FERNANDO RIBEIRO
im Gespräch mit Thomas Fröhlich
Die deutsche Fassung erschien im FILMREIF –sie sind unter uns/etcetera 21/Oktober 2005

Fernando Ribeiro, Sänger und Texter der portugiesischen Metalband Moonspell, Lyriker, Lovecraft-Übersetzer, Literatur- und Filmkenner sowie unheimlich liebenswürdiger Interviewpartner über H. P. Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, Celtic Frost, Iron Maiden, Bob Dylan, Marcel Proust, Charles Bukowski, seine Band Moonspell, Dekadenz, Beatniks, Horrorfilme… und, last but not least, Elfriede Jelineks Klavierspielerin. Das Interview wurde am 9. März 2005 im Anschluss an das Konzert der Band MOONSPELL im Planet Music geführt.

 

In your songs, in your lyrics, in your whole attitude towards music I recognize a strong interest, yes, a deeply articulated foundation in literature, in poetry especially. You deal with the likes of the Portuguese writer Juan Luis Peixoto, you did an interpretation of THE PERFUME by Patrick Sueskind in your song HERR SPIEGELMANN, you dedicate your album SECOND SKIN to the memory of William S. Burroughs, you are a big admirer of H. P. Lovecraft, you write poems of your own and you publish them… Which authors have affected you most from the very beginning, probably even before you have started your musical career?

Well, besides of the authors, I must say I always liked to read, even when I was a child… I mean, I did also the other stuff [laughs], so I wasn’t always in my room reading... With MOONSPELL we cultivate that strong bound between the words and the music, and we have learned this from other bands, especially metal bands (nowadays many bands forget about these roots), for example IRON MAIDEN with THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER by Coleridge or CELTIC FROST (one of the real great influences of MOONSPELL) working on Baudelaire and so on… We always liked this orientation towards literature, it appeals to me as strong as the music itself – so, basically, when I formed my own band, I had this intention of songs and lyrics drawn from books… and then it was the question of discovering more and more authors, as I grew up with them as with the bands… But there’s a few authors that are essential though they are not always quoted by MOONSPELL… I always liked the Faustian thing by Goethe and all the other Fausts…

… Christopher Marlowe…

… yeah, there’s even a Portuguese Faust written by Fernando Pessoa – it’s the Portuguese approach to that topic… And concerning poetry - it’s definitely Baudelaire… but also diverse stuff like Jim Morrison from THE DOORS. Morrison said he wanted to write poetry and not words as a filler to music… And this brings me to my motto that probably seems to be a little arrogant, but [laughs] I can’t deny it: I want to have the MOONSPELL lyrics stand for themselves… though I know they gather meaning, too, through the music… But there’s a lot of other authors I admire: Oscar Wilde for example… or there’s a song, CRYSTAL GAZING, which is drawn from the STEPPENWOLF by Hermann Hesse… So every time I read something I like I try to put that in music. Some things are better for MOONSPELL and some are not that appropriate.

Has there been any point, any landmark in your life when you decided to become a musician, go into the music business, instead of becoming a writer? I mean, you have published poetry of your own, but only in the last few years… Was there ever a decision to be made? Or was it clear for you from the very beginning to form a band, make music and make a living from that?

Nothing was clear! I liked to write… And when we were joining together for MOONSPELL for the first time I actually became the singer because my lyrics were not so ridiculous as those of the others [laughs]! I never thought of living from making music or singing in a band, it happened very naturally: first I wanted to become a teacher, I was studying philosophy for 4 years… Frankly spoken I don’t know why I wanted to become that, probably because I’m crazy! It’s underpaid and it’s a shit job [laughs]! But [shrugs his shoulders] I liked the thing and I liked this connection: my favourite time ever in school was when my teachers themselves allowed us to present the class as if we were ourselves the teachers… Basically, there was no special timing, everything happened by chance. But when I started with MOONSPELL I never wanted my other needs and ambitions as I writer to become completely overshadowed. So I started writing and I started publishing – it’s something that is truly compatible: for example, my last poetry book which is my second I completed to a big part while touring the United States, not that the US tour was an influence for the book [laughs]… I had the time and the ideas, and then I needed some time to organize it – so, basically, I like both things: the solitude as a writer, that you don’t have to convey your words into a – musical – style, into the metrics of music, but on the other side when your words are getting to people through music it’s very powerful, it’s something very spiritual, it’s something… like Nick Cave or Bob Dylan… They are poets, not “just” musicians… So, all in all, I have not decided anything, I’m doing music as long as it’s fresh and challenging and interesting, as long as we have an audience we will go on doing it! And for the writer of literature it seems to me to be much longer and slower than music – I mean when I released the book I thought: “We should have promoted it more intensively”, because in the music business you have six months to promote it and talk with everyone, in literature it’s a bit different: everything is so smooth! I go to libraries a lot to present the book, I go to schools, I go to writer’s conventions – and it’s totally a break from music… it’s really weird sometimes…

…yeah, you are reading your poetry to people who sit and listen more or less in silence – a little bit different than the average MOONSPELL concert [both laugh]…

… but, what I have learned from Juan Luis Peixoto, it’s very important to promote a book as well, of course, but in a different way. So I’m doing small tours on weekends when I have time off from MOONSPELL… I really enjoy doing this, because a lot of people who are fans of the band go there to enjoy the poetry, the reading, enjoy talking with me: it’s not just about arriving there and reading, it’s about talking about life, things in general, talking about the subjects of the book, the visions… The last time I did this it was at a very cool library in the south of Portugal which is named after José Saramago, a Nobel prize winner… And I got a lot of requests for my book, for the ANTIDOTE book – and it’s really good to do! Nowadays I’m more involved in the literature scene which has its positive or negative points – like the music scene… or whatever… So now I started to contribute to literature magazines, library magazines, which is good, because when you see something published it’s always different. So I build up my writing career, slow’n’slow, which goes hand in hand with a guy screaming on stage [laughs] …

… well, it depends on what this guy is screaming [laughs]… Okay, screaming or not, what I found very strongly represented in your lyrics is the feeling of fear. Simply fear. Is it just a kind of black romanticism or has it to do with our European religious background, our Catholic background, where fear is used (like in most religions) on people… or are there any global political threats you are contributing to in your songs?

Fear is a very common element, a primitive element. I think fear – to my opinion – has a lot to do with being incomplete... of knowing that we can do more and we can be more but that we cannot reach that... And, besides of that principal perspective, there’s a lot of fear: fear of God, politics and so on... but what I like to write about is going to the very roots of that... evil. I think my lyrics speak of that, especially on our album THE ANTIDOTE, because fear was all around the world, when I wrote it... It hasn’t been like this before! I mean, I was born ’74, so I still caught this cold war culture which was based on fear but at the same time had a feeling of hope – that was really something else I don’t feel nowadays amongst the younger people: we were raised on a different fear from today. So it is natural that all this shows up in our lyrics... The lyrics of MOONSPELL, especially in THE ANTIDOTE, go into these different stages of fear: there is for example a song, LUNAR STILL, that has this Lovecraftian fear, more secluded, more within yourself, then there are songs, that are more epic, more philosophic like THE SOUTHERN DEATH STYLE... You know, frankly said, in literature, in my song lyrics I don’t want to be too ambitious in the way that I think there are strong themes that I can write about until I die... so I’m not getting too far from them, because these are my themes. So, coming back to fear, it’s not about any special kind of fear we are working on but we tried (especially in THE ANTIDOTE) to transform the element of fear to different stages, to show different manifestations, going from the more exterior fear, more panic, to a, well, smoother form, more internalized fear of yours... And these different stages show up in our music: we have that album THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, which actually nobody likes – it’s our “blue period” [laughs] – very experimental, written in the 90ies, on the edge of the forthcoming millennium where everybody feared that everything would break down, which didn’t occur in the end... And that was our interpretetion of that kind of fear in which we chose a different musical outlook which probably no one was asking for... But that’s what we are: a conceptual band, we set our minds on a topic and then we create something that we hope is adequate to the topic! It’s not tabula rasa or jamming in a garage – it’s our way to work... and sometimes people get it and sometimes not... And this has nothing to do with any intellectual preconception of the people: some like it, some not! It’s like Oscar Wilde when he said: “When you make everything perfect for everyone you’re meaningless!”

Okay, I wanted to ask this question a little bit later but it fits perfectly now, so... We talked about your albums which are pretty different from each other, or like THE ANTIDOTE, which is pretty much different in itself, the beginning very brutal, and in the end it’s very... quiet, leaving space to breathe... You mentioned Lovecraft before: he wrote the weirdest horror stories ever, and on the other hand the most beautiful loveliest fairy tales one can imagine, let alone his letters to his friends and especially to his wife which are really heartwarming, touching... I see a similar element in the music and in the lyrics of yours, sometimes very harsh and then very... soft. How do you write a song? Is it like okay, this is Tuesday, it will be a heavy one or hey, this is Wednesday, this will be a more lighthearted one... [laughs]... Or...

Okay, first of all: the MOONSPELL music is not only darkness – it’s prosaic to say but there is also light in it, and there is an elevating process... And for the songs: you have got the band as a union as well as four individuals! And one comes up with a riff, one with a keyboard sequence, but the decision how the song will be, comes from the words as well. I mean, a song like AS WE ETERNALLY SLEEP ON IT cannot be set on a heavy riff, you need a more atmospheric kind of sound... When it comes upon making an album or a song we talk about it, the feeling that we have, the hypothesis of the album, the song... The album we are working on by now will be about our country, Portugal, about deceiving, about death, so it will be to a great part a very heavy, very epic one, with songs full of chorusses, full of screaming... But, you know, we don’t like total noise or grindcore... I mean, we like a few bands who can really groove that way but they have to have a meaning... So we don’t have a strict formula: a MOONSPELL song can start with a title or a guitar riff... there is no primate of music over words or vice versa – the best is when it happens simultaneously. Sometimes I listen to a riff, a melody, and I think: “Oh, that fits with some words I wrote!” – so I complete it, filling the rest with provisory words first... and then it takes months looking for the right ones [laughs]! So it’s important to have some resources as a writer! It’s definitely not that the guitar play tells me he has got eight songs, so do I have eight lyrics? No! Every time an album is finished there’s a little reserve of ideas left. For example the idea of the four elements of death in THE SOUTHERN DEATH STYLE I had three or four years before we even thought of making THE ANTIDOTE where it’s finally on... so much for the reserve!

To me you have got a huge decadent impact in your songs, in your lyrics, in your stage performance. When I first heard your song OPIUM I imagined the likes of Lord Byron, Thomas de Quincy or Oscar Wilde, and definitely not your average junkie on the street. And, speaking again of Mr. Wilde, your stage persona sometimes act more than a little bit, well, Oscar Wildish...

... that’s a great compliment...

...so do you see yourself in the tradition of European decadence?

Yes! This is definitely something that interests us a lot. OPIUM was not a song about drugs itselves, or their abuse. No, in those days opium was a cited drug, a much used drug, but – and that’s the cool thing about European decadence – it’s not about ruining your body or your spirit, it’s more or less about... elegance! And it has, of course, something to do with our personal lives: as a musician, as a writer you have as well your ups and downs, you have moments of glory and the other day you are totally humiliated within yourself: with MOONSPELL we have now reached a very positive stage – but there were times which were definitely not that positive... Oscar Wilde is a good example. I mean I don’t have such an interesting life like him [laughs]...

... come on [laughs]...

... and that was another time: there were much more Does and Don’ts, there were secrecies... Nowadays you do something... and it’s on the internet...

... yeah, if you like it or not...

... but he, Oscar Wilde, had his moments of glory and on the other side his humiliations, be it on the love side, be it on his writings...

... but done in a more secret way, though he was, for his time, very offensive...

... and this is something that inspires us very much! While touring through the States we were really able of finding how European we are! A lot of times we did not get our messages to the American audiences – I feel sometimes there is a barrier there; because when I go on stage with a song like THE SOUTHERN DEATH STYLE with all that skull stuff it’s not my intention to make a bad impersonation of Alice Cooper, more of a clansman commanding a – metaphorically – ritualistic happening... and afterwards there were a lot of jokes about it on the net... I mean, it’s a way of seeing it, that’s no problem for me... but the European look at it, and they get it... But it’s a world of difference, and MOONSPELL are a truly European roots band – and though our drummer was born in the States there is nothing really American about us... Though, I love the American arts, especially the contemporary... I love Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski... especially Bukowski and his, no, not rise and fall, but fall and rise... that interests me a lot... but it’s surely not luxurious or intriguing like Oscar Wilde...

Yeah... but, as for the authors you mentioned: they are not like your average suburban American, they were more part of a counterculture, or, in the case of Burroughs part of the counter-counterculture...

... they were a different kind, a kind of their own! They belonged to a movement, but, as for Bukowski, he hated the beatniks as well... and Burroughs, he was a real stand-alone guy. Nobody ever wrote like him... and nobody ever will. He was one of the biggest influences in pop music culture: U2, PINK FLOYD, MINISTRY...

... Laurie Anderson...

I once wrote an article on this topic, in a Portuguese magazine... Even MOONSPELL dedicated its album SECOND SKIN to the memory of William Burroughs and used his Dream Machine stuff in THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT. One cannot count down all his collaborations and his impact on music...

... and on movies, above all the Cronenberg movie NAKED LUNCH...

... a great movie, especially of a book that is more or less impossible to be made a film of...

... but it did work out...

... yes, astonishing... Yes, it was very good!

One question about H. P. Lovecraft: am I correct that you have translated Lovecraft into the Portuguese language?

Well, that’s partially correct! The first thing I did was translating a comic book by DC Comics, a fictional biography of Lovecraft: it’s a mix of his actual life and his fiction. And his fiction gets into his life – it’s a very interesting story. It was written by Hans Rodionoff, who worked with Clive Barker, and drawn by Enrique Breccia, who did BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE – and the translation was really, really hard work, because in a comic book you have those balloons to fill in the words, so you have to choose the words very carefully, especially because the Portuguese language is not as economic as English: we have much more words to express something...

... that’s similar to German...

... yeah, you have the biggest words in the world [laughs]... Yeah, that comic book sold very well in Portugal! Now I am involved in another Lovecraft project – only a small translation… I translate WHAT THE MOON BRINGS – it will be for an anthology of short tales by Lovecraft, each tale translated by a different translator; and I will do the foreword, too! But this will not be the usual foreword or preface, it’s a story of its own, and it deals with every tale in the book! So every time a new story is coming up it’s the end of the chapter of my story which will be smaller than the Lovecraft... I am very much involved in the Lovecraft scene in Portugal – I was at the table when they presented the translation of Lovecraft’s poetry, yes, every time there is something “Lovecraftian” going on in Portugal [laughs] I get invited... And that’s pretty cool. Because he really is one of my favourite authors! And I like the people I meet there: there was for example that surrealistic writer who is not very famous, I think he is fifty...something, he sent me his book, and I sent him mine... He was just a very interesting guy to meet...

What is your personal relationship to Lovecraft? He is the “father” of The Elder Ones, The Necronomicon, The Ulthar Cats, and of course, Cthulhu... How did you get across him?

Lovecraft has, of course, a big influence on MOONSPELL and myself, too. He has a very private world, which is probably sometimes very hard to get in, in this arcane world of him, to break the portal to this personal universe... But what I always like in his literature is what he is not saying, the things that are implied... There’s one song by MOONSPELL that is directly based on Lovecraft – LUNAR STILL from THE ANTIDOTE! It’s about a man who is staring into a fog, it’s a kind of dialogue: this could have been a real Lovecraftian subject! I define Lovecraft’s work not as totally solid terror but also not totally spiritual – it’s something in between as well: it’s like a vapour going to your bones, in your eyes, in your mind... He has his unique style not to be imitated! I mean there’s a lot of people who just use his words in a different order – but that doesn’t work! Writing something Lovecraftian has more to do with...

... attitude?

... atmosphere... like – in music – METALLICA doing CALL OF CTHULHU...

... THE THING THAT SHOULD NOT BE...

... which has the most cited sentence from Lovecraft ever in it (“That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die”, The ed.)... but he is an author I would never quote... Take a look at his books! Have you ever read THE COLOUR FROM OUTER SPACE?

Yes...

It’s one of my favourite stories ever, because it is so... slow... slowly happening! You do not really know what is going on, you never know what – he never tells you, he just gives you hints... and that’s much scarier than anything...

... yeah, like in THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, where you just get the description of a gigantic system of caverns – but he never tells you who dwells there: that’s up to your imagination – and that’s really weird!

True! And even his more explicit works like THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD he never tells you everything... And that’s what I like most in literature: ambiguity! Like the character of Harry Haller in Hermann Hesse’s STEPPENWOLF... And I really love Somerset Maugham... OF HUMAN BONDAGE for example... On this tour I have finished by now THE PAINTED VEIL, which takes place in China – and it’s truly amazing how he creates characters, like Phil from OF HUMAN BONDAGE or Mildred – and it’s a little different from Lovecraft [laughs]!

To me many of your songs seem to be like complete movies, they create complete movies in my head... Do you like movies? And which ones especially? Any favourite movie?

I love movies! Of course all the horror flicks... But my favourite movie – it’s very hard to say. I like THE ELEPHANT MAN by David Lynch and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST by Martin Scorsese, which is based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis, who is my favourite author...

... ALEXIS SORBAS...

Yeah, this is the book of my life! I’m trying to get the film, the DVD with Anthony Quinn by now... Well, I really enjoy movies very much, I’ve seen a lot of them...

Have you ever seen CARNIVAL OF SOULS, which is one of my all time favourites?

Yeah, I’ve seen it... I bought it in the States very, very cheap, I thin 5 dollars together with DEMENTIA 13 – it’s an early horror movie by Francis Ford Coppola...

DEMENTIA 13? I think it’s from the early 60ies – it’s fantastic...

... like CARNIVAL OF SOULS – that’s very, very scary!

There is this Austrian author who got the Nobel prize last year, Elfriede Jelinek – and this movie is one of her favourites, too: she wrote an essay on it...

Elfriede Jelinek? THE PIANIST? I’ve seen the movie – very weird sexual thing... The movie was very polemic... In Portugal we were watching it – and some people really were freaking out, it’s such an unexpected story – I’ve never read the book so far...

Well, to my opinion the book was much better... Elfriede Jelinek raised a few scandals here in Austria. She likes to portray Austria and the Austrian society as a kind of... horrorshow, which a lot of people don’t like that much [laughs]! One book she wrote was CHILDREN OF THE DEAD, about 10 years ago I think, which brings her attitude to the point and which is one of my favourites ever: I am sure you would like it...

I have to check it...

I don’t know if it’s translated into the Portuguese language so far...

... but with the Nobel prize it will be... That helps a lot!

Okay, my final question! Once you used a quotation by Marcel Proust in your homepage, saying: “Only through memory life recovers its unity.” What’s memory to you?

Well, I can’t remember anymore in which context I wrote it – now my memory fails me [laughs]... Oh I think it was the tour diary...

Exactly...

Oh that’s why I wrote it! Well – memory... and the past are concepts that are really most important up to a point of obsession in metal... Metal people are very nostalgic, they don’t like the future or the present that much, they prefer the past... And besides that – I find memory as something leaving, something unifying rather than a fracture in yourself – that’s what I meant in the tour diary: I don’t have this dramatic approach to a memory, a memory is not something that is lost, it’s something that is yours, it’s something that is gained and it’s something you will never lose in a way... But obviously it can be very dangerous to live in the shadow of a memory! I think this is a great sentence to describe the fragility of life and the fragility of what we have talked about before: the glory and [laughs] the decadence in its true sense of the word... When I write this tour diary I don’t tell people about waking up and that there is an empty bottle of water, or having french fries and schnitzel, or the sound was not so good, no, that’s not interesting... it’s more impressions that I want to give... My friend and author Juan Luis Peixoto, from whom I learned a lot, not only about writing but also about how to deal with it, once told me when I asked him why he never carries a notebook or anything with him (what is quite the opposite to what most writers do): “If it’s good it will stay on my memory – and if it’s not good it will go away!” I’m totally the other way: I like to relax on that... Otherwise I would be afraid! I’ve got a story on my mind about a man, a writer, who is caught by surprise by his masterpiece, but then has nothing on his memory to rely on... That’s something that scares me a lot! And I respect Juan Luis very much, but I carry my notebook and my little pen, so that I am ready when the words come, be it in a subway or in the middle of a meal... or wherever…

Thank you very much for the interview!