Eddie Lock

I didn’t realise until I looked at your LinkedIn account that we went to the same secondary school. Under the name of the school on your profile, you’ve written: “cheated in every exam.” Is that true? Oh yeah, I cheated loads. I did in everything apart from art – I couldn’t really cheat in that. Did you ever get found out? There was one music exam where I thought I’d get an A because I basically copied my mate’s paper from start to finish, however at our school, music was the only subject where the papers were marked internally by the teacher. He knew I was crap at music and that I mucked about, so he gave me a U. The ironic thing is that since then I’ve been on Top of the Pops and had three Top 40 hits, so I’ve made a good living from music. I can now play guitar, violin and do a bit on the drums. So you’re a self-taught musician. Yeah, I just picked it up as I went along. And going back a bit further – what was your childhood like? Do you know what, that’s a really good question. I thought I’d had an amazing childhood, however when I started therapy I discovered it was actually quite abusive. My therapist told me that, out of all her clients, she thought I’d probably had the most traumatic childhood she’d come across. Although at the time, nothing seemed wrong to you? That’s right. I remember having great Christmases and I loved my mum and dad dearly. My dad, who has passed now, heavily verbally abused me as a child. Although I didn’t see it at the time, you pick up on your parents’ behaviour, and the things I was exposed to meant I didn’t want relationships when I was young. I’d sabotage every situation to keep my independence, and my main companion became my addiction to alcohol. So later in life, you went to see a therapist and tried to unravel all of this. Yeah, I was brought up not to talk about that kind of thing though – to brush everything under the carpet – so it was difficult. I’ve come a long way since then, though. I’ve done talks with The Connor Brothers, who are ambassadors for CALM, and we also work with Mind and many other charities, raising money and awareness around mental health issues. The thing is, it’s good to talk – that’s what we encourage. Boys can cry now, and it’s good to open up. The problem for me was that I kept everything to myself. I didn’t talk about anything, and it became a dis-ease. So was it just therapy that transformed your life, or were there other things that helped? I also did a life coaching course, which took five years to complete. It’s called Landmark Worldwide, and I’m now a senior graduate. It’s given me the tools to deal with pretty much anything in life. Like AA, it’s all about love, forgiveness, taking responsibility, and acceptance – and out of that, you become a better person. When you go into it, everything revolves around your ego, and the course helps you manage that. My wife has also really helped me. She’s amazing, and she’s now a Reiki master, so we meditate together a lot. It’s been hard work, and I’m still dealing with what’s called shadow work. The key is to become really present to your shadow – your ego – and face it. So, you shouldn’t turn away from your shadow or try to ignore it? No, you have to embrace it and confront difficult situations in order to turn negatives into positives. When you’re meditating, though, other things pop up – things you’ve forgotten about or suppressed. A lot of those memories emerged during therapy and meditation. Like two confrontations I had with burglars when I was a child. I’d suppressed a lot of things like that, and confronting them again made me realise how often my parents neglected me. I remember waking up one evening and walking the streets of New York looking for them as a young boy, because they’d gone out for dinner and left me on my own.

What did your parents do? Dad was an English teacher at a local school. It was quite rough, and I remember he was miserable all the time. Mum worked at the Trebor factory in Maidstone before she later became a nurse. She worked nights at the factory, and I remember me and my brothers were always waking her up when she was trying to sleep during the day. I had a great relationship with her, however my mum and dad hated each other most of the time, which was upsetting. Home was so volatile. Although they didn’t hit each other, it was abusive – a lot of swearing. I stuck with my mum and outside of school I started doing really well buying and selling punk memorabilia. Dad saw envelopes full of cash arriving from all over the world – sometimes damaged so you could see everything from Australian dollars to Japanese yen inside. He said he wanted to invest in my business. He offered me £500, which was a lot of money then, so of course I said yes. After that, when I started having a closer relationship with him, my mum sort of turned off her love for me. At the time I didn’t realise how much that affected me and looking back it was devastating. She did that out of jealousy? Definitely. It was literally as though my dad had bought me away from her. Do you think your dad did that deliberately? I don’t think it was intentional – maybe part of him felt he could buy back his son’s attention. How old were you then? I would’ve been 12. My brother – who was two years older – handed down some singles to me, and I started really getting into selling music. I loved the Sex Pistols – not because of their music, it was because of their record covers. I was given Never Mind the Bollocks and I loved that cover. I got expelled around that time because I was wearing a Sex Pistols badge and refused to take it off – I genuinely couldn’t see what the problem was. I started going into London to see what the record shops were like and came across a shop at the back of Hanway Street, near Oxford Circus, called Rocks Off. It was mad because Shane MacGowan from The Pogues was working there – this was pre-Pogues. At the time he was in a punk band called The Nipple Erectors, which later became The Nipps, before he co-founded The Pogues. I asked Shane if there was any Sex Pistols stuff in the shop and didn’t realise he was really into them. He’s in all the early ’76 photos from The 100 Club – in the crowd, pogoing. So he said, “Yeah, I’ve got Pistols, mate – I’ve got these.” He showed me flyers from their first gigs in 1976 at The 100 Club, and telephone-box posters. I’d never seen anything like it. The manager, a guy called Stan, then said he was going out with the Sex Pistols’ secretary – this was after they’d split up – and that he had access to their office files, so he could get hold of anything. I bought as much as I could afford, took it away, and started putting adverts in Record Collector, Sounds and Melody Maker. At 13, I was buying and selling Sex Pistols memorabilia all over the world, and I’d go back every Saturday to buy more. Even though you were really young, they obviously took you seriously at the shop. Well, I could only spend a fiver at first. Then it became a tenner, and then the £500 came in – and suddenly I was a serious player, do you know what I mean? And you were managing all of this on your own? Yeah. I wrote my own adverts and sorted everything out with the magazines. I gradually got to know more people and built a network. There was no email then, so it was all done by phone and post. Most people at that time would only have had one phone at home, so that must have been hectic. Oh yeah. Every night I’d go home and from six till nine I’d be on the phone. Dad kept telling me to get off it, so eventually I started paying him to use it because I knew I could earn money from it.

I also got into selling LP’s and cassettes – this was before CDs. I’d buy them for a pound and sell them at school for three pounds, or four-fifty for a double cassette. There were two short breaks during the school day as well as lunchtime, and I’d have queues in the hallway leading up to my classroom. At first I put up a few lists of what I had in the foyer and after a year or so the whole foyer was covered with my lists. I even had to employ someone to help me at school. I’d started earning quite a lot, so I said to my dad that I fancied putting on some bands at The Kent Hall, a venue in Maidstone. I remember saying I could get a band called Doctor and the Medics for £600. Dad hadn’t heard of them, so I told him they had a record coming out called Spirit in the Sky that was going to be massive. I got him involved with another person and we were going to pay £200 each. Even though I’d provisionally booked the band, they talked themselves out of it and I had to give the date away to a venue in Tonbridge. On the night they played there, they were number one in the charts and also on Top of the Pops – I was gutted. They were on Top of the Pops the next three Thursdays, my dad would say, “Come here – they’re on again,” and I’d just walk past and go upstairs. Soon after I wanted to open a record shop and dad said he’d lend me the money and, with ten grand from him, I opened my first shop in Maidstone, called Plastic Surgery. I remember that! I found rave tickets sold really well, however it meant loads of dance-music people started coming in. That didn’t fit the vibe of the place, so we opened another shop and sold the rave tickets from there. The DJs at the raves were earning good money, and I started thinking I should get into that too. A couple of years later I started DJing, then making music. I was playing all over the world – I toured India, had residencies in Ibiza, and played with big names like Boy George and Pete Tong. At the same time we had a band called Carpe Diem, we were collaborating with Afrika Bambaataa, and I started a record label. We were playing the big clubs in London like Ministry of Sound and Back to Basics. Although it was a really exciting time, a big part of the scene was drugs, and I was on a dangerous path. How old were you then? I was about 28 or 29. When promoters asked if I could play a late set, I’d try to go on earlier so I could finish the music and then basically get off my head. Thankfully, I could see what was happening, and I was getting sick of it. Mike Oldfield left Ibiza for the same reason – there was a party every night and it just got too much. Although I had a house there, I decided to sell up so I could come home and go back to selling art and memorabilia.

…the teacher knew I was rubbish at music and always mucked about, so he gave me a U. The ironic thing is that since then, I’ve been on Top of the Pops and had three Top 40 hits.

I started selling quite a bit of art by Jamie Reid, who was with the Pistols, and one day he contacted me to say he knew I’d sold a lot of his work and asked if I’d like to be his agent. I worked with Jamie for a few years, and one day he told me he’d just finished a show with a new artist called Banksy. At the time I was thinking, who is Banksy? I looked at his work and didn’t really get it then – it wasn’t just me though. Jamie and Banksy exhibited in Glasgow 2001 and Banksy was relatively unknown. However his name kept coming up, so I started selling and collecting his work, and we’re still the biggest collector and dealer for Banksy in the South East. I’ve got so much respect for him now – he’s done so much for the art scene and urban culture. I just love him as an artist. I presume you’ve met him then? I did meet him once, yeah, however I didn’t know it was him at the time – I was told afterwards! Around that time, my music lawyers in London, Sheridans, asked if I could put on an art show for them at the top of their building. Although I managed to get eight or nine original Banksy’s for it, people still didn’t get it. The show was called Artistic Integrity, and I remember having this beautiful Banksy canvas priced at £22,000, which no one bought. It’s probably worth about £4.5 million now. That show led to the next part of my journey because Goldie was there – very celebrity-focused. That’s someone you can’t really miss at an exhibition. No, exactly. He approached me and asked if I could do the same thing for him, so I ended up managing Goldie for eight years. We did a lot together – I even remember going to 10 Downing Street with him once. I can’t imagine you wearing a regular suit. What did you wear? I’m struggling to remember, I’d been given this long black Versace jacket, and it was cold, so I probably wore that. Goldie took a load of Metalheadz stickers in with him and stuck them everywhere – under the toilets, inside drawers, all over the place. We also put on a gig at Buckingham Palace, so it was a great time, and it was another part of my life I had to leave because it was just too chaotic. You seem to land yourself in…Chaos? Yes – wonderful chaos! Well, yeah. Are you naturally drawn to that world? I hadn’t really started working on myself then. I started the Landmark course just before I left Goldie, and it was the first time I realised my life revolved around living to work rather than working to live. I had a conversation with him and told him I was working 24/7 and something had to change. Although we did some amazing stuff together, I needed a shift. Did you have a partner at that time? Yes – I was with Louise, my wife. She was my PA, so she was immersed in the chaos too. Did she play a part in your personal change? In that 24/7 lifestyle, I was making personal mistakes and I had a kind of breakdown. It catches up with you. I knew I had to change my life, and Louise had already done Landmark, so she recommended it. As soon as I started, I thought it was unbelievable. I did the course and also tried a few other healing and therapy approaches. I’m blessed that my wife is a great healer too, so we do a lot together. And have you embraced this beyond just work-life balance? Well, I hardly drink now. One of my best friends is the guitarist from the Sex Pistols and he’s in AA, so I’d never drink around him. I hardly drink anyway unless it’s a special occasion. I can see now that drinking was just a quick fix to numb myself rather than addressing my anxiety and child/teenage trauma. Unless you get to the root of your stress or anxiety, you won’t really resolve it. I’ve discovered it’s often rooted in childhood trauma – much of which we don’t even consciously know about. It’s a blind spot, and it’s only when you start delving deeper that these things come to light.

So, going full circle – do you now like the Sex Pistols? I love them. They’re my favourite band. How old were you when you started changing your mind about their music? As I said earlier, when I was given Never Mind the Bollocks, it was the cover I loved, not the music. I remember running into the garden one day and my dad asking me what I wanted to do for a career. I said I wanted to be the Sex Pistols and Dad was like, “You can’t do that”. I’ve always believed you can have anything you want if you truly believe it and the funny thing is that I’m now best friends with all of the Pistols and, to some degree, I work with them. I tour with them, sell their memorabilia, sell their art – and I have an amazing relationship with all of them and it started with me running into the garden and telling my dad I wanted to be like them. What was it about them? I was fascinated by them. Probably the swearing, the rule-breaking, the anarchy. At the time I didn’t really have a voice of my own, and the way they challenged everything just resonated. That’s why people liked them – their fashion, art and music hit at a time when people were angry about so many changes in the country. It was an unbelievable era. When you go on tour with the Pistols now, what do you do? I’m just there as a mate, really – I don’t like mixing business and pleasure! Are they still able to create the same amazing energy they’re known for? Well, they’re playing without Johnny Rotten now, so it’s different. At the moment they’re with Frank Carter from The Rattlesnakes. He’s a wonderful human being – they all are – so they create their own energy now. And you’ve still got the three original Sex Pistols: Glen Matlock, Paul Cook and Steve Jones. Steve’s an unbelievable guitarist. Noel Gallagher says he was his inspiration – and Joy Division, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet have all cited the Sex Pistols as a major influence.

And jumping from the glorious ’80s to today – what do you think of the music scene now? I think Covid killed a lot of bands just as they were emerging. In the ’90s you had great dance acts coming through, and it was the same for rock bands in the noughties. You don’t see bands breaking through in the same way now. The live scene isn’t what it used to be – however there are still loads of good bands playing this year. Linkin Park are back on the road, and so are Green Day, so let’s hope they can kick-start a new wave. So you’re now in a happier chapter of your life, where you feel more in control. I understand you do quite a bit of charity work now. Did that come from feeling it was the right time to give something back? One hundred percent. It’s important that everyone can have peace of mind. Everyone has anxiety to different degrees. Although most people can manage it, it can be really hard if you’re in a bad place. That’s when you need support, and it’s great that charities like Mind, CALM and HiS are there to help. We organise talks in different locations to encourage people to open up about their mental health, because that really can save lives. It was especially important during Covid, which obviously affected a lot of people’s mental health. And how was Covid for you? Well, I was kept busy with work because the mail-order side of the business went through the roof. Everyone was stuck at home, thinking of ways to do up their houses, so I was lucky in that sense, however my dad also passed away around that time, and we weren’t allowed to see him, which was really hard – especially when politicians were having affairs and parties at the same time. I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist, so I’m definitely angry and sceptical about a lot of what happened. In that case, let’s end controversially by asking the conspiracy theorist inside you what your thoughts are about the moon landing. Ha ha – well, borrowing a word from that amazing Pistols album cover I fell in love with as a young boy… that was definitely bollocks!

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