John Grant: My Actual Culture

Observer.

Bit highbrow and esoteric, love.

John Grant: My Life Story

Michigan, Colorado, Christian family, homophobia, fucked him up, Germany, The Czars, failed, homophobia, alcohol, cocaine, sex, AA, Queen Of Denmark, album of the year, HIV positive, Pale Green Ghosts, Iceland, new boyfriend, happier, new album... 

The Times.

Wouldn't you like to read an interview with John Grant for once that didn't just re-tell his life story?

PS Not sure if the use of the cliché 'who happens to be gay' here is ironic, but it's hard to think of an artist where being gay is more central to his work.

John Grant: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure

If John had ditched the ill-advised cod rap numbers, this would be a great Stephin Merritt album.

'There were times when I thought, “I’d like to fucking beat to death the people who are saying that I don’t deserve to breathe the same air as them.” So I wanted to honestly touch on those things. I think it’s a really big piece of a lot of homosexual lives.'

NewNowNext.

John Grant: Disappointing

LOL! etc.

John Grant: Live In Iceland

There's a lovely, lengthy interview with John Grant in The Observer.

That is all.

John Grant And The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra: Live

BBC Radio 6 Music.

John Grant: Recycled Thought For The Day

“I think, as long as you can be comfortable in your own skin, who gives a damn?"

The Sunday Times, who seem to have forgotten they published this interview in March.

Hercules & Love Affair Featuring John Grant: I Try To Talk To You

x

Thought For The Day: John Grant

"When I came out, I found I hadn't been born with the right genes. It's quite brutal. If you're beautiful and you have the right genes, then the gay scene is a place where you can be worshipped. But if you don't, it's a different ball of wax. I sort of have a lot of anger around that because coming out was tough enough, dealing with the people that hated you because you were gay… to then go into the gay scene and realise that it's even worse there, that was, well, fucked."

The Guardian.

Tweeted by that well-known defender against gay lookism Attitude.

Lookism (noun) The idea that you should be angry cause you're a bit fugly and thus some evil good-looking gay men don't want to fuck you and would rather flirt with someone they fancy. eg 'Lookist bastard!' 'Yeah, right, so we all have to fancy people we fancy now?' See also 'Fancyisit!'

John Grant: Worst Interview EVER!

@TheSTMagazine: Hello @johnwgrant What’s happening?

@johnwgrant: Hi there! Just came in from the rain here in Reykjavík :)

Is Iceland’s climate the secret to such a luscious beard? 

Perhaps. Plus a dash of resolve and sloth.

You moved there to record your last album, Pale Green Ghosts with GusGus. What made you stay? 

The people, the language, the landscape. Many things. Plus, I didn’t really know WHAT to do at the time.

Like the food? I tried Hakarl (pickled shark) and Svið (singed sheep head). What else would you recommend? 

There are great vegan places, and the fish is always good here. I have a few favourite places… one is Garðurinn, which has the best carrot cake in Iceland, just like mom’s.

If you were to form an Icelandic Über Band Supergroup, who would you team up with? Björk? Sigur Rós? GusGus? 

Hmmm, I’d have to say Samaris or the Icelandic legend Megas. He’s like Bob Dylan + Silence of the Lambs + Wendy O'Williams + Dean Martin.

Have you ever been on a night out with any of the aforementioned Icelandic musicians? What are they like? 

[Snip] Falls asleep...

The Sunday Times Magazine.

FFS!

I mean, what did we learn here?

Thanks again generic posh intern!

John Grant: Just One Tiny Little Speck

“We’re talking about the pain of being human. Not that John Grant has HIV. Just one tiny little speck observing one of the seven billion variations on the pain of being a human.”

The great John Grant is interviewed (not very well) in The Sunday Times.

Anyway, here's his playlist...

John Grant: Glacier

Fagburn is unwell.

Fagburn: Album Of The Year

Do you really have to ask?

Runner-up: Petula Clark Lost In You. A total curve-ball. How the fuck did this heartsmashing beauty happen? Like John Grant, but 81. Wow!

The Times: Acid-Tongued Drama Queens!

The Times.

John Grant: Queen Of Denmark

"I wanted to change the world,
But I could not even change my underwear..."

Have a miserable bank holiday weekend!
I hate your ex-boyfriend, too. 

xxx

John Grant: GMF

From my favourite album of the year.
My favourite song of the year.
Sounds like my theme tune right now.
Unjoy!

Depressing Thought For The Day: John Grant

“It might be a little bit glib to people who have been through genocides in countries where people have actual problems. But yes, there has been a horror movie going on in my head for a long time, that has to do with anxiety and severe depression, and feeling trapped inside this horrible labyrinth of over-thinking and fear. And I am trying to write the soundtrack to that.”

John Grant, The Independent.

Pale Green Ghosts is Fagburn's album of the year thus far.
If you're gay - or even a member of the so-called "heterosexual community" - and feel trapped inside a horrible labyrinth of over-thinking and fear, I heartily recommend it! 
Unjoy!

John Grant: Pale Green Ghosts

Everybody loves John Grant.
Even The Sun.

PS And me - Sadolescent Retro Homo Slow-mo Electro rocks!

John Grant: Second Life

Pleasing to see John Grant's Queen of Denmark voted album of the year in Mojo.
That and other plaudits mean QOD's being given another push for the new year, with a single Where Dreams Go To Die out at the end of January, and but of course a new round of press interviews.
Fagburn gets the impression that many journalists are rather titillated by the gay sex and drugs and religious upbringing narrative of Grant's Judy Garland life.
His biography is often retold as a parable - a warning; but hallelujah now he's saved!
It's the same allure Rufus Wainwright clearly holds for some - though Fagburn has interviewed Rufus and found his tales of excess about as convincing as Jay from The Inbetweeners.
Have a read of Andy Gill's rather good interview with Mr Grant in today's Independent by way of bad example.
"It's a miracle I don't have Aids. Because a lot of people haven't been spared. But that's what made me want to commit suicide last year. It was this horrible feeling of being less capable of intimacy than ever before. The older you get, all you can do is sexualise a relationship, because that's what affection means to you. And you become obsessed with age, because you become less sexually viable, less attractive to the younger ones, so you see all these 60-year-olds walking round wearing what the 20-year-olds are wearing, and it's just so sad. I have visions of that in my head – I'm, like, walking round a college campus with a hard-on at the age of 70, with a gun in my pocket, y'know, so that if I don't get laid I can blow my head off."
Yes, dear.

John Grant: Professional Drama Queen

It was a low point — a syphilis diagnosis on the day that all the student doctors were in. “Twelve or thirteen of them!” beams John Grant. “Actually, I’d gone in to get treated for alcohol addiction but the nurse noticed this rash . . . ” It was just another day in New York for the singer, who had sunk into obscurity after the breakup of his band, the Czars, in 2004 and was trying to kick alcohol, cocaine and crack all at once, while waiting tables and sleeping on people’s floors.
The nurse was quite taken with her gentle, soft-spoken patient and offered to become his sponsor for Alcoholics Anonymous. In the absence of drugs and drink, Grant ramped up his addiction to unprotected gay sex. “I loved it. It was a great way to play Russian roulette,” he admits now. “I really dodged a bullet there.”

John Grant in The Times.
Fagburn isn't sure what he makes of John Grant - I quite like his album, but Grant keeps coming up with "Oh pity me please, I have been to gay hell and back" Rufus Wainwright/Judy Garland crap like this.
So you've taken drugs and had bumsex.
Big fucking deal!

I've pasted the interview in the comments section - take that Rupert Murdoch and your stupid paywall!