Billy Childish: ‘I idolise myself. I don’t waste my time idolising other things’

I paint every Monday. That is the only time I’m a painter. The rest of the time I’m something else.

I don’t care what job you do or who you think you are. Let’s see how you act.

I come from a generation where old people at gigs were viewed with high suspicion. Now they’re on the stage as well as in the audiences. People ask me to go and see gigs and I’m like, “I’m an adult!”

I don’t need Sasquatches or flying saucers to exist, and it’s not my fault that they do.

I beat my father up after he got out of prison for drug smuggling in my early 20s. He came back to the family home, which he wanted us to sell, and started to knock my mother about. So I punched him down the stairs.

People may think I like what I do, but that’s not necessarily the case. I do what I do. It’s just a hobby that’s got out of control.

I don’t admire or envy anybody’s success. I pity people who have had a lot of success, because it makes them all wankers. I’ve had a little success. I’d say I’m at the bottom of the top end. Before that I was nowhere. But all success means is we live in a nice house and have nicer dinner.

My networking is not really networking. If I network and say what I feel about things, it has the total polar opposite effect. It’s like my wife says: “You really are so much like you.”

It would be a good idea for all people in pop music to know what their 19-year-old self would think of them now.

I belong to a tradition of creativity. I believe in individual creativity being the heart and soul of mankind. I don’t want to be anything and so I live a wonderful life of freedom.

I got lucky as a painter when I was 50. If Tarantino wants to scour through my albums and use 20 of my songs in his next film, I wouldn’t stop him. I’d quite like to be an overnight success in music after 40 years, too.

You earn your right to fart at the table. I’ve earned the right to be me by sheer bloody-minded persistence.

The artist Kurt Schwitters has the words “You Never Know” inscribed on his grave. I agree wholeheartedly. There are only two certain answers to any question: “You never know” and “Maybe”.

During punk I told people that I was going to kill myself. I didn’t think I could live beyond 21. I thought I was going to be born into a world of fairness, where adults were adults. But no. I still struggle with that.

I idolise myself. I don’t waste my time idolising other things. I recommend it. It’s a spiritual path. You’re meant to love yourself, despite your inadequacies.

To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler is published by Orion at £30. Buy it for £27 from guardianbookshop.com. If you have been affected by these issues, contact Samaritans or Mind

The Guardian

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