| FHM Magazine - October 2000 - The Brian Molko Interview The elfin Placebo frontman chews the fat on his Nike scar, tonsil pus, and Caprice's rubbish chat-up technique.... Be fair - you look like a girl. Has a bloke ever mistakenly chatted you up? Haha, Several times. Even in the pre-makeup days, these poor men would approach me and start talking. Then I'd introduce myself as Brian and watch their jaws drop. And it's one of the reasons I started wearing makeup - to push that confusion further. To think you were almost a vicar. Didn't your devout Christian Mum try to point you towards the clergy? I used to have tutorials with the local pastor; my leadership qualities were recognised at an early age. But I was quite a rebellious Christian. I used to take along all my Jello Biafra (lead singer of the Dead Kennedys) spoken words records - which were just anti-American family, anti-government incendiary politics. I remember getting letters from the pastor when I was in college: "You may have strayed from the path, and you are a lost sheep in the flock, but you will come back." So he hasn't seen you recently then..... No, he's probably thinking, "Whoops, I think we pushed this one a step too far." Because of your Father's banking job, you grew up in Liberia, Lebanon and Luxembourg. Where were the worst school bullies? The European school of Luxembourg - easily. I actually had to leave because I was being bullied too much. I had a tendancy to goad people until they basically lost it, people twice the size of me. They'd then be faced with this saggy, diminutive little tranny infront of them; I think they were embarrassed to hit me. Instead, I remember being dangled from this 10ft wall in the playground by my shoes. It was like those old crime movies, where snitches are dangled from the top of buildings. If they'd dropped me, I'd have broken my neck, definitely. I faced mortality at a very young age. Nasty. Does it still bother you? I still have nightmares of returning to school and repeating my final year. But it's great: I remember halfway through the dream that I left college ages ago, and walk around insulting everybody. It makes a change from my normal dreams. I'm usually persecuted - forced to do some Running Man style race for my freedom, being chased by men with chainsaws. Ever had that dream where you're having sex with Madonna - but her vagina has teeth? No. Oh. We did read, however, that you turned down Caprice when she chatted you up at the Brits. Explain yourself. It was very flattering. She came up to me and said, "I've heard a rumour about you, please tell me it's true." Basically, she became quite obsessed with a certain part of my anatomy; someone had told her - falsly, I add - that it measured in the double figures. It was like being chatted up by a 13 year-old girl; she spent the evening sitting in the corner with her mate, pointing and giggling behind her hand. And she's the archetypal beauty for men around the world! It was far more fulfilling to say no. So have you boffed anyone famous? There's been a few musicians and actresses. It's usually very amusing to sleep with people who have bigger ego's that you do. But I'm the soul of discretion. It'll all be in my book, haha. With numerous groupie-related tales? Groupies? Never heard of them, haha. Normally, we'd just choose the best looking people from the audience, cram them into a room backstage, ply them with alcohol and see what happened. After your 1997 tour, you said you, "Left a trail of blood and spunk across three continents." That's a lot of fluid for a small man. There was probably a bit less blood than spunk. About 70/30, haha. Still, not bad though. We took it as far as humanly possible. I read Marilyn Manson's book - The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell - and it just made me want to go out and take as many drugs, and fuck as many people as I could. It never got as extreme as Manson though - you know, covering handicapped people with cold meants and pissing on them. There has to be a line drawn in the sand. And cold meat is where I draw it. But in the recent Melody Maker list of worst Rock 'n' Roll hellraisers, you came 14th. That's one ahead of Ozzy Osbourne. And he bit the head off a bat, for Christ's sake! Fourteenth? That's not good enough! Mind you, it does dispel the myth - perhaps you can get away with more. I still have battle scars. There's one on my wrist where I put my arm through a window trying to open it; the glass missed Mr. Vein by a millimetre. It healed in the shape of a Nike Swoosh. They can't buy advertising like that. Does this mean you're going to be more careful? There's a French saying, "Put a little water in your wine." That's me now - I have to watch the amount of abuse I subject myself to, simply because of my voice. We finished the last tour, after 13 months on the road, in Australia. Stefan had broken his arm, I'd managed to compress a vertebrae in my neck - so I'd lost all feeling in half of my head. And when you've got a doctor dragging litres of pus from your tonsils with a six-inch needle, it's a bit of an eye-opener. A rock star's popularity skyrockets as soon as they kick the bucket. Have you set yourself a time limit on becoming a dead legend? I'm 27 now, and I'm aware of the fact that Kurt Cobain was my age when he killed himself. Jeff Buckley left this earth at the same time. But I'd like to make it to 30. I feel this is very much a beginning for us. I'd hate to be cut down in my prime. But if you were to go, then dying onstage would be good. But It'd have to be at The Hollywood Bowl, or Madison Square Garden, not in Milton Keynes, certainly. |