In memory of Pete de Freitas, who died on 14th June 1989, here’s an interview with the Sex Gods, the band he formed while on a break from Echo and the Bunnymen.
The Sex Gods had a few line-up changes and then became Balcony Dogs. Pete returned to the Bunnymen.
The flat was on Sefton Park and the local pub where we did the interview was the Albert in Lark Lane.
Heaven up there
MELODY MAKER, May 3, 1986
IT'S one o'clock on a spring afternoon and Pete de Freitas is hanging out of a top floor window wearing a dressing gown. He looks perfectly sane to me. So what's all this about you going mad Pete?
"People always accuse you of going insane when you do something they don't expect of you."
In Pete's case this meant walking out of Echo & The Bunnymen and into The Sex Gods. The way he puts it, it seems a perfectly logical thing to do. The Sex Gods are to become as legendary as The Bunnymen, and the legend starts thus: "On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1985, we suddenly decided we had to be in New York."
Pete's now dressed, fully awake, and has gathered two of the other three Sex Gods, Andy Eastwood and Jonno (aka Stephen Johnson), to help tell the story (drummer Tim Whittaker is the one missing). A short hunt around the flat for three pairs of sunglasses - this group will take its image with frivolous seriousness - and we get to their local in time for me to buy a round. The new supergroup is skint. So skint in fact that they're squatting in a large draughty flat (once The Bunnymen's home) in one of the hipper, and cheaper, parts of South Liverpool, and Pete's trying to sell not only his stereo and his drums but his prized motorbike as well. But he is laughing.
With The Bunnymen, the laughter had stopped long before, frustrated by the routine and restrictions of what had become a business, as well as frustrated musically.
"Part of it was they could do with a change, and it wasn't what I wanted to be doing - the time was right for me to go."
The Sex Gods are a reaction against all that: Pete's search for humour, excitement and spontaneity. The four tracks I heard are direct, dynamic and don't remind you of The Bunnymen. That element of self-invention is still there though.
What began in America as a holiday shaped itself into a more permanent escape. Starting from New York, the four "terminal globetrotters" (as Andy describes them) discovered the freedom and adventure that travel on tour never allowed. Finding themselves in New Orleans with some free studio time, they discovered musical things happening, working in what Jonno describes as "loose conditions", they recorded seven tracks in seven days and, says Pete: "It became apparent that I was enjoying myself doing that a lot more than the idea of going back to The Bunnymen - it was much more fun."
The Sex Gods had begun. "We didn't form the group, it happened," says Pete. The alliance was already there and the friendships firm.
Andy: "Whenever we got together it was always special."
Andy was roadying for The Bunnymen before he got thrown out for refusing to get Mac some eyeliner (or so he claims), Jonno's played with Julian Cope, and Tim's drumming career around Liverpool goes back as far as Deaf School in the mid-Seventies though "his first love", as Pete explains, "is painting - the man's a walking art form."
It was Tim who coined the name Sex Gods, originally for a conglomeration of musicians playing at one of the Liverpool drum marathons, and it was then that the idea of Tim and Pete joining percussive forces was first raised. Now that The Sex Gods are official, though, it's Tim who's the main drummer, with Pete playing guitar. Guitarist Jonno plays bass, Andy sings and plays harmonica, and the search for another bass player continues.
The evolution of the group will be chronicled. While in America, Andy was writing down everything that happened in the "Godlogs" (the basis of the first songs the four wrote together) and they were also filming as they went along.
Pete explains: "I wanted to get away on holiday and come back with more than just memories and having spent a lot of money and very big hangovers. I wanted to come back with something positive."
Returning to England in mid-February when the money ran out, the group ended up in Norwich to escape the phone calls, do some recording and, says Jonno, "slow down from the holiday". They've found themselves a manager (this time business is to be kept at arm's length), got back on speaking terms with The Bunnymen, and are now back home rehearsing and writing and waiting for the next thing. When they play live, for the first time outside a studio, it will probably be abroad - any excuse for another holiday. But, says Andy, "we haven't looked further than next week. Each week we're going to do something else new."
Meanwhile, their identity's taking shape, and a shape that could even justify the extremely silly name. Andy offers: "It's the kind of name which you get a lot of flak for but you can still stand back and laugh." As far as Pete's concerned, it means "rhythm", "greatness", and something a little tongue in cheek. What rock’n’roll should be about really. And his definition sums up the effect any group should aspire to.
"You're going out and they put some James Brown on and you're getting into it and you're dancing in front of some girl you're totally into - you feel like a Sex God."
Nothing mad about that. And, as Pete so reasonably asks, "does Echo & The Bunnymen sound any more sensible?"
Great interview. Terrible how $$ stifles creativity; Pete was right to go for what is fun – for herein creativity lies.
So sorry to hear he died so young.
I recently watched an old VHS of the tube and found Sex Gods playing Balcony Dog. I have uploaded a copy to YouTube.
https://youtu.be/YCadeL6FQMo