Righteous punk

Steve Diggle, guitarist for infamous British punk group Buzzcocks, tells VICKI ANDERSON about taking Kurt Cobain's cocaine and why punk is still righteous.

Steve Diggle has not long tumbled out of Soho pub the Spice of Life when we speak. He has had a busy night, he says, studying up on New Zealand history over a few cold ones.

"It's run by a Kiwi guy and it's full of Kiwi bar staff. They've been giving me the rundown on the sensitivities between the Kiwis and Aussies.

"Christchurch is a rock 'n' roll town I'm led to believe. We've played in Auckland a few times over the years, but never in Christchurch. It's going to be like going to the moon in some ways, in a lovely way."

The previous paragraph makes Diggle sound more coherent than he actually was. The man has taken more drugs than a hundred lab rats and if anyone has orbited the Moon without actually leaving Earth, it's him.

Billed to headline in Christchurch as part of the now- postponed Southern Amp music festival, the Buzzcocks, comprising Diggle, Pete Shelley, Chris Remington and Danny Farrant, are still playing on the same date, Thursday, November 12, but are now at the Bedford and joined by the Veils and An Emerald City.

As our scheduled 15-minute interview turns into an hour, Diggle freely talks about his love life, memories from Nirvana's last ever tour on which the Buzzcocks were the opening act, and his contempt for people he calls "sleepwalkers".

In the 1970s, alongside the Clash and the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks boisterously led the punk-rock movement, or what he calls "Manchester's musical year zero".

When record companies were tripping over their chequebooks to sign anything wearing safety pins, spiky hair and bondage trousers, the Buzzcocks were doing it themselves on their debut four-track extended player (EP) Spiral Scratch.

Diggle went to the Sex Pistols' gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976, and their manager, Malcolm McLaren, introduced him to Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, who were looking for a bassist for their band, Buzzcocks.

Diggle played bass on the Spiral Scratch EP and when Devoto left the Buzzcocks soon after the EP was released, the band reshuffled and Diggle happily switched from bass to his first love, guitar.

The Buzzcocks went on to produce classic songs such as Orgasm Addict, Promises, What Do I Get?, Oh Shit and Ever Fallen In Love, and notable albums including Another Music In A Different Kitchen, Love Bites and A Different Kind of Tension. After splitting in 1981, they reformed in 1989 and have since released six albums. Diggle has also undertaken a solo career and recorded with the group Flag of Convenience.

My favourite quote about Diggle is from the Sex Pistols' Glen Matlock who once said, "He's a boozin' shagger and I love him dearly".

Diggle likes the quote too. "The main thing is to be inspired by life. I wake up down with hangovers or I wake up, up," he chortles, although he quickly tells me that he's been on a bit of a health kick, getting up at 5am.

"It's unusual for me, but then I haven't been doing a lot of drugs recently. It's like Picasso when he did the paintings: he just got on with it, drank and smoked.

"Part of life is to do with a lot of those things. You've got to enjoy yourself while you're here, to experience life, I think, and music's quite extreme in a lot of ways.

"We started off with punk rock with the Pistols and the Clash and it's taking the intellect and the emotions to the extreme."

When does he feel most alive?

"I have been getting up early this week, but there were a couple of mornings last week when I went to bed at 6am. It's when all your senses are alive and you feel complete within yourself on whatever level anyone is complete with. Music can do that for you, paintings can, meeting someone in a bar can do that.

"There are so many sleepwalkers in the world, really. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do music. Are we alive or are we dead? Are we going to feel things?"

It is something of a miracle that Diggle can still feel or remember anything from the past 35 years, yet he has a few rock 'n' roll stories stored away.

The Buzzcocks were the opening act on Nirvana's last tour.

"They came to see us in Boston and asked whether we would do some shows with them. Kurt Cobain wanted us to.

"He looked like Jesus. He had these piercing blue eyes, blond hair and a beard. I told him I could see him on a cross and he did crucify himself in the end.

"I remember being on the tour bus on the first day. I said, 'Where's the cocaine, Kurt?'. Funny isn't it, how the words Cobain and cocaine rhyme? He gave me two grams of cocaine and went upstairs.

"I did the lot and then when he came downstairs it was all gone and so he said, 'What happened to the coke?'.

"I told him that when we got to London I'd sort it out with him, but, of course, he never made it.

"When I die I'll put two grams in my coffin and I'll make sure I return the favour. I'll have to make sure Jimi Hendrix or John Lennon doesn't have it."

He also remembers giving Ian Curtis of Joy Division relationship advice, "and then he f...ing hanged himself".

"Being in a band, you do experience a lot of things. A lot of people crack up in bands. We took Joy Division on tour and he killed himself.

"I'd rather grab all that wonder of the world and take it and use it. My songs are not personal, they're about the human condition. We all have bills to pay.

"Harmony In My Head is about that walking down the street thinking everything is gone. Walking down the High Street, listening to the ambience of people on the street. Even though you don't know them, you know they're going through the same thing as you. You're not alone, in a way.

"There's an outback in all our souls."

He credits his working-class background for his survival.

"When I was a kid, I read all the books from Oxford and Cambridge, even though I wasn't allowed in those places, but having earthy roots has saved me in many ways, you know.

"From the age of 20, being in a band you get to see a lot of things in life. You join all the dots together and work it out from there really. Being in a band toughens you up."

However, he is despondent when he thinks about young people's minds being poisoned.

"Kids are being influenced by horrible MTV, clowns and idiots on American Idol. They're all dumb, really, they all just want to be famous. It's a tragic time to grow up, I think. I grew up with Bob Dylan, the Who, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

"Now you've got to look at somebody doing a cover of some old classic and then they're crying if they don't get through. They don't care about anything but being famous. It's good to watch with your girlfriend and some friends and have a laugh at it.

"All those people who went to university who haven't actually lived are running all those programmes."

Whereas the punk movement had the power to change and inspire, Diggle believes the "corporate world has dragged it back".

"What they've got now is a load of lap dancers. That's what music videos are now. Girls being a lap dancer to some disco beat. They're all the same. In the punk-rock days, girls were intellectuals. Girls don't all just want to be whores on MTV."

It is clear that Diggle still vehemently believes in the punk principles he has preached since the 70s.

"The thing about punk rock was that we questioned a lot of things, posed a lot of questions, suppositions to people and to ourselves, you know. Life is art and life is music and life is painting and everything else.

"It's important not to forget that, you know.

"The punk spirit for me, personally, was about being aware of yourself. I think the music when you put those records on by the Pistols, the Clash and the Buzzcocks - it makes you rethink your whole consciousness. It made you think, 'Wow, what's this music doing to me?'. Through those records incredible things have happened, we've challenged things."

So, Mr Diggle, have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have?

"I fall in love every day, it seems a natural thing to do."

When I use the word "marriage" in the next sentence, Diggle makes a sound resembling a branch caught in a lawnmower.

"I'm too young!" exclaims the 53-year-old.

"I'll never get married. Some people think you get married, you buy the house and that's the end of it. Some of us fall in love with everybody.

"Some people you don't want to fall in love with, but you can't help it.

"I have been very lucky. I've done many wild things . . . taking loads of drugs and having orgies . . . those have been great," Diggle giggles.

Does he still get groupies?

"Yeah. But most of them don't want to come back to the hotel these days. They're boring."

It's also fair to surmise that Diggle won't be buying insurance any time soon.

"Society says you need insurance in case something happens. What is going to happen? Just in case of what? As long as you're still here, that's what matters - that's what people forget."

This Buzzcock is still finding inspiration in his music and the world around him.

"That's the wildest thing to me. I'll pull something out of the air. How did that end up like that? I'll be in the supermarket and suddenly the heavens open and I've got to get home to do this thing and everyone in the queue behind me is looking at me like, 'He's gone all weird'."

Two songs I've heard on Diggle's MySpace page, Sparkle in the Sun and Hey Maria, are destined for his next solo album.

"There's a lot of politics in my songs, human politics underneath. My album's going to be called Air Conditioning, so many people are conditioned. We're all conditioned to boredom these days, really.

"I've been in the studio and I've been rehearsing with my band, because we've got a gig next week. We've just got to finish the album. We've done eight songs, we've got four to finish, then the album's complete.

"I was going to release it before Christmas, but we've been so busy with the Buzzcocks' touring and so it will probably be early next year before it comes out."

Punk's not dead, it just smells funny.

"The great thing about the Buzzcocks is we get on stage and electricity is generated for an hour and people feel it.

"You can't change the world on your own, but you can change yourself. It's all there for people. We're all browbeaten these days. It seems worse than ever. There's no adventure. It's just like super powers are controlling us and messing about with us and putting us in shopping malls. I feel like Winston Smith in 1984. I'm sure a lot of other people do too.

"I look around and think, 'What the f...?'

"After this album, I might just do a straightforward brutal raw-punk album. It might change the brain of some schoolboy somewhere."

THE BUZZCOCKS

The Buzzcocks, named after a review of a television series which read "it's the buzz . . . cocks", were formed in Manchester in 1976 by Howard Trafford and Peter McNeish. McNeish changed his name to Pete Shelley, and Trafford named himself Howard Devoto, after a bus driver. Devoto went on to form Magazine. The Buzzcocks released three acclaimed records. They split up in 1981, reformed in 1989 and have since released six albums. Often cited as an influential act, the group were fiercely independent, recording their first extended player Spiral Scratch by themselves and releasing it on their own New Hormones label in late 1976. Although it didn't get much radio play and the BBC refused to play it, Orgasm Addict, full of Howard Devoto's observations on life in a baker's shop, was their first official single on the United Artists label. It was accompanied by advertisements which read, "Sorry it took so long coming".

The Buzzcocks with the Veils, the Bats and An Emerald City at the Bedford on Thursday, November 12. Tickets, if available, from Ticketek.

- © Fairfax NZ News