Howard Marks has been on the road for many, many years, first as the busiest marijuana dealer in the world and, for the last two decades, as a one-man show telling tales of derring-do in the dope world.
But his Friday night concert at the Forum in London was special. He has been diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer so this was a chance for his fans to pay homage and his friends in the music business to rally round to raise funds for his treatment.
The whippet-thin punk poet John Cooper Clarke, observing that this was “not an entirely happy occasion” told a disbelieving and appreciative audience: “I’ve been piling on the pounds since I stopped taking drugs.”
This had led in Manchester – “where taking drugs is compulsory” – to cries of “get back on drugs, you fat fuck!” and a poem with that title. Observing that “getting old is a pain in the arse”, he recited Bedblocker Blues followed by the marginally more romantic: “I’ve Fallen in Love with My Wife.”
The mood of the night changed as Welsh male voice choir Eschoir, dressed all in black, sang a glorious version of the Welsh national anthem. More than a whiff of marijuana floated through the packed auditorium as a large Welsh contingent in the audience joined in. Then, to rapturous applause, on came Howard.
“Twenty years ago, when I was released from prison, I made a promise to all those poor fuckers I left behind that I would do whatever I could to legalise marijuana,” he told the audience to cheers. To accomplish this, he said, he had stood for parliament without success. He had also failed as a dope dealer - “a successful dealer gets away with it”.
He then enraptured the audience – mainly young but with a smattering of greybeards – with his account of how he had once applied for the job of the government’s “drugs tsar” at a salary of £73,000 a year.
“It doesn’t pay like the old game but it’s not bad for a straight job.” Being a tsar he suggested, as a picture of Ivan the Terrible appeared on a screen behind him, would certainly have been promotion from being a “drugs baron” – as he was more often known.
In his unsuccessful application for the job, he had pointed out that he met all of the “core skills” required, from knowledge of the drugs industry to experience in running a large organisation. “I did run the biggest marijuana organisation in the world,” he said, to loud cheers, mainly from people too young ever to have been his customers.
He spoke briefly about his cancer treatment, saying that “drugs and alcohol are the two things that you’re allowed” (more cheers.)
But the loudest applause of the night came when he announced his simple solution to the drugs problem: “Just make it all legal!” And, with a final “thank you very much and God bless”, the man also known as Mr Nice, the title of his bestselling book and film of the same name, was gone.
His set came early in the show so that he could enjoy the rest of it. This included Cerys Matthews singing a rousing version of Ring of Fire and Take a Whiff on Me. Alabama 3, loyal supporters of Marks over the years, sang Folsom Prison Blues and Peace in the Valley for the man from the Valleys.
Rhys Ifans, who played Marks in the film, thanked everyone for “showing love to Howard” and the Super Furry Animals took the show through to Saturday morning. A night to remember.