After finally getting to the venue I was taken around the band’s tour bus, finding guitars left lying around and a fully stocked bar; exactly what you’d expect from a rock band. But as if it wasn’t obvious by their sound, or the walls of the bus being adorned with posters of Lenin, Gogol aren’t your average band. They’re hard to define as a genre, which is why they’ve struggled to get out into the public sphere. Eugene Hütz, lead singer and lyricist, coined the phrase “Gypsy Punk” to describe themselves – taking influences from gypsy music of his heritage, mixing it with Klezma and folk and punk and a slew of other genres to create an amalgamation that is wholly original.
I stumbled into the dancer’s dressing room, tripping over a cymbal to announce my entrance, only to find Eugene Hütz (who, in addition to fronting Gogol, made his movie debut in the acclaimed ‘Everything is Illuminated’, starring alongside Elijah Wood) eating his dinner. He finishes up and goes about opening a bottle of wine, scrambling around for a corkscrew and eventually uncorking it and pouring himself out a large plastic cup of wine.
Eugene Hütz: You want? [He gestured to BCR with the bottle]
BCR: Just a cup would do. Is this how you prepare for interviews?
EH: Why not? It makes me a picture of health!
[He looks up at me and for the first time I see past his on-stage persona of the gypsy king. Beneath scraggly hair and above his unkempt circus-ringleader moustache he has crystal blue eyes that shine with honesty and humility. ]
BCR: How does it feel being back in the UK?
EH: It feels like I’m here all the time!
BCR: Last time I saw you was at the Electric Ballroom, which was a tiny, personal show; I think you kicked me in the head at least twice – and Pamela (backing singer/dancer) accidentally gave me a boot to the face at least once - which left me a little bit aroused, I’m not sure what that says about me.
EH: Is that right? [laughs].
BCR: And you went on to tour the festival circuit... which do you prefer, the intimate gigs or the huge ones?
EH: I like to take it to the next level, so if I play 20 smaller gigs, I’ll enjoy a smaller gig, but if we’re in a country where nobody knows us, I like to play it big. There’s no real recipe, it’s all about what fits into the flow. I fearlessly enjoy any opportunity to perform.
BCR: How do you warm up for a show?
EH: I don’t do anything. [He takes a large sip of wine]
BCR: Other than drinking?
EH: Alcohol can’t drive anything. It is a myth that it drives it.
BCR: So the energy is innate to the band?
EH: It comes from the personalities – we’re already like that, you know?
BCR: A mesh of like-minded people?
EH: Exactly, I’m a certain type of person, I have energy in abundance, there is no recipe how to get it, it’s more like what you do with it. You can be generous, or you can be an idiot, and I’ve done both [laughs]. The energy is a mystical thing to talk about. it’s just excitement about the music, that’s what it is.
BCR: How did you end up in Everything is Illuminated?
EH: He (Liev Shrieber, director) was a fan of the band and contacted me to create a soundtrack and we started talking about it and he asked me to play the lead - I was like ‘fuck yeah!’
BCR: And you’ve gone from working with a visionary, established director to starring in Madonna’s debut film Filth and Wisdom?
EH: There is a link actually... She basically contacted me without agents or managers – and that’s the best way to contact me! [laughs] The music business is so full of release dates and arrangements, it’s like, fucking hell, by the time it’s fucking done I’ve already forgotten about it. With her, it was spontaneous, cut through everything, like, let’s do it now if we’re gonna do it! I liked her ideas and contributed some of my own.
BCR: In addition to Gogol and acting, you also have regular DJ sets in New York which draw massive crowds.
EH: Yeah.
BCR: Have you thought of bringing them on the road in between shows?
EH: I did a tour with a gypsy band, came on after and DJ’d, but it’s more than a venue can handle, it takes special planning.
BCR: You seem to have inspired a Gypsy Punk movement, I’ve seen four or five bands in the UK, a handful in New York, and in a time where new bands seem to be carbon copies of bands that are already out, you’re looking to the past and inspiring others to look at their ancestors, the music of their fathers and forefathers.
EH: It feels good I guess, to push people towards creativity, but people with an interest in gypsy music, a lot of them fall into the trap of listening to music that is not gypsy music at all...
BCR: Popular translations or imitations instead of the real thing?
EH: Like, popular, but as soon as there is a massive interest in it, there will be people who want to cash in on it and so the record stores fill up with records that have nothing to do with gypsy music.
BCR: Soulless clones?
EH: Yeah, like club remixes of gypsy music. For me, club culture is gone, it was gone ten years ago. They take a piece of music, put it on a club beat and it becomes predictable. They just release music for yuppies who basically don’t care about the music. I think our intention was always to strengthen the connections between gypsy music and punk rock and reggae. And I think gypsy music has more to offer people with above average intelligence, not that is doesn’t have anything to offer people of average intelligence, but those aren’t who I want to work with [laughs].
BCR: Speaking of your audience, you seem to create mantras in your choruses that permeate the collective consciousness – I’ve seen people wearing “start wearing purple” t-shirts and when I speak to some of them, they’ve never heard of the band – the lyrics seem to have transcended the songs, is that something you’ve intended?
EH: I have no control over it – it’s so fucking catchy they can’t resist! [laughs]. But you can’t expect everyone to get down philosophical with your shit – or a lot of it happens over time – people may start wearing a moustache and realise it’s stupid to imitate me for that!
BCR: Has that actually happened?
EH: I was invited to a premiere of some film about how people grew moustaches because of me and I didn’t go, it’s stupid, it’s my personal style and I encourage you to have your own personal style. I only have control to keep writing songs and to perform.
BCR: And you have another 5 or so dates left and you’re rounding it up in New York, is New York now home, or do you still think of yourself as the ‘immigrant punk’?
EH: New York is the only place that feels like home.
BCR: You first headed there because that’s where Sonic Youth started out, is there still that kind of innovative music scene?
EH: There are always pockets, you know, of stuff developing, which is what I love about it. In 2002, 2003 and 2004 where there was all this boom about New York bands everywhere on the planet, in truth, we were the New York band! We were selling more tickets locally than all the other bands put together, but we were not embraced in the media.
BCR: Do you think that’s because of the cultural amalgamation of the band – or maybe the beards? Was is the beardiness?
EH: [laughs] It’s because they want shit that’s easy to market, guys in skinny pants with the model hair. They go straight for what people’s clichéd perception of what a New York band is – whether it’s regurgitation of another shit in the toilet or not.
BCR: So what did you do to break through that?
EH: Back then, we worked hard at getting all the other assholes out the way to make way for our new-new-New York entity, which is actually a thousand fucking percent more New York than them if you think about it – it’s just what it is. The music world plays it so safe...
BCR: You just can’t move forward unless you fit into the box.
EH: But then people like us come and kick the apple cart over!
BCR: Which is what you were hoping for from the beginning...
EH: I just want to write my songs and live an exciting life with exciting people, which is what I accomplished.
BCR: What have you got lined up for the future?
EH: I’m always in creative overdrive, I could go into a studio right now and record a new Gogol Bordello album and a new solo album on top of it.
BCR: Other than the tour, what’s stopping you?
EH: There’s that much material, but we have to do this record, promote it, then the next one, you have to work in a structure, even through it’s frustrating.
At that point, our time was up; Eugene and the band like to have two hours to relax before the show – and we had eaten in to twenty-five minutes of it. Gogol Bordello is famous for its eclectic hyperactive performances and is one of the few bands these days that attract people who have never heard their music to see their mind-blowing performances - tonight is no exception; they went on to perform a spectacular show, full of the theatrics that they’ve become renowned for, from surfing over the audience on giant drums, to having mock-arguments and bullfights on-stage. They had the audience in fits of applause whenever there was a break to fit it in; I’ve never seen a venue’s circle full of people standing on their chairs for so long – much to the aggravation of the stewards. Gogol have another six shows in the UK before they head back to New York, They’ll be back in March to storm Britain again with the gypsy punk revolution.
