by Mcgee, Alan
The stewards telephoned ahead for an ambulance. I thought I was dying. I was met by paramedics who diagnosed me with ‘nervous exhaustion’. It’s an American code-phrase, ‘nervous exhaustion’. It means: go and check into rehab immediately. I didn’t go to hospital because they thought I just needed to dry out. But I still hadn’t learned. I went to bed that morning but got up in the evening to go and see Swervedriver at the Whisky a Go Go. I’d have felt guilty otherwise for not showing Susan around – that’s how crazy my thought processes were at the time. I was doing a lot more than that to feel guilty about.
That night was the final straw. I drank a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and downed a load of diet pills when Susan started pleading with me to take it easy. I was totally addicted. I just couldn’t control myself.
When I went to Warners the next day I was hallucinating. The walls were literally moving in on me. I thought I might be going mad permanently – it was terrifying. I still don’t really understand what happened to me. It’s hard for me to remember the days leading up to the breakdown. I’ve no idea how much sleep I was getting.
I got out of that meeting fast but in the taxi back to the Mondrian Hotel things weren’t any better. I felt like I had a steel rod in my back, like I was on fire. I got back to my room and had a shower, hoping it would calm me down, but I started panicking again. My bones felt so hard, like steel, like I was turning into metal. I had hypertension, that’s what it feels like. It was really painful. I thought it was a heart attack. I told reception to call an ambulance. They asked me what the problem was. I didn’t want to admit to being a drug addict so I just said I’d had some diet pills and a bit to drink.
I knew when the guys in orange jumpsuits were putting the oxygen mask on me and carrying me out that I’d fucked up. It was like a bad American soap, except this time I was the fucking main character. They measured my blood pressure and decided my life was at risk. Thought I might have a blood clot or be having a heart attack. They were really worried that I was going to die before they could get me to hospital. I don’t know if they were overreacting or if I was under-reacting. I was conscious throughout all of it.
In the hospital they sedated me. My sister had been out at the zoo all day, came back and couldn’t find me. She rang my mobile, ‘Where are you, Alan?’ I was in hospital with wires coming out of me. When she turned up and saw that she started crying and I felt awful for putting her through that. ‘What’s Dad going to say?’ she was asking. Of course, I didn’t want him to know.
I left the hospital after a couple of days and went back to the hotel. They had a doctor who used to come round every day and give me a painful shot of sedatives in my arse cheek. Fuck knows why he had to do it that way. Maybe it’s an American thing. I stayed there for a couple of weeks, feeling pretty insane. I couldn’t access the energy in my body – my brain had shut down my body completely: ‘You’ve had enough, you need a rest.’ I had my own private nurse, who I proposed marriage to at one point. She’d told me earlier that she was a virgin. When my Gran Barr called up, I announced I was going to be married.
‘She’s a virgin,’ I told her.
‘What, verging on the ridiculous?’ she asked.
I wasn’t talking to anyone from Creation on the phone by then. The phone was off. I couldn’t face the idea of a plane home, but I couldn’t stay in America either. Two weeks in my room and Susan stayed with me. At one point I got driven to see the Jesus and Mary Chain record a video with Hope Sandoval. ‘I’d heard you were dead,’ said Jim when I arrived.
I ended up calling Ed Ball, who was in Japan playing keyboards for the Boo Radleys, and asking him to come and help me get back. I flew back with him and my sister. I was too weak to even hold my bags when we got the plane back. Ed had to carry everything for me.
14: RECOVERY
Back in London, I stayed in bed every day. I didn’t realize that I’d had a breakdown or how serious it was. I was waiting for it to finish so I could get back on with my life as usual.
But it was hard for me to even get up and go to the toilet. My brain couldn’t access the energy in my body. It was pretty wild. I was totally fucked. All I could do was lie there.
I asked my dad to come and look after me. I don’t think he wanted to, but he came. I’d run out of anyone else to ask. Belinda had dumped me and no wonder. Who would want to go out with a guy who’s had a breakdown, who can’t face the world? Maybe someone who’d been married to you for years, but not a girl nine years younger than you, a twenty-four-year-old. I don’t blame her at all. In fact it’s too cruel to say she left me. Cruel to her. She’d put up with enough from me. Although we’d split up all the time, I knew that this time it was for good.
There was nothing to be done about it though; I needed all my energy just to concentrate on staying alive. I went to the doctor and he didn’t know what was wrong with me. I went to see another doctor after that and he referred me to Dr Colin Brewer, a psychiatrist, and that was the very first step of recovery. I would see Colin Brewer for the next two years.
For the first two months I kept wanting to get back on the Primal Scream bus and have a party. It wasn’t so much the drugs I was craving but the excitement of the lifestyle. Without the excitement I had to think about all the things I didn’t want to, the huge amount I had to regret. I wanted to throw myself back into my old lifestyle and for things to be normal again, and at the same time I knew for a fact that my body and my mind couldn’t take it. I began to realize I wasn’t going to work for a while. I couldn’t give a fuck about Creation at that point. I was just trying to survive. And I had this epiphany then: I don’t want to do this any more, I want to get better. I don’t have to be in the music industry any more. I don’t have to be larger than life. I don’t have to take twenty-five calls every hour and shout at people. I can stay in bed.
Susan would come down to stay and Ed Ball would always come round, but for a while it was just me and my dad. He didn’t have to work any more because of me; so he didn’t have any excuse as to why he couldn’t help out. And he took keeping me off the booze and drugs seriously, which I suppose I should be grateful for.
Noel came round to see me with Marcus. I wasn’t able to keep a close track of what was going on with the business but I was still interested in Oasis. They played me new songs they’d recorded. After trying three different producers hadn’t worked out Marcus Russell had recommended Owen Morris. I thought that was a weird call. Johnny Marr’s engineer – who the fuck was he? He had no reputation at all. He was the guy who mixed Electronic. But Owen had got it bang on. He’d Phil Spectored it, a big wall of sound, a wall of guitars.
My dad kept a close eye on us all. He’d be peering round the corner of doors at us. Noel went to get himself a Jack Daniel’s at one point and found my dad had replaced all the bourbon in the bottle with cold tea! Noel loved it! It cracked him up.
My dad suggested I move back to Glasgow for a while. I was hating living in the penthouse by now – it looked like a big, empty party venue, the kind of place where a man like me would do damage to himself. I ended up staying there for six months, renting a little house in Renfrew. I couldn’t explain what was happening to me, to myself or to Dick Green. It was unquantifiable. I cut myself off from everyone – only Dick Green had my number, and I’d told him not to call under any circumstances. Jeremy Pearce sent me a text at one point asking if I wanted to come to Creation’s tenth anniversary (which by then was actually our eleventh anniversary; we were slow in getting organized). I went mental at him, told him to never speak to me again. I was convinced by then that I was never going anywhere near the music industry again. I just stayed in and watched football on Sky. I would literally watch any game at all, St Mirren v. Kilmarnock, anything. What got me through those days was the gradual realization that no one could stop me doing this, that I was a millionaire and instead of taking thirty phone calls an hour from loonies, musicians and managers, I could hide out on my own if I wanted to. I realized I
could run at my own pace instead of at everybody else’s.
Around August I went for about six weeks to rehab in Charter Nightingale, Lissom Grove. By then getting me off drugs in the short term wasn’t the issue, because I hadn’t taken any for months. They were looking long term, trying to recalibrate the way I saw the world.
Rehab isn’t like the telly. Rehab is pretty fucking boring to describe. It takes you a long time to come round and start seeing the world normally. I had Colin Brewer, my psychiatrist, in the morning and Keith Stoll in the afternoon, and I was really getting into the therapy. Keith Stoll was brilliant, a psychotherapist who every day made me think hard about myself in a way I hadn’t done before. I’d always run away from anything painful. Now he was encouraging me to ask questions of myself and I was willing to do it.
I kept myself to myself there. I refused to do Twelve Steps, knew immediately that it wasn’t for me. Surrendering to a higher authority? Me? Fuck off. I wasn’t going to remove my entire personality.
I remember reading a lot. Head-On by Julian Cope, his autobiography, and thinking it was brilliant.
I started to get my energy back. I’d go for long walks in the afternoon, down to Harley Street and back to Lissom Grove. The parts of London where you don’t see one indie person! It was amazing, I never saw one person I knew out on those walks. No one was looking for me. I loved it. I’d put on a lot of weight by doing nothing and being in Scotland and eating too much, but I lost two stone on these long walks.
I wasn’t trying to follow everything that Oasis were up to, but I knew the singles had done well and that the anticipation for the album Definitely Maybe, which came out on 30 August 1994, was massive. Liam and Noel’s charisma – and dangerousness – was winning everyone over. They’d have fights during interviews for the NME. There was a legendary one with John Harris, the tape of which was later released on vinyl, called ‘Wibbling Rivalry’. It will be on YouTube now, everything is. They had a huge argument, with Noel taking Liam to task for being arrested on the ferry to Amsterdam. It was the first time in years there’d been such an outspoken band, the first time in ages there’d been two huge personalities who weren’t scared to say what they thought. They didn’t watch what they said and they weren’t scared of anything. I think that’s why I liked them so much.
When I finished rehab I went back to Glasgow, and it was a shock to be away from the routine and be confronted again with my loneliness. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with my life. One morning I even went to church. That’s how desperate I was. I came out of church knowing it wasn’t the answer, got back into my house and there was a voice message waiting for me from Dick Green. ‘Hey, we’re number one with Definitely Maybe!’ I just wiped the message, didn’t even smile. It meant nothing to me, in fact it annoyed me. I felt like I’d paid the price for everyone else to have a good time. I know it was no one’s fault but my own but I felt incredibly bitter that I’d been destroyed while they were all still having a party.
But I’d had enough of Glasgow by then too. The walks around London while I was in rehab had got my strength back up and I thought I could go back and see if I could stick it. But when I got back to Rotherhithe I couldn’t stand it. I remember sitting in my massive penthouse with Joe Foster, looking around it, thinking, Is this it? It felt so lonely, so empty. It was a different man’s idea of where a man should live, a man who I’d only ever pretended to be. Pretending to be that man had almost killed me, and I worried that it still might do, and I couldn’t stay there any more.
I never went back. I moved straight out and booked into the Landmark Hotel, just round the corner from where I’d been in rehab. I’d walked past the hotel a few times and thought it looked a nice place to stay. I felt safe in this part of London, safe from the music industry. I ended up staying there for two months. Andy Saunders would come round to visit me and we’d stay up till one in the morning watching Spanish football matches. The rest of 1994 disappeared this way. I wanted nothing to do with Creation Records; I couldn’t bear to even think about the place.
By coincidence, Noel Gallagher was staying there a lot of the time too, and we’d bump into each other occasionally. He’d worked really hard that year, touring constantly. Abbott had saved Oasis on one occasion, after Noel had left the band and gone missing in America. He’d flown out and tracked him down at a girl’s in San Francisco and talked him out of it. I remember the night when Noel was going off to the Q Awards and he came and knocked on my door. I think he was a bit taken aback at how out of it I still was. It must have been a shock to him – he’d known me for only nine months before I changed so drastically. He was just getting started with the rock and roll lifestyle, but I felt like I was finished with it forever.
He’d give me reports on what had been happening. Fucking hell, I met Bono! He knows who I am! At this point, we were both still blown away by things like that. We didn’t feel famous yet, we felt like we had gatecrashed a famous person’s party.
He’d always ask me if I wanted to come to the parties in his room. I never once went and had to beg him not to tell anyone I was there. The last thing I wanted was people knocking on my door asking me round. And I have to thank Noel, because he never told anyone. He’s a man of his word, a great guy.
I was angry at the people who hadn’t come to see me. I tried to contact Primal Scream a few times during their tour of America with Depeche Mode, when they were really coming apart at the seams. They didn’t get back until months later, by which time I was too offended to take their calls. I’d been having a nervous breakdown and I’d needed to talk to them then. I realize now that they needed me as much as I needed them and they were feeling abandoned. They were as lost as me and having their own crises, just a little more privately. (Bobby Gillespie got sober, I think, in 2008. Toby Toman can’t even set foot in London, to this day.)
I was only thirty-four years old at this point. It was a bit early to be feeling like I was finished. My energy was beginning to return and I took longer and longer walks and became a member of the Landmark’s gym and swimming pool. I remember walking in at eight one morning in my Adidas to the Landmark just as Patsy Kensit and Liam Gallagher were driving off in a taxi after having been up all night drinking in the bar, Liam leaning out of the window shouting, ‘McGeeeee!’
I began to get curious again about Creation at the start of 1995. I began to think about going over to Hackney to see what was happening. I’d built the ark, and I wasn’t ready to completely give up the chance of sailing it again. But I knew the office in Westgate Street was the absolutely worst place for me to be around. There wasn’t a room there I hadn’t taken drugs in. The place was inseparable from the crazy times that had nearly killed me.
So I approached slowly. I would walk all the way to Hackney from Marylebone, a good two-hour walk, at least five miles, I reckon. I’d do it twice a week and as soon as I arrived I’d look at everybody and think, What the fuck am I doing here? I’d only last half an hour before I’d have to get a taxi back to my nice hotel! I was behaving like Syd Barrett. I made everyone feel really awkward. They’d tell me stuff which wouldn’t compute, that I’d just have no interest in. I was a completely different Alan to the one they were used to. They didn’t know what to say to me any more. They’d tell me about a great party they’d been to and it would engage me as much as if they were reading out a shopping list. More than anything it was the memories Westgate Street inspired that I couldn’t cope with. It brought all the monsters back, all the ghosts. It felt like I was being pulled back to the life I’d left behind. It made me scared that it wasn’t behind me at all. Everything associated with my past brought the nightmares up. I couldn’t imagine how I was ever going to come back properly again. Everyone was basking in the glory of the success and the man who’d signed all the bands was too ill to join in. I didn’t mind them enjoying the success, but I couldn’t see how there was a place for me there any more. I was depressed and it was hard not to be bitter sometimes.
Once the contract had run out at the penthouse I rented a tiny little flat around the corner from the Landmark and moved in. I know it sounds berserk, but living close to the place where I’d done my rehab was very calming; it made me think help was on hand if I needed it.
I should have been in therapy a long time before then, really. I’m very grateful for what that did for me. I’m still friends with Colin Brewer. He’s in his seventies now and we meet for lunch occasionally. We saw each other professionally for a couple of years and I feel like in doing this we really got to the bottom of me. We spoke a lot about my past, my childhood. The violence and the fear and the powerlessness had fucked me up, there’s no doubt about that. Big deal: everyone’s childhood fucks them up. But it had fucked me up in a big way. Once we worked that out it was a lot easier for me to go on. I could never work it out: what is this fucking thing going on in my head? Why am I so miserable? They worked out all the things that had fractured me. We worked out I’d had some sort of breakdown when I was fifteen and never really recovered. I’ve only just finally begun to close it all. I can control my reactions to things these days, whereas before, because I wasn’t facing up to what was bothering me, I’d fly off the handle whenever someone or something tried to make me confront it.
One day, when I was on one of my walks I ran into Laurence Verfaillie. We were pleased to see each other, and she told me she was going to see Slowdive that night with her friend Kate. ‘Kate from Frazier Chorus?’ I asked.
She’d introduced me to Kate Holmes before. I’d first seen her on TV when I was going out with Belinda. She’d been dressed as an angel, in a TV appearance for her band at that time. Frazier Chorus was a bit like Britpop before Britpop, like Pulp at the wrong time. They were a whimsical indie-pop band from Brighton, signed to 4AD, ended up on Virgin, never made it. After that she fell in with Youth and his Butterfly records label. I thought she was very cool.
