The Fly Column: Are the Cult the Baddies?

Whatever happened to Ian Astbury out of the Cult? The Fly Column has it from good authority that a few years ago the shamanistic frontman of the Goth-flavoured rock duo sat down for a cozy evening to watch Mitchell and Webb on the BBC and saw the famous "Are we the baddies?" sketch.

In this hilarious comedy routine, Mitchell, dressed as an SS soldier, asks Webb, in another SS uniform, whether they were the bad guys due to the skulls on their caps.

Ian, as someone who identifies as a "proud skull wearer," was shaken to his core by this profound question and all that it implied. Was he too one of the baddies? Why the skulls?

I mean, lots of bands wear nice things on their caps, so why were the Cult wearing horrible nasty skulls?

Lemmy out of Motörhead, for example, used to wear the badge of the London constabulary on his barnet to show his support for law and order:

'Constable' Lemmy

While freaky-eyed "shock rocker" Marilyn Manson used to pin the insignia of the Bolivian navy on his on-stage boater.

Bolivian seapower

Both pretty nice, life-affirming things, I think you'll agree.

Then there's Bob Dylan.

As someone who has survived all the nightmares of the 1960s, with the scars to prove it, the nasal-voiced folk whiner would be fully entitled to show his bitterness at the vacuous moral nature of an uncaring universe by wearing as many symbols of hate and death as he pleased.

Shrubs

But does he plant skulls, swastikas, or other nasty things on his brain lid? No, of course not. Instead he decorates it with a small, eco-friendly shrubbery. Quite a contrast to Astbury and the skull on his hat, which is possibly even bigger than the one in his head.

Yes, Ian, why the skulls? Why the fixation with murder, death, genocide, and music piracy?

These and other concerns shook Astbury to his core. Since that fateful day, the Cult have been but a shadow of their former selves, unable to rock with true swagger, always haunted by the searching question, "Why the skulls?" Forever looking into mirrors in darkened rooms and wondering, "Are we the baddies?"

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!