News December 2002

Backwards From Glasgow

I’m in Glasgow now. I was hoping to do on the spot reports from Sheffield, Grimsby, Leeds and Hartlepool but one way or another there hasn’t been time and now I’m half way through what people have called "The Scottish Leg". I’ll just have to work backwards, or sideways in an adverse direction.

Aberdeen was a long way from anywhere. I arrived in the dark and later on I left in the dark, and in between I played to thirteen people. One of them was a university professor specialising in soil. He came with a friend who was also a soil specialist. He was in an ecstatic condition and when I asked him halfway through the set if he was all right he told me that Whole Wide World was the first record he ever bought and that he couldn’t believe it that he was here now listening to me playing because I’m his favourite artist.

I knew the sound man, Alan, from a rehearsal room in London called Atlanta Rehearsals that we used back in 1979 and 1980 when I was on Stiff. He worked there, and once we auditioned him for the band. He didn’t get the job even though I thought he was good – the rest of the band couldn’t understand his nervousness. We had to have a muso guitarist that probably works for in insurance company now. Alan’s still playing – and he’s got a Gibson 345 that belonged to Jimmy McCulloch. I think we made the wrong decision. He made a good job of the sound as well.

There was a fuckwit there who used to be in the Desperate Bicycles. Since then he’s been to sea and worked on oil rigs. He was drinking a lot. He got on my nerves so I told him to fuck off. I’ve just got an email from his girlfriend moaning about being a victim of society because she went to special school – or maybe it was him. She signed it ‘an ex fan’. I don’t care – they can both fuck off. I’m just telling you this so you’ll know what it’s like – I meet all sorts but most of them are really nice, kind and thoughtful. It’s just the occasional twat… Really I’d like to have my friend Johnny Green, the old Clash road manager, looking after things for me on the road, but I can’t afford him. He says he’d love to do it and regards the dispatching of twats as one of the perks of the job.

What else can I tell you – underneath the yuppyfication Sheffield was just like it used to be. I stayed in a hotel that had somehow tumbled into the gap between DSS and asylum seekers. The mattress was little more than a set of springs and the staircase was thick with the stench of salad cream mixed with dog shit. But the Boardwalk, where I played, was great. Everybody was really helpful and I got to see Steve Harley’s ironing board which is still set up back stage exactly where he forgot it when Cockney Rebel played there the other month. I liked the audience too – I liked everybody in that audience. And I’d like to ask Julie from Wakefield to email me.

back at home in a parallel dimension

If Typhoo put the "cunt" in Scunthorpe who put the "grim" in Grimsby?

Oh, excuse my use of the non-PCC word… That’s right – Grimsby really was grim. The venue was anyway. It was a pub in a suburb somewhere between Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Actually it was OK apart from having no dressing room or backstage facilities. The PA system wasn’t up to much but the sound man did a good job with what he had.

Andy and I spent the afternoon walking along the front in Cleethorpes. We were almost seduced - to the point where we were planning an artists community. We were going to take advantage of the cheap house prices -Andy was going to live in a flat above a fish and chip shop on the seafront and I was going to eke out a bohemian existence in a chalet bungalow on the outskirts by the leisure centre. But by the time we’d done the soundcheck and come back to Cleethorpes where there was no choice but fish and chips for dinner, we’d gone off the idea.

The gig went surprisingly well. I thought it was going to be dreadful but it was fine. It wasn’t that grim at all. Afterwards I drove back to Norwich through the fog. It seemed to take all night. Andy stayed in a guest house in Cleethorpes. He had to take the smaller of the two single rooms because the larger room harboured a strong smell of TCP because apparently the lad who had been staying in it had some kind of wound. We knew this because he’d left the old dressings in the room and the owner of the guest house told us all about it.

After that there was ages of time off. I can’t even remember what I did except that I wrote a new song that I’ve been perplexing audiences up and down the country with. I think it’s called "Light Years Beyond The Sell-by Date" but I could be wrong because I haven’t decided yet. I went to the laundrette too.

On the way to Leeds I stopped off in Garforth to see the John Hornby Skewes people who distribute Dan Electro products. It’s my first piece of corporate sponsorship which is a pretentious way of saying that they’ve given me one of their new range of talk boxes and I went up there to be interviewed for their magazine.

Now I suppose I’ve got to explain what a talk box is. Basically it sends the sound from whatever instrument you put into it up a tube which you put in your mouth. You use your mouth to shape the sound and redirect it into a microphone. One of the first records to employ this was Show Me The Way by Peter Frampton back in 1977. I believe Bon Jovi is famous for it too but I have no interest in Bon Jovi so I couldn’t really tell you. Noel Gallagher used one on the first track on the second Oasis album (can’t remember the name of the track). It’s an extremely unhygienic device and I’ve been told that excessive use can loosen your teeth. I don’t believe this – I just think that too much mouth manipulation could lead to a lantern-jawed American look, so I’m being very careful.

Leeds, Hartlepool and onwards to Aberdeen

The New Roscoe was basically a pub. Everywhere you looked there were copper kettles and Toby jugs, carriage lanterns and pictures of olden tymes. In amongst it there was a lighting rig and when we got there they were installing a large PA system. I was told that there would have been more people if Badly Drawn Boy hadn’t been playing at the university but even so it wasn’t at all bad.

After that it was Hartlepool by way of Middlesborough. I was on a programme on Radio Newcastle via a remote link at BBC Radio Cleveland in Middlesborough. It was a bit of a nightmare because there was a delay on the line so that the end of everything I said was repeated back to me. It was all right as long as I kept talking but the slightest gap lead to extreme confusion, especially as I was very tired. I had to keep taking the headphones off in order to string a sentence together and then I couldn’t hear what the woman was asking me at the other end. I’m sure she thought I was retarded.

In Hartlepool we stayed in a hotel that had a heating problem – you couldn’t turn it off. The Studio is a very nice venue. It’s an old church. The sound man was really good. It’s a shame that the people promoting the gig went home before I started and it’s also a shame that they promoted it as some sort of punk night. I think punk turned into something that punk wasn’t when punk started. I identified with it quite strongly back in ’76 and ’77 though I was never sure if I was actually punk or not – I don’t think I had the time to wonder if I was or not and it didn’t really seem to matter either. I know now that I can’t relate in any way to the punk bands that have carried on like 999, the UK Subs, the Vibrators, Chelsea and whoever else is sludging around out there. These people have nothing to do with the old punk ethic anyway. If it has carried on it’s through dance music and rave. I don’t know what punk is now but not long ago punk was making a record in a bedsit on an Atari computer from a car boot sale with a pirate Cubase programme. It stopped being anything to do with middle-aged men with guitars a long time ago and I don’t think it ever had anything to do with a multi-coloured mohican – that was just postcards of the King’s Road. But fuck it, I don’t mind listening to the odd Sex Pistols record.

Someone shouted ‘Fuck you’ at the gig. I said I’d love to – I’d love to fuck myself, I can’t imagine that anybody wouldn’t like to fuck themselves – it’d be the best fuck you could ever have. The only trouble is I’d have to walk round the front to kiss myself. I think that was a bit much for some of Hartlepool’s finest. Back at the hotel it was hotter than hell. There was another Sheffield style hotel bed - I think they're made by a specialist firm somewhere. The hotel was on the seafront and it was blowing a gale but I had to open the window as wide as it would go to let some cold air in because it was impossible to turn the radiator off. Then I had to tie the curtains in knots to stop them and the curtain rail from coming adrift in the resulting hurricane. I wedged the door with coffee whitener packets to stop it rattling and then, because I was burning up and rapidly dehydrating, I soaked a bath towel and hung it over the radiator where it dried off in minutes. After that I lashed myself to the bed (or specialist spring contraption) and sailed the room through the night. Just thinking about it gives me trouble breathing.

The next day I stayed on in Hartlepool and spent a day in the studio at the Studio recording a new track called Bungalowland. They’ll use it on a promotional CD to advertise their studio and I’ll use it on my album. I think I’ve got two and a half tracks recorded so far! We stayed in a different hotel that night. It was run by a slighty daft seventy-eight year old woman. When we got there she said 'I bet you can't guess what my nephews do.' We couldn't, so she told us that they ran the Manic Street Preachers. Apparently there are millions waiting for the boy who vanished. It crossed my mind that with a bit of work I could come back as him. It crossed Andy's too but I think his height's against him. Her son and daughter-in-law own lots of hotels and she always wanted one so they got her one of her own. At a top level meeting later on in my room Andy described it as a vanity hotel. It was much better than a normal hotel - it didn't smell funny, it had normal heating and best of all, it had proper beds. Breakfast was hilarious - everytime somebody came into the breakfast room the old lady popped out of the kitchen looking incredibly bright eyed and enthusiastic, like a small curious rodent. Next time I'm in Hartlepool I'm going to stay there.

The following morning - well, all day actually, I drove to Aberdeen which is where I came in, and as I said, it’s a long way from just about everywhere. It took all day to get there and half the night to get to Glasgow afterwards and that's where I am now.

not in Glasgow