brief encounters #10: the night i pissed off robyn hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock offers his cat Tubby a treasured traffic cone (photo courtesy Robyn Hitchcock Instagram)

In the prelude of his new memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, English singer-songwriter and master raconteur Robyn Hitchcock writes, “I was a different creature then. If I go back far enough it seems as though my life happened to somebody else. I recognize the names I’m writing down, the times and the places I lived in, but I don’t recognize the person who actually did the living. He is called what I am still called; we share the same eyes and birth certificate, but I’m not him anymore. Maybe our names should be renewable every ten years, like passports.”

He continues, “Yes, old chap: your memories belong to someone else. They are borrowed from a character in a previous tale who has now vanished. So perhaps you should pass some of his memories on before you vanish too? Very well, let’s try it: who was I? Or, currently: Writing Guy, who are you? That’s easy: I am the voice in the head of the person who is writing this. Hmm. Things are getting complicated — let’s try another approach: who were you back then?”

One memory I wish I could forget, or believe it happened to someone else, was one of my most embarrassing encounters with a celebrity, the very same Robyn Hitchcock.

When I started dating Ellen, the amazing woman who would become my wife, there were two nonnegotiable caveats: First, I had to be accepted by Ellen’s one-of-a-kind cat, Goat (even though I was allergic). And second, I had to accept Robyn Hitchcock into my life.

The only thing I knew about Hitchcock at that time was his MTV hit “Balloon Man,” one of my favorite songs of the 1980s. But there he was, staring down at me from the wall in Ellen’s room, next to a poster of the great Mekons album Fear and Whiskey. It wasn’t long before I was going to concerts by both bands — and spending lots of quality time with Goat.

Over the years, we’ve seen Hitchcock, solo and with his group the Egyptians, at such venues as Maxwell’s, City Winery, Le Poisson Rouge, and Bowery Ballroom. When I was running a free local weekly newsmagazine in the early 2000s, I did a phone interview with Hitchcock about Nextdoorland, the 2002 reunion album he made with his first major band, the Soft Boys. I remember asking him, “Who is Ralph, and why does he need a spanner?,” what I thought was a playfully silly reference to his song “Give Me a Spanner Ralph,” from his debut solo album, 1981’s Black Snake Diamond Role. It was met with silence, which is rare for Hitchcock. Clearly, he was not as fond of the question as I was, and it did not make it into the final article. (Looking back, I realize that I also completely misinterpreted the title, which is another reason he had no answer.)

Hitchcock has certainly not been silent these past few years. During the pandemic, he performed a regular series of online couch concerts called “Live from Tubby’s House,” acoustic sets accompanied by his wife, Emma Swift, their cats, Tubby and Ringo, and the stuffed Larry the Lobster, streamed from their Nashville home. On Facebook he took requests, posted memories from his past, delivered random thoughts and wildly funny meanderings, and shared his obsession with traffic cones, all of which he is still doing. His next virtual concert is November 13 on StageIt, a thirty-minute pay-what-you-can benefit for Matthew Sweet, who suffered a debilitating stroke while on tour in Toronto on October 12.

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A post shared by @robynhitchcockofficial

Once music venues were back open, Hitchcock began a rollicking tour diary as he played around the world; on October 30, he’s returning to City Winery, and he’ll be at Levon Helm Studios on November 1 in support of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left (Akashic, June 28, $26.95) and its companion album, 1967: Vacations in the Past (Tiny Ghost, September 13, $14.99). The book features such chapters as “So Long, Dalek Sponge,” “All the Lonely People: Hodges and the Duplock,” “The 5000 Spirits or the Fish on the Hill,” and “Under the Floorboards with Fletcher,” written in the unmistakable Hitchcock style, an intoxicating mix of stream-of-consciousness, high-end literature, mordant observation, music appreciation, and hilarious detail. The record consists of cover versions of songs from 1967 that influenced him, including Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play,” and the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

In a recent Facebook video, Hitchcock, grooving in front of a blue brick wall, gleefully proclaimed, “Up against the wall, you bet! Who isn’t? Everybody’s just coming out of the bricks, coming atcha, from the solidity of the past to the clear air of the present into the voracious murk of the future. Chic-a-friggin’ boom!”

I can’t disagree with that.

Oh, and that stupid question I asked Hitchcock in 2002 was not the embarrassing moment I was referring to. In March 2011, Ellen and I saw Robyn and his longtime friend, producer Joe Boyd, team up for a special “Chinese White Bicycles” show at Le Poisson Rouge, an evening of music and stories. I photographed the event; one of my pictures was used by Rolling Stone in its online review of the performance.

After that show, Hitchcock was at the merch table in the lobby. I got up close and snapped a photo with my point and shoot — and the flash practically exploded in his face. I still don’t know why it went off; I hadn’t turned it on during the show, and I rarely used it anyway.

I was going to introduce myself to him and thank him for that 2002 interview (as well as being a key part of my relationship with Ellen), but the justifiably outraged look in his eyes told me I better get away, and fast.

For a few seconds, I had turned him into “The Man with the Lightbulb Head,” a song from his 1985 record with the Egyptians, Fegmania!

Ellen immediately turned into a person who had never seen me before — and had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the flash drama — so she could say hello to him and get something signed.

As much as I love Hitchcock, from his social media posts to his records, concerts, and, now, engaging memoir and terrific covers album, the first thing I think of when it comes to Robyn is him on that poster, about to leap out and strangle me in the dark.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]