Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was an English singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. They were also a founding member of TOPY - Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth - occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.
Born in Manchester, P-Orridge developed an early interest in art, occultism, and the avant-garde while at Solihull School. After dropping out of studies at the University of Hull, they moved into a counter-cultural commune in London and adopted Genesis P-Orridge as their pseudonym. On returning to Hull, they founded COUM Transmissions with Cosey Fanni Tutti, and in 1973 they relocated to London. COUM's confrontational performance work, dealing with such subjects as sex work, pornography, serial killers, and occultism, represented a concerted attempt to challenge societal norms and attracted the attention of the national press. COUM's 1976 Prostitution show at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts was particularly vilified by tabloids, gaining them the moniker of the "wreckers of civilisation." P-Orridge's band, Throbbing Gristle, grew out of COUM, and were active from 1975 to 1981 as pioneers in the industrial music genre. In 1981, P-Orridge co-founded Psychic TV, an experimental band that from 1988 onward came under the increasing influence of acid house.
In 1981, P-Orridge co-founded Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, an informal occult order influenced by chaos magic and experimental music. P-Orridge was seen as the group's leader, but rejected that position, and left the group in 1991. Amid the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria, a 1992 Channel 4 documentary accused P-Orridge of sexually abusing children, resulting in a police investigation. P-Orridge was subsequently cleared and Channel 4 retracted their allegation. As a result of the incident, P-Orridge left the United Kingdom for the United States and settled in New York City. There, they married Jacqueline Breyer, later known as Lady Jaye, in 1995, and together they embarked on the Pandrogeny Project, an attempt to unite as a "pandrogyne", or single entity, through the use of surgical body modification to physically resemble one another. P-Orridge continued with this project of body modification after Lady Jaye's 2007 death. Although involved in reunions of both Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV in the 2000s, they retired from music to focus on other artistic media in 2009.
P-Orridge was credited on over 200 releases during their lifetime. They were cited as an icon within the avant-garde art scene, accrued a cult following, and had been given the moniker of the "Godparent of Industrial Music". P-Orridge considered themself third-gender and used various gender-neutral pronouns.
Early life
1950–1964: Childhood
Genesis P-Orridge was born on 22 February 1950 in Victoria Park, Manchester, to Ronald and Muriel Megson. Ronald was a travelling salesman who had worked in repertory theatre and who played the drums in local jazz and dance bands. Muriel was from Salford and had first met Ronald after he returned to England after being injured with the British Army at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. As a child, they had a good relationship with their parents, who did not interfere with their artistic interests.Due to Ronald's job, the family moved to Essex, where they attended Staples Road Infant School in Loughton, and for a time lived in a caravan near to Epping Forest while the family house was being completed. The family then moved from Essex to Cheshire, where they attended Gatley Primary School. Passing the 11-plus exam, they won a scholarship to attend Stockport Grammar School, doing so between 1961 and 1964.
1964–1968: Solihull School and Worm
After their father became the Midlands area manager of a cleaning and maintenance business, they were sent to the privately run Solihull School in Warwickshire between 1964 and 1968; a period they would refer to as "basically four years of being mentally and physically tortured", but also a time when they developed an interest in art, occultism and the avant-garde. At age fifteen, they became a fan of "The Hundred Headless Woman," a book that contained surrealist collages by various artists, including Max Ernst. The book became an early source of inspiration, and it was at that time that they took on the name "P-Orridge."Unpopular with other pupils, they were bullied at the school, finding comfort in the art department at lunch-time and in the evenings. They befriended Ian "Spydeee" Evetts, Barry "Little Baz" Hermon and Paul Wolfson, three fellow pupils who shared their interest in art, literature, and poetry. They regularly discussed books and music, developing an interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and the music of Frank Zappa, the Fugs and the Velvet Underground. They became interested in occultism, and also asserted that their grandmother was a medium.
In 1967, P-Orridge founded their first collective, Worm, with school friends Pingle Wad, Spydeee Gasmantell and P-Orridge's girlfriend Jane Ray. Worm was influenced by AMM and John Cage's 1961 book Silence: Lectures and Writings. In 1966, P-Orridge, Evetts, Hermon, Wolfson, and Winstanley began production of an underground magazine, entitled Conscience. Forbidden from selling it on school grounds, they sold copies outside the school gates. Included in Conscience were various articles criticising the school's administration, leading to proposed changes regarding such issues as school uniforms and prefects privileges. That same year, influenced by newspaper accounts of "Swinging London", they organised the first happening at the school, doing so under the auspices of organising a school dance.
Brought up in the Anglican denomination of Christianity, P-Orridge became secretary of the school sixth form's Christian Discussion Circle, in this position inviting members of other ideological positions – including a Marxist from the British Communist Party – to speak to the group. Aged 18, P-Orridge began helping to run the local Sunday school classes, but came to reject organised Christianity. Afflicted with asthma throughout childhood, P-Orridge had to take cortisone and prednisone steroids to control the attacks. The latter of these drugs caused their adrenal glands to atrophy as a side-effect, and so the doctor advised P-Orridge to stop taking them. As a result, aged 17, P-Orridge suffered from a serious blackout; while in hospital recovering they decided to devote their life to art and writing.
With Hermon and Wolfson, P-Orridge founded a group called the Knights of the Pentecostal Flame. The Knights undertook a happening on 1 June 1968 which they titled Beautiful Litter. Taking place in Mell Square, Solihull, it involved the three students handing out cards to passersby that had a series of words written onto them; "fleece", "rainbow", "silken", "white", "flower" and "dewdrops". Ensuring that the local Solihull News was informed of the event, P-Orridge told reporters that the Knights wanted to ignite "an artistic revolution in Solihull, by making people aware of the life around them, its essential beauty and tranquillity." In mid-1968, Worm recorded their first and only album, entitled Early Worm, in P-Orridge's parents' attic in Solihull. It was pressed onto vinyl in November at Deroy Sound Services in Manchester, but only one copy was ever produced. A second album, Catching the Bird, was recorded but never pressed.
1968–1969: Hull University and Transmedia Explorations
In September 1968, P-Orridge began studying for a degree in Social Administration and Philosophy at the University of Hull. Hull was chosen in an attempt to study at "the most ordinary non-elitist, working-class, red brick university", but P-Orridge disliked the course and unsuccessfully tried to transfer to study English. With a group of friends, P-Orridge founded a 'free-form' student magazine entitled Worm which waived all editorial control, publishing everything placed into the magazine's pigeonhole, including instructions on how to build a molotov cocktail. Three issues were published between 1968 and 1970 before the Hull Student's Union banned the publication, considering it legally obscene and fearing prosecution. Developing a keen interest in poetry, P-Orridge won the 1969 Hull University Needler Poetry Competition, judged by Compton lecturer Richard Murphy and the poet Philip Larkin, who was then librarian at the university. P-Orridge became involved in radical student politics through their friendship with Tom Fawthrop, a member of the Radical Student Alliance who had led a student occupation of the university's administrative buildings as a part of the worldwide student protests of 1968. In 1969, P-Orridge attempted to reconstruct the occupation for a film, in the hopes that it would itself become a genuine protest occupation, but this venture failed due to a lack of participants.In 1969, P-Orridge dropped out of university and moved to London, and joined the Transmedia Explorations commune, who were then living in a large run-down house in Islington Park Street. The group, initiated by the artist David Medalla and initially named the Exploding Galaxy, had been at the forefront of the London hippy scene since 1967, but had partially disbanded after a series of police raids and a damaging court case. Moving into their commune, P-Orridge was particularly influenced by one of the founding members of the group, Gerald Fitzgerald, a kinetic artist, and would recognise Fitzgerald's formative influence in P-Orridge's later work. The commune members adhered to a strict regime with the intention of deconditioning its members out of their routines and conventional behaviour; they were forbidden from sleeping in the same place on consecutive nights, food was cooked at irregular times of the day and all clothing was kept in a communal chest, with its members wearing something different on each day. P-Orridge stayed there for three months, until late October 1969. They left after becoming angered that the commune's leaders were given more rights than the other members and believing that the group ignored the counter-cultural use of music, something they took a great interest in. Julie Wilson later stated that although P-Orridge's time at the Transmedia Explorations commune had been brief, "the experiences had there proved to be seminal" to their artistic development.