It was a reaction to when I was growing up, and women were supposed to be all blonde hair, gold suntan, and pink lips. It was a real black-and-white opposite of what was considered attractive. I was kicking against something I found really oppressive.
The whole 'anniversary of punk' thing really compounded what I thought was wrong. I was so disillusioned. I remember thinking, 'I don't want anything to do with this.'
Always, with any sort of politics, which is why we haven't got any, you get extremists, and once you get extremists, you get people doing great things and terrible things... for every following of some sort, you get followers who distort things.
Pop music for me was definitely escapist, but never studious.
I love the ocean. I've always liked the blue, so tranquil and peaceful and gliding. And the fear of it.
Every generation has had some sort of focus for their unrest and discomfort with growing up. But today, the music that's in the charts is probably liked by their parents as well, and I think it's a part of youth that you need something that isn't liked or understood by the older generation.
There are some strong female performers out there. But the industry's pre-occupation with the packaging of how a woman looks has gone completely the other way, back to almost the 60s, early 70s.
I was never attracted to being a very proficient singer or player. I suppose I was interested in creating a vision; in the same way I was very drawn to tension within cinema.
I suppose I was interested in creating a vision; in the same way, I was very drawn to tension within cinema. Hitchcock was my other early obsession - 'Psycho' and its score. So there was the sense of trying to create an atmosphere: how a sound resonates and makes an effect.
Gothic in its purest sense is actually a very powerful, twisted genre, but the way it was being used by by journalists - 'goff' with a double f - always seemed to me to be about tacky, harum-scarum horror, and I find that anything but scary. That wasn't what we were about at all.
I hate the industry even more now, no bands get nurtured anymore. Labels only spend money promoting acts they know will be Top Ten. I find it offensive spending $2 million on a video.
We don't like trends. We formed initially because we felt we had something of our own to say. What was happening was lacking in certain aspects - it needed a different point of view, a variant on things, but with the same attack, impact.
