On 16th July 2016, artistic visionary Alan Vega sadly passed away. Frontman of Suicide, solo musician, artist, performer – everything Vega approached, he did so with unflinching passion, intensity and electricity. He carved grooves in the densest of sonic surfaces, built crucifixes from wires, lights and junk, and on stage – alongside his Suicide bandmate Martin Rev – he’d infamously lunge at his audience brandishing a length of motorcycle chain. Suicide were the band punk wanted to be.

With his passing, Vega left behind an unparalleled catalogue of work: tapes upon tapes of unreleased part-completed songs, recorded sounds, raw beats, sketchbooks, artwork and ideas. This incredible archive (known as the Vega Vault), he left in the hands of Jared Artaud, frontman of Brooklyn band The Vacant Lots, who – alongside Vega’s longtime collaborator and partner Liz Lamere – has been piecing together these fragments of work to continue and celebrate Vega’s legacy.

In 2021, Artaud and Lamere co-produced and mixed Vega’s lost, posthumous album Mutator, and this May, the follow-up record Insurrection. Alongside this, Artaud has curated a current exhibition of Vega’s light sculptures in Paris titled Cesspool Saints, and co-produced the Celine FW23 soundtrack alongside Hedi Slimane – an incendiary remix of 1977 Suicide track Girl that set the pace for a collection of black leathers, studs and Perfectos; Vega would’ve loved it. The first single from Insurrection, Mercy, is accompanied by a video directed by Jesus and Mary Chain icon Douglas Hart. In conversation, Artaud and Hart reminisce on Vega’s enduring influence and share essential anecdotes, proudly documented here in Vega’s honour.

Jared Artaud: When you first heard the song, what were your initial impressions?
Douglas Hart: Weirdly, the first thing that came to me after listening to it was that [Kazimir] Malevich Black Square painting, I don’t know why. There’s something in the mood, rhythm and darkness of it. Does that make sense?

JA: Totally.
DH: Sometimes when you listen to music images come into your head, sometimes within seconds, sometimes it takes weeks. But with that one, it totally conjured that image as the starting point for a video. 

JA: Great starting point, and I’m sure Alan would’ve loved that too, just this supreme minimalism.
DH: Light and dark. I’m interested to know how the process works for you.

JA: It’s interesting because I’m co-curating an art show of Alan’s work in Paris and I’ve been doing a lot of research trying to compile a lot of Alan’s interviews. One of the things we’re doing at the show is placing some of his quotes in big text across the wall. Something he kept saying over and over was just how important light was for him with his work. These light sculptures and how light changes everything, it’s the source of everything. For him, he was trying to get to this place where his mood or image shifts, especially when you shift the light. He wanted people to have this emotional or religious experience.

To hear you speak about light and dark with the song, I was totally thinking and feeling that as well. Especially working on his music, this is the second full-length record I’ve produced, mixed, tried to finish. All these were left on ADATs (Alesis Digital Audio Tape, an analogue magnetic tape format), and in terms of how to mix it, treat the sounds and arrange it – in the one hand, it’s trying to honour his aesthetic, then on the other hand, trying to make the right instinctual artist decisions. If you just hit play on the ADATs, if there’s like sixteen tracks, it just sounds like a cacophony of… there’s like four drum machine patterns, all these intersecting sounds, so it’s kind of like this fucked up puzzle. It’s like a cubist painting that you’re trying to turn into a normal portrait. Or sometimes the other way around. But with this song and this record, and Mutator too, it’s been an incredible process. I feel like on one shoulder I have Alan going like, “Hey, this is fucking great!” Then on the other shoulder he’s like, “What the fuck are you doing?! Don’t fuck this shit up man!” [both laugh] It’s always these opposing voices.
DH: When you first get them it must be mind-blowing.

“You can hear him grip the mic, snarl, it’s fucking incredible.”

JA: Oh yeah. I spent countless hours just soloing his vocal performances to really hear him. All these nuances; you can hear him grip the mic, snarl, it’s fucking incredible. When I was doing the Celine FW23 soundtrack and co-produced with Hedi Slimane, we remixed Girl from Suicide’s first record – it even hit me there. The lyrics! You can write them on your hand, just a few lines, but the way Alan is able to make it so compelling for a four or five minute song. Hearing those vocals by themselves – it chills, it’s totally mind-blowing. If you look at the light sculptures, he was almost doing that with sound, he’d take a drum machine or a synth part and warp it, destroy it. He was like a sound sculptor.
DH: It’s funny you should say that about light, because what struck me when I first heard Suicide was that there was a kind of warm glow that radiated from it. And sometimes cold light as well. There are different types of energy.

JA: There’s an electricity behind it.
DH: What’s Liz’s [Lamere] involvement?

JA: She’s been great and is terrific to work with. Collaborating with her, I can totally see how Alan spent over 25 years working with her, since the first album they worked on together in 1990, Deuce Avenue. She’s along with me, co-producing, co-mixing. She was there for most of it when they were recording and during the process. Then obviously since they were married for over 30 years, it didn’t just end in the studio.
DH: And they performed together live.

JA: Yeah, they were a good creative team. She’ll hear something and be like, “Oh, I remember being in the room,” or, “I remember that day he didn’t want to do vocals,” or, “We spent like two weeks trying to find a fucking bass sound.” [both laugh] They were so invested and involved. And she’s been so supportive. One of the things Alan said to me was, “I’m ending, you’re beginning, I’m passing on the torch to you.” Like, Jesus Christ! [both laugh] So I feel this real sense of loyalty, like I made a pact with him and I have to live up to it.
DH: That’s quite a responsibility. How did you first meet him then? 

JA: Back in 2012 or 2013, The Vacant Lots were asked to be part of this Christmas compilation album. We were a new band at that point and were curious. We’d never done a cover song, never mind a fucking Christmas song! Then we found out Iggy Pop, Psychic Ills and a few other cool bands were going to be on it, so we thought, “Fuck it, let’s do it.” We committed to doing it without knowing what track to choose, then I started doing some digging and I found this 1980/81 obscure record that ZE Records put out featuring a Suicide song and an Alan Vega song called No More Christmas Blues. It was the most depressing, fucked up Christmas song. I loved it. [Douglas laughs] We covered it and took it from this dark, depressing ballad and gave it a dance facelift with strong guitars – I imagined if New Order and Link Wray were to cover it, what would it sound like? I really wanted to reach out to Alan but didn’t know the best way to do it. I was friends with Liz on social media and thought I’d share the song as a way of gratitude to Alan. I had zero expectations but she got back to me that day and said she was going to play it for Alan. Then she gave me the play-by-play, like, “Alan really likes it.” I phoned my bandmates: “The pope is listening to our music!” Then she said, “He doesn’t really do this, but he wants you to come over for brunch.”
DH: [laughs] Yeah, I can’t imagine that was a common thing.

JA: I was just shocked. I was really terrified to meet him, I had this fantasy of him coming to the door with chains and shit [laughs], but we went to his apartment and he was the nicest, coolest, smartest dude ever. I felt like I’d known him forever. Then over the next two, three years, up to when he died, I was just one stop away from his apartment in Downtown Manhatten and we’d hang out. Some of my best experiences are him sharing his notebooks and drawings, playing him our album mixes and talking about music. In no way am I comparing myself to Dylan, but it reminded me of stories of Bob Dylan going to visit Woody Guthrie in hospital, his hero, and building this connection. It felt like time stopped when I was hanging out with him. I learned so much from him in those years.
DH: Incredible, are those notebooks in the exhibition? 

JA: Yeah, we’re displaying some of them. They’re so dense, its words, lyrics, poetry, so his notebooks were really the sketches and demos of what was going on in his mind. They really show the dynamics of his personality, they’re light and dark and funny. He always maintained that discipline in his drawings and portraits, using these different gears, mediums and channels. One of the first things I said to him, and he kind of pointed his finger at me [in response] to say, ‘you hit it’, when I first saw his drawings, I said, “Holy shit, I can see the singer from Suicide, I can see the solo artist, I can see the sculptor.” It was like his expression was so true to him, no matter what medium he was exploring. Some of the drawings are very classically trained, it almost looks like Picasso’s early days. Then he does all these crazy lines, fucked up portrait stuff. It really is cool to see, and how open he was in terms of collaborating with other people. I was very lucky and got to meet Ric Ocasek [The Cars frontman] one night. There was a tribute concert for Alan in New York City, and I went to the back room and Ric was just sitting on a couch, so I introduced myself and we started talking. To hear from him too, because his influence and production on Vega’s solo work, like Saturn Strip…
DH: And the second Suicide album [Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev], oh my god.

JA: Yeah, that record is fucking incredible. Do you remember your first impressions when you discovered Suicide and then Alan Vega’s solo work?
DH: I think the first time I heard Cheree, I was probably thirteen or fourteen. I’d got into punk in the summer of 1977 and there were big records everyone had like Sex Pistols, The Clash, Generation X. Amazing. But the cooler kids always had the Suicide album. The album as well, the cover art is so striking. It’s almost like a fetish object. 

JA: Yeah, with the blood on it.
DH: I think all of us have two sides, we like noise, but we also like warmth and melody, so to have that fully satisfied by one band – it was powerful. Also a lot of squares who were a little bit anti-punk or whatever, it turned them off because they didn’t fully understand it, and that was always a good thing. Then when I met Jim Reid [The Jesus and Mary Chain frontman] a couple of years later, there were a few bands that were totemistic and drew us in together, and obviously, The Velvet Underground and Suicide were prime amongst all those bands.

JA: That’s incredible to hear. My twenty-year old self would never forgive me for not asking questions about this. [both laugh] I’d be curious to know what that was like for you and the Mary Chain discovering Suicide? And ultimately the music you made has gone on to be as influential in its own right. Today it seems like music that was really rough around the edges and raw when it came out is now more relatable in culture than some of its contemporaries.
DH: I think so. People are always going to respond to that, and maybe today it’s more difficult to make those types of records. With all the access to everything, maybe things are more sanitised.  

JA: Did you feel that way when it was happening?
DH: I think a lot of bands in their formative period are like little cults, little gangs, so we felt very closed off to the rest of the world. We had our own atmosphere and air that fed us, and that came from music like Suicide. We didn’t see a lot of that in the contemporary music of 1984/5. It’s the same as the punks thinking, “Why can’t music be as wild as the early rock ‘n’ roll?” It’s an eternal quest for people who feel alienated from what they see as the sanitised, anti-septic, cold music of their contemporary world. You’re looking for things that typify the antithesis of that. 

“It felt like time stopped when I was hanging out with him. I learned so much from him in those years.”

JA: I heard about this show that Suicide played in Glasgow in the late-70s, and I asked Alan about it because it’s one of the craziest stories in rock ‘n’ roll history. A fucking axe was thrown at him on stage. I’ve met Bobby Gillespie a few times, and after a show one of my good friends Simone [Butler], who is the bassist in Primal Scream, introduced us and one of the first things I said to him was, “I need confirmation, did this really happen?” And he was like, “Yeah!” And he moved his hand to show me how close it was to Alan’s head. Where you there?
DH: I wasn’t there because I’m like four years younger than Bobby. That was in early 1977 when they were supporting The Clash. But everyone was talking about it. My brother went, Jim [Reid] was there. It was legendary. 

JA: Did you ever see Suicide live?
DH: Yeah I saw them later. I didn’t get to see them until maybe 1986. I was with Bobby in a little club in London and asked Alan about the axe incident and he loved it! [both laughs] 

JA: You remember that conversation?
DH: Yeah, I told him we’re from Glasgow and we asked him about the gig. He said when he was driving into the outskirts of Glasgow it really reminded him of New York because of the architecture with the tenement buildings and the brownstone colours. He must’ve seen a… We had this thing when I was a kid where you’d get a guy who would collect scrap metal and he’d ride around on a horse and cart, and Alan was like, “We were driving into Glasgow and they were still using horse and carts!” [both laugh] He loved that. He had a visceral connection to the city it seemed. 

“I found this 1980/81 obscure record that ZE Records put out featuring a Suicide song and an Alan Vega song called No More Christmas Blues. It was the most depressing, fucked up Christmas song. I loved it.”

JA: I had this idea called the Trinity album to honour Alan, where we’d give three stems to people, someone like Bobby Gillespie, Nine Inch Nails, LCD Soundsystem, and say, “Here, finish this song.” To see what other people would do with his music. For me, it’s about honouring the work but also presenting it in new ways.
DH: Alan was always interested in presenting his ideas in new ways and collaborating, that was a big part of his ethos.

JA: Totally. Everything even down to the vocal effects, he’d encourage people to do their thing. One of the last things he did was remix 6am by The Vacant Lots. He added something to it and took some things away. He was very encouraging.
DH: You’ve done such a great job and I’m happy to be part of it because his music meant so much to me, I felt a real sense of responsibility. 

JA: In terms of the visuals, it’s great working with you and collaborating. It’s a shame he’s not here to see how great it is.
DH: Was he aware of how influential he was? I guess it’s hard to be, like with the Mary Chain, it’s hard when you’re in the middle of it. 

JA: It’s a good question and I feel like I can ask you the same thing. There wasn’t the ego I expected him to have for being such a heavyweight. If Bruce Springsteen came over, Alan would have the same conversation with him as he’d have with the doorman. He had a very level playing field, he didn’t rank people. I think he saw himself in that way, because Suicide was never really a household name or elevated in the way of Patti Smith or The Ramones. In some ways I think he might have known [how influential he was] but on the other hand I don’t think he knew to the extent. Suicide didn’t really get the recognition… The thought of them even being mentioned in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, he’d laugh at that like, “Who gives a shit about us?!” But to so many, they’re as important as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
DH: A lot of the greats never get their due in their day. 

“He’d take a drum machine or a synth part and warp it, destroy it. He was like a sound sculptor.’

JA: It’s interesting because he heard it from so many people and I think he could sense it, but also Alan was so disconnected from social media or going to events and parties, he couldn’t give a fuck. For him, it was all about the human nature aspect of music, it was never about getting rich and famous.
DH: Didn’t he tell a story about seeing the Stooges at Coney Island as a kid and he stage-dived and nobody caught him and he landed on the concrete? 

JA: Yeah. [laughs] That show, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when he told me the story… One of the first things I remember speaking to him about was… I got into Suicide pretty late, like in my 20s, and the first person who really motivated me to move out of basketball and sports – I was an athlete as a teenager – was Iggy Pop. I saw all this crazy shit Iggy was doing and it brought out a lot in me to be like, “I wanna form a band.” Then to find out that Alan had a similar reaction with Iggy – Alan actually told me that on a list of 100 things he wanted to do, visual artist was at the top, and performer on stage and music wasn’t even on the list, it’d be so low down. In terms of working with you on Mercy, it’s such a great match with you and it runs deep.