10 QUESTIONS - Alan McGee

This weeks Ten Questions were thrown at Alan McGee. I first met Alan in 1991 in a pub in Hackney. He was seated at a table chatting with Lydia Lunch. I have no idea what we talked about but he put me up in a hotel that night as I had missed my train back up North. Over the years since we’ve had a up and down relationship but he remains, as the founder of my favourite Record Label, Creation Records, a big influence on my teenage years. Now retired, he looks after his daughter and, if his Tweets are to be believed, spends the rest of the time drinking coffee and giving the Finnish staff and assorted WAGs who frequent his pool inspirational talks on the benefits of Sushi.

1. Where are you? Describe your immediate surroundings.

on couch in london till i move to wales in july

2. Anybody following you on Twitter would think that you are a crass, rude, arrogant, money obsessed, caffeine fueled,
sushi gobbling bully, but in person you are a sensitive, generous and articulate man. Do you consciously adopt a public
persona or does it happen naturally after so many years of fighting your corner?

i agree on all points the thing is i truly don’t give a fuck

3. Which year at Creation Records do you feel was your best in terms of artistic/business satisfaction?

1991 1992 for the music we never got rich till 97 i liked the end bit best video ever is kevin rowland video we rocked

4. You once described ‘Wake Up Boo’ as an ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ which, as I’m sure readers will know, was the title of a J.G Ballard novel.
He’s dead now and, let’s be honest, you have to shoulder some of the blame for that. What other records (records, not bands) that came out on Creation would
you rather have come out on another label, if at all?

Loveless isn’t anything and soon I hate mbv I wish I had never signed them tuneless garbage

5. You’ve retired. Is that for good? C’mon you can’t sit around drinking coffee forever. What’s next?

the school run and the great thing is i don’t have to go in

6. If Creation had folded after a couple of singles what do you think you would be doing now?

on a park bench

7. The thing I most like about you is the fact that your interpretation of Rock’n'Roll is whatever you happen to be doing at any given time. Is the idea of
four-pale-young-things-with-guitars-as-rebellious-act redundant now?

no because glasvegas and the grants still make me believe it’s possible

8. I’ve noticed on your tweets that you regularly lambast LA and Shoreditch as being ’shitholes’ yet you live in St John’s Wood which is really just a Beatle-
themed graveyard. Where in the world do you feel most at home?

i actually live in primrose hill all the celebs moved into my road so i moved into another of my properies

9. How many readers of your guardian blog could you fight in one go?

i’m 48 martin then again probably so are they

10. “Fate is kind to me” exclaims Grigory Petrovitch Liharev in Chekov’s ‘On the Road’ ; “I am always meeting splendid people”

Which person were you most glad to meet?

dan treacy of tv personalities he is still a punk rocker and showed me even a twat like me could run a record company