NME Special-1 August 2015 PDF

* * * 1 3 2 PAG E S * * *
M A S S I VE
C O L L E CTO R S
SPECIAL 2015
ED I TION
Own a piece of history
5O ERS
P O S T atest
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The gr in
covers y
tor
N M E his
The best of
Celebrating the first chapter

1952 – 2O15
29 JULY–26 AUG 2015 £3.50

& FUTU RE OF M USIC
T H E PA S T, P R E S E N T
US$9.50 ES€5.35 CN$8.99

N E W M U S I CA L E X P R E S S | 1 AU G U ST 2 0 1 5
4 LETTERS 6 HISTORY 106 LIVES

Whether it was called From You As NME prepares to make its We revisit some of the most
To Us, Angst, Fanmail or Sounding great leap into the future, we look monumental onstage moments here,
Off, the NME letters page has back over 63 years of the world’s from early Arctic Monkeys shows to
always been the place to tell us finest music magazine, from its Rage Against The Machine sticking
when we were right, when we were origins as a Tin Pan Alley jazz mag it to The Man in Finsbury Park via
wrong, and why we should give to the bicep-troubling bumper The Libertines playing a squat in
you a job – and that’s just Morrissey. issue you hold in your hands now. east London. You had to be there!
Read his many missives and In the intervening years, we launch But not if you read NME…
other entertaining celebrity the singles chart, redefine rock
communiqués here. journalism, throw countless awards
bashes, make and break a million 124 PETER ROBINSON
careers and argue endlessly about VERSUS THE WORLD
what goes on the office stereo. The
It was a sad day for pop music
story so far of NME is here.
when NME’s Peter Robinson retired
his long-running Versus column,
14 BREAKING NEWS in which stars of the day were
While the world occupied itself subjected to a dizzying barrage
with the moon landing, royal of personal, surreal and downright
3
weddings and successive economic rude questions. The best are
COVER: MARTYN GOODACRE, DENNIS MORRIS, CHALKIE DAVIES, STEVE DOUBLE, ELLIS PARRINDER, PIETER M VAN HATTEM, KEVIN
crises, we’ve always been more collected here.

CUMMINS, DEAN CHALKLEY, ZACKERY MICHAEL, EAMONN J MCCABE, TOM OXLEY, ANDREW KENT CONTENTS: DEAN CHALKLEY
interested in what The Beatles

had in their sandwiches. NME has 126 THRILLS
been documenting the moments
We return to NME’s long-running
that shook the music world for more
‘humour’ page Thrills, in which fake
than six decades; we look back on
Wu-Tang members rub shoulders
some of them here.
with made-up techno DJs, and
we visit Mark E Smith’s house and
26 FEATURES investigate the curious phenomenon
We throw open the NME archives of the “C-bag”.
to revisit pivotal encounters with
a troubled Nirvana, an enigmatic 128 HOW THE HELL
Bowie, Morrissey in his pomp and
more. With words by some of DID THAT HAPPEN?
NME’s biggest names through the Damon dressed as Debbie Harry?
ages, from Danny Kelly to Charles That happened. As did Aphex Twin
Shaar Murray, Steven Wells and downing a bowl of lemons and
Johnny Cigarettes, here are some of us killing off a made-up band in a
NME’s best ever features. bus crash. How did it all happen?
Because we just did it!
41 THE 50 GREATEST
NME COVERS
VOT E
Clear a lot of space on your wall –
we’ve selected 50 of the most iconic
NME covers of all time and reprinted FOR YOUR
them in all their glory. Features: The FAVOURITE
Stone Roses, Joy Division, Amy
NME.COM
Winehouse, Blur, Björk, Rihanna, Daft
Punk, Ramones and many more.
1 AU G U ST 2 0 1 5 | N E W M U S I CA L E X P R E S S
►Missives from famous NME readers, and a word about the future – we throw parties!” and
“It doesn’t bother us when
people say that we can’t
EDITOR’S LETTER play, when we met we
actually couldn’t”, etc, etc,
Dear readers, but all these sweeping
Before we begin the next chapter in created the news. We were the news. special. We could never include statements were launched
NME’s history, it’s important to If you’re worried that this is the bell every massive moment in our in 1973, and when those
celebrate the first. For 63 years we’ve tolling for NME, don’t be. Evolution history, and we’re bound to have same epigrams are repeated
been passionate, argumentative and and reinvention is what NME has missed something out that meant three years later by lesser
obsessive about the music that always stood for, and it’s what NME something big to you personally (and mortals (ie Sex Pistols,
matters most to you readers and us will continue to stand for. And on duly pissed you off no doubt!) Runaways, Ramones and
staff. We were there when The September 18, when you pick up a But then, isn’t that how it’s always Kiss), things begin to look
Beatles exploded, saw first hand the copy of the new free NME magazine, been, and why you fell in love with synthetic. Methinks that
birth of punk, turned Britpop into a celebrate with us, knowing that the NME in the first place? It’s always The Dolls weren’t the ‘damp
national obsession and declared The future is very bright for this vital and been about the debate. squib’ that Nick Kent would
White Stripes the saviours of intoxicating old rag. Long live NME. have us believe because
rock’n’roll. We reported the news. We Until then, enjoy this ‘best of’ Mike Williams, Editor if you look closely at the
increasing number of British
‘punk’ bands emerging by
BIGMOUTH Pistols boast having no the shipload, you will see in
STRIKES inspiration from the New each one, a little bit of the
REPEATEDLY York/Manhattan rock scene, Dolls. I think it’s time that
Aged 15, Morrissey yet their set includes ‘(I’m NME broke the office rules
began a long-running Not Your) Steppin’ Stone’, and had an article on the
4
correspondence with the a number believed to be New York Dolls. You know it
NME mailbag on the topic done almost to perfection makes sense.
of bands he’d seen and by the Heartbreakers on November 1976
liked recently, including any sleazy New York night
the Sex Pistols, The and the Pistols’ vocalist/ A mere further mention
New York Dolls and the exhibitionist Johnny of punk rock would no
Buzzcocks. He also, in Rotten’s attitude and doubt bring yawns from all
1977, begged us for a job… self-asserted ‘love us or quarters, as its five-minute
leave us’ approach can be stint at serious musical
Today I bought the album compared to both Iggy Pop acceptance seems long
of the year. I feel I can say and David Johansen in their overdue. The elements of
this without expecting heyday. The Sex Pistols are punkitude are still apparent
several letters saying I’m very New York and it’s nice within my good degenerate
talking rubbish. The album to see that the British have self, however, and I have
is ‘Kimono My House’ by produced a band capable made the impertinence
Sparks. I bought it on the of producing atmosphere to inform the masses of a
strength of the single. created by The New York quartet infamously known
Every track is brilliant, Dolls and their many as Buzzcocks who seem to
although I must name imitators, even though it fit so neatly into the punk
‘Equator’, ‘Complaints’, may be too late. I’d love category, yet have been
‘Amateur Hour’ and ‘Here In to see the Pistols make it. eschewed from all chances
Heaven’ as the best tracks Maybe they will be able to of recognition. Buzzcocks
and in that order. afford some clothes which differ only one way from
June 1974 don’t look as though their contemporaries: they
they’ve been slept in. have a spark of originality
I pen this epistle after June 1976 (that was important
witnessing the infamous once, remember?), and
Sex Pistols in concert at I thought it was terrific when their music gives you the
the Manchester Lesser David Johansen of the New impression they spend
Free Trade Hall. The York Dolls delivered such longer than the customary
bumptious Pistols in jumble quips as: “Who cares about 10 minutes clutching the
Morrissey:
sale attire had those few music when one has such quill in preparation to write.
always has that attended dancing in sense of drama?”, “We don’t Indubitably, Buzzcocks will
something to get the aisles despite their play too good but we can hardly figure strongly – or
off his chest discordant music and dance as bad as we want”, even weakly – in the NME
barely audible lyrics. The and “We don’t hold concerts poll, and in these dark days
when Patti Smith, Loudon THAT SHIT KRAY kind of dirt doesn’t do any The Beatles began
Wainwright or even The In 1987, while doing of us any good, least of their love affair
New York Dolls fail to make time for murder at Her all Paul and I. I suppose
with NME’s letters
an impact on Radio 1 DJs, Majesty’s Prison Gartree in the story is based on the
common sense is therefore Leicestershire, notorious ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ page in 1964
not so common. Both criminal Reggie Kray single, which nearly didn’t
this letter and Buzzcocks wrote a letter addressed come out in the USA too.
themselves will probably to then-editor Ian Pye (at (As you know Northern
be filed and forgotten. But the recommendation of Songs prevented its release
for now, they are the best one “Jooles Holland”) to in Britain). If your groupie
kick-ass rock band in the ask if we’d cover his mate from LA thinks I’m trying to
country. Go and see them Pete Gillett. Knees were steal a march on Paul with
first and then you may have shaking… a live album (recorded in
the audacity to contradict Lyceum Ballroom 1969 and
me, you stupid sluts. Fillmore East with Frank
January 1977 Zappa 1971), and possibly
part of John Sinclair benefit respect. I’m in the fortunate in assorted bedrooms
After witnessing Concert (10th Dec ’71) position of being able to around England, but if
Johnny Thunders & The he must be dafter than I do what I want and at this their owners were led to
Heartbreakers live, my thought! – anyway, this is point I choose not to make them by the inside of a CD
much revered Carly Simon, a John and Yoko album to a record. cover, the true motivation
Loudon Wainwright, boot! As for the Dylan and May 1995 stretches as far as the need
Jefferson Airplane, Buffy God and Buddha rumours, to drop an esoteric title
Sainte-Marie, The New York we’ll see about that one… RICHEY GOES into a conversation in the
Dolls, Phil Ochs and Patti May 1987 PS. By the way, EMI/Capitol TO HOLLYWOOD common room. I know, I
Smith albums are presently are trying to prevent While on tour with the have to listen – and I have
smouldering on a low light. A HARD DAY’S anything recorded by John Manics in 1992, NME’s to clear up the mess. You
Don’t talk to me about any WRITE and Yoko coming out unless Stuart Bailie had this note can take a sixth-former to a
band but the Heartbreakers Barely a week went by in we admit it’s a Beatles pushed under his hotel Penguin Modern Classic but
because I just won’t listen the ’60s without a note record – ie, low royalty. door, Richey exploding The you can’t make him think.
– these boys are newer from the Fabbos arriving (They only decided this Truth behind the façade of The Marxists, Situationalists
than the New Wave and in the office. Such avid after ‘Imagine’!!) consumerist Amerikkka. [sic], pseudo-bisexual
(surprise!) they can play! readers were The Beatles, Puzzled, John and Yoko BAD POETS avec eyeliner,
What’s even more amazing in fact, that ‘From Me To January 1972 pseudo-leopardskin BAD
is that the Heartbreakers’ You’ was named after the POETS sans eyeliner and
music is both memorable NME’s letters page, then TOO RYE OI! the rest of the Cult Of
and professional, something called From You To Us. Kevin Rowland would Nothing should accept,
5
which is seemingly least The ‘Alley Cat’ mentioned often fire off poison pen for the last time, that with
expected from a New Wave in the January 1964 letter missives to NME when Richey went all feeble
band. The ’70s start here. (below) was NME’s gossip he felt slighted. Here hopes of purity and guitars
PS: I work for the Inland column. The postcard he takes issue with a May 1992 and profound graffiti. Don’t
Revenue – am I still allowed was a thank you for a Poll misinterpretation of label hold it against the lads –
to be a punk? Winners’ Party award. offers, but he would also THE LAST (WEIRD) they want to do it. They
April 1977 And come the ’70s, John take umbrage when our WORD ON THE are comfy. And they know
Lennon used the letters gossip page correspondent MANICS that there is more chance
The Nosebleeds have also pages of the music press insinuated that he’d been We think this letter means of social equality through
noticeably metamorphosed to send lengthy diatribes. seen wearing a crap coat. that Pete Doherty was conformity than through
though probably due more fine with the Manics going locking yourself in a hotel
to personnel changes than Dear Chrisp, Al and folks! Re: your piece on myself in MOR, but hated his thicko bathroom and shitting in
anything else. Last year they Having fun, we’ve ordered NME (April 15). It was nice schoolmates. your purse. Besides which,
were the entirely forgettable NME (just to read Alley Cat to see the positive mention the middlebrow ethos
Ed Banger And The of course). See you soon. of ‘Don’t Stand Me Down’ About your Manics article is far more revolutionary
Nosebleeds (who ‘created’ Ta-ta. John, Paul, Ringo, (my favourite Dexy’s LP). (NME, April 19). Mr Wells than the self-conscious
the dirge-like single ‘Ain’t George, from Paris. However, I am frustrated knows the Manics are political seriousness school
Bin To No Music School’); January 1964 at realising once again that middlebrow and they of thought.
now Banger has gone his the reason we’re not probably always have PS. That’s the final word on
own so-called eccentric way. currently recording been. Kafka, Camus and the Manics. Forever. So all
The Nosebleeds resurface is due to the lack of Proust sit snugly on shelves fanzines must stop. Let it
boasting A Front Man With an “acceptable offer be known.
Charisma. Lead singer is from an understanding May 1997
now minor local legend record company”. This
Steve Morrisson, who, in his is not true. The idea AXE HERO
own way, is at least aware that this was the case Addressed to Swells, this
that rock’n’roll is about did not come from me, note came wrapped around
magic, and inspiration. So but from the author an actual axe. Still, it was
The Nosebleeds are now December 1968 of the spring ’93 piece, better than the turd that
a more obvious rock’n’roll Stuart Bailie. He presumed Jeremy from The Levellers
group than they’ve ever If Chris Van Nose is it, he didn’t ask me. We sent to Andrew Collins…
been. Only their name can referring to John and could make a record any Pete had the last
CORBIS, GETTY
prevent them being this Yoko’s ‘Live Jam’ album, time we want. There have word on the “LET’S BURY THE
year’s surprise. it was never intended to been offers that are more Manics. Forever HATCHET” – Bono
May 1978 go out until January. This than “acceptable” in every Sometime in the late ’80s
►NME’s first 63 years in six pages
A brief history
of
DEAN CHALKLEY, ED MILES, AMY BRAMMALL, PAMELA LITTKY,

In its 63 years on the newsstands, NME has
ANDY WILLSHER, RICHARD JOHNSON

intertwined with the history of rock’n’roll more
intimately and exhaustively than any other
publication. As we prepare to make a bold leap
into the future, Barry Nicolson takes a look back
at six and a half turbulent decades reporting
from the front line of popular music
HISTORY
s any writer who’s

ever refereed the
letters page will March 7,
1952
tell you, nothing
boils the blood of
NME readers quite
like a list. Of what,
it hardly matters;
NME’s first issue hits
music fans rarely the newsstands
need an excuse to vent over
the arbitrary and subjective.
So it’s fitting that it was an
act of list-making which first and Percy Dickins, his second-in-
put The New Musical Express – command, had been far-sighted
the mongrel offspring of enough to predict the phonograph
a 1946 merger between two record’s explosion in popularity,
ailing music publications, and within a few short weeks of
the Accordion Times and the the chart’s introduction, NME saw
Musical Express – on the map. a 50 per cent rise in circulation.
In 1952, with the Musical Express (they’d long since What they couldn’t have foreseen, however, was the
dropped the Accordion Times bit) just minutes away effect the chart would have on the course of British
from going into receivership, London music promoter music and, ultimately, of the magazine itself.
Maurice Kinn agreed to buy the paper for the sum of
£1,000. On the cover of its final issue, he promised The 1950s were the age of the teenager,
readers that its new guise would be, “fresh and and of a new kind of music made for, and often by,
stimulating, because The New Musical Express will be them: rock’n’roll. While the jazz-minded Melody Maker
produced by a brand-new, handpicked staff of editorial adopted a generally dismissive view of rock’n’roll,
experts with long experience in music journalism”. seeing it as a strange American fad that would
Sure enough, The New Musical Express inevitably pass, NME looked at their singles chart and
– whose first issue was dated March saw a fast-growing niche not being
8
7, 1952 – had a vibrant, lively tone catered for by anyone else. In The
which distinguished it from the dryer, History Of The NME, his superlative
dourer style of its main competitor, chronicle of the title’s first 50 years,
Melody Maker (a rivalry which would former staffer Pat Long writes that,
continue for the next 50 years). The “by the autumn of 1956, the paper
paper continued to struggle for its was full of pieces on Fats Domino,
first eight months, however, until Elvis, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Gene
Kinn – following the lead of the US Vincent and the 13-year-old Frankie
trade magazine Billboard – decided Lymon. Reading these interviews
to publish a weekly rundown of the with wonder were hundreds of
best-selling releases in the record the children – among them John
shops of London. Topping sales Lennon, Malcolm
MICHAEL OCHS/GETTY, GETTY, ESTATTE OF KEITH MORRIS/GETTY, MICK HUTSON/GETTY,

on that first week of November 8, McLaren and Marc
1952 was American crooner Bolan – who would
CORBIS, SUZIE GIBBONS/GETTY, KEVIN CUMMINS, ANTON CORBIJN, DEAN CHALKLEY

Al Martino with ‘Here In My later shape British
Heart’ and, 3,272 weeks later, pop music”. It was
Kinn’s editorial gimmick lives an early example of the almost
on as the UK singles chart. symbiotic relationship NME has,
At a time when a at various points throughout
Introducing the song’s popularity its history, enjoyed with the
singles ‘hit was still measured musicians featured in its pages.
by the sales of its Yet precisely because of that
parade’ in
sheet music, Kinn Elvis Presley relationship, the paper’s fortunes
November 1952
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME? Major stars’ first appearance on the NME cover
►Fleetwood Mac ►The Smiths ►Oasis ►The White Stripes
January 24, 1970 February 4, 1984 June 4, 1994 August 11, 2001
►David Bowie ►The Stone Roses ►Muse ►The Libertines

July 15, 1972 November 18, 1989 November 30, 2000 June 8, 2002
►Joy Division ►Blur ►The Strokes ►Arctic Monkeys

January 13, 1979 July 20, 1991 June 9, 2001 October 29, 2005
HISTORY
have always been tied to the strength

of the scenes it reports on, and at
the dawn of the 1960s, with the
rock’n’roll craze seemingly at an end
and the British pop charts barren,
NME’s sales dwindled once more. In
1962, Maurice Kinn finally decided to
offload the paper to media magnate
Cecil Harmsworth King’s newly-
formed International Publishing
Company (or IPC) for £500,000,
though one of the stipulations of
the deal was that Kinn could stay on
as Executive Director. The sale was
a decision Kinn would come to regret
almost as soon as a Liverpool-based
stringer (and future NME Editor) The Beatles at the NME
named Alan Smith wrote the words, Poll Winners’ Party 1966
“Things are beginning to move for
The Beatles...” in early 1963.
The Beatles gave NME the first of its many second
winds. They were a cultural phenomenon the likes of
which had never been seen, but they were also right
THE BEATLES WERE A CULTURAL
on NME’s doorstep, and far more accessible than the
American rock’n’roll artists the paper had previously
PHENOMENON… THEY WERE
thrived by covering. NME fostered a close relationship
with the band, who played the inaugural Poll Winners’
ALSO ON NME’S DOORSTEP
Party in 1963, and every year after that until 1966,
where their 15-minute set at the Wembley Empire journalism struggled to keep up. Music was becoming
Pool marked their final appearance on a British stage. more expressive, more meaningful and more and more
10
Meanwhile, as London started to swing, NME writers important to the young people who consumed it, but
began moving in the social circles of bands like The the house style imposed at executive level meant that
Rolling Stones (another Poll Winners’ Party fixture), NME was writing about Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix
The Who and The Kinks, ensuring the paper became in the same glib tone we’d used for Cliff Richard.
the newsiest and best connected of the music weeklies. The weekly charts continued to dictate the paper’s
As those bands pushed pop music into ever-more direction, and as tension grew between the younger
adventurous and sophisticated territory, however, rock staffers and the middle-aged editorial team, NME
began to seem quaint, archaic and out of step.
Once again, NME entered the new decade in a
perilous position and, in late 1971, Alan Smith was
installed as Editor and given three months to turn the
paper’s fortunes around before IPC wound it up for
PAT POPE, JIMMY KING, MIKE DIVER, ED MILES, ANDY WILLSHER, PIETER M VAN HATTEM
good. But Smith would do more than that: he would

hire an entirely new staff and embark upon a root-and-
branch reinvention. “We’re happy to stick pretension
where it belongs,” he told readers in his first issue.
“Simply, NME will be an intelligent weekly paper for
music people who rate Beefheart, but don’t necessarily
slam Bolan.”
NME writers Charles Shaar Murray
Two of the new writers Smith hired – Charles
(left) and Nick Kent (far right) with Shaar Murray and Nick Kent – were integral to NME’s
John Cooper Clarke in 1978 transformation from a failing title on the verge of
closure to the most successful one in the IPC stable.
COVER STARS The artists who’ve graced the front of NME the most
MOST NME
7 COVERS
IN A YEAR
It’s a tie between
T Rex (1972) and
Oasis (2002)
Liam and Noel David Bowie Damon Albarn Arctic Monkeys Manic Street The Strokes and Julian
Gallagher 78 32 and Blur 30 29 Preachers 25 Casablancas 23
U

! "$ # $ !% & "
HISTO RY
Poached from the underground

press, Kent and Murray brought
instant depth and credibility
to the new-look NME: they
were young, passionate and
impossibly hip, and wrote
about rock music with NME journalists
the eloquent conviction Julie Burchill and
and high-mindedness Tony Parsons in 1978
it deserved. They also
looked and lived like the
artists they wrote about: At Dawn’ – would propel NME to even
it was a time of excess, of greater heights.
record company expense While the paper had given the Sex
Writer Mick Farren’s
accounts, of flying around Pistols their first piece of press coverage
1976 feature on the the world at the drop of (and was later namechecked in the lyrics
arrival of punk a hat to go and hang out of ‘Anarchy In The UK’), NME was slow
with Bowie, Jagger or to embrace punk, but the arrival of
1996
Led Zeppelin, and in true New Journalism Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill would
style, the writers themselves often became the story. soon change that. After answering an
Kent’s exploits, in particular, would become the stuff ad in the paper looking for “hip young
of legend: he would join an early incarnation of the Sex gunslingers”, Parsons and Burchill Year NME.COM
Pistols, got whipped with a motorcycle chain by Sid would ultimately come to represent
Vicious, and embarked on a doomed, smack-addled another changing of the guard: younger launched
bromance with Keith Richards that almost killed him. and better-connected to the punk
These were heady times to be an NME journalist, but
they were hazardous ones, too.
Under the influence of staffers like Charles Shaar
scene than their predecessors, their
writing gave NME an eloquence,
influence and circulation which far
2000
Murray and Ian MacDonald, the NME office became outstripped its rivals. Year NME merged
a place where editorial meetings were held in clouds
of dope smoke and copy was written on teeth-grinding
Punk politicised everything it touched,
and by the late ’70s and early ’80s,
with Melody Maker
12
amounts of amphetamines. It became a subversive NME had developed a strong social

countercultural bible, rock music’s unofficial paper conscience, editorialising against Margaret Thatcher
of record, but the arrival of punk – heralded by Mick and the National Front, championing the Rock Against
Farren’s seminal 1976 essay ‘The Titanic Sails Racism campaign and later throwing its support
behind Red Wedge, a left-wing collective of artists
committed to ousting Thatcher at 1987
£2.95
General Election. But music – specifically
new music – remained NME’s mission,
and to some extent, the
Cost of NME’s scene- paper and emergent
independent scene of
defining 1986 mail the 1980s would come to
order cassette, ‘C86’ define each other. NME
faithfully reported on the
38
goings-on at labels like
Rough Trade, Postcard and
Factory, but with its ‘C81’ and
Number of cassette ‘C86’ cassette compilations,
we also helped to define and
compilations NME contextualise these scenes
produced in the ’80s for readers who lived far from
where they were happening.
TOP MARKS 10 albums that got 10/10 in NME

►Whatever People
►AM ►Let England ►OK Computer ►Magic
Say I Am, That’s
Arctic Monkeys Shake Radiohead And Loss
What I’m Not Arctic
(2013) PJ Harvey (2011) (1997) Lou Reed (1992)
Monkeys (2006)
►Generation
►Random Access Terrorists Manic ►Out Of Time
►Stop The Clocks ►Is This It
Memories Street Preachers REM (1991)
Oasis (2006) The Strokes (2001)
Daft Punk (2013) (1992)
OASIS VS BLUR
Meanwhile, indie acts like The Smiths –
whose frontman, Morrissey, had once been The result of the NME-endorsed
a fixture of the letters page (see pages 4-5) 1995 battle of Britpop
– became the paper’s new deities.
216K
Conflict loomed, however, in the form
of the so-called ‘hip-hop wars’, when
the office became factionalised between
adherents of the predominately white,
traditionalist rock music many of the
OASIS
writers regarded as the paper’s purview, Roll With It
and the impossibly exciting sounds
NME gets political,

coming from the streets of black America.
The hip-hop warriors eventually won,
and 25 years before Kanye West upset the
274K
May 1979 rock aristocracy by announcing himself BLUR
“the greatest living rock star on the Country House
planet,” the October 8, 1988 cover of
NME declared Public Enemy “the greatest rock’n’roll
band in the world”.
Indie remained the paper’s bread and butter, THE BATTLE BEGAN AT THE NME
however, and a series of questionable late-’80s cover
stars (Cilla Black, anyone?) hinted at a scene in the BRAT AWARDS, A SUCCESSOR
doldrums. Things were briefly enlivened by the advent
of baggy and acid house, as well as the inimitable, TO THE POLL WINNERS’ PARTY
apoplectic scribblings of Steven ‘Swells’ Wells, but it
wasn’t until the arrival of Britpop that the magazine
began to flourish again. The great Blur vs Oasis sea changes in the industry it covers, bearing witness
battle began at the NME Brat Awards (a modern-day to the births of rock’n’roll, Beatlemania, punk rock,
successor to the old Poll Winners’ Party) in January hip-hop, the internet and the MP3, and in 1996
1995, and the flames were stoked launched its online arm,
further by the mischief-making NME.COM, presaging the
13
cover of August 12, 1995, in which publishing industry’s move from
Liam Gallagher and Damon print to digital. Change has been
Albarn were depicted as rival its only real constant, which is
boxers ahead of the looming chart why every generation looks back
battle between ‘Roll With It’ and on its own NME differently, and
‘Country House’. Such invariably through rose-tinted
was the appetite for all shades. It was always better
things Oasis, a recording back in whichever day
of the Gallagher brothers’ you read it, because no
riotous 1994 interview Public Enemy publication survives this
with NME’s John Harris, in 1988 long by staying the same:
titled ‘Wibbling Rivalry’ the paper has always had
and released on Fierce to adapt to the times, and
Panda, even managed to sneak into the move with them when necessary. Across every
UK singles chart. epoch of rock’n’roll, through the ups and downs,
In the modern era, NME was the first the lulls and booms, NME has always been at
major publication to champion bands like the forefront of new music, a source not only
The Strokes, The White Stripes, Arctic of news and reviews, but of debate, dissent,
Monkeys and countless others who would and above all, passion. We approach the future
Swells (left) living the go on to set the musical agenda for the next cognisant of the most valuable lesson learned
journalism dream in Florida decade. Throughout its existence, the paper from our past: that music doesn’t stand still,
has weathered huge musical and technological and we can’t afford to, either. ▪
NME IN THE 21ST CENTURY The artists who have dominated the cover since 2000
Radiohead and
The Strokes The Vaccines,
6 Arctic
Oasis Arctic Arctic Kasabian and The Libertines
5 Franz Muse Monkeys Arctic Monkeys Monkeys
Monkeys and Noel
4 Ferdinand Gallagher
Oasis Arctic
3 The Strokes, Gorillaz, Kaiser The
Monkeys The Stone Arctic
Courtney Love and Chiefs Libertines
2 Roses
The White Stripes Monkeys
1
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
►Scoop! From Beatlemania to Pussy Riot, a look back at the biggest news stories and strangest
Beatlemania
November 1963
I
t was a new dawn for rock’n’roll as The acknowledged by a report on the 1963 Royal
Beatles and their mop-topped ilk began Variety Show – the one where John Lennon
to dominate the news pages of NME, even told the toffs to “rattle your jewellery” – which
happenings from NME’s history – and how we covered them
if they continued to be asked the same marvelled at the fact that The Beatles got
tame questions (who’s the strongest Beatle? through their set “without a scream!”
Ringo, because he has to carry the drums).
The hysteria surrounding the band was
Elvis meets
The Beatles
August 1965
A
rguably the two most
important musical forces
of the 20th century, Elvis
and The Beatles crossed
paths only once: on August 27,
1965, at Presley’s home in Bel
Air, California. It took three days
of secret planning to set up, and
NME’s Chris Hutchins was the
EMILY MACKAY, JAZZ MONROE, LEONIE COOPER
only journalist allowed to attend.

What he saw was remarkable: Elvis,
WORDS: SAM RICHARDS, BARRY NICOLSON,
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and

George Harrison jamming together
(“Too bad we left the drums in
Memphis,” Elvis told Ringo) and
casually chatting into the wee
hours about music, cars and life on
the road. It was a fly-on-the-wall
experience like no other, even if
The Beatles later admitted to being
unimpressed by the King’s banter.
B R E AKIN G N E WS
Hendrix hits
London
January 1967
I
n early ’67, NME was wowed by the “scene’s wildest raver”! As Jimi’s version he loved sci-fi, hated miming, and that
arrival on our shores of a strange, of ‘Hey Joe’ climbed the charts, NME’s a lot of his songs came from dreams: “I
exotic creature called Jimi Hendrix. John King got to know the “nervous, wrote one called ‘The Purple Haze’ [sic]
He wore frilly blouses! He played gentle kind of person” behind the “Wild which was all about a dream I had that I
guitar with his teeth! He was the Jimi Hendrix” image, discovering that was walking under the sea.”
15
Dylan’s Isle Of
Wight comeback
August 1969
T
he inaugural 1968 Isle Of about Richard Green’s NME
Wight festival, headlined report is how little things have
The Rolling Stones by Jefferson Airplane,

had been a modestly
attended affair. But the following
changed when it comes to
music festivals. Even back in
the summer of ’69, attendees
in Hyde Park year’s crowd numbered in the
hundreds of thousands, all
were already grumbling about
delays, short set lengths, taxi
of them there to witness one drivers charging inflated fares
July 1969 of the festival industry’s first and – worst of all – “the people
major coups: the return of who asked seven-and-six for a
T
he Rolling Stones’ first white butterflies – although half Bob Dylan. Following his 1966 hamburger and chips”.
live show in two years of them fell dead from their boxes motorcycle accident,
was meant to be their due to lack of airholes. NME’s Dylan had largely retired
chance to introduce new Nick Logan wasn’t exactly swept from public life, so
guitarist Mick Taylor. But when his away with emotion: “Mick Jagger… interest in his first live
predecessor Brian Jones drowned shook his bottom, as is his wont, performance in three
in the pool of his Sussex mansion and I, after six hours of earthly years was naturally
two days beforehand, the purpose contact with Hyde Park, made huge, and watching
and tone of the free festival the discovery that by pressing my intently from the crowd
became very different, with palms to the grass I could lever were members of The
Jagger reading the poem Adonais mine a glorious inch above the Beatles and the Stones.
(Shelley’s elegy for Keats) and ground and for a brief moment Yet what’s most striking
releasing hundreds of cabbage- alleviate the discomfort.”
Bowie’s ‘Nazi’
salute
May 1976
A
few days after foolishly
suggesting to reporters
that Britain could benefit
from a fascist leader, David
Bowie turned up at London’s Victoria
station making what looked like a Nazi
salute from the back of his Mercedes
convertible. NME’s report was more
16
concerned with Bowie’s failure to address

the crowd than any perceived Nazi
undertones. Bowie has always claimed
he was simply waving to fans, blaming
his brief obsession with fascism on the
coke-fuelled delusions of the Thin White
The Who smash

Duke. However, NME was not prepared
to give self-indulgent rockers an easy
ride for much longer. A few weeks later,
in the June 19 issue, Mick Farren would
their gold discs pen a legendary NME editorial entitled

‘The Titanic Sails At Dawn’, calling time
on ’70s rock star decadence and helping
January 1972 to usher in the punk revolution.
T
he Who wrote the book on
rock’n’roll auto-destruction: Pete
Townshend was the first rocker
to trash his guitar, while Keith “You dirty fucker!”
Moon, on the band’s US TV debut, filled
his bass drum with explosive charges, December 1976
slightly deafening himself. So it was little
T
surprise to find them, at an afterparty he nation was before topping that with
for a less-than-satisfactory gig at the LA expecting to watch an “You dirty fucker!” and
Forum, smashing the shit out of 32 gold interview with Queen, “What a fucking rotter!” NME
discs presented to them by their label. when instead it got published the whole hoo-ha
Townshend instigated the destruction, an unexpected gob-full of “unexpurgated” and reported
then “just as suddenly, the other three punk. “You’ve got another on the banning of the Pistols’
were on top of him”, reported NME’s five seconds. Say something UK tour and the ‘Anarchy
Chris Van Ness, “and the entire display of outrageous,” goaded Thames In The UK’ single. Malcolm
gold, chrome and platinum flying about TV’s Today host Bill Grundy. McLaren is quoted as saying
the stage. Mick Jagger jumped up and “You dirty bastard!” offered that Jones merely used
down, encouraging the carnage. Just the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, language “in everyday use”.
another simple evening in the simple
lives of The Who.”
B R E AKIN G N E WS
Bob Marley’s
One Love
Peace Concert
April 1978
T
he One Love Once a revolutionary
Peace Concert firebrand, the singer
at Kingston’s seemed, this time, to
National Stadium sympathise with the
was crucial not just for politicians. Maybe he
Bob Marley – whose was just sick of fighting
return marked his first (unlike band member
appearance on home soil Bunny Wailer, who had
since an assassination a machete slung round
attempt in 1976 – but for his waist), but Marley
the whole of Jamaica. worked political magic.
Warring political rivals The concert climaxed
Michael Manley and as he brought out
Edward Seaga had Manley and Seaga for
finally declared peace, ‘Jammin’’, linking their
but, at a time when hands together in one
police brutality was of the decade’s most
stoking youth distrust of enduring images.
authority, it fell to Marley
to unite the people.
17
NME’s Neil Spencer
slowly came round to
Marley’s myth-making.
John
Rock Against Racism rally Lennon’s
April 1978
murder
W
ith punk having
revolutionised not December 1980
only the music we
A
covered but the way shining symbol of the promise of the 1960s,
we covered it, NME threw its cruelly extinguished by the hand of an angry
support behind the Rock Against lone nutcase: the death of John Lennon was
Racism campaign, set up in 1976 rock’n’roll’s JFK moment, and no-one who was
to counteract the rise of far-right alive at the time would ever forget where they were when
they heard about it. In addition to a blow-by-blow account
CHALKIE DAVIES, ADRIAN BOOT, DENNIS O’REGAN
groups. The 1978 rally saw almost

100,000 people march from of what went down that fateful night in New York, NME’s
Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park coverage also included information about Lennon’s final
for a special concert headlined interview (given to BBC Radio 1 days before his death), a
by The Clash. To commemorate reflection on his five years away from the spotlight, and a
the event, NME ran a cover image personal reaction piece from Charles Shaar Murray, which
taken from the demo itself: a sea perfectly articulated the sense of anger and confusion felt
of Anti-Nazi League and pro- by millions around the world. “Next week we can talk about
immigration placards, juxtaposed Lennon’s life, his music, his contribution to the medium in
with the grotesque effigies of which he worked,” wrote Murray. “Today we just deal with
National Front leaders Martin the sorrow and the anger, and rage at the futility and the
Webster and John Tyndall. injustice and the madness.”
Fela Kuti raises
the dead
January 1984
F
ollowing a Brixton Academy show by
Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, NME’s Vivien
Goldman was lured to a small club
performance by Kuti’s “spiritual advisor”
Professor Hindu with the promise of a full-on
resurrection. At Hampstead’s Country Club, she
duly witnessed a bizarre ritual in which a man had
his throat cut with a machete before being buried
outside the club. Two days later she was back to
see his body hauled out of the ground before, with
a shout of “Pollutina Hezekina!” and a few kicks to
the chest, the Professor returned the man to the
land of the living. It seems that spending 48 hours
in the ground hadn’t dampened the victim’s libido:
when Goldman attempted to interview him, he
could only say: “I love you. Come to my hotel.”
18
Live
Aid
July 1985
Ad-Rock in the dock
June 1987
F
ollowing the success of 1984’s Band Aid
A
campaign, Bob Geldof rallied a cast of rock ccompanied by women in on assault charges. As NME reported,
megastars for two televised concerts in cages, a 24-foot hydraulic penis it was only one of several ignominies to
London and Philadelphia, raising over £50m and tabloid accusations of befall the budding rap brats on these
for African famine relief. NME’s tone was sceptical, verbally abusing disabled kids, shores: MCA had a drink thrown in his
epitomised by headlines such as ‘Fame Against Beastie Boys’ maiden UK tour ended face in a London club, while they had
Famine’ and a nagging feeling that, in Don Watson’s in a riot when their Liverpool show to cancel their Glasgow show because
words, this was “corporate pop turned corporative was abandoned after only 10 minutes no hotels would agree to put them
charity”. Paul Du Noyer, reporting from Wembley as a hail of beer cans hit the stage. up. Was this opprobrium deserved?
Stadium, acknowledged that “at worst… it means Frustrated, the Beasties started batting Not according to NME reviewer Gavin
you’ve got some hypocritical bastards in the pop the cans back into the crowd, where one Martin, who called them “genuinely
world walking round with dry-cleaned consciences”. was alleged to have hit a 20-year-old liberating… the air of threat and menace
Ultimately, though, he was moved by the event and fan in the face, landing Ad-Rock in court is not present in their cartoon-iverse.”
noted that, for the first time since the ’60s, the rock
aristocracy were “starting to look at the wider world
again, through thoroughly practical eyes”.
B R E AKIN G N E WS
The Smiths split up

August 1987
W
hoever says The limp on? EMI’s A&R man, having
Smiths have split only just signed the band, was
shall be severely optimistic. But despite the vague
spanked by me with mention of “other guitarists”, two
a wet plimsoll,” quipped Morrissey weeks later NME announced with
as the vultures circled, but the finality: “The Smiths are dead.”
NME newshounds would not be Poignantly, the same issue carried
denied – the following week they a review of what was sadly now
reported that Johnny Marr had to be the band’s final album,
left the band. “The thing that ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’,
used to make me happy was “a masterpiece that surpasses
making me miserable,” explained even ‘The Queen Is Dead’ in
the guitarist. Could The Smiths poetic, pop and emotional power”.
Richey
Manic is
“Acid 4 real
crackdown” May 1991
19
F
November 1988 ollowing their gig at
Norwich Arts Centre,
A
fter 62 people Manic Street Preachers
were arrested sat down with NME’s
at an “acid Steve Lamacq to talk about
house party” credibility, conviction and
in Ipswich – the latest “what a sham some people
in series of police think they’ve become”.
raids in response to After the interview finished,
media-generated guitarist Richey Edwards
acid house hysteria delivered a macabre coup de
– NME attempted grâce to Lamacq’s sceptical
to disentangle fact argument by picking up
from tabloid fantasy. a razor blade and carving
Naturally, it suspected ‘4 REAL’ into his forearm.
the Murdoch press “As Richie’s arm turns into
of attempting to a wash of blood,” wrote a
orchestrate a police shocked and shaken Lamacq,
crackdown on a “my mind wakes up to the
potentially subversive situation and I get away to
youth culture. “The tell their manager to help him
PAUL SLATTERY, DAVID BAILEY, KEVIN CUMMINS, ED SIRRS
press… has meshed out.” Edwards was rushed to

drugs and acid house hospital, where he received
into a bog-eyed 17 stitches. The incident
dribbling bogeymen in caused a sensation, and the
a smiley T-shirt,” wrote frantic debate in the NME
Steven Wells. Some office about how to cover
scene pioneers were it – recorded for a BBC radio
already bailing as a documentary – was issued
result of the unwanted as a B-side on the Manics’
attention. “Anyone who ‘Theme From MASH (Suicide
holds a warehouse Is Painless)’ single, entitled
party now must be ‘Sleeping With the NME’.
mad,” said DJ Nicky
Holloway. “As for acid
house, it’s finished.”
The Stone Roses:
Gotcha!
May 1993
F
our years since the release of their the band weren’t particularly keen to talk
epochal self-titled debut, The to us, so we had to make do with just
Stone Roses’ inability to produce a few snatched photos of Reni’s drumkit
a follow-up album had led many to and Ian Brown walking to his car, plus
speculate that the band were finished. the shocking revelation that the band
And so NME turned supersleuth, tracking had stopped wearing flares. Who says
the Roses down to a rehearsal studio in NME hasn’t brought you the biggest
suburban Manchester. Strangely enough, scoops down the years?
B R EAKIN G N E WS
The KLF ambush

the Turner Prize
December 1993
T
he KLF’s expert-level trolling she did, reluctantly, at the last minute).
of the 1993 Turner Prize was No-one quite understood what the point
one of pop’s most spectacular was, but NME certainly revelled in the
publicity stunts. Having set up anarchy of it all, as did Factory Records
the K Foundation award for the “worst boss Tony Wilson, who told us that, “The
artist of the year” – the shortlist was K Foundation is a very peculiar avant
identical to the Turner Prize’s – merry garde group whose ideas are as valid
pranksters Bill Drummond and Jimmy as anything the Turner people do.” The
Cauty nailed £40,000 in cash to a frame following year, Drummond and Cauty
and promised to burn it unless winner would go one better by burning £1m in
Rachel Whiteread accepted it (which cash on the Isle of Jura.
BREAKI N G N EWS
Kurt’s
suicide
April 1994
T
he news that Kurt
Cobain’s body had
been found in his
Seattle mansion
was announced on April 8,
a Friday. NME editor Steve
Sutherland was working late,
and called an emergency
editorial meeting. “There’s
nothing useful in the papers,
on the radio or on TV, so
it’s up to us,” he told staff.
“The burden of covering
this story responsibly for
an NME readership that’s
The battle of Britpop
likely to be devastated when
the paper hits the streets
August 1995
I
falls squarely on us.” The
cover was respectfully bare, t was the chart battle brought forward the release have stopped ringing and
the news report stark and (and NME cover) that of their new single ‘Roll With the hype and hysteria have
comprehensive, covering defined an era. In the red It’ to set up a decisive head- finally died down – are the
the missing persons report corner, the lairy northern to-head with Blur’s ‘Country true, undisputed people’s
filed by Kurt’s mother, barbarians of Oasis; in the House’. NME assumed the champions of British
22
his disappearance from a blue corner, the soft southern Don King role, styling its rock’n’roll”. Blur won this
Hollywood rehab clinic and wankers of Blur. The feud cover after an iconic Ali battle, selling 274,000
the confiscation of his guns began with some choice vs Fraser poster. Inside, copies to Oasis’ 216,000. But
by police. Next to it was language at the NME Brat Andy Richardson talked up Damon would soon tire of
was a tribute by Keith Awards in January 1995 and the significance of a clash the contest, complaining that
Cameron: “Spare him the intensified over the following which would decide “who people were blasting Oasis at
deification that traditionally months until Oasis cheekily – when the cash registers him everywhere he went.
accompanies our talented
youth; his is not a glamorous
rock death but a pointless
waste of life.”
Jarvis vs Jacko
February 1996
I
f you think Kanye pioneered the
awards ceremony stage invasion, think
again. At the ’96 Brits, Jarvis Cocker
sabotaged Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth
Song’ performance in a stunt that divided
the country and, ultimately, cemented his
status as Britpop’s rebel prince. It was all
sparked by Jackson’s outré performance – a
quasi-Biblical spectacle full of worshipping
kids that seemed somewhat tasteless in light
of his child molestation charges. Sensing his
opportunity – and with nary an “I’mma let launched a child into the audience. While the
you finish” – Jarvis scrambled onto the stage tabloids missed the point and fumed – “We’ll
and wafted his bum at the audience. He was sue Pulp lout!” ran the Daily Mirror’s headline
pursued by a clumsy security guard who – NME had some “Jarvis Is Innocent” T-shirts
barrelled straight into the kids’ choir, leading rushed to the printers, which the band
to some bizarre accusations that Jarvis had proudly sported on their arena tour.
B R E AKIN G N E WS
Libs reunited
Tupac
October 2003
A
t 7.45 on a nippy snappy one-liners. But as
shot October morning,

NME rocked up
to Wandsworth
their moving, triumphant
reunion show that night
proved, this was a poignant
September 1996 Prison with Carl Barât to moment. “If Carl hadn’t been
celebrate the release of one there at the gate I wouldn’t
J
ust before the East Coast-West Coast rap wars got Pete Doherty. A few months be sat here now,” Pete
alarmingly real, Tupac Shakur renounced thug life earlier Pete had failed to reflected. “I think I’d be at
amid premonitions of a violent death. Tragically, his turn up for The Libertines’ the bottom of the river.”
fears came true. NME’s first story went to press as the European tour, prompting
rapper clung on to life at a Las Vegas hospital. The next week, an in-band crisis, before he
an obituary thoughtfully detailed Shakur’s tragic journey was sent down for robbing
from arts and ballet student to rap casualty, without glossing Carl’s flat. But NME found
over his history of sexual assault. In the same issue, Angus the pair in bright spirits: as
Batey went in deep on the East Coast-West Coast feud. At a Pete spied his old comrade
watershed moment for hip-hop, Batey also observed a sense at the gates, he muttered,
of betrayal that Tupac’s gangster showmanship had bled into “It’s Biggles!” in a frail voice.
reality, arguing, “Shakur’s inability to disentangle the role-play In the pub later on, the pair
and posturing of his career from the all-too-real dramas of his resumed regular antics
own life proved his fatal flaw.” (“There’s an air of instability
about Carlos’ coat,” Pete
whispered at one point),
23
quoting Oscar Wilde and
William Blake while trading
Radiohead
break the
music industry
October 2007
J
ust as the music industry seemed to have dealt
with illegal downloaders, Radiohead dropped
their bombshell: a post on their official site
announced that their long-awaited seventh
album ‘In Rainbows’ would be available exclusively
from the Radiohead webstore, on a ‘pay what you
want’ basis. At a stroke, the band obliterated the
long-standing strategy of drawn-out pre-releases
and left the major labels pondering their relevance.
“It’s not a fucking big deal, it’s just a piece of music,”
protested Thom Yorke. But NME disagreed, hailing
the move as “a challenge [to] the way we consume
music, potentially revolutionising the entire music
industry in the process”.
Jay Z
conquers Glasto
June 2008
S
24
even years before Kanye, Jay Z made history as the

first ever hip-hop artist to headline Glastonbury’s
Pyramid Stage. “In case you didn’t get the memo,
I’m Jay Z and I’m pretty fucking awesome,” he
proclaimed after walking on to a karaoke version of
‘Wonderwall’, a neat kiss-off to Noel Gallagher, who said
he was the “wrong” choice to headline. “This is historic,”
Amy wrote NME’s Tim Chester. “Hip-hop is being embraced
with diamond-shaped arms, punters of all persuasions
Winehouse’s
hanging on Jigga’s every word.”
death
July 2011
Pussy Riot
W
ith the 2006 release of the
20m-selling ‘Back To Black’,
Amy Winehouse established
herself as one of the most gifted take on Putin
singers and lyricists of her generation, but
she’d also suffered a very painful, very public March 2012
addiction to drugs and alcohol. Her tragic
R
death in July 2011 was shocking, but not ussian punk activists Pussy Riot
entirely unexpected: Winehouse seemed became a worldwide name when
to live full-time in the public eye, and we’d three of their number were thrown
all become used to seeing her at her worst. in jail after staging their feminist
Across 10 pages of coverage, however, NME “punk prayer” protest at Moscow’s
chose to focus on Winehouse at her best, with Cathedral of Christ The Saviour, as a
a heartfelt reflection on her life, her music and response to President Vladimir Putin’s
her “spiritual as much as physical” home of draconian rule. “If we are silent now and don’t speak out, then we will
Camden, also revisiting her forthright 2006 never be heard,” the group explained to NME. Nadezhda Tolokonnikov
interview with former editor Krissi Murison, and Maria Alyokhina were subsequently imprisoned for 22 months
which found her witty, honest and at the and, upon their release, took the Pussy Riot campaign global, via
peak of her powers. appearances with Madonna and on TV drama House Of Cards.
B R E AKIN G N E WS
The Stone Roses’

comeback show
May 2012
T
he Roses confirmed their momentous reunion
in front of the world’s press in October 2011,
but their first comeback show was strictly for
the hardcore. At 4pm on the day of the gig,
fans were instructed to rush down to Warrington Parr
Hall – where Ian Brown’s dad built the roof – clutching
a Heaton Park ticket, CD or a genuine item of Stone
Roses merch. Only 1,000 got in, but NME’s Hamish
MacBain was among them – as was Liam Gallagher,
who described the show as “better than sex”.
Rihanna’s transatlantic
25
torture trip
November 2012
I
n one of the most ludicrous PR stunts of recent times,
Rihanna decided to take a gaggle of 150 people –
including press and members of her fanclub – on a Boeing
777 to see her play seven gigs in seven days in seven
different countries, from Mexico to New York via Europe.
Things started well, with lashings of tequila and bonhomie,
but ended in mutiny and an in-flight streaker as Rihanna
refused to mingle with those in cattle class, was late for her Alex Turner’s
shows and generally dicked everyone about. A sympathy
hashtag for those onboard, #freetherihanna150, was coined.
From her seat in Row DVT, NME’s Siân Rowe likened the rock’n’roll rant
experience to both Lord Of The Flies and The Hunger Games.
February 2014
A
rctic Monkeys have never been ones to
play the Brits backslapping game, refusing
to attend in 2007 and turning up to collect
their 2008 awards dressed as country gents
while ripping the piss out of the Brit School. In 2014,
Alex Turner took the opportunity of winning Best
British Group to deliver a wry, rambling sermon about
the enduring nature of the music he loves. “That
rock’n’roll, it just won’t go away,” he drawled, much
to the amusement of his smirking bandmates. “It will
never die and there’s nothing you can do about it…
And yeah, invoice me for the microphone.” Putting
Turner on the cover, editor Mike Williams saw Turner’s
speech as drawing a “line in the sand” – a swaggering
endorsement of everything NME stands for.
►A selection of the greatest, most pivotal features from the NME archives
Krist Novoselic,
Kurt Cobain and
Dave Grohl share a
cigarette in Madrid
N IRVANA
“I’ve learned to
accept being
a rock star”
Following the runaway success of ‘Nevermind’,
NME Keith Cameron found a weary Nirvana being
August 29,
1992 rocked by two forces: heroin and Courtney Love
PHOTOS: STEVE DOUBLE
I
magine a wedding without a bride and deliberate, weary motions of a man three
groom. Or a banquet without the food, times his age, while Dave Grohl sat motionless
27
a candle without a flame, a film without for 10 minutes with a towel over his head,
a star. A mother without a child. It’s not every now and again moaning, “I think I’m
right – it’s not ready. It can’t happen. about to die.” Kurt, however, was remarkably
They aren’t here yet. animated, clearly happy it was all over, and
So, somewhere deep in the pristine recesses talked enthusiastically about how much he’d
of Madrid’s Velodrome, we have to wait. There’s enjoyed touring with Shonen Knife and was
a slight commotion in the distance and all now just looking forward to going home for
eyes turn at once. Here they come. She leads a rest. Considering his band had clocked
him by the hand and, from a distance, they up four months on a promotional treadmill
resemble those drawings of Christopher Robin that had become steeper and faster the
dragging Winnie The Pooh along the ground. more ‘Nevermind’ sold, he looked in pretty
As they get nearer though, the vision fades. good shape. See you next year, Kurt. He
Christopher Robin was never this female, never smiled. “Sure.”
this pregnant and Pooh never wore such a Next year turned into this year; ‘Nevermind’
sappy grin or had a blood-red lipstick welt on zoomed past Jacko, Bono and Axl. Nirvana did
his right cheek. She looks angry. He looks cute. Saturday Night Live, the Rolling Stone front
Everybody else looks relieved. Ladeeez an’ cover, landed the Reading Festival headline
gennullmen… I give you King Kurt and Queen slot, the whole shebang, and suddenly ghoulish
Courtney, newly crowned monarchs of the rumours concerning the health – physical and
former Republic of Nirvana. Pray silence for otherwise – of the frail genius at the centre
Her Majesty! “Here he is!” she shrieks. “Here’s of what was now the Nirvana Phenomenon
everyone’s little investment!” started to become commonplace. It got harder
to laugh at the weekly brace of ‘Kurt is dead’
I hadn’t seen Nirvana since December stories when various credible sources were
’91, when they’d played Les Rencontres whispering about Kurt and partner Courtney
Trans Musicales Festival in Rennes, France. Love doing heroin together, about them being
It was the band’s last date before cancelling completely out of it at their wedding in Hawaii,
the rest of their European tour due to Kurt about them going into detox and then quitting,
Cobain’s ravaged voice and, although messy about how the band were on the verge of
in places, their performance still heaved with splitting up, about Courtney doing junk while
a sometimes dangerous, sometimes carefree pregnant… As far as the tabloid music press
sense of abandon, enough to be a vivid were concerned, Nirvana were just too good
reminder of just why this band had meant more to be true.
than any other for years. In the dressing room Nirvana Inc battened down the hatches and
afterwards, all were exhausted. made to ride out the storm. It was business as
Krist Novoselic rolled a cigarette with the usual. The band were taking a break from
Dave – and it dawns on you that the overriding
issue here is not that Kurt is on heroin (or isn’t,
or was, or is and is trying to get off) but that his
wife is a grade A pain in the arse. She seems
almost universally disliked. “The Wicked Witch
each other, but they’d be working on some of the West,” is one crew member’s assessment, Nirvana involves Courtney being admitted
new material soon with a view to releasing a while someone else refers to Kurt as being to hospital in Bilbao – Nirvana’s final port of
new song as a single to coincide with Reading. a nice guy BC: “Before Courtney.” Krist and call before heading back to the US – having
Everything was fine, really it was. During the Shelli simply ignore her. The irrepressible Dave damaged her womb. She is advised to stay there
rest period I interviewed Krist by telephone and alternates that approach with some impressive for five days but insists on going back with the
asked him how the wedding of the year had mimic routines. During the Valencia show, band. Then Kurt has to shell out a considerable
gone. “Oh, quiet.” Masterful diplomacy. Krist in Courtney is sitting on the stage, near Grohl’s amount of money, maybe $25,000, for the first
fact hadn’t been at the wedding, since Courtney kit. “Courtney!” he screams in mock petulance. class plane seats so Courtney can fly home lying
had refused to let his wife, Shelli, attend. “Get the fuck off my stage!” It’s just the sort of down and a specially appointed ambulance to
Meanwhile, Kurt repeatedly and vehemently thing Courtney would say. pick her up at LA airport. OK, another story,
denied taking heroin. As stonewalls go, this For much of that day, everything is put another rumour, but who’d take the trouble
was all highly impressive. on hold – Nirvana’s soundcheck, interview, to make this stuff up? This is serious shit, and
Sure, the rumours continued, but while the NME picture session, Teenage Fanclub’s it’s no wonder some people are freaking out
Nirvana weren’t actually doing anything it soundcheck, everything – because Kurt isn’t and saying Reading will be it. Game Over.
wasn’t hard to dismiss this as nothing more around, still holed up with the missus back The End. And all this because this cool band
than the inevitable lot of a multimillion-selling at the hotel. The band’s press officer Anton sells a super tanker load of records! That’s the
rock band. After the gig at Belfast King’s Hall, repeatedly tries to speak to him but, on the disconcertingly prosaic truth of the matter.
Kurt was rushed to hospital suffering from one occasion when the phone gets picked up, In Spain, about the only times when things
acute stomach pains. “Ulcers,” says Nirvana. Courtney yells “He’s asleep” and slams it down got put in this much perspective were when
“Oh yeah,” yawns everyone else. Could so much again. Eventually she lets Anton talk to Kurt, Nirvana were actually playing – Madrid was
have changed in six months? Moving round who seems unaware of all the fuss. After four still below-par, frenzy-wise, but a thrilling
the archways of Valencia’s bullring where, hours of waiting, Steve gets a 15-minute photo- experience purely because the audience was
that night, Nirvana would give Spain its first shoot. There is no Nirvana soundcheck. so enthused by it all – and when I finally
in-the-flesh taste of what this nonsense was interviewed Dave, Krist and Kurt, away from the
all about, it was almost a relief to greet Kurt Whether heroin is at the root of panic, the waiting, the torn-up schedules – hell,
Cobain once again, a paler, bleached-haired this unreliability I don’t know for sure, nor
“Meeting Bono
bespectacled Kurt Cobain, but recognisably the am I about to proscribe the freedom – or is
same lovable scruff who late last year turned that stupidity? – of anyone to take whatever
rock’n’roll upside down with a song named after substance they choose to take. But the fact
a deodorant.
Krist ambled up to say “hi” and bemoan a
is that Courtney’s dealing the hand of an
unborn baby as well as her own. The health
made me wanna
28
chronic hangover – the inevitable punishment

for a late-night sesh with support band Teenage
of little Frances Bean Cobain is the X factor
that elevates all this second-hand scandal into give up rock’n’roll”
Fanclub – and Dave Grohl soon emerged down something a whole lot scarier, something much
the ramp that led to the sun-baked arena, all more important. She doesn’t have a choice. Dave Grohl
smiles as ever. Hmmm, I thought. This doesn’t The most recent scare story concerning
seem so bad. OK, so I’ve never seen Kurt look
quite that pale before and I’m not sure it’s
such a good idea for Courtney to be zipping Nirvana in 1992
about with Kurt on that hired motorbike while and (above right)
seven months’ pregnant but, hell, it’s not as if Courtney Love
anyone is dead.
We are sitting in one of Nirvana’s

dressing rooms after the taming of the
bullring. By Nirvana’s standards, it’s been
pretty lacklustre stuff, but the crowd didn’t
seem to mind. Kurt is showing me his glasses,
which, along with his new hairstyle, are
supposed to enable him to walk down the street
unrecognised. I suggest that people will likely
stare at him anyway. “You’re probably right.”
Krist and Steve Double are talking cameras, the
bassman’s current hobby, while Dave dispenses
beers. Courtney, meanwhile, is sounding off to
anyone within earshot about Stefanie Sargent
[lead guitarist of 7 Year Bitch, who died of a
heroin overdose in June 1992]. “People say she
was a junkie, but how do they know that?
I mean, I don’t think if you do it once or twice
it means you are hooked, that’s not a junkie.
And if you have someone with you, too, that’s
good. She was alone, though, you know that?
Still, it’s sooo rock.”
Spend two days in tour fatigues with this new,
arena-compatible Nirvana machine – “I don’t
know the names of most of the crew,” admits
N IRVANA
not even considering anything that’s happened
and maybe we can come out absolved.”
Is he worried about Kurt? “You hear all the
rumours. Just media bullshit. You gotta have
a good story.” But there’s usually no smoke
it seemed almost like old times, almost normal. without fire. “Yeah.” Silence. “Yessirree.” A I’m thinking of doing that, actually with Mark
“Petty tour drama can be an ordeal,” sigh. “And after that fire, the fire still burns… Arm and Eric from Hole. But then, I’m so lazy
considers Dave. “People have tantrums, But there’s freedom of speech. What if you with this band I couldn’t imagine being in two
people’s tempers flare. But I can block walked into a crowded theatre and yelled ‘Fire!’ bands at once. Jesus!” It sounds like you’d like
everything out. I’m not really an emotional Is that freedom of speech?” I should hope so. to escape from the limelight. Does it get you
person at all, just because I’d rather ignore Sometimes there’s an excess of freedom. “Yeah down to read every week that you are a heroin
emotion than confront it, so when it comes there is, isn’t there? People lose perspective on addict? “Yeah it does get to me, it pisses me
down to really heavy shit it kinda just breezes things. Which is really easy to do off. I had no idea that being in a
right by me. I don’t really want to get involved in artificial environments. You commercial rock band would be
in anyone else’s problems and I don’t want just accept it. Today I’m here in like this, because I’ve never paid
to be the cause of anyone else’s so I just lay Madrid and that’s just what’s attention to other commercial
low. I think maybe that’s what’ll keep me going on. There’s a light at the rock bands.”
sane through this whole trip.” What causes end of the tunnel. This is my There then follows the weirdest
the madness? “Just constant gratification is reality. It is what I have to do.” episode of a pretty weird two
unhealthy for anybody, y’know? This is why days. I’ve just asked Kurt whether
you’ve got people like Michael Jackson and Axl By the time I get to see the heroin rumours are true – to
Rose, insane rock star A or B, because they’re Kurt, it’s over an hour after the which he’s laughed, said “No!”
constantly being pampered.” show’s finished. Anton tells and made me feel his arms for
Dave’s closest brush with a total gratification me I can have 20 minutes and any tell-tale scars or holes, though
zone came when he met Bono on U2’s recent then he’s sending the other shooting up isn’t the only way to
American tour. “Fuckin’ asshole! It was such a two on to finish things off. It’s take smack – when Anton walks
bummer ’cos when I was 13 I thought ‘War’ was pretty obvious that Kurt has in with Susan Silver, manager
a great album. He reeks of rock-star-ness, he been running on reserve tanks of Soundgarden. She waves at
was not a human being. He wanted us to open for most of this Euro-jaunt. Kurt and says, “I just wanna say
up for them on tour and I said, `No, that’s not Never have I seen him so static goodnight,” then sits down next
what we’re into.’ And he said, ‘You owe it to the onstage, so apparently unmoved to him. Anton tells me to turn the
audience, you’ve got to take that next step!’ And by the whole experience of tape machine off. Why? “Just turn
I said, ‘I don’t wanna take that next step!’ He playing rock’n’roll. The contrast is made all the it off!” As well as being a sweet guy, Anton’s a
was desperately trying to make a connection. more poignant by the ‘Lithium’ promo vid and Thai boxer and he’s got one of these dogs,
‘Do you like gospel?’ ‘Er, no, not really.’ ‘So what its scenes of psyched-up mayhem from last see… So off it goes.
kind of music do you listen to?’ ‘Punk fuckin’ year’s Reading. “Yeah, last year’s shows were Susan talks intently to Kurt, looking directly
29
rock, man!’ And then of course he tells me way better,” he nods. “I don’t think we’ve had into his eyes, the gist of it being just call me if
about punk rock and he was the meaning of a long enough break. I’m still not enjoying it as there’s anything you want, then she and Anton
punk rock. After meeting that guy it made me much as I should. According to our manager leave. Erm, Kurt, about what you were saying…
wanna give up being in a rock’n’roll band.” and most of the people we work with, the break “See! She thinks I’m on heroin!” he whispers
Krist reckons he’s got his priorities sorted. that we had was too long. Everyone wants us excitedly. “She does! Didn’t you see it in her
After this tour, he’s off to Croatia to work and work all the time, and not stop. It eyes? And I’ve heard it from a whole bunch of
to see his family who live in Zadar, was only four months of relaxation and I really people, she says stuff, she actually tells people
about 250 miles up the coast from needed that. I’ve come to a lot of conclusions I’m on heroin all the time. That’s Soundgarden’s
Dubrovnik. “I try to have humility about myself within the last four months. I’ve manager, it goes from the fuckin’ highest level
about things, just be for real. ’Cos learned to accept being a rock star and how big of people in the music industry down to the
all of this is fabricated. People, the band’s become. I can at least deal with it, street punk kids.”
they build these institutions like I’m not as pissed off as I was. It’s still… I dunno, Make of all this what you will. Perhaps I was
governments or rock bands or I’m such a picky person that everything has to naive enough to suppose that, when you’ve
anything, and reality is distorted. be perfect.” sold as many records as Nirvana have, it would
Some people are worried about Does it feel like you created something that’s convey power, a means by which the band
eating and here we are off on this got to be broken down now? “Well it’s a bit could control their own destiny. And maybe it
whole rock’n’roll circus. I have to embarrassing to play in front of kids who wear has, but it also seems to have raised the stakes
take it with a grain of salt.” Skid Row T-shirts, y’know?” he chuckles. “It’s unhelpfully high. Maybe I’m reading too much
Has it changed the way you feel really hard to overcome that, to just shake it off into little things, maybe it’s all as petty as Dave
about Dave and Kurt? “No it’s pretty and say, ‘Oh well, they’re just dumb kids, maybe says and maybe I’m just fearing the worst.
much the same as it always was, they’ll throw away their Skid Row records Frankly, having spent two days looking at how
just pretty laid-back. We spent some and listen to Mudhoney because of us…’ different it is for Nirvana right now – or rather,
time away from each other just to but that story’s old. I’m tired of talking about how it was six weeks ago – I found it difficult
do our own things, but now we’re the underground. I’ve never claimed to be a not to. Reading’ll be great, just the boost they
looking forward to getting back to punk rocker, I’ve just claimed to have liked need. They can still do it, you know. Put Kurt,
how things were, lock ourselves punk rock music. I’d like to be a rhythm guitar Dave and Krist on a stage, in a rehearsal space
away and work. Our new record’s player in a band. No-one realises how fuckin’ or a studio and they can still wreak magic, the
just gotta sound different. I’ve hard it is to scream at the top of your lungs three losers who took on the world and won.
been on this big rant lately of how and concentrate on playing guitar solos. And once the baby’s born everyone’s bound to
transition is natural, continental We’re actually thinking of getting Buzz from calm down and take stock of things, and realise
drift, the seasons, the weather’s The Melvins in to play guitar with us live. what’s important in life.
different every day, people grow It’s still not gonna relieve me of my vocal Dave: “Did you know if you take the N
older and change… When I think duties, through.” and the D and the first E out of Nevermind,
of ‘Nevermind’ now I think of Oh, yes Kurt, but the band wouldn’t be the it spells ‘Vermin’?”
interviews and being famous. Now same if you didn’t sing. “No, I know that.” He Krist: “Mmm.”
I’m focusing on this new record and laughs. “Well maybe I could start another band. Kurt: “Wow.” ■
Brothers
in arms
In 1994, in the midst of their fast and furious rise,
Simon Williams joined a raucous Oasis on tour NME
to stagger from hotel bar to gig venue and back June 4,
again with the Gallagher brothers 1994
PHOTOS: KEVIN CUMMINS
L
iam: “My head’s in ruins – so’s my the floor. Noel tore Liam’s shirt off. Other
shirt.” residents, tiring of the mass brawl downstairs,
Noel: “You’re a mad cunt, you started coming out onto their balconies and
are...” shouting abuse. One particularly aggrieved
Liam: “No, you’re the mad cunt!” sort was accompanied by his girlfriend. While
30
(Repeat to fade) her lover’s attention was focused on the

It all started off normally enough. A quiet mayhem below, she would calmly open her
Monday evening in Portsmouth, a sold-out towel. At this juncture, the pissed-up band
gig for Oasis, followed by a drug pilgrimage would roar their encouragement, causing
and a ‘crap’ student party on the outskirts the baffled boyfriend to turn and find his
of town. Then back to the hotel for a few demure-looking companion safely covered
swift nightcaps. Simple, eh? In the bar, Oasis by the towel. Then he’d shout more abuse and
bumped into East 17, fresh from their own gig she’d flash again.
at Portsmouth Guildhall. And so it went, with a few more punches
“Are you Blur?” demanded East 17. thrown here and a few more items of furniture
“No, why? Are you Take That?” came the thrown there (ie, in the pool). Eventually, at
stroppy reply. While the Walthamstow terriers around six o’bleeding clock in the morning,
wisely retired to their various rumpus rooms, the night porter appeared to tell the fuzzy
Oasis settled down in the bar with a gin and thrill-seekers that, actually, if it was all right
tonic or 10. Then a bottle of champagne or two with them, he was going to knock off because,
appeared on the table. Then the barman made um, someone had called the police.
the terrible mistake of abandoning his post. It is common knowledge that hotels are
Before you could say, “Bugger me, free utterly brilliant places. Let’s face it, if you get
booze!”, two of the entourage were scrambling smashed off your nuts in the confines of your
over the bar, emptying the fridges and passing own home and gleefully decide to trash your
the bounty over the counter. One minute later, living room prior to catching a bit of shut-eye,
50 bottles of beer were being stuffed under are the cleaning pixies likely to rearrange
chairs and into innocent bags. the furniture into some kind of social order
Then things got really strange. Guitarist while your hangover works itself into a
Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs decided to go for a midday frenzy?
dip in the horribly convenient pool next to the But, hotels being hotels, when Oasis
bar. The Gallagher brothers, Noel and Liam, shamble into the bar the following lunchtime
decided to have a scrap about an ex-girlfriend. – apart from the occasional dark stare from
Allegedly. Expletives started flying. Then the receptionists – life is back to normal.
punches started flying. Then bottles of beer Stunningly overpriced pots of tea are being
started flying. Then furniture started flying. drained. Liam and Noel are comparing
Bassist Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan valiantly wounds and laughing about their fight. The
tried to separate the Gallaghers, receiving swimming pool has been cleared of chairs and
two knuckle sandwiches for his endeavours. Boneheads. And everyone decides it was the
Someone started throwing chairs at Bonehead hotel’s fault, anyway.
in the pool. Then tables. Liam had Noel on “It’s a stupid place to put a pool, innit?”
OASIS
frowns Liam. “It was asking for trouble putting

us in this hotel.”
“It’s true.” nods Noel wisely. “Those plate
glass windows are just saying, ‘THROW A
CHAIR THROUGH ME!’”
This is life on the road, Oasis style. You may
not think it’s big, or indeed clever. But it is
rock’n’roll bastard bonkers.
Our task is to follow Oasis around the
country for three nights, from Portsmouth
Wedgewood Rooms to Derby Wherehouse via
Newport TJ’s and points in between.
Fact: Oasis talk a lot of bullshit.

After the Portsmouth gig, Liam insists he’s
going to ‘sort out’ East 17 because, he alleges,
“They’ve ripped off ‘Imagine’.” Half an hour
later, the singer is insisting that all he wants
to do is sit down with East 17, neck a few beers
and sort out how they can “topple Take That”.
The same applies for Noel when he’s told
that Manic Street Preachers are coming down
to the Newport gig: “Do they wanna fight?”
asks the guitarist. Nah, the Manics don’t fight,
comes the answer. “Right!” beams Noel. “We’ll
kick their heads in then!”
Simplicity is the key: Newport, much
like any other set on the tour, is utterly
straightforward and unnervingly familiar.
There’s the Coca-Cola song! The one-that-
sounds-a-bit-like-Blur-song! The Wham! song!
31
A cover of ‘I Am The Walrus’! And no bleeding
encores! It’s the history of rock splattered
over the past 30 years from The Beatles to
Happy Mondays, played by five blokes who
scarcely move a muscle onstage, who barely
communicate between songs, and who are
hardly likely to rival Bad Boys lnc in the “Woof
woof! Down boy!” stakes.
A few more things you may or may not need
to know about Oasis on the road. Already a
seasoned autograph campaigner, Liam has
sussed that signing fans’ chests is a daft idea
because cleavage perspiration prevents your
pen from working properly. Whenever two or
three of Oasis are gathered around the piano
they will bang out a cheery version (to the
tune of The Small Faces’ ‘Lazy Sunday’) of,
“Wouldn’t it be nice to be a fucking
cock-er-nee/Wouldn’t it be nice to be in fucking
Blur – SLAG!” And Newport witnesses some
serious psychological collapse.
It may be something to do with the manner
in which Oasis valiantly attempt to get a
goodly proportion of the TJ’s crowd into the
hotel after the gig. Dispensing with the trite
formalities traditionally deployed to convince
suspicious hotel staff of their guests’ worth,
Liam simply harangues and abuses the night
porter until the poor bloke’s left with the
choice of opening the front doors or being
chased around by drunk Mancunians. It may
then be something to do with the six-hour
drinking session that ensues in – spookily
enough – the hotel’s Oasis bar. Whatever,
the following morning is a sad sight for
bloody sore eyes.
OAS IS
Bonehead has trashed his room.

You can tell this by the way the
morning staff patiently file in from
the street carrying paraphernalia
(telephones, cushions, pillow cases
scarred with tyre marks). Bonehead
would have thrown the bed out
as well but it was too big. Now
he is sitting in the lounge with a
transparent shower cap on his face,
muttering, “I can’t do it any more.”
“There’s no such word as ‘can’t,”
a worryingly wise Guigsy informs
his colleague.
“But I CAAAN’T!” howls
Bonehead. “I’m giving up this
rock’n’roll business, I’m gonna be
a Tory MP. GIVE ME A SATSUMA!
GIVE ME A SATSUMA!”
Over on the other side of the
bar, an irate Liam is throwing this
morning’s music papers around and
“If Liam’s asking
ranting about Oasis being exploited
or some such like. Noel watches
for a smack
in the mouth,
his brother, adjusts his shades and
sighs. Obviously, confronted with all
this evidence, any sane sort without
direct responsibility for this Oasis
tour would pack their bags, slink
he’ll get one”
off to the nearest mainline station
and get the first train back home to Noel Gallagher
32
normality, pronto.
Sadly, the NME crew simply sits in
the midst of the chaos and twitches. RAWK lifestyle. So their bag is speed rather “Our kid thinks that I want him sitting in a
Eventually, after losing the band transport than smack, and their attitude is based room reading a book. I don’t want that at all,
for half an hour, Oasis apologise to the staff, upon bewilderment rather than insufferable man, but he fucking winds me up. He’s the
pile into the van and head off to Derby belligerence. one person I argue with. He goes on about
armed with half a local McDonald’s. It’s one Noel’s the one with the permanent half- this and that and I’ll say, ‘Shut up, you fucking
of those afternoon-after-the-few-nights- smile who appears to get most of his kicks dick – I used to change your fucking nappies!’
before journeys, where a sense of communal from watching the rest of the band’s antics. Basically, if he’s asking for a smack in the
numbness prevails, Bonehead wants to vomit Tony McCarroll barely utters a single word mouth, he’ll get one. And the same applies to
and the tape deck blasts out The Beatles, The in the entire three days. Guigsy, general me – if I’m asking for a smack in the mouth,
Who and the Sex Pistols. Then we hit the traffic consensus has it, is coming out of his shell I’ll get one.”
jam from hell outside Birmingham. and becoming more and more unhinged the So Oasis do another cracking gig, and
When a sleek business type refuses to let the longer the tour progresses. Bonehead is simply some more substances and more socialising.
van sneak in front of his saloon in the outside bonkers. And Liam... Liam is the loose cannon, It all ends at 3am in the Britannia Hotel,
lane, the previously dozy band suddenly erupt, the one who spends 10 minutes abusing where the Buzzcocks are retiring to bed and
banging on the windows and hurling abuse receptionists and the next half-hour trying to These Animal Men cower in shady corners.
at the unfortunate driver. Then, as we crawl chat them up. Lippier than the rest, he’s always Noel Gallagher partakes of one last G&T and
through the roadworks, Bonehead spots a up for something. And when he recounts the contemplates the next step in the Oasis plan
clutch of archetypal British workmen doing Portsmouth saga to an enraptured mini- for global domination: Glastonbury. “This
bugger all and yells, “START DIGGING!” audience in the Derby dressing room, you can is another dream: I always wanted to go to
Five minutes later, and now fully warming see how much he gets off on the attention. Glastonbury but I could never afford a ticket,
to the task, Bonehead decides to stagedive. “Beer is the best drug ever!” he bellows at and now, all of a sudden, someone’s paying me
Clambering on to his seat, he throws himself one point. “I do fucking care, me.” to play to a load of people and give me beer and
headlong into the back of the van. Nothing “I feel sorry for our kid sometimes,” Noel drugs. It’s gonna be brilliant, ’cos once you’re in
wrong with that, you might say. Except had mused back in Newport. that field, anything goes. When you’re at home
Bonehead is driving. “I get all this shit going inside my head and I in your local pub and announce, ‘I’m gonna get
can write it all down and get off on that. But he my face painted like a panda’, everyone goes,
It could be said that if in hedonistic can’t, so his release is to get off his head.” ‘What the fuck does he mean? Let’s bottle the
terms Primal Scream are The Muppets, Noel admits that he worries about some cunt!’ But at Glastonbury you can take your
Oasis are more like The Muppet Babies: a of the, uh, less PC things Liam is inclined to clothes off and run around naked – that’s what
danger only unto themselves. They’re the blurt out. “There’s no need to say them, really. it’s there for! Same with this band: let your hair
sort of trainee rock’n’roll gits who may be He just sets himself up.” He talks about his down, man, have a good time, that’s what it’s
sussed enough to go backwards for their brother’s responsibility towards the band, there for. Then you wake up the morning after
musical inspiration, but they’ve mercifully pointing out that he’s representing five people, and do it again.”
left behind the nastier elements of the trad including himself. And sighs heavily again. And again. And again. And again... ■
Rhyme and
reason
NME
October 8,
34
1988
In 1988, Public Enemy were

the greatest rock‘n’roll band
in the world. Danny Kelly
visited Def Jam HQ to
hear Chuck D’s plans
for global domination
PHOTOS: KEVIN CUMMINS
PUB L IC E N E MY
the notion that rap acts can never be anything
more than interchangeable parts on a hit-
making conveyor belt.
Again, the word ‘accident’ is not part of
Chuck D’s vocabulary. “I’ll let you in on a
P
secret,” he laughs, after I’ve harangued him
ublic Enemy main man Chuck about the godlike genius of Marvin Gaye. be uniformed for easy identification. That was
D has a variety of colourful ways “When I was putting ‘...Nation Of Millions...’ crucial in ensuring that people had the space
of describing himself. Sat in Def together, I wanted it to be the ‘What’s Going and time in which to enjoy themselves.
Jam’s downtown office waiting for On’ of rap. Not in its content, but in its sense of “Now that we’re playing places with their
an audience, I’m nervous. For days arrangement and going into places no rap LP own security, Security Of The First World are
now – in the bath, in bed, on the had gone before. Now I’m not worried whether a symbol, a symbol that Public Enemy are at
plane over, and here, in my head – I’ve been people like the individual songs – and I ain’t war, and that black people should be at war
practising those two little words of greeting: going to start boasting about them – but I know to regain their enslaved minds. It’s the war to
‘Yo Chuck!’… ‘Yo Chuck!’ over and over. Like that no rap album has been made in the places regain awareness; that’s what ‘Countdown To
I said, real nervous. I made this one go. I mean, the live inserts, the Armageddon’ is about.” But the whole S1W
But most of my palpitations have nothing to beats, the totality, the attitude. seems so calculated to provoke. “Of course
do with the broadcast persona of Chuck D but “The LP is also different because it ain’t you’re going to be worried by the sight of black
rather with the realisation that has dawned on as immediate as most rap. Sometimes you men in uniform. To that extent, it’s deliberate,
me over the last few months of just what an can’t make people feel as good as they wanna of course. It makes people feel the same
important hombre he is. For what it’s worth, straight away. There are things on this LP that way I, and other people, feel when they see
and for the moment at least, Public Enemy people aren’t gonna like the first time they a policeman. Or how all the Vietnamese felt
are the greatest damn rock’n’roll band in hear them, things that you have to keep going when they saw all those uniformed Americans
the world! Now the man at the hub of their back to, things that’ll take a bit of uncovering… coming. I want everyone out there to realise
steel web of intriguing parts, Chuck D, walks It cannot easily be ignored or moved out of the that black people feel things too.”
through the door and towards me. One more way. That’s very important for rap; that idea
mental rehearsal – it’s only two words – and that the music was disposable got me hot, but The other part of Public Enemy
my mouth goes into action: “Hello, Chuck, then again it was true, until we did this album. that its inventor has to keep constantly
pleased to meet you…” tampering with is the non-musical output of
“I want everyone to
He is wearing his Los Angeles Raiders cap Flavor Flav and, more recently, Professor Griff,
and jacket; silver and black, like the sides of the way that pair behave, the things they say.
‘It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Chuck isn’t daft enough to pretend he doesn’t
Us Back’, the Raiders are the bad boys of
gridiron football, the violent outsiders that
realise black people know the value of controversy, but he’s aware
too that there has to be limits or the group’ll be
the vast majority love to hate: draw your own
conclusions. The way Chuck tells it, Public feel things too” ostracised. It’s a tough line to walk.
“Well, Flavor,” he begins slowly, “will be
35
Enemy’s ascension has been anything but Flavor. Flavor’s gonna make mistakes, but
haphazard, accidental or lucky, rather the Chuck D people aren’t going to treat his mistakes in the
result of talent bolted to scientific planning same way they’d treat one of Griff’s outbursts,
and attention to detail. where a real threat is perceived. Flavor is only a
“In the ’60s, my parents were in their 20s We had to work against that whole network of threat if everyone starts to think like him; then
so the house was full of it. First jazz, then prejudice – we had to make sure it stuck like he’s a threat to black people. I’m the mediator
Motown and all that.” There’s always been glue.” In succeeding in those missions, Public in all this. Flavor is what America would like
music in Chuck D’s life, long before the first Enemy – like Gaye, Mayfield, Sly, Davis and to see in a black man – sad today, but true
explosion of rap turned him into a crusading very few others before them – dismantled the – whereas Griff is very much what America
fanatic. Motown, Atlantic, Stax, all the giant traditional, ingrained way that black artists would not like to see. And there’s no acting
figures from the pantheon of black pop get are signed, marketed and listened to. here – sometimes I can’t put Flavor and Griff in
mentioned. Were these people heroes? “There Chuck is not inclined to make any bones the same room. I’m in the middle. When Griff
were idols that I didn’t realise were idols ’til about it. Most of Public Enemy’s success – says something too much, I come to the rescue
later… The Temptations, The Four Tops, with the listeners, with the press – is down of white people; when Flavor does something,
Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, y’know, most of to a combination of careful hard work and I come to the defence of the black public. I do
the people that get followed today except now intuition that other groups are too lazy, or constrain them, but not much, because Public
they call it ‘rare groove’.” Public Enemy offer a stupid, to employ. “It’s a science,” he insists. Enemy are the only black group making noises
fairly apocalyptic world view on most things. “I mean, rock’n’roll is there to be studied outside of their records. But that controversy
Are they part of the black pop tradition? “Well and learned about. Rap has closer links to has to be harnessed.”
yeah. Public Enemy is a reflection of the street, rock’n’roll than to any other music. What is Chuck D is either the most literate, together
of how black people are living, just as all those rock’n’roll? It’s the projection of attitude, not musician I’ve ever met, or a brilliant actor and
groups and sounds were about how we were the deliverance of sound. Attitude. Rap acts bullshitter. Probably plenty of each. He must,
living back then. That’s the problem with most have that attitude, that character, that rock I just know, have a gameplan for the Greatest
R&B today; it doesn’t reflect… the masses. bands have used to get across to the public. Rock’n’Roll Band In The World. “Public
Back then it did. Especially Motown. I study They just haven’t learned to project it.” Enemy’s programme is the taking of music
Motown: for its relationship to the streets, for Public Enemy’s biggest problems have followers, and those who are willing to listen,
song arrangements, for its ability to reach the come from the less easy to control matter to see black life as it’s lived. It’s a college course
listener’s inner feelings.” of how people respond to their image and in black life,” he laughs, “as a matter of fact it’s
stance, rather than their music. The gun-toting a whole damn degree you can earn.” Maybe,
The success of ‘It Takes A Nation…’ Security Of The First World comes to mind. I suggest helpfully, you could put the exam
goes beyond the mere quality (massive though “I’ve experienced this before, but in order to papers on the inner sleeves of forthcoming
it is) of its music and lyrics. An hour long, keep playing gigs we had to ensure that there record releases. “You’re giving me ideas!
linked by recurring themes and live inserts, was an order of those gigs we played. People Maybe we could give out those little degree
and a distinct leap forward from their previous need to see the presence of a force of order, certificates with the Public Enemy targets in
work, it is nothing less than a work of art. Its and that presence needed to be uniformed, the wax seal…” “Yeaaaaah boyee!” I say. Well,
existence quashes forever the last vestiges of just like the security at a big office building will in my head anyway... ■
Stories from the city,
On the release of PJ Harvey’s second album
‘Rid Of Me’, Stuart Bailie travelled to Polly’s family
home in Dorset to find out what drove her from NME
London, and what was driving her now April 24,
PHOTOS: STEFAN DE BATSELIER 1993
T
he Harveys were disturbed when standing in the mud with the animals because
they first saw the birds. All their that’s the way I live. There are these different
feathers had fallen out and they extremes. When I’m at home that’s what I do,
were so traumatised by the battery I feed chickens and stuff. And then there’s this
farm that they wouldn’t lay eggs. glamorous pop star bit – or so people think.”
The battery farmer was
delighted to get rid of them – the Harveys saved In our chosen interview spot, Jake’s
him the trouble of killing them. So he waved coffee shop, I tell Polly about my first reaction
them away in the care of these hippy do-rights to new album ‘Rid Of Me’. Maybe it was the
trundling down the road to Corscombe, Dorset. tension of hearing it in a preview situation, or
After a while they recuperated. They began perhaps it was the pungent, passionate style
laying eggs again, even the blind one. Hers of the record, but I broke up laughing.
were weird eggs with points at each end and “It’s so nice to hear you say that because
36
abnormally fragile shells, but Polly ate them that’s how I feel when I listen to it and that’s
anyway. And that was how it was for many years what I want other people to feel. But I don’t
after, with the chickens and the old sheep that think people do a lot of the time. Now when I
way until they became like family pets. listen to it, I don’t know whether to cry or laugh.”
When Polly went up to London it seemed like ‘Rid Of Me’ may not be an all-dancing,
she’d do something exciting – she’d got into St wise-cracking trip – there’s plainly some rotten
Martin’s, one of the best art schools anywhere. experiences in there – but sometimes you
And she was making this special music, using get the impression that the singer has moved
word pictures that left the imagination ravished beyond grief and upset. You’ve got to laugh,
and disturbed. The critics in Britain and really. There’s the likes of ‘Me-Jane’ in which
America raved, and yet Polly wasn’t happy. The Tarzan’s long-suffering mate gets to bitch off
press portrayed her as this grim harpy, and she about his tedious macho ways, or the recent
felt confined by north London, cooped up. She single ‘50Ft Queenie’, a streak of hilarious
had emotional problems and there were stories self-aggrandisement to rival any rapper’s bid
of a few breakdowns. for importance. And by the time the record
Polly’s return to Dorset in summer ’92 was ends, she, drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve
upsetting for everyone. She’d lost much of her Vaughan are rocking out, like Led Zeppelin…
old humour and zip. So she went off down to “Yeah, I think that’s another great
the coast to find space and solitude. breakthrough for the band and me as a person
Springtime again, and the man from NME to be able to do that… we have this phrase in
has come down to take Polly’s picture. So she the band, ‘Have you got your iron knickers on?’
shows him around the family place, with the After we’ve done a gig it’s like, ‘Were the iron
little river and the chicken sheds and old stone knickers on tonight?’ And very often they were
quarry. Her chosen outfit for this session is on, and none of us have let go. But nobody had
astonishing: feather boa, lurex stockings, shiny their iron knickers on for that session at all.”
coat, funk platforms, a suit slashed at the neck
and leg. But that’s not what makes the pictures I ask Polly about studying art, and
so wild and amusing – it’s the background: about her admiration for the work of Andres
while Polly is vogueing and throwing mysterioso Serrano, the New York-based artist who got
shapes, there are feeding buckets and strips notoriety by suspending a plastic crucifix in
of corrugated iron behind her. Sheep have a glass of his own urine. Following on from
seemingly ambled on to this supermodel shoot, Piss Christ, there’s been a trend for artists
and there cradled in Polly’s arms, all feathers, such as Kiki Smith and Marc Quinn to devote
sinews and myopic squint – the blind bird! themselves to making art from bodily fluids.
“I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” Polly It’s not really stretching a point to see this
explains, laughing, “to be glamorous and be trend in Polly’s songs – in ‘Dry’, for example,
PJ H ARVE Y
stories from the farm

which is about her vaginal/emotional The drums sound like the undercarriage of
aridity, or on the excoriating ‘Rub hell. Polly’s guitar, particularly on the last song
’Til It Bleeds’. So is she consciously ‘Ecstasy’, is jack-hammer, hardcore Delta blues
echoing this stuff? with attitude.
“Well, the last thing I saw was in
New York. I went to see the Serrano So was leaving London a practical
exhibition of morgue photos. They decision? “There were lots of reasons. I was
made you feel a lot of things – one paying for this place and I was hardly there – I
minute I’d feel horrified and appalled had to be here for rehearsing. But most of all
and the next I’d think, this isn’t I just couldn’t handle living in London. It was
working at all, this looks staged and the first time away from home, and then all this
I don’t feel anything for these people. attention on the music, suddenly. And my first
“He’s just done loads of ‘cum’ really big relationship that went badly wrong…
pictures. Do you find things like that and just finding that I couldn’t stand up on my
really turn your stomach? I never feel own any more, so I had to come home again.”
physically sick by things like that and When you listen to ‘Rid Of Me’ you almost
I wonder if it’s because I’ve had to feel like a voyeur – you’re party to these painful
deliver lambs and stuff, when I was emotions, but the singer is so far gone that she
younger. I used to ring all the lamb’s doesn’t even know anyone else is around.
tails and ring the testicles. I’d clear “It’s strange you say that because I wrote
up dead lambs when they came out half of the album after I moved back down
in bits – because sometimes they’d
“I’d clear up dead

decompose inside the sheep and
you’d take them out bit by bit. And
37
I wonder if it’s hardened my stomach
to things like that.”
Does it stop you getting
lambs. It’s hardened
sentimental?
“Yeah, it does.” my stomach”
In some of your new songs –
notably in ‘Legs’ – you’ve got this Polly Harvey
idea of love turning into violence and
mutilation, when the lover would
rather butcher the other person than here. I was renting a place on the coastline, a
lose it all. flat very high up above a café, and the only way
“‘I love you so much that I’ll cut you could get to it was across a bridge, so I’d
your legs off so you can’t leave me.’ be sat up there all day looking at people out of
I got that idea from when you’re my window, and thinking about the time I’d
younger and you have your favourite been in London. And it was all very voyeuristic,
toys that you play with and you love watching other people walk back and looking
them so much that they fall apart.” back at myself and how I was then.
I decide to bring up the subject of “I did get really ill, and the time I was at this
Steve Albini. His work with the indie place on the coast, I was repairing the damage,
rock’n’grunge constituency – his own so I was having to look over what happened and
Big Black plus Pixies, The Breeders, be a voyeur on myself. It was a strange time.
the Nirvana album – is practically “I had a couple of breakdowns last year when
a history of the guitar noise that’s I just couldn’t do anything for myself for weeks
mattered in the last 10 years. Polly on end – really little things like having a bath
knew some of them and caught up and brushing your teeth. It was really horrible
on the rest later. She listened to Big and I never want to get back to that again.”
Black after her initial meeting with Back in the office, we’re watching the ‘50Ft
the man, and remembers it feeling Queenie’ video. And there’s Polly, in her fake
like “a wire being pulled tight”. She fur coat and pink mohair dress, leaping around
was pleased that he could produce the studio, howling the words out: “Tell you my
a similar effect with her songs. name: F – U – C – K…” and stomping in her gold
‘Rid Of Me’ triumphs in many wedges like a force-10 hurricane.
ways. The beats, the rhymes and the She looks so happy and liberated – maybe it’s
performances are overwhelming, the tacky sunglasses that allow her to slip into
but it’s the noise, the wonderful, another character, but now she’s completely
visceral rumble that first excites you. huge, unassailable, colossal. ■
Fell in love NME
November 3,
2001
with a band
Back in 2001, the only thing we knew for sure
about The White Stripes was that they were
the most exciting rock band in a generation. raw materials of tradition to make something
new and madly exciting. But there’s something
John Mulvey met ‘brother and sister’ Jack else, too, a gift bestowed on the very band
which allows us to see the simple power of
and Meg in their native Detroit, in a world built rock’n’roll through fresh, clear eyes.
A few minutes later, we’re up in the loft, full
around numerology, taxidermy and poverty of The White Stripes’ equipment. Jack makes
Meg beat him over the head with a Barbie doll
PHOTOS: PIETER M VAN HATTEM that, until seconds ago, was nailed to the wall.
Checking out all the gear, the various room-
O
mates, tour managers and band members
pen the front door to Jack but sometimes he can’t stop himself from hanging out downstairs, the thought occurs:
38
White’s house in south west showing off his trophies. This is the way with how do the neighbours deal with casa White?
Detroit, and the first thing you Jack White, the boyish, hyperactive half of Jack looks bewildered, but only for a
notice are the giant stuffed Detroit’s astounding White Stripes. Myths and moment. “In Detroit,” he says, “you can do
heads of antelopes and elks misinformation cling to Jack and drummer anything you want.”
lying on the floor, slightly Meg White, the woman introduced as his The reason being, perhaps, that in Detroit
fusty, their stitching beginning to fray. These, sister but who’s the subject of much more there’s no-one to stop you doing what you
Jack announces proudly, are new. That one’s complicated rumours. Plainly, the Whites love want. It’s easy to see where the centre of this
called Aquinas, that one O’Brien, the one next to play with ambiguities. They’re aware the sprawling and impoverished city begins: the
to the two old jukeboxes? Onion. stories that have clustered round them since roads become empty, and the buildings are
Since he bought them the other day – from their extraordinarily received British debut in mainly derelict, burnt-out ghosts of past glory.
a guy who told him they’d been worked on by July serve to protect the truths of their lives.
hunting-mad ’70s rocker Ted Nugent’s personal The downtown area of North
taxidermist – Jack hasn’t had a chance to put Nevertheless, when the America’s car capital has been this way for
them on his walls. And where would they go, van pulls up in front of his three-storey place some 30 years, since a series of race riots
anyway? Next to the tiger’s head with broken deep in Detroit’s Mexican district, Jack’s only caused Detroit’s white middle classes to flee
teeth? Between the rusty sculptures made out caveat is that we “don’t go writing about [his] into the suburbs. What they left behind was
of bits of car? Beneath the large collection of old breakfast cereals”. His house isn’t the red and an anachronism: a major American city with
alarm clocks, or the photograph of bluesman white one on the sleeve of their first album, a visible history. While other American cities
Charley Patton’s gravestone? Maybe he could ‘The White Stripes’. It does, however, seem continually erase the signs of their pasts, the
put one near the battered piano, but wouldn’t to be a clubhouse for the tight-knit Detroit monumental old buildings of Detroit have been
that spook out Beretta and Mellow Yellow, garage scene. As Jack charges through the accidentally preserved, only because no-one
Jack’s decidedly alive canaries? door, he swerves to avoid Ben from the Soledad can be bothered to tear them down. As we drive
As for King Christial Mark David Edison’s Brothers, busy playing a 20-year-old arcade around in The White Stripes’ van and Jack
Ghost, he’s still in the big red van. King game. When NME’s photographer goes for points out the shop where he used to work as an
Christial’s a noble if undeniably manky his cameras, the host goes for the stereo and upholsterer, your eyes are drawn instead to the
zebra head, stuck just behind the back seat, selects an album of ’30s jazz standards by massive disused railway station, looming up in
surrounded by all the rubbish of The White the suitably obscure bandleader, Little Jack the middle of nowhere.
Stripes’ endless touring, near the bright red Little. Then he poses by his kudu and his white “The race riots happened in the ’60s and the
umbrella and the spotless white rollerboots. elk, while Little Jack croons delectably, ‘You city never recovered, I guess,” says Jack. “It’s
Jack’s especially pleased with this one: halfway Oughta Be In Pictures’. an abandoned city. Even related to music and
through the photo shoot right by the Hotel It seem The White Stripes can turn anything what artists do in the town, that desolation,
Yorba, he’ll announce, “I’ve just got to go and into an event. There are many things that make that abandonment is the best part of it.”
check on my zebra,” and run back to the van. them the most remarkable rock’n’roll band “As bad as it is, a lot of good music’s gonna
Next moment he’s dragging it across the grass to emerge in years: the taut brilliance of their come from poverty,” agrees Meg. “It’s horrible
for pictures. songs and performances; the clean simplicity people have to live like that, but a lot of times
A man may jealousy guard his privacy, of their ideas and image; the way they use the it’s people in pain that come up with things.
T HE WH IT E ST R IP E S
39
THE WHI TE STRI PES
and black rather than just red and white – but
one part of The White Stripes’ mythology
that endures from his upholstery days is the
significance of the number three. Hence the big
red digit roughly sewn on to his white T-shirt.
“It’s really important, it means perfection
to me. All the songs and lyrics, the way the
songs are structured, everything we do with our
artwork is based on the number three. I try to
have it involved in anything we do, or at least
things that are divisible by three. My studio’s
Once you become rich and famous Third Man Studio, my upholstery shop was
it’s hard to keep your identity. This Third Man Upholstery.
city has a lot of soul.” “The first time I realised it was when I was
an apprentice at an upholstery shop and I had
After three albums a piece of fabric wrapped around a chair. There
and numerous singles for Sympathy were three staples on it, one for the middle
For The Record Industry, The White and one for both sides and that held it down,
Stripes have licensed all past and y’know? It hit me then that it was perfect and
future recordings to XL in the UK, cool. The White Stripes are just vocals, guitar
home of The Prodigy and Badly and drums – it seemed like that was all it
Drawn Boy. In the States, every major needed to be.”
label and management company Having only two members makes The White
continues to chase them. Stripes slippery and highly mobile, giving them
Today’s tour of Detroit has ended. an advantage over most bands that’s “almost
It’s taken in an island industrial unfair”. It also allows them to sneak into places
complex where the MC5 once had like the Hotel Yorba, book a room for 65 bucks
their pictures taken, a beautiful old building
with “New York City type shit” graffitied on the
“I’ve never made a week, and record the B-sides to the new single
amid what Meg describes as “urine-soaked
side and, of course, the sprawling dosshouse
Hotel Yorba, immortalised in the Stripes’ anything up. I don’t carpets and towels that are bar towels”. They
tried to shoot the song’s video there, too, until
rattling new the management got suspicious of all the
single. As a child, Jack was told The Beatles
stayed there.
have to pretend” coming and going, waved a hammer at them
and barred Jack for life.
Now we’re sat in the bar of the St Regis,
Jack White
40
NME’s shabby-genteel hotel, slightly distracted In many respects, Jack White

by the wedding party next door and, in Jack’s is a man out of time. He rails against things
case, checking out the upholstery. “I know when white rappers always claimed they were which kill culture, and mourns the loss of local
this stuff, it’s cheap,” he says, fingering the slip from the ghetto. I don’t have to pretend – you’ve identity which makes most cities in America
cover of his chair. It’s time, finally, to try and seen where I live. I’ve never made up anything (save Detroit, perhaps) seem identical. Hip-
sift a little truth from the fictions that surround about all that stuff. I just don’t think everyone hop, far from being the modern equivalent
this fabulous and canny band, one for whom needs to know everything about everybody. If of the blues he loves, is dismissed as novelty
facts have been replaced by misheard and half- you say, ‘My name’s Bob Dylan’, they’ll say, ‘The music about “women, money and cars, where
understood stories, waves of disinformation artist Bob Dylan (whose real name is Robert every other word is bleeped out. It seems so
and Chinese whispers gleaned from the Zimmerman)’. Why do you have to write that in meaningless.”
internet. Most notoriously, Jack and Meg parentheses? What is the point? If he tells you Do you ever worry about living in the past?
were not, apparently, brother and sister, but a he’s Bob Dylan, he’s Bob Dylan.” “I don’t know… Hmmm, it’s hard to say,
divorced couple. Jack’s real name was Gillis, Jack White is the youngest of 10 children maybe I should. It’s very hard when you look
and he had borrowed his ex-wife’s surname. and grew up in the house he now owns. His around at modern music to find five things that
Now he was going out with one of the girls from father and mother worked for the Catholic are amazing, when in the 1930s or the 1960s
The Von Bondies, or brilliantly, Winona Ryder. church (“He was in maintenance and she was they were all around. It’s hard not to look back
All of this is plausibly denied. Watching a secretary”), and his brothers and sisters are and say, ‘Wow, those were the good old days’.”
them together, they have the offhand affection several years older than him save Meg, who’s When he gets home, he likes to be
you’d expect of a brother and sister. If it were one year older. Now 25 and 26, the pair aren’t surrounded by all the stuffed animal heads.
an act, we’d be forced to applaud an amazing particularly religious but continue to credit Always fearful of egomania, they make him feel
performance. Nevertheless, they both delight God on their album sleeves because, says Jack, humble and “not very important”. “No matter
in playing with the myths that surround them, “I think it’s egotistical not to give some sort of where I look,” he says, “there are eyes staring
in smudging the facts about their private lives. credit to something.” at me. And they’re totally silent. They’re such
“I really respect Bob Dylan,” begins Jack, When Jack left school, he worked in a few majestic creatures and I relate to that so well.”
namechecking someone whose early interviews upholstery shops before starting his own, You can imagine him, in those rare moments
were riddled with self-mythologising. “Maybe renovating antique furniture in spite of having when he stops moving, sitting there in this odd
I wanna know what he has for breakfast, neither a business mind-set nor what he calls place that’s part bluesman’s homestead, part
but then I don’t wanna know what he has “a drive for money”. pop-art den, part baronial hall. The ideal lair,
for breakfast. I respect him for not being “I was more in the cartoon aspect of it,” he perhaps, for the most charismatic and talented
interviewed on MTV every week. I don’t like to remembers. “The entire shop was yellow and rock’n’roll star of his generation. What he wants
see people dissected and obliterated so you feel black, all my tools, all the walls. I even had now isn’t the money, the women or the cars. It’s
you know them 100 per cent.” a yellow van, and I’d deliver the furniture in just one last thing – the buffalo head that would
So how much of what you tell people is true? yellow and black clothes. People didn’t think it complete the collection. Every band has its
He looks incredulous: “It seems that was funny at all. I guess it wasn’t working out.” dreams, of course. But when all the usual ones
everything I do is true. I don’t sit around The colours may have changed nowadays are coming true so fast, it’s useful to have
spinning yarns. I always thought it was funny – Jack maintains the uniform is red, white a speciality interest. ■
NME’s
first issue
March 7, 1952
Jo Brand &
Jarvis Cocker
April 9, 1994
PHOTO BY STEVE DOUBLE
MIA
May 15, 2010
PHOTO BY TOM OXLEY
Morrissey
February 13, 1988
PHOTO BY EAMONN J McCABE
Beth Ditto
June 2, 2007
PHOTO BY ELLIS PARRINDER
The Stone
Roses
July 7, 2012
PHOTO BY ANDY WILLSHER
The Slits
September 8, 1979
PHOTO BY PENNIE SMITH
The Beatles
September 6, 1963
Florence
Welch
June 6, 2015
PHOTO BY ZACKERY MICHAEL
Public Enemy
October 8, 1988
PHOTO BY KEVIN CUMMINS
David Bowie
March 2, 2013
PHOTO BY JIMMY KING
PJ Harvey
April 4, 1992
John Peel
November 6, 2004
PHOTO BY TOM SHEEHAN
Happy Mondays
March 31, 1990
The Clash
April 2, 1977
PHOTO BY CHALKIE DAVIES
Bill Grundy &
Sex Pistols
December 11, 1976
Richey Edwards
October 3, 1992
Echo &
The Bunnymen
February 20, 1982
PHOTO BY ANTON CORBIJN
The Libertines
June 8, 2002
PHOTO BY ROGER SARGENT
Simon Cowell
December 19-26, 2009
PHOTO BY DEAN CHALKLEY
John Lennon
December 13, 1980
Blur
June 25, 1994
The White Stripes
November 3, 2001
PHOTO BY PIETER M VAN HATTEM
ANDREW KENT/ROCK PAPER PHOTO
David Bowie
March 6, 1976
PHOTO BY ANDREW KENT
Manic Street
Preachers
May 11, 1991
Ramones
May 21, 1977
PHOTO BY CHALKIE DAVIES
The Strokes
June 9, 2001
PHOTO BY PENNIE SMITH
Rihanna
April 10, 2010
PHOTO BY TOM OXLEY
Kurt Cobain
April 16, 1994
PHOTO BY MARTYN GOODACRE
Syd Barratt
April 13, 1974
The
Stone Roses
November 18, 1989
Jarvis
Cocker
March 2, 1996
Amy
Winehouse
July 30, 2011
PHOTO BY DEAN CHALKLEY
Lana Del Rey
January 28, 2012
PHOTO BY BELLA HOWARD
Andy Warhol &
Debbie Harry
January 11, 1986
PHOTO BY ALLAN TANNENBAUM
Courtney Love
April 17, 1993
Nick Cave
March 26, 1983
PHOTO BY PETER ANDERSON
Arctic Monkeys
September 7, 2013
PHOTO BY ZACKERY MICHAEL
Joy Division
June 14, 1980
PHOTO BY ANTON CORBIJN
Blur vs Oasis
August 12, 1995
The Who
July 17, 1976
Primal Scream
September 28, 1991
Michael
Jackson
April 4, 1981
PHOTO BY JOE STEVENS
Björk
August 14, 1993
Daft Punk
May 18, 2013
PHOTO BY DEAN CHALKEY
Nirvana
November 23, 1991
PHOTO BY AJ BARRATT
Sex Pistols
August 6, 1977
PHOTO BY DENNIS MORRIS
Oasis
June 4, 1994
Noel Gallagher
September 29, 2012
PHOTO BY DEAN CHALKEY
The Cure
June 12, 1993
“ It felt like
A R CT I C M O N K E YS
we were
in outer
space”
In 2013, Arctic Monkeys
returned to Glastonbury
festival to prove themselves
as one of the greatest
bands on the planet.
Matt Wilkinson hitched a
ride with a spangle-suited, NME
Elvis-channelling troupe July 2,
93
brimming with bravado 2013
PHOTOS: ZACKERY MICHAEL
G
“ lastonbury... Glastonbury?
I love you.” In just five words,
49 minutes into what’s turning
out to be the biggest gig of his
life, Alex Turner sweeps up
100,000 people and puts them
right in the palm of his hand. He’s just become
the first man in Pyramid Stage history to have
the audacity – and cool – to stop his band’s
set so that he can comb his quiff behind the
amps. He’s spent the past 24 hours wondering
whether or not nerves will get the better of him,
and whether he’ll “fall on my arse” and make an
embarrassment of himself in front of the world.
But right now, on a dry and jubilant Worthy
Farm, all of the emotional baggage is suddenly
gone. “Let’s just leave all that showmanship
shit for a bit,” he shrugs. “I just want to tell you
– I’m yours.” In the wings, just a few metres to
his right, an old man in a scarf and baseball
cap watches with great intensity. Now Mick
Jagger knows exactly what he needs to do on
Saturday night.
For the last day or so, Arctic Monkeys

have been twiddling their thumbs a few miles
Alex Turner
from Glastonbury. Every time I ask how they’re
feeling, they’re adamant they’re not nervous onstage at
at all. Ensconced with their girlfriends and a Glastonbury
small road crew at their plush hotel (owned by
Arctic Monkeys
headline the
Pyramid Stage
Duncan Bannatyne from Dragon’s

Den, no less) it’s kind of easy to
believe them. This is where the
biggest acts in the world come
every last weekend in June to psych
themselves up before playing what
could be the defining moment of
their career – Beyoncé and Jay Z
stayed in 2011.
Guitarist Jamie Cook is easily
the most relaxed man in Camp
Monkeys, with his stoic, solid-as-a-
rock presence a cornerstone for the
rest of the party. Basically, the gist is
this: if he’s cool then so is everyone
else. Ask him on Friday morning for
the first thought that went through
his head when he woke up and he’s
totally deadpan: “Fry-up”.
Bassist Nick O’Malley and drumer
Matt Helders are more pensive (“I
just kept thinking about the first
song, singing ‘Do I Wanna Know?’
over and over,” says the latter). Alex,
meanwhile, has a typically poetic
94
response. “I do that thing where

you can never tell what’s going on
behind the curtains. Is it a bright
day or not? So there was a bit of that
this morning, a bit of a guessing
game with the spirits.” For “most
weekends” in the past six years, he
says, he’s woken up in a strange
city, sometimes not even knowing
the name of the festival he’s playing
at. “Whereas this morning, I definitely knew
– Glastonbury Friday. Because as you know, “I just don’t know the corner, huge sofas everywhere, plasma TVs,
band instruments and a ginormous white cake
anything other than

nothing has the properties of Glastonbury.” in the shape of the Pyramid Stage. There’ve
The crux of their planning this time has been no trips to the site on the Wednesday or
rested on two things, he says: what songs they’ll Thursday for the band themselves, so the first
play, and what songs they’ll DJ to the crowd
over the PA before they go on. “We got this
this, I can’t imagine it time any of them get to see the huge crowd is
when Matt goes to check on his drum kit. The
playlist together for the changeover between
Dizzee and us. We’ve just gone for big tunes. any other way” Monkeys go onstage in exactly one hour’s time,
and he couldn’t resist having a peek outside just
Usually you try and put a couple of weird ones as Dizzee Rascal was bringing his set to a close.
so everyone’s fucking Shazaming it or whatever, Alex Turner “I remembered that same feeling from 2007
but there’s definitely gonna be no need for that. when we headlined, and Kasabian were on
Me and Cookie were doing it on the plane – you before us,” he says. “I remember seeing it all
play a tune and try to imagine the crowd, all the on! I watched, like, five minutes of it. It’s weird, and then shitting myself.” And this time? “It
flags and that, see if it works.” maybe it should have shitted me up, watching wasn’t quite as bad – I’m more excited than
that. But you know what, now it’s come round anything now. I feel ready, I think.” And then he
He and the rest of the band have – not to take anything away from it – but turns to Turner. “Someone’s got a flag that says
taken it easy so far, partly because of what there’s a bit of me that’s like, this is sort of ‘Where’s Al?’, Al. A big yellow flag with a picture
happened the last time they headlined here, in what we do now. It’s not just another day at the of your face on it.”
2007. “Me and Miles [Kane] were just ripping it office, definitely not, but so many things have “Oh, nice,” Alex quips. “Well, I haven’t got
up on the site,” says Alex, “and I totally had the changed since the last time we were here. I feel time to go and look for myself. We’re gonna
fear the next day.” Last night was as different kind of... alright.” spend the next hour-and-a-half staring at them
to 2007 as can be, he says – a couple of glasses Cut forward five hours, and I’m in Arctic – what do we need to go up now for?”
of red wine, a ‘family’ meal, everything nice Monkeys’ dressing room directly behind the All four members seem pretty twitchy,
and relaxed. “And then I put the telly on and Pyramid Stage, my arm covered in colour- talking loads quicker than usual about anything
the fucking Glastonbury documentary came coded wristbands. There’s a coffee barista in and everything: from the air conditioning
A R CT I C M O N K E YS
Alex and Matt

pre-gig at
their hotel
Wanna Know?’ for a reason, says

Matt. “It’s new, it’s us, and it’s got
exactly the right kind of groove
to get people moving the way
we like.” He’s proved completely
right. The whole of the stage is
swathed in dust and smoke, but
when it lifts – just in time for
‘Brianstorm’ – the entire horizon
is covered by people going batshit
crazy. It’s the first time the band
have seen the crowd properly,
and Alex instantly turns round
old self) ‘You’re a long way to his drummer and shoots him the biggest
from T’Grapes now, aren’t grin possible. He’s spent the past 18 months
ya, love?!’ I can’t believe becoming as extroverted onstage as possible,
it, who’d have fucking reinventing himself as a bullish modern-day
thought it?” Lennon (fronting his pre-Beatles band Johnny
Helders cuts in. & The Moondogs though, with ultra gang-
“Actually somebody who leader mentality the key ingredient). His patter
knew us 10 years ago was is as much about who he can eyeball and point
One last drink saying that earlier, but they at, rather than what he actually says. And the
were like ‘...you’re still here. whole band thrive off it.
backstage before
WHY are you still here?!’”
the headline set “But I just don’t know There are moments where he
95
anything other than this,” snaps out of it, though, and these are the points
Alex answers. “I can’t when the gig becomes beautifully personal: his
imagine it any other way.” sincere declaration of love for Glastonbury, a
The next time I see the bit in ‘Pretty Visitors’ where he waves his arms
band I’m huddled at the along with the crowd, and a sweet moment
side of the stage along when he gets everyone to sing ‘Happy Birthday’
with a bunch of friends to his mum, Penny.
and family, just opposite Straight after the set, I’m bundled into the
Mick Jagger and Chris band’s dressing room where they’re totally
Martin. ‘Don’t Look Back giddy with excitement. “I feel incredible!” says
In Anger’ plays over the PA Alex. “It’s one of the best gigs we’ve ever done.
and the entire crowd are Ever! Just because it’s... Glastonbury. It wasn’t
going mental. As ‘My Sweet raining, and... it’s Glastonbury!”
Lord’ starts, the band “I was saying to them in the encore that it
suddenly sidle up to the felt like I was floating when I was up there, like
huge, paper-thin curtain I had roller blades on or something!” laughs
Arriving onsite
that shields them from the Nick. “Honestly, I thought I’d be shitting it, but
on Friday masses. It’s just the four I just felt strangely calm!”
of them, jostling around How does it rank compared to everything
on their own for a good 10 else the band have done? “This is the best it
(which is freaking them out because it sounds minutes, by which time ‘Imagine’ has kicked gets!” says Alex. “You only ever do, like, five
like rain), to ping pong (Alex is brilliant, in and everyone is singing along. It sounds like gigs like this. That one was the one. You do
supposedly, but there’s no table backstage for the loudest thing on earth. Jamie and Alex both big shows, big festivals all the time. But it’s a
him to prove it), to Miles Kane, with whom the do a shaky ‘Elvis-leg’ dance together, the kind different beast, Glastonbury. We’ll be playing
singer made a surprise appearance earlier on. “I of thing that Joe Strummer used to do when he to a lot of people over the summer, but it won’t
went on and sang ‘Standing Next To Me’ at the got really intense onstage. They each point out have that feeling we had just then. It felt like
John Peel Stage,” he says. “ It was full and it was where the other is going wrong with it, while I was in outer space. Now, are you gonna have
fucking great. He’s the Turbo Mod isn’t he? Iron Matt drums on his thighs and high-fives Nick. a beer to celebrate?”
Mod 3, we call him!” All of them look completely enclosed in their As the singer dives into the band’s rider, I
I ask if they’re proud that after 10 years as a own little bubble, focused and confident as hell. ask one final question. Where the hell do Arctic
band they’re still at the top of their game, when The gig itself is mesmerising. As all four Monkeys go from here? “I don’t see why we
so many other key guitar acts – The Libertines, have said, they’re a completely different beast can’t do it again!” Alex beams. “In a few years’
The Strokes, The White Stripes, Kings Of Leon now compared to 2007. Back then they were time… I mean it! It seemed like everyone was
– have fallen from grace. “Yeah, I definitely great, but still timid. Now, they’re a rollicking having a good party, you know? And I know we
do feel proud,” says Alex. “There’s no doubt rock’n’roll monster with eight years of success certainly were. So why not?” Michael and Emily
about it. It’s like (affects persona of his 17-year- under their belts. They’ve picked opener ‘Do I Eavis: you know exactly what to do. ■
This
charming
man
Like any long-term love affair, the
relationship between NME and Morrissey
has suffered turbulent times. But following
a triumphant solo show in Wolverhampton,
James Brown found the former Smiths
frontman on the upswing and in
96
provocative form
PHOTOS: LAWRENCE WATSON
NME
February 11,
1989
MORRISSEY
and assume that they notice you. I’ve seen the
film of Wolverhampton but I wouldn’t call that
diving or slobbering. I think that was quite
different, it was love. Unmistakably it was love.
I was choked before I sang a syllable really.”
T
Ahh, yes, Wolverhampton. If there’s one
he doorbell rings once. Morrissey event to mark the triumph of Morrissey’s solo How do you feel about the split now?
looks uncomfortable. career, and more specifically, to clarify the “Well there are personal, there are private, there
“I can’t imagine who that is. relationship between Morrissey and his public, are public reasons. The Smiths had reached
We’ll just have to ignore it. But it was his performance at Wolverhampton Civic a point where they could dominate the world
they may not go away. It happens.” Centre [his solo debut, December 22, 1988, at if they wished to. After years of semi-struggle
There is not a second ring but which fellow Smiths Mike Joyce and Andy everything was finally laid out before us and
Morrissey is clearly alarmed. Rourke joined his backing band]. that was when The Smiths ended. I was quite
“Some people sit and ring and ring. And The excitement and atmosphere inside annoyed by that because suddenly there were
circle the house and peer through the windows. the hall was the most electric I have ever questions. Suddenly the question was ‘Well can
It’s very tedious and very embarrassing because experienced at any public event. Sensible he actually make a record now?’ So it was a very
I don’t know why they do it. I often think that if and intelligent fans were transformed into dodgy period for me and I think my records
people really liked me and understood me and screaming Mozettes (male and female) at the very accurately illustrated that. I feel as though
appreciated me they’d ring once and go away. return of their beloved rebel boy. It was a night I’m actually in my third career now.”
But the people who persist, and believe me this Morrissey, also, will never forget.
happens every day, I don’t have anything to “The concert was a very impulsive thing… Morrissey is currently more
say to those people. To me that’s not adoration, all the best things happen on impulse, I find. popular than he has ever been before. His
it’s complete rudeness. How would you feel if I was interested to see how people would react first two solo singles both entered the Top 10
I stood outside your gate and called your name towards me. There was no intention to cause in the first week of their release, and I have
out every day?” chaos. It wasn’t an attention-seeking device, already heard serious suggestion that ‘The Last
It’s Monday on the outskirts of Manchester I just needed to see some particular faces. It was Of The Famous International Playboys’ will
and Morrissey is fencing with NME, his nice to be kissed repeatedly. I don’t think that be Morrissey’s first Number One hit record.
favourite music paper. The topics ahead are happens very often, I also think it’s very rare for Though lyrically concerned with criminal
sex, crime, honesty beauty, fame, performance, a male audience to kiss a male singer. I don’t notoriety, using The Krays as its example,
adoration and, for the sake of capitalism and think it even happens. Does it happen? the title of ‘Last Of The Famous International
cliché, ‘The Last Of The Famous International “For months previous to that I had Playboys’ screams for a more specific and
Playboys’, a single. languished in this very room, seeing practically familiar nominee. Appropriately Morrissey has
“‘The Last Of The Famous International nobody. And I had to go from that situation to already furnished himself with four candidates.
Playboys’ is the first record that I feel hysterical Wolverhampton where your limbs are spread “The Last Of The Famous International
about,” he gushes, exercising his career-making over… being distributed amongst an audience Playboys are David Bowie, Marc Bolan, [former
talent for self-promotion. “And I’m very pleased is an incredible feeling. Can you imagine being Buzzcocks frontman] Howard Devoto and me,”
97
to feel that way. I compare it to ‘Shoplifters kissed by hundreds of people? It’s probably he announces modestly.
Of The World Unite’. I heard ‘Shoplifters Of happened to you, I don’t know. Where do Do you see similarities between yourself
The World Unite’ once on the radio, a chart you spend your evenings? It was immensely and Bowie?
rundown. It was a new entry. They had to uplifting. Practically medical really. They “What, the living Bowie or the present dead
play it. They had no choice. And I laughed appear very aggressive and brusque but when one? The living Bowie, there are some, yes. Yes,
hysterically as it listened to it. I felt a great they touch me it’s very gentle.” I do see similarities.”
sense of victory.” What was it like to play with your former
Morrissey is tangled up in blue jeans, blue Smiths? Was it something you had planned? Like all immediate success
T-shirt, blue deck pumps and blue eyes. His flat “Well it was a part of it for me. It made me feel stories The Smiths have left in their wake
is spick’n’span. There’s a portable typewriter more confident than if it had been otherwise. a sea of assorted respectful, bemused, and
and a pile of anti-vivisection leaflets on the So I was very happy and very pleased with the sometimes embittered personnel. And like all
table in the hall. The television is off, there are onstage line-up. That made me feel relaxed. It successful rock’n’roll bands who don’t splash
no clothes to tidy away, the settee and armchair does help to have solid people around you. their underwear, their sex, and their mother’s
are drawn a little closer, the tea is poured, the “It’s an interesting question whether we’ll little helpers across the fish and chip wrap
biscuits ignored. continue to work together. These days of of tabloids, there is an equally large stack of
There’s a great deal to be discussed with course it isn’t like earlier times when money unfounded, unproven, and unwanted rumours,
Morrissey, yet as the shriek of the doorbell has and contracts were less concern generally. The lies, and fantasies.
proved, there are others beside NME who feel it secret of The Smiths was that we did everything And yet, apart from a very early interview
is their privilege to have the man’s attention. on impulse for our own amusement. That’s why with our own Cath Carroll where Morrissey
“Some people see me as one thing and some it flowed so perfectly. But these days I suppose spoke directly about the eroticism of the male
people see another. And the people who see me people are a little older and I suppose they need body (and an interview in a lesser rag that was
as a ‘pop singer’ are the people who persist and a safer arrangement, which is fair enough.” littered with tawdry references to public toilets),
ring the doorbell. But the people who see me Do you find people are still interested in your Morrissey has rarely been questioned about the
as a valuable addition to music are the people relationship with Johnny Marr? highly sexual nature of his lyrics.
who wouldn’t dream of coming near the house. “No I don’t actually. I think people have put that Without wishing to undermine his aggressive
I am obsessive about practically everything, one away, in the cupboard, as it were.” challenge to the staid institution of compulsory
but I can control my obsessions. I am not Have you put it in the cupboard? heterosexuality and monogamy, I find it hard
uncontrollably obsessive.” “Yes, I have. In all truth I have. It took me a to believe that it is a Crown Prince Of Celibacy
So you don’t go and stand outside people’s while, but, yes I have. Ashes to ashes really.” who is responsible for such knowing or
houses then? Was there sadness when you realised this? flirtatious songs as ‘Late Night, Maudlin Street’,
“Not lately, I’m rational, very, very rational. “Well, embarrassment more than sadness ‘Reel Around The Fountain’, ‘Hand In Glove’
Even in days of old when I followed others and I because it was utterly, utterly phenomenally and ‘Alsatian Cousin’. Or for the specifically
stood by the coach at soundchecks and so forth, stupid. The split should never have occurred. sexual visual control of his image, from the
I wouldn’t dive on top of people and slobber It was utterly stupid. ‘You hate my cat, so I hate topless NME front cover to the particularly
and say all the things you’re supposed to say. It your cat.’ It was pettiness, it was literally my cat lustful dancing of the young tearaway hoodlum
was just enough to see them drive by in a coach and Johnny’s dog.” on the new video.
MORRISSEY
excitement that you capture, they aren’t the Meanwhile back at the raunch,
words of a celibate. Unless the person was it is this clever choice of asexuality, combined
promiscuous prior to celibacy… with a very physical sexual reality (even if
“Not true, because I think the people who it is only confined to the level of ‘look, don’t
are knee-deep in bodies and flesh can’t be touch’) that makes Morrissey so attractive to
bothered to write about those things. If they sit his hordes. The sweet and tender, untouchable,
down to construct a stanza they actually want topless Adonis, always ready to reveal his inner
Are your lyrics really honest? to write about something a bit different. They thoughts and passions yet just as eager to veil
“Yes I think they are very honest. They’re want to get away from it because flailing flesh is them in lyrical and sexual ambiguity.
honest to everything. Obviously that word is so very much part of their lives. It’s not interesting When I ask about the paradox of his two-
dangerous because as soon as it’s used you’re and nothing new and perhaps they don’t have a sided character he replies with a standard,
suddenly suspect. They’re very true to me and clear vision of it. They’re so steeped in it. “Well I think it’s easier to be oneself onstage.”
what I want.” “So I think if throughout my life I had Isn’t that sad?
There is a very high and strong sense of been popular and active, shall we say “Yeah but it’s just like saying ‘Isn’t it sad that
sexuality running through your lyrics. [chuckles], I might have written about someone need drugs to be happy’.”
“Well that’s me all over. I don’t think I’ve ever something else. But because I was, as I may Have you ever felt like that?
said words that don’t have that tinge…” have casually mentioned once, plunging, “Err, when I was a teenager.”
It’s not just a tinge. plunging, plunging I had to scribble, So you’ve never been a rampant cocaine
“Well I’m being modest. That overblown brew scribble, scribble.” fiend then?
of brimming sexuality, I think that’s there. Do you ever find yourself attracted “I don’t even know what cocaine looks like.
I think what I said was that me as a living, to people? When I was a teenager I used to make my
breathing specimen was bereft of any physical “Yes sometimes. I do have the occasional weekly trip to the GP and come away laden.”
whatever. I listen to Stock, Waterman and flushes but they do pass. I sit down and have a You must have been offered cocaine as The
Faceache with all its brimming disco and to me chip butty. You don’t accept that do you? Yes, Smiths became the classic rock’n’roll band?
it’s sadly clinical, it isn’t sex; it’s obviously the I do have flushes, usually at bank holidays. “I never heard the word mentioned, ever.
A-Z of cliché.” Mostly, no, people are a great disappointment More’s the pity, ha ha.”
Do you see yourself as a sex object? to me. I think I am interested and then I Never on tour?
“I think I must be, absolutely, a total sex object. discover the reality. People are quite light and “No, not at all. I went back to the hotel every
In every sense of the word. A lot of men and a frothy, which is fair enough. I know some night with a tangerine.”
lot of women find me… find me… unmistakably people aren’t frothy at all. I think there’s a lot of Do you feel like you’re constantly living out
attractive. It amuses me, I sit down and wonder frothiness about, especially in Peterborough.” your fantasies?
why, and then somebody writes a beautiful When you write, are you trying to soothe the “I’m not Batman. I’m not The Penguin. I have
letter and tells me why. I find it baffling in a way you feel about sex? always been honest and it has always been
particular sense because, as I said earlier, I can’t “It’s beyond ‘nudge nudge’. I don’t fit into any worth it. There have always been risks from
remember any figure who attracted so many sexual category at all so I don’t feel people see it the very first Smiths sleeve to the very latest.
98
male followers. And a lot of the male followers as being sexual, but as being intimate.” I thought male naked buttocks were a risk. Not
who are, as far as the eye can see, natural to me of course, but to everyone else.”
specimens, have very, very anguished and Do you see your songs as being heterosexual?
devilishly rabid desires in my direction.
And I find that quite historic.”
“People to me were “No. I was beyond all that when I was three-
and-a-half years of age. I left heterosexuality,
What about emotional circles and physical
relationships? never sexual. I’m umbrellasexuality, whatever, behind. I always
said people to me were just sexual. I lied;
beyond that”
“Well, I don’t have them. I have very good actually people to me were never sexual.
friends and we can make phone calls and laugh I’m beyond that and I think if you consider
hysterically for three hours but that’s as far what you have to do to be that, you have to
as it goes.”
All the times when you have discussed your
Morrissey be beyond it. Salvador Dali, who died today,
was beyond that, although clinically
asexuality and celibacy, have you heterosexual, I believe.”
been giving a fair representation of Your lyrics are so amazingly sexual,
the experiences that you also draw very flirtatious, very knowingly saucy,
your lyrics from? double-edged, steeped in innuendo. Is
“I think they have been fair. Totally that all drawn from your past?
accurate.” “Well, yes, because, as I’ve said, I’ve
Why are you so guarded about the been around nearly 30 years now
life you write about? you know, I’ve seen quite a bit. I’m
“I’m guarded because a lot of people not a teenager by any means, despite
make fun and a lot of people think outward appearances. I think I’d omit
I’m clinically mad. So I’m ready to ‘saucy’, I don’t feel very saucy now.”
erect a small wall when somebody You laid yourself absolutely naked on
mentions ‘silly butties’ – celibacy. ‘Viva Hate’, didn’t you?
I’ve been around a bit now, I’m not a “Absolutely naked. Parts of it were
thin swirling creature any more. And quicksand but bravery won the day.”
I suppose manhood does arrive at Would you like to appear actually
some stage, you can’t fend it off.” naked on your sleeves?
People have this impression of “Well, it might detract from record
you as a… sales. I don’t want to enter at
“Yes I know, I’ve heard this.” Number 92.”
…As a celibate, as someone who Shall we call it a day?
stands back, yet the knowledge “Yes, I think I’ve been naked enough
you put across through your lyrics today. I feel like putting a very small
and the pain, the emotion, the flannel on.” ■

*" (

(
( *#
$

!

"

'

'

% &" %
A manic
episode
NME
January 5,
1991
10
0
One of NME’s most vicious and viciously talented “Parliament is more ugly than a gas
chamber. Money controls. Palestine is invaded
writers, the late Steven Wells was suspicious of and occupied like Kuwait but there’s no oil
Manic Street Preachers at first, but following an so nobody cares. The state says a soldier’s or
a politician’s life is worth more than a dead
epiphany found himself hopelessly “in hate” with lrishman’s. The working class cannot draw its
poetry from the past but only from the future.”
their bile-filled, indie kid-baiting manifesto Look at the real legacy of punk – a generation
of coked-out rock pigs, greying journos in
PHOTOS: MARTYN GOODACRE love with George Michael and Van Morrison
while former punk gurus, Garry Bushell and
Julie Burchill, both jump through hoops and
S
snuffle Good Boy chocolate drops from the
mash Hits is more effective in useless if it keeps on prompting hedonism sweaty hands of the Tory press. Manic Street
polluting minds than Goebbels in a war zone...” Preachers are already beyond the reproach of
ever was...” At a recent London show, flowered- ageing punks. They are, quite simply, the
The following article is 100 per up muppets stood and stared when the most articulate, and the most politicised
cent head-over-heels hype. I am in Preachers, necks rigid with tension, knee-deep and the most furious and the sexiest white
hate with a poxy Welsh rock band. in bum notes and spittle, poured hate and rock band in the entire world. See, I told you
They look like shit. Their music is stunted and war over an audience chemically inclined this was hype.
struggling. They will smash their way into the towards love. “You’re wearing a girl’s blouse!” Tight and jittery, singer James smashed
Top 10 or self-destruct in the process. Manic yelled punk veteran and Observer journalist to shards a guitar he had always hated. A
Street Preachers are a speed band in an E Jon Savage, pogoing furiously. “We’re the first 23-inch-beflared lovechild ran up to him like
generation, slogan-vomiting missionaries for androgynous band of the ’90s!” screamed an eager puppy. “Uh!” said the kid. “Uh! That
violence in The Garden Of Good Vibes. the mascara-ed guitarist. He wore a page was fucking brilliant!” When you’ve grown
“The E generation still faces the long suicide torn out of the London A-Z stuck to his up taking drugs that make you act nice and
of work every Monday morning. We need a mum’s old cheesecloth and he’d disfigured you’re encouraged to think that a flickering
constant state of kicking. Turn on to a winter it with the stencilled message, “DEATH strobe and a man dressed as little weed add up
of hate. Keep Warm – Make Trouble. Music is SENTENCE HERITAGE”. to something radical, Manic Street Preachers
MAN IC ST R E E T
P R E ACH E R S
(l-r): Nicky Wire, wank of the indie scene and they ask –
Sean Moore, James what the fuck went wrong?
1986: James has no friends at school –
Dean Bradfield,
every weekend he decamps to Cardiff to
Richey Edwards scream “Garageland” at bemused shoppers.
Meanwhile, Nick is putting on his make-up
in the pit village of Blackwood. The locals unconsciously and joyfully anti-homophobic,
call him Shirley. anti-sexist, anti-racist and anti-shit than any
Little Sean the drummer is also mistaken for band since it became fashionable to be an
a girl. He is lying in a pool of vomit after having apolitical arsehole. Maybe it’s something to
drunk a bottle of his dad’s whisky. Richey is do with coming from the politicised working
ploughing his way through Timothy Leary class rather than the drug-gobbling lumpen
and William Burroughs and trying to “Sid” sump. “The music papers constantly hold up
his hair with liquid soap. They are fucked off political lyrics like ‘This is how it feels to be
about everything – the Labour Party, Jeremy lonely’ as worthwhile. White groups make me
Beadle, the local rugby players, The Alarm, the disgusted. It is pathetic they wank on about
Conservative Party, U2 – you name it, they are scraping a wage while Public Enemy sing
fucked off about it. And nowhere can they find about repression, control, destruction of life.
a music to hate to. Then they get to hear Public We want to operate alongside Chuck D and not
Enemy. Pissed-off black boys from a couple of some T-shirt-selling Inspiral Carpets singer.”
thousand miles away. Something clicks again.
It’s time to form a band. They’ve staggered through three
They bombard the music press with singles – ‘Suicide Alley’, ‘New Art Riot’ and
speed-addled, two-finger-typed hate mail now ‘Motown Junk’ – all the time desperately
– “In mundane 1991 we look like nothing else trying to distance themselves from the
on Earth. A car bomb kiss-off to The Face. anarcho-grungies, the Steve Lamacq muso-
Politics and adolescent cheap sex. Fuck the punks and above all else, the punkywunky
rotten edifice of Manchester. Too safe in cabaret of Birdland, the band whose addle-
dressing like a bricklayer. Too boring. headed corpse-worship renders them to rebel
Too macho, males afraid of themselves. music what cosy, suburban “flame effect”
That’s why we look up to the images of fires are to Welsh cottage burnings. It irritates
Kylie and The Supremes and not bald-fat- them in the way that bands like Mega City 4
ugly-glutton-filth Inspiral Carpets... They seem to revel in the squalor of their slumming,
make us vomit.” bumming lifestyle. “We hate playing toilets.
1
They write with the fury and teeth-gritted We hate losing £50 every gig and having
10
enthusiasm of the hatezines of the early ’80s. to cram back into the Transit van...” And
And they mean it. “Yes. Of course we do, Kylie anybody who enjoys such a ghetto lifestyle,
sells more records and they both stand for they affirm, is a fool. And the contempt is
the same thing – perfect pop. She’s bound mutual. This band are hated by their peers.
to be better, isn’t she? I find it offensive that “Every A&R man in London has come to see
Inspirals are on teenage walls.” Whilst some of us and they hate us totally. They come up to
the young happyheads dig the Strummertime us and tell us to learn to play our instruments.
are a revelation. “I wish I could do that!” blues, older folk are wary. It’s OK to clone The Don’t they realise that we don’t care? We don’t
“Whenever we’ve played to a young audience,” Velvet Underground, it’s dead cool to stick a want to live out their muso fantasies. They
claims blond beanpole bassist Nicky, “they dance beat under a Stones riff or a Byrds run around like headless chickens to sign the
really loved us – even if they just thought we jangle – but The Clash? latest bunch of no-thinkers who successfully
were nutters.” Manic Street Preachers want to release one recreate ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’. They
The Preachers are “cripples” from a south double album, go on Top Of The Pops and don’t realise that every 14-year-old who sees
Wales comprehensive. Turned on by Albert change the world forever before splitting up to us doesn’t care that we sound awful. He goes
Camus and early Who, George Orwell and enjoy the tidal wave of spit and fury they think, home, sells his record collection and wants to
the pre-senility Stones, Hunter S Thompson will explode in their wake. Before they’re burn down Barclays Bank...”
and Big Flame, they buy the first Pop music has many functions,
Clash album to see if it makes any
sense. They think it is shit. Then,
“Every I4-year-old who sees one of which is to articulate and
reflect the breathless, cynical,
in 1986, they see the local mining
community kicked to crap by the us goes home, sells his record clenched-fist optimism of arrogant
teenage naifs who seriously think
police and starved back to work by they can change the world by
the Tories and they see The Clash
perform on a Tony Wilson-presented
collection and wants to burn screaming over a back-feeding
guitar. Manic Street Preachers –
10th anniversary of punk TV show.
Something clicks. When that
down Barclays Bank” operating in a vacuum – want to
make that pop music. They want to
happens to articulate, self-educated be The Who, the Pistols and Public
and dangerously angry working-class boys capable of creating such a catalyst they’re Enemy. Their critics accuse them of being
whose bollocks have just started kicking a going to have to learn to seriously screw up 10 years too late. If anything, they may be 10
natural amphetamine soup into their gangly The Clash the way The Clash screwed up R&B. years too early. And who gives a flying fuck if
frames, the results can be explosive... And that means sounding more like Public they’re totally and absolutely wrong? Better to
Enemy without sounding anything like burn out that to fade away, right? If I can leave
When the dust settles they look Pop Will Eat Itself. rock journalism extolling the same virtues of
again at the music papers pushing Simple In a world where MC Tunes, Happy passion, anger, shit-stirring and politicisation
Minds and The Wedding Present, they listen Mondays and Flowered Up dribble on that dragged me into it in the first place, I’m
with fresh ears to the jangly introspective about ‘faggots’, the Preachers are more happy. Like I said, I’m in hate. ■
NME
November 18,
1995
Different class
Britpop made mainstream stars of perpetual It comes as little surprise,
outsiders Pulp. Next thing they knew, they were

then, that Jarvis is immediately
handcuffed to a sofa by several
being invited to Norwegian “sex parties”. fright-wigged über-babe crazies and

tortured to within an inch of his life
Johnny Cigarettes got stuck in with them with weird conversation, fake fur
and silk scarves. Then again, that’s
Jarv’s natural habitat these days.
PHOTOS: STEFAN DE BATSELIER
Everywhere you see him in London
he’s surrounded by an entourage of
hangers-on united only by eating
C
disorders, ‘I’m Common’ lapel
ould someone please fuck me going so well... OK, so outside was Oslo in badges and a penchant for Godspell
with a broken bottle?” asks November, minus three degrees, with only wardrobe cast-offs. Meanwhile,
Jarvis Cocker of a crowd of one second-hand clothes shop, a population Steve is busy continuing his study
teenage girls not old enough of very beautiful but very boring people, beer into the behavioural patterns of the
to legally drink alcohol from £5 a pint, ciggies £5 a pack, in the middle of Northern European female. He has
10
one, let alone perform bizarre a gruelling promotional tour of Scandinavia. his ‘work’ cut out. Almost literally,
2
sexual practices with it. Suddenly, the louche, But, at 8pm, Norwegian hospitality came into judging by the uncompromising
elegant and friendly facade is torn away to its own in the shape of the gig promoter. “OK, mood of one young fan. “Steve, you
reveal the gnarled, twisted talons of hate that so the band play six songs, then ve haf 1,200 vill now get your jacket and then you
lie seething within the sick, perverted mind of litres of Absolut vodka, all free, and then it’s vill come back and fuck me!”
Britain’s once loveable King Misfit. party party! The bar is open until lunchtime on “Noooooo! I, erm, have to go
Drooling with demonic rage, he picks up his Saturday if you vant.” And crack vol-au-vents home to my hotel and call my
microphone, throws it into the air and drop- on the rider. Splendid! girlfriend.”
kicks it into the eye of unsuspecting Steve Naturally, the mood has curdled rapidly “OK, I come vith you, yes?”
Mackey, his long-suffering bass lieutenant. by the time we rejoin Pulp, 20 minutes after “NOOOOOOO!”
Then, muttering all manner of hideous the dramatic and disgraceful anticlimax of “I used to think French women
blasphemy, he stomps offstage to howl at the tonight’s show. “Aaaaargh! The Vikings are were mad for it,” gasps Steve, after
moon. There’s probably a perfectly logical after us!” screams Steve. And he’s only half prising himself from her grasps with
explanation for our hero’s unlikely behaviour. joking. Jarvis is refusing to leave the backstage the aid of a blowtorch, “but Norwegians take
Marital breakdown or personal bereavement, area to go to the aftershow club, fearing a the biscuit. They practically bash you over
perhaps? Deep early childhood psychological lynching by his deeply offended audience, the head with a club and drag you away. Quite
trauma? Secret broken-glass fetish? Nah, the who probably think he stormed off because impressive, really.”
keyboard’s on the blink again. Of course. he hates Norway. Paranoid? Surely not. The Two Winter Olympic-strength coffees later,
We’re halfway through a six-song TV special pink-haired make-up artist wishes to raise a we’re just about ready to grapple with the oily
performance in Oslo, Norway, in front of an practical question at this point. “If you like, beast that is fame, the one Jarvis chased vainly
invite-only crowd of mildly disinterested club you can all come to a sex party at my house.” for the best part of 20 years, and which he’s
groovers, and the gods are interfering just “Well, I only really want a feel,” quips Jarvis. just reached intimate first-name terms with.
when Pulp were thinking all their troubles “Many coloured walls! Many fun people!” she So does it feel like he’s finally got his
were behind them. “Oh Jesus, me foot’s argues, persuasively. revenge on the world, and proved wrong all
fucked!” he groans as we greet him backstage the sneering misfit-bashers? “Well, it’s not
and watch the upper part of said extremity Eventually word comes really getting my own back. It’s not as if there
swell. “Typical, I didn’t kick the microphone back from that there are not, in fact, hordes was a teacher at school who told me I was
right – I got it with the wrong part of me foot.” of medieval Nordic warriors with pitchforks worthless, and then I’d thought, ‘Right, I’m
Yeah, the boy Jarvis may finally have baying for the blood of the evil Lord Cocker. going to rub your nose in it, and I’ll drive past
wriggled through the net marked ‘terminally So we brave the dark recesses of the aftershow your house in my Rolls-Royce and do a shit on
uncoordinated nerdular inadequates’ into the party and are greeted by a scattering of youths your front step’. Nothing like that.”
sun-drenched, nymph-strewn oceans of pop frugging in all manner of bizarre European Oh well. It’s just, listening to the new
stardom, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to styles to a selection of techno hits. Oh yes, and album ‘Different Class’, featuring the likes of
be endowed with some supernatural ability they drink like fishes. Like alcoholic fishes ‘Mis-Shapes’, with its spitting determination
not to trip over the cracks in the pavement or adrift in a sea of flavoured vodka. And they to avenge the socially disenfranchised, you
see without jam-jar glasses. screw, because, as the man once said, there’s get the impression that there are scores to
And yet, earlier this evening, it was all nothing else to doo-hoo-hoo. settle. And then you hear the startlingly
P UL P
you that you’ve gone the right way, the way

fate intended. It all sounds a bit Mystic Meg,
but... well, it makes for a good chat-up line.”
You wonder how much of Jarvis’ lyrical
concerns are truly autobiographical and how
much is merely personaspeak. All this beastly
voyeurism business, for a start. Does it really
turn him on?
“Erm... well, no more than anyone else. I
don’t believe it’s a very nice human instinct.
But it’s that forbidden curiosity. Sex is always a
bit shadowy, isn’t it? When it’s done properly,
anyway. I remember when I was a kid, me
and a friend were out in the park and these
girls on the swings said to us, ‘Hey, do you
masturbate?’ I’d never heard of it before, but
they giggled so I knew it was rude. So I says, ‘I
might do’, so’s not to show meself up. And they
laughed even more. I ran home and looked it
up in the dictionary, and it defined masturbate
as, ‘To abuse yourself’. So from that moment I
thought it meant you just tell yourself you’re a
bastard all the time.”
At this point Jarvis Cocker the man has to
make way for Jarvis the pop star, because the
latter has to go for a photo session. There,
he suddenly turns into a camera-devouring
monster who will toss, turn, pout, preen and
pull every expression and pose known to
3
humankind with every click of the shutter. It’s
10
kind of like watching a documentary about a
mental patient who thinks he’s a supermodel.
Except, whichever way you look at him, Jarvis
Cocker is no Claudia Schiffer.
As soon as those horn-rimmed specs go
on, he’s an early-’80s BBC newsreader out
on a bender after being sacked. Or perhaps
a delegate to the 1971 NatWest conference
having had his drink spiked with acid. Rowan
Atkinson in Saturday Night Fever? Kenneth
Williams as Serge Gainsbourg? Lord knows.
And then you’re struck by the fake-fur
“When people This week Pulp have just gone
coat, the burgundy cords, the lemon shirt,
the suave slip-ons. Then you see the satchel.
say we’re ironic, straight in at Number One in the UK album

charts. Ten years ago this week, Jarvis fell
And you ask yourself, is this bloke for real? “I
would like to go on record as saying I’ve never
out of a window at a party in Sheffield, and worn anything as a joke,” he pronounces,
I feel so insulted” ended up in hospital for months, where he
began to mentally (and physically) pick up the
prodding the table. “In retrospect I may look
at something I wore and regret it, but I know
Jarvis Cocker pieces of his increasingly shapeless life and
art. Coincidence? Well, yeah. Nevertheless,
at the time I thought it was worthwhile. When
people say we’re ironic, I feel so insulted,
there’s a fairy-tale quality to Pulp’s fall and because it implies that you don’t care about
unscrupulous revenge fantasies of ‘I Spy’, fall and rise that makes you wonder whether what you do. I haven’t devoted 15 years of my
addressed to some anonymous class enemy supernatural forces were involved. life to a joke. You may think we’re misguided,
whose wife Jarvis is shagging, and you think... “I’ve often wondered whether I believe in but we’re totally honest. Anyone who has
You’re not a very nice man, are you, Jarvis? fate,” he muses, nicking his fifth fag in an hour listened properly should realise that we’re
“Oh, you know how it is. Everyone’s got from your impoverished correspondent. “I never tongue-in-cheek.”
a vindictive side. It was my justification for say to myself that I don’t. But surreptitiously, Later, we prepare for one final assault on
being a doley scumbag. I thought to myself I do. I have dreams where something trivial Oslo nightlife. But not before Jarvis makes the
that I was actually working undercover, trying happens – like you’re in a café and someone most astonishing revelation.“Prince William is
to observe the world, taking notes for future asks, ‘Can you pass the pepper please?’. Then a Pulp fan, you know.” Get awaaaaay! “Honest.
reference, secretly subverting society. And one six months later you’re in a café and someone There was a thing in the Evening Standard
day, when the time was right, I would come actually asks you to pass the pepper. I interpret about him, and his favourite band is Pulp! ‘One
out of the shadows and pounce on the world. that as showing that your life could go a wants to live with the common people...’ Don’t
I guess you could call that revenge, not only for number of ways, which is revealed to you in know quite what to make of that. Good name
myself, but for the kind of people I respect.” dreams, and this déjà vu turns up to encourage to have on the guest list, though...” ■
“Ziggy’s my gi
The day after unveiling Ziggy Stardust at
a now-legendary Aylesbury concert,
David Bowie filled a London hotel suite NME
with scotch, sandwiches and Lou Reed. July 22,
Charles Shaar Murray dove headfirst into the 1972
myth-making surrounding Bowie’s new persona
J
ill and Lyn are 17 and they’re do with funk. I’ve never considered myself
into Bowie. They’ve both got funky. Would you say that? I wouldn’t…”
‘Ziggy Stardust…’ and neither Would you want to be?
of them like Marc Bolan. Jill says “Yes. It’s muddy. Camp, yes, I understand the
she likes the way David looks. camp thing. Once upon a time it was put down
She doesn’t necessarily think he’s in the category of entertainer, but since the
good-looking, she just likes the way he looks. departure of good old-fashioned entertainers
10
They and me and a sweaty hall full of other the re-emergence of somebody who wants to
4
people saw David Bowie and the Spiders From be an entertainer has unfortunately become a
Mars work Friars in Aylesbury at the weekend. synonym for camp. I don’t think I’m camper
It was alright, the band were altogether and than any other person who felt more at home
Ziggy played guitar. onstage than he did offstage.”
The Spiders are a surrealistic version of a Nobody ever called Jerry Garcia camp.
rock band. Trevor Bolder’s silvered sideboards “No, but he’s a musician and I’m not. I’m not
hang several inches off his face and Woody into music on that level. I don’t profess to have
Woodmansey’s hair is an orange Vidal Sassoon music as my big wheel and there are a number
duck’s ass similar to David’s. They go through of other things as important to me apart from
the show at top speed until the final encore music. Theatre and mime, for instance.”
of ‘Suffragette City’ where David pulls off his You say you don’t consider yourself a
most outrageous stunt and goes down on Mick musician, but for somebody who’s producing
Ronson’s guitar. David is gonna be huge. music of a very high grade, I would reckon
The day after the gig he’s holding a press that you’re entitled to be called a musician.
conference at the Dorchester Hotel. Lou Reed “OK then, I’ll shift my emphasis. I wouldn’t
and his band are there, all the Spiders and, think I’d ever be considered a technocrat on
curled up in a corner in a Bolan T-shirt, eye any instrument. I have a creative force which
shadow and silvered hair, is Iggy Pop. When finds its way through into a musical form.”
I got there David was wearing an entirely You were saying you didn’t consider yourself
different outfit. Before I left he’d changed into to be a musician.
a third. Woody pours me a sumptuous Johnny “In that terminology, in that definition: that a
Walker Black Label and peach juice. Lou Reed musician is a virtuoso on his instrument? By
is talking quietly to David. He’s wearing shades no stretch of the imagination. I play a good
and maroon fingernails. Periodically, horrified alto, I played a bit actually on the Mott album
waiters enter to deliver yet more scotch and [1972’s ‘All The Young Dudes’].”
wine and sandwiches. Rock’n’roll is increasingly becoming a ritual.
At the moment, the most popular rock Instead of the very down-to-earth stance of,
journalist words appear to be funk, camp and say, the Grateful Dead. It’s becoming very
punk. To what extent do you think you’ve much of a spectacle, very formulaic.
MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY
brought these words into essential usage? “I’ve not seen many bands where I’ve
“I think it’s most probably due to the general noticed that.”
inarticulacy of the press. They’re very small- Alice Cooper is an extreme example. I think
minded. They do indeed revolve around those you come into it to a certain extent. Marc Bolan
three words. does. Sha Na Na in their own particular way…
Not revolve around. They crop up… “Firstly, you must tell me your feelings on this
“Yes they do. I don’t think I have anything to before I quite know what your question is…”
DAVID B OW IE
ft to you”
I have mixed feelings about it. I think it works but he just came over and kissed David.)
when you do it, but sometimes I get the Reed: “That’s it.” (exit)
feeling that the audience is being excluded. I was hoping to get a two-way interview.
“As you saw with us, we were using no props. Bowie: “That was a two-way interview.”
We’re not into props. If we have theatricality You retired after ‘Space Oddity’. Would you
it comes through from us as people, not as ever do it again?
a set environment or stage. Like playing “I can’t envisage stopping gigging for the
an instrument, theatre craftsmanship next year at least because I’m having such a
is something that one learns. I’m a very good time – I’ve never enjoyed it more. I’m
professional person, and I feel that I contribute one with the band I’m working with and that
all my energies into my stage performance. hasn’t happened before. I’ve always felt I was
When I’m onstage I give more to an audience dragging people into doing things.”
than to anybody else offstage. Yeah, I saw you work at
I’ve worked hard at it. It’s
important to know about
“I’m just a the Roundhouse once
with Country Joe about
person, I’m not

the things you do as it is to two years ago.
learn your instrument. I wish “That Roundhouse gig
myself to be a prop for my was the kind of thing
songs. I want to be the vehicle
for my songs. I would like to
quite that much I cite in that I was into
something that the band
colour the material with as
of a superman” wasn’t into. They were
5
much visual expression as is still only wanting to be
10
necessary.” musicians at the time,
Do you feel worried by David Bowie and it came off as no
people who regard you more than everybody
as a guru? dressing up. Was that
“I’m not that convinced that I am anybody’s the one you came to where I was wearing a
guru. I know there is a lot of interest in what silver superman suit?”
I’m doing, and we seem to be getting our fair You weren’t. You did ‘Cypress Avenue’.
share of exposure, but I’m not convinced that “We did one at the Roundhouse about the
we are leading any particular cult.” same period when we appeared very much the
But it’s happening almost in spite of you, same as we are appearing now, and that was
people examining your albums almost with Mick Ronson. I was in a cartoon strip and
line by line. we all dressed up as a different superhero.”
“Well, if this is going to be an inevitable Were they ready to cope with it at the time?
situation with the chronicles of rock, and one “No, we died a death. And, of course, the boys
must presume that it will be, then I would said, ‘I told you so, let’s get back to just being
strive to use that position to promote some a band again’. That’s the period that broke me
feeling of optimism in the future, which up. I just about stopped after that performance
might seem very hypocritical related to ‘Five because I knew it was what I wanted, and
Years’. There the whole thing was to try to get I knew it was what people would want
a mocking angle at the future. If I can mock eventually. I didn’t know when though, so I
something, one isn’t so scared of it. People are held on. I’ve always been excited about seeing
so incredibly serious and scared of the future things that are visually exciting. I like seeing
that I would wish to turn the feeling the other people pretending. I’m not a vegetable. I like
way, into a wave of optimism. to let my imagination run wild. I thought, well,
“If one can take the mickey out of the future, if that does that to me, it has to do it to other
and what it is going to be like... It’s going to be people as well, ’cos I’m just a person. I’m not
unbelievably technological. There isn’t going quite that much of a superman. And anyway,
to be a triangle system, we aren’t going to I’m glad I stuck it out really.”
revert back to the real way of life. It’s certainly What’s the next post-Ziggy development?
not a new thing, my god I haven’t got any “I’m still totally involved with Ziggy. I probably
new concept. I juggle with them, but what I’m will be for a few months getting it out of my
David Bowie
saying has been said a million times before. system, and then we’ll don another mask.”
performing I’m just saying that we’ve gotta have some Thanks a lot, and I hope you and Ziggy will
at Friars club optimism in the future.” be very happy together.
Aylesbury, 1972 (At this point, Lou Reed entered the room. “Oh, no. I hope YOU and Ziggy will be very
I hoped to get him to join in the conversation, happy. Ziggy’s my gift to you.” ■
► NME has captured countless momentous shows. Here are some moshpit memories
The Rolling
Stones
Deutschlandhalle, West Berlin
October 19, 1973
PHOTO: PENNIE SMITH
►
Writer Nick Kent travelled with
photographer Pennie Smith to West
Berlin to join The Rolling Stones, branding
their show “rock’n’roll deluxe for the
connoisseurs and the crazies”. Kent also spent
time with the band ahead of the gig, which took
place in a city rife with political tension. “There
are maybe 40 police vans parked around the
side of the hall the Stones are playing tonight.
Outside the hall a thousand ‘polizei’ are sifting
out the potential troublemakers, the leftist
politicos who are there to cause heavy
disturbance, while the air is thick with cold rain.”
The show also marked Mick Taylor’s
last live appearance with the band until 1981.
7
10
Iggy &
The Stooges
King’s Cross Cinema, London
July 15, 1972
PHOTO: PENNIE SMITH
►
Caked in clown make-up in
either imitation or cruel
mockery of the glam rockers,
Iggy Pop so terrified the crowd at
Iggy & The Stooges’ 1972 London
show – and UK debut – by climbing
over them and performing what Nick
Kent described as a “demented
boogaloo” that their manager
thought they’d be arrested if they
played any more shows. “He grabbed
a chick and stared blankly into her
face, almost beating up some poor
wretch who dared to laugh at him,”
Kent wrote of the gig. “The total
effect was more frightening than all
10
the Alice Coopers and A Clockwork

8
Orange put together, simply because

these guys weren’t joking.”
Led Zeppelin
Earls Court, London
May 17, 1975
PHOTO: PENNIE SMITH
►
The ‘Oasis At Knebworth’ of
its day, Led Zeppelin sold
85,000 tickets for their
five-night run at Earls Court, at the
time the biggest audience draw in
the UK’s rock history. It was also the
first time a big screen was used to
display the onstage action, at a cost
of £10,000. Minds, understandably,
were blown. “Jimmy Page is hunched
over his Les Paul doing a kind of
on-the-spot Chuck Berry duckwalk,”
wrote reviewer Charles Shaar
Murray. “Black velvet with frequent
outbursts of rhinestones, sensitive
pout, ridges of razored chords, pure
’70s guitar hero, pretty but mean. As
he steps forward the light explodes
around him on the screen. He’s
flaying the guitar alive and it’s only
seconds into the show.”
9
10
Joy Division
University Of London
Union, London
February 8, 1980
PHOTO: ANTON CORBIJN
►
One of the last Joy Division
shows NME would review,
their gig at the University
Of London Union found the band
boosting their sound with extra
instrumentation. Paul Morley was left
stunned by the stark and harrowing
spectacle. “The full new introduction
of synthesizer has not damaged the
coherence and balance of the music
in any way, it simply increases the
amount of mood, atmosphere and
ephemeral terror they are capable of
achieving,” he wrote of the show. “It’s
simple music, but not simple-minded;
cryptic but not inpenetrable… Joy
Division will tear you apart. Still.”
11
0
L IVE
Hole
Reading Festival
August 26, 1994
PHOTO: KEVIN CUMMINS
1
11
►
Just four months after the
death of her husband,
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain,
Courtney Love made her first UK
appearance with Hole. It was a
troubled experience for the fans as
well as the bereaved frontwoman.
“Hole were never quite a great band,
but this dark, shabby mess is still
some kind of tragedy all its own,”
wrote John Mulvey of the Main Stage
set. “Guitars grind numbly and
Courtney slurs and croaks where she
used to scream, a mere shadow…
Parts of this are defiant and, yes,
brave. Right at the end she strums
and raves about not leaving, about
sticking it out, then slings her guitar
across the stage in a rare burst of
energy. Mostly, though, it’s a
cathartic torture for us and them.”
Foo
Fighters
Reading Festival
August 26, 1995
PHOTO: STEVE DOUBLE
►
“Let’s face facts: Foo Fighters
headlining the second stage
was a stupid fucking idea,”
wrote Mark Sutherland of the
packed-out tent gig that Dave Grohl
found himself attempting to appease
at 1995’s Reading Festival. “Whoever
thought you could book one of the
world’s hottest ‘new’ acts – let alone
one whose frontman was in the
decade’s most important American
band – without half of Berkshire
turning up to watch was surely
kidding themselves. And whoever,
when faced with the opportunity to
switch to the larger stage [the Foos
were reportedly offered a swap with
Tricky] decided it was more punk
rock to play under canvas, must have
been away with the sodding fairies.”
L IVE
3
11
The Strokes
The Monarch, London
February 7, 2001
PHOTO: ALESSIO PIZZICANNELLA
►
“Someday there’ll be volumes
of breathless prose written on
Julian Casablancas’
tumescent pout or the way he grips
his leather jacket when he sings,”
wrote Stevie Chick of The Strokes’
first London headline show. “They
swoon with the pure romance and
passion of punk rock NYC,
swaggering street-poets who thrash
out towering pop songs awash
with love and hate and lust and
the switchblade-agony of
misunderstanding, all the
frustrations of young adulthood
writ in Technicolor widescreen
with casual profundity by
photogenic Bowery bands.”
The Libertines
112a Teesdale Street, London
March 21, 2003
PHOTO: ROGER SARGENT
►
The Libertines’ plan to stage
a show in their east London home
was foiled after riot police raided
the premises and closed down the gig
after only a handful of songs. The band,
who charged fans £10 for entry, managed
to get through ‘Up The Bracket’, ‘Boys In
The Band’, ‘I Get Along’ and new track
‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ before the
party was shut down. “Police bundled
people out into the Bethnal Green streets
with a defiant Carl Barât making sure
he shook hands and kissed every fan as
they left,” read the NME news report.
“As bucketloads of booze flowed and with
the bathroom plumbing not working, Carl
was overheard to remark to someone who
had ventured into the toilets: ‘I can’t
believe you did that…
L IVE
Arctic Monkeys
Old Trafford Cricket Ground, Manchester
July 28, 2007
PHOTO: ANDY WILLSHER
►
Touted as their Event Gig akin
to The Stone Roses at Spike
Island, Arctic Monkeys’ show
at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in
Manchester was blighted by PA failures,
allowing the band to snatch victory
from the wobbly electric connection
of defeat. “The fans, already worked
into a frenzy, are teetering on the brink
of a riot,” wrote Alex Miller of the
awkward moment the PA cut out during
‘Balaclava’. But then: “‘RAUUARGH!!’
Alex Turner’s guitar leaps back into life,
disemboweling whatever ghosts dared
stray into his machine. By the time
‘This House Is A Circus’’ manic skat-rap
is bursting from Turner’s lips, there are
bouncers peeling the Old Trafford
crowd from the clouds.”
11
6
L IVE
Amy
Winehouse
Dublin Castle, London
April 19, 2007
PHOTO: TOM OXLEY
►
She didn’t turn up on time and she
spent much of the show pouring
pints of beer over the front rows
of the packed-out venue while winking
at Blake Fielder-Civil, who was to become
her husband the following month, but
Amy was still the best thing we saw at
2007’s Camden Crawl. “The first night’s
closing gig sees the longest queue of
the whole event for Amy Winehouse,
who shuffles onstage half an hour late.
‘I’m so sorry for keeping you waiting,’
she growls sincerely – tits’n’tats on
proud display – before jumping into
her cover of The Zutons’ ‘Valerie’,
7
kickstarting a glorious soul-splattered
11
homecoming, which leaves no doubt as
to whom the queen of this castle is,”
read Leonie Cooper’s review.
Rage Against
The Machine
Finsbury Park, London
June 6, 2010
PHOTO: RICHARD JOHNSON
►
After an anti-X Factor fan
campaign saw Rage Against The
Machine’s super sweary 1992
single ‘Killing In The Name’ named
2009’s Christmas Number One, the
band played a free show in the UK to
say thanks to the British public. “The
mood at ‘The Rage Factor’ is one of
hope and pride and heroic moshing –
and a renewed faith in the power of the
human spirit, and music’s influence over
it,” wrote Dan Martin of the incendiary
show, which was attended by 40,000
punters. The band accepted a cheque
for £162,713.03 – the royalties earned
from the festive sales of the single
– on behalf of homelessness charity
11
Shelter onstage at the gig.

8
L IVE
Florence
9
11
+ The Machine
Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury
June 26, 2015
PHOTO: ED MILES
►
The first British female-
fronted Glastonbury headliner
since Skunk Anansie in 1999,
Florence + The Machine stepped in
at the last minute to replace Foo
Fighters, after Dave Grohl broke his
leg. “Even if it was made under
duress, Florence Welch’s promotion
is symbolically important,” wrote
Barry Nicolson. “From the moment
she takes to the stage, barefoot and
restless, banging a tambourine
throughout ‘What The Water Gave
Me’, she seems eager to please:
indeed, you often get the sense that
you’re watching someone who knows
they’re playing the biggest, most
important gig of their life, and is
determined not to disappoint. Sure,
Foo Fighters would have killed it. But
tonight, Florence + The Machine
prove that they’re here on merit, and
not just necessity.”

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PETER ROBINSON VS ►From 2003 to 2012, NME’s
Peter Robinson asked the
EVERYONE questions no one else dared.

Here are his highlights:
Serge Bryan Adams

Pizzorno, October 2, 2004
Kasabian It’s been 35 summers since you

got your first real six-string.
October 23, 2004 Had you had much experience
of six-strings that for whichever
reason weren’t real?
Is Kasabian’s success “Most guitar players have that experience. You
mainly down to having go through a slew of cheapos until you can afford
the name of a really a good one.”
rubbish indie band and
then turning out to be quite good
when you put the CD on?
“I just think we’re connecting the Nick Carter,
people, you know what I mean? With
everyone from all sorts of walks of Backstreet Boys
life – nurses, people in offices, kids. My
grandma’s a big fan, too.” May 28, 2005
12
But to be fair, you could probably Your advice for new boyband
4
shit in a bucket and your grandma members in the UK is:

Amy Winehouse would say it was great.
“Yes, very true.”
“Play instruments.”
August 14, 2004 Controversial!!!

“Huh? I mean, we sing a cappella and now we’ve
started to play instruments – guitar, bass, drums.
When you were a comedy showbiz hack at an
entertainment website, how many stories did Chico, Boybands should write pop music that can be
you make up? played with instruments. Kind of like The Beatles!”
“Oh, I used to make up stories all day. I’d go, The X Factor
‘That’s shit. Let’s use this quote, where she goes Or, perhaps more realistically, Busted.
‘I don’t want to be nobody’s bitch’. So it’d be, March 11, 2006
headline: ‘Posh: I don’t want to be nobody’s bitch’.
First paragraph: ‘Posh said today that she never Will you do a version of ‘It’s Chico
wanted to be someone’s bitch’. Second paragraph:
Adam Ficek,
Time’ called ‘It’s Christmas Time’?
‘The lanky bitch, who said she didn’t want to be “Brilliant! I’d never run out of
anyone’s bitch, spoke at a benefit for bitches’. New advertising ideas, would I?
paragraph: ‘I don’t want to be nobody’s bitch, she
said.’ Easy. Job done.”
It’s chocolate time! It’s, er,
time out! And I’ve made a
Babyshambles
fitness video for (mobile August 30, 2008
Has anyone pointed out the similarity phone company
between your new single ‘Fuck Me Pumps’ removed – Do you make any art, apart from
and ‘Winter Wonderland’, and which is best? gratuitous the art of popular song?
“Eh? No. (Sings a bit) Oh my god. You’re right. branding – “Well, I try to draw now
Thanks for alerting me to that. I’d say ‘Winter Ed). And and again.”
Wonderland’ is best. Are we going to McDonald’s?” it works!”
Do you draw with
Now? And it’s YOUR BLOOD?
“Sorry, I’m talking to my driver. I’m about to go into not just “No.”
McDonald’s. I’m in Camden. (Pauses) You know a phone
you need to employ me for your magazine, right? company
I want a column. Where I just cuss everyone. It will paying you
be called ‘Straight From The House’s Mouth: Amy £10,000 to
Winehouse Cusses Down All You Pop Bastards’. put your name to
Do you pay well? You probably make more than any old shit?
I do. I’ve got about £20,000 in the bank. (Pause) “I just want people
Of course I fucking don’t!” to get fit!”
VE R SUS
Howlin’ Pelle
Almqvist,
The Hives
April 16, 2005
Tori Amos said in this James Blunt

here column that man-
made beehives are NOT
October 23, 2010
blocks of flats for bees,
but she’s basically wrong about You are thought of as boring, but actually
that, don’t you think? you are quite interesting. You go out, get
“Did she offer an explanation to back off your tits, shag people. You’re a lot more
her theory that they were not blocks interesting than people give you credit for if,
of flats? They even look like blocks of of course, those aforementioned activities
flats. I mean, what are they, if they’re are ‘interesting’, which they are.
not blocks of flats?” “Er, thank you. Well, my mum doesn’t think so
Lily Allen when she reads the papers. But I do like to get
Quite. Can you please say now, out a little bit…”
June 24, 2006 for the benefit of Tori Amos, ‘Tori
Amos, you are wrong about the Are you the person at the party who gets the
Are you a better pop star than your dad? blocks of flats thing’? guitar out to ‘enchant’ the ladies?
“My dad’s not really a pop star.” “Tori Amos, you are wrong about “Oh, good god, no. That would be the quickest way
the block of flats thing.” to clear a party. I do better at funerals.”
He’s had more records out than you have.
“(Giggles) Yeah, well. I don’t really think I can What music would you like at your own
possibly say I’m better than anyone, except funeral?
perhaps Sandi Thom. And maybe Jennifer Ellison.
And Jentina.”
Calvin Harris “I’d choose something happy.”
March 3, 2007 Would people be happy you’d died?

Are you a good role model for your “Some people would be.”
young fans? Did you really get your [record]
5
“Yes, I’m a realistic role model. I think it’s better deal off Myspace or is it a
12
to be honest about the way you are in life than to cute story to get you in
hide it. Pop stars who pretend they’re virgins, for
example, when they’re probably taking it up the
the papers?
“It’s true. I’m not like Lily Allen who
Tulisa
arse more than anyone else. And then their fans
are very disappointed. Whereas with me, you know
already had her deal. It’s a bit tragic
being signed due to Myspace. I blame Contostavlos
what you’re getting from the start.” the A&R men.” December 4, 2010
Are you suggesting that you’re taking As well as being Myspace’s Calvin
it up the arse already? Harris you’re also known as Kylie Are you sad about the imminent end of the
“Oh, constantly. I’m always bending over.” Producer Calvin Harris. It’s nice, Harry Potter films or is it more a question
I think, so early in your career of ‘Thank god that’s over, no more people
to have two things completely pretending to be wizards’?
overshadow your own work. “I didn’t even know it was over to be
“Hahaha, yes. Ever since I admitted honest. I don’t think it will affect my
Shaggy that I worked with Kylie, I’ve been life too much. I was never a Harry
CORBIS, DEAN CHALKLEY, GETTY, JAMES QUINTON, REX FEATURES, SAM JONES
very cagey. The Kylie fans have been Potter reader. I like all that fantasy
September 13, 2008 bombarding me – they want to know stuff but…”
what she likes to eat, what her address
Hello Shaggy. Have you ever is, what her phone number is…” But it’s made up! It’s a load
thought about killing yourself? of rubbish!
“No. Never. Never crossed my mind.” I’ve got Kylie’s phone number from “My favourite film of all time is
an interview, but I’m so terrified Labyrinth, starring David Bowie.
If you were banned from music – and I’m not about calling her when drunk If they made another one, I’d
saying you should be, necessarily – what that it’s not in my phone but is be ecstatic.”
would happen next? locked in a box. Although she’s
“I’m shit at everything else. I thank God for music probably changed it now. Would you take the
every day because you don’t want to see me female lead?
playing cricket. I’m really shitty.” “I’d be the girl running
around with a little goblin
Could you work in a shop? sidekick.”
“I used to – I worked in a bakery. They fired me so
fucking quick!” Isn’t that what
you’re already
Did you just spend all day filling tarts doing with Dappy?
with cream? “EXACTLY.”
“It wasn’t that sort of bakery.”
►For almost two decades, NME’s Thrills page collected rafts of rock’n’roll
satire and general made-up bollocks. Here are some of its prime cuts…
Wacky Wu-Tang
Thrills was the epicentre of all
things satirical, leaping to the
laughter barricades when the
Wu-Tang Clan emerged with
their many comedy monikers.
Original hipster
The NME letters page has,
for eons, been full of angry
old gets gnashing on about
how their favourite band
has become shit since
they got popular. Thrills
parodied those saddos in
the form of perma-bitter
12
walking corpse Brian Hurst.

6
From noise to norm

In the ’90s, techno was a very
alien world full of oddly named
DJs releasing chunky great
splodges of mental noise on
sandpaper vinyl. Little has
changed, we’re just more used to How to sing like Ian
it now, largely thanks to updates No sacred cow was safe from
from regular Thrills column Thrills’ amusement. Here’s
Techno News and its host Glacier Ian Brown being ribbed for
Glider, Troy Wembley. his unique vocal abilities.
Healthy start
to the day…
When Noel said doing drugs
was “like having a cup of tea Stars held at gun point
in the morning,” Thrills ran Occasionally, Thrills went
away with the idea. somewhat ‘postal’.
7
12
Getting the inside story
For one weekly article, Thrills popped
round various rock stars’ houses for
a cup of tea and a rummage through
their knicker drawer.
ANDY WILLSHER, STEVE DOUBLE, JOSEPH STEVENS
Watch out kids

In 1991 the shadowy
puppeteer of the Boo yar sucks to shoegaze
music industry, old Today, shoegaze is rightly considered
Satan’s Cock himself, a pivotal and revolutionary early ’90s
broke cover to mock movement of unadulterated sonic
readers with his cathedrality. At the time, though, it was a
wicked plots to kill bit of a joke scene full of ‘ethereal’ posh
off the good in rock. kids from the home counties, and ripe
for public school pastiche in one of our
most self-celebrating weekly columns.
How the hell
did that happen?
►At NME we’ve never been ones to avoid an opportunity to abuse our power.
Here are some of the sandwich-dropping moments from the past 63 years
Aphex Twin
drinks everything
December 1997
Of all the monumental
rock star piss-ups that
have appeared in our
annual Pub Golf feature
in the Christmas double
Made-up band
issue, the battle between
the rock and dance
teams in 1997 was by
meets tragic end
12
far the wildest. Aphex

8
Twin, realising he scored

April 1995 more points the fouler
the concoction he was
In 1995, slap bang in the middle of Britpop, we made up an prepared to down, began
electro krautpop band called I Dream Of Wires (vanguard mixing pints of bubbling
of the fictional New Wave Of Synth Pop scene alongside alco-alchemy, necked an
invented peers Monophone and Dresden Ludo) and wrote entire bowl of lemons and covered in sick, while ‘Little’
an in-depth feature on them for a laugh. Then, on April 1, ended up so hammered Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai
we killed them off in a bus crash, to the despair of our more he was clambering on cars in downed a pint of every shot behind
gullible letters page correspondents. stopped traffic. He was carried the Good Mixer bar, securing
home early, unconscious and a victory for the rockers.
CARTOON CORNER
Way before Gorillaz we
were quick on the draw
NME has never quite found
its own Garfield. In the early
’90s, Father Ted writers Arthur
Mathews and Graham Linehan
contributed Dickensian
sketches on indie rock themes The Beatles’
to NME under the guise
of Dr Crawshaft. This gave trivial pursuits
way to Great Pop Things,
a slapdash four-panel January 1967
history of some of the most
complex bands in rock. In the ’60s, we literally used to ask major
Other notable cartoon superstars what their favourite food was – and
contributors include Alan 20-odd other equally inane questions – by post.
Moore, Shakespeare of It was halfway between a Fearne Cotton interview
comics and drawer of trippy and a passport application, but somehow we got
Elvis Costello illustrations. NME's very own toon army throug h t h e age s The Beatles and Bob Dylan to do it.
HOW T HE HEL L DI D TH AT H AP P E N ?
THE MOST WTF

Damon NME COVERS EVER…
does Debbie The strange things you end up doing
December 1991 when Noel Gallagher’s not available
For 1991’s Christmas issue, we

somehow managed to convince
the indie heroes of the day to
dress up as their favourite album
covers. Cue Blur doing Blondie’s
‘Parallel Lines’ complete with
Damon in drag and Happy
Mondays’ Bez as Bob Marley,
smoking the obligatory spliff.
History is rewritten Lab o u r l e a d e r N e i l Blind D a te host Cilla Black

Kinnock 13/6/87 15/11/86
2004
In the mid-’00s,
a little-noticed
feature under
the gig listings
highlighted notable events from that day in
history, none of which actually happened. And
Goldie Lookin Chain so it came to pass that NME remembered the
9
day Damon Albarn had his heart replaced with
guest edit NME
12
a Babybel, the time when David Bowie’s range
of chicken kievs was withdrawn from the
January 2004 market and the day P Diddy paid to have
his butler gold plated. Ancient monument Flop movie Popeye
Few acts have been given the opportunity to Stonehenge 1/7/78 11/4/81
guest edit NME. Blur had a go (and got their
producer Stephen Street’s kids to review the
singles), Franz Ferdinand waxed lyrical about
The Blood Arm and Buzzcocks, the cast of The
The Inbetweeners joined us as the work
experience and, in a moment of madness,
the reigns were handed over to hip-hop goons
Kaisersaurus
Goldie Lookin Chain in 2004. Cue features
on drugs, GLC’s unique fashion sense and
lives
Eggsy’s handy guide to being abducted by
aliens, swiftly followed by the mass dismissal
of IPC Media’s HR department.
PETER ANDERSON, STEVE PYKE, DEREK RIDGERS, DUNCAN RABAN

Page 3 girl-turned-pop T V’s O n l y F o o l s And
Trousersnake named star S am Fox 12/4/86 H o rse s 21/12/85

MARTYN GOODCARE, KEVIN CUMMINS, HAYLEY MADDEN,
MARTYN GOODACRE, KEVIN CUMMINS, HAYLEY MADDEN
Earth’s coolest being

November 2003
The annual NME Cool July 2005
List was unarguably
the definitive final word During the Kaiser Chiefs’ set at
on the most credible Glastonbury 2005, a large inflatable
artistes on the planet. dinosaur was tossed onstage, dubbed
Apart from the year the Kaisersaurus and roundly ridden
we decided to make by Ricky Wilson like the massive
Justin Timberlake number one in undoubtedly prehistoric lizard whore it was. After B oxer Fra n k B r u n o B oxer B a r r y M c G u i g a n
the most reader-angering list we’ve ever published the set, we adopted it and took it for 3/9/83 10/5/86
(and that’s saying something). walkies around London.
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* * * 1 3 2 PAG E S * * *

Celebrating the first chapter

29 JULY–26 AUG 2015 £3.50

US$9.50 ES€5.35 CN$8.99

4 LETTERS 6 HISTORY 106 LIVES

crises, we’ve always been more collected here.

interested in what The Beatles

DEAN CHALKLEY, ED MILES, AMY BRAMMALL, PAMELA LITTKY,

ANDY WILLSHER, RICHARD JOHNSON

s any writer who’s

MICHAEL OCHS/GETTY, GETTY, ESTATTE OF KEITH MORRIS/GETTY, MICK HUTSON/GETTY,

CORBIS, SUZIE GIBBONS/GETTY, KEVIN CUMMINS, ANTON CORBIJN, DEAN CHALKLEY

►David Bowie ►The Stone Roses ►Muse ►The Libertines

►Joy Division ►Blur ►The Strokes ►Arctic Monkeys

have always been tied to the strength

good. But Smith would do more than that: he would

       

Poached from the underground

amounts of amphetamines. It became a subversive NME had developed a strong social

TOP MARKS 10 albums that got 10/10 in NME

NME gets political,

only journalist allowed to attend.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney and

The Rolling Stones by Jefferson Airplane,

concerned with Bowie’s failure to address

The Who smash

their gold discs pen a legendary NME editorial entitled

groups. The 1978 rally saw almost

The Smiths split up

press… has meshed out.” Edwards was rushed to

The KLF ambush

shot October morning,

even years before Kanye, Jay Z made history as the

The Stone Roses’

chronic hangover – the inevitable punishment

We are sitting in one of Nirvana’s

(Repeat to fade) her lover’s attention was focused on the

frowns Liam. “It was asking for trouble putting

Fact: Oasis talk a lot of bullshit.

Bonehead has trashed his room.

In 1988, Public Enemy were

stories from the farm

“I’d clear up dead

NME’s shabby-genteel hotel, slightly distracted In many respects, Jack White

For the last day or so, Arctic Monkeys

Duncan Bannatyne from Dragon’s

response. “I do that thing where

anything other than

Alex and Matt

Wanna Know?’ for a reason, says

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outsiders Pulp. Next thing they knew, they were

being invited to Norwegian “sex parties”. fright-wigged über-babe crazies and

you that you’ve gone the right way, the way

say we’re ironic, straight in at Number One in the UK album

person, I’m not

the Alice Coopers and A Clockwork

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