Ah, the endless depths of the internet, timekiller par excellence. Source for great stories and videos for music nerds, fanboys and whatever you need. “Whatever you need”…in this case would be a “classic interview”.

Among the few musicians that successfully (well at least kind of), kept up a slight sense of mystery in our very demystified era is The Sisters of Mercy mastermind Andrew Eldritch, who neither shaped Goth Rock and its visual appearance in any way nor is connected to that scene. Nope!

This classic interview by German Alternative Music tv series Offbeat, which was conducted in 1989 prior to the release of Vision Thing, is likely the source for a lot of Andrew Eldritch jokes and pretty much shaped his public persona which remains to this day. Although spoken in precision Germany, there are really excellent English subtitles, accompanying this wonder of a conversation that is split into three parts.

See Andrew dropping epic one-liners about the goth scene (“That’s quite daft, ain’t it? The goth scene, I mean.”), Los Angeles (“Best place to get bored”) and his motivation about starting a band, which is likely linked with his abilities to please your girlfriend, which he likely did, though: “See, I’m rather small, quite brittle, not really a great ficker, so I had to become a musician” and talking about other interesting things – like German nursery rhymes (“Only the meanest!”), fencing and Alien Sex Fiend (“Never heard that!”).

See him in all his hungover, chainsmoking heavy leather glory, simply doing what he can do best: Being the coolest mensch to roam the earth thus far (the author’s and readership’s opinion might differ at this point). Oh yeah—it’s likely he did yours…ahem…anyway.

Here—have approximately 25 minutes of pure entertainment. I raise my coffee mug (written on it: “I don’t sleep so I don’t dream so I don’t wake up frightened”) to Andy, and according to one of the greater and cringe-worthy and offensive quotes from this interview, I’ll take a sip.