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I've been re-reading Luke Haines' two books: Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall and Post Everything, which probably has a subtitle as well but I can't be arsed looking it up. Of the two I prefer Post Everything, where Haines is a Biblical Ancient of Days: a haughty and distant God, untroubled by verminous humanity creeping on the earth. He is withering and unmoved and vituperative and cruel but there is at least distance - he is in love and is preoccupied by it, and money just shows up in his bank account despite none of his records ever selling anything. He mucks about, he drives a sports car, he tries to write a musical about Fred the Shred. And he is very funny: Roger Lewis in a white linen suit, barking at hedges and shopping trolleys and basically harmless.
Luke Haines of Bad Vibes is a nasty piece of work. Worse, he's in an indie band, scraping about in sticky carpeted venues that won't survive Covid, and hissing and sneering at everyone. Despite all appearances he has led a charmed life. He has been reasonably successful since his early twenties. His first band, The Servants, grey Creation also-rans, were deservedly over-looked - leading to an amusing life-long enmity between Haines and that star-jumping clown Bobby Gillespie. But as soon as he set out on his own, writing his fly-blown, faded glamour vignettes, he is called the new Ray Davies and people throw money and front covers at him. Both books are lists of the free money he has wangled out of music labels over the last thirty years, and his stead-fast commitment to derailing his own career: shattering his ankles, pissed, writing a concept album about terrorism, getting involved in the lively arts.
Oh yes. One of the best parts of Post Everything sees Haines, alongside dramatist Simon Bent, writing a musical based on the life of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. A typical Haines hero, van Hoogstraten is a thoroughly evil property magnate who was once imprisoned for paying a gang to chuck a grenade into a Rabbi's home over a failed textile business he had once owned with the Rabbi's son. Its the sort of story that only Haines could look at and think "That could really alienate my indie fan-base".
He takes the show to the National Theatre - of course he does - and is suddenly in a world he never made, where he notes sagely that theatre folk know everything about the theatre and nothing about anything else. This is quite correct. It goes tits up of course. He can't stand them and they can't stand him. But I wish I'd seen it - Property - the bit where van Hoogstraten sold his stamp collection to get start up capital would have brought tears to the eyes.
No one comes out of these books well, except oddly, the rhythm section of Suede, but these are the funniest rock autobiographies (that description is a massive disservice - good) ever written and Haines, a sort of Gladstone Screwer with a grudge, is a fine comic creation.
I met him once in the Spread Eagle pub in Camden where I drunkenly attempted to explain that I bought the twelve inch of "Showgirl" three times from Our Price in Basingstoke "There are two of them, Luke, but the one at the top of town is usually best". There was a fault with the pressing and it would skip so I returned it twice. I'm not sure what I expected Haines to do about it. I think it was the only link I could find between us - I later bought The Auteurs first album New Wave without incident. Throughout this spittle-flecked exchange Haines was politeness itself, eventually edging away and out of the pub. I've scanned his back catalogue for a song called "Boring Twat from Basingstoke" but once again I am not even a footnote in history.
Luke Haines of Bad Vibes is a nasty piece of work. Worse, he's in an indie band, scraping about in sticky carpeted venues that won't survive Covid, and hissing and sneering at everyone. Despite all appearances he has led a charmed life. He has been reasonably successful since his early twenties. His first band, The Servants, grey Creation also-rans, were deservedly over-looked - leading to an amusing life-long enmity between Haines and that star-jumping clown Bobby Gillespie. But as soon as he set out on his own, writing his fly-blown, faded glamour vignettes, he is called the new Ray Davies and people throw money and front covers at him. Both books are lists of the free money he has wangled out of music labels over the last thirty years, and his stead-fast commitment to derailing his own career: shattering his ankles, pissed, writing a concept album about terrorism, getting involved in the lively arts.
Oh yes. One of the best parts of Post Everything sees Haines, alongside dramatist Simon Bent, writing a musical based on the life of Nicholas van Hoogstraten. A typical Haines hero, van Hoogstraten is a thoroughly evil property magnate who was once imprisoned for paying a gang to chuck a grenade into a Rabbi's home over a failed textile business he had once owned with the Rabbi's son. Its the sort of story that only Haines could look at and think "That could really alienate my indie fan-base".
He takes the show to the National Theatre - of course he does - and is suddenly in a world he never made, where he notes sagely that theatre folk know everything about the theatre and nothing about anything else. This is quite correct. It goes tits up of course. He can't stand them and they can't stand him. But I wish I'd seen it - Property - the bit where van Hoogstraten sold his stamp collection to get start up capital would have brought tears to the eyes.
No one comes out of these books well, except oddly, the rhythm section of Suede, but these are the funniest rock autobiographies (that description is a massive disservice - good) ever written and Haines, a sort of Gladstone Screwer with a grudge, is a fine comic creation.
I met him once in the Spread Eagle pub in Camden where I drunkenly attempted to explain that I bought the twelve inch of "Showgirl" three times from Our Price in Basingstoke "There are two of them, Luke, but the one at the top of town is usually best". There was a fault with the pressing and it would skip so I returned it twice. I'm not sure what I expected Haines to do about it. I think it was the only link I could find between us - I later bought The Auteurs first album New Wave without incident. Throughout this spittle-flecked exchange Haines was politeness itself, eventually edging away and out of the pub. I've scanned his back catalogue for a song called "Boring Twat from Basingstoke" but once again I am not even a footnote in history.
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