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" Ian Astbury of The Cult is something of a paradox. He&amp;#039;s had huge success as a leather-clad, stage-humping Morrison-esque rock star while enchanting throngs of music lovers with his early post-punk, gothic caroling. Last year his band released a new album, Choice of Weapon, and this year they celebrated an old one (1987&amp;#039;s Electric) on the &amp;quot;Electric 13&amp;quot; tour that just wrapped this month. We talked to Astbury before he took the stage at a concert in New Jersey, and he revelaed himself to be a down-to-earth, convivial, and funny guy who loves Yohji Yamamoto and Nikes. He spoke candidly about music, his views on fashion, and what it means to be a rock star today. ESQUIRE.COM: Hey Ian, how&amp;#039;s it going? IAN ASTBURY: Good, good, Mick. Going on stage soon, but plenty of time for Esquire. Fire away! ESQ: Nelson Mandela recently passed away. Did he have any impact on your life at all? IA: Certainly, in the sense that his civil rights work, and as a humanitarian, is deeply humbling. I&amp;#039;ve tended to lean more toward the Dalai Lama and people like Russell Means who have been my political and spiritual North Stars, but I certainly regard Nelson Mandela with great respect and humility. I think his work unifying South Africa and bringing about the end of apartheid definitely affected the world that we live in. He suffered greatly, but he was very instrumental in us moving forward as a global community. He was very important and he will be missed. ESQ: So, Morrissey released his autobiography, and in it he mentions his early days playing in a band with [Cult guitarist] Billy Duffy. Have you read it, and if so, what did you think? IA: I have no interest in it. ESQ: No interest at all? IA: No interest whatsoever. You&amp;#039;d have to ask Billy about that. I have no connection to him. I mean, I admire The Smiths, certainly, and Morrissey as well, but the only moment I ever had with Morrissey was when he did Your Arsenal with Mick Ronson producing, which I thought was an exceptional record. In terms of autobiographies, I&amp;#039;ve got Mike Tyson&amp;#039;s autobiography right now. I&amp;#039;m much more interested in Mike Tyson than I am in Morrissey. ESQ: Interesting. You&amp;#039;re perceived as this enigmatic figure with The Cult... IA: [Laughs] Really? It&amp;#039;s strange because I don&amp;#039;t objectify myself. I hate looking at pictures of myself, they&amp;#039;re usually awful. As you get older, it&amp;#039;s just, &amp;quot;Aww...&amp;quot; The last videos we did, &amp;quot;Honey from a Knife,&amp;quot; we&amp;#039;re not even in it! And for the &amp;quot;Animals&amp;quot; video, we&amp;#039;re only in a cameo. The most important thing for us is putting our music out there. The idea of being icons, I think it&amp;#039;s great when you&amp;#039;re 24. It&amp;#039;s fantastic. I much prefer being in the studio or on stage and staying out of the mainstream really. Adam Levine is good at that.      ESQ: I think a lot of people would agree that you&amp;#039;re a rock star, though. What I was going to ask was, what happened to the idea of that? All the rock stars, the mainstream rock stars, where are they? It seems like in the past decade or so, all that&amp;#039;s out there is maybe Chris Martin from Coldplay or Adam Levine... IA: Hold on. They&amp;#039;re not rock singers. Let&amp;#039;s roll it back: They&amp;#039;re pop stars. They&amp;#039;ve got nothing to do with rock music. They&amp;#039;re popular icons, individual popular icons. They have nothing to do with rock music whatsoever. ESQ: There is an absence of, in this case, men who front bands that actually play instruments and use those instruments to play high-energy rock and roll with an element of danger. Would you agree? IA: What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel. The original rock and roll came from that well. It was meant to be played from the waist down. It wasn&amp;#039;t supposed to be played from the neck up. ESQ: So the Chris Martins... IA: I admire Chris Martin. Coldplay have made some wonderful records for the genre they&amp;#039;re involved in, but I would consider them to be more of a pop act. The music is much more cerebral than it is animalistic. I think hip-hop has more to do with rock and roll. Kanye West is, in many ways, a rock artist. Jay Z in many ways is a rock artist. In the sense that they&amp;#039;ve used hard rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock aesthetics and influences in their music. When you see Kanye West, he has a full band playing. Jay Z has a full band playing with Marshalls. ESQ: Rihanna plays with Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme. IA: Right. Their aesthetic and the kinds of things that they aspire to \u2014 for example, Kanye West talks about being Axl Rose, being Kurt Cobain, being Jim Morrison. Adam Levine is selling acne ointment to teenagers. ESQ: He&amp;#039;s Proactiv! IA: He&amp;#039;s a popular icon and I don&amp;#039;t take anything away from him in that sense, and it&amp;#039;s his prerogative to do whatever he sees fit to do for his career. He is deeply ingrained in a career that has transcended his involvement with music. He&amp;#039;s a celebrity, he&amp;#039;s an icon. Chris Martin is more of a musician and hasn&amp;#039;t really put himself out there as a television host or anything like that. ESQ: I think the world still lacks rock stars. IA: Well, the term &amp;quot;rock&amp;quot; has, unfortunately, become appropriated by four-year-old girls and accountants. An accountant does something amazingly well on the stock exchange and his buddies high-five him: He&amp;#039;s a rock star! A four-year-old girl learned to ride a bicycle: She&amp;#039;s a rock star!  ESQ: I blame Smash Mouth. IA: But what does that mean anymore? What is the popular image of rock star? A rail-thin, overly-paid, narcissistic, average-talented individual who self-implodes in front of everybody, eternally having a party and who looks eternally youthful? ESQ: Yes. With guitars. IA: I don&amp;#039;t know what it is. I don&amp;#039;t really know. I do know that there is a difference between artists who are career-driven and artists who have a calling and are just compelled to make music, compelled to perform live, and the business isn&amp;#039;t the reason they&amp;#039;re doing it. In fact, there isn&amp;#039;t really a reason. You just do it. ESQ: Is that how it was for you? IA: I didn&amp;#039;t join a band. I didn&amp;#039;t start a band. I got asked to do it. It kinda happened by accident. I wasn&amp;#039;t pursuing a musical career or anything. It just happened and then it was there. There have been times in my life where I was asked to do things and I didn&amp;#039;t feel comfortable with it. ESQ: I&amp;#039;m troubled by a world where everyone can make music but no one actually plays any instruments, aren&amp;#039;t you? IA: That is how it will be as long as people are making records in their bedrooms, making records as individuals. Jim Morrison said back in 1970 when he did an interview for public television \u2014 he was asked how he envisions the future of music and he said, &amp;quot;I see a guy in his room with tapes and machines doing something on his own.&amp;quot; We&amp;#039;ve seen it and we are seeing it, but there are still young people learning to play guitars and making music. ESQ: How do you think The Cult would fare if you were starting out today, or even 13 years ago? IA: I couldn&amp;#039;t even speculate. It would be a completely different context. I think if I was 19 years old now, I&amp;#039;d be doing something on my own. I don&amp;#039;t think I would even be in a band. ESQ: What is the status of the &amp;quot;Untitled Terrence Malick Project,&amp;quot; which was shot in Austin, Texas, during the 2012 SXSW music festival, at which you headlined a performance at Auditorium Shores? Is the performance still going to be featured? IA:[Laughs] I have no idea! It&amp;#039;s just one of those things. Hollywood has this incredible ability to make a lot of noise, which they did. Terrence Malick, full production, Matthew McConaughey running around... and then it all goes away and you never hear anything else about it. Who knows? It might come out in 2026. I don&amp;#039;t know. ESQ: But you were in it, or the band was in it? IA:I did some improvisational dialogue, maybe 30 seconds, with Rooney Mara. But it was just such bullshit, really. It&amp;#039;s just nonsense. More nonsense goes on than you would ever expect. ESQ: Such as? IA:The days are usually filled with nonsense and every now and again somebody flies by the circus to party on your dime. We were doing SXSW, 20,000 people on St. Patrick&amp;#039;s Day. It was a big show. They asked to use our production as a backdrop to their film and our manager was all over it. So, okay, cool. I&amp;#039;m getting ready for the show in a handicapped porta-potty, putting on a pair of trousers and getting screamed at by a production manager to get out and walk into the scene. I go out indignantly pulling up my pants in the backstage area just to be in the scene to do an improvisational walk-on. ESQ: Matthew McConaughey appeared at that show and played bongos on a couple songs. How did that come about? IA:Matthew&amp;#039;s a big Cult fan. Usually when I see Matthew at a show, he&amp;#039;ll be down in front with his shirt off with two beers just going mental, lit up and having an amazing time. He loves the band and just rolls in, so it&amp;#039;s like: fine, totally cool.      ESQ: Did you catch him in Dallas Buyers Club? IA:No, not yet, but I did see him in Mud and I thought he was exceptional in that. He&amp;#039;s one of the few actors I actually admire. I mean, let&amp;#039;s be honest: It&amp;#039;s acting for God&amp;#039;s sake. You get paid and you get venerated and worshipped for pretending to be somebody else. And having great hair and great teeth and abs and all the rest of it. Maybe I&amp;#039;m a bit envious, but it&amp;#039;s a fa\u00E7ade. I had a great conversation with Trent Reznor. Trent said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d have a sixpack, too, if I didn&amp;#039;t write my own music!&amp;quot; ESQ: That&amp;#039;s funny. IA:Meaning, of course, that I work at my life and I cultivate myself and don&amp;#039;t spend six hours in a gym. Some people would say I should but why? ESQ: Acting doesn&amp;#039;t interest you? IA:I think the thing that would interest me would be to appear in a period piece where you&amp;#039;d get to dress in an elaborate costume and say nothing but just look fabulous and have a fancy role. I have no desire to be a lead actor or anything. I was offered things and occasionally something comes along, but for the most part I&amp;#039;m pretty much, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve got to be joking, right?&amp;quot; I like the idea of getting to dress up, like to do a Barry Lyndon or something about the Napoleonic period, the grand army retreating from Moscow. I understand that there&amp;#039;s a craft to acting and a lot of people work hard at it. I just know that music is my first love. I love music, I love film, and I love clothes. ESQ: Speaking of music and fashion: How do you think your video for The Cult&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Resurrection Joe&amp;quot; holds up?  IA:[Laughs] I think it looks about right on for now! If it came out this week, it would probably do okay! It was an abomination. It was like the best amateur dramatics right there. I don&amp;#039;t think it holds up at all. It&amp;#039;s just... It&amp;#039;s just... You&amp;#039;re looking at a time when the making of videos was incredibly na\u00EFve. There was a guy with a VHS camera on his shoulder and the director was from the local television station who had no clue what he was doing. Didn&amp;#039;t have a clue about lighting. The actors were just extras they picked up from some agency. A pretty cheap production.      ESQ: Flash forward to now. The Cult has been touring for the past two years \u2014 in 2012, to support Choice of Weapon, and this year on the &amp;quot;Electric 13&amp;quot; tour. How do you compare and contrast touring an album of new material and touring an album that was released when many Millennials were born? IA:With Electric, I like these songs because they&amp;#039;re rooted in three-chords and blues-rock elements. They&amp;#039;re on a dark cycle and really come from an organic force. They may not be current in the sense of what&amp;#039;s popular but in terms of human action, they&amp;#039;re archetypal. They&amp;#039;ll always be fresh. When we play new songs, it&amp;#039;s like fresh bread: You have to serve it up. When we perform any songs live, the performance we&amp;#039;re doing is what you&amp;#039;re getting. That&amp;#039;s the experience. These songs are very physical and demand a certain amount of physicality and that&amp;#039;s the one thing about live music that you&amp;#039;re never going to get from a bedroom production that&amp;#039;s a digitally manufactured, Pro Tools piece. It&amp;#039;s the difference between playing a fighting video game and actually punching someone. ESQ: You mentioned you&amp;#039;re very interested in fashion. Can you talk about Wes Lang and your involvement with him?  IA:Wes is actually a fan of the band and I really admire his artwork. We talked about doing something for this tour. I have a friend in Australia who has a clothing store called Supply that&amp;#039;s quite an important player in the high-end street wear market. So we came together with Supply handling production and Wes handling the artwork, which was a take on the artwork we&amp;#039;d come up with for the &amp;quot;Electric 13&amp;quot; tour. We did a very short run of it and it was gone. About two weeks later, he came out with the tour merch for Yeezus. ESQ: Are you doing your clothing line, LAMF? IA:Yes.  ESQ: What is the status of it right now? IA:It&amp;#039;s not about mainstream global domination. I make clothes that I can&amp;#039;t find. I made a few pieces and Lupe Fiasco bought a pair of trousers I&amp;#039;d made, and a few other artists picked some up. I really made them for myself and close friends and now there&amp;#039;s people who are sniffing around and want to get involved. I&amp;#039;m keeping it really tight and not broadcasting it and it has nothing to do with The Cult whatsoever. It&amp;#039;s a completely different platform. ESQ: You&amp;#039;re into street wear. IA:Absolutely. I have been for many years. I used to make all my clothes when I was in Southern Death Cult [the first incarnation of The Cult]. I still make things to wear on stage and I am involved with sketching, choosing fabric, cutting. You come out of a working-class environment, you know, working-class kids always put them themselves together because it&amp;#039;s one of the only things they had. You had control of your image. If you look at our band from &amp;#039;81 to &amp;#039;95, it&amp;#039;s very, very conscious. I got my first pair of Nikes in the &amp;#039;70s. I always played soccer in Adidas, but I always wore Nikes. I love street sportswear. ESQ: That explains the hoodie. IA:Yeah. Hoodies are definitely street wear, no doubt. It&amp;#039;s amazing how hoodies have become such an important staple in people&amp;#039;s wardrobes. So much so that even Nick Cave sells a hoodie with his merch. That&amp;#039;s a real sign of the times \u2014 can you imagine Nick Cave wearing a hoodie? He may not wear one, but he definitely sells them. But they&amp;#039;re part of my everyday wardrobe. It&amp;#039;s interesting. When you look at men&amp;#039;s fashion magazines, you see a lot of well-groomed guys in suits, but very rarely do you see a lot of guys in drop-crotch and hoods with high-tops. It&amp;#039;s coming, though, because guys in suits and short hair are beginning to look like they&amp;#039;re from another time. But you can take street wear and you can throw in some Comme des Garcons or something and you can put yourself together really well. There&amp;#039;s some incredible tailors out there. Junya Watanabe did this incredible collection of Brooks Brothers that&amp;#039;s really dope. ESQ: So no suits for you, then? IA:I own one Vivienne Westwood suit, which I never wear, and I&amp;#039;ve got a few Alexander McQueen pieces that I wear, from when he was still alive. I&amp;#039;ve got a Yohji Yamamoto jacket, a linen blazer from about eight years ago and I&amp;#039;ll wear that with drop-crotch and hoods. And high-tops. Occasionally I like a really good pair of shoes. A pair of leather shoes from Gieves &amp;amp;amp; Hawkes in England, Buckshot Brogue, they look really sick. The thing that I&amp;#039;m against is all this &amp;quot;age-appropriate dressing.&amp;quot; Who decides that shit? Don&amp;#039;t let anyone dictate what you should and shouldn&amp;#039;t wear. Do what you want. Who cares? ESQ: Maybe my editors, some readers... IA:If you want to go put on a bathrobe and go walk down the street, excellent. I think it&amp;#039;s more about trying to get an individual style than trying to get a uniform look. I think there&amp;#039;s a lot of people who are afraid to experiment with clothing because they&amp;#039;re afraid to get judged or ridiculed. Be a peacock! So what? I&amp;#039;ve seen people wearing clothes that don&amp;#039;t look good on them, but they&amp;#039;re really loving those clothes and the experience of wearing those clothes. Fine. At the end of the day, it&amp;#039;s fashion. I&amp;#039;m much more for style and not trend-driven. I&amp;#039;ve got a black leopard-skin Supreme jacket I&amp;#039;m wearing right now, with a pair of Rick Owens drop-crotch pants and a New York Yankees beanie. So... ESQ: Yankees? Really? IA:Yeah. I&amp;#039;ve liked the Yankees since I was a kid. I grew up in Canada so I kind of identified with New York sports teams. We didn&amp;#039;t have a baseball team in Canada so they were the go-to team for me in the &amp;#039;70s. Then I liked the Raiders as a football team, and then the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks. So I grew up on North American sports teams as well as English soccer clubs. ESQ: We haven&amp;#039;t really talked about music, but I saw something somewhere that you&amp;#039;re going into the studio to record new material next year. Is that true? IA:Yeah. There&amp;#039;s always music sitting around, but when you&amp;#039;re cultivating music, the idea of getting into a studio and compressing it to get something out on time can be really good, but sometimes you have to prepare yourself for the best possible outcome and I think that we&amp;#039;ve got material sitting around and it will naturally evolve from us. Billy and I know each other quite instinctively and we&amp;#039;ll probably convene in the studio. But there is material floating around right now. We&amp;#039;ll see what kind of format it takes. It could be a couple of new tracks or a full-blown album. We&amp;#039;ll see. I know there&amp;#039;s going to be something next year. ESQ: So I can quote you on that? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s going to be something from The Cult...&amp;quot; IA:Yes. There will be something from The Cult next year for sure. I think we&amp;#039;ll go in the studio in January and do a discovery session and see what&amp;#039;s going on. I write all the time. The wonderful thing about having a cell phone is that if I get an idea, I knock it out and it&amp;#039;s in my phone and I can transfer it to my computer and go into the studio and bring it up. ESQ: Right now you&amp;#039;re on the road. Do you celebrate Christmas, and if so, what does Christmas mean to you? IA: I celebrate the spirit of Christmas. It&amp;#039;s the winter solstice celebration, rebirth and new possibilities. Christmas to me is very much about family and the depths of winter. My children are older now so they do their own thing, and it&amp;#039;s just myself and my wife and a time for reflection. I&amp;#039;m not really caught up in the whole commercial thing of Christmas. I&amp;#039;m probably more of a pagan than a Christian, but it&amp;#039;s hard not to get caught up in it. I actually like the Victorian Christmas. Idyllic, Dickensian... Alistair Sims as Ebeneezer Scrooge [Scrooge 1951] is probably my definitive Christmas. Peace on earth and good will toward men \u2014 that is something we need to work on. Like Nelson Mandela, we should learn from him. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/interviews/a26588/ian-astbury-interview/>