David J Opens the Attic: old ghosts, new bloom, and songs still in motion

With Tracks From the Attic Revisited, David J Haskins does far more than dust off abandoned material. The album turns forgotten demos into living works, shaped by distance, experience, wit, and a willingness to let old songs evolve rather than remain sealed in amber. In this conversation, David J – the Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and solo artist – reflects on rewriting the past without romanticizing it, the mischief and melancholy running through the record, the creative freedom of collaboration, and why songs, unlike paintings, are never truly finished. David J also looks ahead to new releases, visual art, and an ambitious stage project inspired by Egon Schiele.

David J interview

Q: Tracks From the Attic Revisited feels less like a return to old material and more like a conversation between different versions of yourself. When you began working on these songs again, did you feel more like their original author, their editor, or almost their collaborator from another lifetime?

David J: That’s a really good way of putting it. I never thought of it in that way, but it is like the latter, in a way. Yes. How interesting. What an interesting take on it. Yeah, it was like that because it’s so long ago and I’m so divorced from that person, although I still have connecting factors. But also the songs, when I listened to those songs again after laying them aside, really, with most of them, I had only listened to them a couple of times when I was writing them, and then I just put them away and never listened to them again. So I was not familiar with the material, even though I was the one who authored it. So it was a very different experience going back to these songs and then reimagining them. But when I was first appraising them, when we were putting together the Tracks From the Attic collection, ideas would occur to me just listening to them, and I would think, oh, if I’d fully made this, fully realized it, I would have done this or I would have done that. Just in the structure of some of the songs, I would listen to them and think, oh, I would do that differently. I would change this. I’d drop a couple of verses there or add a chorus here. So the process had been initiated right from the start when I first was appraising these old demos.

Q: You described the original attic recordings as neglected seeds and the new album as the bloom. That image is very beautiful, but gardening also involves pruning, patience, and loss. What had to be cut away for these songs to become fully themselves now?

David J: Well, yes, quite a bit. As I said, it’s just part of the process of honing and crafting. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about that, and so I applied that knowledge to the reimagining of these songs. It was not painful at all. I would make a snip here and a snip there, but it was just, oh, that’s necessary in order for this little rose to bloom. I did tweak some of the lyrics. In some cases I made them more contemporary, more relevant, because there were some references that were very much of the time when I wrote them in the ’80s and ’90s. I referred to people and situations that were relevant then. And so in order to make them contemporary, I made those changes here and there.

Q: Can you give an example?

David J: For example, in “New Year’s Day” I refer to Patrick Walker. It’s a rather sardonic verse where I talk about “what does Patrick Walker say?” about the future. Patrick Walker was a famous astrologer in the newspapers in England in the ’80s and early ’90s. I thought, well, Patrick Walker is not even around anymore. Nobody knows who Patrick Walker is. Maybe some people from my generation remember him. So I thought, who’s the equivalent today? So I put in Lisa Stardust.

Q: Is she also an astrologist?

David J: Yeah. In the original, I say, “Pass the paper” at the start of the verse, “Pass the paper, what does Patrick Walker say?” So in the new one I write, “Pass the smartphone, what does Lisa Stardust say? Lisa Stardust and her well-informed friends have run away.” That’s an example. Another example is in “I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come,” where I’m referring to Ronald Reagan. It felt appropriate to change the reference to Donald Trump, so “The corporation conmen have crowned a cowboy king for a day” became “The oligarchs and tech bros have crowned a conman king for four years.”

Q: There’s also another kind of change on the album, hearing the songs move from intimate home recordings into fuller ensemble arrangements with the musicians you invited into the collaboration. What did working with this group of artists make possible emotionally or musically that solitude could not?

David J: Well, it’s very much an extension of the palette. They brought different colors to it, so they made the painting that much richer. I always encourage the musicians I work with to be themselves and to bring their own creativity to bear. I instruct them to a degree, but I also let them have their own opportunity for self-expression. That’s what it’s all about. So they brought, I mean, they’re all great players and they all brought their expertise to bear. It was great because they were very much into the songs and the material, and I think that enthusiasm is very evident on the recordings. They were into it.

Q: And when you choose the artists to collaborate with, what makes you pick this or that artist and not somebody else?

David J: Well, I have a core group that I’ve been working with for, God, getting on for 20 years. They are my go-to guys. Although there was a new addition, an amazing guitarist I’ve been working with of late, Jason Roberts from Spoon. I’ve been working with him on my new album that’s coming out later this year, a double album. So we already had a musical relationship that was ongoing, and for this material I thought he would be perfect as well. Just the way he plays and his style would suit the material very much. And it did.

Q: There is this title that I profoundly like, “If Muzak Be the Junk Food of Love.” I have a feeling it is very you: witty, elegant, but also slightly subversive. Has revisiting these songs changed your relationship to irony at all? Do you hear them now with more tenderness, more distance, or even more mischief?

David J: More mischief, yeah. Kind of mischievous anyway. There is that element there and this sort of sardonic element to them. But they’re also very romantic as well. It is the juxtaposition of those kinds of extreme emotions that are evident throughout the album. With that title, I was paraphrasing Shakespeare, of course, from Twelfth Night, “If music be the food of love,” and adopting that in various ways. I’m using junk food and I’m referring to junk food and Muzak as they are cheap. The song is a kind of indictment of modern dating, as it was back in the 1980s when I wrote that song. Not that I was experiencing that, because I was in a relationship, but I saw it all around me and I was observing it.

And in Twelfth Night, the entreaty is for music to play on because the protagonist there, Duke Orsino, is obsessed with this melancholy countess, Olivia, and wants to be done with it all. So he wants music to play on until it becomes too much and he’s had enough of it, so that he can free himself from the obsession. So there’s a parallel there with somebody who’s going through the rigors of modern dating and wants to be done with it. He’s saying, bring it on and just bury me in this excess so that I can ultimately be rid of the whole sorry business.

Q: In what way do you feel dating in the ’80s and dating right now changed, in your perspective?

David: Again, I comment about this because I’m not actively involved, just an observer. I have friends, particularly women friends, and it sounds like a battlefield out there from what they tell me. I’m in a very steady relationship, I have been for eight years, so I’m not looking to be part of that scene, thank God. Can’t imagine. But yeah, it seems like these days especially it’s much worse because it’s all… I refer to computer dating in the song, but that was when it was kind of in its infancy. Now it’s very much part and parcel of that whole battleground. It seems to produce a lot of alienation and confusion and deception. I don’t envy anybody who’s experiencing that. It must be very hard these days in that regard.

Q: Because you played these songs live earlier this year, I’m wondering what these songs have shown you on stage that you could not have fully known while making the record.

David J: Well, when you play a song live, it always evolves. I have songs that I wrote, God, in the mid ’80s that I still play, and they’re still constantly evolving. So it’s just an evolution. That’s something I enjoy because it keeps the song alive. And I think it’s also a sign of a good song if it can evolve, if it has that potential to evolve.

Q: So for you, live concerts are not so much a dialogue with the audience as the way the songs themselves keep evolving?

David J: As far as the music is concerned, it’s not a dialogue. It’s just a musical evolution. Through playing and playing, you come up with ideas. You come up with ideas in the moment that work, and so you retain them. So that becomes the growth of the song. That’s what it is. Purely that. But there is a dialogue and interplay with other musicians, who bring something to it that you would never have thought of, and that is retained. Maybe even if they’re not playing with you anymore, you take that little element that they played, some little guitar riff, say, and incorporate it yourself. I really enjoy that process.

Q: Do you ever improvise on stage because of the particular atmosphere or the moment?

David J: Yeah, sometimes I surprise myself!

Q: Do you remember a particular moment?

David J: There are many moments where, in the moment, if I’m playing with another player, a keyboard player while I’m on guitar, I’ll just stop playing guitar in a verse or in the middle of a verse, or I’ll play something that I’ve just come up with, like a little lead lick that’s never been there before, that’s just created in the moment and it works. This is what I’m talking about, the constant evolution of music. I’ll also work with mistakes and things going wrong. These occurrences can actually be magic gifts that take you in a whole other inspired direction.

Q: Looking across your whole arc, from Bauhaus to Love and Rockets to your solo work now, what still fascinates you most about song as a form? After all these years, what can a song still do that no other artistic medium can quite manage?

David J: Well, again, it comes back to this potential for change and evolution. Once the painting is on the canvas, it’s on the canvas and it’s not going to change. Whereas with a song, that can change all the time. So it’s in a potential state of flux and is malleable in that way. So that’s the difference.

Q: Have you ever considered expressing yourself in other artistic areas beyond music?

David J: I do. I paint and I make collages as well. I was doing that before I was doing music, and I’ve kept that up to a great degree. I really got back into it during the pandemic. What I did was, I saw what was going on and I thought everything’s going to close down, so the last act I did was that I went to an art store and I bought a load of paints and brushes and canvases and an easel, and I set up the room I am in now as a little painting studio.That was a very therapeutic thing to do and very cathartic. After the pandemic ended, I kept on painting. The only thing that I could paint was about being in a pandemic. I painted that subject. And then after that, it was post-pandemic. I’ve had two art shows here in LA, one called Paintdemic, a little play on words, and then Post-Paintdemic.

Outside of that, I’ve been doing some collage work as well. That’s always been there, and sometimes the two resonate. I’ve done projects where the subject is kind of so big that it’s not contained by an album of music. It spills over into visual art. There was an album called An Eclipse of Ships, which is all about women. After I finished the album, I was doing paintings and collage pieces that I entitled In the Realm of the Muses. That was an extension of the music. It’s not the only time either. I’ve done that for other projects.

Q: Music is like painting with sounds, and painting is painting with paint. Do you approach those creative processes similarly, or differently?

David J: The biggest difference is, again, harking back to what I just said, that with music it can keep changing forever. There is obviously the recorded version, but then if you are working on a song and you play it live and it’s evolving, you can go back and do a new version. But with painting, that’s not really the case. Once it’s down and fixed on the canvas, it’s fixed and then you move on. The process of creativity has parallels there because you’re in this creative state where you’re expressing what you’re feeling and thinking, but once it’s down and fixed on the canvas, it’s fixed. Whereas the song can be in that state of flux indefinitely.

Q: Are there any current artists or bands that inspire you?

David J: Yeah. They have really blown up, but I discovered this band some time ago when they were not really known and they were just playing on the street. I immediately felt like this is the real thing, and that’s Geese, who are now massive. I think Cameron Winter is a really fascinating artist as well. His solo record is really great and very audacious.

I also like the fact that they’re kind of divisive. Many people love them, and more and more love them, but there’s also a lot of derision they get as well. I think that’s always a very good thing. Going all through the music that’s meant something, going back to the Velvet Underground, there’s haters and there’s lovers. If it’s all love, that’s not going to last very long, I think. Bauhaus as well certainly got our antagonizers and those that didn’t like it or didn’t get it.

Q: Do you ever feel the need to discuss those antagonists, or do you find any value in what they say?

David J: It’s not to say that I’m so bloody minded that I think I can do no wrong and my bands can do no wrong. You listen and then assess what’s being said and decide whether it’s valid or not. Quite often it’s not valid. So that makes you just go against the grain, really, and the thing that they’re criticizing, do it even more. It’s inspiring in that way. Kicking against the pricks, as it were.

Q: I wanted to come back to the album for a second, because the very image of the attic is such a potent one. It suggests both archive and subconscious, storage and forgetting. When you opened those boxes again, did you discover only the songs, or also recurring obsessions, patterns, or ghosts that made you recognize a hidden continuity in your own work?

David J: Absolutely. Ghosts, yes. Some that still haunt me. It was kind of poignant to revisit those ghosts. And also just situations. Listening to those songs and reading the lyrics again was very evocative of a time and place, like a diary entry, really. They’re like diary entries, some of them. But some of them are very surreal and don’t relate to what was going on outside of my subconscious. But then again, the subconscious, of course, relates to what is going on on a conscious level. Getting complex here! Some of them are very specific. They refer to situations that I was in that I hadn’t thought about for years and years. Then the song brings it all back, in fact in a more vivid way than a conventional diary entry, because the lyric is more potent than just “I went to London on this day and saw the Queen.” The lyrics are colored with poetic insight in some cases, and very evocative for that.

Q: And my final question: what’s next for you?

David J: Yeah, I have so much coming up. Initially, yes, I will be going out and doing a little mini tour in June on the back of this album, just me and different players in different areas. I do like to do that. Then after that, the next album that’s coming out is a concept album about the painter Egon Schiele. I might do some dates to coincide with that, although ultimately that was written as a theatrical piece and I would love to bring that to the stage at some point. Then later in the year, the big release for me is a new double album that will come out in the autumn, and I definitely want to do some dates then. I just had somebody, a promoter in England, who wants to bring me over to the UK, so I would like to do that, and I’d like to extend it into Europe and I’d love to come to Poland. As for the Egon Schiele project, I’ve been working on it with Paul Wallfisch, and Paul will be the person that I’ll be touring with in the UK and hopefully in Europe. I’ve worked with Paul for decades now, and he’s a brilliant musician and composer. We wrote the songs together. How that started was that Paul was the musical director at the Volkstheater in Vienna, and in conjunction with them, approached me with the idea of writing something for their stage, on any subject. So I chose Egon Schiele because it’s relevant to the location and also I love him and it’s a great story. I started writing this as a narrative and then I started writing songs, and then I brought Paul into it and we wrote songs together.

For the stage, what I want to have is traditional wooden marionettes representing key figures in the story. There will be a puppet theater on the stage, but there’ll be a camera inside the puppet theater that will blow up these puppets to life-size on the screen behind, and they will interact with a Butoh performer. I’ve worked with Butoh in the past. A great Butoh performer, Vangeline, she’s one of the best in the world, and she will be involved.

So it’s a song cycle, it’s a narrative, it’s Butoh, it’s marionettes. Also there’s a kind of shadow text, which is drawing from Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, which was Schiele’s favorite book of poetry. I have certain lines from that that resonate with what was going on in Schiele’s own life, and that will be narrated by Gavin Friday.

There are other projects as well and several completed albums, also two new books in the works, so busy, busy, busy!