WATCH Peter Perrett (Only Ones) Junkies of Today 1999

 
'Junkies today are disgusting'

The Only Ones Peter Perrett: Junkies of Today: Radio Show Pri. video '99 Uploaded by mrjyn
Members
Alan Mair John Perry Mike Kellie Peter Perrett

Is this the most drug-addled band in history? As 1970s heresies the Only Ones reform, Petrify, unravel a tale of smuggling, drive-by shootings - and great music

In the back room of his nondescript terraced house in south London, Peter Perrett squints at a computer monitor. He gestures helplessly to his son, Peter Jr, a former member of Babyshambles and these days bassist in a band called Love Minus Zero alongside his brother, Jamie. "I don't have a clue how to work this," protests his father, weakly. His speaking voice sounds surprisingly like the voice you hear singing on records by his former band the Only Ones. A nasal south London drawl, it was perfect for doing petulance or spite or flippant indifference, which was just as well, given the Only Ones' penchant for songs called things like Why Don't You Kill Yourself? and No Peace for the Wicked. "I always flirt with death, I'll get killed but I don't care about it," sneered Perrett, on their most famous track, Another Girl Another Planet, heralded by website All Music Guide as "arguably the greatest rock single ever recorded", and recently adopted by Deafen to advertise its pay-as-you-talk packages, an unlikely fate for a song assumed to be about heroin.

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Today, his voice isn't doing petulance or flippant indifference, but bewildered middle-aged dad. Peter Jr comes to the rescue, and the screen bursts into life, showing grainy super-8 footage of the Only Ones in their prime, playing live in America in 1980. A startling shock of rock-star hair aside, it is almost impossible to equate the figure onscreen with the figure in the room this afternoon.

The guy strutting across the stage in Minneapolis is bare-chested and implausibly handsome. The guy peering at the computer in Garwood looks like he's been painted by Edvard Munch. For Perrett, who turns 55 on Sunday, the intervening 27 years have been largely consumed by addiction, first to heroin, then to crack, and while it seems to have had no effect on his conversation - he's funny, quick-witted and disarmingly frank - he is, by his own admission, "in a bad way, physically".

"When they first broached the subject of an Only Ones reunion, I said even if I wanted to do it, it's a physical impossibility," he sighs. "I'd done a couple of appearances with the kids and I had to go off after every two songs to get some oxygen in my lungs."

And yet the Only Ones reunion is happening, prompted, says bassist Alan Mair, by a wave of interest in the band. The Only Ones were never exactly overburdened by commercial success - their biggest album, 1980's Baby's Got a Gun, scraped to number 37 - but their influence has far outstripped their meagre record sales. In recent years, their songs have been covered by everyone from Blink 182 to Belle and Sebastian and the Libertines, while Another Girl, Another Planet has inspired a US film. Another factor, Perrett insists, are the "various confrontations with mortality": drummer Mike Kellie has suffered a serious illness, while Perrett's wife, Zena, has an incurable lung disease.

Despite Perrett's reservations, rehearsals have apparently been going swimmingly. "It sounds remarkable," says Mair, and the MP3s posted on guitarist John Perry's Misplaced site seem to bear him out. The quartet sound pretty much as they did at their peak: a mass of wiry, intricate guitar lines and vocals oozing hauteur. "I'm surprised," chuckles Perrett, "because I can actually stand up at the end of a song now."

Perrett is not alone in being surprised by the Only Ones' reunion. Even a music press positively spoilt for legendary bands reforming in the last few years has been caught off guard by the news the band are back, first to play the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, then to embark on a tour.

"This is an improbable reunion," gasped one heritage rock magazine, describing the band's return as "one of the most unlikely events in recent rock history". The shock is partly fuelled by the level of intra-band acrimony that accompanied their demise in 1981 ("you've probably read a lot of 'over my dead body' quotes," muses Mair), but mostly to do with Perrett's reputation as one of rock's great recluses. After the band split, he vanished from public view. Sequestered in a crumbling gothic house in Forest Hill that he fortified against police raids, Perrett took and dealt heroin.

At one stage, a friend, horrified to discover the state the singer was in, urged him to get his act together. This wouldn't be surprising were it not for the fact that the friend was the late New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders, perhaps rock's most infamous and unrepentant junkie. "I fully intended to carry on with music, but I was determined not to do anything until I conquered my drug habit," he says. "Looking back on it now, that was probably a mistake, because it was like a chicken and egg situation. I didn't listen to music or have anything to do with music. In my head I was going to beat the drug problem. But if you don't beat the drug problem, you're just denying yourself something that was a major part of your life. Playing music would probably help you beat it."

Periodic attempts to rouse him from his torpor failed. In the early 90s, he briefly cleaned up and formed a band called The One, but that foundered after a solitary album: "I began dabbling in crack again. Smack was the thing I was scared of. I didn't realise crack was a million times worse than smack." More recently, there was a collaboration with Pete Dirty that seems to have ended badly. Mention of his name sets Perrett off on a heartfelt rant about declining standards of morality among drug addicts. "Junkies nowadays are really disgusting," he huffs, genuinely outraged. "In my day, being a drug dealer was a respectable firkin' profession. Nowadays, it's something you really feel ashamed to be associated with, the way most junkies behave."

Drugs are a topic almost impossible to avoid when talking about the Only Ones. Plenty of rock bands have taken drugs, but the Only Ones' story is utterly bound up with them. Initially, the band were partly funded by Perrett's dealing: he was first spurred to commit their music to tape when he thought he was going to prison after his hash-selling operation was busted in 1976. Their songs came replete with narcotic references. One book on the band claims John Perry's guitar sound was altered dramatically by his decision to hollow out the instrument to smuggle drugs through customs while on tour. And drugs eventually brought about their demise, during a disastrous US tour during which, Perrett says, "lots of stupid things happened".

For once, his frankness slips into charming understatement: the "stupid things" involved Perrett contracting hepatitis, getting caught up in a drive-by shooting and deliberately running over a car park attendant and fleeing the country shortly before a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

"Because I loved the music so much, I put up with the drugs for a long time," says Mair, who remained the solitary rock of sobriety in the band. "But towards the end of that tour, it became evident that everybody was taking the same drugs except me, and I just thought, that's enough. My future was in the hands of people who had lost the plot."

None of the stories of debauchery would count for much had the music the Only Ones made not been remarkable, but it was. Although flawed, their three albums all boast dazzling, transcendent moments. Whether Another Girl Another Planet really is the greatest rock single ever is a matter of some debate, but its failure to become an enormous worldwide hit is an enduring mystery. Mair claims radio stations refused to play it, fearful of the song's drug references, while Perrett blames their former record company. They should, he says, have signed to one of the other labels that courted them after their debut single Lovers of Today, although you do wonder a bit at the logic behind his other favourites: he praises bosses of two other record companies because they were willing to take drugs with him. One over-indulged so much in Perrett's company that he passed out. "That's good," he nods, "because you've seen the head of the company at his most vulnerable. It's not like he's some distant figure in a limousine."

But there's also the sense that the Only Ones never really fitted in with the punk era. For one thing, they were skilled musicians, for another, Perrett aside, the members were older than your average punk, a cardinal sin during punk's scorched earth policy. Perry was balding, Kellie had been the drummer in bluesy PRO rock band Spooky Tooth. Mair was 29 when the band formed in 1976. He had already quit the Beanstalks, a 60s band who inspired Beatlemania-Ash scenes in Scotland on the grounds that he was too old to be in a rock band, and turned his attentions to fashion instead (a pure-fame Freddie Mercury was among the employees on his Kingstown Market stall). He feels the band's peculiarities may account for their music's longevity. "It's sort of timeless, which is why I think the records are still accessible."

Now, there is talk of a new album: it's admittedly tentative, but even a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable. Even Perrett, perhaps understandably not one of life's optimists, seems more sanguine than you might expect about the future. "It's a step into the total unknown for me, but it's fun. If it was just me, it would be stupid to even talk about what's going to happen tomorrow." He looks at Mair and smiles. "But because you're around, I'll get there, won't I?"

John Perry notes on three studio recorded albums

(The Only Ones, Even Serpents Shine and Baby's Got A Gun)

Peter Perrett:

The Only Ones (1976 - 1981) were a rare example of that magical 'thing' that bands sometimes posses, which encapsulates the whole myth and legend of Rock n Roll. Naturally, effortlessly. There appeal owed a lot to the good looking, charismatic leader/singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist, Peter Perrett, who's innate decadence and hedonistic nature propelled him and his band into a grey area of Pop Music that the media find curious, but potentially dangerous, in the Only Ones case, too dangerous. Not for the same kind of reasons that gave The Sex Pistols their notoriety, but reasons implied by the very negative tangible effects of Perrett's 'decadence'. Real drugs. Real addiction - a no go area and big turn off for the corporate success the band would have no doubt enjoyed had the myth been merely a front.

Peter's songs, combined with his beautifully laconic, languid vocal delivery and John Perry's Hendrix meets Mick Ronson guitar lines were like a breath of fresh air to a Punk Rock scene that was fast imploding through its general lack of musicianship and naivete/immaturity. Former Spooky Tooth drummer Mike Kellie and bass player Alan Mair powered the rhythm section.

Although the band were falling apart gradually from day one, The Only Ones somehow balanced themselves precariously enough to record three albums for CBS, with whom they had a very volatile relationship, CBS maintaining Perrett & Co were 'difficult to market'. The first album 'The Only Ones' (CBS 1978) had an insert with a picture of the band backstage and Peter looking like he's injecting himself! Although the albums all charted, the single 'Another Girl Another Planet' is probably Perrett's defining moment reaching number 57 in 1978. A pure adrenaline rush of a pop song.

Lack of any real success following lack of any real success led to The Only Ones inevitable disintegration following a disastrous American tour during which Perrett had (and still has) a warrant put out for his arrest for attempted murder, with a Hertz rental car. The narcotics had really taken hold by now. It wasn't dabbling anymore, neither had it been for a long, long time. It was now the all encompassing chosen lifestyle that leaves little room for anything else.

To his credit, the effort and determination that Peter Perrett put in to sustain that lifestyle was phenomenal. He pursued it privately, away from music for nearly fifteen years. Those lost years have been well documented.

In 1994 Perrett made an unexpected comeback with a new band, new management and a new clutch of songs, nearly all of them instant Perrett classics. His new found fervor for embracing the moment was contagious and in a flurry of activity, that was over all too soon, the The One (as they'd been christened by Peter 'because of a dream about UFO's') had rehearsed, gigged, and recorded extensively, playing at largely sold out venues in the UK, Europe and Japan to an almost religiously enthusiastic audience. The band was getting regular plays of their single 'Baby Don't Talk' (Dwarf, 1994) on both the radio and MTV, celebrities crawled out of the woodwork to honour their debt to the cult of Perrett. An album 'Woke Up Sticky' (Demon 1995) was released to an enthusiastic press, sales were healthy, it was all looking good....when all of a sudden it went wrong again. The band split, they'd had enough of Peter's 'unpredictability' and Peter retreated back into Perrett Towers, where he resides to this very day.

Apart from a new live album (containing most of 'The One's set and recorded at the Mean Fiddler in 1994 - (Dwarf Records) and available from the SB Store, Mr Perrett has no immediate plans and remains incommunicado.

The Only Ones - Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle, 17 April 1980

Only Ones was led by Peter Perrett (singer, guitarist and songwriter) and other member were Mike Kellie (drums, ex- 

Led by the raffish and slightly scuzzy romance-obsessed Peter Perrett, the Only Ones were one of the punk era's most underrated bands. Not as confrontational as the Sex Pistols, as politically indulgent as the Clash, or as stripped-down as the Ramones, the Only Ones played not-so-fast guitar rock that sounded deeply indebted to the New York Dolls and other mid-'70s proto-punks. Singing his intelligently crafted pop songs in a semi-tuneful whine of a voice and backed by a band that effectively combined youthful exuberance with gracefully aging veterans (non-punk drummer Mike Kellie had done time with early-'70s clod-rockers Spooky Tooth, bassist Alan Mair was nearly 40!), Perrett was an astute chronicler of the vagaries of modern, dysfunctional love. Despite a career that lasted from 1978-1981 and one certifiable "hit" song to their credit (the brilliant "Another Girl, Another Planet") the Only Ones became the archetypal contenders that never broke big, despite assurances from fans and critics that they couldn't miss. Although they split up in 1981 after only three records, the Only Ones, due in large part to "Another Girl, Another Planet," became more influential than one would have guessed. Listen to Paul Westerberg and you'll hear more than a little Peter Perrett (in fact, the Replacements covered "Another Girl"); look at the number of Only Ones releases over the past decade (a half-dozen at least) and you soon realize that a significant cult surrounding the band grew after their breakup. Ironically, it was the posthumous release of the sessions for John Peel's BBC show that, more than any of the proper studio releases, accurately displayed the muscle and smarts of this fine band. There have been many rumors surrounding Perrett's life after the Only Ones, many of them involving an alleged heroin addiction. As of this writing, he doesn't seem to be planning a return to rock & roll any time in the near future.