'COCKS AWAY!

WHEN I last saw the Buzzcocks at London's Camden Music Machine in 1977, The Damned's mate Johnny Moped was the support and there was a mad rugby scrum in the bar when Mick Jones was spotted enjoying, ahem, social intercourse with one of the Slits.
I had intended keeping these trainspotterish reminiscences to myself but as soon as Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle saunter into the room - looking disgustingly well preserved, I might add - I lose all self-control and start babbling about how punk changed my life.
"Mine too," laughs Pete Shelley displaying that famous boyish grin of his. "I was a trainee computer operator before going full-time with the Buzzcocks, I hated it and because of punk and what's come since, I've been able to earn a living doing something I love instead. Few of my non-musical friends can say that, so I'm grateful for the opportunities it's presented me.
"People such as yourself come along because they want to re-live part of their youth whereas others, like the 15-year-old girl we met in Belfast last night, weren't even born when we started but have gotten to know us through their elder brother and sister or parents' record collection."
I can appreciate that sort of back-dated adulation being very flattering but it must be frustrating having to play songs that you wrote half a lifetime ago and probably can't stand anymore?
"Yeah," admits the singer, "there's quite a bit of stuff that makes me cringe now but there's a simple solution to that - leave them out. I can hand on heart say that I enjoy performing, what, 90 or 95% of the current set. That slight compromise exists because nobody's heard our new 'Test Trade Transmission' album yet and it wouldn't make sense to feature it too predominantly.
"At the same time, we're not a Butlin's chicken-in-the-basket act. One of the weeklies reviewed us in the States and said we were, 'whoring it round the cabaret circuit', which was inaccurate enough to be offensive. What they didn't mention was that there were 9,000 people there and half the songs were brand new. There's a future to the Buzzcocks as well as a past and hopefully when we're next in Ireland, I'll be able to come on and go, 'here's a number you might have seen us doing last week on Top of the Pops''. I'm proud of what we achieved in the Seventies, I don't want to destroy our reputation and contrary to what our critics think, money isn't the only reason we've decided to give it another whirl."
But financial considerations do come into it?
"We're not bullshitters," picks up Steve Diggle, "and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that there were dollar signs in our eyes when we were offered that first 'comeback' tour of the States. Peter had gone away and done his own solo stuff, I'd formed Flag Of Convenience with John Maher and signed to Sire but neither of us had really found the satisfaction or success we'd been striving for.
"Everyone assumes that we made a fortune during the punk era but you've got to remember that we never had a Top 10 hit. There's a world of difference between spending a week at number 23 and a month at number one and even though 'Ever Fallen In Love' shifted 250,000 copies and went silver, by the time we'd paid for office space, a #40,000 p.a. and the wages of the 11 people working for us, there wasn't much left. I'm not bitter about that - we started out making the least commercial music possible, it'd have been nice ending up with a few quid but that was never the motivation. The art, the craft - whatever you want to call it - came first then and still does now."
Point taken but I assume you weren't suicidally depressed when Fine Young Cannibals decided to cover "Ever Fallen..." and did make it into the Top 10, not just here but in America where we're talking millions rather than thousands of units.
"It wasn't a bad little earner," Steve agrees, "but we'd all been without a contract for three and a half years and those royalties are what physically kept us alive for the remainder of the eighties. We're not exactly financial wizards - I don't even know what a pint or a packet of cigarettes costs and we've always tended to buy first and check the price tag later."
The Pistols split because they hated each other, The Clash disappeared up their own leather trousered posteriors because they wanted to be the Rolling Stones and the rest of the class of '76 self-destructed because, well, they weren't much cop. What was the Buzzcocks' excuse?
"It wasn't a case of loathing threatening to turn into murder," chuckles Shelley. "In fact, considering the close proximity we lived in for four or five years, we parted remarkably good friends and that's what left it open for myself and Steve to work together again. We certainly didn't want to be the Stones - no, it was an accumulation of too many gigs, too many diet pills and not enough record company support."
Thanks to Malcolm McLaren's revisionist version of punk history, it's often forgotten that you were around nearly as early as the Sex Pistols and pretty much defined the d-i-y ethos by taking the unprecedented step of releasing your debut EP through a small independent, New Hormones. Are you bitter that what started out a genuinely street level movement should have become absorbed so quickly and completely into the mainstream?
"The real punk explosion," reflects Diggle, "only lasted six months and then the middle-class started having their bin liner parties and the scene became a bit of a joke. To me, it was more about attitude and changing things than walking up and down the King's Road showing off the bondage trousers you'd just bought from Seditionaires. I look at kids these days with their regulation mohawks and studded leather jackets and think, 'why are you wearing a uniform?'. That stereotyped, picture postcard image of punk is what helped kill it off."
The way I saw it, the death knell sounded the moment that original spirit and open-mindedness began being replaced by right-wing bootboy thuggery and a refusal to let the music evolve. Fair comment?
"You have to look at it in its historic context," insists the guitarist. "We'd had five years of Led Zeppelin and Yes singing about mushrooms in the sky and punk, for many teenagers, was the first time they'd been able to relate to what a band was saying and apply it to their own situation. The Buzzcocks were political but not in a narrow or party sense. Unfortunately, there were organisations like the British Movement who took that 'I'm fed up with life' philosophy and developed it into 'I'm fed up with life because of X, Y and Z and I'm going to kick their fucking heads in'.
"It was a terrible shame," rues Shelley, "because in '75 and '76, the big thing was acceptance. The meeting place for punks in Manchester then was a gay bar called Rafters but it didn't matter if you were homosexual, lesbian or straight, you could sit down and have a pint without worrying you were going to be bottled by a National Front lunatic.
"There was a band - who were they? - ah yes, Skrewdriver, who were openly racist early on and then the NF skinheads allied themselves to Sham 69 and went round destroying venues. The irony is that the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Slits and even the dreaded Generation X had a deep appreciation of reggae and got heavily involved with Rock Against Racism. There was an air of nihilism to punk and the extremists used that as an excuse for violence."
When you were gigging round every toilet in the country and recording EPs on a budget of twenty quid and a packet of crisps for the producer, did you realise the legacy you were creating?
"It was special," enthuses Diggle, "but perhaps that's because I was 17 or 18 and prior to that hadn't done much living. It saddens me when I read that punk was a media creation or Malcolm McLaren's handiwork as that ignores the hundreds of people with no previous music biz experience who suddenly started playing in a band, promoting gigs or writing a fanzine. You could say that the Buzzcocks, and others like us, were the key that opened the door for that talent."
"Steve's right," nods his partner-in-crime, "and you only have to look at the charts today for proof that without punk, a lot of stuff wouldn't have happened. I remember us taking Barney Sumner on a shopping expedition to buy his first guitar and we even thought up one of Joy Division's early names for them, The Stiff Kittens. They were four lads from Salford, who didn't have a clue what they were doing, asking four equally clueless lads for advice.
"Manchester was an exciting place in those days and still is, I suppose. You had Johnnie Cooper-Clarke stumbling round looking distinctly unwell, Slaughter ... The Dogs reeking havoc at every opportunity and Morrissey sneaking into the office when our backs were turned and trying to use the phone."
What about some of your contemporaries, do you reckon they've managed to grow old gracefully?
"Well, the only way John Lydon could grow old is dis-gracefully and up till a few years ago, I loved what he was doing with PIL. Then he nicked our drummer and I went off him! Billy Idol was always a bit of an idiot but now that he's into this 'Hollywood and heroin' lifestyle, he's lost it completely. I've stumbled into Mick Rossi from Slaughter ... The Dogs at a few clubs and he's stopped being a hooligan and turned into rather a nice chap. The other person I see occasionally is Howard Devoto (the original Buzzcocks lead singer) who's incredibly secretive but last heard of was working in a picture library."
Those of you who enjoy wallowing hippopotamus-style in nostalgia will be tickled all sorts of colours to hear that Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, is furiously scribbling down his memoirs at present and hopes to publish them in book-form sometime next year.
Back together permanently with a new album and a diary-full of gigs, are the Buzzcocks capable of scaling the same heights as they did in the Seventies?
"To be honest," replies Steve Diggle thoughtfully, "I haven't got a fucking clue. The indications are good - people are coming to the shows, not just in Britain and Ireland but France, Spain, Japan and America - and the press we've had has been surprisingly positive.
"Talking of which, did you see the piece in last week's Melody Maker ? We had a launch party in London for the album, the champagne was flowing a little too freely and our drummer ended up clocking the bassist out of Blur and spending the night in the cells. One of their journalists was there and gave a blow by blow account - we were a bit freaked at first but then we thought, 'this'll show there's life in the old dog yet!".
Having seen the Buzzcocks lay waste to the Tivoli in suitably amphetamined style, I'm delighted to report that the dog's not only alive but still displaying all of its bollocks.
Let the revolution re-commence!