Janice Headley talks with Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants about Colossal Youth.
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Janice Headley talks with Stuart Moxham of Young Marble Giants about Colossal Youth. This album from the Welsh post-punk trio may seem like a surprising entry on Kurt's list given its minimalist instrumentation, but these bands shared a similar disdain for the spotlight.
Hosts: Dusty Henry and Martin Douglas
Written & Produced: Janice Headley
Mixed & Mastered: Matt Martin and Roddy Nikpour
Special thanks to Isabel Khalili and Larry Mizell Jr.
Support the podcast: kexp.org/cobain
You may not detect it immediately, but Kurt Cobain himself says Nirvana were heavily influenced by the band we’re featuring this week on the Cobain 50 podcast: the iconic Welsh post-punk trio Young Marble Giants.
Here’s Kurt on MTV Brazil in 1993:
“I’m heavily influenced by them. It doesn’t sound like it in our music, but just the emotions they evoke and the feeling and the sincerity. The songwriting is just fantastic, and it's so original, too. No drums, except for that little tik-tik-tik Casio thing? Great. I just love that stuff."
Actually, throughout this episode, you’ll find Young Marble Giants provide a touchstone to many of the bands we’ve already covered in the Cobain 50 podcast. Keep listening and see.
Young Marble Giants was formed in the late 1970s by siblings Stuart Moxham on guitar and organ, Philip Moxham on bass, and vocalist Alison Statton, at the time, Phil’s girlfriend.
At a time when the punk scene was raging in London…
These three were hunkered down in Cardiff, Wales, crafting the exact opposite.
They infused their own influences into an utterly iconic sound that shines on their singular studio album, Colossal Youth, released on Rough Trade Records in 1980 and scribbled in Kurt’s journals over a decade later. Against a stark, minimalist instrumentation, Alison delivers a haunting coo that continues to captivate and inspire listeners to this day.
As the band have said, the spaces between the notes were just as important as the notes themselves.
Here’s Stuart in an exclusive interview with KEXP talking about the elements the band brought in to craft their truly unique sound:
Stuart: I think the Young Mobile Giants music, we were obviously trying to be original because we had to pull it out of the hat to get anywhere. Part of that, I think, is there are all sorts of influences in there, so it's quite widely appealing, I think. But musically, we were all reading the New Musical Express, so we were hip to the trip, you know, And that's what we liked. We liked Eno...
(Fun fact: prior to Young Marble Giants, Alison, Phil, and Stuart were in a covers band called True Wheel, named after this Brian Eno song.)
Stuart: ...and Kraftwerk, and Can, and the kind of more artsy leftfield stuff, really, but not exclusively...
Stuart: But yeah, Devo, we were huge fans of Devo.
Cardiff is also a city by the bay, which brought influences from around the world. Like the Jamaican dub influence you can hear in some of their songs.
Stuart: There's an area called Tiger Bay which is all down around by the docks there and there's always been people from all over the world. And it had a large Black population. Live side by side, you know. That was a benefit to the whole city. Cardiff had the first record shop in the world. In the 1880s. It's still there, called Spillers. I've got the coffee cup with it on.
Stuart and Philip brought a natural sibling synergy to their songwriting. In the 33 ⅓ series book on Colossal Youth, Alison noted that the brothers had "some form of alchemy as Stuart and Philip performed and blended their musical chemistry, but it also felt a bit like a family joke, in that you don’t expect anyone else to get it!”
They didn’t have a drummer. Instead, Stuart and Philip’s cousin Peter Joyce had built a homemade drum machine for them. In a 1992 interview with Melody Maker magazine, Kurt Cobain had said, “The drum machine has to be the cheesiest sound ever.”
Stuart wrote the lyrics for Alison to sing. At the time, he has said it created a sense of resentment, to have his innermost thoughts and feelings conveyed by someone else’s voice. But looking back nearly 50 years later, he shared with KEXP a new perspective:
Stuart: I only recently worked out what I personally was doing musically at the time. But that project, the Young Marble Giants, was what enabled me to write lyrics. So, if you think about the lyric side of it, you know, I was writing but not singing it. So, that gave me a freedom. And also it was being sung by a woman, which gave me another freedom.
When it came to the music side of things, it was Phil and I who did the music, really, and being brothers and all, found it quite easy to develop the sound.
The whole project to me was almost life and death. And I was it was a huge existential problem. I knew that music had to be the answer for me. And so I was under intense sort of self-pressure, I suppose, and what I ended up doing was, writing for an abstract band and thinking, "What would the best band in the world make?" Let's do that music. So, that was another layer away from reality. You see what I mean? So you've got three elements, all of which I'm dissociating from. So, I got a lot of creative freedom.
In 1979, they debuted their first songs on the compilation album Is The War Over? On Z Block Records, a collection and spotlight of Cardiff-based artists. The young trio contributed the singles “Ode To Booker T” and "Searching For Mr. Right."
None other than Geoff Travis from Rough Trade Records took notice. Rough Trade had already built a reputation for discovering the best new punk and post-punk bands, releasing music from Cabaret Voltaire, Stiff Little Fingers, and Kleenex, another band who landed on Kurt Cobain’s 50 Top Albums list. You can check them out on an earlier episode of The Cobain 50.
And Rough Trade continued the tradition of discovering compelling new talent with Young Marble Giants. Here’s Geoff, on BBC Radio Wales:
Geoff: We had an album that came from Cardiff, and the Young Marble Giants had two tracks on there. When their track came on and it just stopped me dead in my tracks. I thought, this is pretty wonderful. I think I just liked the simplicity and the unusual instrumentation and the fact that it sounded like nothing else really. In the context of the time, it was just a very brave move to do something that was so quiet.
Stuart told us about meeting Geoff and leaning on his big brother energy to come to a decision that would change their lives forever.
Stuart: We went up to London, first time to meet Geoff Travis. And he said, what would you like to do? And I thought, what would we like to do? So I said to Geoff, "Is there a cafe around here somewhere?" And he said, "Yeah, it's around the corner." So I said, "We'll be back in a minute." So, we went to the cafe and I said, "We've got to do an album." And Phil and Alison said, "No, no, it'll cost Rough Trade too much money! Let's do a single." And I said, "No, no, no, no." I said, "If we come out on Rough Trade, right — the hippest label in the world at the time — with our album, that's going to be the biggest impact we can make." I kind-of had to bully them. We used to spend all night with me trying to convince them — literally all night — to do things, you know. But this is because they're lovely, unassuming people.
Rough Trade – to their credit – agreed, and Young Marble Giants took to the studio. The trio had already self-recorded and self-released a cassette version of Colossal Youth, that Stuart would shop around Cardiff. Ten of those original songs re-appeared on the Rough Trade release. Stuart told us they finished the album in just five days.
Stuart: Each mix was 20 minutes. And we played it all and sang it all live. We just did our gig in the studio, that was it. So it was all dirt cheap. Quick, quick, quick. And as we left the studio, I turned to Phil and I said, "Well, we've done it now, haven't we?" And he just smiled and said, "Yeah." We didn't want to do anything more than that. Just make a record because we loved the records we played at home. That was our ambition.
The response to the album was overwhelmingly positive.
Stuart: We were very thrilled. The first review we ever had was incredibly good. And they've all been like that, ever since. And the records started selling. We were the second biggest band on the label until The Smiths were signed. And so everything was just like that, just soaring. And, I mean, you had to believe it because it was happening.
The band found camaraderie in The Raincoats, another band signed to Rough Trade Records, and another band who landed on Kurt’s list of 50 Favorite Albums. You can hear more about them on a previous episode of the Cobain 50 podcast, too.
In the 33 ⅓ series book on Colossal Youth, Stuart says, the band “took us under their wing like feisty aunties or something.” Alison added, “The Raincoats made me feel like running away and forming a girl band.”
The band were making television appearances and touring around Europe. They had recorded a John Peel session at BBC Radio One. They had climbed to #3 in the UK Independent Albums chart. But as Stuart explains, they were thrown off their footing by the response.
Stuart: We didn't have any plans because we hadn't expected it. So, we were kind of on automatic pilot, really. Saying yes to everything. Do you want to tour America? Yes, of course. Yeah, of course you do.
Young Marble Giants embarked on a US tour in late October, 1980, with dates down the east and west coasts, including a November stop in Seattle at WREX, a mostly punk and new wave club located at 2018 First Ave.
Sadly, it was during this US tour that the band began to breakdown, as Stuart explained:
Stuart: We're not people who communicated with each other. Which obviously doesn't help. Phil and Alison — I didn't realize it — as a couple, they were on the rocks anyway. I didn't know that at the time. And we were smoking a lot of marijuana at the time, which also doesn't help. We were kind of isolated people, really. Nothing was ever discussed. We'd never had a band meeting, ever. And Alison was really ill. Poor kid. She was really, really poorly. And so it was inevitable that we were gonna... you know. It didn't feel like it, but it was.
Stuart told us about how an offhand snarky comment at the band’s final US show at Hurrahs in New York City cemented the end of Young Marble Giants:
Stuart: I said something like, "Welcome to the last gig before our reunion tour." And Phil and Alison took that as, "Right. It's over." That was it. I've forgiven myself, at long last. I think I was being a lightning rod, really, for the band, you know. Because all of it had been a complete shock in one way. We hadn't expected it at all. And it wasn't gradual, it was like, bang straight in. Great reviews, great sales, great audiences. On one hand you might say, well, so? But we just didn't ever think that that could happen and never imagined it, you know.
Colossal Youth hadn’t even been out a full year yet — it had only come out in February, and the band broke up by November.
While the band had called it quits, their influence has clearly lived on.
In 1992, Kurt Cobain told Melody Maker magazine, that Colossal Youth was one of the ten most influential records he had ever heard. He said:
Kurt: This music relaxes you, it's total atmospherics. It's just nice, pleasant music. I love it. I had a crush on the singer for a while — didn't everyone?
I first heard Colossal Youth on the radio, after I started getting into K music when I lived in Olympia. It was a year before I put out the Bleach album.
Speaking of K Records, the iconic label has come up more than a few times in this podcast. It was founded by Calvin Johnson, who was also the frontman for Beat Happening – they’ve got an episode in the Cobain 50 archives as well. In 1992, Stuart co-produced their album You Turn Me On with Steve Fisk.
In a 2015 interview, Calvin told Vice Magazine, "We did songs that were less rock’n’roll with Stuart. I don’t know if it was on purpose or it just ended up that way. But we enjoyed it. He produced the second Marine Girls album, which I like a lot. And he’d worked on some other records that I appreciated, so I knew he was a good producer."
Marine Girls are another band on Kurt’s list — not to sound like a broken record, but you can check out their episode in the archives of the Cobain 50 podcast, too.
In that 1992 Melody Maker interview, Kurt mentions Nirvana would be covering the Young Marble Giants song “Credit in the Straight World” for a tribute compilation. While Nirvana’s cover never came to fruition, Kurt’s wife Courtney Love came through with her rendition in 1994, which landed on Hole’s second album Live Through This.
R.E.M. is another band who cite Young Marble Giants as an influence, and another band with a Cobain 50 episode you can check out in our archives. In 2011, they released the track “That Someone Is You” with the opening lyrics:
“With the restraint of New Order covers, Young Marble Giants /
I sat quietly waiting /
For someone else to make the first move”
Throughout it all, and despite living in Seattle for a little while in 1992 while working on the Beat Happening album, Stuart tells us he never crossed paths with his biggest fan, Kurt Cobain.
Stuart: I remember we were driving somewhere on tour and everyone was talking about Kurt Cobain and I said, "Who is Kurt Cobain?" And they said, "Stuart, you're so quaint." Somebody played me "Teen Spirit." And they said, "Stuart, you've got to hear this. This is the latest thing." They put it on and I was like, "It's just loud rock music." [ Laughs ]
While Nirvana and Young Marble Giants might not be similar stylistically, they shared a similar disdain for the spotlight. Stuart shared his perspective with KEXP:
Stuart: I'm not interested in money. I really don't want fame. None of us wanted any of that stuff because it's not important. What matters is the art, the music, the feeling, you know. Contributing to that is what matters. I think Phil and I and Alison were innately good at what we did.
Throughout the 2000s, Young Marble Giants reunited quite a few times – in 2007, to commemorate the deluxe reissue of Colossal Youth; in 2008, for the Primavera Sound Festival; in 2009, for the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, with a return appearance in 2012 for guest curator Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel; concluding with a 2015 appearance at David Byrne’s Meltdown Festival.
Stuart: The last gig that Young Marble Giants ever did was David Byrne's Meltdown Festival. And the next morning I happened to be the first person down in the hotel lobby, and Alison's husband was there, Pete. And we were waiting for the others to come down on us. It'd been such an incredible night. And there were many, many great nights where the love from the audience was almost unbearable. And a complete mystery to me. And I said to Pete — you know, because it was all over, it was the last gig — "So, what is it about that music, you know?" And he said, "Your music is aimed at the level of the heart." Right? I didn't know that.
Thankfully, Kurt, and a lot of us, definitely did know that. Colossal Youth celebrates its 45th anniversary this year, and it’s just as potent then as it is now.
