The Cult’s Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy are rock’s odd couple. The band’s frontman and guitarist make for an awkward pair but there is an undeniable chemistry between them that has made The Cult one of rock’s most enduring bands – it is now over four decades since they came together to form the band Death Cult. Speaking to this write a couple of years ago, Duffy explained how their relationship works after the affable Mancunian was asked how much they speak when they’re not on Cult duty.
“I would say we speak like a kind of separated married couple, we keep in touch, we’re not unfriendly, we get on,” he explained. “We have an OK business relationship, it’s difficult because we’re basically like two guys running in a three-legged race, we’re tied together and that’s just how it is and we need to navigate and work that out. If he wants to go left and I want to go right, we fall over. So we have to kind of navigate that but socially, we’re good. We probably will fall foul of, in terms of arguments and disagreements over business stuff, not financial luckily, we’ve never had any problems over money or anything like that, just creatively we’ll have differences of opinion maybe. I think it’s probably fair to say I’m a bit more conservative, as a guitar player, I like what I like. Ian, being the lead singer, is always out there reaching, and that dynamic and that tension between those two elements probably can be a good and a bad thing, but hopefully more good than bad.”
