Daniel Ash, one-third of the English band Love and Rockets, entered a trailer dressing room in Los Angeles before a recent concert and squinted severely at the harsh fluorescent lighting.
”Can`t we turn those lights off?” he asked. ”It`s like a bloody supermarket in here.”
The lights were killed, leaving only a little illumination from a small window. As Ash settled onto a small sofa, David J., who splits Love and Rockets` singing and writing duties with Ash, stepped into the room and immediately asked: ”Can`t we get some light in here? It`s like a bleeding morgue.”
A brief discussion ensued. Ash and J. never actually agreed, but settled on a compromise: The light in the room was left off, and a door was opened so light from an adjoining room could filter in while Ash and J. expressed conflicting opinions on a number of subjects.
The spike-haired Ash-who is flamboyant enough to don fishnet stockings and a mini-dress for the band`s encore-is fairly bluntand prone to making sweeping statements in a working-class English accent disconcertingly reminiscent of the character Nigel Tufnel in the movie ”This is Spinal Tap.” Bassist J., in contrast, is more reserved and pensive.
”We usually see eye to eye at the end of the day,” explained Ash, who plays guitar in addition to singing. ”But we like a bit of healthy contrast. ”Us two are very different in many respects and I think we learn from each other, really. Particularly on the creative side, there are areas we wouldn`t indulge in normally, both of us.”
It`s a contrast mirrored by the audience Love and Rockets attracts. When
”So Alive”-the first single from their ”Love and Rockets” album-made Billboard`s Top 5 last summer, the trio started headlining big arenas. At the same time, Love and Rockets has held onto fans who have been with the trio since it was three-fourths of the gloom `n` doom icon Bauhaus in the early
`80s.
The resulting audience-predominantly white teens and young adults-is the kind usually reserved for either a let`s-party-together band, like Motley Crue, or a let`s-be-alienated-together experience, like the Cure or the Smiths.
”No one else can flirt with death and bring it back like Love and Rockets,” said a 23-year-old fan during one of the band`s recent concerts.
”Can`t you hear the afterlife in their voices? ”
Next to him, another concert-goer had a more down-to-earth assessment:
”I just like the rhythms and the beats. I`m not too good with lyrics.”
In either case, it`s an audience with an average age at least a decade younger than the musicians (Ash is 31, J. is 32, and drummer Kevin Haskins-J.` s younger brother-is 29).
Is it awkward to be speaking to, if not for, a younger generation?
”Not at all,” Ash replied. ”That`s part of rock `n` roll anyway. It lets you act like a kid longer than the usual time you`re supposed to.”
Typically, J. disagreed: ”It`s a more advantaged position we`re in, because you learn from experience, but we still have sympathy for that time of life.”
After a brief argument, Ash confessed: ”Personally, I don`t remember going through any big change in my teens. Nothing drastic happened to me at that age at all.”
He didn`t spend hours sitting alone in his room, anguishing, as many of his young fans certainly do?
”Yeah, but I still do that,” Ash said. ”That`s what I`m saying. I`ve always done that.”
Nonetheless, Ash shrugged off any implied responsibility in having young fans. ”Responsibility? None at all,” he said. ”If you start worrying about that, you can miss your own truths.”
Added J., ”Your responsibility is honesty.”
Not that the Rockets haven`t thought about their relationship with their fans. Ever since the Bauhaus days, they`ve had many encounters with, and yearning letters from, young admirers who take their introspective songs very personally.
”We get quite a variety,” Ash said. ”From strange obsessive letters to very interesting letters that can give an insight into the music that really hadn`t occurred to us.”
If not responsibility, they do acknowledge a potential power in their position. It`s a subject they have addressed in song.
”Swing the Heartache,” a recent collection of BBC radio sessions by Bauhaus, includes ”Party of the First Part,” which features dialogue taken from a film presenting stardom as a Faustian exercise. And on the ”Love and Rockets” album, the song ”Rock and Roll Babylon” presents pop stars as tightrope walkers through whom fans vicariously take risks.
”Anybody that`s in the public eye, people want them to take their chances for them,” Ash said. ”But I wouldn`t presume that it`s us.”
J. disagreed, saying that the risk-taker`s role is indeed relevant to Love and Rockets` relationship with its audience. ”But if you`re aware of it,” he said, ”then you`ve already made a move to avoid it.”
Ash countered: ”But it`s not about us. It`s observations about the general things that go on.”
”It beckons, though,” J. insisted. ”But we recognized it for what it is, so it isn`t a danger.”
