Steve raises his voice, a bit of the old punk rage perhaps asserting itself again after all these years. "You had to work to go and see a band back in '77, had to get off your arse and go to a gig, and then go to a record store to purchase the product. There was a lot more work involved. Now it's just mindless consumption."
Escalier 39, my new film company with Dean Cavanagh, makes its first real-life movie next month Kubricks which will be shot in the grounds of my gaff in Wales... The musical with Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh now looks back on and as I write, meetings are being put in place to get it moving along...and speaking of meetings, I am also going to meet some people in Japan who want to bring me back into music.
Kurt Cobain passed 18 years ago and like when John Lennon passed, I was genuinely devastated. I was also in bad shape at that point. I ran into Kurt on a few occasions with Teenage Fanclub when they toured together in 1992/93. It was around that time I first met Courtney Love, Kurt's then partner. What's sad is he had really only just begun in music. I think some people just handle that level of attention better than others, and I think Kurt found it not just difficult, but impossible.
In truth, I grew up in a violent household, just like most Glaswegian households of that era - no more or less really than any other from that time. I ended up getting 16 stitches in the back of my head after a bit of parenting from my dad when I was 15 for being cheeky. My mum and gran used to smash me about as well, it was just a different time then in the 60s and 70s.
With all the recent talk by Sir Richard Branson about decriminalising drugs, it made me think about the three big moments in my life which changed me, or even (if you like) opened my third eye. What people ingest is up to them, but for me it gave me access to creative worlds whilst running Creation that I would never have got to without the helping hand of the gods.
On Thursday the Metropolitan Police got back in touch regarding the News of the World hacking saga. The next stage for me is travelling to see them at the end of the week. So far all the information I've been told is the numbers found on the notebook of some 'journalist', and subsequently recognised as being mine, along with a postcode, which I also recognised as mine! One of the numbers was my old answerphone number, so let's see where this now goes - I can see this getting interesting...
It turns out that my name has popped up in the News of the World phone hacking case and they are investigating as I type. In truth, I would have been gutted to think I wasn't worth at least a little hack! Imagine being deemed by the people at News of the World as not being in the the top 8,000 most interesting people? Joking aside, if the police confirm that I have indeed been hacked, I will still sue. The joke to me is that in the period they are talking about, whoever had the pleasure to get into my voicemail would have been faced with hour-long Courtney Love rambles about her new songs at 5am UK time.
I'd like to pay my respects and say R.I.P to Sir Jimmy Savile, who died on Saturday. I met him only once, weirdly, it was at a dinner at Chequers in October 1999. I was first to arrive that evening (sad but true) and I was standing talking to Tony Blair, who was rocking his Gap casuals. Anyway, who is the next guest to arrive, but Jimmy Savile. At that point I thought life is definitely getting surreal. Rock 'n' roll to the end, he spent the entire night trying with persistence to chat up my wife, Kate. He was a rock 'n' roller even in his 70s, a bit like my Dad. Actually, my Dad just does the rock 'n' roll, not the charity work.