Rowland .S.Howard
May 2010ZANI – Remembered
With an increasingly diverse readership, I feel now is the time for an article that has been sitting for some time inside my head. Rowland S. Howard may not be an artist that you immediately associate with; but his influence on the last 30 years should not be underestimated. Rowland had planned to come over to the UK this Spring to promote his new album, Pop Crimes. Tragically, he lost his fight for life whilst waiting for a liver transplant on December 30th last year. You only have to listen to the work of bands like the Horrors and Yeah Yeah Yeahs - alongside many of the more maverick underground artists from the last 20 years - to see how much his influence abounds. He was one of those artists who lived the Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle to the full. Always on the edge, his death as he completed this full-of-promise comeback album is as tragic as the dark lyrics that ran around his head. The album - to be released on May 31st in the UK on Infectious Records - is a fitting legacy to an artist who will one day take his rightful place up there and be remembered as a musical genius.Rowland S. Howard had history; he started out playing in teenage bands like The Obsessions and The Young Charlatans in late 70s Melbourne. Whilst he was still a callow youth, he wrote ‘Shivers’ - an undisputed classic (quietly ignoring the fact that Howard perhaps doesn’t see it that way and approaches the song as if it was written by someone else). The song was recorded by his band The Boys Next Door, who mutated into the wilder and looser The Birthday Party. They relocated to Europe to wage a guerrilla campaign against the trivialities of the 80s, themselves and the world at large, through a series of wild and feral records oozing high-IQ and filthy disgust. The Birthday Party were one of the most no-holds-barred bands of all time. Their expressive and wild music packed a fierce and filthy punch of intellect as it thrilled the early 80s underground music scene.
Front man Nick Cave has become an international star - a dark-hearted preacher who sings songs of tender love or demonic filth with a leering glee. The charismatic star still stalks the stage with a powerful presence, but it is his Birthday Party performances which introduced the world to an astonishingly dangerous persona.
To his side was a stick-thin razor-sharp guitarist consumed with the feral power of his instrument - a power so little utilised by most other players. Rowland S. Howard would shimmy with a devilish glee, at one with his instrument as he carved out great slices of six-string thunder. His guitar could twang deep and dark, like a Link Wray gone bad; it could skree free-jazz filth or it could cut loose with the power of The Stooges. It was the purest cigarette-in-the-mouth power of rock 'n' roll - an astonishing sound capturing all the potential for freedom that the instrument possesses in a life-affirming howl of blues; the perfect foil to Cave’s astonishing poetry. And in a world where there were too many guitar players, Rowland S. Howard actually managed to produce a distinctive sound all of his own - far too rare an achievement to get from an instrument that is so regularly abused by those average and cloth-eared musicians who adhere to tired old rules, techniques and clichés. Players like Rowland S. Howard come along only occasionally - maybe a handful in each generation – and are barely recognised by the dull mainstream that rewards effort over genius and plodding hard work over brave, instinctive originality.
The last two Birthday Party EPs contained some of Howard's greatest guitar work - deep, sonorous riffs and garbage-can twanging that echoes the band's kinetic chaos with a delta blues instinct, sieved through a punk rock intensity. Few rock bands have made records as dark and deadly as this. A generation’s post-punk disgust at the vile world was spewed and skewed back in loud, loose music that fought with the audience.
Howard’s guitar style and song writing was one of the key components of The Birthday Party over the course of two albums and a series of singles. Onstage, Rowland was the skinny badass guitar freak with the "six strings that drew blood", as Nick Cave once sang. His popeyed expression and disheveled hair made him a charismatic foil for Cave, as well as an arresting figure himself.
It was because of this intensity that they collapsed. There was no way the competing talents of Nick Cave and Rowland S. Howard could be contained in one unit. Howard left The Birthday Party to become a member of Crime and the City Solution - a band led by Simon Bonney - and then later formed These Immortal Souls with Genevieve McGuckin, his brother Harry Howard, and Epic Soundtracks.
He made a singularly brilliant record with Lydia Lunch - a powerful swaggering take on Lee Hazelwood‘s Some Velvet Morning. His sneering vocal alone on that record makes it one of the greatest releases of the period, and the cover shot of himself and Lydia Lunch drips pure sex appeal. The pair further collaborated on other songs, all of which oozed erotic violence and melancholy.
Whilst his former associates have moved on to weekend colour supplement acceptability, Rowland S. Howard himself moved back to Australia and seemed to drop out of view, with only the occasional snippet of information giving us any clue to his activities. His ghostly demeanour (pale, gaunt, stick thin, sickly, dark-humoured, fatalistic) has perhaps inadvertently added far too much credence to his shadowy presence. The shadow of this myth has seemingly obscured the sheer volume of his creativity and the singularity of his musical vision.
In reality always respected by his peers, a scan through Rowland’s catalogue of work sees him allied with the likes of Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore, Wim Wenders, Barry Adamson, The Gun Club, Nikki Sudden, the Beasts Of Bourbon, the Hungry Ghosts and HTRK. Rowland’s own ensemble These Immortal Souls guns its engines in the ill-lit background and the legacy of his work with The Birthday Party has scored the skin of successive generations of musicians and fans.
But it’s a history Howard would gleefully have put a match to.
Rowland S. Howard has carved a deep scar across the landscape of contemporary music. Elsewhere in the world, such a rogue character would be rewarded with glowing features in glossy music magazines, invited to curate arts festivals, offered their own radio show or feted with tribute albums. In Australia, such a triumph of spirit - his lifetime spent wilfully unyielding to the middle ground - is not so highly prized and not so publicly commended.
Until recently.
Last year, Howard performed at All Tomorrow’s Parties at the Mount Buller ski resort in alpine Australia. The daylight and charms of the great outdoors perhaps seemed at odds with his legendary status. But the large crowd was with this enigmatic man; the crowd grasped his right to be there and warmly welcomed him. Howard seemed well aware that it was an unlikely journey for him to make to connect with an audience who know and value his worth. And with an ever-sharp wit, he greeted them with the wry observation that “Sometimes Muhammad must come to the mountain.”
R.I.P.
© Words – Mark Thorpe/ ZANI
