Someone asked me why I called the project ‘Lunar Moths.’ In English folklore, nocturnal moths are believed to be unbaptised souls, strange and ghostly flittering in the moonlight. Butterflies are also considered to be spirits but they have a brighter more transformative journey as they glide between the mortal realm and eternity. ‘Dropping like Butterflies’ is a paean to society’s lost souls, those who left their imprint on culture but at a cost they couldn’t afford to pay, The poems had been written long before they were set to music through the generous guidance of Neal X. On stage, he likes to say we met when we were 12 which isn’t exactly true but it’s not so far off.
Johnny Thunders has to make a guest appearance at this point as he used to stay at Tony James and Magenta Devine’s Maida Vale mews house, whenever he was in London in the early 1980’s. (Ironically, the little house over a garage had been the former abode of Sid and Nancy.) Johnny seemed comfortable with the general groove of the place and it was an ideal setting for interviewing him for ‘In Cold Blood.’ Although Tony James was playing bass for Johnny at this juncture, he was also in the process of forming futuristic glam punks Sigue Sigue Sputnik. One afternoon, I met their charming, affable guitarist, Neal X, soon to have the biggest quiff London had ever seen. The look was that of a sharp dressed 1950’s rocker transposed to a cartoon future that had not yet happened. Life got in the way, decades merged but we vaguely infrequently stayed in touch until 4 years ago when I sent him a booklet of poems entitled ‘Lunar Moths’.
It’s a hard ask getting someone as steeped in rock n’ roll as Neal is to look at poetry but then again, he has been playing with Marc Almond for almost 20 years who is probably one of the most poetic torch singers ever there was. The first of the poem’s to catch Mr X’s attention was ‘Joe Dallesandro’ which oddly enough is a homage to the Warhol superstar. Neal set it to a Bo Diddley guitar riff, Chris Musto, latterly of Johnny Thunders Oddballs, played drums and percussion and so we began recording the poems one by one. It took almost a year. From the core of Neal, Chris and I, the album spread its wings as other musicians contributed to it. The record’s development was almost dream-like, a magical production in a midnight theatre closed to all but the participants. What had begun as a tiny statement became this glorious, melancholy nightscape, described by Waterboy Mike Scott as being like ‘The Velvet Underground with twinkling lights.’
It’s time for Johnny Thunders to make another entrance in the Lunar Moths saga, as Mike had very kindly written a foreword to the 2025 Jawbone Press edition of ‘In Cold Blood’. We hadn’t yet met in person but via the internet and cohorts in common, we had begun communicating. This culminated in the Waterboys contributing an awesome track to the Thunders’ tribute album reissue ‘I Only Wrote This Song For You’ (Cadiz Records.) Mike also plays guitar on ‘Lodgers’ for the Lunar Moths, which is about the ever changing cast of drifters who rented rooms in my grandmother’s somber Victorian house before vanishing into the Mersey mist. Fellow Waterboy ‘Famous’ James Hallawell extraordinarily sensitive keyboards and piano can also be heard throughout the album. However, the album truly came alive when it was mixed by Mike Scott. I know it was probably technical but to me it seemed alchemical, crystallizing every nuance of the music and my voice.
Spoken word albums aren’t exactly best sellers, they are oddities but ‘Dropping like Butterflies’ was never meant to be a commercial proposition. It’s enough to know that we’ve created something beautiful, an artwork encompassing all of the down at heel elegance of the chancers and Nijinsky dancers, Chatteron in Euston Square, Jean Genet in Paris and the Kings Road Ophelias fading into one final sunset.
Nina Antonia 