The Real Thing
The Church's stunning new video features real live head-hunters !
The song is called Already Yesterday and the clip shows scenes of a savage jungle tribe.
"It's the tribe who supposedly ate Rockefeller's son." frontman Steve Kilbey told SCENE. "They're pretty primitive - they're still in the mud age because they don't have stones. When we were thinking about the film clip, lots of people were submitting ideas. We heard about this guy who had fottage of this New Guinean tribe and we thought it would be a good idea to use it. The guy who filmed them reckons they are pretty fierce."
The Church is one band who haven't been as keen as other bands to explore the video area. "I think it's fairly regrettable that music got caught up with video." Steve explained.
"A song can make important statements in an abstract way, but a video can take away other things a song could have said. I mean, Already Yesterday is now going to be tied to that head-hunter thing."
The Church were conspicuous by their absence in '85. After several successful years both here and abroad they seemed to vanish from the scene. "We did nothing last year." Steve said. "Everyone took very, very long holidays. Richard spent five months living in a jungle in Thailand ! It was nice to take time off and evaluate everything. When The Church got started it was very exciting, but then we got disillusioned and a terrible cynicism crept in. But now we are back into it and it's like a breath of fresh air blowing through the ranks."
The Church plan to release a new album in February and will then look at touring plans. "Lyrically the album is more involved and conceptually it's more innovative." Steve said. "As for touring we don't know if we'll do Australia or America. We're a very popular cult underground band in America and we've been going down well live. But basically we're just going to where people want to see us."
During the band's break last year. Steve thought long and hard about The Church's lifespan. "I thought to myself: What am I going to do when this is finished." he said. "But we're back and enjoying it again, so I'll probably see you in 1995"
(Transcriber notes: He was right !)