anotherplanet. It seemed a pretty convincing argument, and I was having it. But then I did also like the argument that it was a bit of a blag by the Americans to cover up some nuclear experiment – that they would rather have the general public half believing there was a UFO cover-up than the Russians finding out what was really going on, which was that they were developing some new spy plane technology or something. So for a while I was more inclined to believe that perhaps it was a US military cover-up of some kind and the whole alien thing was just a smokescreen.
Then I saw another documentary which showed some other evidence and a new way of looking at it, which made me think again and come back round to thinking, ‘Nah, something definitely happened at Roswell. There was definitely some contact with an alien race that those fuckers in charge don’t want us knowing about.’ Nurses who worked there later came out and swore blind that they were there when autopsies were done on little bodies. So that’s where I’m at now with Roswell. I’m back to thinking that something definitely went down there.
When the US started their ‘Star Wars’ programme under Ronald Reagan, obviously your average man on the street got even more interested in what was happening out there in space. Now they’ve abandoned it, but I don’t think that’s stopped the general public’s interest.
I think young kids are particularly fascinated by UFOs. Especially now they’re not being told, like Iwas, that there is no life out there; they’re being taught that water has been found on Mars, and that there may be life out there somewhere and that there are planets similar to Earth, that could sustain life, being discovered all the time.
I talk to my kids about UFOs and whether there is other life out there, just as my dad used to talk to me when I was a kid. I’ve talked to them about what I’ve seen. Their response was, ‘Why were they here, Dad?’ I said, ‘They’re probably coming to check up on us, to see how we’re doing, to make sure we’re all right.’ And they were happy with that. I also talk to my wife Joanne about it, and she’s very much of the same opinion as me that there is definitely life out there.
If you look back at history, most things that humans have thought about have gone on to be invented. Most things that you think about become reality. Someone thought about photography one day and then it became real. Someone thought about moving pictures one day and it became real. Someone thought about landing on the moon, it became real.
That sort of stuff fascinates me – how the mind works and changes reality. Like the cat-in-the-box theory. It’s called the Schrödinger’s cat theory. It’s a bit too complex for me to explain, but look it up – it’s to do with our influence on everything around us and how we affect reality.
I think we’re all aerials or antennae in a way, and we all tune into and pick up signals from people who are similar to us, and we attract people who think in the same way and believe the same sort of things. That’s how we end up getting drawn to certain people. With Happy Mondays, our drummer Gaz Whelan was always bang into UFO sort of stuff, and we would chat about it for hours when we were on tour. Bez also has a really inquisitive mind. I’m sure you all know the boggle-eyed caricature of Bez, which everyone loves, but anyone who’s ever sat down and had a chat with Bez, when he’s not off his head, will tell you that he’s a really intelligent and inquisitive guy. He contradicts himself all the time, on everything and anything, often in the same sentence. But he’s an interested, and interesting, dude.
Like I said earlier, Kermit from Black Grape is also fascinated by things like this, which is one of the things we bonded over. Well, along with the fact that we both had quite healthy drug habits at the time. Too Nice Tom, a good friend of mine who is a boxing trainer