Martyn Jacques (The Tiger Lillies): We’re quite silly and humorous, really. I sing about sex with flies and how I fell in love with a giraffe (“Vagina” from the album “Farmyard Filth”, 1997). The themes are surreal, but humorous at the same time. We like being silly and entertaining people, but then at the same time suddenly doing something really sad.

Life is very unhappy, you see. Humans can be very horrible, cruel and hateful to one another. One reason I want to entertain people is that I like to see them enjoy themselves. But at the same time I think it’s nice if I can occasionally make them cry, remind them of the way life is. Without doing that you can just become trivial and superficial, so every now and again there’s got to be some reminder that life is actually quite dark. We all realize that deep in our hearts, but we try very hard to smile, to be happy… 

 

The Russian version of the interview was published in a magazine of the cultural resistance SHO.