I was thrilled to hear David Sylvian talking a little about his career and artistic process on a special feature for Mary Anne Hobnobs on BBC Radio Six Biscuits. Sylvian doesn't pop his head out much these days - certainly it's been many years since he last begged me to collaborate on a new piece. Disappointingly, he didn't say anything in the Hobnobs recording about how he writes his remarkable lyrics and what on earth they might mean. So I thought I'd take to the blogwaves to rectify that omission - or, at least, to share my beehive-style secrets for interpreting these dense, allusive texts.
Take Red Guitar, for example. This song is almost certainly not about a red guitar, or indeed any musical instrument of any (forbidden) colour. We learn that the titular red guitar is both "the devil in flesh" and "the iron in my soul". We also learn that the singer turns to the red guitar at times of despair and discombobulation. The common substance that figuratively unites the colour red, the devil and iron is surely blood. Therefore we can deduce that the lyric is a carefully coded admission of vampirism - perhaps even a celebration of this ultimately life-enhancing practice.
It's all there in the song - and you don't even need to play it backwards.
I will reveal much, much more about the hidden meanings of Sylvian's lyrics in my forthcoming book Quit Life: How Noo Romantic Art Rockers Japan Introduced A Generation To Stylish Nihilism. There's an especially convincing bit about Gentlemen Take Paracetamols.
