Back around 1991, a friend and I decided this song was about a drug-dealing pornographer from a parallel universe, which also has a Leatherhead. We were fueled on Philip K Dick, Williams S. Burroughs, Hellblazer comic books, David Lynch, and living in a backwards, creepy Southern Gothic town in which our Clean Steve would be a natural inhabitant.
Whatever Hitchcock was actually going on about will forever be irrelevant to the character we thought he was sketching back then.
Tags: Robyn Hitchcock
A favorite track of mine, maybe my favorite from Eye. When I saw RH play Eye last fall, I felt freaked out for days prior about how he was going to play this song. And he did, and it was great. I think you guys were fairly on track about its subject matter.
For years, I’ve been saying I Often Dream of Trains is my favorite Hitchcock album, but when i just checked to see whether ‘Clean Steve” would be my favorite song off there too, I was torn. My favorite of his albums might actually be Eye!
For me it is Perspex Island all the way.
you’re mad, brother… mad! (I would not have realized that album would have any fierce devotees.)
Element Of Light, although I had a lengthy IODOT phase and Eye is a strong album. Robyn’s one of those artists (literally, an artist) that has his albums rereleased every few years with different extra tracks. There’s a “new” song from Eye called Century that’s just amazing. My big track is Chinese Water Python.
Element Of Light isn’t only his best; it’s one of my Top 5 for anybody, ever. I saw the Egyptians on that tour, and I don’t have the adjectives. I saw Morris Windsor sing harmonies.
Element of Light is a great, great record, no question. Also great: Eye, IODOT, Respect/Spectre (if only it did not include Wafflehead this would be my favorite RH disc), Moss Elixir, Black Snake Diamond Role, Underwater Moonlight, Goodnight Oslo, Ole Tarantula, … I think of PI as my favorite one because I have listened to it from beginning to end more (pretty sure) than any oother RH disc, it is the one that got me back into his music after 15 years or so of not listening to it. “Birds in Perspex” is probably my favorite track of his. More thoughts about this record at READIN…
(Oh and Storefront Hitchcock, that demands to be included in any list of great RH discs)
I really like Perspex Island, arguably the best of Robyn’s major label period. The songs are great, and it all is very radio-friendly. I am slowly (it’s taken me 20 years) unraveling the meaning of the title track—still not there yet.
Wait, wasn’t Element of Light on A&M? I thought the major label period was EoL -> Respect.
Nope, EoL is Midnight Music.
Another obscurish one is the b-sides comp, Invisible Hitchcock. Lot of fun, that one, but it has since been superseded by other releases. I kind of lost Robyn in the mid-90s along with other acts whose lights I thought to be fading at that point (Parker, Costello), but that may just be me.
I was a Robyn obsessive. Saw him at least 4 times, was driving fifty miles to buy flexidiscs, the whole bit. Robyn pops up on The Decemberists’ The Hazards Of Love record, but that’s another story.
A word to the wise: there is a bit torrent floating around of RH (and Soft Boys) complete discography up thru 2007 or thereabouts which has all the rare trax including the unreleased A&M trax and a pretty exhaustive set of RH guest appearances on everybody from Decemberists to REM to Captain Sensible to… I can’t remember where I downloaded it but searching the bittorrent sites for “Robyn Hitchcock discography” should get you somewhere.
My top three might be IODOT, Eye, and Black Snake Diamond Role.
I lost Hitchcock in the ’90s too. Perspex was okay at the time and oddly, the first one I bought in store (on tape. the rest were taped from tapes of vinyl.) Respect almost put me off altogether. I bought Moss Elixir on vinyl but never developed a relationship with it.