A Cult Leader With Personality - And An Eye For Controversy

Ian Astbury is at it again.

The controversial lead singer of the Cult, the rock band playing Monday at the Coliseum, with singer-guitarist Lenny Kravitz opening, has just had a tussle with MTV.

And lost.

Astbury agreed to take out a couple of scenes from the video of the band's newest single, "Heart of Soul," in order to get it played on the station. The offensive scenes showed him in a crown of thorns pointing a .357 Magnum at the camera.

He agreed to alter the clip to help the band's latest album, "Ceremony," which is faltering at the record stores.

But he's not happy about it.

"It's OK for Axl Rose to pistol-whip his girlfriend in the `Don't Cry' video, but it's not OK for me to portray an image that's obviously not to be taken literally, that's food for thought," he griped in a phone interview from a tour stop in Edmonton.

He said the image relates to criticism he and the band have taken over the years, mostly related to Astbury's arrogance and feistiness.

"We've been subject to incredibly harsh criticism and misunderstanding and slandering of character," he said. "At one point it nearly crippled me. So I find I really identify with martyr symbolism, martyr images. A lot of my role models are martyrs."

The point he was trying to make, he said, was that if Christ were to come back today, he would be angry. Very angry. Angry enough to take up the gun. And that's why MTV was afraid to show it.

"Art the world finds immoral is art that shows the world its own shame," he declared.

Astbury has provoked controversy with images before. At a show here in the mid-1980s, he performed wearing a big red swastika armband.

"That was probably to get a reaction out of people," he explained. "I thought somebody would run up on stage and rip it off me and punch me on the nose." He was disappointed, he said, that nobody did.

"Sometimes I just think that people, especially young people, really need to have their perception of reality really shaken up. And the only way to talk about it or to get into certain subject material, or provoke a reaction, is to use really blatant symbols.

"I see that young people today are like vegetables. I don't see passion. I don't see people getting worked up about what happens in the world. I don't see it."

His combative nature, he said, stems from when he was 11 years old and his family emigrated from England to Canada.

"I was extremely alienated from the white kids at school because I had a different accent, I dressed differently, musically I was into different things, I was into different sports," he said. "They shunned me, they pushed me out, and all my friends were like from Jamaica, India, Turkey. And that's when it started. That was the first time I realized I felt apart and different from the kids at school. I get wound up about stuff still."

He cited as examples the fact that he met his current girlfriend when he "rescued" her from an abusive boyfriend outside a Los Angeles nightclub, and his arrest a few years ago in Vancouver when he punched a couple of security guards at a Cult concert, after he saw them roughing up fans (he was held in jail 12 hours, but the charges were dropped).

Astbury's most famous cause is native peoples here and in Canada. "Ceremony" is inspired by the rituals and history of Native Americans. A rock festival he organized last year in California was called "A Gathering of The Tribes" and featured Native American dancers between rock acts.

"I'm not a Sting kind of person who puts on a wooly pullover and goes down to the Amazon and says let's all save the Indians down there. I'm just saying this is me and I have experiences and this is how I react to certain things. And I write about it and maybe you identify with some of the things I'm saying."

Astbury said that if he has another "Gathering of the Tribes" he'd invite his favorite Seattle bands: Soundgarden, Nirvana and Mudhoney. He said he misses Mother Love Bone, the Seattle band that broke up in 1990 after the heroin overdose of lead singer Andrew Wood. He met Wood at a concert in Toronto and they became friends, he said.

"We miss Andrew. He was an incredible sweetheart. I used to visit with him in Seattle."

Monday's show, he said, will concentrate on the Cult's hits, like "She Sells Sanctuary," "Love Removal Machine" and "Edie (Ciao Baby)." Only a few songs from "Ceremony" are in the set. "Because we don't want to bore people to death with things they haven't heard before."

He urged concert-goers to arrive on time to see Kravitz, "because he's incredible."

The flashy, '60s-influenced singer-guitarist was here only three months ago, playing a sold-out show at the Moore.

His playing, which evoked the memory of Jimi Hendrix, was impressive, and he showed his versatility with a variety of songs, ranging from the Temptations-like ballad "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over" to the rousing "Freedom Train."

He performed with confidence and swagger, exciting the capacity audience with fine guitar-playing, strong vocals and a likable stage manner.