Mick Mercer Interview
"Venus In Verse"
1992
by: Mick Mercer

Going underground since leaving Christian Death, Gitane DeMone has undergone a transformation, becoming a proud purveyor of everything from Surreal Sensuality to Fetish to Hardcore Mutant House. Busy girl.

Gitane: “God, I’m going to be nauseated…REM! Oh dear…”

The blonde on the barstool suffering jaundice by the jukebox shivers with distaste. The surrounding gaggle of pissed-up builders eye her with almost neaderthal consternation. To them she is a figure to fear, liable to stab a stiletto heel through their watery eyeballs or rapidly shrinking testicles at any moment. To us of course she is Gitane DeMone, until now known only for her luminous presence inside the sounds of Christian Death (RIP). At first a shadowy, post-medieval figure, she blossomed through the spectral mid-Eighties into a fully fledged Marilyn That Ate New York figurine, producing the warmest vocal gulf streams in their lugubrious sound. In 1989 she jumped ship and has only recently resurfaced, a vanishing act all the more bizarre as it followed an exceptional Marquee performance.

Gitane: “The next morning I packed my bag and left”, she shrugs. “It was a shame, because it was a really high point. I’d been trying to do solo things for a couple of years which Valor was helping me with and they didn’t work out. The production of Christian Death was getting more and more screwed up and I was really disappointed in hearing it. My favorite thing to do is be a free-vocalist, whatever type of music it is, to work with musicians capable of going with the moment. Musically it was getting more straightforward-into Rock-and less surreal. Another favorite thing of mine involved in everything, whether its’ music or lifestyle, is to keep some element of surreal in it. Christian Death was too hardcore philosophical.

Gitane: “I’m glad I left when I did. Kota went away, James beam had quit. Webbyspoo….couldn’t find him anywhere…it’s a struggle when there’s no-one you can turn to onstage, to feel close to.

Gitane: “I could have been happier duetting with Rozz (Williams-original CD vocalist), we had a really wonderful communication together. There was no way I could have fronted Christian Death, that’s why I had to leave”.

Mercer: What do you regard as the main achievements during that era?

Gitane: “The time with Rozz was magic-maybe because it was the beginning. If there’s a sound in my head, it’s Christian Death off “Atrocities”, that guitar sound that maintained pretty much the whole way through. I think Valor did well getting the sound. He had this sound in his head and he was able to grab it.

Gitane: “It’s nice to create and explore. I’d like to have played more but I was busy with kids”.

Mercer: Do you miss the audience? Verging on insanity, some of them…

Gitane: “Yeah…there were…we had letters from people…one from a guy in an asylum, from people in jail…”

Mercer: The most worrying ones were roaming free at your gigs.

Gitane: “I mostly had mild to deeper relationships with some of the younger people who were very creative, artistic, and very depressed, because they weren’t free…too young to be what they wanted to be. I sort of stayed away because I’d had enough experience of insane people. If they want to see or feel something…it’s there for them. I’ve got enough problems myself to go through!”

Mercer: Christian Death music was used by some to intensify their isolation.

Gitane:“It’s not my responsibility! I’m pretty fucking depressed a lot of the time too-it’s up to those people, if they can, to work their way out. Otherwise maybe they’ll be lured into death or go insane and find some other reality there. For me, I’ve been close enough to all of it. I’ve learned and am learning all the time that it feels good to be happy. If you’re depressed or have a veil of death around you…I found myself completely paralyzed! A lot of kids romanticize death but if you are actually in the mouth of death it’s not romantic at all. It’s horrible. If there’s a heaven, hell and purgatory then it’s purgatory”.

Mercer:How long were you close to death?

Gitane: “A couple of years, and it happened another time also but I don’t believe in suicide. If you really want to die you can just sit there and not see anything at all. You don’t see what purpose you have in life. “I think there’s a real process”, she adds, pushing open the door marked Metaphysical, eyes alight at the prospect of sounding absurd. “I’ve to really sussed it out for myself, right? We’re here on Earth to learn, to ultimately learn compassion, through different experiences which make you more human and once you learn you don’t have to come back on this earth again. I think you can go into another form, a spiritual dimension. I think Earth, as much fun as it is, is partially hell also. If there’s a heaven and hell I think the spiritual dimension is what they mean by heaven and earth, life and dealing with all the crazy fucking shit that goes on…is hell. If you don’t accept it, its’ hell right?”

Mercer: You got it.

Gitane fled England for Holland, a place she had already come to love. Here began a thoroughly hedonistic exercise.

Gitane: “I had a great time, completely wild. I’ve got two kids, left them with their father a couple of months-had a great time, then started having trouble and breaking up had an effect on my kids. This last year I thought about giving up singing-the world doesn’t need another singer, there’s plenty of them around-there’s so much music and there’s no-one really phenomenal and I’m not a phenomenon and I just thought what’s the point really, there’s enough things going on to take care of? Then something happened to change my mind.”

Mercer:Do tell.

Gitane: “A picture of mine was shown on Dutch television. Have you seen it? The one with the gun in my mouth?”

Mercer: Indeed I have.

Gitane: “People were pretty fascinated by this. They wanted to do a ‘portrait’ of me. That got me doing things. I was able to do some performance art with music. I got to do a Skin Two party over there and a lot of good things started happening. I met different musicians and tried a lot of things-that’s why I went into the House thing a bit because in Amsterdam nobody could find the right sound I’m looking for-I write on piano and there’s no guitarist that plays like James Beam and it took me a while to hook up with him. Alternative music over there is hardcore house. They just don’t know the sounds…I checked a lot of people out, even in jazz, trying to get this really atmospheric sound that I was after and everybody just gets traditional…even the free jazz musicians couldn’t understand it, so I thought, okay this is “blue”. I had this singing melody, I wrote it on tour with Christian Death-this keyboard player, jazz classical guitarist I worked with had these blue chords and this other guy I knew was doing hardcore house, so we came out with this thing…”

This thing is actually ‘A Heavenly Melancholy’, Gitane’s debut solo release, as mild but involving a piece of swirling, aereated house as you could desire with the gently simmered rhythm track punctuated by swollen bass, pockmarked by guitar and gentrified by sparse piano. The easiest comparison would be N-Joi, who Gitane’s never heard of. The exquisite vocal vapor trails ease it into the accessible dance genre but there is a tangible depth that sets it aside. How people will take it is quite another matter.
Gitane: “I don’t know what’ll happen. I have no idea”.

Mercer: Is there any challenge in this style?

Gitane: “I like that music. The vocal part was challenging. It wasn’t just singing in the shower. I tell you, it’s challenging for me to attempt to write lyrics that convey a deep feeling but can be felt by everybody…to just write very simply, very purely, very deeply about emotion or something that’s happened. I listen to stuff on the radio occasionally and I can’t believe these people are singing these words…nothing in the lyrics, the vocals are fixed up! The songs I’ve recorded are all one takes. If everything else is a computer then right, I’m going to do a real live vocal!”

Mercer: Record companies ought to be smitten by the idea of a Julee Cruise who won’t fall over in a stiff breeze.

Gitane: “Well they didn’t welcome it. I delivered stuff like that. They thought it was rubbish, I found a general lack of faith in me as a singer and a lack of understanding.”

She looks outraged.
Gitane: “So I’m just gonna do whatever the hell I like.”

Mercer: How tough have you become through all this?

Gitane: “How tough have I got? Really fucking nasty but at the same time I’m not at all. I won’t take any shit as far as record companies go…they don’t understand me so why should I have them not understand me and kiss their ass anyway?”

Mercer: Any approaches after your television appearance?

Gitane: “I’ve had to go after interest and got turned down and then just decided to give up or go on. The tv show was very strange, the musicians very experimental. My portrait was called “The Darker Side of Life”. They spent a whole week with me but I came over as a sex maniac who’s really into death. On the tram people were staring at me, some came up and said ‘I really like your message”. What message?”

ROYAL AT RUBBER SEX ORGY! was actually the way Gitane was reintroduced to Britain in the middle of last year, courtesy of News of The World’s front cover, when that August journal learnt that the hundred and eightieth in line to our fabulous throne was captured passing briefly through one of these rubber events.

Gitane: “There was no ‘simulated sex act’ she chortles, not even remotely offended. “The curtains opened and I was handcuffed in a chair with a blindfold on and I had this mistress who was…teasing me with a whip. I couldn’t see anything, I don’t know what she was actually did, she certainly didn’t go down on me or anything. There was a kiss at the end and that was it!

Mercer: Well I’ll be jiggered!

Gitane: “They used a really bad photo. I was quite radiant that night as well. Why did they have to use that one? Actually they nicked it from Skin Two. My next performance was supposed to be at the next Skin Two party but they’ve had to cancel it, everybody’s getting arrested that has these leather and rubber clubs. At the last Skin Two party a girl dressed in rubber went onto the fire escape to get a breath of fresh air and was arrested.”

Mercer: Probably a fire risk.

Gitane: "At a DeMask party I got offered a record contract but only for an Italian label that were very heavy fetish. I have some recordings that are quite heavy fetish."

Mercer: Eh?

Gitane: “The whole atmosphere is very heavy…S&M. I like the idea of S&M games. One song is called ‘Passion, Pleasure & Pain’. You have to experience it to know. I’ve got some whips and handcuffs in my bag. Wanna have a go?”

Mercer: Right here, right now! (Roughly translated: writer swiftly blushes a deep crimson.)

Gitane: “People are getting ecstasy out of pain but more important than that is to look at the emotional whys: why did I-not me, but whoever the person is-why did I get into this state where I need to receive pain to free myself into pleasure?”

Mercer: Is there a standard answer?

Gitane: “I don’t know if there is. A lot of what makes us up anyway had to do with our childhood.”

Mercer: Are we taking about evening the odds?

Gitane: “Well, we do that anyway, or stay in the same little place we were in in our childhood and not know what else there is. I had a very self-destructive period in my teens because when I was a kid I didn’t get enough attention. My parents loved me but they were always too busy…so I was always reaching for love. When I got into my teens and started having lovers I got with shit men, always trying to get their love but not getting the real thing. I really looked into this, found out what was going on and was able to change it. It takes a hell of a lot of introspection. I think that’s interesting with really heavy S&M cases, to trace the source.”

Mercer: This “fetish” music…is it more in the voice?

Gitane: “It should be in both, it has to be complete. It’s only a little fragment of me personally. I find it quite interesting. The clothing-rubber-I find really sophisticated, really sexy. I like wearing it-but it’s not my world.”

Mercer: What is the surreal aspect in this?

Gitane: “The sound I put into my music is transporting because it is atmospheric and what is atmosphere? And sex, I think, can be quite surreal. It’s a fantasy all this, people living out their fantasies, which is why I like it. It’s sexual, putting you in a state of mind between the conscious and the unconscious. Sometimes you have to go to extremes to have fun. There’s something I don’t like about it-to some people it’s ‘ooh, we’re going to do this, because it’s naughty!’ So what? You could also expose yourself on a street corner. It’s another world, a separate reality. If you’re wearing a rubber hood-right?-and a rubber catsuit and a rubber corset, it makes you feel really different.”

Mercer: This I will accept.

Gitane: “I did a Festival of Perversity”, she suddenly announces, the way you might say I saw The Cardiacs last night and they were crap, “in Holland, that combined art performance and music. I used tapes and a guy on sound effects. It was very weird, the music was strange. It’s not a big event, in a small town, but these things don’t go unnoticed. They have a Festival of Death I almost got into but I didn’t have enough material.”

Mercer: I presume these events are intellectual affairs?

Gitane: “This Festival of Perversity, there wasn’t any rubber people-this was more intellectual. I think mine was the only one that dealt with sexual perversity. I had another girl, a dancer. In one part she was a mistress, another a man, in another we interacted and then I took the keyboard. Four songs. Actually I was handcuffed and my legs were bound also. This girl was supposed to un-handcuff me and she forgot! I had to wriggle out of it and fling myself into the next number, which was on the floor. If you do art performance it has to flow. I’m not so into it anymore, it takes away too much from my singing-leave that other stuff for videos because it detracts too much from your concentration. The video I’m gonna be releasing is ‘Rubberella’-Cinderella in rubber. People are being arrested for dressing the way they want to-I’d sure love to do well with a record or video that’s throwing it right in the police’s faces and they can’t do anything about it ‘cos it’s a totally acceptable song”.

Mercer: To an ignoramus such as myself the ‘blue’ sounds and one big voice have me wondering whether this is part of a big tradition?

Gitane: “A lot of people heard I was moving into jazz, which has always been a part of me and Christian Death, whether anybody realizes or not. I listen to a lot of different things but as a singer who’s trying to progress I’m only really interested in things I can learn from. Diamanda Galas…I think she’s great but aside from her I think the last vocal phenomenon was Janis Joplin. I learned from Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone…only ‘Masters’-they’re pure emotion. Shirley Bassey! I don’t like her music but she’s got a great voice, there’s only one tone like that in the world. All I want to do is try to clear myself out enough so I can be a direct vocal channel from my soul, to speak very spiritually, and there’s a lot in there. Whatever I choose to sing, the chords in the music has got to have something I can connect with. It’s got to have a certain feeling, on the blue side which is not to say blues”.

Mercer: Which is to say what?

Gitane: “I’ve found I’m not a blues singer, I’m a blue singer.”

Mercer: Without the rude connotations?

Gitane: “Well”…she hesitates, “I don’t know! It’s got to have a certain emotional feeling and most pop is devoid of that, it’s all party, which is great for people who can do that but I can’t! When I was in Christian Death, just for fun, I went to a commercial songwriter who wrote songs for people like Ruby Turner and he liked my voice but these songs-very simple-were so artificial, so it was like take your money and stuff it up your arse!”

Mercer: Charming!

When Christian Death were between tours Gitane developed the habit of going to Holland and working behind the bar of a free jazz club, where she could leap up onstage with whomsoever she pleased, which brought her into contact with some big jazz names.

Gitane: “Frank Wright and Woody Shaw”, she whispers, with reverence. “They’re dead now. Frank Wright died when he was fucking someone. Woody Shaw, one of America’s greatest trumpeters…I saw him go down the drain…”

Yet these jazz types all fit into Gitane’s love of improvisation. How improvisational is improvisation? (Whose song is it anyway?)

Gitane: “You’re making something up on the moment. If you’re using musicians it’s like telepathy. I’ll start doing something and the musicians move with me. Someone else takes the line and I move with them. It comes directly from how you’re feeling inside and balancing it with everyone whose there, so it’s very harmonious, or not harmonious if you want it to take you places. It’s very difficult music to understand but I never did anything more thrilling.”

Swing madly over to the other side of things and Gitane can take on from where some of Christian Death’s more harrowing material left off, all the more chilling through a woman’s voice. One track she plays me, a cover of a Hendrix oldie (not that he’s done that many newies), ‘Manic Depression’ was done for a radio competition.

Gitane: “We used the name Anti-Therapy for it and actually won! They said it was too disturbing to ignore. It was played on the radio and ‘discussed’”.

Mercer: Can you also do songs about sex as joyful as the sad stuff is morose?

Gitane: “There will be!”

Mercer: How far can you go?

Gitane: “I’ve got a great song…about sex. About really…well, I can’t tell you any more about it. You’ll have to wait. It’s more real. It’s telling more about sensuality, about what somebody does to you without coming out and saying it graphically.”

She bounces up and down on her chair.

Gitane: "Oh I hope I can do these songs! I’d love to do an album. It’s my third project. Really nice. Really nice songs. The fetish stuff I let myself go completely, I can sing anything. The sensual stuff is really beautifully put, no words like cock or fucking in it. Image-wise I don’t know and I don’t care. I’d really like to cover myself in rubber from head to toe and totally delete the image ting because I think it’s sickening. What I do I do for me, you know? Bit of an exhibitionist I suppose, huh?”

Oh contraire! Admittedly I was initially a trifle bit taken aback by her appearance during our short photographic break-“excuse my body!”-mainly by the threatening silver water-filled balloons but that was nothing compared to the surprise awaiting the two workmen who ambled onto the roof to fix the aerial. Back in the pub the builders are beginning to smoulder.

Gitane: “This is probably one of the only interviews I’ll do without a rubber hood on my head, because I already knew you a bit. I’m going to have a fairly twisted image to go along with my songs”.

Mercer: How important or possible during recording is the improvisational side to you?

Gitane: “With Christian Death often when I sang a song recording it was the first time I’d heard the song or sung it, a lot of it was improvisational and now I work with the song more and in a way the vocals for Christian Death were pretty raw, and then worked the songs later and developed them. Often the first time you sing them is the best time. Now if I have a song on tape I try and get to the heart of it, the same way I first sang it. I still do the song ‘Lover’ off the single”, she muses, cigarette in hand. “I hadn’t heard the music for that before-I was drunk on vodka, recorded it in my living room, with a sock over the mike, went into a nice studio though and that’s why I like to improvise a lot because it’s always fresh, always new. I like to have a raw edge of emotion in anything I do. It’s not worth listening to otherwise”.

‘Lover’ finds Gitane at her naked best. Ostensibly a controlled lament it fast becomes a scalp-chilling eternity of untreatable anguish, set aside the most minimalist musical backdrop. Its structure seems totally normal. Our saturated airwaves bulge with fake displays-but here truth burns away the blight until the inside of the back of your neck prickles. Listening to it in the dark becomes unbearable. Gitane exhales. It’s a funny old world. Why only the other night she was reunited with James Beam, singing one song with his new band Nothingville, in a pub suitably named The Cock, and now she’s off to Holland once more, seemingly perplexed.

Gitane: “I don’t expect much, I really don’t. I have to do an LP. I don’t want to sound pretentious but to me it’ll be a masterwork, these sensual and surreal songs. After that…I can float anywhere, it doesn’t matter but I have to get those out.”

Mercer: You said earlier you’d considered giving up. What were you planning to do instead?

Gitane: “Just have lot of SEX!” she shrieks, and three builders achieve lift-off. “I don’t know what I could do”, she wonders, momentarily. “There’s not a lot I can do. I’m a mother, I sing and…love. It would have to come out artistically. I write! I wrote a film script and I think something will be done-there’s interest from independent filmmakers.”

In fact in the film department she’s got a head start as her boyfriend makes horror films.

Gitane: “I’m in a really bizarre little film, very avant garde, called ‘Slime’!"

Mercer: Doing what, might I ask?

Gitane: “I’m just doing tings in it. Slimy things. It would get banned but its’ not pornographic. It’s like we come from slime and we dissolve into slime.”

Which brings us back full circle to REM, never an easy trick to pull off, but then Gitane has become adept in the art of magic. This woman could put the scat in scatology.