Heads, you win

Gerry Anderson, the Northern Ireland BBC DJ, has been doing a lot of reminiscing lately about his former life as a musician as he puts the finishing touches to a new memoir, entitled Heads. And the Derry-born guitarist has an unusual bit of advice for parents whose kids are considering dropping out of college to join a rock band – let them do it!

“When people ask me if I’d do anything different with my life, I reply, ‘No. I just wish I could do it again!’,” he laughs. “I meet all kinds of people and somebody might say to me, ‘My son’s going to university to study accountancy and he’s 18 and he really wants to join a rock ‘n’ roll band!’ I’ll say, ‘Let him go! He has to do it now. He can’t join the band when he’s 25 – he has to do it now. He can be an accountant when he’s 25. Let him go and get it out of his system!’”
In hindsight, he’s concluded that the life of a musician is as close to perfect as you can get. “There we were, like 23 or 24 years old, and our job was to travel the country, drink and smoke, play music, and go with women. That was our job! Do you know what I mean? What a wonderful life that is…”
By all accounts, Anderson got a lot out of his own system during his rock ‘n’ roll days – both on the road in Ireland and the US with Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks.
“There was a lot of sex,” he reveals about his formative years. “I was interested in women, but I wouldn’t really describe myself as a ladies’ man. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I didn’t have much confidence. But when you look back you’re kind of better looking than you thought you were (laughs)! Sometimes I look back at photographs and I think, ‘If I had known then that I was not too bad looking, I would’ve had more confidence!’
Indeed, if you were in a band getting laid was as easy as falling off a cliff, he says. “You didn’t need a line in a band. It was very much taken as given that you’d have a woman. It was no big deal. There would have been a few groupies. Quite a few of those but – you know? – it’s all very easy and all very, kind of, no big deal. It was just what you did! You have to remember that when you are 22 or 23 you’re testosterone levels are high. You were interested in women 24 hours a day, that’s just the way you were. You would try to get as many women as you could. That’s the way it was. And being in a band helped. Everybody in a band could get women, you know? It was just the quantity depended on your charisma! And I was never greedy!”
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.
While Anderson never drank and drove, he has, however, been behind the wheel after smoking an illicit joint.
“I don’t like to drive when you’re high. It’s like a videogame. You’d drive when you’re younger and it’s like a videogame – it’s just not real. You just go, ‘Hey...Woooooow!’ It’s easy! It’s a bad idea. I’ve seen people doing it and I was terrified,” he concludes.

Heads by Gerry Anderson is published Gill & Macmillan