Primal Scream . Webadelica

Sheiladelica!

What happens when The Shaman Of Bliss-Out meets The 500 Megaton Sex Warhead? On a four-poster bed with a crate of Bollinger?You are cordially invited to the Kylie Minogue/ Bobby Gillespie Love-In... Story by Andrew Harrison, Photos by Katerina Jebb "These are the best two things in British pop music. Primal Scream and Kylie Minogue." BOBBY GILLESPIE

11AM, APRIL 10, 1992: KYLIE MINOGUE FLOATS INTO ROOM 314 of the Kensington Gore Hotel, and the first thing she does is absently scoop up the TV remote control to turn off the torrent of post-election tele-misery. John Major is ushering his caravan of dingbats back into power, a man in a suit says something like, Remember the Last five years? Well that's what the next five years are going to be like...and Kylie, oblivious, dumps her bags with one hand and skips the channels with the other.

She's tiny. Really tiny, four feet ten at the outside - she could probably still get a half fare on the buses if she used them - and she's wearing jeans and a little denim jacket, dinkily done-out with lacy flowers. But Kylie is in civvies from the neck down only. She's been in make-up since 9.30 and her hair and face are virtually glowing with photogenic health and radioactive wonderfulness. It feels like someone's turned a sunlamp on in here.

Kylie's thumb stops clicking. She's found something she wants to watch while she waits for Bobby Gillespie. "Oh brilliant! Get Smart!"

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE GORE HOTEL'S RESTAURANT A monosyllabic Gillespie is sitting at a table drinking orange juice with girlfriend Emily and Creation pal Stephanie. Well, not sitting as such. He's more sort of...propped there, racked up between two chairs like a pile of pool cues wrapped in ultra-tight cords, black leather jacket and Primal Scream standard-issue Hysteric's Angel T-shirt. His hair has that Duckham's Multigrade sheen and if there's anything going on behind the mirror-lens aviator shades you really wouldn't know about it. Bobby has had a heavy night.

"See we got battered last night, then?" he breathes. Yes, he does mean the election. So how did he see in the historic fourth term?

"I went out to see Flowered Up," he replies. Don't know where it was. Then we went down to Number Ten Downing Street where we, uh, exchanged a difference of opinion with some cops. Coupla Tory c***s, y'know? Sorta guys who spout shit, cos they're so stupid and right wing.

"Anyway, one of these cops threatened my friend Alex (Nightingale, Primal Scream's booking agent) with a loaded gun. He said, I've got a weapon and I'll use it unless you go... So we, well we just laughed and went. We said, Ah you're such a big man with your big gun. God, were so scared of you. And then we went back to Alex's and got wasted. A good night..."

Oh, it seemed like such a great idea at the time. Get the bushbaby love queen together with Primal Scream's shaman of bliss-out, let them talk, see what happens. Bobby's an avowed disciple of Kylie-ism, and she's the patron saint of Creation - there are poster shrines to her all over their offices. Bobby's favourite band Teenage Fanclub did the infamous 'Kylie's Got A Crush On Us' for the Select Creation Tape. To a legion of Scream fans Kylie is the United Nations Ambassador for Total Sex Overload.

She'd even asked for Bobby by name, wanting to meet this spark-headed rake whose LP, like anyone else with sense in their head, she'd loved. Her favourite Scream song is not 'Loaded' but 'Don't Fight It, Feel It'. Bobby had his misgivings - how would it go? what would she be like? - but in the end he was unable to resist. Anyway, he had one question he was desperate to ask her: how does she feel about people masturbating over her?

But now Kylie's upstairs, full of antipodean zip, and Bobby's down here looking like he's ready for a bodybag. Here we go. Bobby, this is Kylie. Kylie, this is Bobby.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, SOMETHING STRANGE HAS happened up in 314. Kylie and Bobby - or 'Kyles' and 'Bob' as they're now calling each other - have clicked. They've just sync'ed in, for all the world as if he was a jovial PWL popocrat, or she was a paid-up member of the Primal Scream backstage auto-destruction crew.

Kylie's changed into a carnivorous leopardskin dress to match the room's taste-bypass upholstery, and as she switches from demure Ms Melbourne to 500 megaton sex warhead she sings snatches of 'Movin' On Up'. Bobby slouches determinedly, his method rock 'n' roll wipeout persona firmly in place. They roll about on the four-poster bed for the camera. They vogue around the couch. Kylie vamps it, Bobby camps it. Jesus creeping Christ, they're kissing. Stitch that, Michael Hutchence.

More of Primal Scream's floating posse of ne'er-do-wells arrive. Scream guitarist Andrew Innes and the aforementioned cop-baiting Alex Nightingale have joined Emily and Stephanie. They order champagne and disappear cackling into the bathroom to dissolve things in it.

As Bobby downs Dr Innes' prescribed fortified Bollinger, it becomes more more apparent that Kylie's bulletproof perkiness isn't just a carapace she uses to fend off the press. You can keep vour interview head on for the man from the Daily Mirror, and you can keep Kylie Empress of Lust at the front of your mind while you're making your next video, but when you're hanging out with this rock'n' roll scarecrow - and he keeps sticking his tongue down your ear - be honest, could you hold it together? Kylie can, because she's like this down to the bone.

"What do you think of her?" whispers Emily. "Do you think she's pretty? I don't know, with all that makeup I can't tell. She doesn't even look real."

Emily is 17 years old and she's wearing a pink New York Dolls T-shirt. Bobby met her in the front row of a Rolling Stones concert. She is the anti-Kylie. And she's got the ultimate Gillespie seal of approval: "She's classic, man, Proper womann." More champagne arrives. Innes begs Kylie, can he stay while Bobby talks to her? She's used to dealing with fans, so she says yes...

Bobby: What did you think about last night, Kylie? We were sickened. Totally. It's just sick, this country. There was some Tory MP on this morning saying it was the greatest victory since the Second World War...
Kylie: (drily) I wouldn't wish to express my opinions. I've made that mistake before and it was blown totally out of all proportion so I vowed not to talk about it. Ever.
Select: What happened then?
Kylie: I don't even want to go into it, it's like bringing it up again. I have interest in politics, but not involvement. My interest is in the environment.
Bobby: Ahh, see we don't give a shit about the environment.
Kylie: No?
Bobby: Well... (he pauses, rather sadly, and considers) No, really we don't. We don't give a shit at all. We're bothered about what's happening to people. This government has and will now continue to attack old people, single parents...they're against working class people. It's a war, you know. A definite war.
Select: Kylie, much has been made of your 'SexKylie' makeover, yet you've always had older fans. But they're fans of Kylie the pop star, the icon they don't buy your records. Has the time come to stop doing covers of 'Give Me Just A Little More Time' and leave the kids behind?
Bobby: (interrupting, not for the Last time) Thing is, there's this disgusting attitude that a 14-year-old girl does not have taste in music, but a person in their 20s does. (Kylie laughs in sympathy). It's really patronising, you know what I mean? Young kids know what they like because they like it, and not because the NME or whoever have told them it's hip to like it. Some 13 or 44-year-old kids are going to see a Kylie video or hear a Kylie record and love it, but if they see U2 they're gonna say, Who are those ugly fuckin'guys? They havenae got a tune.
Kylie: I think that it is best to have an open mind, and if a certain group of people don't like me then there are people that I don't like, so what... Select: But they do like you. It's "The Locomotion' and 'Give Me Just A Little More Time' they can't stand. They like you removed from your records.
Bobby: How do you know that?
Kylie: It's hard for me to be objective about myself and to see what goes on, because obviously when people are talking to me they're...
Bobby: But that happens to anybody that's a singer or a performer, or in music. People don't just like them for their records, they like them for the way they look or the things they say or what they think that person is like, because they romanticise them. That's the thing. I'm sure there's people that like Primal Scream for reasons other than the music.
Select: Never. You can't like Primal Scream and not like the music.
Bobby: How do you know? Maybe you're enamoured with the attitude of the band. I don't know what people think. But this idea that what Kylie does is not to be taken seriously, but because we're a rock 'n' roll band with all these boys in it playing guitars, we are taken seriously...it's fuckin' shit. Sexist shit. I hate the attitude that people take rock music seriously.
Kylie: At the very least it's a serious business...
Select: Kylie has an icon status, and in some ways the records are secondary.
Kylie: I see what you're saying, but pop music is disposable music.
Bobby: I don't think it is.
Kylie: Yes it is - kids buy it, take it home, play it a hundred times and then stick it away. And then they get it out again, but only a long time later.
Bobby: I disagree. Last night, before I came up here, I was playing T-Rex and 'John I'm Only Dancing'. And I was into those records when I was eleven, and they've stuck with me.
Kylie: Well, they do make an impression on you. OK, disposable in a way that the charts are, they do go straight up and down and then out.
Bobby: (earnestly) Yeah yeah yeah, but you can find somebody 20 years from now on some radio show, and they're saying, Play your favourite record and they'll play 'Shocked', because it reminds you of a really happy time in your life. And it's a really great record.
Kylie: Yes. That's what I like about them, because they symbolise the time. We were talking about old Duran Duran songs the other day, for instance. They were so brilliant.
Bobby: U2 could never be as good as 'Shocked'. They're so pompous they have to pretend they have a sense of humour. It's embarrassing.
Kylie: I don't know. I've met a couple of them, and they seem...ahh...easy-going, nice people.
Bobby: They're probably nice guys but they cannae write songs. They don't have any melodies and that guy's lyrics are really embarrassing. And he's a terrible singer. There's something really phony about that band. They're not sexy or anything.
Innes: Do you think they're sexy, Kylie?
Kylie: I'm not sure. It"s like INXS. I'd probably be killed for saying that by both parties, but yeah, there is something. But to be honest I've never thought to myself, Boy, are U2 sexy!
Innes: So what do you like in lead singers?
Kylie: Charisma.
Innes: Who's your favourite singer?
Bobby: Sid Vicious doing 'My Way'. That's Leonard Cohen's favourite version...
Kylie: Excuse me! I would say...Prince. It's an obvious thing to say but I have but I have been fan of his for years. Errmm...Lenny Kravitz Mmm - yes! Alexander O'Neal, Keith Washington - it's the most beautiful album.
Innes: Do you like Sam Cooke?
Kylie: Who? Sam Cooke I don't know. I'm sure there's so much I would love but to be honest I'm fairly uneducated. I find something that I like and I just stick to it. My leanings are less pure pop, and hopefully you can hear in my music that it's going...slowly..that way. I do get frustrated some times, but I think it would be foolish for me to rush out and do something too unusual...
Bobby: Do you know the song 'Heroin' by The Velvet Underground?
Kylie: (nonplussed) No.
Bobby: You don't know that song? You should cover that song. It's a really beautiful song.
Kylie: Mmm. I like doing covers.
Bobby: No, honestly, I think you should consider 'Heroin' by The Velvet Underground. The lyrics are beautiful, it's a beautiful song.
Select: Don't you ever get just a little sick of making squeaky clean pop records?
Kylie: Yeah, a little frustrated. I have been moving slowly and people are saying, God, the changes! They're continually surprised that I've actually aged.
Bobby: But part of that criticism of you is because you're a woman...don't you reckon?
Kylie: I think in the early days I probably would have been one of those people giving me a hard time. But it's very easy and it's very boring and I think people should be more thoughtful and inventive about it. People like to have something to criticise and something to go on about. I'm young, I'm successful, I come from a soap opera, I'm Australian...call it petty but I'm blonde, you know. I'm sure if I was dark and exotic it probably wouldn't be quite the same. It's a perfect little package for scandal, and while I still get shocked at criticism I honestly don't mind if it's constructive and worthwhile. But Bobby, you're fortunate in that you're mainly in music journalism,..
Innes: ...and not in tabloids What're they like?
Kylie: Well I'm not going to stay inside or go down to get the newspaper with a body guard, no way. I'd rather stop everything if I have to become a hermit like that. You might as well kill yourself, it's killing your soul if you can't be yourself and walk down the street. As it is I will walk down the street, probably with a crook in my neck trying to get by. But anyway the other day I was walking down the street going for my groceries and a kid came up to me and said, I just thought I should let you know there's two guys following you. I was like, Excuse me, can I not even go out? What are they going to do? Print my shopping list? it makes me feel absolutely sick. It's disgusting.
Select: But it doesn't make you feel sick enough to give it up?
Kylie: Sometimes, yeah.
Select: When?
Kylie: When I've been on holidays, when I've been away, just when I wanna be with my boyfriend or my friends. You work hard all year and you get two weeks to just relax. But no, there's a journalist and photographer outside now. And they'll say, Er sorry you know, doll, it's just part of our job. We're just trying to do our job, come on, just one...
Bobby: (adopts reptilian journo voice) Aye, relax love,relax.
Kylie: ...And you can't really do anything. I always say to people that the feeling is like when you come back to your home and it's been robbed. You know that feeling - complete violation. It really does upset me. I guess people think you get used to it, or you toughen up or whatever, but no...
Select: Haven't you toughened up at all?
Kylie: No.
Bobby: It must affect your psyche.
Kylie: It does. It can make me paranoid and I think I don't need to be paranoid so why am I paranoid? I just think it's low.
Bobby: What do you think about, say, the next five or ten years? Like what are you going to be doing? Kylie= I don't know.
Bobby: Would you hope to be doing music or films?
Kylie: Music, at least for the next year.
Select: What, just for the next year?
Kylie: I can't really think further ahead than a year.
Bobby: See, if it stops, it stops, right? Aye. Are you scared of it stopping?
Kylie: Ahhh...in a way. It would be nice to decide to finish when I want to, rather than it ending with no one buying my records and no one interested in me. It would be lovely to say I'll be doing music for the next five years, but who knows?
Bobby: That's like with our band. We don't know. We don't think, Hey in two albums' time well be this big or that big, cos we don't even think there might be a two albums' time. Every time we do an album we think that's the last one. We always think it's gonna end. So when are you gonna do one of our songs, Kyles?
Kylie: When you write me one. I want a new one.
Innes: Give her 'Shine Like Stars', the fast version.
Bobby: Nah, it wouldn't work. Or maybe it could work. Remember 'Rock Me Baby' by George McCrae, Kylie? It's like that - not the version on the LP, but more funked up. A proper Christmas single.
Kylie: Yeah, definitely. (she adopts a crap American accent) This could be the start of a beautiful relationship!
Innes: This could be the start of a bank account!
Bobby: The Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood of the '90s.
Kylie: It might be a good idea... When I wanted to start making some changes in my career all the suits around me said, Ooh no, just you sing and smile and sell. The first thing I could get corltrol of was the image, cos the music, of course, was that whole Stock Aitken Waterman set-up. I mean, I used to get sent out of the studios so they could write the next verse.
Bobby: We're like that.
Kylie: You'd send me out?
Bobby: No, we wouldn't send you out, Kylie. We're gentlemen.
Kylie: I get tired of people talking about the image but I guess it's much more important than it used to be.
Select: But that's the area where you've made the most change.
Bobby: She's changed her records as well. nylie: Yeah, but not as drastically.
Bobby:'I Should Be So Lucky' was a good song, a good Supremes song. But 'Shocked' was far more advanced - do you know what I mean by that? Your music has changed. How many Top Ten singles have you had?
Kylie: Fourteen.
Bobby: That's fantastic. I really respect that...How many years have you been having hits?
Kylie: Four.
Bobby: Four years, that's fantastic. Not many people sustain that. Even T. Rex only did two or three years.
Select: You're really big as a pop act for young kids and you're dead hip with the fashion victims. But you've never really taken off in America, you've never been fully accepted as club music and you're certainly not an albums act. Do you think you could have been more successful if you'd taken a different tack?
Kylie: I dunno if it's me but there seemed to be more pop music around '87,'88. I'm the only one that's survived of thewhole PWL stable.
Select: That's it. They've gone all Euro-techno now. Have you ever thought, I'll do that, I'm going to go all-out to be a serious House music person?
Kylie: With them?
Select: 'With them or without them.
Kylie: Oh no, we do that just for B-sides, for clubs...
Bobby: She does do proper House music! How can you define serious House music? I hate serious rock music. I like good songs with melodies and good words.
Kylie: Most people do.
Bobby: If you're off your nut in a club say you're really E'd up....
Kylie: Then you wouldn't know a tune if you tripped over it.
Bobby: Yes you would! You would! If they played 'Shocked' you'd be up to the fuckin' roof!
Select: What kind of fan mail do you both get? What do they say? What do they want from you?
Bobby: They send me poetry sometimes, death wish poetry. Suicide pacts, you know the kind of thing. Like, I know you and no one else knows you. I understand you, and you and me could get on really well, I love you.
Kylie: (in her best sex fiend voice) I want your body! That's what they say to me.
Bobby: (he leans forward and fixes Kylie with his mirrorshades. It's time for that question) How do you feel about people masturbating over photographs of you? (Kylie shrieks with laughter.)
Kylie: Do they?
(They do, they do!' chorus Gillespie and Innes. Kylie's PR minder begins to emit a high-pitched, kettle-like whistling noise. Kylie is flabbergasted.)
Kylie: Well...journalists always try to come up with a question I haven't been asked before and they just can't...and here it is! How do you feel about people masturbating over you? Oh God!
Bobby: Yeah, males and females! Are you into that, Kyles?
Kylie: Weeeell...if I give them some joy...then I'm very happy.
lnnes and Bobby: (ecstatic) Yeahyeahyeah!!
Bobby: What a woman! That's what I wanted to hear!
Innes: That's right! You wouldn't want to spoil anyone's fun, would ye Kyles?
Kylie: Would I? Would I?
Select: Face it, Kylie - you are the Queen of Sex.
Kylie: No no! I would disagree.
Select: You'd agree, wouldn't you, Bobby? All Kylie's videos make Madonna - who's supposedly fantastically sexy - look really boring.
Bobby: That's because Madonna wants to be a man. She always plays real male roles in her videos. She's a bit harsh. It's the vulnerability of Kylie that Madonna just doesn't possess.
Select: But Charlene in Neigh bours was a mechanic. That's pretty masculine.
Kylie: Ohhh...people, particularly older women journalists, are so patronising and condescending with me - they give me such a hard time they think that I'm flirting with them. They say, She doesn't know when to stop flirting.
Innes: Do they treat you like you're thick? Like all these people do everything for you?
Kylie: Oh yeah.
Bobby: We get that as well. People think that we just sit around taking drugs all day. They don't actually think you read books or watch videos or have an intelligent conversation. They think you spend your whole time getting wasted.
Kylie: They ask me, What's it like now that you're raunch? And you can hardly answer a question like that. I say I still hope to God I have a cestain amount of innocence. I do and I'm naive in some ways, and in other ways I'm what they think I am. They just try to pigeonhole you, you're either this or that, you could neither be a whole person with many aspects to your personality.
Select: So what's the aspect of yourself that never comes across?
Kylie: Probably my very sensitive nature (laughs). I mean I'm very sensitive, which doesn't really help with what I do.
Select: How can you be sensitive in front of 10,000 people?
Bobby: (narkily) I was sensitive in front of 6,000 people in Brixton Academy last week! On 'Damaged' (he explains to Kylie). It's just an acoustic guitar and a voice, totally naked.
Kylie: Yes, you can, I agree. But before one of my shows I just had had enough of the press, and you're trying to get it together to perform in front of all those thousands of people and I had a fit of tears, not a panic attack, but you have to reach into yourself to give and each night I'd always try and make my performance better. Something like that just sends you way back, and you're struggling again.
Innes: We're lucky cos we've got a group.
Bobby: It's like a gang, and you're on your own.
Kylie: Yes, but there's a point in the show, it might be two seconds, two minutes, 20 minutes or whatever, but there's an absolute peak and it's such a high. Then the rest of that bullshit is so far away from my mind that I think that this is what it's for, you can see and feel that the people are happy.
Innes: See, there's sexual things and there's drugs and there's actually being onstage. It happens once in a concert, when we all look round and catch each other's eyes...and for us it's the greatest high because there's eight of us.
Bobby: Primal Scream's like a gang, so we're like protected, you know? Whereas you're doing it on your own, and that's heavy...
Kylie: Well, it's allight on my own, in a way, because I've got my dancers and the band, but we're not a band. I just hire them. And also I imagine with all bands you go through your ups and downs, but at that moment where you're all feeling right and there's no problems, that must be good.
Bobby: It's the greatest feeling in the world.
Kylie: There is so much about what I do that I don't like, but that makes up for it. All of the criticism and complaints...
Bobby: People are fuckin' philistines, all o'em. Just vegetable-heads, They cannae handle the fact that there's a good-looking woman onstage...
Kylie: ...Who they can't have.
Bobby: Who they can't have, aye. And who they couldn't satisfy in the first place.
Kylie: (brightly Mmm! Thanks, Bobby!
Bobby: It's just neurotic, they're fucked-up vegetables. They see a woman up onstage and they start jeering - it's sick, and it's all based on male insecurity. They don't like women, basically. They got problems with sex, people like that, and it spreads out and poisons the rest of their lives.
Select: But isn't that to be expected? Isn't Kylie just selling titillating male fantasies anyway?
Kylie: I have to disagree there.
Bobby: Even if she was, whats wrong with that?
Kylie: I'd be a Page 3 girl then wouldn't I? It'd be a lot less work.
Bobby: But what's better than selling a record where you can see someone's sexuality in it? Marilyn Monroe is as great a rock'n' roll star as Elvis Presley. Marlon Brando in The Wild One. It's the attitude in sexuality.
Select: Alright then, aren't you giving little kids their picture of sexuality?
Kylie: Nooo! I think they find out themselves, don't you? They're confronted with it everwhere they look these days. I wish I could take credit for it. I guess they can identify with me.
Bobby: What you want is for a six or seven-year-old girl to see her and say, She looks so beautiful, I wanna dress like Kylie. Now that's fuckin' fantastic. You don't want six or seven-year-old kids looking at Lush, do ya? They wouldnae fall for that shit. They go for the real grease, the true meat, and that's Kylie.
Kylie: I think maybe a five-year-old girl will say, Oh look at the pretty colours, and a ten-year-old girl will get more of the picture - but a 25-year-old woman will get the whole picture.
Bobby: I mean, I was sexually attracted to women when I was really young.
Innes: I was sexually attracted to Marc Bolan when I was eight.
Kylie: That's unavoidable. But, there are limits with what I do.
Select: In fact you're both sex symbols, aren't you?
Bobby: You think I'm a sex symbol, Kylie?
Kylie: Ooohh... good job we were bouncing around on the bed together.
Select: So do you think, I can push it so far, and no further?
Bobby: No, no, its your stage and you can do what the fucking hell you want tae do. No matter that everyone in the audience is screaming at you to get off, it's your stage and you can do what you like.
Kylie: I resented the fact that people said, Oh, it's a raunchy show. Well it was, but it was also a Iot of fun and other things...we have been talking about people losing their sense of humour and getting too serious about it. But they pay decent money to go to a show, I should make it worthwhile.
Bobby: People go tae a gig, you got to get their rocks off, man. You do that at Kylie's gigs, you do that at Primal Scream gigs. You go home happy.
Select: Bobby once said he's trisexual - he'll try anything once. Are you trisexual, Kylie?
Kylie: Ha! If I say yes, it'll follow me around for the rest of my days. I'll...I'll think about trying anything once. I think trisexual. Yes...yes, I'll consider it.
Bobby and Innes: Yeesss!!!!

THEY CHEER, THEY SMILE THEY toast Kylie with the dregs of the afternoon's champagne and they wade through the spilt orange juice. It's a great moment in pop. Kylie has been inducted into the Scream - she's more or less committed herself to making a record of some kind with them, and knowing this lot they won't let her alone until it's done. The idea has grown to monstrous proportions in Bobby's head - he insists that it will have to be a summer cover of 'Summer Time' by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. "She said, Summer singles are great. Isn't that classic?" beams a starry-eyed Gillespie. "I might just kiss your feet for that, Kylie."

They fleece her for signed pictures, for Sheer Taft, Bobby's mum Wilma and the entire Creation crew. Innes asks her to dedicate one to Scream guitarist The Throb with the words 'Is it really that big?' and for the first time this afternoon she draws the line.

She has to go. She's flying to Paris for the opening of EuroDisney. Bobby asks can he come and open EuroDisney too? Yes, smiles Kylie. NOO! scream the eyes of Kylie's minder. She kisses Bobby and Innes and Emily and Stephanie and she's gone. The record, Bobby declares, will happen. He grins like a fan. In his hand he has a black and white shot of Kyliee that reads: Dearest darling Bobby, thanks for lounging on the bed with me... love and stuff xxxxx Kylie. What's the verdict?

"She's classic, man. Proper fuckin' woman.."

Originally Appeared in Select June 1992 Copyright © Select.

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