Q & A with Bobby

Where are you now?
In a hotel in Portsmouth. We played on the Thames last Saturday--20 years since the Sex Pistols did it--but last night was our first gig on land for two-and-a-half years. It was cool. Really buzzin'. Dead alert.

Vanishing Point, then. Album of the year or what?
It's definitely the best primal Scream album, but we're only half-way through the year. Somebody else might come out with a classic that's better than ours...but I doubt it. Ha ha ha.

You've covered Motorhead's Motorhead on Vanishing Point, and sung it through a Darth Vader Mask. Any more odd covers in the pipeline?
We've just covered a track by '60s garage band The Third Bardo Called I'm Five Years Ahead Of My Time. It's got Jaki Lieberzeit from Can on drums. It's really intense and psychotic-sounding. We're gonna release it on an EP at the end of they year. Another track has got Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine playing guitar. He's incredible. His guitar sounds like a squadron of jet fighters taking off. Fucking beautiful!

The album's title ad the first single Kowalski were inspired by the post-Easy Rider existentialist speed freak movie Vanishing Point. What was the last film that inspired you?
I saw Michael Powell's Black Narcissus last week [a hysterical tragedy about a bunch of British nuns doing charity work in the Himalayas before strangely becoming sexually charged]. Powell's Peeping Tom [an outrageous '60s psycho-flick] is even better. He was hounded out of Britain after that one! Too much has been made of our influence from the film Vanishing Point, though. We only called the album that 'cos it's a great title. Really Mod-like, clean and sharp.

You used to tell the world that Primal Scream had no competition. But what's inspiring you musically right now?
Tricky's doing some great stuff. I really loved his Pre-Millennium Tension. It's modern blues--the lyrics are paranoid, edgy, emotional...just fucking great. I really like Oasis too. Liam is the greatest rock'n'roll star in the world.

What? Greater than you? But he doesn't even wear leather trousers.
Neither do I now. I'm through that phase. And anyway, since when was wearing leather trousers a prerequisite for being a rock'n'roll star?

What about your forthcoming British tour then? Huge marquees and all day events...it's almost Pop Mart.
Fuck off! We're punk rock. We're nothing to do with that showbiz shit. We just wanted to do something different. It's the summer so why not play in a tent and make a good day

What about Primal Scream live?
We'll be playing a whole new set, all new songs apart from Higher Than The Sun. That might sound dangerous, but it's the way we feel fight now. If we played all the old ones it'd get too much like showbiz.

Cavorting with Kate Moss, as you did in the video for Kowalski, could be construed as showbiz. What are the chances she'll be popping up at gigs?
What d'you mean cavorted? She kung fu'd me in that video! But if she did come to the shows, it wouldn't be like out for people? You've got us, Kris Needs Djing, Irvine Welsh doing a couple of readings and Asian Dub Foundation--the best new band I've heard in years.

Tell us more...
ADF are dead exciting. Dub, jungle, hip hop, experimental sounds, good songs, anger, energy, and they look fucking brilliant. We're at a time when most young bands don't have any imagination, everybody's following the same formula. Bud ADF are out there in their own world. And they're fucking great live. Naomi Campbell at U2's Zooropa (and before you ask, I've no opinion on Naomi Campbells' overdose. I just let people get on with their own life). Kate would be more up for driving on stage in our Dodge Challenger, running a couple of us over, jumping out, doing karate chops, kung fu kicks, bottling us, and driving off again. She's incredible. And that would be some fucking ending to the gig.

Any equally outrageous plans for the backstage parties?
They're normally chaos with a sea of bodies strewn across the floor like the closing scene of Sam Peckipah's The Wild Bunch where they all get wasted.

Sounds like a scene made for Adrian Sherwood's dub version of your album.
Now that is incredible. It's gonna be called Echodek. It sounds superb-heavy and dark but really beautiful. We watched Adrian doing the mixes live and it was like Watching Jackson Pollock doing an action painting. Adrian does action paintings with sound-the way his hands move across the desk, planting echoes and reverbs and...It's just incredible. He's a scientist of sound.

So with Vanishing Point spanning rock'n'roll to psyelectonica, and a dub album to boot, does this add weight to the argument that Primal Scream are the Total Footballing team of music?
Aye, Holland in '74 and '78--Fucking great teams. If this band is the Total Football of music then I must be Cruyff...I'm great at doing backheels at the corner flag.

On the topic of God's own game, did you hear that Maradona has just appointed Ben Johnson (the disgraced Canadian sprinter, stripped of an Olympic title after failing a drugs test) as his personal trainer?
Fuck! I wonder if they're partners in crime? I do love Maradona though. He was the last great player. There's been no-one like him ever since. That second goal against England...

Yeah, yeah, that's enough now...
Oh Maradona! He's heroic. He's so beautiful he makes me cry.

He made me cry on that day too
Fucking good! Ha ha.

Can we move on please? Who would you appoint as your personal trainer?
(almost hysterical...) Adrian Sherwood could teach me a thing or too. He's a very inspiring man. Is that really true about Maradona getting Ben Johnson? Fuck, that's incredible. Maradona's such a beautiful player.

In the run out groove of Kowalski you scratched "Paranoia is total awareness." If that's how you felt when you recorded the single, how do you feel today?
The same. It's the truth. But it was also supposed to make you laugh. There's a joke in there somewhere... Primal Scream's album, Vanishing point, is out now on Creation. The band play Dublin Olympia (July 30-31), Glasgow Green (August 2), Manchester Apollo (August 5), and London Victoria Park (August 9-10).