The Cult’s Ian Astbury: ‘One minute we were fighting skinheads and psychobillies, and the next we’re in Smash Hits’

Forty years after their debut, goth pioneers The Cult are returning to their post-punk roots on tour as Death Cult. Over curry in Los Angeles, singer Ian Astbury talks to Kevin E G Perry about stepping in for Jim Morrison, playing football with Vinnie Jones, and video shopping with David Bowie

The Cult appearing on music show ‘The Tube’ in January 1984

(ITV/Shutterstock)

In the gloomy grandeur of a Spanish Gothic theatre in downtown Los Angeles, singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy are reaching into the deepest recesses of their back catalogue. As the songwriting partnership at the heart of The Cult, the pair helped pioneer the first wave of Gothic rock and went on to become one of the decade’s biggest and most influential bands, filling stadiums and in heavy rotation on MTV. But before any of that, they were a post-punk band called Death Cult, making raw, impassioned music that howls viscerally about the plight of Native Americans and the horrors of war. Tonight is a resurrection of sorts, a one-off American show ahead of a UK tour. Before the set closes with the majesty and mass euphoria of 1985’s “She Sells Sanctuary”, Astbury pauses for just a moment. “Thanks,” he says, his face smeared with white make-up and sweat, “for the rebirth of Death Cult.”

A week later, Astbury meets me for a curry at a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant in Hollywood beneath the Capitol Records Building. Dressed head-to-toe in black, the 61-year-old may have mountains of stories – from rock’n’roll hijinks to seeking spiritual enlightenment among the monks of Tibet – but he maintains a healthy aversion to nostalgia. “I don’t really live in a time machine,” he tells me, digging into a plate of saag chicken, rice and vegetables. “If you come to my house, I don’t have any discs on the walls or photographs and memorabilia. Actually, in 1995 I put it all on the barbecue and set it on fire.”

The decision to return to Death Cult after 40 years might seem counterintuitive, then, but for Astbury it felt like too poignant and auspicious an opportunity to pass up. “The 25th anniversary? Whatever! 30th? No. But this time I felt something different,” he says. “For Billy and I, it’s been incredible, because we go, ‘Oh, this is our DNA, where we came from.’”