“And in the end, we shall achieve in time / The thing they call divine” were probably the first words most of us ever heard from Royston Langdon, the lead singer of Spacehog whose hit single “In the Meantime” was booming from all our speakers in 1996. A trio of albums – Resident Alien, The Chinese Album, The Hogyssey – solidified that band’s rep as the critical darlings of neo-glam-rock so it may come as somewhat of a surprise to your ears and your eyes when you hear Langdon’s latest album Everything’s Dandy — which has a decidedly different sound and sensibility. Langdon shares a bit on both his past and present in the CultureSonar interview.
Q: Contrary to the album’s title, Everything’s Dandy sometimes takes an aching look at the past and present… Looking back, if you were to make a different career choice, what might you be doing now?
A: Gosh! The only other thing I think I would have ended up as is a photographer/painter. I’d wanted to go to St. Martin’s in the Field in London but I was kicked out of school at 16. I’ve always liked visual arts. Particularly great painters i.e. Hockney, Freud, Bacon, though I don’t think I am remotely talented enough.
Q: Everything’s Dandy shows a different side of your artistry. Given that you play all the instruments on many of this new album’s tracks, was there anything new that you learned about yourself as a musician/composer in the process?
A: Yes, I learned I appreciate economy in art.
Q: Would you say your music taste has shifted over the years? Is there anyone you listen to today that you feel you just didn’t “get” 20 years ago?
A: I appreciate honesty, the feeling that I’m experiencing an artists’ truth. That comes in many forms depending on the artist. Obviously, my sensibility has shifted over the years. It is and will remain evidence of my musical expression of now. I don’t think there’s anyone I listen to now that I “didn’t get” twenty years ago. If something sounds genuine, I’m always curious and hope to always remain open in that way both to the old and the new.
Q: You were an artist-in-residence at Spotify for a number of years. What did that entail? Did it change the way you look at writing a song or conceiving an album?
A: I’ve experienced music and the industry of it throughout this paradigm shift from a transaction to the subscription-based industry because of the Internet. I was involved in a think tank called “The Big Bang Group” in LA years ago as an attempt to figure out how to “deal” with the MP3 problem. It wasn’t until I met Daniel Ek that I came to believe that there was a solution. I found Daniel to have a refreshing artist-like mind in relation to how to support artists in their art. In that sense, I think it’s never been a better time to be an artist. I helped share my experience on both sides of the music business as a means to move towards deeper transparency in a world where, as in my own formative experiences, things can get or are made very murky. This can directly affect the artists’ desire to create. My work today is improved enormously on a conscious level because of this ability to stay aware due to the transparency I was a part of creating with Spotify. I’d love to keep moving forward with this work in other areas. Corporations need to improve the way they patronize the arts. No one is in a better position than I do understand how to do this.
Q: Earlier in your career, you collaborated with some of the Talking Heads on “One of These Days” and some of Guns N’ Roses on “Gluttony.” If you could collaborate with any artist dead or alive, who might that be and why?
A: Talking Heads I merely sampled and that was the terms we reached credit-wise. I was working with Velvet Revolver when they were looking for a replacement for Weiland and we wrote quite a few songs together. I would have liked to have done something with Bowie. He opened up to me personally but regrettably, I was somewhat unavailable and too afraid to be vulnerable with him at that time.
See Also: “What Would Bowie Do?”
Q: Have you ever heard a new song and thought “I should’ve written that!” as if the songwriter had somehow got into your brain?
A: Good question and yes, all the time. That’s the beauty of a good song, anyone could have thought of it. It’s like myths. There’s really only something like seven and we just reinvent them. I think that’s the same for songwriting. I wish I’d have written “Happy Birthday.”
Click here to buy Royston Langdon’s latest release, Everything’s Dandy by Leeds.
Photo Credit: Royston Langdon of Leeds by Mark Koh courtesy of Reckoning PR
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