Shrink rap

The column that straps today’s pop wallahs to a couch and puts them under scrutiny by the MM quack

Image
Image? Well, my image is a bit of a mystery to me, image is not a word in my vocabulary… though it seems to be in everybody else’s. I get on with what I’ve got to do and do it on my own terms, that’s all.

Elvis Costello
I’m smiling. Don’t ask me why, but I’m smiling. I think he’s great.

Kids in America
I loved it because it was so absurd. And I loved the fact that everybody else loved it. Even the NME loved it… and that’s the paradox of it all.

Ricky Wilde
Right. He’s one of the only people that I can get on with without words. I don’t have to do anything for him to like me. He doesn’t expect me to do anything at all and it doesn’t matter. He’s great.

Record companies
A difficult one. At the end of the day they’re all about making money and you have to accept that. But that’s obvious innit? Oh, just say I’m lost for words.

Debbie Harry
She’s delicious. That’s the only word for her… delicious.

Money
Ah cash… it’s annoying when you haven’t got any cash on you, and that’s about as far as it goes with me. If I haven’t got money and I don’t need it, that’s okay. It’s just a convenient way of getting by. Lots and lots of money I find frightening. You get into all sorts of sadness when you have money. You get drawn into all kinds of tax evasion schemes and I think it’s really stupid. I don’t know how much I’ve got in my account and I haven’t a clue how much I earn.

Leather
Boring.

Gary Barnacle
(A long sigh followed by a burst of giggles.) You really dug that out of a hit, didn’t you? He’s… er… fascinating. A fascinating man in lots of different areas. He knows lots of different things about… music. And he’s one of the few people who tells me the truth.

Mrs. Thatcher
I’m waiting to see about Mrs. Thatcher… I’m waiting to see how she deals with the situation in the next year. Up until now she’s had a lot of flak directed at her unfairly. I think she has a lot of courage. For instance, just because my last album went crashing out of the charts at a rate of knots, I don’t think it would be fair of me to blame Mickie Most or some other person… there’s a lot of reasons why things go wrong and it’s the same with Margaret Thatcher. With Margaret Thatcher people have acted like witch-hunters – they’re looking for someone to burn.

The IRA
MURDERERS. What else do you expect me to say?

Blonde bombshells
Marilyn was… Mansfield wasn’t.

Vices
Sly cigarettes. Laziness. That’s all.

London
I like Soho. In fact I like London. The only thing that irritates me is that it’s not open 24 hours a day like New York. London is great; if it was open 24 hours a day it would be brilliant. That’s because I’m a bit of a home person. I was born here and I have this antiquated pride in ye olde London. My nan’s a Cockney and all that stuff. I like the fact that it’s so sprawled out and totally different to a lot of other towns.

Dusty Springfield
She’s fantastic. One of the first singers I listened to when I was young because my mum had her album. It’s a total mystery to me why she hasn’t made more records recently, but I think that’s going to change soon anyway. She really knows how to sing.

Frankie goes to Hollywood
I’ve OD’d a bit on them. Everyone has, haven’t they? My first reaction to hearing “Relax” was “What’s that?” and I wanted to find out. That was before all the national pandemonium. I’ll be really interested to see what they’ll go and do with themselves over the next year. They interest me… slightly.

Religion
It doesn’t have any place in my life. I find it rather paradoxical and confusing. Religion confuses people… especially my people.

Mickie Most
I knew that was coming. Well, anyone who has a song written about them by Joni Mitchell is alright by me. The song was “A free man in Paris” which was about Mickie Most… listen to the lyric. If the only reason he lived was to have a song written about jim by Joni Mitchell, then it’s good enough reason.

Pin-ups
I don’t have pin-ups any more. When I was a kid the picture I had on my wall were Elton John and Gary Glitter… and Roy Wood. When I was a kid I wasn’t into goodlookers… it’s what’s behind the men rather than what they look like and the characters of Elton John and Gary Glitter really got me going.

National papers
A pleasant non-essential five-second read. Even more pleasant when I’m in them. I’ve been brought up in the old-fashioned belief that all publicity is good publicity and I still believe it.

Discos
Boring. I used to go to discos when I was a kid when it was a place just to go and have a dance and it was all innocent. But adult discos… ugh…

Heroes
Bette Davis… Eric Morecambe… Bob Hope… Phil Silvers… Marilyn Monroe… Cary Grant.