The New Cue #407: Steve Diggle of Buzzcocks

"The Moors Murderers’ Manchester was the same as our Manchester..."

Good morning,

Today, we have the first part of an epic four-hour encounter with Steve Diggle, co-founder, guitarist and final remaining member of Buzzcocks.

On the back cover of his autobiography, Autonomy - Portrait of a Buzzcock, which is published this Friday by Omnibus Press, and which he co-wrote with the great Simon Goddard, there’s a selection of gushing quotes. The calibre of artist providing the quotes is noticeably higher than usual. Liam Gallagher describes Buzzcocks as “the second best group from Manchester”, elevating them above The Fall, Smiths, Joy Division/New Order, 10cc, etc. Steve Cook of The Sex Pistols describes how crucial Diggle and singer Pete Shelley were in his own band’s early success before “bombarding us with hit after hit” of “pure punk power pop”. And Will Sergeant, guitarist with Echo And The Bunnymen, pinpoints Diggle’s particular skills, saying, “Diggle's approach to bass, and later his switch to guitar, was crucial in the shaping of the sound of the entire punk movement.”

Buzzcocks are often described as “the punk Beatles”, and there’s truth in that. But in many ways, they were more like the British Blondie: a group born at the very eruption of English punk in 1976, who once co-founder Howard Devoto had quit after their punky debut Spiral Scratch EP in ‘77, evolved into an incredible singles band, a four-year run until their first split in 1981 of first-take love-angst guitar-pop that set a template for everyone from Orange Juice to Nirvana. Come on…

Ted joined Diggle in the pub garden of his leafy North London local to discuss the life-story as detailed in his truly excellent book, as well as his journey after the sudden death of Pete Shelley in 2018, and the future for Buzzcocks too. It was meant to be a couple of pints. I explained when we met that anything longer than a thirty minute interview was hard to read as a Q&A on email or online. Diggle agreed. Five pints (I think) and ninety minutes of recorded interview later, I pressed pause.

“What did you really expect,” said Diggle, by way of apology. “I’m 69! There’s a lot of story to tell…”

So, we’ve split this edition in two. Second part will follow on Friday. I recommend sticking on Singles Going Steady as you read.

Enjoy the edition

Ted, Niall and Chris

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Start The Week With…Steve Diggle

Let’s start with your early life in Manchester in the 50s and 60s.
I’m so glad to have been born in Manchester. I had a great life there. But when you go back, it’s changed a lot, it’s all glass now. Dad was a lorry driver, an easy-going bloke who’d done national service which landed him in the Korean War when he was 18. He never really spoke about it, but I know it affected him. Mam had a shop on Stockport Road selling kids’ clothes. I was born off Oxford Road, moved to a semi with a nice garden in Longsight, Clarence Road. Working class, though doing OK, but it could be hairy round there, even at seven. I’d walk down these terraced streets past all these little gangs in my cool suede jacket. But I came to I love all the street gangs and became quite influential in it, in terms of organising them. Not so much the fights but getting bonfire wood, stuff like that.

There’s a chilling bit in your book where The Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are watching you playing around the bonfire in your street as a kid.
Yeah, because she literally lived down the road from me as a kid. My dad even got roped into decorating Ian Brady’s bedroom! He knew his stepdad who was really worried about Brady coming home after borstal. He wallpapered his bedroom. The Moors Murderers’ Manchester was the same as our Manchester, you know. So, one day, a teddy boy and this blonde woman that looked like Brigitte Bardot or Diana Dors, were sat on this box watching us, calling over to kids, “Come and sit with Myra”. I might have gone if it wasn’t peer pressure. I was messing with the doctor’s daughter at the time, learning my skills, becoming sexually aware, right, so thank God I didn’t go, you know!

Close call.
Absolutely. Close shave. Really, it was great growing up there, but in those streets, you didn’t think you’d be getting anywhere. I remember going to Australia once, years later, and thinking, “Wow, that’s the cosmos!” You couldn’t see much of the sky in Manchester: I realised how important that is then. But internally you're kind of thinking you’re not like the rest of them.  

Well, you were a mod in the late 1960s, early. 70s. Not many of those in Manchester then.
We moved to Bradford in east Manchester, not Yorkshire, just after the Beatles brought out Love Me Do and George Best had just joined United. I was a United fan, my dad was a City fan, my grandad was United. That was 1965. I was ten. A guy had bought a scooter in the street, it had Union Jack panels, and he was forever pushing it up and down the street. He was the only mod I’d seen, and I think that got me into the idea – though nobody could afford the clothes.

Was it hairy for you, being a Mod?
A little bit! My cousin was a rocker: he had a white plastic coat, winklepickers and he lived a couple of doors down. He was listening to Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis at the time, but I got into the Beatles, and then The Who, My Generation, the Kinks, all that was coming at the same time. That was my thing. But most kids were getting jobs in factories and all that. They just dressed ordinary and the mentality wasn’t there. So that’s when you start thinking about the poetry of life, you know. You were supposed to get married, have a kid and then just never go anywhere the rest of your life. I knew that wasn’t going to be for me.

Yet you started work in a factory as a teenager all the same.
I did. The great thing about the dole in those days, it would give you the freedom to work on yourself. It was your own university. I wasn’t destined to go to university, that was for the middle class, but you’d got a generation of self-made men, like me. I loved reading, so that was what I did. I read everything I could. The dole was great for me, I used it to educate myself. But my grandad was a trade union man and he said, “I’ve got you a job”. I’m like, Fucking hell: I didn’t want to say no, you know? But I thought, “I’ll get me money to buy a guitar.” Within months, I caused a strike there.

How?
It was heavy in there, because with new apprentices like me it’s the classic thing, they’ll put your balls in the vice. But I stood my ground and had a fight with this black guy outside of work. Everyone watched. I got beaten, because this guy was a bit tasty, he was bigger than me. But the fact I did that meant everyone respected me enough to leave me alone. One day the boss asked me to operate this scary machine. I refused – didn’t wanna lose an arm or my hand! And so, they sacked me. Everyone went on strike, so they had to reinstate me, which was annoying as I wanted to be sacked. Came back and the same thing happened again! I came down from the managing director’s office, the shop steward said, “We’ll come out again for it,” and at 17 years old, I said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to put my coat on, I’m going to go home and I’m never going to work again”. And I really believed that.

After that, you concentrate on music, arranging to meet a guy from an advert outside Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976 to form a band. He doesn’t show up, but the moment changes your life.
Yeah. It’s amazing, really. So, my dad nicked a bass guitar off the back of his truck. I was trying to get the money for a guitar, which I think I just about had, and he said, “I delivered to A1 Music in Manchester, I’ve got you that guitar, it’s upstairs.” I ran up to my bedroom: “It’s a fucking bass, it’s got four strings!” But then I looked in the back of the local paper, and everybody wanted bass players and drummers, so I thought, “At least I’m in there”.

I phoned this guy in an ad, said, “Let’s write three-minute songs, smash the fucking equipment like The Who and tell the audience to fuck off,” you know. That was my version of punk, before I even knew about punk. I arranged to meet him outside the Free Trade Hall, but before he got there, a bloke was stood there, dressed like the Elvis comeback all in leather: Malcolm McLaren. Which is amazing, isn’t it? He said, “There’s a band inside waiting for you.” I thought, “I don’t know anything about this”. I said, “Oh, I’m forming a group, mate.” He told me he had a band playing inside called the Sex Pistols. What a name. I told him I didn’t know them. “Oh, they do things like Substitute.” I said, “Well, I’m in for that.” Go inside and Pete Shelley was doing the tickets. We got on OK, so I said I’d see him inside.

What are the chances! Quite an important gig, that, every music star of the era says they were there.
I mean, we sat at the back, with rows and rows of empty seats. They all swear they was there, but I’m sure there was about 20 people there!  It was full the next time they played there, when we actually supported them.

Very soon after, the next day, you form Buzzcocks with Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto.
Yeah, it’s not like we all grew up together at art school and we knew each other. We were all very different. Howard was a bit Noel Coward and a bit Samuel Beckett, mysterious. Pete was a bit camp, Bowie-like and all that, and then there was me. I liked the Stones, Bob Dylan, and rock’n’roll.

The final key is John Maher on drums.
Howard said he knew this girl drummer, and I was thinking, “I’m not sure about that. It’s not going to be like The Who.” Not very enlightened, I’m sorry! But then he’d got a number for this 16-year-old guy, John Maher. He seemed quite young, because we were 20, but it all just gelled. John had been playing about six weeks, I couldn’t believe it. He said, “I had a guitar, didn’t get on with it and bought a drum kit”. Fucking hell, he was phenomenal. He’s one of those, though, you know. We had this odd combination of performers who clicked in a way which was quite amazing. And when new songs came up, they’d be sorted out within some moments. The quicker we write them, the better. More time in the boozer.

One of your earliest gigs was that Screen on the Green gig in London in ‘76: there’s The Clash, yourselves, the Pistols. Three generational bands, all the same age and all starting at the same time in different places.
First gig we opened for The Pistols at Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Then the next gig, we played some Hells Angels pub, we did half a set and then they asked us to leave, so we knew we was on the right track. Within days of that, we were at the Screen on the Green, all the audience were dressed up in this punk gear, and I thought, “This is the crystallisation of it now, you can see what this punk thing’s going to be like.” It was developing into something a bit more physical: you could see what is happening and see people’s attitudes and the vibe around it all.

Yourselves, the Pistols and the Clash, three of the most influential British bands, all three groups starting simultaneously.
Amazing, isn’t it? I’d been sacked from my job, had no idea what I was going to do. I was hopeless, stood outside Free Trade Hall. I randomly meet Malcolm McLaren and the next thing I’m doing the Pistols at the Free Trade Hall and then the Screen on the Green. It’s just like it had an inbuilt gyroscope. You started to just go along with the flow of it, you know. Us, Clash, Pistols – and The Jam, who were on the White Riot tour with us for a bit - it’s amazing how great all those bands are, all at the same time. You couldn’t design and organise that, nobody looked pretty enough for record labels. But like like a carpet bomb, it swept this country, didn’t it.

Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Jam all sounded really different from each other, but fit together as well.
We were all young, which wasn’t typical for bands in the 70s, and we weren’t musos. Those other bands had a more linear rock sound than us I think, though. I was aware of Stockhausen and Eno and Bowie and things like that. We were quite idiosyncratic from the start.

That changed a bit when Devoto left after the first EP, Spiral Scratch, didn’t it?
Howard said he’d done what he wanted, which was make a record, so he left. It was a shock, but he was happy for us to carry on. I moved over to guitar, and it became more melodic. I put a lot of the riffs in Pete’s songs. Everybody’s Happy Nowadays was my riff and loads of other ones he owes me money for, basically! I think really, you know, because we grew up with like the Beatles, the Kinks and all of that – I don’t know whether Pete liked The Who, but I did – some of that must have been the foundations of Buzzcocks.

When did you feel like it was serious?
It was all a bit haphazard really. We’d done Spiral Scratch and then we got offers from about six record companies, including CBS, “We’ll give you a blank cheque and as much money as you want.” We said we want artistic control. Not a popular request! But we had these songs, and people that had seen us, they knew we were different than all the others, you know. Eventually, we signed a deal with Andrew Lauder from UA, who came to the gigs a lot, and he said, “You can do what you want,” you know, complete artistic freedom, but for less money than we could have got from CBS!

That’s the price to pay.
Yeah. And then the first record was Orgasm Addict, and the record plant went on strike for three weeks, going, “We’re not pressing this filth”! They had to negotiate with the pressing plant, to handle this disgusting filth about orgasms. I mean, it was hard to describe to them that this is poetry.

As a very young teenage fan who’d missed the start of Buzzcocks, that’s where I first heard Orgasm Addict ,on the Singles Going Steady compilation. I wore that record out when I was 13, 14: it was like my Motown Chartbusters. Every number is immense. You packed a lot in to short period. What was that four-year journey to the band’s split like in 1981?
Motown Chartbusters is a great analogy. It’s true. We had this string of great singles, didn’t we? I think we were on about seven or eight Top of the Pops. It was an electric, golden era. But at that time, it was always about working fast. I mean, we’d be on the road, doing about 82 gigs a year at least. And we didn’t put a lot of the early singles on the albums, you know, Harmony in My Head wasn’t on an album, Promises wasn’t. It was about giving kids value for money.

Diggle singing his Harmony in My Head on Top Of The Pops…

Crazy talk.
Couldn’t happen now. it was just coming out fast. We thought the songs would never dry up. We’d go in the rehearsal room about one o’clock and go, “Come on, we’ve got to get on with this, the pubs are open at five”: that was the inspiration. I’m talking about Ever Fallen in Love, all them hits, “We’ve got to get in the pub at half-five, come on, let’s get this done”. You can hear people next door in their rehearsal, going, “Ahh,” just getting the intro together for three hours. We’d written about two hit songs by that time!

Maybe that’s why those recordings often sound like a live performance.
We recorded them live, pretty much! Few overdubs and a vocal, maybe, but mostly live. It was like Motown, all live-recorded, like all the classic 60s songs. We had a great flow, up until 1980, we was going to America a lot, all round Europe and Britain, and then, you know, a lot of drugs got involved, there was a lot of girls along the way. Things like that. Rock’n’roll…

To Be Continued!
Tune in to The New Cue this Friday for part two of this interview, where we travel deeper into the excesses that curtailed the first incarnation of Buzzcocks, their reformation in 1989, the impact of Pete Shelley’s sudden death on his oldest friend, Buzzcocks after his passing, and the future for Steve Diggle…

TK