Rock music is dead. This was the shocking news delivered at the end of last year. The pathologist concluded that dear old rock and roll was flatlining with sales figures down to 3%. Professor Paul 'Gambo' Gambaccini gleefully administered the last rites. Of course, artistically there has been nothing new under the sun since The First Rock And Roll Revival of 1968 – I'll see your Dizzee Rascal and Xenophobia with The Last Poets and a pair of Boyce and Hart, The Monkees crack songwriting team – that it took the stark balance sheet of capitalism to notice the penny finally drop is only a surprise to the dunces at the back of the class. So lets just take it at face value; rock music is finally, thankfully dead.
The real looting and pillaging went on in the '90's and early 2000's. I know, I was one of the marauding hun, the sweet shop doors were left open and man did we have some fun. Well, quite odd fun in my case, but good if you like mind games and that sort of thing. By the early twentieth century the whole thing was fucked for everyone else. Sorry about that. When I was booted off EMI after 10 years (10 years!) and 9 albums, I had cost the company £750,000. Bye bye. I was not the only one. So what does my kind legacy mean for the strumming youth of today and tomorrow? It means that they'd better like strumming, yknow, a lot, 'cos no fucker is going to be paying them for it. If you're lucky, look like you can rustle up a few hits – remember you've only got a 3% and dwindling margin to play with here – your band may get signed for around £10,000. You will need to cover any recording costs with this and you will not receive any extra tour support. Split between three or four people that money won't go far. Tour support is the thing that record companies used to provide for their up and coming bands. It's expensive putting a new band on the road, and tour support is the free money (it's free money, who gives a fuck about recouping, just keep on handing out the dosh Tosh. Whoops it's all gone) that will keep you adrift on a sea of booze, in nice hotels, where you will meet interesting women (or men), and less interesting drug dealers, brought to your door by men (the road crew) who seem to say yes to your every whim. (Don't worry, they've seen it all before and are laughing at you behind your back.) Tour support pays for all this. It was the reason why being in a rock and roll band is better than working at Greggs.
Of course you could sign to an independent record label for no money, who will never, ever pay you any royalties. Ever. Or you could work at Greggs. As heroic rock stardom becomes less of a career option for school leavers it's inevitable that the glut of lets do the show right here manage ourselves and give away all our music on the internet for free bands will diminish. Unless you are independently wealthy the glory of a half page feature in the NME will only appeal for so long if you can't afford to eat. The old fun music biz money has gone elsewhere. To the nostalgia circuit. In five years time there will be no new bands. Just a bunch of cryogenically defrosted cadavers reliving their glory days in the Shepherds Bush Empire or the O2.
A few years ago, the pop group British Sea Power had an album out called 'Do You Like Rock Music?' As part of the promotion for the album the band published a list/manifesto of things that were Rock (good) and Not Rock. (bad) It's a nifty idea if not original. Vorticist Wyndham Lewis published a Blast and Bless manifesto in 1914, and Malcolm and Vivian borrowed it again in 1976 for a Seditionaries ' One Day You're Gonna Wake Up And Know Which Side Of The Bed You've Been Lying On?' T shirt. Old bands reforming are most definitely on the 'Not Rock' side of the bed.
Buzzcocks did it first. Or at least were the first band that really mattered to my generation who did the unthinkable: Reform. Man, you should've heard the Greek Chorus of post punk condemnation. (three more from them later as John Peel used to say). It was a dark day back in 1989 when the news broke as my two skinny basin headed knock kneed pals and I listened to a cassette of the Buzzers 'Razor Cuts' bootleg, whilst bemoaning the inevitable besmirching of the 'Cocks perfectly imperfect legacy - three albums and that run of singles. Remember, by the mid eighties the defunct Buzzcocks (notice I correctly refrain from writing The Buzzcocks. Annoying huh?) were seen as a major influence on The Smiths, The Mary Chain, the burgeoning C86 mob and erm, The Soup Dragons. In short, Buzzcocks (arghh) were close to canonisation. Then they went and blew it by reforming. My we were cross. Buzzcocks have now been reformed for 21 years. Sixteen years longer than when they were originally together.
It's a cold late January night in 2011, and I am playing a record that I haven't listened to in almost twenty years. The record is the third Velvet Underground album. Lou Reed's finest hour, this album used to be my favourite album. It may well be again. It has three of the greatest rock songs ever written on the first side alone: 'Candy Says,' 'Some Kinda Love,' and 'Pale Blue Eyes.' The reason I haven't, no couldn't, listen to these songs in such a long time can be attributed to an atrocity that took place in a field in Somerset.
June 1993, my group, The Auteurs have just played a tepid set to a disinterested field of punters at Glastonbury. Festivals are not my thing, you can take yer 'Glasto' and shove it up yer arse. I'm quite keen to finish our set as I know that the most important band in the world are about to begin theirs. Unfortunately I have to hot foot it 97 miles across fucking countryside to a far away place they call 'The Main Stage.' It will be worth it I know because the best band in the world, who nobody ever saw, and who split up in 1970, have got back together. I have by now got over my precious gripes about holy grail acts such as Buzzcocks (arghh fuckit) getting back together. Besides Sterl and Mo probably need the money, and who would begrudge them that? I am in fact hyperventilating in excitement at the thought of The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Fucking Underground, performing live in front of my eyes. It's a shame I have to negotiate another 60 miles of agricultural terrain before I will see them. I arrive just as The Velvets are finishing their first song. It's already clear that the Velvet Underground are breaking new ground. They are breaking new ground by being shit. Being shit is not something I had previously associated with The Velvet Fucking Underground. They already look all wrong - standing on that stupid Pyramid Stage at Fucking 'Glasto.' This was the most urban New York Fuckin' City group in the world. They are meant to be surrounded by frightening street drag queens and 'A heads', not cunts who refer to this godforsaken place that we are in as 'Glasto.' The Velvet Underground do not belong in a cowshit field in fucking Somerset, they are not the fucking Wurzels. And what is wrong with that guitar that Lou is playing? Oh, I see it's got no body and no neck. Ah, I see it's a shit guitar. But it does stay in tune very well, which is not really the point of the Velvet Underground is it? And then Lou starts singing. 'Shiny shiny, whoo hoo, shiny shiny boots of leather, Whoo yeah.' 'Venus In Furs' is not considerably improved by incorporating 'Whoo hoo, whoo yeah' into the lyric. The VU play on, people drift away, grown men weep with disappointment, children laugh, and a dog howling in pain teaches itself to read. The next day the dog will go out and buy a gun and blow its' brains out. That is how badly the Velvet Underground suck on a crappy day, in a stupid field in the countryside. When I get back home I put my Velvets records away in shame and don't play them for another twenty years.
Part two here: http://www.kickingagainstthepricks.org/features-luke-haines-re-formed-a-...
Luke Haines is the founder and mercury nominated brain behind The Auteurs. Also founder of Black Box Recorder, a successful solo artist and a critically acclaimed published author about his life and times in the music industry - Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in it’s downfall.