Question:
noel trainers interview?
Answer:GA -I just wanted to talk to you about trainer culture, specifically in the
UK. Over the last 15 - 20 years many would say that Hip-Hop has been a
driving force in global culture and everybody, when they talk about trainer
culture, seems to relate it back to hip-hop whereas in the UK you've got a
trainer culture that's pretty much unique to this country that didn't really
happen anywhere else.
NG - I don't think it was a UK thing, I think it was exclusive to the North
West. When I first moved down here with a couple of holdalls full of adidas
trainers and I was checking into hotels I'd e like "Don't lose me fucking
trainers." They'd be going "What is it with you mancunians and trainers?"
That's when it first stuck me, I don't think it even came as far as London
to be honest with you. Cos we were obsessed with it up in Manchester. It was
a football thing as well, really, in the eighties it was exclusive to adidas
and I don't know why that was. I don't know whether they were...or maybe
they were...maybe it's just... I don't know whether it was the price of them
or whether they were more readily available, but nike weren't really a force
then in the eighties. They weren't doing anything that was considered street
culture, I mean they still aren't as far as I'm concerened anyway. It's all
gimmicks isn't it? It's all things you can pump up and walk on air and
fucking ski on sea with and all that shit but they look shit to me.
GA - Yeah, cos when I go back up north, I always get lads coming up to me
going "why don't you get adidas to reissue this, why don't you get them to
reissue that?" and the thing is in order for adidas to reissue it, the shoe
has to have the support of the product managers in more than one country and
a lot of the products that are relevant in the UK might not have that same
relevance in say Italy or Germany.
NG - Yeah totally yeah
GA - In the same way that a Superstar is a basketball shoe but when a kid
sees a shell toe he associates it with far more than basketball- he might
know it was originally designed for playing basketball but probably
associates it with hip-hop. The same way that an indoor super is an old
fashioned squash shoe to someone from a sports company but to a kid up north
it's like "yeah, this is a shoe that everybody wore on the football terraces
back in the early 80s." So are you convinced that the connection between the
football terraces and trainers began in the North West?
NG - I mean saying that I would be biased saying that cos that's where I
grew up. All I can relate it to is when I first moved to London or even when
I was a roadie and we used to come down to London when I was in me twenties
and stuff like that, nobody would stop you in the street and say "where'd
you get them trainers from ?" I remember going to Argentina and getting a
pair of adidas Marathon in navy blue with white stripes, this is years ago,
and it was literally the minute I walked out of the airport somebody pulled
up in a car- "Where did you get those from?"
and I said "Argentina"
and they go "where's that?" cos they thought it was a shop! I said, "its in
South America isn't it"
Down here they don't seem to get it, maybe it's because when I moved down
here I was living in North London, which is a bit posh anyway, maybe if I'd
have gone down the East End it might have been a bit different.
GA - I wanted to talk about some of your earlier memories of getting into
trainers. For me, the first pair of trainers I got were from a shoe shop and
weren't branded. The first pair of adidas trainers I really remember getting
were adidas kick.
NG - That's my first pair - adidas kick.
GA - Then I got, erm, "Power Tunis" (both laugh) which was like a black
footy trainer and then onto SRS, Samba. I was thinking back through early
trainers I wore last night and I realised that because I used to play
football as a kid that the priority was getting trainers that could stand up
to regularly kicking a ball about. I wore a lot of black leather trainers
because I used to play football so much and if I'd got suede trainers and
played football they would have lasted about 5mins.
NG - Well, I remember the first pair of adidas shoes I got weren't trainers
actually, they were a pair of adidas football boots and they were black
leather and they had like a sky bluish molded sole and the first pair I had
after that were adidas kick, I didn't get them from a shop, I bought them
off a lad in primary school cos he had them and they didn't fit him so my
mam bought them off his mam. I suppose it started becoming an obsession when
you were old enough to go to the match on your own and everyone had adidas.
Adidas were massive, massive, massive in the North West- huge. And in the
first division it seemed to be only scousers and mancs who... and Leeds as
well. When we drew Leeds in the cup, all the hooligans were wearing adidas.
GA - Yeah cos I remember the thing with samba (they call them Samba Super
now) - there was a time when nearly every lad I knew must have owned a pair.
NG - I hated them though, I always hated them, I couldn't stand them- that
big white thing on the toe man always got on me tits.
GA - As I remember Puma G Vilas and California were the only time Puma had
any credibility as far as they lasted 3 months and then I remember all the
adidas trainers with the pegs coming out.- LA Trainers came out and I
remember getting SRS cos everyone else had already got hold of LA Trainer
and I got a pair of SRS. Then it went into like all the sort of suede stuff,
I used to go into Manchester to shop and remember Gazelles being massive and
there was another suede range that we used to call 'poor mans gazelles'.
Shoes like Madeira, Monaco and Samoa (not the same silhouette as the current
adidas Samaoa re-issue which dates back to the 70s). They were all suede
with like a plastic sole on them and I remember getting them in the sale
from JD for like £12.99 reduced from £18.99 (Gazelles were £24.99) - it was
the same shaped shoe but they did them in all different colours of suede. I
remember going into Manchester and picking up trainers up from JD, Gansgear
and the underground market. Where were you did your shopping for shoes in
the early eighties?
NG - Yeah, Oasis centre in the underground market, it wasn't actually
underground it was the bit at the top, and they used to sell...what was the
t-shirts with the penguin on?
GA - Munsingwear
NG - That's 'em. That was all they used to sell and fucking wrangler brown,
flared cords and they used to have about maybe, in stock, about a dozen
pairs of adidas trainers and they were always, I always remember them having
the Dublins - toffee coloured sole, blue suede with red stripes and it was
just in there really and I mean, I don't think, in the eighties it wasn't
really a massive thing, I mean trainers is fucking big business now, it wasn
't then, it wasn't even, trainers weren't really... you'd never see an
advert on the telly for a trainer back in the eighties, ever. Like now,
adidas spend a couple of million quid or fucking £500 on an advert to get
David Beckham to sit in a car for 30 seconds and it's an advert. But back
then it was all word of mouth and if you had a cool pair of adidas on you
got the looks in the street man.
GA - Cos the guy who ran the Oasis shop was a City fan wasn't he?
NG - He was yeah, that's where I claim we got our name from. Liam always
comes up with another dull story that he saw it on a poster somewhere, and
it's like "Shut up man." But that was a wicked place to go, we used to wear
these levis yellow checked shirts, they were yellow with like a sort of red
check, brown wrangler flared cords and any adidas you could get, Nike didn't
even exist then.
GA - Yeah, it's funny to hear you talk about the way trainers are now in
comparison to how it was then cos I remember moving to Manchester in 1988, I
got on a college course in Manchester at the time and I used to wear
trainers and anoraks and students would call people like me "townies," cos
students in Manchester at that time were wearing Smiths t-shirts and
overcoats...
NG - We used to go to Manchester uni, when the bands you'd be into would
come and play the uni and if you wore what we wore they'd never let you in.
If you turned up with like an anorak on and a pair of flares and a pair of
adidas trainers, fucking half stoned or summat, they'd say "No, Students
only tonight" just because for some reason they thought you looked rough,
don't know why.
GA - If never ceases to amaze me, it's taken on this fashionable connotation
but at that time it was seen as being...I wouldn't say dangerous, but kind
of like an underclass thing.
NG - It's the same, without trying to use the word ghetto or anything like
that, but people from council estates- that's what they wore. It's as simple
as that. So you can call them the projects or whatever in America, it was
council estate wear. It's as simple as that.
GA - And what about going abroad for trainers? One of your mates Chris, who
Liams mentioned to me, used to get his clothes from all over. I know up our
way there was a big culture of people going out to Switzerland, Austria,
Germany to get hold of adidas trainers...
NG - Scandinavia as well. Ian Brown used to travel out there all the time
with Cressa, although I don't know whether it was to buy trainers or not.
But I never left the country until I became a roadie, I remember going to
America and being shocked that they didn't have anything there that you
couldn't get in Manchester. I was going there thinking, "That's it, I'm
gonna fucking spend every penny I've got on these trainers that no-one else
has got," but they didn't have that much adidas, it was all reebok and nike.
Then we went to eastern Europe - adidas tracksuit tops like you've never
seen before...ever. I mean, I've got one at home and it's pink ...
