Ian Astbury’s struggles provide ammo for new Cult album ‘Choice of Weapon’

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TORONTO – Before Ian Astbury and the Cult made “Choice of Weapon,” the Hamilton-reared rock howler was starting to believe he might never take up musical arms again.

After 2007’s “Born Into This” came out, Astbury went through a difficult period. He suffered through a bad breakup and then his body began to fail him: a lifetime of hopping around stages, running long distances to stay in shape and wrecking motorcycles started to lead to the deterioration of his hip.

“I was being carried off stages in tears,” Astbury recalled during a recent interview at a Toronto rock club, slouched on a dark velvety couch.

“It was brutal, and I just couldn’t continue…. I’d beat myself into the ground and the body just went, ‘EEERH,'” added the 50-year-old, imitating the sound of a car screeching to a sudden halt. “I’ve got a pound and a half of titanium in my hip. I was lying on a hospital bed in the Upper East Side in New York in the winter, looking out the window watching these barges go up and down, the snow coming down.

“I was just sitting there thinking: ‘I’m done…. I ain’t going nowhere. This is debilitating.'”

So, Astbury took it easy for a while, enjoying a “sedentary” period. He read, he explored New York, he found, well, sanctuary at a Shambhala centre in the city.

Then Cult guitarist Billy Duffy rolled through town, and Astbury started to feel that familiar itch. They wrote two songs together — “The Wolf” and “Wilderness Now” — and then they kept writing more. Ultimately, they were armed with enough tunes to finish “Weapon,” which hits stores Tuesday.

From chugging opener “Honey From a Knife” to the reverb-clouded closer “This Night in the City Forever,” “Choice of Weapon” aims for a primal urgency that makes clear the relief Astbury feels to be back behind a microphone. Conjuring the band’s usually foreboding hard rock, the Cult sound newly cohesive musically — owing, in part, to the fact that this marks the first time in the group’s sometimes tumultuous run that they’ve retained the same lineup for consecutive records.

And over and over again — especially on songs like the brooding “Life > Death” and chiming “Elemental Light” — Astbury sings about redemption and resilience.

“Perhaps when you’ve had success, you can cruise a bit. But then this record was very different. We were out of that place,” said Astbury, a Brit who spent a portion of his childhood living in Ontario.

“There’s a redemptive quality. Redemption in terms of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.”

But while Astbury says he’s thrilled with the “cinematic” new album, his difficult period isn’t far from mind. Even as “Weapon” began taking shape, Astbury struggled.

“I went through incredible self-doubt,” said Astbury, clad in a pair of sunglasses despite the dim interior of the vacant rock club surrounding him.

“One of the hardest things was the physical (aspect). I mean, you put on weight and people go, ‘Ahh, look at him! What happened to the kid who was running around in 28-waist jeans?’

“It took a while to move through that and be OK with that,” he added. “I didn’t want to be objectified…. Now, you’re older and you’ve got weight on you and it’s a crime. It’s criminal.”

Indeed, Astbury seems to still be coming to terms to the changes in his career and his image.

The adjustment in his demeanour is evident when a photographer asks Astbury to strike a rock-star pose. Shaking his head, Astbury declines and replies: “That’s not me … I’m Zen.”

“It’s not about me being on the cover of a magazine anymore,” he said. “I went through that, I did that…. We’ve been entertainers, we’ve been pop stars, we’ve been on the cover of (U.K. pop magazine) Smash Hits with makeup on and heart paint on my face.

“That’s gone. I’m not that child anymore.”

But looking back, Astbury says he was never necessarily comfortable with rock-star trappings. He discusses how the band had a golden opportunity to move into the next stratosphere of rock stardom following the release of 1989’s “Sonic Temple” — the Cult’s third straight album to reach double-platinum certification in Canada — but never capitalized. His relationship with Duffy was falling apart when they recorded the follow-up, 1991’s “Ceremony,” and that record initiated a commercial tailspin that the band has never been able to reverse.

Astbury said that at the time, he just wasn’t comfortable with the band becoming drastically bigger, especially at a difficult period in his personal life when his father was dying of cancer.

“It was a very difficult, bittersweet moment, having the keys handed to us,” he said. “The next level after where we were was stadiums … and I was like, I can’t do that. It’s not where I want to be. I can’t make those kinds of concessions and compromises. It’s too much to ask. I can’t be that guy.”

Duffy, he said, disagreed and felt the band should have been continuing its ascension. Their relationship was notoriously rocky at that point in the band’s career, which makes it all the more impressive that they’re still collaborating two decades later.

“I’m not going to try to shape Billy into my version of what I think he should be, and I think he’s learned to accept that he’s in a band with me,” Astbury said of their relationship.

“He chose to be in a group with Ian Astbury. He didn’t choose to be in a band with some generic rock ‘n’ roll singer. Probably life would have been a lot easier. He’d probably be playing stadiums now.

“But maybe it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Still, Astbury betrays a note of dissatisfaction when sizing up the band’s legacy. And perhaps that’s why, in part, he couldn’t leave the Cult behind.

“For whatever reason, the Cult’s never really fully connected. Those elements never fully lined up. A lot of our trophies were in other people’s trophy cabinets — certainly, artists who we came up with were given acclaim (for) a road that we built or were part of building,” he said, arguing that the band’s influence on hard rock has been occasionally overlooked.

“We’ve never even really been recognized by our industry. Never fully embraced. So OK. Where do you go with that? You stay in the wilderness. You stay outside.”

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