Chris Roberts - Idle Worship (Text Only Edition)

IDLE WORSHIP

HOW POP EMPOWERS THE WEAK, REWARDS THE FAITHFUL, AND SUCCOURS THE NEEDY

Edited by

Chris Roberts

Copyright Copyright Introduction ‘You Gotta Have Lost a Couple o’ Fights’ Bono ‘Sparing the Rod’ Nick Hornby ‘Led Zeppelin and the Pixies’ Martin Millar ‘Vedder as Merton: 2001’ Stephen J. Malkmus ‘Suede or How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Hype’ Caitlin Moran ‘In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader’ Thurston Moore ‘Stations of the Crass’ Robert Newman ‘Walking Around Being a Woman’ Kristin Hersh ‘Tonight, Your Hair Is Beautiful’ Chris Roberts ‘Musical Influence in Great Britain on Big-Head Here’ Mark E. Smith ‘Banana Republic: Memories of a Suburban Irish Childhood’ Joseph O’Connor About the Author About the Publisher

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Originally published in paperback 1994

Copyright in introduction, compilation and editorial matter

Copyright © Chris Roberts 1994

Chris Roberts asserts the moral right to be identified as the editor of this work

‘You Gotta Have Lost a Couple o’ Fights’ © Bono 1994

‘Sparing the Rod’ © Nick Hornby 1994

‘Led Zeppelin and the Pixies’ © Martin Millar 1994

‘Vedder as Merton: 2001’ © Stephen J. Malkmus 1994

‘Suede or How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Hype’ © Caitlin Moran 1994

‘In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader’ © Thurston Moore 1994

(All songs © Sonic Tooth adm. by Zomba Songs inc BMI)

‘Stations of the Crass’ © Robert Newman 1994

‘Walking Around Being a Woman’ © Kristin Hersh 1994

‘Tonight, Your Hair Is Beautiful’ © Chris Roberts 1994

‘Musical Influence in Great Britain on Big-Head Here’ © Mark E. Smith 1994

‘Banana Republic: Memories of a Suburban Irish Childhood’ © Joseph O’Connor 1994

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

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Source ISBN: 9780006382669

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008191641

Version: 2016-05-23

Contents

Cover

Title Page IDLE WORSHIP HOW POP EMPOWERS THE WEAK, REWARDS THE FAITHFUL, AND SUCCOURS THE NEEDY Edited by Chris Roberts

Copyright

Introduction

‘You Gotta Have Lost a Couple o’ Fights’ Bono

‘Sparing the Rod’ Nick Hornby

‘Led Zeppelin and the Pixies’ Martin Millar

‘Vedder as Merton: 2001’ Stephen J. Malkmus

‘Suede or How I Stopped Worrying and Learnt to Love the Hype’ Caitlin Moran

‘In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader’ Thurston Moore

‘Stations of the Crass’ Robert Newman

‘Walking Around Being a Woman’ Kristin Hersh

‘Tonight, Your Hair Is Beautiful’ Chris Roberts

‘Musical Influence in Great Britain on Big-Head Here’ Mark E. Smith

‘Banana Republic: Memories of a Suburban Irish Childhood’ Joseph O’Connor

About the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction

SO I’VE JUST GOT UP THE STAIRS with my piping hot fish and chips and the phone’s ringing. I put my fish and chips on top of the stove, which hasn’t worked for eighteen months, and think: this better be quick. ‘Yeah?’ I snarl with all the hostility I can muster.

‘Hello, Chris?’

‘Yeah.’ (A sort of three-quarters snarl, jockeying for position.)

‘Hi, it’s Bono here.’

I don’t say: Bono Who?? Neither do I ask him to ring back after I’ve had my chips. I switch into what I consider to be sweetness-and-light mode and thank him for phoning, and we talk about Frank Sinatra. ‘Have you got five minutes? I’ll read it out to you,’ he says. Oh, I think so. The chips can go hang. Because no matter how jaded you are by working around the music industry, or for that matter how jaded you are by Life Itself (big themes! already! yeah!), when one of the world’s most famous rock stars phones you up it is still, frankly, quite exciting. It is more exciting than chips, say.

The absurdity of the situation does not escape me; neither does the thought that he’d be perfectly within his rights to have a moan about one or two of my U2 reviews over the years. Yet he seems to want to talk about his enthusiasm for Frank, and stress the point that however many fans you’re perceived to have acquired yourself, you don’t stop being one, it doesn’t go away, you can still be starstruck.

While some of the contributors to Idle Worship remain rather gloriously starstruck, others remember when they were, with affection or disbelief. Some admit to hideous embarrassment, while others eulogise the inspiration and motivation drawn from leading pop lights. Others go off on berserk ‘irrelevant’ tangents, which is fine by me.

Some time ago I was approached by Philip Gwyn Jones at HarperCollins with a view to compiling a book that ran against the grain of ‘hagiographical, pompous, inane’ writing on modern music. I was very impressed by the word ‘hagiographical’, and, after looking it up, and demanding a rider of Last-Days-of-Pompeii proportions, set myself to the task. This involved innumerable letters and phone calls and becoming The Nag from Hell. Then saying, ‘Yeah, whatever. Sounds good to me,’ whenever a writer or musician got out of bed long enough to call me back and proffer a synopsis. We wanted an eclectic mix of story-tellers and I think I can safely say the diversity herein, by accident or design, is both luscious and arousing. Many PRs were very helpful over the course of this book’s protracted birth. And some were entirely bloody useless. Thanks to the former.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the more established ‘writers’ who delivered the goods most promptly, increasing the literary merit of my letterbox before I could say Smokey Robinson. I am baffled as to how they found the time when they should be doing proper joiny-up writing, but hey, in the world of rock’n’roll there’s no sleep till the typewriter ribbon gets all snaggled. Dreams of Sex and Stagediving author Martin Millar compares and contrasts his experiences attending noisy hairy gigs seventeen years apart, discovering in the process that the Pixies pummel the sweat glands as ferociously as Led Zeppelin fired the awe. After sending me this he rang to see if I could get him on the guest list for Smashing Pumpkins, which proves his reborn zeal knows no bounds. Fever Pitch author Nick Hornby’s secret admiration for the very great Rod Stewart is long overdue for exposure, especially since he once made a veiled reference in a popular magazine to my owning a Genesis album. Still, no-one twigged except me. Any jibes about the Johnny Cougar debut album will however be matched by a ruthless description of the neo-Rod haircut sported in his days as midfield dynamo for the college Third XI. Ah, the joys of the old school tie set-up. When I first discussed this book with Desperadoes author Joseph O’Connor, whose sister is no stranger to the slings and arrows of pop fortune, I was myopic enough to mumble, ‘Hmm, I don’t know if Bob Geldof’s very topical.’ Reading his masterful evocation of a troubled Dublin childhood and adolescence amid a traumatised family I can only humbly admire his sangfroid.