Unknown publication
Canada 1987
By Lynn Geller

True Messiah

Bill Carter, singer / guitarist for the Screaming Blue messiahs, a wild British trio with a Fred Flintstone edge and a new album, Bikini Red, talks about the perils of the road.

"Touring is sensory deprivation. When you wake up you know everything that's going to happen that day. The good part is that you have the gig, so you try to put everything into that to make up for the deprivation. The bad part is that you put out so much and then you get empty and there's nothing to fill it up. But there's no going back. You meet these bands who can't stop touring. They have nothing else, so they go around the world in a kind of limbo. They live in a time warp.

"Most pop stars are huge assholes with personality problems. You're creating a monster. Of course, everyone likes a monster, it's possessed. So they keep feeding it. The best movie about that is Performance. James Fox turned to religion after making that film.

"In performance, particularly with some kinds of music – gospel, certain blues – it's like an exorcism. You're tapping into things and it could be that it isn't you. It's the devil's music. That's the Moral Majority's view, but I'm suspicious of it myself. You do change. All you have to do is look at Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean. And the ones who are still alive, a lot of them are like cardboard cutouts. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

"Robert Johnson is a classic. In a way you are selling yourself to the devil. There's always something and everybody's weak. Being successful, the difference is you have to do a lot more. Instead of doing twenty shows, you tour for six months. I didn't expect that when we started out. And it burns you out, giving 100%, you pay sooner or later. What we do is beyond our capabilities. You're stretching something that isn't quite there.

"But that's what makes it exciting. You can do things that are in everyone, but most people never have a chance to show. And the money's a plus, not that I have any yet. If I were rich I'd quit. I'd quit and form a band."