CM: What does "Industrial" mean?

JGT: I don't know what that means. I knew what it meant back then—"Industrial Music for Industrial People," which is a coined termed by—or about—Throbbing Gristle. They had a label called Industrial Records, and that's where it came from, Throbbing Gristle. But then "Industrial" became Einstürzende Neubauten, and I sort of came under the umbrella of "Industrial" because I used unconventional instrumentation, such as hitting on objects to get the custom sounds, metal, or maybe vacuum clean sounds, or maybe other weird things. And I challenged—like I was using a lot of tape loops and studio manipulation to achieve what I did, and so I don't know where the industrial thing came in.

CM: I heard that you basically financed Einstürzende Neubauten's first record. Is that true?

JGT: No, that's not true.

CM: There's a lot of not-true things printed about you, I've discovered.

JGT: They had put out, you know, a couple of singles and stuff, and maybe even their first album in 12-inch. I think I had their records, and I saw them play in Berlin and I loved them, they were amazing experience, and I approached them and said, "Do you want your record to come out in England?" You know, they were unknown there, and they had said, "Of course!" I had just by then put out my second album under Self-Immolation, Ache, and I had a deal through Rough Trade—just a manufacturing/distribution deal then, and so I formed this label with Rough Trade as a part of Hardt Records. I was just in London and found the Hardt Records letterhead. The first release on Hardt Records was to be Strategies Against Architecture, and so I basically said, "Okay, what do you want to do?" And they started putting this compilation together, which was Strategies Against Architecture, and then I started cornered by Some Bizarre [an underground British '80s record company best known for bringing Soft Cell to the world], and I had this thing where I stared putting my royalties from my album Ache to the production of Strategies Against Architecture.

And I said, to Neubauten, "Look, I'm doing this deal, are you interested in signing with Some Bizarre too?" and they said, "Yeah." And I said to Stevo [of Some Bizarre], one of the provisions of signing me is to sign Neubauten as well—and of course, years later, much to everyone's dismay, we are stuck on Some Bizarre, which turned out to be not such a good thing. However, it did, at the time, raise our profiles quite considerably. And I think it enabled me to get an influx of money to get a 24 track studio where I was able to do more than eight tracks, and it was the first time I had a decent recording budget. So then Stevo decided he didn't want to put out Strategies Against Architecture. So then we took Strategies Against Architecture to Daniel Miller of Mute, and said, "Are you interested in releasing this?" and he said, "Oh yes, definitely, but do you want to keep you company logo on there, Hardt Records?"—you know, keep your imprint. Stupidly, I said, "No, I've done what I've wanted to achieve, which was to get them recognition in this country."

CM: Everything I've read about you, is that you've been very generous about promoting other artists, you've done compilations of people you just like and put out, where is your motivation for doing that?

JGT: The days of that are long gone. I put out one compilation of bands. I just found it to be thankless a task and I abandoned it. I was thinking about doing a series of 10-inches, and I felt that I was really spreading myself too thin by doing this. You know, these people can fend for themselves. It's an uphill battle for me, let alone being an entrepreneur. I have my own stable of acts, and I'm only one person. I've got five acts myself!

CM: Okay, so you have Manorexia, Foetus, Baby Zizane, Steroid Maximus, DJ Otefsu. . . Now I saw that, I'm looking at your records, where in the hell do you find your records at, and how do you know what to get?

JGT: People who collect records just know.

CM: Okay, it's a record collector thing.

JGT: Yeah, I mean you get deep into it, you find out about things. It's a treasure hunt, it's fun. Especially with sound-trackie stuff—and that whole middle row is sound tracks, and I can tell by picking up a record I can sometimes look at the song titles and go, "Okay, there's a chase scene, a party scene, maybe there's going to be something useful there," but that also forms my own music, it always has.

CM: What about the artwork? Ever buy a record strictly based on the artwork? I only mention that because that's the only reason I ever discovered you, I liked the artwork, so I bought the record.

JGT: Well, sometimes when you look at old vinyl and you see something with an amazing cover for a dollar, you'll buy it, but there's so many old records with good covers, and you just put them on the shelf and file them away. I don't pull them out and marvel at the covers anymore. I'm more interested in the music.

CM: Well, you have a show out right now, Exit Art?

JGT: Exit Art put on this show the LP art show curated by Carlo McCormick and it traveled a couple places, it went to the Experience Music Project in Seattle and it went to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and now it's back, the show is back here. I had my own little wall. There were about 20 to 25 covers up.

CM: You mean you had done all of that artwork yourself? Do you miss the days of vinyl, just for the physical space for the artwork?

JGT: Yeah, for the artwork, yeah but I mean, I still do the occasional vinyl.

CM: Yeah I heard that you did limited releases on vinyl.

JGT: Baby Zizanie is coming out on vinyl, but we don't really need it. It's just generic, so the artwork I designed for it is only about that big. [Thirwell describes a shape about the size of about a credit card with his hands.]

CM: But that doesn't bother you so much I mean, it's not like you miss it?

JGT: Vinyl is, you know… the idea of being able to present something in the form of an album is like a whole different art form in itself, and it's like a whole different fetish object itself. People who like really enjoy that. And things being reduced to CD, you just deal with it. You can't be crying over it forever, you can't be crying over the wistful days of silent movies, and now in 10 years time, everyone is going to be shooting on digital, everything will be screened digitally and stuff. There still will be nice warm analog music in movie houses and they'll still be people putting out vinyl. And there are still hundreds of millions of records out there to snuggle up to and feel comfortable and nostalgic about. I'm more interested in putting out the next thing.

CM: Yeah, not necessarily how it gets out there, but that it does.

JGT: It's good that it gets out there. There are many mediums out there, and they all have different qualities.

CM: Yeah, how do you feel about BearShare, Napster? Has your stuff ended up there? Do you have a problem with that?

JGT: I don't really have an opinion about it, to be honest. You know, I see it all happening but you know, it's kind of like walking down to the ocean and yelling and asking the tide not to come in, because the genie's out of the bottle. Nothing that I can do or say is going to change it. There are people who are devoting their lives to it full-time and I don't know what my voice contributed to the argument has to with anything. But I do think it's dangerous that a whole generation thinks that they deserve to get music exclusively for free, and what the musicians are going free lot ride-along? I mean this is a fucking hell of a lot of work, this is not just something like puttering around and I have a day job at a dot-com or something. I think that I should be allowed to be in control of that.

The way the whole Metallica-business-Napster thing, blew up really because someone took an unfinished song from their studio and put it out through Napster, and that's the point where someone is saying, "I'm a Metallica fan, therefore I think that it's democratically right for everyone to have access to this." And it's not their right at all, Metallica should have the final say over what of theirs is distributed. But then you know, there's the argument, "What, is it going to be the death of copyright?" I mean you hope that there's going to be enough people around—you know there's certainly not enough movies being made and commercials being made and blah, blah, blah…

There's not enough people going to concerts, where everyone can make a living doing music, because there's too many people making music now anyway. You know I think the whole process has been too democratized and I think that the availability of the means to make it has devalued music, and instead of a lot of quality music out there, there's a lot of content, and content is different. And I think that has devalued it. And I also think that maybe there use to be generations of people where music was the central core of what they did with their life, and their lifestyle—it's really important. And it really mattered to them, and now it's like for an ADD generation it's just another piece of upholstery, it's another piece of furniture, it's a decoration… None of those words are right, maybe it's an accessory to a lot of other things, you know, the Internet, video games, and DVD's and so on. And I think, you know, it depends… It's changed a lot. There's many different layers to that cake. There's the real underground, then there's the fake underground, then there is the mainstream, all sorts of shit.

CM: Do you find that younger people now are aware of who you are and what you did?

JGT: Some are, some aren't, same as always.

CM: Do you find that frustrating. . . Well, I guess you don't find anything frustrating. Is it just is what it is?

JGT: It just is what it is. I do my fucking best to get it out there without making myself nuts.

CM: I was just going to ask you what the most frustrating part and I think you just answered it. Doing your music, distribution, pretty much?

JGT: You know the business side of things can be really frustrating because to deal with the business side of things too. You know, I began this because I wanted to put out records and pieces of art and everyone owns an original. I came into it from a post-modern perspective in the first place, in a post-Andy Warhol world, and by an independent means of distribution. But as a non-musician too, I started from the get go as the guy that did the record company guy, the promotions guy, the artwork, the chief cook, and bottle washer, and the artist, and I still am.

CM: So you have absolute control over everything. You don't farm anything out?

JGT: Well of course. What I'm trying to say, is that each part of the process, in the way that engineering and production and composition are inextricably linked you know, in the songwriting process as opposed to picking up a guitar and knocking out three chords, I think the production to me is part of the composition process. But then, so is the identity that I have control over, and the design and probably, you wouldn't believe how many times I've shot myself in the foot.

CM: Because of your identity changing you mean?

JGT: Either that or because every time I look like I'm going to be successful, I do a little twist or a turn or a little bit of suicide.

CM: Really? A little self-destructive, you mean?

JGT: I don't even try to do that, that's just something someone observed once.

CM: There's six years that sort of went missing. . .I don't know if you want to get into that or not. . .

JGT: I mean, I was going to say that I'm working at a pace right now which is the hardest I've ever worked in my life. I think that part of it is playing catch-up. I want my legacy to be now. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time. And I think there will be a point to where I will be satisfied with this little mattress of work that I've created, since the dark years, you know… which is coming up soon. Once this album, and the Baby Zizanie album come out, that's like six albums in 18 months. That's a lot of material.

CM: That's almost manic. Do you sleep?

JGT: Just a little bit. And right now I've got a new Foetus album, I've got about five new songs for that. One of the songs is in French, I hope to do another song in French, there's also going to be a duet with Jennifer Charles on there. And I probably will finish that by early spring next year but it won't come out until next fall. A Foetus album in fall of 2003, there will be another Manorexia album about the same time, and hopefully 2004 I will do a performance of Manorexia with an orchestra. And that will coincide with the triple Manorexia release.

CM: Yeah, you had mentioned earlier that Manorexia was going to be a triple album release.