IN THE CASE OF TOP NOTCH MUSIC JOURNALIST AND BROADCASTER MARK ELLEN – A MAN WE MIGHT CHEERFULLY TERM ‘CHEERY MARK ELLEN’ – CHANCES TO ENCOUNTER THE GREAT AND THE GOOD (AND OFTEN THE NOT QUITE AS GREAT AND THE NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD) HAVE LED TO A STAGGERING VARIETY OF HIGHLY UNLIKELY SCENARIOS UNFOLDING… A WELSH HILLSIDE AND A TOTALLY OUT OF HIS GOURD JIMMY PAGE, LINES OF VOLCANIC SPEED IN A CLUB WITH A YOUNG JULIAN COPE, MILES HIGH ON A JUMBO JET WITH RIHANNA AND, RECENTLY, LADY GAGA’S DRESSING ROOM WHERE THERE WAS NO MEAT DRESS – OR ANY DRESS – TO PROTECT HER MODESTY…

Ellen was the founding Editor of heavyweight UK publications Q and THE WORD, Launch Editor for MOJO, Relaunch Editor for SELECT and Features Editor of SMASH HITS in its heyday. He’s also written for the NME, RECORD MIRROR and TIME OUT. He has stood in for John Peel on Radio 1, was co-presenter of BBC TV’s WHISTLE TEST and of the channel’s 16-hour rolling coverage of the Wembley leg of 1985 charity extravaganza LIVE AID. A paperback edition of Ellen’s rollicking good memoir ROCK STARS STOLE MY LIFE (first published in Autumn 2014) is out this coming week. It’s one of the warmest music books you will likely ever read, with Ellen casting his good natured – and generally forgiving – eye back across five decades of loving pop music and working within it. In this exclusive, cheerfully extended (and spread over two parts) interview with The Mouth Magazine we talk about the book, and we look back at as much of Mark Ellen’s career in writing and broadcasting as we can possibly manage in a phone call which lasts the length of four sides of a double vinyl album… Needle to the groove. Pump up the voluminous…

I THINK YOUR BOOK IS ONE OF THE FUNNIEST I’VE READ FOR A LONG TIME – AND THAT’S AS MUCH TO DO WITH YOUR TAKE ON THINGS AS THE THINGS THEMSELVES. FOR ANYONE WITH AN INTEREST IN MUSIC THERE ARE SO MANY ANECDOTES AND OBSERVATIONS AND, REALLY, THIS IDEA THAT YOU’VE MOVED AWAY FROM BEING A FAN OF MUSIC AND ADMIRER OF ROCK STARS TO BEING A FAN OF MUSIC AND INCREASINGLY AWARE THAT – WITH PERHAPS NO EXCEPTION – ROCK STARS HAVE FEET OF CLAY…
Ha ha, this is a great question! Go on…

… I REMEMBER SOMETHING JOHN PEEL WROTE – OR, ACTUALLY, PERHAPS HIS WIDOW SHEILA WROTE IT AFTER HE’D DIED – ABOUT AN EXPERIENCE OF THAT, TO DO WITH MARC BOLAN. JOHN HAD BEFRIENDED HIM – IDOLISED HIM REALLY – IN THE DAYS BEFORE FAME CALLED FOR T-REX. AND WHEN IT DID CALL HE DROPPED PEEL, PERHAPS FROM AN ONLY MODEST HEIGHT, BUT PEEL WAS DEEPLY UPSET BY IT – AND PROBABLY BY BEING GIVEN THIS RATHER RUDE AWAKENING, THE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE ALL OF BOLAN’S… LET’S SAY “FOIBLES”...
Yes. John told me that story himself in great detail and, of course, very entertainingly. And yet, I might just add, John was still very slightly crushed by it, many years later. Part of his younger self was mortified that he’d been dumped.

I’VE HAD EXPERIENCE OF THAT FEET OF CLAY THING MYSELF, AND OF COURSE YOU WILL HAVE DONE TOO. IT’S A LITTLE BIT… I’M NOT SURE ‘HEARTBREAKING’ IS QUITE THE RIGHT WORD..? BUT WHEN YOU FALL DEEPLY IN LOVE WITH THE MUSIC YOU LOVE, YOU CAN’T HELP BUT FALL IN LOVE WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT, TOO. YOU SORT OF JUST EXPECT YOUR FAVOURITE ROCK STARS TO BE SUPERHUMAN. YOU EXPECT THEM TO BE INVINCIBLE SOMEHOW… NOT ARSEHOLES…
Yes you do, you really do. The interesting thing from my point of view – and, in fact, that’s the main mechanic of the book for the first third – is that I’m just seeing these people as people whose records I’ve bought and whose tickets I’ve bought and concerts I’ve been to… as sort of ‘distant figures in the dry ice’, I suppose, and I can’t help but idolise them. And then by the virtue of the profession I chose I’ve got to meet these people and see things from a completely different angle, ha ha. And it’s nice, in the book, that I kind of grow up through a lot of it and I realise that you can’t expect people to be everything you wanted them to be. This is a big subject, really…

IT REALLY IS! BUT THERE CAN BE A REVERSE OF THAT DISAPPOINTMENT TOO THOUGH, CAN’T THERE? I INTERVIEWED JOHN COOPER CLARKE ONCE. I WAS BOOKED IN FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES OR SOMETHING, BACKSTAGE. BUT WE ENDED UP BACK AT HIS HOTEL FOR HOURS, AND HE POURED ME INTO A TAXI AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING AFTER GIVING ME THIS TRULY AMAZING INTERVIEW. HE GAVE ME THIS HUG AND SHOVED THE FARE INTO THE TAXI DRIVER’S HAND AND TOTTERED OFF ON HIS CUBAN HEELS TOWARDS THE HOTEL LIFT. I THOUGHT THAT HE’D BE QUITE HARD GOING BUT HE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER COMPANY. HE WAS AN ABSOLUTE SWEETHEART…
Oh, that is tremendous. That’s lovely… John Cooper Clarke! With those amazing gold teeth glinting in the moonlight, probably… Wonderful, yeah… They are lovely, those moments.

WHATEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENS – WHICHEVER WAY IT GOES – IT’S ALWAYS INCREDIBLY INTERESTING TO MEET THE PERSON BEHIND THE PUBLIC IMAGE…
Yeah, it is. I think that too. You do have to accept that a lot of these people have to inhabit some sort of character to be able to perform. And to compose, actually. Tom Waits is a really good example, isn’t he? A lot of people might think of Tom Waits as a guy who lives in some sort of weird basement in Sacramento, banging a radiator with an ass’s jawbone and sort of grunting and making incredibly strange music. And actually he’s not really like that. That’s just someone he’s invented in order to go out and perform. In some ways these people have made things difficult for themselves, by taking on these characters and imposing a certain level of expectation for people like you and me. Ha ha…

SO IN TERMS OF THE BOOK, WHAT WAS WRITING ABOUT IT LIKE – THAT GAP BETWEEN FANTASY AND REALITY?
It was actually sobering. There had been so much investment in people that you meet later on… And I mean that in every sense; emotional investment, time, money… And then you meet them and you don’t know which way it’s going to go. I wrote, in the book, about meeting Rod Stewart at one point – and I think people had really rather hoped that I was going to be really cruel about him, and say what an absolute arsehole the guy is. But I was just… utterly enamoured of him. I thought he was wonderful. He was just so funny and so charismatic. And so… honest, really…

THAT’S THE THING – IF THEY’RE HONEST, NOT PLAYING ABOUT, YOU CAN END UP REALLY LIKING SOMEONE WHOSE MUSIC YOU MIGHT NOT REALLY HAVE THAT MUCH TIME FOR…
The biggest problem is that most musicians, a very large percentage, are very very articulate when they’re on the stage but off the stage they are not necessarily the most charismatic of people. Being on stage happens to be the best way for them to express themselves. And so you kind of expect them to be a hundred percent fabulous and ‘on’ all the time, when you meet them by the luggage carousel at five o’clock in the morning – and they aren’t, always. Ha ha. But that’s such a naive thing to think – because why should you think that they’ll be like that? Why should you expect people to be a hundred percent fabulous? Some are ghastly. Van Morrison… I haven’t yet met anyone who says this is fundamentally untrue, and it seems so unkind to say it, but – as I wrote in the book – there are two types of people in the world. Those who love Van Morrison and those who’ve met him. Ha ha ha ha…

I WAS ONCE SENT ALONG TO A VAN MORRISON SHOW TO GET PHOTOS AND THERE WAS A POST-IT NOTE STUCK TO THE ENVELOPE WHICH I WAS HANDED WITH MY PASS IN IT. IT SAID “THE FIRST TWO MINUTES ONLY… NO FURTHER FORWARD THAN PARALLEL WITH ROW K.. MID-TO-WIDE SHOTS FROM THE LEFT HAND SIDE ONLY… AND UNDER ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANCES MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH VAN MORRISON”…
Ha ha, I wish I’d known that. I may have nicked that for my book… Well, there’s this other device the PRs often use, as you will well know. It’s to make everything seem completely ghastly so that when you do finally get the paltry crumbs of the great feast you’d originally ordered, you’re actually pathetically grateful… You feel sometimes that these people are surrounded by great big guys whose job it is to be ogres, to be horrible, and then when you do meet the artist they can just freewheel around in this big cotton-wool ball of fluffy gorgeousness and be lovely and friendly and charming. When you meet Van Morrison it’s not like that. He isn’t charismatic at all. He’s the grumpiest, grouchiest, most cantankerous and ungrateful old… git. I did a thing in Belfast and people started Tweeting in the afternoon saying that Van Morrison was going to turn up. I have to say that gave me a heart attack. I really thought maybe he would turn up! I kept looking out into the audience but there were these very strong lights and I could only see silhouettes. I really had to keep my eyes open in case there appeared this enormous figure glowering somewhere in the dark. Possibly in some sort of cape. And wearing a strange hat, ha ha…

TO TURN THAT ON ITS HEAD SLIGHTLY, IS THERE ANYONE FOR YOU WHO IS BEYOND THAT NOTION OF HAVING FEET OF CLAY? I DON’T IMAGINE THAT THERE CAN BE… CAN THERE?
Well, I didn’t write much in the book about The Beatles, because I didn’t know how much original stuff I had to say about them. I’ve interviewed McCartney nine times, Ringo Starr once, in Monaco, and George Harrison three times. I really adored The Beatles – and I thought George Harrison was just… absolutely fantastic. It’s not that funny, is it, if you really like someone? It’s much funnier if you can come away and it’s… there’s a sequence in the book about Jimmy Page on a Welsh hillside that has quite a lot of traction in that regard… but with George Harrison the thing was that there’s something which actually only really applies to those people who have achieved a certain amount of success. The book is not unsympathetic, by the way – even with someone like Bono. People do get pissed off with him, but I say “Imagine what it’s actually like being Bono, and try and put yourself in this ridiculous position that some of these people have created for themselves”… And so the thing about George Harrison was that he was so successful, everything he’d wanted to achieve in the world he’d achieved. Actually, he’d pretty much achieved all of it by the time he was eighteen. I mean – eighteen!

… IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE THAT…
I know! It is, isn’t it? Everything after that was a bonus. He left that group – they split up – when he was just twenty-seven, I think. It’s astonishing, really. I felt that he was absolutely and utterly happy in his own skin. He had an extraordinary variety of friends. He was friends with Formula 1 racing drivers, he was friendly with the guys at his local pub in Henley where they used to have ukulele nights and he’d sit in there on Tuesdays playing old tunes, he was friends with the Monty Python, he was friends with the Hare Krishna… He was friends with an amazing bunch of people who, if you put them together, wouldn’t necessarily get on, which I think is a real testament to what an interesting and diverse and fabulously exotic character he was…

… EXOTIC IS A GREAT WORD.
George Martin told me a great story about George Harrison. George Martin had been in hospital having an operation on his ears and George Harrison went to visit him. George Martin’s lying in bed and he can hear this motor car drawing up in the drive of his house near Bath, and he can George getting out and crunching along the gravel. And he arrives in his room and gives him a little figure of a wonderful Indian god, a bodhisattva or somebody.  A little tiny eight-armed figure that George Martin could put by his bed and he said [adopts pitch-perfect George Harrison impression] “This is something special to bring you healing vibes to help with the old lug-‘oles getting better”. And outside the window George Martin could see this three hundred thousand pounds bright scarlet gull-wing Lamborghini car, you know? Most people – in the media particularly – find it very hard not to compartmentalise people. So you’re either a Jeremy Clarkson car-loving type… or you’re some kind of spiritual being. You can’t possibly be both. And yet George Harrison was both. He really did believe in his religions and he also really didn’t mind driving around in a car which did just the two miles to the gallon. He was utterly unselfconscious. He didn’t care what anybody thought of him, actually….

… BEEN THERE AND DONE IT IN HIS YOUTH SO ABSOLUTELY NOT BOTHERED ABOUT SELF IMAGE?
Yeah, I think so. I think the point I’m trying to make is that I really liked him because a lot of musicians are incredibly obsessed with self-image. And he wasn’t. I do have some sympathy with that, though. They get up in the morning and they might think “I need to go out to the corner shop to get a pint of milk – and what if I’m recognised..? I’d better put some shades on…” or whatever, you know? I get it – they feel they have to ‘be’ Lou Reed or whoever they’re meant to be… Imagine having been Lou Reed? Everywhere you went people going “Jesus Christ! It’s Lou Reed! The Prince of Darkness! The old Ice Block himself” – but actually he might have felt he had to be that even though he may not have really been like it… So, anyway, ha ha. George Harrison. I thought George was absolutely bloody fan-tastic. And also David Bowie, too…

… BOWIE ALWAYS COMES ACROSS PARTICULARLY WELL IN INTERVIEWS, I THINK – CERTAINLY IN LATER YEARS… HE COMES ACROSS AS THIS VERY ‘ON IT’ LONDON FELLA – VERY FRIENDLY, QUITE KIND, GENEROUS, CHARMING AND FUNNY. NOT AT ALL AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT…
Yeah, he does and he is. I’ve only interviewed him once, unfortunately. David Bowie is fantastic – really really funny and really optimistic. So bright and fascinating, really. As you rightly note, very unlike what you might think he’s going to be. Perhaps he can afford to be that way because he’s achieved everything he wanted to achieve? Often the really difficult people are the people who maybe only had a tiny little bit of success in, I don’t know, the punk years or maybe they had a head of steam in the SMASH HITS era and so they’ve been left in this predicament where they’ve got to kind of resuscitate that. They’re the ones who are a bit sort of pissed off, actually: “Jesus. Why do I have to work when Gary bloody Kemp’s sitting around in a mansion?” – well that’s because Gary bloody Kemp wrote all the songs, mate. You just played the drums in, I don’t know, The Adverts, ha ha…

YOU MENTIONED GARY KEMP. SPANDAU BALLET FEATURED ON THE COVER OF SMASH HITS, AS DID MANY OTHER NOTABLES – DURAN DURAN, JULIAN COPE, MORRISSEY, WHOEVER – ALL OF WHOM, IN THEIR OWN WAYS, HAVE GONE ON TO BE REGARDED AS HEAVYWEIGHTS…
Absolutely, yeah.

… WERE THERE PEOPLE FROM THAT ERA WHO SURPRISE YOU BY THE FACT THAT THEY ARE STILL GOING OR WHO ARE, TO ONE DEGREE OR ANOTHER, STILL QUITE SUCCESSFUL?
Errrrrm, I don’t think I’m ever surprised that people are still going. I think we figured out a long time ago that nobody ever actually splits up, really. The Beatles would have got back together, had they all still been alive – because the pressure on you to do so becomes irresistable. It’s impossible, in the end, to say “no”. The Smiths will get back together one day…

… THEY WON’T…
Oh they will, they will. You wait and see. And the same goes for The Jam. They all will. It’s a question of time. It’s like Cream. Eric Clapton got back together with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker and, believe me, there was a lot of bad blood there… So I think it was probably “I have two choices here. I can either go to my grave never knowing what it’d be like to re-form Cream and do all those lovely songs again – and make a lot of money, actually – or I can choose not to, and never know”. I think eventually people just have to give in, you know? Clapton didn’t need to do it, but in the end you can’t resist… Anyway, before SMASH HITS I’d been at the NME during punk rock, or the end of punk rock, and at the time I didn’t think any of those punk rock stars, really, were going to last the distance. I think I was largely right. Punk rock was just a huge press thing and it wasn’t quite the extraordinary cultural event in the real world that people claim it was. Whereas the ’80s was the reverse of that in many ways. Everyone was saying “This is synthetic. This is fake. This is manufactured. This is a load of idiots who probably can’t even play their instruments, dressed up in preposterous clothes”. And, actually, that decade produced some incredibly durable music. Neil Tennant and I were about 26 or 27 or something when we were at SMASH HITS, so clearly we were too old for some of the records. They weren’t aimed at us. Certain things like Adam And The Ants were clearly aimed at twelve year olds or whatever, and you could still admire what was involved… but some of the records were terrific. We really liked the ABC record, we really liked the Frankie Goes To Hollywood record. The Human League. There were just so many good songs.

I WAS GOING TO SAY ABC’S LEXICON OF LOVE AND DURAN DURAN’S RIO WERE PROBABLY THE BEST ‘MAINSTREAM’ RECORDS FROM THE VERY EARLY ’80S BUT I THINK THEY’RE PROBABLY TWO OF THE BEST RECORDS OF ANY ERA OR, IF YOU LIKE, OF ALL TIME… BOTH OF THEM STILL SOUND ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC…
Yeah! They do. And I think people are finally coming round to changing their view about them, which is down to the records but also partly because of the media itself. It’s like when The Beatles revived is when people of my age, who’d grown up loving The Beatles, suddenly find themselves editing Q magazine or whatever, and wanting to put them on the cover all the time. Next thing you know it’s moved on a bit and people are going “Neil Young is brilliant! David Bowie is brilliant!”… and then it’s the punk rock stuff and now it’s the ’80s. I mean, look at Steve Strange’s funeral recently. If that had happened ten years ago I don’t know how much coverage it would have got – but not this amount, you know? So these things happen and people of a certain age, and people in the media, think “This is my life that someone’s holding a mirror up to”… All the people in the media in their forties or fifties grew up with those records.

THAT WAS EXACTLY HOW DOCTOR WHO CAME BACK, ISN’T IT? THE GENERATION WHO’D GROWN UP WITH IT WENT TO WORK IN TV AND…
… Yeah, completely. It just comes in cycles, you know?  So what’s the next cycle? I don’t know. Perhaps The Wedding Present are going to save the world? In fact it’s already started happening hasn’t it – the ’90s thing? All of a sudden everyone’s going “Do you know what? Supergrass – bloody fantastic”. Well, Supergrass were bloody fantastic, actually… And Miles Hunt’s probably gone back out on the road, has he?

… HA HA… WE’RE PUTTING A GIG ON IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS…
You are indeed. Well there you go. Point proven! THE SIZE OF A COW – excellent! Ha ha…

I REALLY LOVED THE SECTION IN YOUR BOOK ABOUT YOU GOING UP TO LIVERPOOL TO INTERVIEW THE TEARDROP EXPLODES…
The drugs bit?

YEAH… JULIAN COPE IS SUCH A FORMIDABLE CHARACTER – WITH A RAVENOUS APPETITE FOR WHATEVER HE TURNS HIS HAND TO – DRUGS OR INFORMATION, WHATEVER… I DON’T IMAGINE THAT YOU’RE TOO SURPRISED HE’S GONE ON TO WRITE SO MUCH, AND SO VERY WELL. THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS AND THE -SAMPLER BOOKS ARE FANTASTIC BUT HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY IS EXCEPTIONAL…
That autobiography is phenomenal. Can you remember the scene in it where The Teardrop Explodes take acid when they’re on TOP OF THE POPS? He’s standing on the piano and feels like his feet are melting into tar or something… It’s quite a long time since I’ve read it but I remember thinking this is a great story beautifully expressed  – the ideal thing, really. I wasn’t surprised at all about that. I went to see The Teardrop Explodes when they were playing at… erm… the Music Machine in London, I think. What was out? LAUGHING GAS would it be? Or BOUNCING BABIES? They were third on the bill, and this was probably their very first London concert – and I became absolutely besotted with them. I thought they were amazing. And then they put out REWARD – oh my God! The opening line was “Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news” and people ask me this all the time, about great opening lines to songs, but I still honestly think that is one of the greatest opening lines to a song I have ever heard in my life, or will ever hear. You simply cannot wait to find out what’s happened! You could make movies out of some of Julian Cope’s songs, I think. There’s so much in them. He was such an original thinker.

HE’S SUCH A BRIGHT BLOKE, ISN’T HE? I LOVE HIS RECORDS BUT HIS WRITING IS ASTONISHING…
Unfortunately I think the whole ‘acid casualty’ element has been a bit of a burden, really. It’s something he created himself, obviously, but I think it’s rather confined what he’s capable of doing or what people are capable are thinking of him. I’m not sure a lot of people take him seriously. I think people have this impression that Julian Cope just wanders around the house all the time thinking he’s a cauliflower… Munching tabs at two-hourly intervals… A big mound of pills for breakfast… Sitting naked and cross-legged in a kind of geodesic dome at the bottom of his garden all day. It’s not really true – it couldn’t be, when you think of the kind of output he has. He works very hard, and writing books is such a laborious pursuit – especially writing good ones. He works dilligently at what he does. Even if you read about him – in all of the mainstream publications – it’s still “acid fried drug casualty turns weirdo attention to prehistoric world”. So that’s a disservice, and such a hindrance, really. I think he should be taken far more seriously. He’s so knowledgeable. An amazing guy. I love him. I think I actually wrote the first thing about The Teardrop Explodes in the NME. The paper wouldn’t send a photographer so I took my own camera. I took them to London Zoo, ha ha, and took all the pictures myself. I’ve still got them somewhere, they were great. I’ll have to dig them out.

THIS IS THE IMPRESSION I GOT ABOUT SMASH HITS – AND I THINK IT MIGHT POSSIBLY BE APPLICABLE TO THE WORD AT SOME LEVEL, TOO… THE INTENTION WAS TO TAKE THE PISS A LITTLE BIT… TO HAVE SOME FUN AT THE ARTISTS’ EXPENSE, AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE AND AT THE READERS’ EXPENSE. BUT IT WAS DONE IN SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WAY – EVERYONE WAS IN ON IT, EVERYONE WAS INVITED TO BE IN ON THE JOKE…
Yeah, but it was not remotely unkind. I’d worked at the NME and I thought the NME was really vicious and really cruel, actually. It just wasn’t in my nature to be like that, I’m not that kind of person. I found working at the NME quite hard, actually, because I just didn’t have the required cynicism. I was slightly sarcastic but I wasn’t cynical. I think everyone else at the NME really enjoyed laying into yesterday’s news. Obviously we were keen to promote tomorrow’s news – but having promoted them, for me there was a little too much pleasure in pulling the rug out from under their feet. It was a harsh environment, really. So with SMASH HITS the idea was that you can’t take pop music (and to an extent rock music) a hundred percent seriously all the time – because half of the fun of pop music is that it can be colourful, it can be over the top, it can be shallow. And it’s populated with very exotic and charismatic and often rather peculiar characters. It’s good to encourage them to be like that – because that’s what you want them to be – so that’s what we encouraged them to be. Also pop is full of preposterous pretension a lot of the time. It’s very easy to laugh at pretension but often pretension is just people trying to do something different, willing to go out on a limb. They might make themselves look ludicrous but they might succeed, you know? I always used to think Queen were pretentious. A lot of people really liked what they did, and good luck to them, ha ha… So part of the SMASH HITS thing was that we were trying to suggest the landscape was filled with these kind of cartoon characters, really. And all of the musicians really liked it. Well, Morrissey didn’t really like it. He didn’t particularly like the way we wrote about him, and he felt he was above SMASH HITS.

THAT’S INTERESTING, REALLY – BECAUSE MORRISSEY WAS IN SMASH HITS OFTEN ENOUGH, IF I REMEMBER RIGHTLY…
I suppose he just thought we weren’t really too capable of fathoming the vast depths of his fabulous lyrics. Which we probably weren’t, for SMASH HITS! We presented him as this superbly bequiffed, blouse-wearing, hearing-aid-wearing, gladioli-whirling English eccentric. Which he was! But our job was quite simply to get people interested in him. When they were old enough they could figure those other things out for themselves…

I’M GOING TO ASK YOU ABOUT WHISTLE TEST IN A BIT – BUT TO GET THERE, AND IT SEEMS RATHER NEAT NOW, I DID ACTUALLY HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT MORRISSEY… YOU INTERVIEWED HIM ON WHISTLE TEST, AROUND THE TIME OF THE MAKING OF THE MEAT IS MURDER ALBUM…
Yeah! That’s right, I did. And MEAT IS MURDER was fantastic.

THERE’S A SORT OF DEVILISH GLINT IN HIS EYES AND THIS ENORMOUSLY AMUSED GLINT IN YOURS. THE SUBTEXT OF THAT FOOTAGE SEEMS TO BE THAT YOU’RE BOTH ABSOLUTELY AWARE THIS IS ALL A BIT OF A DANCE, OF SORTS…
Yeah. I can‘t remember what was actually said in the interview – but I do remember doing the interview, very clearly actually. I think I interviewed him and Johnny was there too? It was in a recording studio somewhere? 

THIS MIGHT TOUCH ON SOMETHING WE SPOKE ABOUT EARLIER; THE GAP BETWEEN THE FANTASY AND REALITY. BUT I WONDERED WHETHER YOU’D ENCOUNTERED MORRISSEY SINCE THAT WHISTLE TEST PIECE – AND WHETHER THE WAY IN WHICH HE’S COMPLETELY CONSTRUCTED, REFINED AND PERFECTED THE PERSONA SINCE THEN MEANS HE’S NOW ABSOLUTELY IMPENETRABLE?
I’ve only actually met him three or four times since that interview – and I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed him since. I absolutely adore Morrissey, let me tell you. I’m one of those people who finds it almost impossible to be at all critical of him because I just love what he does. But if I did have just the one criticism of Morrissey, it’s that he’s created this world which is so restricting it must be impossible for him to manoeuvre outside the very tight contours of what he’s created… I read his book, I didn’t finish it. Did you read it? Do you like The Smiths?

I DID READ IT, YEAH – AND I DO LIKE THE SMITHS…
Good, yeah. Well, I read some of his memoir and some of it fantastic. But the bit where The Smiths start is awful. It’s “And then we formed a group. And then we wrote some songs” – and then within seconds he goes into this five page go at Geoff Travis. Kind of an open letter to Geoff Travis and Rough Trade and all of the people he got into legal tangles with. It’s fantastically uninteresting. You like The Smiths and, like me, what you probably wanted was for him to shed some light on the recording of, I don’t know, THIS CHARMING MAN or THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT… You just want to be there in that recording studio while all this is happening so you can think “Oh my God, this is fabulous”, don’t you? How amazing would reading about that have been?

ROCK STARS STOLE MY LIFE is published by Hodder. Order the paperback edition here
Enter a competition to win one of five lots of music memorabilia from Mark’s personal collection, at his website here
Mark Ellen will be appearing at Waterstones, Nottingham, on 26th March. Details here