The story of Billy Childish, a tormented British punk icon: ‘Professional art kills art’

He has a noose tattooed on his left arm. He paints pictures of gallows. He named his publishing house and record label “Hangman.” And he has songs titled One Day You Die (2007) and You Make Me Die (1986). But there’s nothing macabre about him. In fact, he laughs at everything… and at everyone.

For this singer, guitarist, songwriter and poet, tragedy and comedy go hand in hand. And he expresses this in thousands of paintings, hundreds of poems and his more than a thousand songs, in styles ranging from punk-rock and garage to rhythm and blues, beat and folk. They’re collected on over 100 albums recorded over almost half a century, with bands including The Pop Rivets, The Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, Thee Headcoats, Thee Headcoatees, The Buff Medways and The Musicians of the British Empire.

The man we’re talking about is 66-year-old Steve Hamper. He’s also known as William Ivy Loveday, Guy Hamper and, above all, as Billy Childish. Born in Chatham, in the English county of Kent, he’s an artist dedicated to his craft. And he rejects the commercialization of art: “Professional football kills football, professional art kills art,” he maintains, in an email interview with EL PAÍS.

Between October 9 and 11, Childish headlined the Funtastic Festival in Benidorm, Spain, with Thee Headcoats. And, back in 2024, he was the subject of To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorized Unauthorized History of Billy Childish. He agreed to provide all the necessary materials — letters, photos and videos — to author Ted Kessler… on the condition that he didn’t have to read the book.

The British artist — who, in songs like You Make Me Die, affirms that “your ambition and success / is what I detest” — is starting to receive increasing attention. And he isn’t bothered by it. He only feels aversion when galleries or record labels have expectations about what he should or shouldn’t do. “I’ve never signed a contract, not even when I was 16 [working] as a stonemason’s apprentice. So, I’m totally free,” he says.

This must be true. The biography portrays Childish as a man who’s untouched by what the market dictates. In his youth, the artist dated the British designer Tracey Emin (now a millionaire). He’s always been a guy who does whatever he wants, without wasting a second thinking about the repercussions… or the money.

“He taught me what it means to be committed to the truth, no matter how painful it may be [...] I’m not sure there’s anyone else who can do that with so little ego,” Kessler notes. Long ago, the biographer — who used to work for the music magazine New Musical Express (NME) — had a Thee Headcoats song titled (We Hate The Fuckin’) N.M.E. on his answering machine.

A workaholic and a Luddite at the same time — with a fiercely imperfect and authentic style — Childish is the closest thing to AI’s nemesis. He explains this bluntly: “My work belongs down low, close to the ground, to instinct and the elemental. I believe in homemade music, homemade art and homemade cooking.”

With his bands, he affirms, he seeks to project “strength and humanity,” drawing on influences such as Link Wray, The Kinks, Bo Diddley, The Troggs, Son House, Downliners Sect, The Sonics and The Who. And, while his most recent source of inspiration is Bob Dylan, as a musician, painter, or writer, he hasn’t changed much since his beginnings in the 1970s. “I still love the same things: Kurt Schwitters, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Delacroix, Hans Fallada, John Fante, etc.,” he lists.

With unbridled honesty, he’s always used his personal experiences as raw material in his work. He’s channelled all of his emotions into it — his desire, his rage, his madness, his boredom — as well as the most idiotic fun, or the most brutal violence. For example, in 1992, for the cover of a single titled Pedophile, he used a real photo of a “friend” of his parents named Norman, who sexually abused him when he was nine years old.

Punk in the shipyards

Childish grew up in Chatham, one of the most important shipyards of the declining British Empire. He worked there for a few months as a teenager, and he felt so alienated that it led him to make a collection of 600 drawings titled Hell’s Barracks. The job didn’t last long, because after hearing God Save the Queen (1977) by the Sex Pistols, he decided to smash his hand with a sledgehammer to avoid returning to the shipyard. He went on the dole and dedicated his time to doing only what inspired him, even if it meant subsisting on sliced bread and tea.

“He embraces DIY as a philosophy for work and life,” says Paloma Borbone, who runs the Funtastic Festival, along with Varo Coalla. “In these times of monstrous capitalist corporations devouring any trace of art or intelligence — and I say devour on purpose, because if they consumed it before, what they’re doing now goes even further — the fact that someone can stay true to themselves and remain on the margins isn’t just admirable: it’s worthy of study.”

Childish had already warned about this trend in En carne viva: Poemas 1984-88 (“Raw Flesh: Poems 1984-88), a book which contains a collection of his poems in English, alongside their Spanish translations, which was released by the Barcelona-based publisher Stultifera Navis back in 1989. He pointed out that people don’t like it when you do what you want and that “they’ll do anything to bring you down.”

That same year, Christian Martí-Menzel, a writer and translator who was head of the Barcelona publishing house at the time, brought Childish to Spain to present the book, exhibit some paintings and play with his band (Thee Headcoats) alongside guitarist Bruce Brand in several cities. “It was a suicide mission. He was quite a character: he had the capacity to experience everything to the fullest. He was an old-school artist, in the sense that he was a craftsman. He had incredible conviction in everything he did,” Martí-Menzel recalls.

The singer’s life wasn’t easy. As a child, he was bullied at school. His mother was an alcoholic and his father was “a complicated narcissistic sociopath,” according to the artist’s description. He was a violent man who used to headbutt his elder brother… that is, until young Childish — in the middle of an argument — ended up punching his father, after feeling a wave of “perfect hatred, finally polished over years of silence and docility, that exploded inside me like a creeping, malignant disease,” as he recounts in his self-published book My Fault (1991).

The hypocrisy of English culture — which makes you suffer at home, at school, or at work, but forces you to function socially as if nothing were wrong — led him to make the radical decision to never lie, something that has caused him more than a few headaches. This happened with Jack White, lead singer of The White Stripes, who admired his work and, a few years ago, wanted to promote it (without Childish asking him to). When asked about his opinion of White’s band, the Chatham native confessed that he didn’t like their sound and that, with his own band, he always tries “to close the 15 feet between us and the audience; they’re trying to expand it.”

Kessler is clear about this: approaching the age of 70, Childish remains a driving force, teaching us not to be afraid and to take action. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t write, paint, play an instrument, or sing... just write a book, paint a picture, record an album, give a concert. Do it. And then, do it again. Do it for yourself. And, if no one helps you publish, market, or showcase your work, keep going,” he explains.

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