By Ali Ikram
Lord Bishop is the self-proclaimed king of what he calls 'sex rock'.
He is in the country playing small venues from Auckland to Invercargill, with Greymouth in between.
'Rock'n'roll' was 1950s slang for sex, so 'sex rock' could be translated as 'sexy sex music'.
"I wanted to create music that was similar to sex," says Lord Bishop, "so while sometimes music can be blasting hard and aggressive and sweating, the next time it's soft mellow and gentle, and of course sometimes the songs only last two minutes."
One of his lyrics reads: "Oh, you drive me crazy 'cause you got a great ass, you got a great ass, you got a great ass, you got a great ass, ooooh… Great crack."
'Great Ass' is pretty much the archetypal sex rock song - low down dirty, it's tempting to call it suggestive, but it doesn't suggest anything - it's explicit. Its message is lit up like a neon sign.
The song was inspired by one night on the road.
"I think I wrote that song in Ireland in 2002, because it was a really fat Irish girl who jumped on the stage in a thong, pulled her pants down and shook it. I got on the mic and said, 'Ooh, you got a great arse,' and the band went, 'da da da da da', and we went into this groove and the song was created… That's how sometimes great works of art are formed."
Ironically, Lord Bishop's sex rock revolution began 10 years ago when he followed his heart to live in Germany.
"I went there and I had this girl I was hypothetically in love with, and when I got there, six hours after I landed, she told me she wasn't interested in me anymore.
"She told me how she felt. I was immediately thrust back into childhood, being alone, and I immediately needed to create my own thing."
His own thing was throwing himself into touring like a demon. In a decade he's done 675,000km, playing 1700 shows. While in New Zealand, he'll play clubs - 11 gigs in 11 days.
"Now we're approaching minimum 200, upwards to 250 shows a year. It's gruelling mentally and physically, but I'm used to it.
"I live to challenge myself, to express the message that I'm trying to get across to the people and have them accept it."
He's got four children - one in East Germany, one in West Germany, one in America and one in Austria, but he's happiest on the road - his motto is that's he'll live on the stage and he'll die on the stage.
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