Bobby Gillespie is a fucking anorak

Bobby Gillespie, former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer, anorak devotee, erstwhile champion of the bowl-haircut, long-time stranger to shampoo and famous fan of Led Zeppelin, wrote of “Zep” in The Observer Music Magazine last week:

“It’s gone that swing and that swagger. The Stones had it and Zep had it. Indie-rock killed it off. All those fucking anoraks with their retarded girlfriends.”

I know Gillespie’s taken some drugs in his time – what else could explain his dancing style of an arrhythmic Mick Jagger fan with no sense of direction caught in a force-10 gale? – but to blame “those anoraks” for killing rock’s swagger is delusional.

Those anoraks are, according to Gillespie, male. The women involved are retards, apparently. Allow me to cast my mind back to August 1989: a small club in Birmingham where Primal Scream, who’ve just started their risible rock phase, are playing the opening night. I’m backstage (Bobby, you won’t remember me, but I was the young lad who asked, “Are you missing Jim Beattie?” and you snorted derisorily, “What do you think?”; I said I thought, in fact, that your songs were far better with Beattie’s contribution) and this couple turns up, him bedecked faithfully in the clothes and hairstyle you sported on the sleeve to Gentle Tuesday.

His retarded girlfriend – quite an attractive young lady, I remember – you took ‘somewhere private’ to be serviced. Very gallant of you rescuing her from that anorak, but sexual exploitation of what you call retards is a criminal offence. But we’ll leave the semantics for another time, perhaps.

The tour was part of the introduction of a new Primal Scream, a proper rock band, a band that wouldn’t be shamed by something like writing decent tunes, but would instead blanket everything with bluster and brawn. Your attempt then to inject that “swing and swagger” into your music was cackhanded at best and embarrassing for the most part. Donning some leather trousers and discarding basic hygiene wasn’t enough to convince anyone: if you were that rock, that dangerous, had any swing or swagger, why didn’t you show it? Because you’re a fraud. You threw fucking sweeties into the crowd that night because you’re a fucking anorak, pal.

Why, Bobby, when you were desperately trying to distance yourself from a few decent singles you’d made in the past, were you woefully reheating The Stooges (in 1989! Everyone had heard it all before, and better, and even then it wasn’t much good)? You failed completely to capture anything of the spirit and zest and manic mayhem of your idols because your music was just a cheap confidence trick.

Your first rock single, Ivy Ivy Ivy, borrowed its title from a song by chamber pop maestros The Left Banke, and its b-side, You’re Just Too Dark To Care, stole its title from a line in Neil Young’s finest effort with Buffalo Springfield, Flying On The Ground Is Wrong.

Not that rock, eh? In fact, pretty much the music that inspires those fucking anoraks you hate (and who hate “Zep”; and, naturally, your clownish self). The same music that used to inspire you but were pretending then, as now, to despise, in fact. Even at 16 I knew from where you’d stolen your source material. The problem was – and still is –that you have such disdain for your audience that you don’t ever think they’re on to you. Most of those fucking anoraks and their retarded girlfriends know that you’re a fucking anorak.

You’d have been on the scrap heap, probably working in Record and Tape Exchange since 1990, had it not been for Andrew Weatherall creating the one album that’s guaranteed you press coverage forevermore. You know that. That’s why all your pronouncements are based on bullying rhetoric rather than informed opinion. How was it you excused the use of the Confederate flag as cover art? Oh yes:

"People think the flag is a symbol for like slavery and racism. But that's not what the Civil War was about. It was about like freedom, you know.”

You told Select in 1994 your worries over Primal Scream’s legacy:

“The only thing I don't want is us to be nailed down as some motherfuckin' curators of some rock 'n' roll fuckin' museum. We love all sorts of music, and I'm glad to turn people on to sounds they've never heard - y'know, go and buy Superfly by Curtis Mayfield, or the Impressions' Greatest Hits, or Culture’s Two Sevens Clash.”

Do I have to point out the irony in that statement? You’re worried about being seen as curators, then immediately impose your rock curatorial bent: being rock curators is what justifies your existence. If you shout your off-the-peg didacticism loud enough from your media-sponsored position of privilege, then enough people will believe it to keep the Primal Scream Travelling Circus on the road.

Also, you patronising little shit, most people will have heard those records you recommend. By the way, Bobby, there are at least three Curtis Mayfield albums you should buy before Superfly; and don’t waste your pennies on an Impressions’ Greatest Hits: there are at least four albums by them that you should own.

The argument that you’re a fraud, a clown, a bully and a fucking anorak is unassailable. I feel, though, that I should introduce some more personal knowledge to the situation to compound your penance:

About 15 years ago you went to bed with a friend’s housemate. It was a shame that your conquest had her period, but she said that you – gallantly, again, I must say – told her to flip over and then proceeded to fuck her up the arse. Unused to such anal attentions, the young lady shat on you.

She later opined about reading an interview with you in which you were asked what the most embarrassing moment of your career was:

“I’m not telling you, but it’s got something to do with excrement.”

Of course, you were asked this some years before you made Country Girl.