I once passed up the chance of meeting Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, who - it was announced by his Throbbing Gristle bandmates on Twitter - died in his sleep last night aged 55. In the late 1990s I was invited to interview him and his long-term partner Geoff Rushton aka John Balance at the country house where they recorded their ritual electronic music as Coil, but being a young and inexperienced writer at the time, I got scared off by their reputation as exploratory occultists and opted instead for a phone interview with Rushton. He proved to be a spectacularly charming and fascinating interviewee, and I quickly regretted my cowardice; Rushton died after a fall in 2004, and now that Christopherson has passed away too I will never get the chance to make up for it.
Christopherson always played up to a challenging image, though. From the beginnings of his first band Throbbing Gristle in 1975 to their recent reformation and dramatic re-dissolution last month, he has been involved with music and performance that plays with taboos and provocation. Whether it's Coil's Scatology album (1984) or Christopherson's recent Thailand-based Threshold HouseBoys Choir project, his work dealt with sexuality, mortality, ritual, shock and control. It could be stomach-churningly grotesque or very beautiful indeed, often within the space of the same piece – but it was always delivered with a kind of flat Yorkshire deadpan attitude that refused to give up what was deadly serious and what was prank.
Sound and video from Coil's 2000 Time Machines project:
There were troubling aspects to Christopherson's work without a doubt; however, his brilliance as an artistic and musical technical innovator were unquestionable – his collaborations with everyone from the prog-rock musicians of the 1970s through Marc Almond to the Chapman Brothers being only his most direct influence on the culture around him – and his reputation for generosity and kindness was huge. His contribution to underground culture has been immeasurable, he will be sorely missed by those who knew him, and I regret my unprofessional wavering more than ever now.
- Christopherson's Threshold House site
- Throbbing Gristle's site
- The announcement of Christopherson's death by Throbbing Gristle's Cosey Fanni Tutti
- Read my Coil interview on LittleDetroit
- Find Throbbing Gristle on Amazon
- Find Coil on Amazon
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