“I've
been contemplating suicide/But it really doesn't suit my style...”
The famous opening lines of “Shivers,” written by
Rowland S. Howard when he was just sixteen, pretty well sum up his
brand of wry,
guarded romanticism – even if Howard came to have second thoughts
about the song, or at any rate the overwrought way it was performed by
Nick Cave as the frontman of The Boys Next Door.
Howard,
who died in 2009 of liver cancer at the age of 50, has never been as famous as Cave,
his sometime bandmate. But as man and musician he's at least as
intriguing a figure. This thorough, reverent documentary by
Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn portrays him as a
self-created dandy,
an autodidact in the noblest sense – though we get only a few hints
about how he managed to step onto the Melbourne punk scene in his
mid-teens with tastes, prejudices and idiosyncratic guitar style all
fully formed.
More
than with most rock musicians, an air of precocity clung to Howard. In the early Boys Next Door footage, he's like
a bashful, resentful schoolkid, standing off to one side while Cave
hogs the spotlight. Playing the androgynous pin-up for
publicity shots, in eyeliner and skinny tie, he's pure glamour.
Later,
when the drugs caught up with him, he came to look like an old crone – but at all periods he had a perfect face for cinema, gaunt and
finely-drawn, with hooded ageless eyes and full lips often parted in
world-weary amusement. It's no wonder that Wim Wenders was so
determined to make Howard a part of Wings of Desire (1987),
his cinematic ode to 1980s Berlin, where The Birthday Party (the
successor to The Boys Next Door) were for a while the hippest band in
town.
Assembling
a documentary on a relatively obscure personality like Howard is a
technical challenge – finding the right balance between archival
clips and present-day interviews, providing a fair sample of the
music while still conveying the basic, journalistic facts. Not
everything succeeds here, especially not the vaporous interludes
where the camera wanders through a Gothic netherworld of cats and
tombstones, accompanied by whispered extracts from Howard's
unpublished novels.
But
at best, Autoluminescent
is that rare thing, a tribute to an artist that comes close to being
a work of art in its own right. Howard's death is so recent the
interviews often have an uncomfortable intimacy,
as friends, fans and the various women in his life (three overlapping
categories) take turns to pay their respects. So many affectionate
stories get told – about Howard's hatred for bananas, say, or about
the playfully violent fantasies he would dream up with his young
step-son. Not merely a biography of one man, the film offers a whole
collection of indelible portraits, like a family album.
As
in any family, there's also a feeling of unspoken tensions, scores
not yet settled. Mick Harvey, who bore direct responsibility
for firing Howard from The Birthday Party, fronts up for his
interview with
a look of stolid anger, like a local councillor defending an
unpopular planning decision. Cave seems ill-at-ease whenever
he's on screen – as well he might – while still managing to
use phrases like “my lyrical style” without a blush.
Some
of the most moving recollections come from Howard's brother Harry,
who played bass in a couple of the same bands and says he doesn't
mind being overshadowed: “It's a good shadow.” But
Howard also left a mark on those who only knew him from a distance –
like Wenders, who would sometimes spot him loitering at bars after
gigs, and who speaks with matter-of-fact sadness of their failure to
stay in touch. “He left Berlin, and never have I seen him
again.”
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