Genesis P-Orridge interview
Genesis P-Orridge is an industrial music legend, pioneering the form as well the lifestyle — his ventures in body modification, tattoos, and piercing were well documented in the seminal RE/Search book “Modern Primitives,” a counter culture sensation that spawned a mainstream aesthetic form.
He still performs with both his bands, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV.
Recently, P-Orridge’s partner in life and art, Lady Jaye, died in their Brooklyn home. The two had been working on a performance project of body modification wherein they created a third being, known as Breyer P-Orridge, and received cosmetic surgery to bring them closer visually. The work was an examination of self and sexuality that the couple made personal and part of their everyday life.
The following interview was conducted prior to Lady Jaye’s death — in the same interview session Lady Jaye spoke about the Breyer P-Orridge project in conjunction with an installation at Mass MoCA — that can be read here. What follows is the conversation with Genesis about his beliefs and work.
SB: The book “Modern Primitives,” which you were featured in, is one of those quiet bits of influence that never really gets its due.
GP: It’s funny, because that book Modern Primitives, I knew Vale, who runs RE/Search, already and he used to do it in a newspaper format and called it “Search and Destroy” and then I was hanging out with him way back in 1980, maybe earlier, and we were talking. I said “You know what someone should do? Do a series of books that are like an alternative culture encyclopedia that you get in volumes and start to document all these new underground movements that are going on.”
So the first one was William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Throbbing Gristle, then he did “The Industrial Culture Handbook” and then he said to me when I was visiting “What next?”
I said that we had been getting piercing and tattoos and the Fakir Mustaphar and Mr. Sebastion, I explained why it was interesting, this reclamation of the human body, and that was how modern primitives happened, it was actually a suggestion that he took up.
We had no idea that it would be so incredibly influential. When you look at it chronologically, that’s when it exploded across the planet. Now there’s a piercing and tattoo shop in almost every village, everywhere you go, it’s incredible.
SB: You can’t pass a teenager without one or the other or both or several.
GP: We walk along and Jaye says “I blame you for this.”
