“Kid” Strange in Doctors Of Madness, 1975
RICHARD Strange has a curious knack for being in the right place at the right time. That could be fortuitously witnessing The Beatles’ rooftop concert as a truanting schoolboy in 1969 or, several decades later, landing a part in Tom Waits’ avant-garde opera The Black Rider, having bumped into director Robert Wilson the day before auditions. It’s a talent that’s helped lubricate a diverse career that’s encompassed rock music, theatre, film and TV, involving improbable walk-on roles for everybody from Grace Jones to Captain Beefheart. “I know my limitations,” says Strange, who is currently turning his remarkable autobiography Punks And Drunks And Flicks And Kicks into an audiobook. “I can’t make films or be a visual artist, but I am a fan of collaboration.”
It all began when Strange, spurred on by Ziggy Stardust, dyed his hair blue and formed art-rockers Doctors Of Madness, who mixed dystopian lyrics with aggressive music and a distorted violin. “I wanted the Doctors to be a controversial cartoon band,” he says. “I was inspired by William Burroughs, Lou Reed, the Theatre Of Cruelty and visual art. That was my source material.”