Bad Vibes, Good Book.

A few weeks ago I glimpsed a review of a book by Luke Haines entitled Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In It's Downfall. I have admired Haines' songwriting on and off for many years (although I prefer his Black Box Recorder output to his earlier work that this book covers) and in the early 90's his ascent to glory seemed assured - he was "the new girl in town that everyone wants to fuck". His band, the Auteurs, were feted by the press and nominated for the Mercury Music Prize (an event he describes, with winning disdain, as a "feeble-minded sports day for the music biz") before their burgeoning career was pretty much flattened by the juggernaut of Britpop. Bad Vibes is his recollection of the next few years, but it could easily be a comic novel.

In his introduction Haines is at pains to make it clear that he bears no ill will towards those mentioned, "most of whom I don't think about very often", before going on to insult just about everybody who played a part in the most egotistical and truly stupid 'movement' the British music industry ever foisted on an ever-gullible public - myself included. A born contrarian, Haines has long been a Southern middle-class equivalent of Mark E Smith. He describes himself as a "reformed egomaniac" and attempts to portray himself as an unashamed elitist, but it isn't his forte - he is much more entertaining when reverting to type as a grumpy, acerbic misanthrope. He is unreservedly vile in his treatment of most people he meets (he despises his own cellist and hires a rhythm guitarist on the strength that "The Cellist pompously loathes him") and his obliviousness to his own obnoxiousness is what makes Bad Vibes such an entertaining read.

As funny as he is grumpy it is however not his bilious condemnations of his contemporaries but his recollections of being on tour that really hit the sweet-spot. Often sailing close to Spinal Tap territory it is a mixture of the comic (playing to 17 people in a 950 capacity venue, going on before a comedian whilst supporting The The) and the tragic (lost in a haze of dope smoke and alcohol, he heard voices that goaded him to leap from a 15-foot wall on to concrete. He broke both his legs and spent months in a wheelchair). As becomes apparent as the book goes on, Haines has a rather big self-destruct button that he likes to press quite often.

I did find this book hugely entertaining, but still felt a little frustrated at the end. Haines luxuriates in his role as pantomime villain, but there's an undercurrent of misdirection in what he writes. The real Luke Haines is missing. He gives only the barest details of his personal life or history and, as a consequence, this reads more like a comic novel than a memoir. Despite his contrary ways, it's painfully apparent that Haines's political views are a matter of style, not substance. As Baader Meinhof he wrote an album, an "ogre-funk opus, in praise of 70s terrorism", and in place of a press release, sent out photocopied pages from The Anarchist Cookbook, detailing how to construct a nail bomb. Unsurprisingly, the response was mixed. He was accused of being obscure, of wilfully concealing any moral point. But he's waited until now to confess that there was no point. He simply had the hots for the iconography: Patty Hearst posing with an AK-47, Andreas Baader with his long hair and Ray-Bans. "Terrorist chic," he writes. "You got to love it." Indeed, Haines loved it so much that he had his drummer dress as a member of the Provisional IRA during TV performances. He can also be contradictory - in one section of the book he chastises the members of various northern rock groups chanting "two world wars and one world cup" whilst at a European festival, yet later remembers himself touring Germany and blasting the theme from The Great Escape at every rest stop. It is also true that much of his snideness about other bands seems to be schoolboy score-settling.

I would recommend this as a humorous take on life in a b-list band - nothing more, nothing less. Enjoy it for that and you will not be disappointed.