Why Peter Murphy is a Badass: A Beginner's Guide

A list of reasons why I find "the Gothfather" (if you can really call him that) relentlessly groovy:

• He was not a singer before the day he was asked to join a band. Just a tiny bit later, this happened:

• He has amazing vocal range. He can be singing high speed alto one second and then go hard bass the very next. (Skip to the 4 Minute mark if you want to get right to my point.)

• He may have created mainstream creepy sexy.

• But he's not just an "erotic black spider." He's his own thing completely. He ranges from what many have dubbed as "goth rock" to eastern traditional music to '80s pop to soul. He has a lot going for him between "Béla Lugosi's Dead" and his most recent album Ninth.

• He has eyes like this (I'm not even sorry.):

 

• During one of Bauhaus' "Exquisite Corpse" experiments (not the actual song "Exquisite Corpse," but the song "1. David Jay 2. Peter Murphy 3. Kevin Haskins 4. Daniel Ash."), his contribution is about fish cakes. Take a fish...and a potato...smash it on the wall. Smash it on the wall. Stamp on the fish! This is how you make fishcakes... Like I said, he's not what you think he is. There's a sense of humour there that goes vastly overlooked.

 

• He likes to hang upside down when he performs sometimes. Even did a music video hanging upside down.

• He has a stammer that he deals with in the way he sings. That's where his enunciation comes from. What a gorgeous uniqueness. But, I might say that just because I have a thing for blue-eyed left-handed stammerers. 

• I wonder if Peter Murphy is left handed...

• He is left-handed.
  

• I admire anyone who has been with the the same person for longer than a decade. He and his wife met in 1982.

• He's David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Iggy Pop's three-way lovechild and, most importantly, to tell him this wouldn't surprise him.

• He went from Bauhaus to Dalis Car. He threw everybody with that move and I think it was wicked brave. And pretty good stuff as well.

 

• His solo work is completely different from all of the above things he's done. Because, like our previous badass, Paul Weller, you can't pin Peter Murphy down. You just can't.

• He's still doing it. He might have taken a few albums to do questionable world music, but so did Damon Albarn and we forgave him (I did anyway). Peter is back and he's just as good as ever. He's never lost that gorgeous voice.

So congratulations, Peter Murphy. You've been wonderful since the very beginning.

 And, we all have our problems.

I feel ya bro. 

I will climb this high wall in remembrance of Clancy...