Getting High

by Paolo Hewitt

  According to her, Thomas had now started drinking.

  ‘I don’t know whether that is when things went wrong,’ muses Peggy, ‘but I could never think the way he does. I’d think, you’re out there doing a job, why not do it, get paid for it and come home? He felt he was getting paid and he should put all that money behind the bar for drink. That’s when I guess his life turned around.’

  As the father further alienated himself from the family, Peggy had to balance her life around work and her children. She was forced now to earn her own money, which she did by finding a job at the McVitie’s biscuit factory.

  ‘That wasn’t a very happy time,’ she recalls, ‘because I had to go to work, I had no other choice. I had to feed them and clothe them. I’d leave for McVitie’s at four o’clock in the afternoon and I’d work from four forty-five to nine-fifteen. I’d bring Liam into the sitting-room and I’d say, “Watch Playschool, Liam.”

  ‘He’d sit there, I’d draw the curtains, turn out the lights and he’d be quite happy, even though he was about six years old.’

  Peggy would then rush to work. Every five minutes she would call Liam and ask if his brothers had returned home from school. She felt so guilty leaving her six-year-old on his own but there was no alternative.

  ‘I’d spend my time on the phone ringing again and again until I knew the others were in. I’d ring every hour and say, ‘Liam, is your dad home yet?” He’d say, “No, he’s not back and I want you to come home, Mam, I don’t like being here on my own.”

  ‘I would say to his father, before he would go out, “Liam will be here on his own, I have to go to work.” He’d say, “I’ll be back, I’ll definitely be back,” but he didn’t come back until the next day. Liam would come down the road to meet me, crying and looking to see where I was because there was nobody in the house. So you can imagine the condition I was in, as well as Liam. And there was the father, out with other women and expecting me to give him money as well.

  ‘I was earning £40 a week but he’d always ask me, many times, if he could lend a fiver. He was going out with other women while I was trying to keep the three of them fed, clothed and put to school.’

  In summertime, Thomas would force Noel and Paul to go raspberry picking with him. Thomas had discovered a patch of the fruit growing wild by an old disused railway line.

  ‘Of course, the jam-making fetish all Irish people have came out in him,’ Noel recalls, ‘so after school in the summer I used to have to say to my mates, “I can’t go out with you, I’ve gotta pick some berries, make some jam.” All my mates would say, “Why don’t you buy some?”

  ‘Hey, that’s not a bad idea. “Oi! Dad! Why don’t you buy some jam like everybody else?” “I’m not fucking paying twelve pence for a jar of jam,” he’d say. I’d think, what, a full twelve pence?

  ‘And we used to have an allotment where they used to grow cabbage and all this shit. And he used to take us to the allotment and we used to fucking hate going there. All our mates would be playing football in the park. They didn’t have that make-your-own-food nonsense. They went to a supermarket to buy it.’

  Noel also remembers helping his father load up the car with his records for his night’s DJing. But, however hard Noel tried to gain his father’s love, it was all a waste of time. Out of his three children, Thomas seems to have hated Noel most. It was he who bore the brunt of his father’s frustrations and anger.

  ‘He didn’t particularly like me for some reason,’ Noel softly muses. ‘I suppose I was a sarcastic little tyke and he could see right through it. I was always answering back, I was always asking, “What are you doing that for?” Or, “What’s all that about?”’

  ‘He gave Noel a bad time,’ Peggy confirms. ‘I don’t know why. Maybe it was because Noel was that much closer to me. Noel got the worst of it but then again, Paul got a fair share of it as well, and Liam. Liam would be the most likely one to retaliate. Liam would stand there and you could see it in his face, Don’t you dare touch my mam.

  ‘But Noel got... he really didn’t treat Noel well and I can’t understand why he would just pick on one. Maybe it was because Noel was that much closer to me.

  ‘I’ll always remember Noel saying to me, “Soon as I can beat him, Mam, I’m going to kill him.” He had beaten him [Noel] that bad one night.

  ‘Maybe it was because Noel had gone out one night and he had said to him, “You be back by nine.” But Noel would be stubborn. Noel would come in at nine-fifteen or maybe he would wait for him to go out and then come in. But if Noel got in five minutes after nine and he was there, then Noel got it.

  ‘And it wasn’t just a slap,’ Peggy reveals, ‘it was proper, you know, they’d get it in the face, in the mouth, he didn’t care. And he’d kick them with his walking-boots and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But I put it down to his conscience.

  ‘He had a guilty conscience for what he was doing outside. He was coming back in and taking it out on us. I used to say to him over the years, “Why don’t you walk out?” I swear if he had walked out, they probably would have had a bit of respect for him. But he didn’t do that, he terrorised them.’

  Peggy did her utmost to protect her sons but she was weak in the face of such a physical onslaught. Worse still, young Liam, who was constantly by her side, witnessed everything, engendering in him a pain he carries to this day.

  ‘Wherever I went Liam went, so Liam saw more of his father hitting me. Noel would come in and say, “What happened to you, Mam? Where did you get that black eye?” “Oh, never mind that,” I’d say, “I walked into the door.” I’d cover up, you see. But of course, Noel knew and so did Paul. They’d seen it all before.’

  It’s impossible to fully calculate the effect upon Noel of his father’s violence. Would he have pursued his career if things had been different? Did his father’s lack of love mould him into the quality songwriter he is today? Or what about the reverse?

  Would unconditional love alone have propelled him into musicianship? Peggy certainly provided that.

  One thing is for sure. Noel Gallagher’s happy-go-lucky side was slowly being eroded. By the time he was fourteen, major depressions had set in. He became withdrawn and moody, as though there was a dark shadow constantly hanging over him.

  Noel now suffered from a mild form of dyslexia and spent four years having a stutter in his voice seen to by a specialist.

  Emotionally, his barriers went up. He wouldn’t let anyone in. It’s the standard response in all people, the only form of self-protection against unmitigated cruelty. Instinctively you learn to trust nobody but yourself. Your heart turns to ice.

  And for many that will be their condition for ever.

  Noel expressed his unhappiness in many ways. He became a thief, a football hooligan, and he found refuge from his miserable existence in drugs of many kinds. Later on in life he would find true lasting salvation in music.

  And late at night as he lay in bed listening in abject terror to his father raging downstairs, waiting in terror for his steps to be heard on the stairs, the bedroom door flying open and himself being dragged out of bed to be hit for absolutely no reason, Noel imagined inflicting huge physical pain on his dad.

  ‘I can’t remember who said this,’ he now says, ‘but somebody said to me that Irish Catholic sons always turn out to be the antithesis of their fathers. They always grow up promising themselves they’ll never be like their dad. The way he used to beat my mam and all that, that’s why I’d never do that to a girl, like abuse them or take the piss out of them. I’ve seen me mam crying too many times to put anyone else through that.

  ‘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.’

&
nbsp; ‘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.’

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bsp; 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.