The Primal Scream man on the importance of punk , doing
things their own way and speaking rock’s classical language.
Words: Ian FortnamW
hile playing drums for the Jesus And Mary
Chain in 1985, vocalist Bobby Gillespie formed
Primal Scream, and they released a couple of
singles on his old school chum Alan McGee’s
Creation Records. Offered a ‘them or us’
ultimatum by JAMC, Gillespie decided to take his
chances with the Scream. Thirty-four years later, they’re releasing
Maximum Rock’N’Roll, a two-CD, 31-track singles collection
encapsulating a singularly genre-vaulting career that has always
intrigued and never compromised.
Glaswegian Gillespie, whose stone-faced reaction to Labour MP
Caroline Flint, Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo dancing on This
We ek recently broke the internet, admits: “It just wasn’t my scene,
man. Afterwards she was cracking open the wine and champagne
like they were clubbing together. It was quite distasteful.”Is rock’n’roll where you went to school?
Punk rock was my cultural revolution. I left school at sixteen. I didn’t
learn very much there, but my involvement in punk rock and
reading the weekly music papers – interviews with bands talking
about books they read, writers, art movements, other musical artists
they loved – that’s where I got my education.Punk rock seemed to offer a lifeline to kids like you and
Alan McGee.
We took the words of Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten very
seriously. They said: “Anybody can do this”, and we took it to heart.
Alan started a record label and I started Primal Scream, and it was
completely inspired by McLaren and Rotten. The great thing about
punk was that it was empowering. It encouraged young people to
think for themselves, question authority, pick up instruments or
cameras, to write and be creative. Being working-class, my school had
me earmarked for the industrial scrap heap at best, unemployment at
worst. Punk and post-punk sparked my imagination and gave me an
urge to express myself I never got from any of my teachers.When the Reid brothers made you choose between remaining
with The Jesus And Mary Chain or persevering with Primal
Scream, was it a difficult decision?
Very hard. I was heartbroken, because I had a fantastic time with the
Reids and Douglas Hart. At that point I loved being in Jesus And
Mary Chain more than I loved being in Primal Scream. I’d travelled
to America, Europe, made Psychocandy, it was such an amazing time.
So it was a very hard choice.Maximum Rock’N’Roll is a singles collection. Have Primal
Scream always been a singles band?
We make really good albums too, but singles are important to us.
When we were younger we’d hear Bowie’s Starman coming on the
radio, or Marc Bolan’s Metal Guru, Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize...
Then, during punk, that run of four Pistols singles, The Jam and
Siouxsie singles – incredible. Singles were signposts to where a band
were at that particular point in time – artists defining their art.You’ve always enjoyed an amazing degree of artistic freedom.
You’ve never had to suffer a marketing department
demanding another Rocks?
No, we never had that. But when we made Rocks, Alan McGee told
me nobody likes it; that the only guy who likes it is this kid in
a new band I’ve signed from Manchester called Oasis and his name’s
Noel Gallagher.The contemporary music press seemed to be in deep denial
about Rocks. At that point in time it was almost considered
counter-revolutionary to say you loved that brand of
rock’n’roll in print.
That’s right. And for us to actually come out and say: “We love
rock’n’roll”, people were saying: “Oh, you’re fucking seventies
throwbacks.” But we knew we were speaking a classical language.
I wanted to write a classic commercial rock song, like The Boys Are
Back In Town or School’s Out. I wanted to redeem rock’n’roll. That might
seem really fucking arrogant and deluded, but that was what I felt.
And in the early-to-mid-nineties, rock’n’roll needed to be redeemed.Has our generation stolen rock from the kids by refusing to
let go?
No, I think rock’s an old language and it no longer speaks for young
people. My kids are fourteen and seventeen and largely listen to drill,
grime, rap and pop. The youngest is a guitarist, loves Hendrix, the
Pistols, great rock’n’roll, but also loves stuff by young black artists
that speaks to him about his life. When you’re young you want to be
hip, and contemporary black music’s where it’s at, the same as soul
was in the sixties.There was a point when you appeared to be living in a Stones
1972 tour whirl of abject hedonism. Did it live up to
expectations, and now it’s in the past are you happy to leave
it there?
The band was quite excessive for quite a long time. We had a lot of
good times. But there’ve been casualties; Robert Young died four
years ago. But I see photographs of us on tour in the nineties and
we’re all smiling. We’re definitely having fun. It’s a high-energy,
twenty-four-hours-a-day lifestyle. The whole point of being in
a rock’n’roll band is to create your own world, direct your own
movie, not live in the straight world. And the more extreme you are,
the higher the price you eventually pay. You hit a point where your
creativity suffers. It got to the point where I had to stop to stay alive.
If you live that life for too long it’s a kind of self-induced psychosis.
But we had a lot of great times and wrote a lot of great songs.Where next for Primal Scream?
We recorded an album’s worth of new material last year, but I don’t
know if it’s Primal Scream. I know I sound a bit obscure and abstract,
but there’s some beautiful new music recorded that’ll be released
eventually, but I don’t know under what name.Maximum Rock’N’ Roll is available now via Sony.Bobby Gillespie
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