In today’s Guardian, former Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters admits to having held a grudge against the paper for 25 years. The reason? “When I did The Wall in Berlin in 1990,” he says, “they printed a big picture, half a page, no article. Underneath it said something like, ‘Last night, Pink Floyd played their record The Wall in Berlin and the sound was terrible.’ Full stop. And I thought, ‘Fuck you, that paper is never coming through my letterbox again.’”
Perhaps the fact that the interview took place at all suggests a certain thaw. But this quarter-century gripe is actually at the milder end of the spectrum of musicians’ grudges against papers and writers. It certainly can’t compare to the fury of industrial rockers Killing Joke, who once responded to a critical Melody Maker review by dumping offal and live maggots on one of the desks in its office.
The Stranglers also have form here. They once abandoned an NME writer in the desert while an overly persistent French hack ended up being gaffer-taped to the Eiffel tower’s girders, minus his trousers. “We left him to be photographed by Japanese tourists,” bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel told the Guardian last year, adding: “It was 400 feet above the ground.”
Some incidences of revenge seem off the scale – the Fall’s Mark E Smith attempting to stub a cigarette out on a Loaded journalist’s forehead, or Sid Vicious assaulting the NME’s Nick Kent with a bike chain. Mostly – and thankfully – spats don’t go further than threats, such as when journo Johnny Cigarettes wrote that most people would try to bottle Richard Ashcroft if he walked into a bar. The Verve singer not unreasonably threatened to respond in kind.
On some occasions, it’s hard not to have sympathy for the artist, such as when Björk went what was described as “berserk” after apparently being pestered for four days by a reporter, who crossed an unwritten line by approaching her young son as the pair entered an airport.
Then again, some revenge acts seem to be the result of pettiness or particularly eggshell egos. Alt-J barred Simon Price from their gigs after coming across an old, unsupportive tweet, and Noel Gallagher has similarly excommunicated the Edinburgh Evening News. Morrissey began a feud with the NME over an article that he said made him seem racist. Then again, this is the same Moz who subsequently declared the Chinese a “sub-species” over their record on animal rights. It’s much harder to comprehend why this most critically feted – but, in his mind, persecuted – of performers often bars all media from his gigs, or at least denies reviewers tickets. Twice, I’ve found myself loitering outside a venue, before handing over wads of cash to touts so I can give the great man a good review.
Sometimes, artists respond in kind to poor press, such as when, in 2008, the Courteeners’ Liam Fray took to the Guardian’s Comment is Free section to defend himself against the paper’s accusations of misogyny. Most, though, shoot back in the way they know best – with music. There are numerous examples of songs about a harsh and wicked media – from (inevitably) Morrissey’s Journalists Who Lie to Stereophonics’ Mr Writer, which contains the lyric: “You don’t even know me, you still like to stone me.”
The most venomous, though, are personal. After writer Mat Snow incurred the wrath of his former flatmate Nick Cave by writing that the Bad Seeds’ latest work “lacked the same dramatic tension” of his best stuff, Cave first called Snow “an arsehole” during an interview, then he penned the withering song Scum, which brands the hapless hack “a miserable shitwringing turd / Like he reminded me of some evil gnome / Shakin’ hands was like shakin’ a hot, fat, oily bone / Holdin’ on for far too long.”
Today, at least, Snow sees the funny side. “It is,” he maintains, “one of Nick’s best songs.”
