Budgie From The Creatures

Punk legends Siouxsie & The Banshees remain towering icons of contemporary culture, though on Aujgsut 19, 2002, Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie finally put the band aside, the concentrate on their long running side project The Creatures.

Conceived as a drum & voice experimental collaboration in 1981, the duo's innovative and experimental approach spawned pop hits including Miss The Girl and Right Now and four occasional albums throughout the two decade period.

20 years on, they've just completed the latest project, Hai!, a typically original record featuring new collaborator Leonard Eto, a drummer from legendary Japanese rhythm masters Kodo.

Chatting down the line from his South-Western France base, Budgie sounded enthused about the latest musical chapter in his and Siouxsie's life (the duo also remain one of rock's enduring couples).

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How did the collaboration with Leonard Eto come about-

The Creatures (Budgie): "It was a one off opportunity I'd always been an admirer of Kodo and we'd always wanted to collaborate with him, we'd actually gone down the official route progressing through lots of Japanese red tape and had got as far as talking to the managers of Kodo, but we knew it wasn't going to go any further. But once we'd done the session I understood from Leonard that he felt he'd done his time with Kodo and was at the point of broadening his stance, to become less pure, so he could expose himself to a broader audience. I saw that happening with Kodo over the years that they started becoming a little lighter introducing more entertainment than just the pure soul drumming. It was a moment that presented itself, we went into the studio with nothing planned, said Hello and started. We'd never spoke before. When we started off it was a little tentative then very quickly it became very full on."

Skrufff: Was the plan to do a Creatures album beforehand-

The Creatures (Budgie): "We had no plans at all, other than thinking wouldn't it be great if we could. When we listened back to the tapes we realised there was something there and I said to Siouxsie 'we can make this work, this should be the next album. It felt like the right thing because it was also unexpected, which was how The Creatures first did things. It took on a momentum and developed relatively quickly, once we'd got The Banshees out of the way. So Siouxsie was finally able to put down the melodies and ideas that she'd been storing up."

Skrufff: How much do you consider The Creatures as being about pop music, or making tracks in radio friendly terms-

The Creatures (Budgie): "For this album it never entered our heads. Though with the single Godzilla it started with that old Creatures/ Bo Diddley type skippy beat, which screamed single, particularly after Siouxsie came up with the idea of lyrics based around her long standing love affair with the little monster. It was a fun lyric and a fun idea that appealed to our pop sensibilities, because they're always there. But as we worked on the rest of album we struggled to decide which bits to chop out. I can't listen to drum solos, I never could and the only thing that made me edit it down was avoiding that. I wanted it to be as unrestricted as it could be."

Skrufff: There's a phrase on the biog that says 'the spirit of Japan touched our souls', what is it about Japan that inspires you-

The Creatures (Budgie): "It touched our souls, in the way that there are not many times when you travel somewhere that you feel you've been altered or moved by a place, but that's how we felt in Japan. Maybe it's something to do with the culture there making you feel so alien, that you feel very vulnerable which takes you off your guard. On a surface level, what we noticed was the difference in the way people treated each other. I'm by no means an authority on Japanese culture or customs but on a gut response. I noticed a simplicity and a politeness that' Tags