“IT’S OUTLAW MUSIC”

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS

MARCH 29 1980

The normally mild-mannered offstage figure of Lux Interior twists and writhes his face in a rare show of angry emotion…

If looks could kill. Lux looks like he could spit a bucket of blood. All him and Poison Ivy Rorschach did was to walk into the buffet bar on York Station and within seconds the entire room is staring at them.

Lux is wearing his habitual black undertaker’s coat, plastic trousers and a shiny top hat. Ivy trails him lovingly in gold lamé pants and a pair of severe diamanté spectacles. For some reason the combination has tickled the imagination of all the other occupants of the buffet. They gawp over cheese rolls, their mouths a perfect question mark. Some people titter and nudge. Some people are outraged and point accusingly, openly offended at Lux’s appearance. Given the opportunity, they would like to exercise some physical violence on his large and harmless exterior.

It’s exactly the same on a train heading for Edinburgh, where The Cramps are to play for many of their most fevered and committed fans. Lux looms down the corridor in crepuscular silence, oblivious to the horror on the faces of all the mothers who hide their children from this nasty man. Eventually some oafs start to laugh out loud, seemingly unaware of their own intense anonymity. Lux echoes their laughter back at them and the situation is suddenly ugly until Ivy hurries him towards the relative safety of a dining compartment.

After 15 years of being jeered at, Mr Interior is getting immune to the insults. “It isn’t an act we suddenly thought of, to look like this. I’ve always been a freak. The first gig we ever played at CBGB’s we were completely out of tune for 45 minutes and the club owner Hilly Kristal told us we sounded like a total joke.”

Five years later a lot. It’s true that they don’t like being in the sun too much (although they have to keep warm), but Ivy comes from Sacramento, California, and not Providence, Rhode Island.