Art-Punk Avatar: Jowe Head
by Peter Aaron
With Swell Maps and the Television Personalities you were doing music that was intentionally outside the mainstream, but did it ever occur to you that what you were doing then would later help to shape the mainstream itself?
Even now, I do not really consider seriously that what I’ve been involved in has “shaped” mainstream culture significantly. It’s not the kind of topic that I prefer to dwell upon. However, at certain times in my performing life I remember feeling that what I was striving for with my band-mates was of crucial importance and needed to be heard, but not at any cost to its intrinsic ideals. There was never any danger of us selling out to commercial pressure, because our attitude in Swell Maps, for example, was so willfully perverse and idiosyncratic! I’ve heard it said that the Maps and the TVPs (Television Personalities) were pioneers of independent alternative rock or something like that, so that’s quite satisfying. Having said that, I learned that a Maps track was recently used in a car advert in TV in the U.S. It is quite flattering that they chose to use such an obscure, primitive piece of 25-year-old music, I suppose, but that’s one of the most ridiculous ideas that I’ve ever heard!
Swell Maps had much more diverse influences than most other acts of the original UK punk era—perhaps as much Stockhausen as New York Dolls. What was it about the avant-garde that grabbed you as much as rock ’n’ roll did?
The range of influences in Swell Maps was down to the range of personalities involved. We would all share certain tastes, for example a liking for Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, and Public Image, but we would all bring something personal into the mix: Epic’s love of Can, my love of Captain Beefheart, Nikki’s love T.Rex, [guitarist] Phones B. Sportsman’s liking for Stockhausen, and so on...CONTINUE...
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