{"id":4880,"date":"2025-08-31T17:41:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T17:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/christopher-owens-girls-uncut-qa-end-of-the-road-151143\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T17:41:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T17:41:21","slug":"christopher-owens-girls-uncut-qa-end-of-the-road-151143","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/christopher-owens-girls-uncut-qa-end-of-the-road-151143\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Owens: \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about the world\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There are, it transpires, many things that Christopher Owens<\/strong> can quote by heart. Most psalms of the King James Bible (\u201cthe first pop songs, by the way\u201d); passages of Shakespeare; and extended sections of his favourite musical,\u00a0Man Of La Mancha<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get goosebumps every time I watch it,\u201d he says, before going on to recite almost all of \u201cThe Impossible Dream (The Quest)\u201d and run through the film\u2019s full plot and key dramatic scenes, all in order to illustrate the sonic root of his band Girls<\/strong>. It\u2019s a typically elaborate diversion in Owens\u2019 intriguing journey from cloistered cult child to revered cult rocker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up on the road, kind of, and I feel a little weird when I\u2019m not,\u201d Owens says, detailing his youthful travels around Europe and Asia, and life in the Children Of God cult. \u201cThey became obsessed with the fun they had,\u201d he says, referring to the practice of \u201cflirty fishing\u201d which saw members sleep with over 200,000 people in the 1970s and \u201980s. \u201cThe liberation of nightclubbing and showing people God\u2019s love through sleeping with them. I think there were a lot of people that did it genuinely thinking they were out there showing people God\u2019s love. And then nobody worked, so you had to eat somehow, so why not get a donation? A lot of men probably thought, \u2018Wow, that was God\u2019s love\u2019, or at least felt loved. I don\u2019t think it was all bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group did face accusations of child abuse and exploitation, however. \u201cThe children started to become old enough to maybe be complicit or be in some sketchy situations,\u201d Owens says. \u201cI like to call the Children Of God, us, the children, because we were just born. We had no choice, you know. The adults were full of themselves at this point and became authoritarian. I sort of see my peers and myself as the actual innocents, the real children of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaving the cult at 16 while based in Slovenia and following his sister to Amarillo in Texas, he says, left him socially and culturally adrift for several years. \u201cWhen I got [to America], I had to get the kick in the face of what that really was. I didn\u2019t know anything about the world. People wonder where I went to high school. Oh yeah, of course I went to Amarillo High. I just started lying and trying to fit in. It was such an acrobatic feat to learn how to know which CDs were cool at a party. How to survive as an American is fucking far-out to learn sliding on your fucking ass at 16.\u201d <\/p>\n

Finding a wealthy mentor, Stanley Marsh 3, introduced Owens to new worlds of art and literature in his late twenties. He recalls, at Marsh\u2019s suggestion, making fake street signs bearing quotes from best-selling novels and cementing them into the streets of Amarillo. \u201cThey looked exactly like the stop signs in town, and they\u2019re made from the same material, and you could not get them out. They would say, \u2018I should have kissed her more\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m a hot dog\u2019.\u201d When Owens struck out for San Francisco on his own, \u201c[Marsh\u2019s] actual response was, \u2018It\u2019ll be interesting to see what becomes of you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Girls made Owens an indie hero, but his subsequent solo career stalled until he was plucked from what he calls \u201ca whirlpool going down\u201d by a new manager. He ends by revealing that there\u2019s a full album\u2019s worth of Girls songs which have never seen the light of day. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about maybe doing that in the future.\u201d <\/p>\n

Catch up with all Uncut\u2019s coverage from End Of The Road here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Christopher Owens: \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about the world\u201d<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There are, it transpires, many things that Christopher Owens can quote by heart. Most psalms of the King James Bible (\u201cthe first pop songs, by the way\u201d); passages of Shakespeare;…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[669,3544,3488,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-christopher-owens","category-end-of-the-road","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}