Musicians - Rowland S. Howard

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	Musicians - Rowland S. Howard

Rowland Stuart Howard is a rock musician, guitarist and songwriter, based in Melbourne, Australia, best known for his macabre lyrics and imposing roots-based guitar playing. Howard recieved peer group kudos early in his career for his song Shivers and as a member of the Antipodean discophile art-rock groups The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party (both featuring the singer Nick Cave), and Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls.

Biography

Rowland S. Howard wrote the song Shivers, which appeared on The Boys Next Door's LP , Door, Door (1978) . Opening with the lyrics "I've been contemplating suicide... but it really doesn't suit my style", Shivers became a cult classic, particularly among Bad Seeds fans (it was sung by Nick Cave, the music video showing a glum looking Howard playing guitar behind the dashing Cave), and 1980's followers of Swamp Rock (see Kim Salmon, et al), and was later covered by the Australian rock groups No and Screaming Jets (1992).

The band Boys Next Door was renamed the Birthday Party, fronted by Nick Cave. The Birthday Party relocated from their native Melbourne, Australia to London, UK, where they became a progressively experimental group, in part due to their tumultuous lifestyle as well as their art rock leanings, which were developed in the band's formative years.

In interviews with former members of the Birthday Party, Howard's songwriting was described as more precious and stolid than that of Cave and Mick Harvey, and that his music is generally built up around a Bassline.

The Birthday Party was confronting and provokative in the manner of bands such as The Stooges, The Contortions, PiL, Pere Ubu, Throbbing Gristle and The Pop Group. Their live shows in London were often scenes of drug-fuelled violence. Cave and Howard's highly intelligent understanding of genre and pop culture references defined the Birthday Party and was serendipitous at a time when, internationally there was growing interest in postmodernity. The Birthday Party's records were considered by many of their fans to be Avant-garde cultural artefacts, released by Missing Link Records. Howard and Cave had creative differences and Howard then left the Birthday Party to become a member of Crime and the City Solution, a band led by Simon Bonney, and later formed These Immortal Souls with Genevieve McGuckin, Harry Howard and Epic Soundtracks.

Howard has also collaborated with multi-media artist Lydia Lunch, Nikki Sudden, Jeremy Gluck, Kas Produkt, Barry Adamson, Einstürzende Neubauten, Chris Haskett, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Fad Gadget, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Henry Rollins, and A.C. Marias. His distinctive style of technically limited, audio feedback-laden, sinister Blues guitar playing is regarded very highly by afficionados of the Southern Gothic inspired rock style and in 2005, was described by Sam Agostino of Digger and the Pussycats as "one of the most influential indie guitarists ever."

Howard lamented in a 1999 television interview (Studio 22, ABCTV (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)) with Clinton Walker that people still asked him about Shivers, a song he wrote when he was sixteen years old which first became well known when it was sung by Nick Cave. Cave had by this time won a long-standing reputation for his macabre writings and his gruff, charismatic stage presence. Conversely, the guttural voiced Howard's plaintive ballads are often flavoured with cryptic puns and quixotic crooning.

Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore recorded a sultry, slinky version of Howard's song Still Burning ("I catch most things in my blood you all lose between rooms") for Lunch's In Limbo (1984) mini-album. Still Burning had previously been recorded as a bass-heavy track with a pugilistic sounding Howard on vocals, during the Honeymoon In Red (developed 1983 - 1987) recording sessions.

The Howard-Lunch collaborations saw Howard's singing and guitar playing moving into Lunch's lyrical obsessions such as retribution and murder, sparser arrangements, and in the case of the track Dead In The Head, sung by Nick Cave and Lunch, Howard's furious guitar playing quoting Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, while remaining unmistakably his own style. Lunch and Howard sang duets on Howard's forboding song Come Fall ("I am king, I can do anything, come follow me, come fall with me") and cover of Lee Hazlewood's Some Velvet Morning, which was released as a 12 inch single with the catchy B-side I Fell In Love With A Ghost, written by Lunch and Howard and sung by Lunch. Both Howard and Lunch used the bare minimum of MTV-style music video to promote their work, preferring to concentrate on the process of their work, and largely relying on word-of-mouth endorsement as marketing. Originally, Honeymoon in Red and In Limbo were released on Lunch's privately-owned record label, Widowspeak Productions. Their records were usually only available through specialist record bars.

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