Simon Price

MyGen Profile Generator A Welshman living in England, I am a music journalist by day, a club DJ by night. I write for the Independent On Sunday newspaper, and I run Stay Beautiful Club . I'm fairly well-known, in a big fish/small pool kind of way, to people who care about either of those subjects.
I specialise in dressing up like a silly cyber-glam tart, ranting on about the supremacy of synthpop/the necessity of atheism/the rising Fourth Reich of the USA, riding the wheels of steel, losing myself in old films, acting someone else's age.
That was the short version. This, however, is not…
What keeps me alive is the idea of the working class intellectual, the proletarian aesthete, the dandy in the underclass, and I consider myself a walking specimen thereof. I spit on royalty - the Russians had the right idea - but I believe that there is a natural nobility which has nothing to do with heredity and titles: some of us are princes… and some of us are princesses (and I should know; I’ve found mine).
I was born in Cardiff when hippies crawled the earth, in a hospital which has since burnt down. I grew up in Barry, a dying docks town/seaside resort at the southernmost tip of Wales, in a bedroom overlooking exotic England. I’ve also lived in a small Sussex village with the ridiculous Anglo-Saxon name of Warninglid, where for two years I experienced the brutality of private education. (It was free, oh lucky me: my mum was a teacher there.) During the bicentenaire of the French Revolution, I lived in the highly counter-revolutionary city of Paris (where I was arrested at gunpoint by gendarmes for painting my nails in public). I’ve lived in dirty old Camden Town where I spent (and still spend) too much money and time, and Holloway Babylon, where I hid from the daylight in an underground lair.
After two decades in London I have fled to the seaside, swapping the sound of sirens for the sound of seagulls, and a dungeon for an eagle‘s nest (from my window, I can see the waves crashing ashore). Brighton is Britain’s badly-kept-secret enclave of arty bohemia and sexual liberation, and for perhaps the first time, I feel at home.
To quote the “Thriller” video, I’m not like other guys. (Except when I am.) In purely sexual terms, I’m hetero to an almost medically unsettling degree, but in every other sense (cultural, temperamental) I’m thoroughly queer. A friend of mine, who edits a leading gay magazine, says the adjective for people like me is ‘stray’. I’m still trying to find my masculine side. People are always surprised to find out that I’m a football supporter (Liverpool, Barry Town, Wales), but that is about as stereotypically male as I get. I once wrote “In any sense that matters, I am a woman.” I still know what I meant.
I was politicised at an early age. I joined the Communist Party at 13, the same year that I stopped going to church. During the Miners’ Strike, NUM collection buckets were shaken in the school corridors. It was that kind of place, and that kind of time.
Music is my life. I’ve inherited that from my father, along with a tendency to be an intransigent thorn in the side, and an absolute inability to be on time for anything, ever.
I’ve been through changes. The first single I bought was “(I’m The) Leader Of The Gang (I Am)“ by Gary Glitter, the first album I bought was Abba Greatest Hits Vol. 2, the first concert I went to was Dexys Midnight Runners, my induction into youth culture was as a suedeheaded Rude Boy obsessed with 2 Tone ska, then I became a Weller-obsessed Soulcialist, then a retro-dressing Smiths fan, and then, for a shamefully long time, a goth. To my discredit, I stayed in that scene way too long, after I’d realised that goths weren’t the crazy transgressives they believe themselves to be, but scared little conformists. So I stripped it all away, even went through a hip hop phase, then discovered the RoMo scene (look it up), through which I built my own individual, non-tribal identity, leading to the creature you see before you today.
When I was 15 I firebombed a church, but nobody was killed. When I was 16 I wrote a letter to the Barry & District News to complain that it was full of obituaries and ladies’ skittles results and nothing for young people, and they responded by giving me my own weekly pop column, ‘Simon Says’ (their name, not mine). When I came to London I got involved in the London Student newspaper, and before long I’d infiltrated my way into Melody Maker, initially as their Paris correspondent, then became one of their leading writers for 9 years.
In 1991 I encountered a bunch of fellow flamboyant Welsh working class intellectuals, Manic Street Preachers. The first thing Nicky Wire said to me was “How come your make-up is better than ours?“ I followed them closely thereafter, and in 1999 they were the subject of my first (and so far only) book: ‘Everything [A Book About Manic Street Preachers]’. It became the fastest-selling rock biography in UK history, it was named as Book Of The Year in NME, Rock Book Of The Decade in The Guardian, and one of Q magazine’s Essential Rock Books of all time. But I don’t like to show off about it.
I’ve written for just about every entertainments publication in Britain, and either quit or been fired from all of them. (They usually go bust soon afterwards, so let that be a warning.) I now earn a living being rude about famous people in my weekly Rock & Pop column for the Independent On Sunday.
I wrote the first-ever interview with Suede, the first-ever review of The Darkness, and the last-ever solo interview with Richey Edwards. My only regret is ignoring Trent Reznor when he tried to get me interested in this new protégé of his called Marilyn Manson.
I’ve met them all: Kylie, Snoop, Cher, Pharrell, Siouxsie, Meat Loaf, Left Eye, Kevin Rowland, Smokey Robinson, Adam Ant, Phil Oakey, Jarvis Cocker, Boy George, Kim Wilde, Gary Numan, even Cameron flipping Diaz… Well, nearly all. Morrissey and Prince continue to evade me, although they have both eyed me with curiosity from a short distance. Perhaps it’s for the best. The two who impressed me the most were Chuck D and, of course, Richey.
I spoke to Kurt Cobain on the phone once. He said “Yeah, sure, wait a minute… Court-neeey!!!” I silently lit Natalie Imbruglia’s cigarette while Michael Hutchence rambled about dirty magazines in my ear (“Now, Hustler… Hustler is just flaps.”) That was a bit of a moment. I sat in a darkened tour bus surrounded by the Wu-Tang Clan, while Method Man told me “You have to understand: the black man is God.” So was that. A member of The Cure once told me to cheer up. I thought that was a bit rich. I’ve played football with Robert Plant and basketball with The Beastie Boys. The Spice Girls nearly ran me over, and laughed. Boy George called me a lesbian. Ice-T rapped into my face from three feet away. Somebody introduced me to Katie Melua, but I thought she was just the work experience girl. Julian Casablancas gave me a lovebite. Tim Burton already knew who I was, and told me he read my column. Joe Strummer nudged one of the Sex Pistols and said “Wow!” as I walked past. Keith Richards winked at me. I made Dido cry.
There have been other jobs. I worked in the porn industry for one short summer, but it didn’t work out. I’ve been both a construction worker, and a demolition man. The latter came more naturally to me. I’ve been a bingo caller, a seafood seller, and I once spent two days cleaning dead dogs’ skulls, World War II gas masks, Catholic memorabilia, used tampons and condoms out of the muddy banks of the Thames.
I was born with next to no musical talent, but - unlike the people I write about every week - I have chosen not to inflict my meagre thimbleful of it upon the world. The closest I get is behind a pair of Technics: happiness is a full dancefloor.
I first learned to DJ while at university, and got myself elected as UCLU’s entertainments officer. I also ran nights at ULU down the road, with the then non-famous Ricky Gervais (I’d love to say “Oh, he was a really funny boss”, but he wasn’t especially), including early gigs by Radiohead (boo!), Shampoo (hurrah!) and Kenickie (double hurrah!).
In the mid-90s I launched a RoMo dancerie called Arcadia, a polemic in nightclub form, treasuring the plastique over the ‘real’ and the synthetic over the organic, as a kamikaze act of cultural terrorism against Dadrock orthodoxy. I even took it on tour around the UK. We crashed and burned, but we did it with valour.
I now run a legendary glam-electro-alternative club night called Stay Beautiful for flamboyant freaks and shameless show-offs. Since it launched in 2001, we’ve had guest DJs like Peaches, Ladytron, My Chemical Romance, New York Dolls, Saint Etienne, The Darkness and Soft Cell, live bands like Nicky Wire, The Pipettes, Towers Of London, Dragonette, Scarling, Johnny Boy, Paul St Paul And The Apostles, The Acute and Sigue Sigue Sputnik, and an insane amount of fun.
As a freelance DJ, I’ve been booked for private bashes by the likes of AC/DC, N*E*R*D and The Darkness, guested from Glasgow to Barcelona and various points in between (including countless London clubs big and small), and headlined the VIP backstage bar at the Reading Festival three years in a row. I know how to rock the party, if I do say so myself.
Yes, I am that guy on TV. I’ve finally decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em and whored myself to become one of those talking heads on list-based BBC3 shows. If it’s good enough for Paul Morley, it’s good enough for me.
I’ve also appeared in three pop videos. Well, parts of me have. “You Love Us” by Manic Street Preachers (but only from the neck down), “Nightlife” by Kenickie (but only the back of my head), and “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us” by British Whale (but only for a split second). These directors know what they’re doing.
Oh, and I’ve been on a top 10 album, Saint Etienne’s So Tough, rambling drunkenly about why I prefer the taste of Malibu to “these adult drinks, like whisky or lager”. I still don’t know why.
I have two tattoos: a Prince symbol on my right bicep, and a Stay Beautiful logo on my left. I would like two more: a flaming sacred heart with the words ‘SOUL BOY’, and a hammer and sickle. I’ve been all over this great big world and I’ve seen all kinds of places, and my favourite three are Barcelona, San Francisco and Reykjavik. Havana was pretty amazing too. My computer desktop is a Pop Art portrait of Christina Ricci, before that it was a Siberian tiger. My favourite breed of dog is the husky. White, one sugar.
I don’t wear women’s clothes. I don’t wear men’s clothes. I wear my clothes.
No it’s not my real hair, you fucking idiot.
I have beliefs, and I have disbeliefs.
I believe in magnificence.
I do not have a star sign, whatever it might say in my Details box.
I am a vegetarian, because I extend my belief in the intrinsic value of life to all sentient beings. I can look into the eyes of an Alsatian and sense as much empathy as I can with a human. Or as little.
I believe in the virtue of being a gentleman, and I do not accept that it is inherently sexist or chauvinist to do so.
I believe in the traditional but now lost British virtue of emotional continence, and abhor the emotionalism which has infected the nation since the death of the parasite princess.
I do not believe that our purpose or duty on earth is to breed (“Reproduction Is Pollution” by Shelley used to be my anthem), but I will break that rule soon. I do not believe that love requires a certificate, and I will break that one too.
It is only the hippies and the rich who tell you that materialism doesn’t matter, and that wealth can‘t buy you happiness. It is only Christians and other liars who tell you to await your reward in the afterlife. My socialism is all about material possessions, and the just distribution thereof, otherwise it is meaningless.
It may be true, as Girls Aloud almost sang, that we can’t escape our biology, but I’m going to die trying. Anyone who believes that they are fully ‘natural’ is at best naïve, at worst a liar. Self-reinvention isn’t merely an option, it’s an imperative, and if I could, I would remould myself entirely in plastic. I’ve already started with my hair.
Nobody is really grown-up: they’re just pretending. Nobody is really a man: they’re just pretending. In the words of RuPaul, “We are all born naked, and the rest is drag.”
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and I refuse to feel pride (or indeed shame) based upon a geographical accident of birth. I do not feel the ‘Welsh’ thing (although I have the accent, when drunk), I am British by default, but I am European passionately. Europe is our playground…
‘Capitalism’ and ‘Freedom’ are not synonyms. ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Democracy’ are not synonyms. Capitalism entails slavery: it requires a slave population in order to perpetuate itself, using the spectre of poverty as a whip. And the poor are never free.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a posh person to make a decent record.
‘Authenticity’ is a myth. Your rock heroes don’t ‘mean it‘. You aren’t hearing their raw ‘feelings‘. You’re hearing a series of accepted vocal signifiers for ‘emotion’, rehearsed and perfected in a studio. They’re all faking it, without exception. “But Simon, what about…?” Shut up. All of them.
Everything you’ve ever been told about music is wrong. The Style Council were better than The Jam, New Order were better than Joy Division, and the only good Neil Young album is Trans.
TV licence detector vans never existed.
A veteran photographer once said to me “This is not a rehearsal” as he poured me a large tequila in a Las Vegas hotel, and that’s stayed with me.
I’ve lived quite a life, but I haven’t finished yet.
Four words to leave you with: NEVER ‘KNOW YOUR PLACE’.