A Mixture of Music and Theater Conjures Up an Original ELIXIR [1983]

Text by Julia Masi / FFanzeen, 1983 / 2021
Images from the Internet

A Mixture of Music and Theater Conjures Up an Original ELIXIR

This article was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #10, dated 1983. It was written by Julia Masi.

I never saw Elixir play. That being said, FFanzeen received an enormous amount of outpouring of mail from Elixir’s fans upon this interview’s publication, arguably more than anyone else who appeared in the ‘zine. They had a single out, which can be found at the end of this article. Note that they are not to be confused with the British metal band, or New Zealand Christian music group. – RBF, 2021

 

“We are a modern band. We’re not last week’s act,” professes George Conrad, chief songwriter and focal point of Elixir, the most original entry into rock’n’roll theater since F.S. Sorrow in 1968 [Ed. Note: F.S. Sorrow by the Pretty Things, is credited with being the first rock opera – 1983]. Incorporating elements of mime, Kabuki, opera and synthesizer-based rock’n’roll, Elixir, Donny Hathaway, Skipp, Jim Copering, Eddie Rossario and Conrad, literally change faces as fast as other bands change chords. Employing a succession of elaborate masks, costumes, and props, Conrad brings to life the everyday heroes and fantasy figures of his songs.

For “Northern Industrials,” he becomes a hard hat, for “Shanghai Sideshow,” he is disguised as a Chinese peasant. A graduate of the New York High School of Performing Arts, Conrad came up with the concept for Elixir when he was in junior high school. “There really is no before Elixir,” he states as he muses about his past. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I started a very long time ago when I used to be shipped down to Florida on breaks (from school).

“I was 12 or 13 and the band was 18 or 20. There was a novelty element and depending on what I was into, as I grew older, I brought that into it.

“The thing that really got me into it mostly was a group called Behemoth that I’d thrown together. We were high school kids but we were gigging our asses off. Much more than we are now.

“The Elixir band is about five years old with maybe seven or eight different line-ups. This band is new,” he says, pointing to four musicians rehearsing on the opposite side of the plexiglass window in a Queens studio. They’ve been rehearsing about three weeks.

“There’s a show that people like to come to see that we do. It’s like TV. We do learn our lines and it’s how good an actor you are to carry it off.” His acting ability is quite good, from having spent part of his performing career working in various mime troupes. “Kids really love mime because it’s the control of the body. I like it now to watch, not so much to do anymore, because of what I’m doing now. But I do rip it off. We react to illusion. People like illusion.”

Conrad likes creating illusions through music. Despite the fact that he is Elixir’s lead singer, he enjoys writing instrumentals for the band. “It’s magic,” he says of his song writing prowess. “You know, one of those things you just can’t explain? Instead of saying, ‘You know, one of those things you call magic.’ For some reason, the instrumentals are basically coming from me, until the band starts saying, ‘We’re doing too many instrumentals. Start singing.’

“It’s as if it’s a puppet show where the puppets control the puppeteer. It’s pure entertainment. What annoys us most is when people say, ‘Well, what does that mean? What did you do that for?’ We’re not saying anything religious, or anything political. We’re saying if you paid $8 or $10, I hope you get your money’s worth because we really drain you out and make you feel sad or make you smile or make you say, ‘How stupid.’ We’re here to make you say all those things and do achieve it.

 

“I like to think of it more as entertainment. It’s like a rock circus. Even without us doing it. We don’t’ use fire and we don’t use smoke because it’s cliché. It’s been used. It works, too. I still see people go” – mimes jumping back in fear – “We use little subtle things to make it work. The appearance is a very drastic thing.”

But it’s what he describes as “subtle little trips that are played on the audience, the dry humor and the lyrics that are very descriptive,” that gives Elixir it’s ambiance. “It’s not just the music, it’s the presentation, the way we start a gig. A lot of bands come out,” he shouts, “’one-two-three-four,’ and they start the show. We do it differently. It does take a bit of acting and loosening up because that’s all acting is: loosening up.”

The concept changes from day to day. It’s such impressionable music. This he stops to call attention to the band, “is Melted Colors. The band’s primary example of chromesthesia, is if you close your eyes you really can see and feel the sound blending together like a rainbow. The music is very impressionable and traditional. It’s a modern sound. We write about tropics before we come up with licks. People will have licks and say give me something, how about rain. And somebody starts to play rain. It’s very easy to tell a drummer, ‘play me rain.’ He hits the cymbals and give you tinkles, but when you tell a guitar player to play rain, he has to come up with something.

“When you say, ‘give me a violent storm, give me rain,’ tell the drums, ‘give me a flood,’ and he starts making a pattering sound, and it feels like the streets are starting to build with rain. We work that way. Not like, ‘Why, what is this about?’ there is no question of what it is about because the main concern is what we’re starting out with.

“’Northern Industrial’ is inspired by New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, where the production lines, the pulse of the whole country, are found in the North. ‘Northern Industrial’ just describes what a day in the life is in a Northern industrial town.

“’Hold that Line’ is about overpopulation and how everything relates to a line. I got poised off standing in line waiting for a token or when I pulled up to a toll booth. I just couldn’t get away from the line. If I drove up or walked up, I still had to stand in line. I cashed my checks, I’d go to spend the money, even to buy goods I had to stand in line. And I said, ‘Hey, I gotta do something,’ so I wrote ‘Hold that Line.’

“We use a lot of pre-recorded tapes in the show, which is fun. It’s difficult, because you have to make sure you’re in sync with the tapes. You’ve gotta do it with the machine. The machine doesn’t have to do it with you.”

Their repertoire is limited to about 15 pieces, only six of which are played during any given 45-minute set. “The shorter the list, the more of a blitz you can lay out,” believes Conrad. “When you give people something they haven’t heard before, you’re gonna give it to them in small doses, or they OD.”