SELF PORTRAIT BOBBY GILLESPIE
Primal Scream’s true believer in his own words and by his own hand.
I’d describe myself as… a skinny punk-rock Scottish bastard-motherfucker? Frontman with a rock and roll band? I don’t know. Music changed me… by giving me a frame of reference that was unknown to me. Punk rock and post-punk was my cultural revelation, it was my university and art school, and it set me on the road to being a creative person. Away from music… I’m happy to sit in silence and read, you know. Silence is good. My biggest vice is… I don’t have any any more. None. Is buying records all the time a vice? ’Cos I can’t stop doing that. I just bought that new Meat Puppets album, the Royal Trux album, a Mark Stewart reissue, so fucking many. I buy soul singles off eBay, I’ve been known to frequent Discogs, MusicStack… The last time I was embarrassed was… when I was on The Week [in November 2018, Bobby appeared on Andrew Neil’s BBC TV politics show, had his opinions on the failures of capitalism “closed down” and then sat in stony silence as Neil, Michael Portillo and Caroline Flint all danced to Russian band Little Big’s viral hit Skibidi]. To be there, with all them, in the heart of Westminster – that felt like a humiliating experience. But there are no music programmes to go on any more. My formal qualifications are… O levels in History, English and Art, a City & Guilds. I’m a lithographic printer by trade. That’s it. The last time I cried was… I can’t remember, honestly. Sometimes I cry when I hear songs, because they’re so beautiful. It’s a random thing. I remember once when I first met my wife, we were driving in her car, I was deeply in love and it was before Christmas and The Pogues’ The Fairytale Of New York came on the radio. It got to the lines. “I could have been someone…” and I just broke down, I was sobbing heavily, and Kate’s looking at me going, “What’s wrong?” It was the beauty, the poetry and empathy of Shane MacGowan’s words, and how he’s sharing that with all of us.
Vinyl, CD or streaming?… I’m a vinyl junkie, man. I love the needle, when it hits the vinyl and digs right in… There’s a physicality which I love. But I love technology too, the fact you can hear a track on your phone. My kids listen like that, it’s like having a hand-held transistor radio in the ’70s. So everything’s good.
My most treasured possession is… my Johnny Thunders bow tie. An old girlfriend was in the front row at a gig he did in Glasgow, and it fell off and she grabbed it. When I came home from a Jesus And Mary Chain tour she gave me it. That, and my wedding ring and my white wedding suit made for me by Alexander McQueen. I wore the bow tie at the wedding with the McQueen suit.
The best book I’ve read is… it changes all the time, but The Order Of The Day, a quasi-historical semi-novel by Eric Vuillard. There are two different acts – the first is when the 18 most powerful industrialists in Germany met Göring in 1933. The second is about the annexation of Austria in 1936. It’s kind of a warning, ’cos it’s kind of getting close to those times again.
Is the glass half full or half empty… depends on how you wake up. At the moment things are good. I don’t like that saying, actually – I tend to see things in more extreme terms.
My greatest regret is… woah. Good question. All I’m going to say is, not following a certain piece of advice from [late Scream guitarist] Robert Young, when I was younger.
When we die… we decompose and get eaten by insects. Hopefully our spirit lives on in our work and the memories of our loved ones. That’s the serious answer. The humorous one is that our mates throw our wretched, stinking corpse on a funeral pyre and have a fantastic, drunken, druggy party in our memory.
I would like to be remembered… I could be a real sarcastic cunt here but… how’d I like to be remembered. As a guy who loved rock’n’roll. Somebody who cared.
Primal Scream’s Maximum Rock’n’Roll: The Singles is out now on Sony.
“My most treasured possession is my Johnny Thunders bow tie.” BOBBY GILLESPIE