Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Quite a few people have written in to tell me how depressed they have become since listening to the album. There seems to be some confusion about why I started things off with Angel Eyes. The album kicks off with this track, because it introduces the idea that there’s nothing so sad, depressing and guaranteed to make your brain addled as losing the one you love. The song was written about eighty years ago and the sentiment is as true now as it was then. The next song, You Don’t Know What Love Is, is even more depressing and if you think things can’t get any worse, well I hope you’ll be comforted by the fact that, at this point, we’re on a gentle incline, emotionally as it were, but as things proceed, we go into a near vertical freefall and plumb the very depths of despair and gloom, so that by the time you’ve listened to the last song, every one of you will be completely submerged in a vast ocean of despondency and melancholia.
It is, after all, why the album is called Songs For Suicidal Lovers. My manager did suggest the idea of having a supply of free razor blades available in the foyer after each show. He was talking about stuff like “emotional solidarity” and “natural wastage”, whatever that is. I said no, no no! Look, as much as I’m into Iggy Pop and all that, I don’t want to get into all that self-mutilation stuff. The live show has to be a strictly cerebral experience. A sort of catharsis, or exorcism, if you like, of those terrible demons we’ve all got swimming around in our heads, that can only be achieved by us all getting totally and utterly miserable together. Besides, I don’t want to pick up the bill for the awful mess there would undoubtedly be on the foyer carpet. In fact and, well, I know that out in some parts of the world, everyone screams and shouts and wails a lot when there’s some grief to be jettisoned. So, anyway, if after a song, any of you are feeling completely emotionally overcome, feel free to scream and shout and wail as much as you like. I know it’s often done up against a wall, so all you have to do is designate a wall in your living room, bedroom, or toilet, or wherever it is you listen to music, where you can bawl your heart out after each song.
Yes, cerebral is the word ladies and gentlemen. It’s funny, the first few shows I did, well, I think the audience were expecting me to slit my wrists at the end - you know, a sort of grand finale. There were, in fact, a couple of guys who offered to do the job for me. But now, well I’m trying to attract a more, kind of, intellectual audience. Judging by the language used in most of the letters you’ve sent, well I can tell that you all know your Proust from your Goethe. Most of you probably have a large collection of DVD’s released by the Swedish Film Institute and I bet some of you even have a miniature facsimile of the Elgin Marbles too, eh? Well, for the uninitiated, if you like the films of Ingmar Bergman, I know your going to love the album. It’s very dark with absolutely no sense of humour.
