Small boy begins breeding budgerigars in Liverpool, makes enough to buy a drum kit and becomes the power behind Big In Japan, the Slits, the Creatures and Siouxsie and the Banshees. And one half of punk rock’s most famous couples. The immensely engaging Budgie has finally written his memoir, ‘The Absence’, and talks to us from Berlin about …

… are bands only as good as their drummers?

… Siouxsie, the Ice Queen goth-in-waiting who was actually “a cackling crazy tomboy from Chiselhurst”.

… playing Shadows instruments in a nightclub cabaret, aged 13.

… the gnawing pain of not being asked to play Live Aid – “we just weren’t part of that all-pals-together-in-the-wonderful word of music”.

… “World Exclusive!”: seeing Bill Nighy in a band in the ‘70s singing Rosalita.

… the Apache and Wipeout drum patterns in the rhythms of the Slits and Banshees.

… in praise of drummers: Bill Buford, Phil Collins, the Glitter Band, Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley.

… the peculiar world of the teenage budgerigar breeder.

… the dynamic of the Slits – “Palmolive, off-the-scale crazy”.

… ‘You're The Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk’ by Burke Shelley’s Budgie, Humble Pie’s ‘Rockin’ the Fillmore’ and when you only have one cassette in your car and it’s ‘Wonderworld’ by Uriah Heep.

… Siouxsie’s Jim Morrison fixation and lack of ambition.

… the advantage of being in a band with a girl singer.

… and the likelihood of a Banshees’ reunion.

Order Budgie’s memoir ‘the Absence’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Absence-Memoirs-Banshee-Drummer/dp/1399621564

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