Björk and The Sugarcubes don’t offer a message as much as a sensibility. Mischievous, cynical, and naive this band forces us to gaze upon the world with fresg eyes.
By 12, she was playing drums and screaming in an all-girl punk band. "Spit & Snot" she says, recalling the band’s name with a punk-rock snarl. I got so easily bored. I was always having these secret projects all over town - with a brass section, with jazz people, people making electronic contemporary music. I made film music on my own with drum machines and synthesizers. I did music for avant-garde dance theaters. I produced a heavy metal band, did backing vocals, wrote songs, had a radio program.
Before the Sugarcubes I was in K.U.K.L., a punk band, and that was much more important to me. The KUKL-period taught me a lot of valuable lessons in a quick and violent way. That band really changed me.
Then in 1986, the label went bankrupt and Kukl quit and I was heartbroken. Crying for days. Much more upset than I’ve been over any boyfriend. But things began to happen. I bought a house with my then boyfriend and I had a kid. Our house became like a cafeteria for all these people looking for something new to do. And we formed this organisation called Bad Taste, where we reacted against all this punk dressing down and being socially correct. We wore pink and encouraged irresponsibility and had these mottoes like ’World Domination Or Death’. Einar drove a huge, impractical convertible and everyone hated us. It was a magical time, and out of this grew the Sugarcubes.
People think I did nothing in Iceland before The Sugarcubes, but me and my friends did everything ! We’d make pirate radio, attack the government, run into the TV station and take control, hold film festivals of only X-rated films, attack policemen - we were like terrorists, you know ? We were... terrible ! The Sugarcubes was just a hobby we did at weekends, singing silly pop songs.
I was in a muso band at 13, playing seven-nine rythems, being complicated and difficult. Then I got into punk. I formed this band called "Spit And Snot". I was the drummer, with no hair. Then I was in "Tappi Tíkarrass", which translates as "Cork The Bitch’s Arse" ! Everyone whowas in these bands got over the problem of not knowing how to play. Me and my friends did evrything ourselves ; the posters, the driving, the singing. We even started out own label. We were like ’Fuck the system’.
I have never felt that I’m a girl. I am of course a girl, and I’m frankly proud of it. I’m different from the boys and it has it’s pros and flaws. I’ve quit a band because I just didn’t fit with the moral. You must be one of the group and equal with the others – if not it will never work out. You can neither be better or worse than the others because then there will be complexes and trouble. Yes, boyish moral ? Then I must be a bit of a boy, although I find myself to be just girly enough.
Most people in Iceland are blonde and blue-eyed. I was nicknamed ’China girl’ in school ’cos they thought I looked Asian. And most people in Iceland didn’t like what me and my mates were doing. It took the English to discover it.
I’m really weird like that. I blame it on the punk background. We were so ... what’s the right word for it ? I guess a bad word for it would be ’holistic’. You know, this idea that you make your own poster and you glue it up and you carry your equipment. And even though it’s a long time since I put a poster on the wall, I have to tell you, I have that background, and I’m still working with the same people I’ve been working with since I was 16. I have a feeling for the whole picture.
It’s very uncomfortable for me to sing a song unless every word is thought of, and very carefully put down, murmurs Bjork. I never vary with the words. `Birthday’ was first going to be about a man who sells ... food ?
A grocer, points out Einar, who doubles as a brilliant walking dictionary.
Yes, a grocer, very close to me, in a little shop. But then I found out it was about some old guy who’s living close to me ... it changed very often. Then finally, I just had to write it down, and I sort of collected memories together in my head of ... like, when I was a kid, all old men that influenced me sort of erotically, without doing anything, really. Men at 50 and stuff like that. But, you know, without doing anything ... so that’s the feeling.
For me, says Einar, because I don’t sing on this track, I play trumpet, it is a menace that lurks behind these words. A menace like when Frank Zappa said, If she were my daughter I’d ahhhh...! You remember that ?
It was only an atmosphere I was trying to describe, says Bjork. The only thing I was doing consciously, that was mixing together pure innocence and pure ... well, not danger, but something, you know, evil. Evil in an unreal way.
It’s a story a love affair between a girl who’s five years old and a secret with a man who lives next door. The song’s called ’Birthday’ because it’s his 50th birthday, but not many people can figure it out from the lyrics. It’s a tasteless love song.
We could have called us The Lollipops or something, like a joke, you know ? We were kind of working for the establishment abroad that we were fighting in Iceland, so it was really weird.
Obviously we said no to 90 per cent of all the offers we had, just because we can. And then five years later it was taking up all our time ; all we were doing was, like we had an empty office and piles of unsold books. And what was supposed to be the most promising poet of his
generation hadn’t written a book for four or five years because he was doing soundchecks in Texas.
When we formed it we thought OK, we’ll do it just for one night, and then it was "let’s do it for a few months" and then "let’s do an album," and the fact it lasted for five years was really surprising. But the good thing about it was that I know a lot of bands who have as many dressing-rooms as there are members and this kind of thing, and we never had we never had that problem. The few times we had two or three dressing-rooms, we were all in the same one. It was a laugh all the way
to the end.
The Sugarcubes were a bit of a clique, you know - we had been going for years before people in Britain discovered us. When we became so famous, so talked about after our first record, we said ’Fuck the world’, and decided to make the most unpredictable album we could.
Our heroes in Iceland weren’t the Cilla Blacks and The Eurythmics, but the chemistry experimentalist in the back room in a small village you could sneak in and watch and be completely obsessed with his ideas. Or the guy who was really into making synthesizers out of old televisions. We thought they were sincere and it was almost a rule in Iceland that if you were doing anything that was worth anything, you didn’t get famous. I guess our attitudes in The Sugarcubes come from that. So in our heads, if we get famous, we are selling out.
The Sugarcubes came about because of the domesticity imposed by Björk’s motherhood. After they were married, Björk and Thor moved into a house, and an avant-garde crowd of poets, painters, and musicians would come around. Six of them created Bad Taste Ltd., dedicated to publishing each other’s work. For a joke they also formed the Sugarcubes. When one of their songs, ’Birthday,’ caused a stir in England, they rerecorded it in English. Suddenly they had a career.
It was a hobby really. We’d all get drunk at weekends and write these weirdo pop songs and then when we had enough we could go on holiday as The Sugarcubes. It was just a group of friends travelling all over the world and thinking, ’this is crazy’. Nobody expected to last even as long as it did.
Folks might say something went wrong with the Sugarcubes. Not so ! We had worked together as a unit since we were 14, 15 years old - we’d done all these different things together and always stuck by each other no matter what. We set up a pirate
radio station - we broke into Radio One for the 200-year birthday of Reykjavik and made all these announcements and played songs that we considered more realistic. So we’ve been arrested, been thrown in jail together.
Sugarcubes, number one was people. We liked each other and we had a good time together and the music that came out of that relationship was a bit of an accident. When I realized the Sugarcubes had become this serious band-thing, I started to realize that it was now or never. If I didn’t record all those songs I’d written in my head, then it would never do it.
Well I had to listen to it a year ago because we did a concert in Iceland, the Sugarcubes. It was weird because I was on a boat and I was in Tunisia and we were sailing from town to town, and I would take the bicycle, and bicycle with my Ipod around Tunisian villages and listen to Life’s Too Good.
And I was like "what were we on ?" I mean it actually surprised me how—I mean when I look back now I feel like I was a baby then—but it actually surprised me how formed, I mean as a group, like the ideas, the lyrics stuff that we were actually really—maybe it’s like when you’re in your teens and early twenties when you form your views of the world, and then you sort of stick pretty much to them. I mean songs like "God does not exist" and and other stuff like that. I guess it’s pretty teenage as well, you sort of make Important Statements. Yeah.
When I worked with the Sugarcubes it was really really different because I just wrote my melodies and my lyrics and that was all. We were going into rehearsal rooms and there’d be some beats or some chords or whatever, and I’d usually write my melodies on top of what somebody else had done. So that’s a very different method and has a very different outcome too, where I was being more reactionary. It’s not a bad thing thing, but I guess when you make your own music on your own, you’re the one who starts, you’re—where you are coming from, and you get to be reactionary to that, so it’s more like your own point of view.
I think it’s not a coincidence a lot of bands are formed when people are 14-15, and it’s rare that they last longer than 25, because that’s sort of the age where you’re sort of forming your views of the world, and your gang or your friends or whatever [are] setting up a certain philosophy you would probably maintain for the rest of your life, and that’s kind of quite natural to do that in a group where you’re just part of many, it’s not about individualism. And then once you form that sort of statement you break off and become more individual.
Listening to it I’m like, ’What were we on ?’ When I look back now I feel like I was a baby then but it actually surprised me how formed the ideas were.
We did a gig last November so I listened to all the songs again for the first time since we stopped playing together probably. My surprise was how “Euro“ we were. Also how well-formed my opinions on the world were back then – the whole “God does not exist“ and so on. Hasn’t changed much…
Björk, radiating bemusement : The lyrics are not really offensive, not at all. They are about a little girl who is out biking, and she sees a motor crash, and no police has arrived yet, and there is a car with parents in the front and children in the back and they’re all wounded. And she wants to help them - so it’s a really nice song.
So she takes the mother - cos she likes mothers the most of people - and sneaks her back to her home, and nurses her there, sort of puts plastic stuff on her, and dries off her wounds, and gives her milk and biscuits, because she likes that herself, and steals a dress from her mother - nobody knows about this, it’s totally secret - and when finally the woman wakes up, and when she’s totally healed, they sneak out, take a taxi to the home of the woman and the children are there, already healed, and the husband opens the door and they take the costumes off and say, We’re back ! But the husband gets very angry and says, Where have you been all this time ? And then the song is over.
It’s just a little girl and she wants to do something, but she’s so clumsy ... I guess it’s because it’s called `Motorcrash’. They don’t like songs that are called that...
My moving to London probably only affected the practical side of my work. It’s a cosmopolitan city, with all the provisions and people I need. Reykjavik doesn’t. For the rest, the move meant at most the start of a new fase in my life : in the time before it - the Sugarcubes era - it always felt very safe and comfortable to make music with other people and not have to many responsa- bilities. But I’ve thrown all that overboard. I realised : It’s now or never. I make that solo-album now, or else I never will. I’m glad I did, because now I know I can never go back : it feels as safe and comfortable as the time with the Sugarcubes.
Were you hoarding up the ’Debut’ songs, keeping them away from The Sugarcubes ?
No, in The Sugarcubes it was never like that. It was a joke band. Braggi would never have brought a three page poem for us to use, it would just be ridiculous. It’s like, you wouldn’t go to your grandma’s and discuss your sex life — it wasn’t the place for it. We would never discuss music, that was like the bottom of the pit. Now with my band we’re all pretty much muses. We can discuss drum breaks for an hour — if you’d done that with The Sugarcubes, people would just have walked out of the room !
I moved out when I was 14. My mum was hysterical about it. I decided I would never do that to him : I would never be that desperate about it. We’ve always been like Siamese Twins, me and my boy. He toured with me - we were together, 24/7, for 14 years.
He’s having an excellent time. He’s living with his father in Iceland - they’re bonding and shaving and talking about girls, which I think is excellent. He’s partying and socialising and doing what you’re supposed to do when you’re 15. He’s in a band. He likes rock. Which I don’t. He’s rebelling. Thank God !
It was extremely enjoyable.We wanted to rescue our label we have run in Iceland for 20 years from bankruptcy, and we did. Hopefully it will be OK for another 20 years.
Björk, you recently reunited with the Sugarcubes and played a show in Iceland. How did that come about ? Were you happy how it turned out, and most importantly - would you do it again in the U.S.? (New York preferably !)
Sorry , won’t be doing it again , I guess it was strictly for rescuing Bad Taste which was on the verge of bankruptcy . Don’t know if you know about that label but it has been putting out grassroot poetry and music now for 20 years . A non profit company where most of the people that work for it do so voluntarily . We put out sigurrós and múm’s first albums for example.
It was a hobby really. We’d all got drunk at weekends and write these weirdo pop songs and then when we had enough we could go on holiday as The Sugarcubes. It was just a group of friends travelling all over the world and thinking, ’this is crazy’. Nobody expected to last even as long as it did.
In the time of the Sugarcubes, things were done completely different. We didn’t really have a heart for what we did. It was one big joke. Yes, you can write that down : The Sugarcubes were a joke. I don’t mean we were bad or fake, but we were people who would meet each other in the pub on weekends and then suddenly decided to make some stupid pop songs. While half of us weren’t even musicians ; we were really poets. Our heart wasn’t in music.
After a while, the joke became a job, a profession. And then it went wrong. At least where I’m concerned. Before the Sugarcubes I was in K.U.K.L., a punk band, and that was much more important to me. The KUKL-period taught me a lot of valuable lessons in a quick and violent way. That band really changed me. But the Sugarcubes....Maybe you should put it in a timeframe : the group was founded in a very lively, fertile time. Of course Iceland is very small and we were bored to death, so we wanted some action. We started developing lots of activities, which eventually led to one big commune of artists. We supported each other, started a little company to publish poetry and literature, we ran a radio station, we had a coffeeshop that doubled as bookstore... And everyone helped each other. It was a hot-bed, a breeding pit. All very exciting. And the poets who were used to getting drunk together every weekend, decided to start a pop band. That was the Sugarcubes.
From that moment on, something changed : the Sugarcubes suddenly became very interesting and everybody wanted them to become world famous. And the strange thing is that we actually started striving for that, even though everybody had other occupations as well. But we knew that we would regret it forever if we did NOT do it. In the end it was another two years before we signed a contract with a record company, because even though everybody wanted us, we were always very stubborn and pig-headed ; for instance, we refused for a long time to sing in English. Eventually it went awry because the group didn’t have enough priority for some members. They thought that other things were more important. I hated the fact that we were splitting up. I cried several nights. Later, I was glad we had made that decision : you shouldn’t milk out a joke for too long.
My time with the Sugarcubes was one of the "most magical" periods of my
life. We were six persons who really loved eachother to death. We were
friends, we had known eachother forever, we started a band, more or less
as a joke - and people took us seriously !
We just laughed. Three of us were poets who were seen as the most
promising in the country and what do we do ? Go to Texas and do
guitarsolos. Of course we couldn’t live on a joke forever. It just
wasn’t fun in the end.
Finally we found ourselves in the rock’n’roll dressingrooms playing
"Spinal Tap" and nobody had written a single line in four years. This
time meant a lot to me and I learned incredibly much, but in the end it
all just felt so unhealthy.
The Sugarcubes were attracted to each other because we were all extreme people. We always had a good time, even if we were stuck in a boring German suburb eating cold hamburgers.
The music was secondary, so we didn’t have this big musical ambition to be brilliant. I could be in the background and write my melodies and lyrics and then watch how the music turned out. Plus I got the chance to travel all the time and see how other bands function, which taught me a lot. Fame was not in our plan but at the same time, we enjoyed it. It was a happy accident.
The Sugarcubes people will support each other until the ay we die. And we are also each other’s hardest critics. Like, I’ll send my record to the bass player and he will tell me it’s crap, you know ? And he sends me his poetry.
The way I’ve been explaining the difference is by comparing it to a party. You know the people who are going to be there, so you get all dressed up and maybe bring a bottle of wine or some tapes. And you go, and you have great time ; and if the curtains aren’t the colour you like or people are telling jokes that aren’t your kind of jokes, you’re not going to stand on a chair and tell everybody what to say or do. That’s kind of what the Sugarcubes’ music was like. We’d been friends from way back - some of us have known each other for, like, 15 years - and there was no way I was going to tell anyone in the band what to do. Because I respect them, and I just love them as people, you know ?
ukl means grope and was intended as pun on the name Kukl, which means sorcery done the amteurish way. þukl only played one gig with this name, as for the next gig we had taken the name The Sugarcubes.
I was in a muso band at 15, playing seven-ninth rhythms, being complicated and diffcult. Then I got into punk. I started by forming this punk band, called Spit And Snot, believe it or not. I was the drummer, with no hair. That was a big scene in Reykjavik : I think we hold the world record of how many people lived in Iceland, and how many punk bands there were. But it was very difficult to get English punk records : you’d get one, like a Gang Of Four record, and everyone would go to that one person’s house. So all these bands started to play, and we definitely got over the problem of not knowing how to play - that was mind over matter.
I hated the fact that we were splitting up. I cried several nights. Later, I was glad
we had made that decision : you shouldn’t milk out a joke for too long.
