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Words: Nicola Meighan
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Photography: Steve Double
Moustachioed radicals through the years, in
ascending succession of sexual allure: Albert
Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allan Poe,
Arthur Conan Doyle, David Crosby, Asterix the
Gaul, Tom Selleck, Xena: Warrior Princess, Poirot.
The time-honoured canon of nose beards,
however, has recently been bestialised by a bold,
bewhiskered Slavic pop-revolter whose rampant
handlebar threatens to sabotage both his avidly
handsome, bristling visage; and the retrospective
bollocks of his hairy, venerated forebears. He is
Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello: a swaggering,
sky-high, saucer-eyed gypsy punk. The Ukrainian
Iggy, you might say. But best not.
“It’s kind of getting a little too much,” yawns
our winkle-picking, peripatetic Yosemite Sam, from
the paisley-pattern margins of a boudoir in London.
“It’s like, I get called the Iggy Pop of the Ukraine;
Marcel Marceau got called the Charlie Chaplin
of Europe. But how much really fuckin’ Marcel
Marceau is like Charlie Chaplin?” he quarrels
in quaint, clipped English. “Like, not at all.
“People are conditioned to think in
comparisons,” he chides in rising agitation. “But
after a while they see that Marcel Marceau is one
guy and fuckin’ Iggy Pop is another and then there’s
me, I’m a different guy, and Charlie Chaplin is
a completely another guy again,” he concludes.
That’s that cleared up then. Eugene Hutz –
angular, rabid brigadier of New York thrash-folk
decadents Gogol Bordello – is a one-off. Born in
the Ukraine at the height of the Cold War, Hutz
fled Chernobyl’s fallout in a fishing boat, grew
up in sundry Eastern European gypsy communes
and eventually settled in Vermont with his family
– where his prototype aural menageries spanned
The Fags and Flying Fuck.
On relocating (“escaping”) to New York 10
years ago, Hutz modelled for Donna Karan (among
others); helmed a flamenco reggaeton cult at a lewd
downtown Bulgarian nitespot (“Eastern Europeans
are really supportive of debauchery,” he applauds);
made his Hollywood debut alongside boggle-eyed
hobbit Elijah Wood (in Everything Is Illuminated);
and recently completed a documentary, The Pied
Piper Of Hutzovina – which chronicles one of his
annual odysseys into lesser-known global musical
fringes. Not least, he mobilised cultural magpies,
mavericks and arsonists Gogol Bordello.
Their current third album, Gypsy Punks:
Underworld God Strike, is a theatrical, international
clamour of Balkan folk, itinerant punk, Andalusian
knees-ups and scuzzy, stunted dub: unsurprising,
perhaps, given Gogol Bordello’s eightsome reel of
Russians, Ecuadorians, Thai-Americans, Ukrainians,
Israelis, Floridians and Chinese-Scots. The Clash,
Funkadelic, Dostoyevsky, The Birthday Party,
Bulgakov, Bartok and absurdism all feature; while
Hutz also flicks a wink to the Ig. “Of course I’m
into The Stooges! Who isn’t! You’ve got to be like
a fuckin’ idiot not to love them,” he scolds. He will
later mark his words.
For now, however, on the eve of a European
tour, Hutz is endorsing travelling light. “I totally
minimise my luggage, everything’s pretty
disposable, apart from my guitar and my gypsy flag.
They’re always with me,” he avows. “Books too.”
What’s your current tour-bus reading? “It’s a bit
of a book called The Palm-Wine Drinkard,” he
shrugs in a lazy Baltic drawl. “It’s a like a totally
mad, psychedelic, African tale – to say the least.”
“We saw the creatures that we called ‘Drum’,
‘Song’ and ‘Dance’ personally, and these
creatures were living creatures as ours. When
these three fellows started at the same time, the
whole people of the town, the whole people
that rose up from the grave, animals, snakes,
spirits and other nameless creatures, were
dancing together with these three fellows.
When the whole people of that town and bush
creatures started dancing together none of them
could stop for two days.”
– Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Here are Gogol Bordello live: orgies, accordions,
drum-fucking, dog-barking, pyrotechnics, piratedancing,
whirling zombies, naked degenerates,
acrobatics, fire-eating, stage-scaling, wax-guzzling:
bright United Nations chaos. “Yeah, a lot of fun
comes from baptising people, you know, doing
their first time.” Hutz salaciously curls his abundant
moustache. “But another kind of fun is where we’re
playing for thousands of people who know us, all
going fucking insane,” he claims, and he’s
unmistaken. They render crowds compelled to
dance for days.
Do you enjoy a reciprocal abandonment from
music? “Oh yeah! I just gone to Spain and to France,
to gypsy pilgrimages,” Eugene enlivens, “and there
were flamenco musicians that were totally not
known, like down-and-outers, very different to
what we know, and they were amazing, totally
insane. Same thing in Ukraine,” muses our musical
highwayman. “I met like a gypsy group that was
basically playing on trains and at local weddings and
funerals and so, I joined them, they welcomed me as
a brother into the band…” he trails off, and smiles.
“It’s all about musical communication, with kind
of unprofessional but totally authentic artists,” he
resumes, enthused. “To me, to see real music in its
own habitat is so important. And it’s great to play
with these musicians because there’s a lot of
repertoire that’s dying, actually – the traditional stuff
that never gets anywhere, that never gets known.”
Do you feel a sense of responsibility to explore
and document these untapped, declining musical
forms? Do you consciously assimilate them?
“Oh yeah, for sure. Part of doing these trips was
for scouting for talent for a New York gypsy festival
that we’re doing in October. It’s about finding realdeal
musicians, you know what I mean – not letting
fuckin’ World Music institutes near it, ‘cause we
know what they’re gonna bring,” he snorts.
“But another big part of it is kind of
unexplainable,” Hutz intently hushes. “I guess
I really can’t live without that music – I guess it
goes back to my own upbringing, where I got
blown away by gypsy musicians from my family,
you know? And since then, no rock concert, no rave
does it to me anymore.” He is almost apologetic.
“I end up going all the way to completely deserted
areas, just to find people that will actually blow me
away,” he motions, wide-eyed.
“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy
of 10…I was drinking palm-wine from morning
till night and from night and till morning. I could
not drink ordinary water at all except palm wine.
When there was no palm-wine for me to drink
I started to drink ordinary water, but I did not
satisfy with it as palm-wine.”
– Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Is that why you started your own band – because
nothing around you could slake your craving for
music? “Absolutely. I think that at one point
I realised I was utterly frustrated with predominant
forms of music, and nothing was doing it for me,”
he quickens. “So I was just like, what the fuck, I’m
gonna do it myself. And it was the same with other
people. In New York, I met other people who were
in the same mind-frame, who just really couldn’t
fuckin’ bear, you know, ongoing fuckin’ crap.”
Perhaps it’s this zeal for aesthetic atonement;
for inducing socio-cultural uproar, that’s led
the Ukrainian Pied Piper to Hollywood: Hutz
acknowledges Lenin’s notion of cinema as vital
artistic mass medium. Any plans for further celluloid
adventures, following last year’s lauded debut?
“Well, there are a couple of roles,” he nods,
“but I can’t really declare them at the moment,
because they’re kind of competing one over the
other.” They’re fighting over you? A chuckle. Isn’t it
great to be fought over? “Eh, no,” he counters. “I
wish that it would just be decided with and fuck it.”
You should do a Rom Com – a romantic comedy.
Who would be your leading lady? “Woah, not that
whole fuckin’ thing. I don’t know. I guess…actually,
Iggy Pop could play a nice old leading lady for me,
that’d be great!” he exclaims, with a wave goodbye,
and a glint in his eye, and a lust for life.
This article first appeared in Issue 13 |
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