Born in 1968, Jamie Hince is a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter in indie-rock duo the Kills. He studied drama at Goldsmiths College in London in the early 90s, and played in rock bands Fiji, Scarfo and Blyth Power largely while living in squats. He met American singer Alison Mosshart when she heard him play guitar in the apartment above her and in 2000 they formed the Kills, releasing their debut Keep On Your Mean Side in 2003. Hince is an enthusiastic photographer and held his first exhibition in New York in 2014. Between 2007 and 2015 he was in a relationship with Kate Moss. The Kills’ fifth studio album, Ash & Ice, is out now on Domino.
1 | Art
I always seem to be drawn to Russian art and literature. This is a Russian animator I’ve been really intrigued by: I stumbled across his work on the internet, and sat down for three hours and went through everything he’s done. He makes these amazing animations – there’s one in particular called From Left to Right and most recently he’s done one called Long Bridge of Desired Direction. They’re like beautiful psychedelic hallucinations, like the scene in Dumbo where he starts hallucinating. The animations are all very similar: they’ve got these melancholic little characters that normally have their roots in something human, but they’re kind of blobs. It’s really absurd and beautiful and sad.
2 | Photography
Photography is a big part of my life: taking photographs, being around photographers. Nikolay Bakharev operates in Siberia and he takes these amazing pictures of normal, working-class Russians on holiday at bizarre beaches and lakes by the forest. In pretty much all of them he’s managed to convince these people to be photographed naked, but it’s not pornographic or erotic in any way: you can see how life has taken its toll on their bodies, whether it’s scars or tattoos or the weathering of a hard life. They’re absolutely beautiful – it’s like the old masters or something. He’s a massive inspiration to me.
3 | Film
The Tin Drum is one of my favourite books of all time – I’ve probably got 12 or 15 copies with different covers, different translations – but it’s also just about my favourite film. You know how it is: you read a book that you love and the film is always an embarrassment in comparison. But this really ranks as one of the greatest films. You can pause it at any moment and the whole frame is a work of art. I’ve gone through that film as photographs, hundreds and hundreds of frames of it. I can watch it over and over again. The kid who plays Oskar, David Bennent, is absolutely mind-blowing.
4 | Documentary
This is the documentary that blew me away most recently: it’s the story of Lee “Scratch” Perry who is, at least from a production point of view, just about my biggest idol. He is otherworldly. There’s a lot of talk about the correlation between madness and genius but with Lee “Scratch” Perry I’d defy anyone, after watching that documentary, to describe him in any other way than as a mad genius. The output is crazy from someone who is so high all the time – he is crazy prolific. There’s nothing academic about it, it’s absolute instinct. His first job was in a quarry, and he describes how he first got into music from the sound of smashing rocks up. He’s got such a bizarre insight into things and he does it so beautifully.
5 | Gig
We [the Kills] were doing a TV show in Paris last month and Iggy Pop was playing a couple of miles away. He’s got this new band with Josh Homme and Matt [Helders] from Arctic Monkeys. It was one of the most uplifting things I’ve ever seen. People were sitting on the ground after the show trying to get their breath back; not from jumping around but from how many emotions you can get from this one guy. It was unbelievable: he’s just short of 70 and it teaches you a thing or two about performance. He came on and started Lust for Life and then, before you know it, he’s jumped into the crowd. It was absolutely fantastic.
6 | Bar
Bar Hemingway at the Ritz, Paris
There are loads of little dive bars that I love and the Hemingway is obviously the antithesis of that. It’s posh – very posh – but it’s the one bar that gets me really excited. It’s not just going to a bar; you don’t really know what’s going to happen. They have all these typewriters and they encourage you to write stuff and leave it. There are just ghosts there, you know? You can tell quite a lot of debauched shit has gone on. I’ve had so many fantastic nights there. And there’s a brilliant barman I’ve been friends with since first going – he actually bar-tended at my wedding.
7 | Book
Tragically, I Was An Only Twin by Peter Cook
This is the last book I read. I’ve recently relocated to LA so I’m finding myself gravitating towards very English things as an antidote. Peter Cook is a sort of absurdist philosopher: his humour is unreal and the observations say a lot about the state of humanity. There’s a poem called Black and White Blues which is really beautiful. There’s a section called Spindly Legs, about how his life has been ruled by having spindly legs. It’s full of tiny observations that I find fascinating.
