Murray Lachlan Young: Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine

<p>Murray Lachlan Young walked off the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury to find himself on the front page of the Daily Telegraph as the poet who had signed a million pound record deal. It made him the most talked-about poet in Britain, and very nearly broke him. Includes three poems performed in full: Simply Everyone&#39;s Taking Cocaine (with a brand-new verse), Don the sheepdog, and Everything&#39;s Under Control.</p><p>In the 1990s Murray Lachlan Young went from Sunday nights at Ronnie Scott&#39;s to EMI, Glastonbury and every chat show going, on the strength of a Noël Coward voice and a poem called Simply Everyone&#39;s Taking Cocaine that caught the decade in a single, ahem, line.</p><p>In this episode he tells Martin Deeson how the 90s music machine really worked, how he had already written a university dissertation on stardom before he found it, and what happened when he did. He performs three poems in full, including Simply Everyone&#39;s Taking Cocaine with a brand-new verse, and the conversation runs from Howard Marks, Orbital and Mary Berry to CERN, Mark Rylance&#39;s Globe, the Dalai Lama and a sheepdog who drove a tractor up the M74.</p><p>Murray Lachlan Young is the author of the collected poems How Freaking Zeitgeist Are You?, a long-standing poet on BBC 6 Music, co-writer of the film of Under Milk Wood and of Rehab: The Musical, and one half of Hartnoll &amp; Young with Orbital&#39;s Paul Hartnoll.</p><p><br></p><p>Three things you will get from this episode:</p><ul><li>How the 90s fame machine actually worked, from a man who studied stardom at university and then watched a record deal turn him from a working artist into a media story overnight.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>A sharp take on why the 90s felt so different: the recession that cleared out the people who owned the 80s, and a country that for once wanted its people to succeed.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>What is left when the ego crashes: stage presence, losing it, and why surrender is the moment you get back in the game.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>In this episode:</p><ul><li>Martin&#39;s memory of pulling Murray&#39;s demo tape off the pile in the Loaded magazine office one Saturday Sunday nights at Ronnie Scott&#39;s, on the same bill as a pre-Bush Gavin Rossdale.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>Walking off Glastonbury&#39;s Pyramid Stage to a Telegraph front page, and the truth about the million pound deal.</li></ul><p><br></p><ul><li>The 90s as a big “why not”: the Spice Girls, Oasis as th