Heads, you win

He's familiar to Northern listeners as a super-smooth middle of the road DJ. But in his misspent youth as a guitarist, Gerry Anderson lived a life of rock and roll abandon.

Jason O'Toole, 11 Dec 2008

Did the band ever participate in any wild orgies?

“Never in Ireland,” he laughs. “No, that came later! In many ways we were kind of innocent because we had no precedence. Those guys in the ‘60s – like The Rolling Stones – they were the first people who lived like that. And on a very small scale people in bands in Ireland lived like that. There were, of course, orchestras and band before us and I’m sure they got up to all kinds of stuff – but they weren’t like us, you know?” he says.

“The thing with Ireland is you’d only be on the road for one or two nights, so I didn’t get into the road culture whereby you’re constantly on the road – and when you’re constantly on the road, the world seems very unreal. And the ordinary rules don’t apply to you because you don’t feel as if you’re living in the world because you’re changing every day. We were basically decent people in the band in Ireland; it wasn’t until I went away to America that I discovered everybody wasn’t decent! There was some very strange people.”

So did you get to see any wild orgies over there?

“I’m not going to tell you that because that will be the headline to your story! Yes, but that’s for the next book! I know – you’re looking for dirt! Yes, you are! Anything like that will be in the next book! That would be misleading people because there’s nothing in this book! We can’t fool the readers!” states Anderson.

There might have been a lot of sex during Anderson’s rock ‘n’ roll days, but by his own accounts there wasn’t that much drug intake.

“There wasn’t too many drugs, just a bit, you know? It was little things like inhalers and stuff like uppers and Benzedrine...and some marijuana, but I don’t think that’s criminal anymore! But that’s nothing, when you are talking about cocaine and heroin – there was none of that.”

Would you be in favour of legalising marijuanna?

“I think it’s silly, because it loses its appeal if it’s legalised. Back in our day, you’d look for pills and stuff to make you not tired, basically. There was no real kind of compulsion to get high for the sake of it. It was a case of, ‘I need something to lighten me up a bit!’ There was always the demon drink – ‘cause you are always drinking all the time! I was never a drinker, but you did it anyway. I used to drink quite a bit, but not as much as any of them,” he says, referring to his former band mates.

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