Billy Duffy first clapped eyes on Ian Astbury in the grounds of Keele University. “He was going through the bushes, wearing buckskin chaps that he’d made himself, a blanket loincloth wrapped up like a nappy, and these moccasins with bells on,” says Duffy. “He looked like Daniel Day Lewis in The Last Of The Mohicans, except he jangled when he walked. I thought: ‘That’s a bit interesting.’”
It was February 23, 1982. Duffy was the black quiffed, white Gretsch-wielding guitarist with post-punk gunslingers Theatre Of Hate, who had just edged into the UK Top 40 with the pulsing, Spaghetti Western-edged single Do You Believe In The Westworld. Astbury was the mohawked singer in rising Bradford ‘positive punks’ Southern Death Cult, who were opening for Duffy’s band on their current run of dates, including Keele.
Duffy had heard the name Southern Death Cult, but didn’t know anything about their music. The two men got talking pre-show. “We bonded over Embassy cigarettes,” says Duffy. “In that I had them and he wanted one.”
That evening, the guitarist watched the support band’s set. “They’d start playing this song called building up this atmosphere, and then Ian would boogie across the stage doing his Indian dance,” he says. “And then this voice
