Sunday June 15 2008
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I meet Steve Abel at his very rural-looking Kingsland home, an old railway cottage I imagine, where a bird eats black berries from a privet tree at the window. There's junk or old household gear all over the porch - Abel's leaving town for Geneva, Switzerland in a couple of weeks. Up the road there's an old car jacked up on bricks on the lawn. It hardly feels like central Auckland...

He's lived here for nine years. Must be cheap. The barefoot (size 11) bearded musician makes tea and we begin by lamenting the loss of the art of handwriting, me because of shorthand and typing while Abel leaps up to grab an old book that illustrates our modern shame. It's by his Invercargill grandfather, a physiotherapist who worked with New Zealanders who lost limbs, and is full of photos.

"This woman's a ballet teacher and a horse rider, she's only 16 or something," says Abel, pointing out a young woman with no legs. "This guy's a cop, he's got a paddle there, he can still swim… Just all these different people, and this is this guy's handwriting – he's got no arms! He's got a hook…" And his handwriting's exquisite. I can hardly read mine and am missing no limbs. Abel, surveying a picture of the behooked man penning a letter, shakes his head. "That's him writing, they just published a letter that he wrote… that's out of it eh? We've lost that ability to write."

We discuss learning to type on typewriters.

"We used to have all these bibs, we had a bib to cover the keyboard. That's how you learned to type… the old (typewriters) are better because the keys are firm enough that you could actually sit your fingers on them, you had to punch them to make them go whereas modern keys you can't rest your hand because you'll activate the key, so you sit off, slightly hovering the whole time."

So, Whakapapa? Where are your folks from? Abel says he's Scottish on "Dad's side", Grandad studied at Otago, while his mother's side hails from Tauranga with Spanish heritage: "My mum in particular has incredibly olive skin". They're also southern French "but it's fascinating coz when I was in England a lot of people asked me if I was Jewish" due to his surname: lots of Jews fled to Edinburgh to escape persecution during the Enlightenment so a possible link there, he's going to find out more.

Despite the temptation, I don't ask Abel if he's Shane McGowan's illegitimate love child. He sounds like the Pogues singer in Fairytale of New York mode, which I love.

What's your earliest memory?

"I have a weird memory of being in a cot in a big room with dark timbered ceilings which would have been an old high stud house and really quite vivid images of a chequered black and white floor… and I dunno what that memory is but I was in hospital when I was three years old for six weeks so I've got quite a lot of memories of that, they're more specific.

First musical memory?

"This is funny coz I remember when I was three years old, Dad took me to Jesus Christ Superstar at the movies. So I can remember sitting in the theatre seat, I remember the big screen, I just remember sitting there, the image is like a third person removed, like looking down at the theatre seat. And I had that memory and I didn't know when that was, it came out in '73, '74. Dad loved it for some reason and he went to it a few times and took me along to see it, so I must've been about three years old."

I recall the Jewish priests, singing in bass voices: "Heeee is dan-gerous..."

"Yeah aren't they brilliant! Ciaphus… that big deep voice! It's amazing music but it's funny, I started watching the movie about two or three years ago and I got halfway through and I was like, ohhh! It was a little bit too cheesey, I was kind of a bit disappointed, I wanted it to be better. There's some good tunes in it, some great bits. I mean the Judas Iscariot song is superb."

Favourite musician/band? Abel hated this one.

"I really can't say that I've got one but I suppose I should say one… It's probably something like… I dunno, I'd have a really boring answer like Bob Dylan or something you know because I'm perpetually impressed by how he's been writing great songs since 1963 or '62 and he's still doing it."

We discuss Dylan's Chronicles book – describe, narrative leaps, ignores 60s, Lanois - which SA hasn't read. "Oh fuck I'd love to read it."

I make a mental note to buy a copy for him. What's your favourite book then? "I don't really read much really but my favourite book right now is The Oxford Book of Death, have you seen that? I'll show it to you. It's an omnibus…" He trots off to another room and returns with the 1983 tome. "It's like an omnibus of all sorts of quotes and sayings about death, it's really cool, it's got all sorts of shit in it."

Death fascinates you then? It's a theme? How come…

"Yeah I think it is actually. Coz, I think, maybe it's the punk in me or something. I mean seriously I think we have a really dysfunctional relationship with death in our culture and it's the cause of a lot of problems I reckon. Our failure to kinda accept that basic fundament of life, that we're all gonna die. And that's actually part of a process and it's natural and we shouldn't be… we shouldn't be trying to escape it! You know we are pretty much are trying to escape death and avoid it and, even at a scientific level and a medical level people are trying to avoid it, and then at a cultural level people don't want to get old and when people die it's a shock and a surprise and no one knows how to deal with it whereas there's lots of different cultural approaches to death that are much more healthy, traditional approaches are probably a lot healthier. I find death and loneliness pretty interesting coz they're pretty distinct cultural conditions that are taboos. I'm interesting in talking about shit that no one else wants to talk about."

Best film ever? !!!WARNING PLOT SPOILER AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM (I hate reviews or any writing that give away crucial plot detail – why bother seeing a film after that?)!!!

"Favourite film ever, I'm not very good at remembering favourite film either." No Country For Old Men comes up, I opine that it's exactly like Fight Club, it's completely the book. Dialogue etc, easy to put it to the screen. SA: "It's kind of cool if they can do that, coz you normally can't do that in two hours… it's kind of obvious that it's a film."

Abel likes the sense of inevitability in No Country For Old Men, how the main character Llewelyn Moss was going to die from the moment he found all that money at the shootout where all the Mexicans had been killed: "There was that fate about the whole thing, I felt like there was an inevitability, his death was inevitable. I thought it was an incredibly well made film. For me it was about morality, right from his decision to go and bring the guy water. In the middle of the night he woke up, it was like 'Fuck!', and he didn't have to go back for any reason except that he knew that guy (in the truck who had been shot, the only survivor) needed water. So he made that choice to go back and give him water…"

"Then the cop's morality as well, coz ultimately what's so subtle about it later on is you realise the cop chose NOT to chase the real bad arse. At the very end he, Tommy Lee Jones, chooses the easy option, to NOT catch this bastard. He lets him go, coz he's too old for it. And THAT'S the interesting thing, whereas these cops are banging on about how people got no morals anymore, at the end of the day HE made the weakest choice."

"Then the guy with the strongest morality is the fucking baddest arse, what he says he'll do he does. If I'm gonna kill somebody I'm gonna kill them and if I tell you if I toss this coin and it goes your way I won't kill you you know, and he sticks to it. Even though he - that scene at the beginning of the movie is probably the best in the whole thing, with that guy in the shop. That is the most intense scene… and you know that he wants to kill that guy behind the counter because he's such a wanker! But he sticks to his word. And that's kind of his… I thought it was great in that way, beautifully made film. Those guys (Coen brothers) have been making good films for years but there's no question they've really done something brilliant with that. But what I'll say is… In The Shadow Of The Moon. It's not my favourite film but I saw it a couple of nights ago and it was really great. Documentary about the Apollo flights. The amazing original footage of the moon and the Earth and shit from the Apollo, unseen footage. You gotta see it on the big screen… the reflections of all these guys, all these astronauts, they're all in their seventies now, like Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins – Neil Armstrong didn't do it but lots of the other guys did. And it's just beautiful, well made, simple, it's not like a, you know it's just a beautiful, simple, enjoyable movie. Completely transporting, I felt completely transported actually. You really can, if you allow yourself, you can really feel like what it would have been like, you know. The footage is beautiful, amazing. And the other thing that's so profound about it really is their relections on the Earth. Coz what they, you know that classic thing, they perceive the Earth for the first time. In that image that was so familiar now, of the Earth, of that little jewel floating in the blackness of space… they were the first to ever see that. But all their reflections ultimately became about the Earth. Even though their trip to the moon, was actually a trip to the Earth..."

You're not a conspiracy theorist, they really went to the moon?

"You know what, I'm very willing. I'm not really much of a conspiracy theorist but I'd be very willing to believe it was faked. At least until I saw that movie probably. And then the two things that occur to me was, if they faked it then they did a great fucking service to humanity by faking that image of the moon rise over the Earth."

"Those images are just so profound and I think that they affected the psychology of modern culture profoundly and so in that way even if it was faked it was a beautiful thing. I don't necessarily think it was faked, I think Milan (Borich, of SA's band The Chrysalids, and Pluto) really apparently seriously thinks it was faked. You know in, people from Soviet-associated countries, the way that we assume the moon landing did happen, they assume it didn't happen. And I found that out through knowing people in the Arab community, from North Africa, from Morocco and Nigeria… coz they were associated with Russia during the Cold War and the same way that we have it as an a priori truth that these guys landed on the moon, we just don't even sorta think about it – well some people do but most people just, 'oh yeah, of course' – they have it as an a priori truth that it was fake. And it's funny, you can have a conversation with these guys and then suddenly reach that point, if it occurs, and it's like, 'oh of course they never landed on the moon' and it's like, 'oh of course they landed on the moon' you know, it's real funny eh. I mean I don't have a strong opinion about it, I'm not offended if someone suggests that it didn't happen but then there's a funny point that one of the guys makes in the movie, he says, 'if we faked it, if we were gonna fake it, well you could understand us faking it once – why would we fake it nine times?'"

Why haven't they been back? That's the obvious retort.

"In a way, why would you go back? I mean like, what are they gonna do?"

Mining perhaps? Minerals?

"I don't reckon they should fucken mine it, I reckon they should leave it alone!"

What's the most illegal or naughty thing you've ever done?

"I can't actually tell you coz it might be incriminating… I really can't tell you!"

Are you a good cook and what's your best dish?

"I am a pretty good cook, I don't do it enough though. But I enjoy it."

Meat or no?

"Yeah, not much though. My partner eats meat. Which is funny, coz she eats meat I've got really good at cooking meatballs. Italian meatballs."

"Haven't made it for ages but I used to make a really good potato curry. You gotta get it right, a true potato curry is, if you go to a good Indian restaurant you get (it), the potatoes are like new potatoes, really really soft and sweet and delicate. But if you overcook it they crumble and then it's yucky and kinda goes all floury and wrong. Happy if I can get that right."

Flax happy…and anomie? (dictionary.Cambridge.org says: a lack of moral or social principles in a person or in society) "Flax happy… the conscientious objectors in the Second World War down in Shannon were cutting flax all day… near Foxton, yeah, and they went stir crazy basically and that's the term they gave to it, was flax happy."

"But the cool thing that I thought was wrong with it was, 'flak happy' is the term that the bombers used to use in the Second World War for being under anti-aircraft attack, referencing shell shock I guess for being constantly attacked, so they were flak happy, and then the conscientious objectors who were refusing to fight were flax happy. I thought that was pretty cool. But anomie isn't just that one you read about the moral thing… it is that but it hasn't got so much of a moral flavour necessarily, because it's also a state of normlessness, it was originally a reference that psychologist Tony Taylor was making to the people when they lose all structure to their lives through indeterminate detention and the life of being in prison - actually prisoners in any situation, he's against the super max prisons in the States - is you become in a state of anomie, so you become… you just drift. Tankeritis is the other term, for the guys who work on the big ocean tankers that just slowly plough across the ocean endlessly for hours and hours and you just basically go doolally, stir crazy or whatever you wanna call it… but I love the, I dunno, there's a certain aspect of, I can really relate to that feeling of flax happy sometimes you know, some of society feels a bit like an indeterminate detention!" he laughs.

Who's the most famous person you've ever met?

"Oh that's classic… shit I dunno man, who do I know who's famous? I met this amazing composer the other day, Beck's father…"

Who would you like to meet? Bowie gets a mention because he lives in Switzerland so it's not that impossible: "I'd quite like to meet David Bowie I think, I'd probably rather meet Leonard Cohen... I'd like to meet Brian Eno… Edward Goldsmith, he's like an ecologist guy. I have actually met him but not properly, just briefly, he did a lecture here once. Who else would I have liked to meet? I'll think about really great answers to these questions later on."

"I would have liked to have met Archibald Baxter."

James K. Baxter's dad.

"Yeah, he was a conscientious objector. Amazing guy man, that's an amazing story, someone should make a movie of that."

Didn't they stake him out in a war zone or something?

"To give him Field Punishment No.1 they basically tied him to a stake on an angle… with his hands behind his back… They made him do shit in the line of fire, that was in a camp in the front line in the Somme so there were other soldiers… being punished for different acts of insubordination but that was the worst punishment, and no one survived it more than a day and he survived it three days. In the snow. And an officer was walking past on this dismal day or night when (Baxter had) been left tied up to this post and the snow was everywhere including all over him and the post and this officer suddenly realised there was a man tied to this post and said, 'Who, is there a man tied to that post?' and they were like, 'yeah', and they cut him down coz the officer said to do it. And so he's the only one, he's the only person including all these serving soldiers who's ever survived that long in that punishment coz it's so painful. They cut him down at the end of each day and his hands are blue because all the blood's coagulated, just fucking intense! I mean that's what was so amazing about him, he is staunch. And he refused to put on a uniform, that was, for the conscis, that was the first command you must refuse was to put on a uniform coz that's the first command as a soldier… so he never even put on a uniform. And he wouldn't do any, coz a lot of the guys, they'd let them be stretcher bearers or they'd get them digging holes and shit but they're all commands the army was giving so they're essentially accepting the command and so the real staunch guys like Baxter were like, 'well I don't recognise your authority, I think the army's fundamentally flawed, I think this whole war is a joke and it's an imperial war and I'm against it."

Wow, a total pariah.

"Totally out there yeah, the amazing thing was he won the total respect of the other soldiers, that was the other interesting thing that happened to him coz they saw what he went through and the officers and everyone just thought, 'this guy's for real, he's as tough as us, he's just sticking up for his morals'."

Have you ever taken advantage of your personal renown?

"Shit I don't know how that works, coz I think it's a funny thing that happens, that people know you more than you know them. And that's the weirdest thing, because we live in such a small society you kinda do know a lot of people and you're familiar with a lot of people and often you're familiar with people coz you know their face but you don't necessarily know who they are maybe. So there's a weird thing going out sometimes is that people will say hello to you and you'll say hello and think maybe I know this person but then you realise, 'I don't really know who the fuck that is'. But the first thing that I noticed was that more people knew me than I knew, and I thought maybe it was because, I actually thought it was when I was doing Greenpeace stuff was maybe because I was doing spokesperson stuff on TV and people recognised me. So in a way it was a recognition that there is some sort of renown – if you want to use that word – but then do you ever use it? I dunno that you consciously do but then I think it probably advantages you without you having to consciously… and that's a bit weird and dubious on some level."

"Coz even through simply the fact that people think they know you, that they might act differently. Coz people do come up to you and say, 'hey man, where do I know you from?' and often it might be coz they do know you from something but other times I think 'maybe he doesn't know me and maybe it's just he's seen a picture somewhere or something'.

Abel worked for Greenpeace full time and as a volunteer, and for Native Forest Action… "Which probably to answer your question about the naughtiest shit I've ever done was stuff then, down on the West Coast."

Stuff?
"Well I mean the one thing I got arrested for was locking to a logging helicopter to stop them using that. But that's public knowledge… they were logging West Coast forest, West Coast rain forest. We succeeded, finally, but it was a fucking long battle though. That was an intense experience."
The locals were nasty?

"The locals were fascinating coz there's a handful who were very nasty, and there was a lot of rhetoric, a lot of aggro, anti-Greenie rhetoric and there's a few people, a tiny, tiny percentage who are a bit scary you know, you think might do something violent. In fact there was a guy threatening us with chainsaws at one stage. But most of the people there actually get your perspective, and a high percentage – we actually took a petition on the streets of Westport and 50% of the people, over 50% of the people signing this petition that they would support stopping the logging as long as there was the provision of new jobs. Their main concern was the jobs."

"That was something we ended up pushing for really hard, that was part of our pitch to Labour was if you're gonna stop it then make sure there are jobs."

Complete these sentences: If I had a million dollars I would…

"I'd probably build a studio."

If I had one wish (that would come true), I would…

"Shit! I think I'm hopeless at having one of anything." (Later he decides it would be to have enough money to buy some socks.

Is the apostrophe doomed?

"I fucken have a lot of trouble with apostrophes on my blog."

I noticed.

"I like punctuation but I don't know how to use it."

There's actually more apostrophes now than there ever have been, they're just all in the wrong place. So they'll survive, but maybe we need a cull… How about the music industry, is that doomed?

"The industry, the mainstream industry, yeah. Music will always be around but I'm not going to lament its departure."

Mainstream industry, do you mean record labels, big labels? How about record stores, because they seem doomed too maybe… which is tough, I like record stores.

"It is tough, I don't mean anyone any ill will in this coz I think, I know a lot of people will get their lifestyles upset."

Two artists in the last week have told me it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better (Futureheads singer Barry Hyde and Yes King's Mark Rae)…

"Yeah but worse is all relative you know? I mean my anarchist self thinks the current set-up's a fucking rort. When you have an established structure that's so ludicrous and over-balanced then it eventually cannot reform itself, it has to collapse. And so that's what we're seeing."

You said on your The Wire page: 'I prefer it when one of your songs means different things to other people to what it means to you - which is more often the case. It's sort of essential for the life of it I suspect.'

-So what do you think your songs get up to when you're not around?

"I hope they affect people's… I love it when people say they got a song stuck in their head."
I was whistling Little Death on the way over here.

"That's great… I've always had this real feeling that the songs aren't really mine. Actually Geoff (Maddock) sent me a great quote from Pop Levi about this, where he talks about how you're sort of 'channelling'... Songs do kind of occur at a moment in time and they're to do with a collection of experiences and also the space that exists at that time… you can have a sense of them coming through you."

Like a conduit, I say: I did a programme for Radio NZ on songwriting and everybody spoke about either really hard work, or you were a conduit and it was easy.

"And I do both approaches. But I am much, much happier with the ones that are conduited, that just come out, coz you trust them, coz you think they've come from, they come from a subconscious and in a way that expresses a pure concept…"

Here Abel relates a tale of someone telling him his song Lonely Babylon was about a transvestite, when the author only meant a prostitute.

"The trippiest thing about a song that often conduits is you find out what it means later. Even YOU find out what it means, or you work out meanings for it."

"And of course if you're tapping into more universal, subconscious conceptions or ideas then it's gonna trigger different feelings and responses in different people. Because you're essentially tapping into archetypes of truth I reckon. Which is what Dylan does, you're tapping into quite universal archetypes. And those archetypes are gonna trigger different responses in different people. And different feelings. But for me the emotional response that a song gives you, or the feeling it gives you, the place that it takes you emotionally, is incredibly important you know. I'd love to know the life that the songs have after you fling them off."
"Jolie Holland did a cover of Little Death, she sung it on her tour in the UK. That was a kick, coz I've never played my songs in the UK but someone has."

His album Flax Happy is out now. Steve Abel & The Chrysalids play this Saturday 21st June at Bethalls Beach Cottages (Waitakere) w/Kirsten Morrell. There's a wooden pizza oven… mmm.

Other dates: 3 July Al's Bar (Christchurch) w/ special guests
12 July Wine Cellar (Auckland) w/ Renee-Louise Carafice
16 July Mighty Mighty (Wellington) w/ Samuel Flynn Scott