NSG’s David Lancaster caught up with author Simon Mason, also the songwriter and frontman of Hightown Pirates, to talk about his band’s upcoming shows, their latest album, years of battling addiction, and his eventual recovery! 

DL: Hi Simon, thanks for spending some time talking to us today. Where did it all start for you? Were you always into music and what was your teenage life like??

SM: It all started in 1981, my friend at school had really cool parents and they got tickets for the pair of us to go and see The Jam. I was only 12 or 13 at the time. I’m aching a bit this week after some hard graft and I’m feeling my age, but I don’t mind being the age that I am coz it means that I can say that I saw the fucking Jam!!! They’ll always be my first love, and they arrived at a time in my life which was really unpleasant for me, my father died in 1979 when I was 11 and I had a grandparent die too and I’d been sent to some horrible boarding school, I was getting sexually abused and it was shite, fucking horrible, but I saw The Jam and I knew there was another world and I knew I could survive in the place I was at, and that’s what got me through it.

DL: How have you been coping with everything over the last year? 

SM: That’s a good question you know, coz I think some days I’ve been really feeling it. I lived in London from the 1980s and I’ve recently left London and moved to Margate. I’m by the sea with my wife and my daughter isn’t too far away, she’s only 13 so I can still see her which is great. I’ve been sober now for 15 years and the things that I love doing are going to the match, going to gigs, playing gigs and because my recovery is based on a 12 step fellowship, I also go to meetings, and I’ve not been able to do any of those things for a year and a half. I call them simple pleasures and I guess they are, though going to the match isn’t too simple these days and it’s difficult to get a ticket, but I have missed all those things and I’ve missed that connection with people. That’s the struggle for me as I don’t have a real job or career. I miss being in Liverpool as I’m usually there a couple of days each month. I miss the laughter and the energy of Liverpool, so hopefully, all those things are going to be happening again very soon.

DL: So, ‘Too High, Too Far, Too Soon: Tales from a dubious past.’For those who don’t know, that’s the title of your famous book, it tells us about your life and your times hanging out with some major names from the music scene, through the ’90s right up to the 2000s. Why the dubious past Simon, for those who don’t know, can you spill the beans? 

SM: I was a drug addict and one of the things I did to support my own dependency was to help other people find what they were looking for in that area. Would I do it now? No!.. Do I regret doing it then?… No! 

DL: What was your main reason for writing the book Simon?

SM: I kept diaries for years, again, for people who don’t know I was injecting into my neck and into my legs and that’s where I ended up, but bizarrely even during that period of my life I used to write stuff down, and it was painful reading when I read it all back many years later. I was at work one day and someone asked me a question, asked me if I missed the old days and I was thinking, what part of the old days?do I miss the part where I was off my head on an E at the side of the stage at Glastonbury watching Paul Weller?, yes, I fucking miss that, that was amazing and that will stay with me forever, but do I miss trying to get a needle in my veins? er, no! So that person told me to write a book and I thought, well, maybe I will, and eventually I did.

Simon Mason:(Credit Billy Vitch)

DL: So, you’re hanging out with these successful bands, stellar names … you become the guy who provides them with their powder and pills. You become the go to man for record company executives and music journalists too. How did that all start and is it true you were known as The Rock N’ Roll doctor? I’ve heard something about a Leopard Skin hat too??

SM: Ahhh, Alan McGee was kind enough, when the book was published, to give me a quote for the front cover, saying “Simon Mason was the Rock’n’Roll doctor!”I didn’t have a calling card with that on though, ha. I’d been going to Glastonbury since the mid-’80s and I knew how it all worked. I used to go there for weeks, and you get to know people and get to know what’s what and who’s doing what and why they’re there. That was always my favourite part of the festival, watching the build up to it. You could zoom around on motorbikes back then and we were all like extras from a Mad Max movie. Anyway, I was backstage and I was stood next to Bez from The Happy Mondays and he was looking at me and he asked me if I knew where I could get something that most people wouldn’t normally ask for, but I knew what he meant and I took him to see some people that I knew and they sorted him out and Bez was trying to sort Shaun out and in return, he gave me some pills and said maybe you can get rid of a few of them.. so I said thanks, okay, and that’s how it all happened, that was 1990 I think. I went from being someone who just used drugs for themselves to someone who knew people that used drugs and knew people who sold them, so I became this kind of guy in the middle of all that. The leopard skin hat was fake leopard skin, leopard print actually. I think I bought that at Glastonbury in 1993. It’s on the back cover of my book. Someone took a photo of me wearing it, Noel Gallagher sat next to me and Evan Dando of The Lemonheads sat on the other side. It was a great hat, hence the name, The Cat In Hat, that was Paul Gallagher that came up with that.

DL: You must have some amazing backstage stories or after-show anecdotes, Anything you can share with us?

SM: That whole period, when I look back on it, it’s very romanticised, a lot of it was boss, and everybody rediscovered their zest for music and going out and we were tribal again. There were parties and gigs everywhere and it was fucking great, but the most boring part of that whole scene was backstage, that wasn’t really where it was happening, backstage was just music journalists and musicians that were too scared to go out into the festival and get stuck in and have a good time. So, I don’t wanna piss on anyone’s bonfire, but backstage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, the real fun bit I saw was watching the band out front, that’s the best thing about it all, being at the festival, not hanging around backstage. If we’re talking about after parties, I was at a party in Kings Cross, Donna from Elastica, it was her flat, it was notorious, it was always “back to Donna’s”, and it’s no big secret that there was a heroin thing going on during that whole Britpop thing, I’m not the first person to talk about it and it was always a part of that scene. Anyway, I was halfway up these stairs, talking to Jarvis Cocker of Britpop band, PULP about god knows what, it was stupid O’Clock in the morning and we knew each other, as everyone knew everybody and he said to me “So, Simon are you going upstairs?” and he looked up towards this room, and the room that he was looking at was where everyone was doing smack. So he asked, “Are you going upstairs or downstairs?” and I just looked at him and shrugged my shoulders and said, “well, I guess I’m going upstairs mate,” and he said, “Well that’s a shame,” Jarvis walked downstairs and I went upstairs.

DL: So, sadly Simon, and maybe inevitably you become an addict yourself, leading you to an attempted OD, how long did that period last for you?

SM: I used drugs for 20 years on a daily basis, the first 5 years were fantastic, I wouldn’t change a thing, the next 5 kinds of had their moments, including being at the side of the stage watching Paul Weller, but the last 10 years were fucking horrible, addiction and hopelessness and I was sick of seeing people getting stabbed and it was just really really horrible so, those last 10 years going up to 2006 were a nightmare.

Simon Mason:(Credit Billy Vitch)

DL: And once you were free from addiction yourself you worked in recovery helping other people get over their problems. Is that something you’re still involved with?

SM: I’d like to think I’m still involved with it, but it’s a well trodden path. When you come out of the end of addiction you have a criminal record and you have no CV or anything so you only have a few options, go to college and study something from scratch, maybe if you’re young enough you can learn a trade, but there is one industry that will acknowledge that your previous experiences are valuable, and that’s working in the “field of addiction” as they say. So, a lot of people do that and you start as a volunteer and at some point, if you decide you want to keep doing it, you can get your qualifications. I just kind of fell into it and I liked the idea of being able to help people. I went back and worked in a detox centre that I’d been in 9 times myself and I stayed in that industry for 6 years. I found towards the end that I was sitting behind a computer all day and I was tapping in what I thought were just useless statistics, I was only getting 5 minutes with a client and I didn’t feel that it was helping anybody apart from the people that manufacture methadone and all those other drugs and I didn’t think they worked, so I wrote my book and I can say, fairly confidently, that writing that book, and later on, turning the book into a play has helped more people. I think that’s done more for people than I ever did sitting behind that computer tapping in useless information.

DL: If you could hang out with 1 deceased rock star for a day, who would it be and why? What would you ask them and where would you go??

SM: I’m trying not to say the obvious one, but I’m gonna say the obvious one..I’d go for a cup of tea with John Lennon. I’d love to just try and get inside his head for a little bit, so a cup of tea with John at The Brink. 

DL: Sadly The Brink has gone now.

SM: I know, but so has John Lennon !!! 

DL: What’s your spirit animal? 

SM: An owl, I’ll be an owl, an owl with a spinning head. I could be Professor Yaffle,.. also the name of another great band from Liverpool.

DL: What’s the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?

SM: I got put in jail in Los Angeles in 1988. I was living in LA, I was doing drugs and I was driving a stolen car. I got nicked on a Friday and I got locked up for the weekend until I could find someone stupid enough to bail me out. I thought I was gonna die, or at least come out not being able to walk. I was 19, I had long hair, I’m from Weston-Super-Mare and I’m not a fucking gangster if you know what I mean, but these boys were proper gangsters. One of them came up to me and demanded a cigarette and I told him to fuck off, and as soon as I said it, I was thinking “why did I say that?”, I should have just given him the packet. He asked me where I was from and once they realised I was from England they were cool, but up until that point it was terrifying being in the cell with those guys, being in the tank until Monday morning, it fills up and some of those guys were from South Central.

DL: What’s the best advice you were ever given?

SM: The piece of advice that I keep forgetting, is to remember that the reward is the making of the music, that’s it. The process of me sitting at home with my guitar, writing a song, then getting some people together to record it, that’s the reward. The magic is that creative thing and if anyone else listens to it, then that’s a bonus. It was Mick Head who said that to me.

Simon Mason:(Credit Billy Vitch)

DL: So, as you just mentioned, you eventually meet Mick Head, a well known name from these parts, the frontman of iconic Liverpool band, Shack. You say you had a life changing talk with Mick walking along Crosby beach, what went on there?

SM: He wanted to meet some people who were sober, he was interested in the concept of sobriety but he didn’t want it spat at him by some Guardian reading bully therapist type, he just wanted to talk to someone who he would associate within his normal life.So we’d been hanging out for a bit, talking about writing a book, as he’d read my book.. anyway, we were sat on Crosby beach one morning and this ship came up the river, and Mick said, “Do you think that’s a tramp steamer?” Now, I happen to know what that is, it’s not a term used too often these days, but it was a merchant ship that would take anything anywhere, no questions asked kind of thing. So, it was a very romantic, typical Mick thing to say, so I told him I was gonna use that for a song, and Mick pointed out that I didn’t have a band, but I told him that I would have a band one day. We ended up in Hightown, we got on a train, just having a day out really, sat in this pub and we had a game of “Celebrity Pirate Ship”, where you have to pick 6 people to have on your fantasy pirate boat, who would you chose? So Mick said Scarlet Johansson and then I said I’d have Gordon Ramsey in the galley as he can cook, and I think he could look after himself, so, we came up with the name  ‘Hightown Pirates‘ for this crew, and I told Mick that that would be the name of my band, and he said, ok, fine. So Hightown Pirates, as a concept was born there, and a couple of years later it became a real band.

DL: How did you go about forming Hightown Pirates and where were your first shows?

SM: What happened was that Mick came to stay with me, a little while after that conversation and he’d stopped drinking and I said to him that before he went back to Liverpool he needed to do a little gig sober, just so he knew that he could do it. So, we found a venue in Hackney and Mick said that if he was gonna do that gig, then he wanted me to be the support act. I hadn’t played any of my own songs in public for ten or fifteen years, but there was a pivotal moment, my daughter Tabitha was also staying with me, she was 7 at the time. Mick and I were just chatting one night and she came into the room as she couldn’t sleep, and Mick grabbed my guitar, literally blew the dust off it and Tabitha was sitting on my knee and he proceeded to play this set of songs and we were both sat there crying. Mick plays for over an hour and he puts the guitar down and tells me that I need to start playing that guitar again. So, Mick did the gig, I was the support, he was amazing and I was rubbish, but then I ended up going on tour with The Libertines in my capacity as the sober guy.I was hanging out with them and we’d got on really well and Peter invited me to be the opening act on his solo tour that year, so I did that and then after 1 gig someone asked about a song I’d played, asking if they could get it anywhere and when I said I had no recordings yet, they took my number and called me a few weeks later saying that I should make an album. So I called some friends of mine and we got this studio, just to do a couple of songs, so that was the first line-up of Hightown Pirates, we had 5 rehearsals and then we went to the studio and recorded the album ‘Dry & High‘ in 6 days. It was a celebration and some of those guys on those sessions. I’d known them since I was a teenager and they have their own stories of addiction. It was beautiful, and the guy who ran the studio, he’d played drums for Jethro Tull and Gary Barlow, he’d seen it all before and he’d had the studio for 20 years, but he said it was remarkable. That’s where we became a crew, not really a band, and that remains true to this day. We’re a collection of musicians who are recovering from things.

DL: You’ve had 2 albums out so far plus a canon of singles can you tell us a bit about your 2020 album ‘All Of The Above‘, Where did you record it, and what’s the inspiration behind the songs? 

SM: We got amazing reviews for ‘Dry & High‘, (our first album), Q magazine likened us to Arcade Fire and Primal Scream, and I think we turned a few heads and people up in Liverpool like Ian Salmon the playwright, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of music, he told us it was amazing, but no one was more surprised than myself. After High & Dry, we did an EP that didn’t get released, it is still available on our Bandcamp. I forgot the advice that Mick had given me and I was despairing. We played a gig at the end of 2019 and let’s just say, there were only 2 sober people on stage. I hadn’t yet decided that I only wanted to work with people who were sober, I was almost ready to quit music, and then sadly in the space of 18 months, 3 of my best friends died, and then I realised that’s what I wanted to do, make an album and do it with people who are in recovery from addiction, and I wanted to do it for those guys that I’d lost really. So I had a piece of artwork from Banksy, who I’m friendly with, we’ve known each other since the ’90s and this piece didn’t have a serial number on it and I contacted him to say I was making a record because of Luke, Earle and Carrie, my friends that I’d lost, and I told him how I wanted to record it with musicians who are sober and he told me to send the piece of artwork back to him and he sorted out some dough for me so I could make the album. That’s what we did, and I insisted that everybody got paid at a good rate. That’s when I realised that to move forward, I’d like to just work with people who are in recovery, I’m not anti drugs or anti alcohol, but I just found that as a songwriter, I can be on the same page with people if we’re all sober. So that’s when we became this collective of sober people, and we spent a long time in the studio and I was so excited to put the album out, this time people had to listen! 

DL: ‘The Boy In The Doorway‘ is your latest single that just came out this year. What’s the story behind that song?

SM: We actually released two singles this year, we released ‘Jetgirl‘ on New Year’s Day which bombed, but ‘Boy In the Doorway’ was written about 2 friends of mine, Carrie, the girl who died and the other person is my friend John, he’s been clean now for 6 or 7 years, he was “the boy in the doorway”, He’s stayed clean after living on the streets as an addict and he’s now qualified as an art teacher which was always his dream. There’s a string part for the song which I think is absolutely stunning and it’s a bit different from what we’ve done in the past. We do go big on the production sometimes, but we’ve never used strings before. 

Simon Mason:(Credit Billy Vitch)

DL:  Hightown Pirates are a live touring band, you like to get out there in front of the crowd. What’s your favourite gig so far and what’s your favourite place to play?

SM: We are getting out again in October hopefully, but we haven’t played in over 2 years now. Our first gig, with a horn section, was at a place called The Water Rats in Kings Cross, and I remember there being about 10 of us on stage, and we looked like a pirate crew and that gig was great. My favourite gig will be one that we do soon when loads of people turn up. 

DL: And you’re playing Liverpool again soon, right?

SM: I’ve got a solo gig at The Angus in Liverpool on the 22nd of July and then in October we’re playing in Leeds, York, and at District in Liverpool on the 22nd, then Newcastle, then back down in London and we finish in Margate. We’ll only do those gigs if they aren’t socially distanced, financially it just doesn’t work for us as I need to sell tickets in order to pay people, we almost need to sell places out to put a full band on stage, but yer, I’m really looking forward to it.

DL: Before we say goodbye Simon, one last question for the road. You mentioned a bit earlier that you are a big LFC fan, what’s your most memorable Anfield moment? 

SM: I was at the Champions League semi against Barcelona and I was sat next to this fella, and as Barca came out in that bright yellow kit, he told me to squint as they’d look more like Norwich City than Barcelona. As the final whistle goes and it’s 4 nil, we’re like, “yer, we just played fuckin’, Norwich !!!!” If I never see another game in my life, I’m just so happy that I was at that game. Nobody before the game thought we could come back and beat Barca 4-0 to win the tie, but you have to go in there with belief, and this is like a metaphor really, you have to get in there, turn up and sing your songs, and sometimes miracles happen, some things are meant to be, and that’s how I feel about Hightown Pirates too, I believe that one day we can sell out Brixton Academy or The Phil in Liverpool, with a full band on stage and it will be an absolute joyous celebration. I always have that belief, that “never give up” mentality and I have that from supporting Liverpool.

DL: Once again thanks for your time, anything else you’d like to add?

SM: Just thanks to yourself and thanks to the Magazine, I look forward to seeing you both at The Angus, I’ve put a couple of seats to one side for you guys.

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