1.) For those who don’t know you, who is Ian Cusack?
I’m 54, live by the sea in North Tyneside and
work in delivery logistics for a world-famous auction house, having taken
redundancy at Easter 2018 from a 30-year career as a Literature lecturer,
predominantly in adult education, that deteriorated from being the centre of my
life to a cause of great distress and fury, as education cuts bit harder every
year, making the job impossible and the FE sector unfit for purpose. I’m father
to Ben who has just completed an MA in 20th Century Social History,
with a dissertation on the Manchester Music Scene from the Sex Pistols gig at
the Lesser Free Trade Hall to the closure of The Hacienda, and partner to Laura,
who is the guardian angel for all coastal cats for miles around. Culturally, as
my family came from County Cork, I regard my ethnicity as Irish, which is of
enormous importance to me.
My sporting interests are focussed on my beloved
Newcastle Benfield of Northern League Division 1, whose programme I edit and my
beloved Tynemouth Cricket Club, for whose recreational scion I still attempt to
bowl leg spin. Additionally, I adore Hibernian FC and have done since 1972, as
well as holding great affection for Bohemian (Dublin), Petrzalka (Bratislava)
and Athletic Club (Bilbao). Other
important factors include my ultra-left politics (I’m a supporter of the
Socialist Party of Great Britain and all companion parties in the World
Socialism Movement), Real Ale and Craft Ale (whether that be Bass in my local, the Tynemouth Lodge or
anything interesting in any of Newcastle’s brilliant selection of pubs, tap
rooms and bottle shops) and indie and folk music, from Teenage Fanclub to
Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Fairport Convention to Seosamh Ó hÉanaí.
Finally, I used to love Newcastle United until all those bad things happened to
the ownership, the management, the players and the support.
2.) You have been a prolific published writer for some years
now. How and when did you first start writing? Did you always want to write
about football, and how did you come to be involved in the fanzine movement?
I’ve been a writer, of some description or
other, since my early teenage years. Initially it was song lyrics for a series
of terrible bands that I failed to adequately play bass for, or distressingly
pretentious poetry. However, at the end of the 70s, having fallen head over
heels in love with the magnificent variety of bands who emerged during the post
punk scene on Rough Trade, Fast Product
and then Postcard Records, I sought
to express my thoughts, mainly in terms of reviews, in a series of samizdat
music fanzines. My words were repetitive, derivative and imprecise, but I
learned to hone my craft, producing pieces worthy of reading by the time I went
to University, where I inflicted my unwonted and unwanted opinions on my peers
in the pages of Leeds Student, edited
at the time by Jay Rayner, son of Clare, and now The Observer’s food critic.
Arriving back in Newcastle in 1988, I lucked
upon 2 emerging publications; Paint It
Red, a music magazine I wrote for during the entire decade of its existence
and The Mag, Newcastle United’s first
fanzine, which showcased my opinions until 2004, when I moved on to Toon Talk. The idea of ordinary fans
writing about football had never been possible before the end of the 80s; unlike
now when the internet is an extensive resource for badly written, poorly
punctuated and inadequately edited opinion pieces from the over-inflated egos
of cyber non-entities, there simply weren’t any places to get published.
Certainly, it was also the case in Newcastle that blokes, and it was almost
entirely blokes back then, made a choice to either music or football fans as
teenagers. You didn’t see punks or hippies on the terraces and gigs weren’t
akin to an afternoon on the Gallowgate or Leazes End. Music always had both a
mainstream and marginal printed presence, but football lacked any true
independent voices.
This is why the football fanzine movement was
incredibly empowering, allowing normal, everyday fans to express cogent
opinions. I’d never previously harboured ambitions to write about the game, as
there had been no possible vehicle for my thoughts, but once fanzines gave fans
a voice, mine became louder than many others. Democracy was a key watchword in
the early days and all attitudes were possible and publishable. Certainly, this
open access resource appealed to my belief system, grounded in the
impossibilist position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who eschew any
truck with leaders or hierarchical structures; standpoints are established by
debate and consensus, with every participant viewed as of equal value. For a
brief period, fanzines were a real and sincere republique des lettres that I sought to find a role in. I wrote
articles, then posted them to a huge array of fanzines from any and every club
in the late 80s and early to mid-90s.
Almost always they published my stuff, sent me a copy and often asked me
to contribute another piece. Through this I even ended up being asked (and
paid!!) to write stuff for When Saturday
Comes, The Guardian and The
Independent. When the internet brought message boards and web sites that
offered further democracy and instant opinions, fanzines died in the main.
Sadly, the anonymous keyboard warriors brought about the destruction of
reasoned debate, as loud, braying ignorance became the default position of so
many participants. However, we were lucky to still have printed magazines up
north, meaning I kept writing for Newcastle United’s Toon Talk until 2014 and then launched The Popular Side that I edited for 14 issues over 3 seasons, until
we decided we’d said all we could about the club.
3.) Who are your favourite writers both in terms of influencing
you growing up, and more specifically in the world of football fanzines?
As well as declaiming my opinions about
football, cricket, music, politics and beer in print and on my blog (http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/ ), I am also a writer
of fiction, which isn’t that surprising for a Literature lecturer I suppose. I
currently edit the literary magazine glove
(@glovelitzine), which is as important an outlet for me as the football
writing which, if I’m totally honest, still makes up the vast majority of my
output. The first writers I loved were Camus, Kafka and Sartre, for the
subtlety of expression and complexity of thought behind their words. I moved on
to devouring James Joyce, Flann O’Brien and Brendan Behan; luxuriating in the intellectual
depth and detailed examination of the Irish cultural experience at home and
among the diaspora that I am proud to belong to. My attitude to England and
Britishness is a hostile, negative one; few English writers, other than my
brilliant pal David Peace and the eccentric genius Magnus Mills, appeal to
me. At University, Bukowski, Ellroy,
Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy and all manner of other deadbeats, drop-outs and dope
fiends stole my heart away forever; hence my MA in 20th Century American Fiction.
The hard-boiled, spare, terse style of Ellroy and the grandiloquent, florid
mode adopted by McCarthy have parity of esteem and levels of plagiarism in my
work. Also, I always write my name in lower case as a homage to ee cummings.
As regards football writers; the likes of Frank
McGhee, Mike Langley, Charlie Summerbell and Arthur Appleton who wrote articles
in the old fella’s Daily Mirror, back
in the early 70s when it was a quasi-socialist paper that didn’t treat readers
like cattle, showed football was more interesting when you considered the
sociological angle rather than focusing on statistics. These writers didn’t
talk tactics; they told stories about people, places, grounds and training
grounds. It was brutal poetry, reeking of liniment and thwarted ambition. I
graduated from them, via Arthur Hopcraft’s seminal The Football Man, to reading Brian Glanville; I didn’t always agree,
and I often didn’t understand him, but he made me think, which I believe to be
the most important duty of any writer. If you can’t engage the reader’s brain,
keep your mouth shut. I’m not talking about the capricious shock troops on line,
in tabloids or on radio, I’m talking about proper, thoughtful, perceptive
football writers, like the wonderful Paddy Barclay, whose nuanced opinions
baffle the belligerent. In terms of fanzines, George Culkin from The Times is my favourite football journalist;
he started by writing for The Mag
when he was 14, I’m delighted to note. I must say that all fanzine writers
should be regarded as of equal value; we should be a democratic, egalitarian,
broad church, where all views are sought and respected.
4.) Do you ever feel that your personal values and lifestyle are
at odds with the often vain and fashion centric ‘fanscene’ community? Ever feel
slightly at odds with the subculture in which you are so prolific?
Excellent question. I used to stand on the Gallowgate
in the 80s in a long overcoat, Unknown
Pleasures badge on the lapel, Dennis
the Menace style wooly jumper, combat strides and paint spattered DM boots.
To one side, the Lacoste and Tacchini bona drag popinjays, dressed as
if on their way to the All England club, sneered at my deportment, while on the
other moustachioed headcases in NCB donkey jackets and Wranglers viewed me with equal contempt. It didn’t bother me. I’ve
never tried to fit in because I’ve never wanted to fit in. As I’ve said, I want
to make people think and part of that is questioning whether the widespread
tendency towards apolitical commodity fetishism is a defensible course of
action for a football fan, especially when late capitalism is falling apart.
For me spending £400 on a Stone Island
blouse to sashay up to St James Park, ignoring the volunteers collecting for
the NUFC Food Bank other than to make snide comments about their footwear on Twitter, is the kind of behaviour that
should see your head on a spike.
5.) Your writing is often unflinchingly honest, and occasionally
makes for uncomfortable reading in terms of subject matter. How much poetic
licence do you like to sprinkle over your work?
Another excellent question. I would say there
are a couple of competing dynamics at work in my writing. Firstly, I’ve never
put my name to a piece of writing that includes opinions I don’t actually hold,
and I never would. That said, some of the ways in which I express myself are
cases of gilding the lily. Some element of dramatic licence, or exaggeration,
may be deemed necessary to get the point across. Also, when I use my life and
experiences for illustrative reasons, this is not done gratuitously; it is done
because that is how I remember and interpret the narrative of my life. Some
people who are part of this narrative will interpret the events in question
very differently and that’s the case whether we’re talking about my childhood
family traumas or the conduct of the self-mythologising NUFC super fans with
the on-line merchandising operations that take the eyes out of weak fools with
more money than sense.
6.) Do you love football? How has the commercial development of
the game impacted on your relationship with the sport?
Oh, I dearly love the game, whether watching or
playing. The simple beauty and immediacy of emotions can never be replicated,
though I adore cricket even more. Cricket is poetry and football is prose, it
seems to me. I must admit the endless, rampant commercialism has sickened me of
the professional game. While I appreciate Manchester City and their ilk play a
stunning version of the sport I grew up with, equal only to my dim memories of
Brazil 70, Holland 74 or Keegan’s NUFC, I know they are a ridiculous construct.
Major clubs are buoyant on the back of bloodstained petrodollars that support
the continued existence and spectacular achievements of monolithic corporations
with the turnover of a small European country. Meanwhile, the grassroots game
is on the bones of its arse; Benfield play our home games in front of 150 or
so. Within a mile radius, three or four pubs each have that many punters in
them on any given Saturday afternoon, glugging cooking lager and watching
sluggish streams of Burnley v Fulham, or some other game they have no emotional
investment in. That sort of passive consumerism really does disgust me.
7.) Premiership match day or a non-league game?
As my beloved Benfield are non-league, that is
where my heart is. Also, I am chair of the Tyneside Amateur League, which
operates at Tier 15 of the English football pyramid, so you’ll understand where
I’m coming from. That said, I’m thinking of going to Newcastle v Wolves, which
has been declared a game to boycott by the super fan hotheads who’ve elected
themselves to non-existent roles of supporter supremos, as it is on a Sunday,
purely to boo Benitez, who I think is an absolute con artist, phoning it in
while reversing the charges and doing anything to avoid any of the blame
falling on him.
8.) Music appears to be a huge part of your life. Care to talk
to us a little about your main interests in this area?
The question I alluded to before, about
expressing a preference for either music or football is not one I’ve ever been
able to answer with any certainty at any point in my life. I was brought up on
my dad’s collection of The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers. From there I
discovered Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Lindisfarne in my pre-teenage years.
Post-punk happened when I was 13 and it changed my life, as other than Wire or
The Buzzcocks, punk left me cold as it sounded like speeded-up glam rock. I’ve
spent my life listening to anything and everything, but with a gun against my
head, I’d say Teenage Fanclub are the greatest band of all time, with The
Wedding Present, British Sea Power, Dinosaur Jr, Shellac, Trembling Bells and
Godspeed You! Black Emperor up there as well. However, the eccentric love I
have for late 60s / early 70s folk and prog rock is an utterly guilt-free
pleasure. I love dub, free jazz and anything fairly extreme. I hate dad rock,
lad rock, AOR rock and stadium rock. Not keen on dance or electronica either.
Other than news, football and the odd documentary, I don’t watch telly; I
listen to music instead.
9.) Your piece in the last issue of The Football Pink (issue #21) entitled Away Is Where the Heart Is was a fascinating and engaging piece of
nostalgia. The piece felt a lot warmer than much of your output. Is it fair to
say that your writing is often quite spiky with regards to its tone?
I’ve touched on this before. I believe my
responsibility is to make people think, which is why I adopt a provocative
tone, when appropriate. If the reader becomes angry and wants to argue with me,
brilliant! That’s exactly what I want; the real enemy of ordinary people is
slothful, indolent thought and inaction. Of course, when I’m in a reactive
mood, it is because I can forgive ignorance, because not everyone can know
everything, but I can’t forgive stupidity; woolly thinking, logical imprecisions,
arrogant solipsism and all other kinds of indefensible solecisms need to be met
head on, with brute, intellectual force.
I’d love to be more nostalgic, but there are so many things wrong with
the world that I need to make people aware of that I simply don’t have time to
develop my softer side. Interestingly, in my fiction, those short pieces where
I’ve explored a gentler, more affectionate tone, have proved to be popular. Perhaps
I should read them to DFLA members rather than correcting their appalling
grammar and bare faced lies on social media.
10.)How
angry is Ian Cusack?
In all honesty, unless I think of how dismal our
world has become (Food Banks, Brexit, Poppy Fascism and all other
manifestations of authoritarian populism), I am as blissfully happy as I’ve
ever been in my life. Just give me a subject, word count and deadline and I’ll
be your pal forever.
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