Spiritwalker

Ian Astbury talks about “Spiritwalker”.

That’s paraphrasing a Native American prayer song that some anthropologist deciphered, a traditional song. I’d taken some of that and melded it with… maybe Buffy Sainte-Marie’s song “Starwalker.” That’s probably where the title came from, because I remember listening to Buffy Sainte-Marie at that time, and it was just so exotic and otherworldly. She was very present when she sang, and I felt very connected to her voice and her music. It had such incredible dignity, and it was so different from everything else we were hearing, where it was distorted and angular and violent and dark and here was this voice with an angelic quality. I think that was part of the liberation and breaking through, and probably the optimism that went into things like “She Sells Sanctuary.” We found that optimism, but we had to dig for it. We had to dig for those jewels.

These are archetypal things I was picking up from discovering things like Joseph Campbell and Buffy Sainte-Marie or even Jim Morrison. All these things were flying around, and the songs “Spiritwalker” and “She Sells Sanctuary” are quite similar, in a way. In fact, “Spiritwalker” was going to be a Southern Death Cult song, but they didn’t want to do it for whatever reason, so I said, “Fine, I’m leaving, and I’m taking my songs with me.”

Ripped from the 12” single to spiritualised MP3 @ 320kbps

The Cult; Spiritwalker 12”

A.     Spiritwalker

B1.  A Flower In The Desert

B2.  Bone Bag