The Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
August 27, 2005 Saturday

So dark, Diamanda

by Patrick Watson

AN INTERVIEW with Diamanda Galas is a bit like meeting Saint Peter.
It could go both ways.

“I’ve had eight or 10 interviews this morning. Some journalists ask
the most stupid f——- questions. I might go hang myself in the
bathroom,” she says.

It’s the kind of threat that, perhaps, holds just a hint of truth.
After all, this is the same woman who wrote The Shit of God, walked
the streets as a prostitute in Oakland, California, and has dedicated
four albums to the AIDS epidemic.

A classically trained pianist with an opera singer’s voice of four
octaves, Diamanda Galas has been performing her frighteningly
haunting ballads since 1978.

On her upcoming tour, Guilty Guilty Guilty, she promises a program of
homicidal love songs, including Johnny Cash’s Long Black Veil, Edith
Piaf’s Heaven Have Mercy and Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could
Cry.

They’re not exactly the kind of genres you’d associate with the gaunt
Gala, but at least the subject matter rings true.

“Morbidity and depression aren’t fascinating. It just happens to
exist in everything, like everything else. I’ve my share of the s—
that life is composed of,” she says.

“The stoics said if you expect from life only happiness, you’re a
fool. They had it figured out. I don’t make it up. I’m not fascinated
about going through morbid states, but when I talk about it, I talk
about it in an undiluted way.”

The LA Weekly called her “the original badass musician”.

It seems to make sense, particularly for the blatantly non-conformist
artist who has previously written works such as Plague Mass, Concert
for the Damned, and something called Defixiones, a meditation on the
Armenian genocide and the politically co-operative denial of it.

She is, she confesses, a ratbag of the worst kind and rejects most of
what society has to offer.

“It’s just a different way of doing it. People think that’s so
depressing and so desperate and it’s so this and that. In fact,
there’s no more to it than Greek women who mourn the dead saying
hello to those below,” she explains.

“It’s not scary music. What is scary to me is not to be able to
express myself. Not expressing myself, now that’s really scary.”

Asked what she thinks about being labelled the “princess of
darkness”, and she is outraged.

“I’m not the princess, I’m the queen of darkness. I don’t address
these things at all,” she says.

She also hates the term “Goth”: “In America you’re either black,
white or Hispanic. They look at my white skin and black hair and say
Gothic. They don’t see that I’m Greek.

“Lots of people come up with different opinions. I just do what I
do.”

Which includes, of course, her legendary fascination with AIDS.

“When I become involved with an issue like that it’s not going to
last just two months. It’s a lot of work. It takes years to get to
it. You have to look at opportunistic infections, medicines, suicide.

“Most artists exhaust a subject in five minutes and tomorrow will be
in Hawaii.”

But despite the jutting bones, the black clothes, the skin pallor and
the pagan poetry, Diamanda Gala says she’s just a musician. And, like
many, she feels she’s often misunderstood.

Not that she cares much.

“I think I’m the most lovable individual in the f—— world,” she
says.

“And, in case you’re wondering, I’m not going to go hang myself in
the toilet after this interview.”

Diamanda Galas plays Brisbane October 13, QPAC Concert Hall.
Bookings: 136 246