Ramble, rant or reminisce, this is an artist’s opportunity to pen their own Clash article.
In 2003, Buck 65 created a live six-turntabled score to Eraserhead. He recalls his unlikely inspiration for the event…
“When the ICA approached me to participate in their music/film project I originally chose Tales From The Gimli Hospital by my friend and fellow Canadian, Guy Maddin. But they urged me to choose another film over concerns of its obscurity. So I went with my alternate choice: David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
I set up shop in a room at the weird, old Columbia Hotel at Lancaster Gate. I loaded it with equipment: mixers, monitors, computers, instruments, samplers, effects units, a Tesla coil, an old projector, six turntables, and crate upon crate of phonograph records. The room was transformed into Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. It hummed. The walls vibrated. It smelled like burning hair.
I removed the fox hunting paintings from the wall and inflicted Lynch’s nightmare upon it. My senses were assaulted, but inspiration eluded me somehow. Something was missing. I didn’t know what – but I decided to venture out of the hotel and look for it.
Wandering blind, I zombied into Hyde Park. Soon I realised I was being led by a dreadful siren’s song. My pace quickened towards its source. Finally, I found my purpose at the edge of Round Pond – a crying, wounded water fowl. Her desperate lament broke my heart and I made her plight my business. I gathered her into my arms and stroked her smooth neck. Looking into one another’s eyes, we made a pact: she would inspire me to know Henry Spencer’s dilemma (Henry is the hero of Eraserhead) and I would nurse her to full recovery. I tucked my duck into my jacket and spirited her back to the Columbia, past the slumbering front desk clerk, and up to the warmth of my make-shift laboratory.
I built a nest for my injured friend (an old sweatshirt shoved into a cardboard box) and returned to my work, her horrible moan filling the room with the reminder of death. Flickering images of poor Henry caring for his mutant child mirrored my concern for the bird. Radiators hissed. Old vinyl crackled. Fireworks spewed from overworked electrical outlets. I filled the bathroom sink with water. I octopused the turntables. I bathed the fighting bird in warm water and my own body in cold sweat. Sexy neighbours patrolled the corridors and blood pooled on the floor as the divide between my reality and David Lynch’s sick fantasies blurred. The moon was stuck in a tree outside the open window of my chamber as night dragged itself across England. The hours unfolded in slow agony.
I don’t remember falling asleep that morning, but when I woke late the next afternoon, my body was unclothed, my notebooks were filled with notes detailing cues and key changes, the equipment was cold and the duck was gone.
That night at the ICA, when the closing credits rolled a mighty cheer rose from the throats of the assembled – maybe the loudest and longest I’ve ever managed to provoke. And woven into that curtain of applause, I thought I heard the laughter of a duck, but it couldn’t have been…”
Buck 65’s new album ’20 Odd Years’ is out now.
