Getting High (12 page)

‘The effect it had on me was also to distrust figures of authority, like people, such as my dad, telling me what to do when they were no better than me. Like, he was giving me a hard time for not going to school and robbing shops, and he's just beaten me mam up. Hello? Is there anybody in there?'

Obviously, and sadly, there wasn't.

‘Bad news, Noel.'

‘What?'

‘Your mum's the new dinner lady.'

Noel Gallagher entered St. Mark's secondary school in September 1978, and he ran straight into a nightmare.

First off, a lot of his friends had gone to St. Bernard's school. Then, much to his horror, he discovered that the school had now adopted a boys-only policy. There would be no girls in attendance.

On top of that, he was somehow placed in the wrong class.

‘This is a true story,' he states. ‘There were five classes in the year which went M, A, R, K, S. M, A and R were the top three classes. I gloriously failed my eleven-plus but my results got mixed up with a geezer called David Gallagher. I got put in the top bracket in the first year. So I'm with all these fucking nobs and I can't get my fucking head around it. I hated everyone in the class.

‘They all had glasses, fucking briefcases and all this shit. I remember in the first assembly the teacher calling out the names and all my mates, who were in the divvies class, were going, “Where the fuck are you going? You must have passed your fucking exam, you swot bastard.”

‘Meanwhile, this poor bastard, David, was with all my mates and they used to kick his fucking head in, take his dinner tickets off him, his butties and all that. His mam and dad used to come to the school to complain. And they never sussed it out until a year later. Then, I swapped with him. I remember a symbolic thing at assembly when he walked passed me and gave me a dirty look as I was going to join my mates. I was like, you fucking twat, I'll do you. I think that's where I got all my hate of school from. I hated everyone.'

Especially so the bright kids, the ones who would always hand their homework in on time, who never got into trouble and looked down on people such as Noel. It's a snobbery that is never overt but Noel could sense it every time they watched him walking towards the headmaster's office for another rollicking.

Students, he hated students. And when, later on in life, his band would be pitched against a student band, his venom would come pouring out.

In the same month that Noel was starting school, Johnny Rotten's new group, Public Image Ltd., released their eponymous debut single. Rotten had quit the Pistols while on their ill-advised American tour and was now embarked on a new musical journey. But for Noel The Sex Pistols were one of the most thrilling bands ever. They had tunes, disaffected but glorious anthems most of them, and they single-handedly rekindled rock's rebellious nature before gloriously self-destructing.

Noel connected heavily with their don't-give-a-fuck attitude and the Pistols became a major influence. But at that time, there was little else to inspire him.

The Bee Gees soundtrack album for the film
Saturday Night Fever
, starring John Travolta, was number one for the tenth week running, while ‘Summer Nights' by Travolta and Olivia Newton John had replaced 10cc's ‘Dreadlock Holiday' as the UK's number one single. It would stay there for what seemed forever.

Tragically, Keith Moon, The Who's drummer, would die in September, and The Jam would later pay tribute to him by covering The Who's ‘So Sad About Us', placing it on the B-side of their next single, ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight'. Records such as these aside, not a good time for music.

Punk was now dead and buried and New Wave acts, such as The Police or Elvis Costello, had taken its place. But for Noel punk was the business.

Yet there was still some way to go before he started taking a musical instrument seriously. Incidents such as briefly trying out guitar lessons in the last year of his primary school hadn't helped.

‘I kicked it on the head because the teacher was trying to make me play left-handed because I'm left-handed,' he explains.' And I couldn't get it. Then, when I got a right-handed one, it all made sense.'

Surprisingly, this guitar had been given to him by his father.

‘Well, me dad, and I remember it to this day, he went out to buy me mam an eternity ring and he came back with an acoustic guitar. It's true. I remember him going off to get this ring and he came back and said, “Well, I was just passing the shop and I seen this guitar so I thought, fuck it, I'll get one of these.” And he couldn't play a fucking crotchet on it so it ends up just lying around the house.'

Again Noel would take guitar lessons, this time at St. Marks.

Again he would know only disinterest from his teacher.

‘Somebody should have taken the time to say, fucking hell, this kid's got talent, he's actually left-handed but he's persevering to play it right-handed, there must be something here. But they never did.'

It was a slight that Noel would never forget.

‘Noel won't forgive and forget,' Peggy says. ‘If you cross him then that's it, and I'm like that as well.'

Faced with an unhappy home life and filled with contempt for his school and classmates, Noel Gallagher started to isolate himself. He recalls his first two years at school as 'days filled with just staring out of the window'.

At home, he found himself writing poems, scraps of lyrics. And out in the street he fully involved himself in illegal activities. Near his house lay a parade of shops. One of them, Mr. Sifter's, was where Noel would buy all his records. Later on, he would immortalise it in ‘Shakermaker'.

Nearby, on Shorebrook Road, was a confectioner's run by two old women. At lunchtime, they would shut up shop but fail to secure the front door.

‘And we hated them,' Noel says, ‘because they looked like Hinge and Bracket. So me and two geezers bowl in at about half-past one while these old biddies sat in the back room having tea and biscuits.

‘One of the geezers got to the door that leads to the back of the shop and he placed a chair underneath the handle and we proceed to take cigarettes. We couldn't open the till ‘cos it was one of those electronic tills and they were a new-fangled thing in them days. We were pressing all these buttons and they didn't do a fucking thing.

‘Anyway, as we were bowling out of the shop, full of cigarettes, tins of salmon and coffee, because they were the most expensive things, a delivery man shows up and sees us. So we get chased away and recognised.'

Noel appeared in juvenile court and was fined £2, a fee his mam had to pay.

Later on, another escapade. Bunking off school, Noel and his friends would often end up in a cafe in Levenshulme where, at the time, stolen goods were handled. It was here that Noel got talking with two guys one day. They asked him to accompany them on a job. Noel agreed finally and they entered a house, taking a digital watch and a Walkman, one of the first-ever models to appear on the market. The next day Noel sold them in the cafe.

‘We actually got away with that for about six weeks, until one of the geezers we burgled this house with got caught doing another burglary. See, when you get caught,' Noel explains, ‘the cops say to you, “If you admit to everything you've done, we'll let you off”.

‘So he told them that he had burgled the house with me. I was sat in the launderette doing me mam's washing and this fucking CID man walks in.

‘”Are you Noel Gallagher? Does this address ring any bells?” Me mam's going, “How dare you? That's my son. He hasn't done anything wrong.” Eh, sorry, Mam. So I went to court and got fined again.'

It was rapidly becoming apparent that Noel wasn't cut out for a successful criminal career. He had to face the facts: twice he had been caught now, but that wasn't really surprising as every time he committed a crime he sniffed glue beforehand to work up his courage. In other words, he was glued-up, not clued-up.

For many kids, sniffing glue is their first drug experience. It's legal and cheap, but the thrills are rich. Noel reckons he was about twelve years old when he first imbibed.

‘How we ever actually managed to do any burgling I don't know,' he exclaims. ‘We were all off our tits on drugs. We'd be hopeless, killing ourselves laughing, walking round a house, giggling like fuck. I mean, the people could have been there for all we knew.'

It didn't matter. Noel had found temporary relief from the pain in his life, discovered an instant solution to his problems. Glue, spliff, magic mushrooms, these would all now be consumed in great quantities. And then the world would look great again and the misery would magically disappear. There was just laughter and good times then. No more guilt, no more pain. How could he resist? He couldn't. Not even when robbing the local milkman.

‘There was this public toilet where we used to get the bus to school,' Noel recalls, ‘and the milkman used to pull up, buy a paper from the newsagent and go and have a shit in the toilets.

‘Well, one day, we sussed that on a Monday morning, that's when he had the most money. So we hatched this plot which was that we were gonna lock the geezer in the bog and take the money which we had been told was under the guy's seat.'

The plan seemed foolproof. The boys met at the arranged time. They let the school bus go by and then surreptitiously sniffed some glue to chase away their nerves. As planned, the milkman arrived and entered the toilets.

‘So my mate goes into the bog and comes out laughing, the geezer has got his kecks round his ankles. Into the milk float the three of us go, and then someone comes out the bog. Fuck this. Let's nick the milk float.

‘This would be about half-ten in the morning. Glued-up. In a milk float. School uniforms on. Blazer, school ties and Adidas bags. We drive straight past our houses, up the main street on to the golf course. Then comes the realisation.

‘What are we gonna do with a milk float and like 20,000 bottles of milk? Don't know. What have we nicked it for? Don't know. Isn't that a police siren I've just heard? Fuck me. So it is. We'd better get out and run.

‘But you can't run because you're that caned off your tits. It must have been the easiest collar that policeman ever had. You think you're running dead fast with this big bag of fifty-pence pieces, but really we were just falling about laughing.

‘Anyway, we get taken down the fucking police station. The coppers were like, “What do you think you're doing?” Don't know. Fuck knows. Mam turns up. Headmaster turns up. Then they got a fucking social worker.

‘He starts going, “Why are you doing all these things?” ‘Cos me mates do it. “So tell me about your childhood.” Don't know. Then he was like, “I want to come round and speak to your dad.” I was like, don't come round to my house, you don't want to speak to me dad. In fact, wait a minute, yes come round to my house. In fact, come on let's go. ‘Cos I hated this cunt.

‘He walks in and me dad's like, “You fuck off. You're telling me I'm a bad parent? It's that cunt there.” And I'm standing there going, I told ya so.'

In Noel's third year, his mum left McVitie's biscuit factory and joined St. Mark's as a dinner lady. Exam question A. In not more than 100 words, describe how best to bunk off school, take drugs and hang out with your mates when your mum is the dinner lady and expecting to see you every day.

Answer. Go to school. Register. Then leave. But always ensure you are back at school by lunchtime. Walk into dinner hall. Make a point of saying ‘Hello mum', preferably in front of teacher on lunch-duty. Eat dinner. Leave school for the afternoon and then return home at normal times. Full marks, Noel Gallagher.

‘Me mam was flabbergasted at the military precision of how I managed to blag a whole term of school when she thought I was in every single day,' Noel proudly says. ‘I think she admired me for that.'

Noel spent his days at his friend's houses, playing records, sniffing glue. At home, he practised the guitar and at age thirteen he attended his first concert, The Damned at the Manchester Apollo. He recalls being dazzled by the lights, the huge sound, the spectacle. He also remembers being bemused by the wild pogoing that the band's fans erupted into throughout the band's performance.

Noel stayed at the back, coolly watching.

This pogoing lark looked a little bit too energetic for his liking, plus he couldn't rid himself of the thought, the same one Peggy had experienced when she first saw screaming Beatles' fans, that somehow it all looked a bit silly. There must be something a bit more serious. And there was.

One Saturday evening, Noel found himself watching the Granada music show
So It Goes
. The show was hosted by Tony Wilson who was also head of Factory Records, based in Manchester.

Factory courted controversy. Their first major signing, Joy Division, took their name from the phrase used by the Nazis to refer to Jewish women incarcerated in concentration camps who were regularly raped. A Joy Division EP, ‘An Ideal For Living', used as its front cover a photo of a Nazi stormtrooper, a Jewish boy and a member of the Hitler Youth. When their lead singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide in May 1980, the band reformed under the name of New Order, the term used by the Nazis to describe their vision of the future.

Tony Wilson once said that his whole philosophy was contained in a Sid Vicious quote. ‘I've met the man in the street,' the now-deceased Sex Pistols bassist had said, ‘and he's a cunt.' Wilson liked that.

Yet in Manchester, the label was revered by many, especially students, the angst-ridden, middle-class teenagers who heavily related to Joy Division's Gothic music and elliptical lyrics. Plus, Joy Division weren't signed to a big company.

Punk had initiated a move away from major record companies. CBS, EMI and co. were all seen as the enemy, money-grabbing Conservatives who were out to stifle all innovation, all rebellion.