Suicide: More Quotes from Alan Vega
Original Interview by Joseph Ragusa

After reading our article on NYC legends Suicide, on page 39 of Under the Radar’s 4th issue, scroll bellow to read some quotes from our interview with the band’s Alan Vega that didn’t make it into the magazine.

Alan Vega…on Education
“ The one thing I never really wanted to learn was music because once you learn something, once you go to school for something, you have to unlearn it to…get to it. I always said, ‘I never want to learn music’. I remember my mother said to me one day, she said; ‘Look, I’ll do it this way. I’ll get you a violin or whatever - play whatever you want, take lessons. But you can’t be out on the street playing stickball.’ I said ‘Sorry, Mom. I’m going out in the street’. And that was that. I never really wanted to learn that. Whereas with art, I studied the shit, man, it was like…it took me 10 years after being out of school to unfigure it all out, to get to the meat, you know what I mean? It’s a hard thing, I had some great teachers and I learned a lot. But then you have to unlearn it. It really is hard to unlearn, it’s hard to get rid of these things that teachers put into your head, you know? I admired these guys, I learned a lot of shit from them, but your stuff starts looking like their work.”

… on Moving from Painting to Sculpting in His Art
“ And then I saw Iggy Pop in ’69 and all that changed. To me, that was like an environmental art piece. At the time I was painting, sort of drifting into sculpture, in a weird way. But I always stayed with it, ‘cause I always loved working with that stuff. I always loved color, I love working with light. And I finally got out of that painting jag, man; painting was always like a black hole to me. I probably didn’t realize that I was leaning into sculpture, and that would solve some of the problems I was leaning to. I never liked sculpture, man. A teacher of mine said it’s something you bump into when you’re walking around the museum trying to look at paintings, or something. So I never saw sculpture as any kind of possibility. The last thing I ever thought I’d ever be doing is standing on a stage, never thought it in my life. But every once in awhile, you make a list of what you want to do, or you think you want to do, and it was a list of 100, number 100 was being on a stage, and here I am - the last 30 years of my life - being on a stage. Go figure it. If you make a list, take number 100 next time - that’s where you’re gonna land on”.


… on Today’s Music
“ I like some of it. I’m not doing cartwheels about it, you know. I lot of things that we’ve influenced just never seem to have the same balls as Suicide has. They seem to reduce it. You know, in the early 80s there was the Soft Cells and the Depeche Modes and all that. They seem to take one part of our thing and make it into some kind of commercial thing and, well, Suicide has always been about the blues, you know, in a way. And, Marty and I just have a thing where we go out and kick ass and just do our thing from our heart and head, you know. Basically, mostly from our heart (laughs). And you hear these bands and it’s more like a head trip. I like Add N To X, I like uh, I forget all their names already - A.R.E. Weapons. And, uh, I listen to the records and it’s OK, you know. Like I said, I’m not doing cartwheels over it, I’m not listening to it for my musical pleasure, in a sense, you know… “If they (kids today) are into the Strokes or the Hives and all those bands on another level, it’s sort of like the punk thing. Compared to punk, I don’t see how and why (laughs) but it’s OK. If you want to call it the new punk, fine. It ain’t like the punk era I came out of, the bands I liked, that I played along with in the 70s. There was a lot more energy there. It was a different kind of angst in the 70s, and a different kind of thing. There was the Vietnam war, now we got Bush, you know. There’s a different kind of angst, everything is becoming more oppressive, I don’t know”.

… on the State of the Music Industry Today
“ The people have changed and the times have changed. Money is getting weird. Suicide, we didn’t get into it for the money obviously. We don’t make anything. Marty and I, we never thought of money. When we couldn’t get gigs in NY for the longest time, we used to go into 3-4 hour rehearsals, just to get it out of our gut. Never thought about money, we just thought about our music all the time, that’s all we talked about was the music. I think a lot of bands are coming in today with the idea of making money. You know, to create a package. They create an image, a package. They get a lawyer, they get managers, they go to the record companies, they create their thing. And with money in mind, I think. I’m not sure; I’m not going to say that for everybody. It’s a pre-conditioned package. But that could be what it’s all about now, you know? I don’t think things will ever be the way they were in the 70s again, you know? In the 60s and 70s, music was the ultimate goal, in a way. And money is in some ways now the ultimate goal, whether they’ll admit it or not. I might be really wrong, and it could be that what the kids are hearing today, it could be that that’s their music. That’s why I can’t talk about it - I’m another generation. I’m like a dinosaur already. I come from another world. In a way, I’m disappointed. I find myself having to go back into the past to listen to stuff, except for certain kinds of hip-hop and rap music. There’s still bands that I hear that I love. I love the beat, I love the words. It speaks to me, I can understand it and feel it. I love some of it. Most of it, like everything else, is garbage, but there’s some cool rap bands, hip-hop bands”.