Ten things you should always do when you form a group
‘Turned out his cure for jetlag was the biggest line of coke I’d ever seen.’
‘One genius and three Manchester United supporters’
‘This is a rock band, let’s stick with the guitars and drums’
Timeline One: April 1980–December 1980
Ten things you should never do when you form a group
‘Anything to keep Rob happy . . .’
‘Feels like I’ve been here before’
Timeline Two: January–December 1981
‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’
‘The noise attracted scumbags like a magnet’
‘But then twatto returned . . .’
‘Marooned in the middle of puke’
‘She went off like a firework’
Power, Corruption and Lies Track by Track
Timeline Three: January–December 1982
‘Arthur was fucking bonkers . . . I loved him.’
‘Go and have a holiday, Judas’
Timeline Four: January–December 1983
‘Love is the air that supports the eagle . . .’
‘One look at the books was all it took’
‘We’d made something very special’
‘He went absolutely berserk when he saw the video’
Timeline Five: January–December 1984
Top Ten Best People I Never Got to Play With, Sadly
Take us back to Hong Kong, Pedro’
‘It was the highest room-service bill in the history of the hotel’
‘I’ll be writing about that in me memoirs’
‘Go on, go on holiday, you twat’
Timeline Six: January–December 1985
‘The trouble with you is . . .’
‘We weren’t really a Smash Hits kind of group’
Timeline Seven: January–December 1986
Ten Best People I Did Get to Play With
‘Make-up wearing, miming bunch of flouncing jessies’
‘I want to work with other people’
Timeline Eight January–December 1987
‘Get it out of your system, darling’
Timeline Nine: February–December 1988
‘It’s a New Order gig, this, not a Revenge gig’
‘This was the tour that broke us’
‘Turns out the chiropodist was a New Order fan’
‘Off my face – every day – repeat till fade’
Timeline Ten: January–December 1989
‘Gascoigne, will you fuck off!’
‘Shit concept, shit music, shit everything else’
‘We are having to remove you for your own safety’
The Stone Roses deserve a chapter to themselves, so here we go
Timeline Eleven: January–December 1990
Ten Most Interesting Medical Problems I Got Working in a Band
‘In among all this madness . . .’
Timeline Twelve: January–December 1991
‘There was trouble brewing . . .’
Timeline Thirteen: January–December 1992
Timeline Fourteen: January–December 1993
‘We needed binoculars to see Noel Edmonds’
‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure’
‘I wish I could thank that cleaner’
Timeline Fifteen: July 1994–November 2000
Timeline Sixteen: April–December 2001
‘Grandmaster Flash being marched out by a copper with a machine gun’
‘The idea was that I’d hide in the bushes’
‘Something had got corrupted along the way’