ROCK’N’ ROLL CONFIDENTIAL
John Grant
Michigan’s human synthesizer talks lava, famous friends and loving 1970s AOR.
All eyes on me: John Grant and (below) his beloved Petoskey rock.
Hordur Sveinsson
AS MOJO CALLS John Grant at his home in Reykjavik in April, we wonder: is he anywhere near the lava currently erupting around Iceland? “It’s definitely going on,” he says airily, “but not everywhere. I’m sitting pretty comfortably in my room.”
He’s got his own conflagration on the way: The Art Of The Lie, the next chapter in the solo canon which began with 2010’s five-star ‘Instant MOJO Classic’ Queen Of Denmark, is imminent. Within he deals with the unending hellishness of life both personal and political with barbed humours, analogue electronics and a full soft rock/funk band. An extra dimension of purgatory arrives when MOJO’s recording device packs up, unbeknownst, eight minutes into our interview. Like a mensch, Grant obligingly comes back on the phone without complaint.