🔸𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐁𝐄𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐀 𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 – 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐡𝐥🔸

⭐"𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒎𝒆, 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒏, 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒍𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑹𝒊𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒍 𝒂𝒈𝒂𝒊𝒏"⭐

Dear friends,
The idea for this post came from my 13-year-old son.
He loves 𝐍𝐈𝐑𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐀 and in his spare time he searches for various information about his favorites on Google, just as we do.
And as we all know, 𝐃𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐇𝐋 was the drummer of Nirvana until the death of Kurt Cobain and then founded his great band Foo Fighters.
And my son came to me recently with a big smile on his face and said:
"Mom, looks like your Molko is everywhere ... 😁 Can you please explain this to me?
And he showed me one of the photos - the one with Brian and Dave's tongue ...

Photo credit: Melody Maker / Photo edit: Marti

So dear soulmates - if you don't know the history of these snapshots, now you have the opportunity to learn another piece of the mosaic of Placebo life. Here is just a part of this very long conversation that will take you to times long past - January 9, 1997.

You can read the whole interview here:
👉 https://bit.ly/3B6vevj

I wish you all a pleasant reading.

🔸⭐🔸
𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐲𝐬
𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟕
𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐞'𝐬 𝟓𝟎𝐭𝐡. 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧' 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐁𝐎'𝐬 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐌𝐎𝐋𝐊𝐎 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐎𝐎 𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒' 𝐃𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐇𝐋.


Why not get the two of them to interview each other, we thought. So we did.
The setting: Placebo's dressing room, backstage at Madison Square Garden.
David Bowie is halfway through his 50th Birthday Concert. Two of his special guests are with The Maker:
Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl who, minutes earlier, had helped Bowie perform a rousing tribal version of "Hallo Spaceboy", drumming on stage for almost the first time since Nirvana; and Placebo's Brian Molko, whose band had earlier performed a blistering opening set.
The two frontmen had met before, during last summer's round of festivals, when Dave nearly hitched a ride up to Reading in Placebo's van.
Dave looks like a Muskateer or a Fifties beat poet with his newly-grown beard; Brian looks...well, like Brian. Androgynous.
Knowing that the two musicians are massive Bowie fans, and knowing that Brian was a massive Nirvana fan and also fascinated by the whole idea of fame, I figured it'd be a good idea to have them interview each other.


🔸Brian: "Tell me about the first time you met Bowie."
🔸Dave: "It was the day before yesterday. And he looks totally fucking amazing! He's 50 years old, he could practically be my parent. He's such a gentleman."/.../
Brian: "It's interesting that you use the word 'gentleman' to describe Bowie. We did two tours in Europe with him - Morrissey gave us our big break, he disappeared and we stood in for him - and when people ask me what he's like, I reply that he's a true, true gentleman with his feet on the ground. He speaks to you. You feel like he's genuinely interested in what you have to say.
I'll tell you about the first time I met Bowie. We'd just done a little tour of England - the biggest capacity venue we played was 300 people - and we got on a plane, we flew to Milan and we show up in this place, 8000-seater! I was quite freaked, so a lot of jack and coke went into my system before I went on. The gig wasn't that fantastic. I broke a string and threw my guitar across the stage.
So we come offstage, high on adrenalin, walk towards the dressing room...there's Bowie, standing by the door, with his arms crossed, shades on, and I'm like, 'All right, Dave. Want a cigarette?' And he's like, 'No, sorry. Just put one out.' And that's the first thing I ever said to him: 'Want a fag?' How did I feel? He really went out of his way to make us feel comfortable. He's a lovely man, and he deserves to be hugged. Constantly."

Photo credit: Melody Maker 

🔸Brian: "Let's change tack. I'm known for wearing makeup, for my androgyny. On our bus, we have a video of Nirvana. Something I loved was seeing you and Kurt onstage wearing bras. So what I'd like to know is: when was the first time you wore women's clothing and have you ever been out in drag?"
🔸Dave: "I've been out in drag. When I was young, I would put on a show for the family - I was always the comedian..."
🔸Brian: "With your mum's clothes? Did you have any sisters?"
🔸Dave: "No, I think it may have been some clothing we had in the attic, something as outlandish and ridiculous as possible..." /.../
🔸Brian: "Tell me more about dressing up in women's clothing."
🔸Dave: "I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where my parents were divorced, with only my mother and sister, so there was no male balance. There was no father who wanted you to be like dad, so you were left to be an individual because of course your mother didn't want you to grow up to be like your mother, and your sister didn't want you to grow up to be like your sister. That was nice."
🔸Brian: "I wouldn't be the person I am now if I'd grown up with a heavy fatherly influence. My father was hardly ever there." /.../


🔸Dave: "Explain the correlation between theatre and rock'n'roll."
🔸Brian: "Theatre taught me about emotional memory and how to become your character and build a history for it."
🔸Dave: "You studied that?"
🔸Brian: "I have a university degree in drama."
🔸Dave: "You do? Then you're the perfect frontman for the band, aren't you?" (Laughs)
🔸Brian: "I guess so. What that training taught me was how to open emotional doors and lose myself in something."
🔸Dave: "So you lose yourself when you step onstage."
🔸Brian: "Yeah. I put my makeup on and that's instrumental in becoming Brian Placebo instead of becoming Brian Molko. The emotions that are in the songs become easier to express. And it's a completely emotional thing for me, it really is." /.../
"Look, I don't want you to think that what I do onstage is like a Ziggy kind of character. When I step onstage, it gives me the freedom to be the person I've always wanted to be. That's why i loved acting so much, because you could go onstage and do things that, in real life, you wouldn't be able to get away with. It was an escape.
What it does is give me the power to be as large as I always wanted to be - and I'm quite a small guy - for half an hour, an hour. It's real. It opens things up. It's not a character, it's a part of me which I can't bring out all the time. It comes out when I'm drunk, when I've been tooting, when my mind's been altered in one way or another. I'm usually quite quiet, and it's good to go to extremes..."
🔸Dave: "With me, there's always this guilt, stepping onstage."
🔸Brian: "Really? You see, I won't go onstage wearing the same shirt. I'll wear the same trousers all day, but I won't wear the same shirt. Sometimes I'll be really quiet, but all I need to do is put my makeup on, and I'll be there. I'll do your makeup one day."
🔸Dave: "You should." /.../

Photo credit: Melody Maker 

🔸Dave: "When you (Brian) walk onstage, it's a celebration. A lot of the times when I walk onstage, I'm so incredibly frightened. There's guilt, there's fear. There are people out there who are standing, looking at me as if they're reaching out and will never be able to touch me. That's what scares me. Because I still believe I could make a connection if only they didn't think that about me. I want to bring down that barrier."
🔸Brian: "I understand that completely, but unfortunately for you, you were the drummer with the biggest rock band in the world. I try to speak to people after shows and depending on how much I've drunk, how I react is very strange. I'll be like, 'Don't be that way. I'm a fucking human being.'" /.../


🔸Brian: "When you go to the supermarket, do you get recognised? Is that why you grew a beard?"
🔸Dave: "No. No, not at all."
🔸Brian: "I ask you that because I want to be in your position in a couple of years."
🔸Dave: "Well, OK. There's people who see that as threatening, there's people who see it as flattering. It's strange. If somebody comes up and says, 'Oh my God, yeah, that's you, I really love what you do', how are you going to react? Hide away in your basement, unable to cope with people telling you they like you? Fuck no.
You're going to say 'Thank you very much.' It doesn't happen that often and when it does happen you should feel happy about it...until you feel claustrophobic and surrounded by people who want to tear your hair out, freak out. That doesn't happen to me."
🔸Brian: "That's kind of how I feel. I get love letters, but I also get letters from really fucked up teenagers. Sometimes the letters go, 'Thank you, cos when I listen to your records I feel like there's a friend for me out there somewhere', and sometimes it's as extreme as 'When I listen to your records, I feel like I don't have to cut myself as much as I would if I didn't.'
And that fucks with your head, because you start wondering about what sort of responsibility you have - when, in fact, you don't.
The responsibility you have is to yourself, you're expressing yourself because you need to, because you'd be depressed, an alcoholic, a junkie if you didn't. What's amazing is that things happen and you don't have very much control. /.../

Photo credit: Melody Maker 

🔸Brian: "OK. I'll ask you one last question. When you're 33, what are you going to do next?"
🔸Dave: "I don't know. And you? How old are you now?"
🔸Brian: "I'm 24."
🔸Dave: "What are you going to do when you're 33?"
🔸Brian: "I'm going to make movies. David's done it, Courtney's done it, Madonna's done it. They all have. But the difference between them and me is that I have a degree from university."
🔸Dave: "Well, there you go. And there's nothing like a certificate to get your foot in the door."

Laughter. Dave gets up to leave.

🔸Dave: "I hope you're the most famous man in America. Be cool."
🔸Brian: "You too."

Post by Marti