'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and 45 is his logbook' Independent

'45 is a fine read . . . Drummond draws you into his mad world with conviction' Evening Standard

'Informed by the same high level of insight into the pop music industry that was evident in his first book, The Manual... peculiarly and sometimes painfully honest' Independent on Sunday

'A cracking read and one of the most interesting books about music and art in years' Matt Anniss, Amazon.co.uk

'A compelling missive from one of popular culture's great dis­cordant imaginations' Select

'A wry and witty take on Drummond's 25-year career' Loaded

'A worthy and compelling addition to the rock biography pan­theon . . . Even when describing the most quotidian of tasks, Drummond proves himself a compelling raconteur, his reckless scheming only serving to underline modern pop's paucity of true visionaries' Big Issue

FORTY-FIVE TODAY

29 April 1998

In 1986 I recorded a long-playing record entitled 'The Man'. It was released by Creation Records. It was a very personal record. All the songs dealt with my life and my emotions at that point in time. It was done to mark the end of one period of my life. I was 331/3 years old. Time for a revolution, I thought. I was leaving pop music behind to start writing books. I promised myself I would not have any further involvement with music until I reached the age of 45, when I would make one single 45 rpm seven-inch record.

My promise was never kept. Like that dog, I returned. As I entered my 45th year, I decided to write a book that contained snapshots of the world from where I was standing. The stories span a period from early in my 45th year to well into being 45. I will read them again if I get to the age of 78.

If this book gets written, this page may act as an introduction.

45

Bill Drummond

An Abacus Book

First published in Great Britain by Little, Brown in 2000 This edition published by Abacus in 2001

Copyright © Penkiln Burn, 2000, 2001

www.penkiln-burn.com

Introduction copyright © Neal Brown, 2001

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without

the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 349 11289 4

Typeset by M Rules

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Abacus A Division of Little, Brown and Company (UK) Brettenham House

Lancaster Place London WC2E 7EN

CONTENTS

FORTY-FIVE TODAY 1

CONTENTS 2

THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL 4

5 September 1997 6

THE URGE TO PAINT or Have I Got The Strength To 'Just Say No'?'. 15

MICK PHONED. 16

ON PAPER 19

FROM THE SHORES OF LAKE PLACID 20

IT'S SHIT 40

CHUNKY THIGHS 41

A SMELL OF MONEY UNDER GROUND 43

LET'S GRIND or How R2 Plant Hire Went To Work 52

ONE IDEA 59

THE NUMBER FOURTEEN 60

A CURE FOR NATIONALISM 68

A CHRISTMAS CAROL 80

BOXING DAY 90

WILLIAM BUTTERWORTH REVEALED 91

DEATH BY DEED POLL 94

BA BA GAA 95

GIMPO'S 25 99

THEY CALLED ME UP IN TENNESSEE 105

IN PRAISE OF COUNCIL HOMES 109

MAKING SOUP 115

THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTED 126

ROBBIE JOINS THE JAMS 132

BILL DRUMMOND IS DEAD 143

TOWERS, TUNNELS AND ELDERFLOWER WINE 145

GIMPO AND ME AND THE FABIAN SOCIETY 152

MY MODERN LIFE 157

ART TERRORIST INCIDENT AT LUTON AIRPORT 173

MY P45 175

GREAT EXPECTATIONS 175

ACKNOWLEDGE 183

THRASHED 183

WHEELCHAIRS 186

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DISILLUSIONMENT, I 190

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DISILLUSIONMENT, II 192

WHERE'S BILL? 196

FORWARDS TO THE FOREWORD 198

INTRODUCTION 199

BACKWARDS FROM THE FOREWORD 201

THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL

2 September 1997

I'm pulling my horse face.

'Dad.'

'What?'

'I might have found it funny you doing that when I was seven, but now it just makes you look stupid.'

5.05 p.m. Rate (12), James (10) and Dad (me) are standing in line at the Finn Air check-in, Heathrow. We're off to Helsinki. It's a summer holiday of sorts. I'm weighed down with a couple of rucksacks stuffed with a few hundred seven-inch singles, a thousand sheets of freshly printed, letterheaded writing paper and a notebook filled with lies to tell. We are on our way. In front of me in the queue is a girl; shoulder-length, sleek brown hair, expensive shades, hip-hugging slacks with 1997 regula­tion flared bottoms, skimpy black top, her every movement giving off total sexual confidence. Classy. I can't help but stare. She has a man with her a good twenty-five years her senior; hair loss, tired and drawn looks. He is checking in at least half a dozen bulging cases. They're an odd couple, but very familiar and comfortable with each other. The only thing that gives her away is when she opens her mouth. Rough, tough Glaswegian.

Rate and James are sitting on their bags. Rate is drawing a picture oï the cute, keyboard-playing singer with Hanson.

James is bored and pissed off. It's been a long day already. We were up at 6.15 a.m. to drive to Peterborough, to the passport office, to get their names on my passport. On the way back down we heard Noel Gallagher on the radio being interviewed. Be Here Now is released today. Noel was trying to tell us that Oasis are going to blow every other band off the face of the earth. What a quaint aspiration.

The girl in front calls out to three others lounging about with attitude on an airport couch. I hadn't seen them until now. One of them comes over. The first thing I notice is her massive plat­form trainers, white, a good six inches off the ground. The next thing I take in is her hair. Ginger with streaks, the cut identical to Geri's from The Spice Girls. She's in her early twenties, suck­ing on an alcopop, and I'm thinking, 'Why would anybody her age and at this time in the history of pop want to have a hair­style so knowingly identical to Ginger Spice, seeing as The Spice Girls are into a phase of their career in which their appeal is strictly pre-teen?'

Their two tubby mates join them, and all is becoming clearer. One is an even plainer version of Sporty Spice. As she drags on her Marlboro Light, back flips look like the last thing she could ever manage. As for Baby, bleached-blonde bunches are about as close as the likeness gets.

My mind is off, racing down half a dozen back alleys at the same time. Posh Spice with a tenement-slum Glaswegian accent, Sporty Spice on forty a day, an alcoholic Ginger and a fat Baby. What seedy showbiz office was this whole exploit hatched from, where was the advert placed? How many wannabes responded, and why? Are these girls after fame and fortune? And once they passed the audition and got the job as would-be Sporty, Posh, Baby, Ginger and . . . Hang on a minute, where is Scary? I stop and look around. There is no lookalike Scary. Has she just not turned up yet or was she kicked out last night for getting pissed up once too often? Do they get the tabloids every morning to check on the latest Spice Girls news, clothes, points of view,

hairdos? Can they sing, or do they just mime to a backing track? Do they live in fear that their Spice Girl alter ego might take an overdose, get up the duff or be chucked out? What then for them? Back to the Situations Vacant pages in The Stage? Maybe none of it's that sad, maybe they are just a bunch of girls game for a laugh, taking a year out before they start their BA course in Medieval History at the University of East Anglia or something.

Not since Monkeemania hit our TV screens on that Saturday teatime in 1966 has a band appeared which required us all to have our favourite. Mine was Circus Boy and drummer Micky Dolenz. Then there was a thirty-year wait before I had to make a similar choice. This time it was Baby Spice; I've always been a sucker for a grown woman with bunches. But in the past couple of weeks my allegiances have shifted. It's that fishwife-done-up-like-a-pushy-transvestite-with-big-tits-look that has drawn me to her. That and her glorious lack of singing and dancing talent, only surpassed by her driven desperation to be famous at any cost. I also like the fact that she seems older than she says she is, that the other four probably hate her, that no bloke appears able to put up with her for more than four weeks and that she will almost certainly be the first to lose her looks. Geri, you are now Spice Girl Number One in my heart. There is room for no other.

But why, here and now, are these Spice Girl look-sort-of-alikes (minus Scary) queuing to go to Helsinki? Off my mind goes again into another internal pop debate. When it was just the Bootleg Beatles, the Australian Doors and Björn Again I could understand it. But now it seems that for every band in the history of rock 'n' roll that has ever had an album out, there is a corresponding tribute band. Do gangs of young blokes hang around cafés flicking through back numbers of the NME, trying to find groups that haven't been tributed yet? Last week in my village hall The Love Cats, a tribute to The Cure, played. With all due respect to his artistic talent, who in their right mind would want to look and sound like Robert Smith?

Stop! Stop! Stop, Bill! I'm thinking too much about this. It doesn't matter, none of this matters. Pop music has become like a cancer that has spread through my whole body and is now affecting my brain. But what if I were cured? What would be left of me? I'd be like a shrivelled-up party balloon seven days after the birthday party. I saw a sketch on The Fast Show where the character could not do or say or hear or see anything without relating it back to a line in a pop song. That was me. I never listen to anything but Radio Three or Four, don't look at a music magazine from one year to the next, do not play any sort of music at home. But still it goes on, this internal sound­track of riff, hook, chorus and backing vocals to every moment of my waking life. I can't pass a mirror without hitting a power chord. Can't pass a sweet shop without hearing the Shangri-Las. Can't put out the milk bottles without wondering what happened to the Hermits. It's got to stop. I've tried everything, and it's too late to hope I die before I get old.

'Dad.'

'What?'

'Why do you keep looking at those girls?'