Peter Murphy does not like to be described as a rock star. ”It’s such an American term,” he says with charming English disdain. The 56-year-old performer and songwriter, who invented Gothic rock in 1978 with his post-punk band Bauhaus, tends to offset his sonorous voice with a flagrantly camp ”darling” or two and a conspiratorial ”as you know”.
Murphy, who remains a striking figure more than three decades after he was competing with Japan’s David Sylvian for the title of most beautiful man in the world, is alternately self-deprecating and earnest. Even when the subject is his arrest in Glendale, California, in March for driving under the influence, hit and run, and possession of methamphetamine, he’s assured.
”Meth was planted on me – I’ve never taken meth in my life. It was a misdemeanour and I was charged too heavily,” he says, speaking on the phone from his home in Istanbul. ”I bumped a lady’s car, panicked, and went down the road to park and in America that’s counted as hit and run and they arrested me. There’s a renowned heavy, corrupt police precinct over there and I was charged with a felony.”
Murphy spent four days in custody.
