Bill Fisher puts politics in prog as he takes pot-shots at billionaires via “yacht doom”

‘Brother Bill’ Fisher is a busy man. As well as leading Nottingham’s brilliant, multi-headed musical pseudo-cult Church Of The Cosmic Skull , the hirsute multi-instrumentalist has also released three solo albums, which fuse lush musicality with the same slyly satirical worldview that characterises his band.

The latest is the wryly-titled How To Think Like A Billionaire . Written largely on an old-school Yamaha PSR-8000 keyboard, it draws on everything from 70s soft rock, prog and 80s art-pop to grinding metal – something Fisher, who plays all the instruments, describes as “yacht doom.”

Fisher explains: “When Stevie Wonder did Songs In The Key Of Life , he decided to embrace the chunkiness of the Yamaha sound. I thought, ‘If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.’”

‘Yacht doom’ – that’s a new one. What is it?

The theme of the album is the tech billionaire worship that’s so prevalent today, so the idea of writing these yacht rock songs with some heavy, downtuned guitars in there made sense. I’ve been listening to not much else other than Steely Dan for the past year, for better or worse. A lot of the songs on the album have triad notes over interesting bass notes, which is taken a little bit from Steely Dan or even 90s James Taylor .

There are Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel influences in there too. I was born in 1981, so I grew up when that really video-centric, dark, arty sound was everywhere. Even the pop end of Genesis – it’s interesting to see how these amazingly talented musicians experimented with pop.

Where did that theme come from? What have tech billionaires ever done to hurt you?

The first song, Overview Effect , is all about that space race where you had Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson all competing to be the first in orbit – all trying to build the biggest, fastest, most phallic rocket.

There was this period after Covid when that stuff was all over the news, and it all came together as this idea of the poor billionaire up in his tin can, experiencing the overview effect of looking down on mankind and being all sad.

The thing that really grinds my gears the most is aspirational Tories looking at these people, going, “Fair play guys, great way to run a business.” Which is basically everything I stand against.

The album cover is a painting of a tech mogul who looks suspiciously like you, sipping a Martini in a spaceship, while looking down at a massive explosion on Earth – presumably after pressing the big red button in front of him.

That sums the whole thing up. If he’s just pressed the big red button, where’s he going to get the rest of the Martinis from? It’s the ultimate self-obsessed, self-destructive situation.

So are you still using X and Facebook?

Yeah. I’ve done sponsored posts, as every band does. That’s the irony of ironies: paying Zuckerberg to show people who like good music songs that are denouncing him.

Ride On, Unicorn from the new record sounds like it could fit on a Church album. How you decide what goes where?

Audio-wise, that one suits Church – it’s the only one that’s major key or positive and upbeat musically. But the lyrical theme fits this album – it’s about ‘unicorn’ tech companies [private companies that are worth at least $1bn] and the whole tech bubble, and the ludicrous optimism that everything can keep growing and growing and never stop. Throwing it on a Church album felt a little weird.

Are your solo albums, Church Of The Cosmic Skull and your other band, Massive Hassle, connected in any way, like some Marvel-style Extended Bill Fisher Universe?

Certainly with the solo stuff and Church, there are things that are tied in. That bizarre 70s/80s human potential movement is an influence on both of them – the self-help, self-improvement universe with all the weird techniques that come with them.

How To Think Like A Billionaire comes from that – also, Donald Trump has a book called Think Like A Billionaire, Become A Billionaire , too. But they’re not really linked as such, otherwise I would have done the solo albums as Brother Bill. And Massive Hassle, which is a project I do with my brother Marty, is a more personal thing.

You release your albums via your own label, Septaphonic. How hard is it to be a DIY artist in 2024?

The DIY thing is working. When Church was starting, we released the first album on an indie label, Kozmik Artifactz in Germany. After that, we started getting offers from bigger independent labels. I looked at it as, “Well, if we’ve got our own internet shop set up, what’s the point in a label taking a percentage of what we make or, worse, owning the recording?”

I spent a year after that first Church record learning what the music industry was doing. It seemed like it was actually possible. But, it’s still easier said than done – with the internet, anybody can do it themselves, but the music has to be good and everything about it has to be eye-catching.

What’s the best thing about doing it all yourself?

I record everything we do myself, so there’s not that much of an outlay of money to do the actual recording. And there’s obviously an OCD thing of having control of every little bit of what you do yourself. But I’m not hugely fussed about growing and growing and growing. Selling out Madison Square Garden isn’t the goal for us. Something doesn’t have to be massive for it to be working out.

What’s next for you?

We’ve got another Massive Hassle album coming out in a couple of months. We’re going to record more Church stuff this year. And there’s Dystopian Future Movies, which is Caroline’s [Cawley, aka Church Of The Cosmic Skull’s Sister Caroline and Bill’s partner] project, which I’m involved in as well – she’s singing, I play drums. It’s kind of proggy, grungy, post-rock with doomy elements.

So how do you think like a billionaire?

Destructively.