Get along to Stills Automat to meet Budgie – one day only!
Meet Peter Clarke (aka Budgie) at Stills Automat on Cockburn Street where he will be popping in to have his photo taken.
The Edinburgh Reporter readers may be able to persuade the rocker to have their photo taken with him in Scotland's only analogue photobooth.
Budgie was an era defining drummer in the punk scene of the late 1970s. As a disenchanted teenager at art college in Liverpool he went to London, first joining the all-female group The Slits, afterwards touring with former members of The Sex Pistols and finally finding a home with The Banshees.
He has written an autobiography and will appear at Toppings at 7pm that evening to talk about his glamorous life which he recounts in The Absence.
The beating heart of this at times painfully honest account of a life often sabotaged is, of course, his long-term position as Siouxsie and The Banshees' drummer and co-writer alongside his ex-wife Siouxsie Sioux.
Their creative partnership produced some of the most seductive and celebrated pop music of the decade. Eventually, their personal relationship started to fall apart, with inevitable consequences for both bands. The Absence is bravely unflinching in its dissection of how and why this happened, and powerfully moving in its account of the angels that emerged to heal both these wounds and those of a mother's lost love.
A man and musician whose creativity and singular style came to define the goth-pop 1980s, Budgie's life is both fabulously glamorous and a cautionary tale. For the first time the story of the era's most exalted and mysterious bands has been told by one who survived inside the belly of the beast.
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The Guardian
06-08-2025
- The Guardian
I'd never wear budgie smugglers – but I did once help smuggle a budgie
Incredibly, given all the trouble in the world, we were short of an item or two on my BBC radio show recently. Someone suggested something about budgie smugglers coming back into fashion. Hardly very Reithian, is it? On the other hand, we all need a break from the dark stuff. And anyway, it turned out there was plenty in the budgie smugglers story with which to inform, educate and entertain our listeners. For a start, we needed to define the term. I'd been banging on about budgie smugglers on the radio all morning when I got a text from my mum demanding I explain what the devil these budgie smugglers were. In fact, she was so unfamiliar with the term that she spelt it phonetically using her Croatian keyboard, which renders it 'bađi smagles'. So, to be clear, we're talking men's swimwear, with bađi smagles being the tight, not-leaving-much-to-the-imagination style, as distinct from rather more modest swimming shorts which, mercifully, have become the norm. The tight ones had fallen out of favour but now, someone read somewhere, they were making a comeback. Eyewateringly tight swimming pants have been referred to as budgie smugglers for barely a quarter of a century, the description originating in a 1998 Australian television series called The Games, which satirised the 2000 Sydney Olympics. We can only wonder what kind of twisted mind came up with it, or indeed what kind of gentleman's arrangement they saw that looked as if there might have been a couple of budgerigars down there. I for one have never seen such a thing and certainly have no desire to. I can't get past the thought of some fella, engaged in rearranging things, inadvertently releasing a couple – or would it be three? – relieved budgies, freeing them to live better lives. If the fashion comeback is for real, it'll be good news for the Australian brand, Budgy Smuggler. Shame on them for the spelling but we'll let that pass. Their website says they are 'On a mission to free the thighs of the world'. That's an interestingly demure take on the purpose of their gear. I've always taken these things to be less about freeing anything and more about a) packing things up rather too snugly and b) showing off what there is to be proud of, including, but not restricted to, the thighs. I, needless to say, am very much a swimming shorts man. If you'd given the matter any thought, I hope you'd have reached this conclusion. Take any man, and it's clear which way they lean when it comes to swimwear. Ronaldo's a smuggler all day long. I'd be staggered if a single pair of swimming shorts had ever seen the inside of his wardrobe. Lionel Messi, on the other hand, shorts all the way. Have a Google of this and you'll see I'm right. There is, to be fair, the odd shot of Ronaldo in shorts, but only in ones tailored tight enough to suggest that some kind of smuggling operation is indeed under way. Messi, though, is 100% standard shorts, bless him. In politics I have our prime minister in shorts, as is only right and proper. The only male member of the cabinet I can see in smugglers is Hilary Benn, for some reason. Across the floor, I can imagine Robert Jenrick keeping him company. Nigel Farage, shorts. Lee Anderson, definitely smugglers. Feel free to play this game at home. On the radio I was enjoying myself no end with all this when a listener texted in alleging that in France, budgie smugglers are mandatory! How I laughed! But it's true. Jump into a public pool wearing shorts and you'll be hauled right back out. Hygiene reasons, apparently. I'd have thought that shorts, allowing a bit more freedom and ventilation, would be healthier. But the logic is that you might have been in shorts all day before getting in the pool, whereas you're unlikely, even in France, to have been a man about town in your contrebandiers de perruches. You may by now be wondering if my level of interest in all this is entirely healthy. Well, the truth is, I once had a hand in a budgie-smuggling operation – that is, the smuggling of an actual budgie. I'm not proud of it, but it's time to come clean. In mitigation, this was in the 1970s and I was but a child. Auntie Lily and Uncle Sid, Lily being my grandad's sister, had long lived in Perth, Australia. But now they decided to live out their days back in Birmingham. They brought with them a budgerigar called Timmy. Timmy was a most excellent budgie. He'd tilt his head in a sweet way when whistled to, say the odd word, and fly around the front room without crapping everywhere. They loved Timmy. We all loved Timmy. But Lily and Sid didn't love life back in Birmingham, so resolved to return to Perth. Disastrously though, the rules were such that Timmy wouldn't be allowed back into Australia. Disaster. Lily – pardon the slight pun – hatched a plan. She'd smuggle Timmy back to Oz in her handbag. The Timmy training commenced. Day by day we accustomed him to ever longer periods of handbag time which, being a prince among budgies, he soon got the hang of. During the flight Lily planned to feed him and let him out for a quick flap when she went to the toilet. Departure day dawned. The jeopardy was very real. If, God forbid, they were rumbled and Timmy was to be confiscated, Lily even had with her something with which to euthanise him. Quite where she sourced this budgie poison, I know not. But off they went on a flight that still feels like the longest flight I've ever taken, even though I wasn't on it. The wait was awful. Then a three-word telegram arrived: 'All is well.' Oh, the joy. And the three of them lived happily ever after. I am now bracing myself for letters about some ghastly avian health calamity that subsequently came to pass down under, with the finger pointing at our Timmy as budgie zero. Please let it not be so. If it is, as my penance, I'll wear nothing but budgie smugglers, in and out of the water, for the rest of my days. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Herald Scotland
20-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
He was married to punk princess Siouxsie. Here's how it all went wrong
Today he comes into the room still looking like the rock star he was. The hair is no longer bleached, there are a few more lines on his face, but he is recognisably Budgie - the drummer with Siouxsie and the Banshees, half of The Creatures, also with Siouxsie, and for a time, of course, Siouxsie's husband. But the man in front of me is less rock god today, more human being. He's soft-spoken, open, honest. Budgie is on a book tour which started in Glasgow last night. Yesterday morning he took his kids to school in Berlin, walked the dog and then caught a flight to Scotland to talk about his fine new memoir The Absence. Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie And The Banshees in 1980. She was known as Janet to her band (Image: Michael Putland)It's the story of a kid from St Helens who moved to Liverpool, became a member of the band Big in Japan alongside Jane Casey, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford (later of Frankie Goes to Hollywood) Bill Drummond (The KLF) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds), then joined The Slits for a short time before becoming a Banshee. Almost inevitably, it's a book about rock and roll and excess in all its forms. But it's also the story of an 11-year-old boy who loses his mother and how that shapes all that follows. And it's about alcohol and substance abuse, and about the breakdown of his marriage to Siouxsie. As such, it's a book full of pain. But there's love in it too. He has rebuilt his life, remarried, become a dad, after all. But for a long time he was a lost boy. Pop music is full of them. Both on the page and in person it's clear that the death of his mother is the key event in Budgie's life. 'The trauma of somebody dying changed everything,' he admits. The whole world didn't feel the same. I had to figure out as a young boy what does all this mean? It meant less than anything. I was already going, 'God doesn't exist.' I thought, 'Well, sod it, I can do anything I want because she'll never know what I do.' And that left me feeling totally bereft.' Music was to become his attempted escape route. And a place to hide. In a band, he points out, 'you don't have to do anything that is too close to reality.' For a while at least. Reality, though, has a nasty way of catching up with you. It was Holly Johnson who gave him the name Budgie - a throwback to when the young Peter Clarke used to breed them. Now, he says, 'my wife calls me Peter. The people in Liverpool call me Pete, because I was Pete before I was Budgie. Mostly in the business they call me Budgie.' He joined the Banshees in 1979. The band had just imploded. Siouxsie and bassist Steven Severin were the only ones still standing at the time. Scottish guitarist John McGeoch was also hired and the new line-up set the course for the band's imperial phase on albums such as Kaleidoscope, Juju and A Kiss in the Dreamhouse at the start of the 1980s. McGeoch would later be fired because of his issues with drinking. He was initially replaced by The Cure's Robert Smith - who would call Siouxsie by her middle name, Janet. Budgie, meanwhile, had become an integral part of the band and eventually Siouxsie's partner in music - in side-project The Creatures - and in life. Read more Siouxsie, who had emerged from the Bromley Contingent at the beginning of punk, would become alt-rock's ultimate Gothy ice queen. But who was the woman Budgie met when he joined the band? 'Within the band she's Janet. And Robert picked up on that straight away. 'Oh, come on Janet.' And she hated it in a way, but she loved it because it's teasing. 'She would say things with all seriousness and tell people to f*** off and then go, 'Heh, heh, heh, they fell for it.' 'Some of the guys at Polydor, they loved it. 'You know what Siouxsie said to me? She told me to f*** off.'' And she clearly made an impression on Smith, Budgie suggests. 'He leaves with the hair different, crimped and make-up. He took the look.' But behind the make-up and the backcombed hair and the attitude, Siouxsie, like Budgie, was a child of grief. Her bacteriologist father had been an alcoholic and died when she was just 14. 'Siouxsie does say somewhere we both had that loss in common,' he admits, 'but what I realised was we never really talked about it. We never sat down and said what it was like. 'In her family they had a man killing himself. He was drinking himself to death. And everyone reacted in a different way. But it was pushing them apart, making them all isolated. 'When my mum died we did a similar thing. But it wasn't aggressive because she hadn't done anything, so we were tender. But we didn't know how to embrace and help. We were also isolated. 'When Siouxsie came up to see my family in St Helens, she'd say, 'You're all so quiet and placid.' When I'd go down to their house it was crazy, it was Abigail's Party gone mad. And Siouxsie loved Abigail's Party because she could relate to it.' Budgie married Siouxsie and the couple moved to France - with disastrous consequences for their relationship (Image: Redferns)The problem for both of them was that they carried their traumatic pasts with them and a relationship that started in passion evolved into an unhealthy form of co-dependency, a situation exacerbated when they moved to a French chateau in the early 1990s. 'We were told it was a dangerous place to be,' Budgie acknowledges. 'We were isolated. My drinking was getting worse.' Dangerous even. 'Yeah, I had to take risks. I didn't understand how to just be. I enjoyed walking the knife edge, literally and metaphorically. I took risks physically, as everybody does if they have a binge drink. But then you have to grow up. You have to lose all the things that you think you need and see what it feels like to start again.' It would take a while for him to get to that point. He and Siouxsie had been in France about three years when he finally stopped drinking. In its wake, he essentially became a househusband. 'I looked after the garden, I did all the driving, I did the shopping and then I learned skills on the computer making Anima Animus [the second album by The Creatures, released in 1999].' Whatever issues the couple were facing they never addressed them. 'We didn't discuss or talk, we just got on with the next album, the next project. I think I just burnt out.' More than that, he adds, 'I had actually ceased to be anything in the relationship.' And though he had stopped drinking, Siouxsie hadn't. It's almost inevitable that it would end badly. The book climaxes with an account of Siouxsie loudly demanding to be let into his room at four in the morning, then physically attacking him while screaming 'I'll f****** kill you.' It's maybe significant that these few pages are written in the third person. When I bring it up he shifts between trying to understand and explain what happened while also wanting to acknowledge that it did. 'I don't blame Siouxsie. If I look at it and I examine it I'm in danger of condoning it and denying my right to speak about it. My nature is, 'I shouldn't talk about that.' But I feel I had to give voice to myself in that situation.' You were being attacked, Budgie. 'And yet I was still being careful that she didn't injure herself. I wasn't sure when it was going to stop, and then it stopped. And it wasn't just one night. That particular incident was one night, but there were other …' Read more He pauses, resets, tries to tell the other side of the story. 'The voice outside the door was from someone who was also lost. It's not that she was an ogre prowling on me. 'I've been that drinker. And then living with it, living with the drink, its unpredictability, you're on eggshells.' The couple divorced in 2007 and he admits he was lost for a while. But he's built a new life in Berlin. Writing the book, he says, has been both traumatic and therapeutic. And somewhere in the middle of all this, he adds, 'my mum came back. That's what happened. In terms of … I felt like she's not gone anywhere. 'It's nothing strange. It's just a very reassuring, comforting thing. How could the love die?' Which means? The lost boy has been found, perhaps. 'I was in danger of losing myself," Budgie admits. ' I realised I didn't need to risk losing myself anymore.' The Absence by Budgie is published by White Rabbit, £25
The Herald Scotland
15-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
'Life & joy & swearing' - Del Amitri tour diary is unexpected thrill
New Modern, £22 August 28 This summer is a good one for music memoirs from ageing pop stars. As well as The Absence, Budgie's account of his life in Siouxsie and the Banshees there's also Kevin Rowland's self-flagellating memoir about his time in Dexys Midnight Runners (Bless Me Father, Ebury Spotlight, £25). But if you can wait until the end of August it's worth considering The Tremolo Diaries. At first glance it might not seem promising - a tour diary of Justin Currie's band Del Amitri as they schlep around America alongside Semisonic and Barenaked Ladies, and then around the UK and Europe in support of Simple Minds (who come out of this account very well, it has to be said). But there's much more to this than an ageing musician's grumbling about bad hotels and bad food. Because in these pages Currie is coming to terms with his own Parkinson's diagnosis - what he calls the Ghastly Affliction; his tremor, meanwhile, is named Gavin - while also dealing with the fact that the love of his life is now in a care home. Read more And yet for all the pain and fear and heartache in these pages, it's also full of life and joy and copious swearing. I laughed out loud more than once. Currie is realistic about his condition but not maudlin about it and he has retained his very Scottish ability to be entertainingly angry at things that annoy him. The result is a thrill of a book and a great marker for new music publisher New Modern. Oh, and if BBC Scotland ever wants to make a programme that people might actually want to watch, just send Justin and a camera crew around the art galleries of Europe. His art criticism here is by turns caustic and funny. He has all the potential to be TV's new Sister Wendy.
