Cocteau Twins

• By Andrew Smith
• Raygun
• Nov 1993

Elizabeth Fraser’s eyes flash as suddenly and sharply as the spark chasing a bullet from a gun barrel, and the sing-song Scotch lilt of her voice turns stony and defiant.

It only lasts a moment, but you’ll not often see her like this. Liz claims to be bad at protecting herself, but when it comes to Robin Guthrie, the musical visionary at the heart of Cocteau Twins’ acutely beautiful sound and the father of her four-year old daughter, Lucy Belle, she takes no prisoners.

“Robin’s brilliant,” she insists. “I don’t know what to say about him, except that he’s a great guy and I really like him.”

Liz glances downward, becoming quiet again.

“I’ve never liked him more, actually. He always does the best he can.”

We’re sitting round a table at the Cocteau Twins’ September Sound Studios, in a bright room overlooking a quiet stretch of the River Thames. The facility takes its name from Lucy Belle’s birthday in 1989, as the band’s last album, the spectral Heaven or Las Vegas, was being recorded. It’s lovely, exactly the kind of place you’d imagine the amorphous, celestial strains of their music to form and take shape like clouds gathering before a warm summer storm.

But despite the attractive setting, the Twins themselves have always been an interviewer’s nightmare. They generally give little away, often preferring to while away the time talking about polar bears or whatever nonsense comes into their heads. But the year of Lucy and Las Vegas was different. Robin’s mind went AWOL. Driven by the effects of too much coke and booze, his taciturn, difficult behavior reached new heights.

On one occasion, at the end of the Heaven tour in, appropriately enough, Las Vegas, he demanded $100 from his publicist before he would grant an interview with an English journalist who had been flown in specifically to speak to him. And a further $100 for a photo session with another magazine. Later, he was accused, unfairly as it turns out, of having ruined Lush’s Spooky album, which he largely produced in the midst of a chemical haze.

(This is an excerpt. The full transcription is not yet available.)