Interview: Luke Haines - "I'm A Cottage Industry Nowadays..."

Chameleonic songwriter, Britpop curmudgeon, arch-misanthropist... It's fair to say that Luke Haines is a lot of things to a lot of different people. With the prolific former Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder frontman having recently released his umpteenth studio album – November's typically idiosyncratic concept LP, 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of The 1970s & Early '80s – we sent our resident Hainesologist Niall McCann along for a chat with the man himself.

Amongst other topics, their conversation touched on the myth of English repression, nostalgia as a false form of memory and the singer's latest side project, The North Sea Scrolls. Oh, and his love of wrestling of course! Just some of the concerns currently stirring the mind of one of the most restlessly enduring figures in British music.

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I’m late. Never early, always late. As I fall in the door some fifteen minutes after I was supposed to be there, I will blame the bus – as that's what buses are for – and he wont mind. After all, he's had the earthy camaraderie of the wrestling fraternity to keep him company - for here, in Les Kellett's transport café, Bradford, it is forever 1978.

The appointment I'm running late for is a meeting with Luke Haines to talk about his latest album, 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of The 1970s & Early '80s. As its title suggests, Haines' sixteenth studio LP is a strange, kaleidescopic, LSD-inspired whirl through some of the upside-down lives that populated the glory days of the British wrestling scene. If the tardiness of the White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is echoed here today by my lazy self, then Carroll's strange, dreamlike world – lost in time, and in which Alice herself is lost – is replicated in Haines' own trippy land of gentle giants and uneasy minds. To stretch the analogy still further, the lost child in this instance is clearly the young Luke, albeit one difference being that he seems in no particular hurry to get back home.

All the old wrestling stars make an appearance on the record: Mick McManus, Catweazle, Kendo Nagasaki and of course Big Daddy, as well as the aforementioned Les Kellett, in whose café the pair of us currently sit.

We quickly dispense with the chitchat and order some egg and chips, a plate of liver sausage sandwiches (with cheese, naturally) and two mugs of tea (with tea bags still afloat), before getting down to the nitty-gritty: 

The subject matter of your new LP is nothing if not unusual - what exactly drew you to this particular milieu as the basis for an album?

I'd had it in mind for a while, to be honest - British wrestling that is. Initially I thought that maybe I could write a screenplay based around the life of Kendo Nagasaki. But of course I soon realised there would be a fatal flaw in this plan, namely Nagasaki being a masked man who never speaks. So I turned my attention towards Kendo's one-time manager, the flamboyant (and ludicrously camp) 'Gorgeous' George Gillette; however, it turned out there wasn't that much information available on George, so the whole project opened out to be about the wrestling of the period in general. The screenplay idea was ultimately abandoned, and it became a concept album instead.

You were clearly a wrestling fan when you were younger, so it must be a topic that remains close to your heart. Which of the wrestlers was your favourite as a child?

Nagasaki, of course - although I realise naming him as a favourite is just as predictable as saying Pet Sounds is your favourite album. But yeah, Catweazle, Mark 'Rollerball' Rocco... basically all the ones mentioned on the album. Apart from Big Daddy, whom I have little affection for. 

Musically speaking, there seems to be some of The Fall, circa (1984's) The Wonderful and Frightening World..., on the record. Did you look back at the records you were into as a younger man for inspiration?

Well, I will hold my hands up to the Wonderful and Frightening World... reference. I copped the intro from that album wholesale; however, The Fall themselves copped the intro to that particular album from Quatermass. Other than that, there is no Fall influence on the LP - I don't much like the Brix era anyway. I was thinking more about records like Syd Barrett's Madcap Laughs and various Kevin Ayers albums. Bit of 'Canterbury scene', y'know: bit of early Robert Wyatt, early Bolan/Steve Took, bit of Skip Spence... Whether or not any of this is evident I'm not sure.

Is the album dedicated to anyone or anything in particular? It has the feel of a lament to lost innocence, or perhaps the loss of a more innocent world.

It's dedicated to dying memory. Not false memory, as in nostalgia - in fact, it's definitely a record against nostalgia. The past is getting further away, and there is less future left. As soon as I write about a particular time, I find I can barely remember the period as it actually was (or how I perceived it to be, at least). I have almost no memory of the '90s, for instance. The '80s were fairly awful... Maybe if I write about them more I can obliterate them from my memory!

More so than any of your previous outings that I can recall, this strikes me as quite an affectionate record. Did you intentionally set out to surprise those listeners who might have come to expect a more acerbic take on the world from you?

Well, ('96's) Baader Meinhof was actually quite an affectionate record in my opinion. I guess it's a matter of what it was affectionate for... I don't ever think about the listeners - if I did, I'd probably have sold a lot more records many years ago. I do entirely what I want, now more than ever. As the clock ticks on it seems more important to explore only the things that interest me.

Your take on the past is usually more hostile. Is this your first studio album approaching nostalgia? Or does the psychedelic element exclude this sort of reading?

Well, I guess I've already said what I think of the nostalgia element. Nostalgia, for me, is a false memory of the past. But, as none of us have an accurate memory of the past, we would have to conclude that nostalgia cannot exist, or that memory doesn't exist; so is all memory therefore nostalgia? The psych element came about because the album stems from childhood 'memories'. American psychedelia is/was primarily concerned with expanding the consciousness, whereas English psychedelia focussed more on the notion of regressing to a childlike state. So psychedelia of the Old England variety it was that inspired me.

9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations... is clearly irony-free, which seems apt since the heyday of the characters who inhabit the narrative was a largely irony-free world. Given the irony-saturated times we now live in, is this simply another example of Luke Haines the contrarian at play, or do you just follow the concept to its logical conclusion?

Irony was, in many ways, the Get Out of Jail Free card for British rock and roll. The Brits could barely play rock and roll - with the exception of Johnny Kidd, Vince Taylor and the early Beatles. It provided Bowie with a career, but it also means there can never be another Jim Morrison. Even with someone like Marylin Manson, everyone knew that he was kidding... The Brit groups that couldn't grasp the irony nettle had to pretend to be thicker than they really were in order to strike it rich. I am of course talking about Britpop. My only way forward is to move on to the dessert and become an acid guru in my middle age - and frankly I am fucking game for this idea!

The North Sea Scrolls (left to right): Luke Haines, Andrew Mueller & Cathal Coughlan

One of the key differences between your Auteurs output and the stuff issued under your own moniker is that there seems to be a more obvious thread of humour running through these 'Luke Haines' albums. What do you feel are some of the defining differences between your work in the past and more recent material?

Well, The Auteurs were a wretched and miserable bunch of friendless motherfuckers. Ha! I still like the records, though... I do think the fact that ('96's) After Murder Park has no detectable sense of humour works to its advantage. Let's just say that my thirties and forties suit my temperament more than my twenties ever did.

You have a reputation for being a bit of a grump - although much of this seems to have been cultivated by people unfamiliar with your music, as there is actually quite a lot of humour there. Do you think you have helped forge this persona in some respects, and does it give you room to go places you maybe couldn’t otherwise?

As I touched upon in the previous answer, I was certainly guilty of my fair share of mardiness in the days of my callow youth – and you must remember that Bad Vibes... (Haines' memoir from 2009 –RW Ed.) was written in my mid-twenties persona – but there is definitely an invidious streak surrounding the whole issue of grumpiness. It's an English thing, all to do with repression and the English default mode of accepting the so-called 'repressed English psyche'. Most English people I know are far less repressed than the national stereotype would have you believe; y'know, they drink, they take drugs, they gorge themselves, they fuck freely... If we really were that repressed, we wouldn't have been colonial imperialists. The cliché of Limey repression was, in my view, a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing disguise our imperialist ancestors wore; it suited both the oppressors and the oppressed, when you think about it.

So anyone who has an idea, or disagrees with the automatic settings, or (worse still) is interested in a bit of art/religion/philosophy/rock and roll, is dismissed as being grumpy. There's a puff of boring smoke, and out of the boring smoke the hydra rises: it has the heads of Chris Evans, Brian Eno, Bono, Ricky Gervais, Paul Morley, Richard Dawkins, Alan Yentob and that pop star scientist (we reckon he must be referring to Brian Cox –RW Ed.). The heads argue amongst themselves... Morley thinks he's disagreeing with Gervais, but he isn't really etc. You could waste your whole life hacking the heads off the hydra, but the med-i-ocracy never changes. I prefer to think about Comanches instead.

You recently played a couple of gigs here in Ireland alongside Cathal Coughlan and Andrew Mueller as The North Sea Scrolls. How did this collaboration first come about? And are there any plans to continue it further?

The Scrolls pretty much fell into our hands, having been dumped in a bin outside a supermarket. They were the archive of one Tony Allen (deceased). Allen, a bit-part actor, secret lover of Sid James and perpetrator of fine art (the combined achievements of Francis Bacon and Feliks Topolski are in fact the work of Allen's hand), was the unwitting curator of The Scrolls. The Scrolls themselves hold many a terrible truth - think what you like about Morris Men, Enoch Powell and Hawkwind, but whatever you think you know is wrong. 

The primary concern of The North Sea Scrolls appears to be an alternate history of Britain, Ireland and Australia. The notion of secret histories has seemed to interest you more or less throughout your career. Have you any idea where this preoccupation comes from, or are you just a curious sort of man?

Ha ha! Well, some people do think I'm a curious sort of man alright!

It's been quite a while ('06's Off My Rocker... tour, if we're not mistaken) since you toured at all over here. Is touring something integral to being a musician do you think, or is it rather something we are told is integral? And what is the relationship, if any, between playing live and your work on record?

I don't think touring is essential. There's a big lie currently doing the rounds that the whole 'live' thing is going through a boom period, and that it's the way forward for musicians/bands to make money. This is a fallacy put about by a few people (who have no evidence or experience of playing gigs etc.) who have written articles in the mainstream press. If I want to, I go out and play a live show.

Do you still feel like an outsider in the music/art world? Your star seems to be higher and brighter in some respects than it has been in over a decade. Is the comeback complete?

All I do is make stuff at home nowadays. I write books sitting at home, I have my studio at home, I paint in the living room. I'm a cottage industry... I give the 'stuff' I make to various people – publishers, record company folk – and they put it out there. There is no comeback.

Finally, you've now written two books, recorded a movie soundtrack in addition to some sixteen albums proper, written a musical and, most recently, painted portraits of the wrestling stars who inhabit 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations.... What will you be turning your hand to next?

I have made myself available to Her Majesty's Prison Service as a prison reform consultant, and recently offered my skills as a pace bowler to the England cricket team. I have yet to receive a response on either count.

And with that, it's over. Debriefing finished. Food untouched. We get to our feet to begin the long bus journey back to London. Time to leave the egg and chips, as well as 'Gorgeous' George, Kendo, 'Rollerball' and Big Daddy behind... The past, as a great man once said, is not what they tell you.

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9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of The 1970s & Early '80s is out now via Fantastic Plastic.

Lead photo by Colm Kelly. Go here to view a full gallery of Colm's shots from The North Sea Scrolls' recent Dublin show, and head over here to read Niall McCann's verdict on that same gig.