When "Prostitution" was held at the ICA in 1976, this was pretty far-out stuff for such a prestigious public institution or anywhere else for that matter. Not only is the ICA "owned" by the Queen, it's just down the street from Buckingham Palace, so I'm wondering . . .

We were almost within spitting distance of Buckingham Palace when we were doing "Prostitution" . . .

And you were spitting on it! The ICA obviously received money to mount the show from Britain's art councils, so the funding for "Prostitution" actually came from the Queen herself, in a manner of speaking, didn't it? Do you think she actually knew about the used tampons and the milk and blood enemas?

Absolutely! She and I have had a long standing relationship (laughs)!

She sent three Law Lords down . . . They tried to do the British diplomacy thing, you know "C'mon, you've had your moment of fun, old chap. If you just calm things down, behave nicely, we'll forget about this." And maybe you'll get more money! (laughs)

Basically, what I replied to these Lords --who were under the administration of the Queen, answerable directly to her-- was "Look, you try to close this show down, we'll paint the whole place camouflage. We'll put sandbags outside and declare this a free zone. We'll have a war. You're not coming in, we're not going out. What do you want? Because I will not stop and I will not close this show down for you, for the Queen, the government, the newspapers or a-n-y-o-n-e. If we have to live in here under siege, we will. And you won't like THAT publicity!" (laughs).

Surely you knew what kind of reaction 'Prostitution' was going to cause . . .

I thought I did. Unbeknownst to the other members, I'd secretly assembled, then serepticiously utilised, a list of "yellow" journals and journalists --around fifty or so names and addresses . . . I'd done this before and nothing had happened. I was thinking very much in terms of Dada and Surrealism. Sending out flyers to titillate and arouse. Where just the action of the mailing was an event in and of itself. A souvenir if you like. I 've always viewed art as being much closer to sea-side merchandise and memorabilia than it likes to admit. I must confess though, I had no idea that the media would take it so seriously, or that it would turn out to be so serious. It started a cultural war in much the same way as the grievious grenade in Sarajevo did! Which caught all of us off guard to be honest.

Your public life and your art has always been very confrontational . . .

No, self-indulgent (laughs). And prepared to have a confrontation as a result of a specific action. I try to be realistic in forecasting the inevitable, such that I can make a calculated decision that I'm aware that confrontation can or probably will occur and I try and have various back up plans in mind even before it occurs. I try to strategize carefully and remain aware that confrontation can occur. There have been times when I've been annoyed and incredibly angry at hypocrisy, but confrontation just for its own sake has never been something I've been interested in, funnily enough.

How did Throbbing Gristle develop out of COUM?

I'd been messing with tape recorders and sounds and raw noise from when I was 12, feeling there was a new way to make music as a band, so it was actually a continuous thread waiting to become a rope. What happened was that suddenly here was the unit of people who absolutely "got" how to do "it" and all of whom could realize it and contribute something that made it much, much better. It was a concept and a spectacle and detail. A lot of detail figured out, and a lot of resonance and reverberation. You still need the right people for it to work and be convincing. And of course, making the vehicle such that it had the ability to accept and to "mediumize" the information that came through.

Music From the Death Factory

Like a seance? How did TG go about preparing to "transmit" these energies?

Well for a start we all slept together every weekend for a year. We used to make a joke and say 'the band that plays together lays together.' Here's the thing, this is also, don't forget, a reapplication of the early psychodramas from the days of the Transmedia commune I'd lived with in the 60's. 'Here's the uniforms, here's the concept, here's the name, here's the characters, here's the attitude, here's the objective.' We will live it. We will live it and commit our lives and our bodies and our souls to it. That's the only way it will work. That's the only way we will find out (whisper) what it is. The medium is manifested by total immersion.

Was this sex magick or an attempt to decondition yourselves?

It was primarily deconditioning and building a sense of separate unity in order to be effective doing the alchemy with the music. I mean after all, you have to remember that we were basically redrawing the global perception of what popular music could be. As it turns out. I mean that was our intent, but it turns out that we actually were. Now that requires an amazing amount of focus and camaraderie and we achieved that.

How did the TG sound take shape?

We spent about a year looking for it, waiting for TG to tell us how it sounded. During the weekdays Chris and I would build speakers. I would help him with that because it was kind of manual work, wiring, screwing, sawing wood. He would build effects and synthesizer modules. He rebuilt my bass guitar. And then we would experiment. I would use the space echoes and so on and we would just endlessly feel for noises or sonic effects or volume effects. He would keep on and on telling me all these ideas that he'd read about in electronic magazines and what they might mean and I'd say "Yes! Let's try that one!' or "No, that's boring." "Oh, very high frequencies, doesn't that mean that such and such would happen?" It would be trial and error, discussion, build, experiment. If it was something to do with the effect of the sound on the body he and I would use our own bodies as the Guinea pigs.

You were trying to break down pure sound in order to gauge its magickal effects?