Roaring Forty - Legendary rock journalist Sam Snort reflects on a life in music

A bit like that old beer commercial in which the complaints department is an abandoned office where the phone hasn’t rung in years, Sam Snort’s communications nerve centre has been somewhat underutilised in recent times, the famed ‘mojo wire’ itself all but invisible beneath a thick coating of dust and the caked residue of other once powdery substances. So conceive, if you will, of the shock to the old system when, without warning, the bastard machine suddenly erupted into life the other day, emitting a series of squawks, croaks and strangulated beeps, before slowly issuing a single piece of faded A4 paper, on which was scrawled the following message from El Gafferissimo himself:

“Sam, you horny old goat, it’s forty years since you and I set out together on this long, strange trip, dedicating ourselves to the cause of making Ireland safe for rock ‘n’ roll. So how’s about a hydra-headed, quintessentially Snortian screed, not just for old time’s sake, old chum, but to let the kids of today know what it was really like to go up against the dark forces of church and State, armed only with righteous anger, a burning desire to create a better world and prodigious quantities of triangular sandwiches, electric soup and fast white powders. PS: if you can possibly get the copy to us sometime before the next forty years is up, I’ll have my people send you around a preserved phial of your favourite ’77-vintage king-hell crank. Whaddya say, Sam? Yours in Jesus, The Editor.”

Well, need I tell you, he had me at the postscript.

So, forty years, eh? Forty fucking years. Well, that can’t be right for a start. Because I’m pretty sure it was only last weekend I was down in Macroom for that first great gathering of the tribes, in the year when the two sevens clashed, me ‘n’ Philo ‘n’ Keef ‘n’ Chrissie ‘n’ Lemmy ‘n’ Zevon ‘n’ Patti ‘n’ Lou ‘n’ Thunders ‘n’ Rotten having black pudding fights backstage, while the incomparable Rory was out front wowing the awe-struck Billy Bunters, those poor deprived saps whose only previous exposure to the big beat in such bucolic surroundings had been the once a year middle-Ireland mindfuck, when the cosmic carnival that was the Horslips roadshow rolled into town.

Yeah, we were the pathfinders alright, the point men and women for a generation – and, en route to becoming the world’s most legendary rock journalist, I, Samuel J Snort Esq, was right there in the thick of it, as mover and shaker, weaver of dreams, confidant and muse to the stars and shaper of a new, liberal, tolerant and inclusive Ireland, a Republic worthy of the name.

But, mainly, to be honest, I was in it for the chicks and the dope.

And when you were Sam Snort – second only, I don’t mind admitting, to my old mucker Handsome Dick Manitoba in the running for the title of World’s Most Desirable Human Being – there was never any problem getting yourself some of that wang dang sweet poontang. Long before they could even conceive of such a thing as a Viagra overdose, the celebrated Snortian pecker was pretty much permanently standing to attention, the famous Greasy Pole all washed and waxed and ready to bring joy to thousands of grateful Irish ladeez who’d previously known nothing of the infinite wonders of the sexual universe beyond the missionary position – and, indeed, more often than not with actual missionaries, as we were later to find out. (For the purposes of historical accuracy, I should point out that Sam shared his legendary pork sword with black, brown, yellow and freckled women too: he was nothing if not generous in his multiculturalism – Ed).

So that was the sex taken care of. As for the drugs, they were illegal, of course, and, indeed, my sources in the field tell me most of ‘em still are. Which, frankly, is the way it should be. Sam Snort has no truck with wrong-headed calls, however well-meaning, to legalise the stuff. Where’s the fun in firing up a Termonfeckin Torpedo the size of a Saturn V rocket or snorting a thin white line off a shiny, pert buttock, without the additional pure adrenaline kick of knowing that, at any moment, another passenger on the Luas might report your behaviour to the Feds? “To live outside the law you must be honest.” Bobby D said that, but only after I’d told him to, of course.

Yeah, Sam Snort – a vertical man in a horizontal world (I think that should be the other way around – Ed), double-parked on the Highway of Life – has seen and done it all.

Which is why I reckon I’m better placed than any other animal, mineral or vegetable to cast an eye over an unfolding tragedy which I can only describe as the betrayal of the rock ‘n’ roll dream. Partly that’s because we’ve lost a few of the great ones, of course. But partly it’s also because some of the great ones have lost it.

Exhibit A: another of my old muckers, Ted Nugent. Once, it was all cat scratch fever and intensity in ten cities with The Fuckin’ Nuge. And now? The old dingbat was on Fox News last week, bigging up The Trumpster. “If you’re not pissing off idiots you’re an idiot,” he was quoted as saying. “He’s not an idiot. He’s driving the idiots crazy so I’m proud of him.”

So that’s the Fuckin’ Nuge off the honours list, the big plonker.

Not that we’re doing a whole lot better for political role-models in this neck of the woods. Say what you like about how primitive the nation was back in ‘77 but at least there was never any danger that Liam Cosgrave was going to disgrace us all by getting up and playing air guitar.

And, hey, remember when we used to “put on a gig”? Not any more. Now, you have to – pass the sick bag, Alice – “curate” ‘em.

Was it for this that, I, Samuel J Snort Esq, flew one too many missions in the great acid wars? I should think bloody well not. Indeed, things have come to such a pretty pass now that, as far as I can see, sport is the new rock ‘n’ roll – signs on it, you’ll find more evidence of debauchery in the eyes of the Tiger than you will in the face of Mrs Doubtfire lookalike, Axel Rose.

And, sure, all you young farts out there might scoff at the notion of a time when ‘social media’ meant freeloading at as many ligs as possible but, let me assure you chillun, that lifestyle didn’t do old Sam one bit of harm.

Indeed, as I recline here in a comfortable bath-chair in my lovely padded room in St Janis’ Home For Senile Delinquents, reeling in all those 40 years of gargantuan excess, it should be patently obvious to all that Uncle Sam is not just the handsomest man in the world but the luckiest…

Your ever lovin’

Samuel J. Snort Esq.