Luke Haines - Post everything: outsider rock and roll, 1997-2005

About the Book

Britain in the late 1990s. Post Britpop. The dawn of the rock and roll apocalypse. If it feels like theres nothing new under the sun, thats because there is nothing new under the sun. After the death of Kurt Cobain popular culture entered, and is still in, its final phase: post everything.

Post Everything is the sequel to the hugely acclaimed Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in its Downfall. It is a story of survival in the music industry and the only way to survive the tyrannical scourge of Britpop is to become an Outsider.

We open with Luke Haines the avant-garde Arthur Scargill calling upon the nations pop stars to down tools and go on strike. We get the story of Haines post-Britpop art house trio Black Box Recorder (Chas and Dave with a chanteuse) then, barely pausing to put in a brief appearance on Top of the Pops, we meet a talking cat, two dead rappers (Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur), a mystical England football manager, and a shady transgender German Professor exponent of a dangerous and radical Beatles denial cult and author of The Theorem of the Moron, (the most important book about rock that youve never heard of). Haines even finds time to write a musical for the National Theatre.

Blisteringly funny and searingly scathing, Post Everything may quite possibly be the first and only truly surreal comic rock memoir. It even contains a killer recipe for scrambled eggs.

Luke Haines

POST
EVERYTHING

Outsider Rock and Roll 19972005

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781409037163

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by William Heinemann 2011

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Copyright Luke Haines 2011

Luke Haines has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is substantially a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some limited cases names of people/places/dates and the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
William Heinemann
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

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

ISBN 9780434020096

Contents

For S & F.

About the Author

Luke Haines was born in Gods own county of Surrey in 1967. He has recorded five albums with the Auteurs, one album as Baader Meinhof, three albums with Black Box Recorder, one film soundtrack album, fifty individual volumes of Outsider Music, and three solo albums. He has appeared on Top of the Pops and has been nominated for loads of awards but has won nothing. In 2003 Luke Haines was in Debretts People of Today. He thinks that he is no longer listed in this esteemed publication, as the free copy of the magazine hasnt been delivered for some time. Its not the end of the world. This is his second book. The author is married with one child.

Also by Luke Haines

Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall

Introduction

My first book, Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall, ends in 1997 with me teetering on the precipice of mental ruin. For the rest of the country this is a brief period of optimism and inclusion; after 18 years of Conservative government the British public have voted themselves in. I have been voted out. Three years before reality television bites and I am already ahead of the game. Never mind, the margins are good. No-mans-land is all right. Its easy to laugh when youre on the outside and I rarely take the easy option but just this once please forgive me; after all, being on the outside is what this book, Post Everything, is about.

After the commercial and critical success of Black Box Recorders second album I backed away from the edge of the fantasy. It was the second or third time that I had grasped the nettle but this time, with no small amount of self-knowledge, I let go. Most of the action in Post Everything takes place in London; I had by the end of the century pretty much extricated the act of touring from my life (Black Box Recorder over a period of six years probably played no more than 20 gigs). This book is about self-imposed exile on the fringes of the music scene, and sometimes even further out than that

I still manage to have about five feuds a year. As a man in his early forties I no longer wear each feud as a badge of honour. I am in fact mildly embarrassed by these skirmishes. Many of the deposed of Bad Vibes have gone, and in this book there are many ghosts, and despite what they try and tell you, rock music itself, in the Post Everything age is a spectre.

First, a little scene-setting: Britain in the late 1990s. Post Britpop. The dawn of the rock n roll apocalypse. Post Everything. If it feels like theres nothing new under the sun, thats because there is nothing new under the sun. The 50s and 60s marked the end of post-war austerity and the beginning of cultural enlightenment. The 70s ushered in the first true age of rock, as well as its first self-conscious year zero and by the 80s depression, ennui, and irony tumbled over each other to create an accelerated culture. At the turn of the new decade, brass bands and morris dancers were more subversive than rock music. The only way forward was to pretend that nothing mattered. (Everything mattered?) After the death of Kurt Cobain popular culture entered, and is still in, its final phase: Post Everything where the phones dont ring any more and conversation is silent. Post nostalgia, post reason, post memory memory replaced by a collective memory for an age that did not exist; we can all pretend to remember communally that episode of Bergerac that we didnt watch yknow, the one where Liza Goddard didnt give old Jim that filthy am-I-or-am-I-not look before she failed to fall through the trap door. Post rock. Post Top of the Pops, post Gary Glitter, post the charts, post hit singles, post pop, post modern, post irony, post David Bowie ever making another album. Post albums, post archives, post hard copy, pre-ephemera. Post (real) fame, post real celebrity, post Warhol, Post. Any. Fucking. Good. Post film, post telly, post millennium madness; pre-millennial mumbo jumbo, post millennial mumbo jumbo, post God, post science does rationalism have to be so damned anti-poetic? (I mean, Richard Dawkins isnt exactly Voltaire.) Post literature post pens, post paper, post ink, post letter writing. Post romantic what was your last romantic gesture? Post London young couples with children leave the big city, the countryside groans with the strain, man, its like the fucking blitz. Post class system leisurewear for the new white trash. Post fucking shoes, post leather uppers, post style wear a good suit well and it can hide a multitude of sins, but dont let a suit wear you. Post suits. Post hats apart from weddings and funerals. Post comedy Bill Hicks has got a lot to answer for. Post imagination try taking a surrealistic leap of the mind. Post. Avant. Garde. Post shock comedians tell rape jokes, M. McCann jokes, wife-beating jokes and paedophile jokes under the auspices of saying the unsayable, safe in the knowledge that the aforementioned wont or cannot make themselves known. But post-political-correctness race jokes are still a no-go area there may be foreigners in the audience, you might get lamped. Post child catcher, post flashers what happened to all those harmless old perverts who used to lurk in parks and under railway bridges? Post starving for your art real artists are just compelled, regardless of whether there is any fiscal demand. They just get on with it, its a curse, yknow? Post art. Banksy, fucking Banksy telling you what you already know. Post drinking what exactly is binge drinking? Has everyone forgotten we are a northern European country? Post geography. Post smoke-filled pubs; pre health consciousness, interesting people used to smoke cigarettes. Its getting hard to be interesting. Post interesting. Post fags, post drugs the older generation, though barely acknowledged, look on aghast at the younger generations casual acquaintance with altered states. Post old people. Post AIDS. Post Labour, post Tory, post right wing, post left wing. Speaking of angels, where did all the Hells Angels go? Post national mourning. Post intelligence human intelligence isnt what it used to be, according to a survey that no one took part in. Military intelligence isnt what it used to be either, according to a dossier that everyone ignored. Post alls fair in love and war. Post world war veterans. Post birth, post generation gaps where did all the Teddy boys go? Post teenage, post 20-something, post 30-something, post life begins at 40, post middle age, post midlife crisis, post old age total inability to accept the ageing process. Post age. Post death. Post apocalypse. Im going to go bleeding postal any moment now Post. Everything.