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The life of Howard Marks defies easy explanation.
A cannabis smuggler from the Welsh valleys who became the nemesis of the DEA as the crack epidemic began. A physics scholar at Oxford who spent most of his life developing a network linking, among others, pot dealers in London, an IRA gun runner, prog rock bands, corrupt Mexican police officers, Pakistani hashish exporters, the triads, a chum from MI6, American crime families, a Philippine brothel-owning renegade member of the House of Lords, Colombia’s Medellin Cartel and the Afghan mujahideen via the CIA. An outlaw and gourmet hedonist whose skill at building up his own legend was surpassed only by his own capacity to add to it.
Marks has been something like a hero of this writer since reading his autobiography, Mr Nice, as a teenager stuck in a suburban stasis, caught between the apathetic subcultures of nu-metal and garage. An amateur’s story of successfully merging hippy idealism – nonviolence, soft drugs, psychedelic mysticism – into the hidden and ugly world of drug traffickers and enforcers, Marks attracted tabloid notoriety in an age that might seem far more innocent than our own, with its twitterstorms of jihadist beheadings and gang warfare and drugs scares like crystal meth and krokodil rather than LSD and pot.
But this story had a dark ending too, in Marks losing his freedom to a DEA bust that also imprisoned his wife, inadvertently abandoning their three children to the care of his wife’s sister and her abusive, heroin-addicted boyfriend. Since his release from a high-security US prison in 1995, Marks has redirected himself towards the campaign to, as he puts it, “re-legalise” marijuana, securing the release of all those still left unjustly behind bars after him. He made a new trade for himself, peddling his celebrity by telling stories in one-man shows that have built his cult following among British stoners.
Now suffering terminal bowel cancer, he is back on the road for the last time, physically diminished and shorn of his shaggy hair, but his reckless love of life undimmed.
On Friday night he re-emerged at The Forum in London's Camden, supported by appreciative friends. The gentle Cerys Matthews called him the world’s biggest chancer before her rendition of 'Ring of Fire'. Punk poet John Cooper Clarke reluctantly admitted Howard is growing old, “what waits for us all if we’re lucky”. Welsh vocal choir Eschoir gave a stirring version of the national anthem. Alabama 3 performed 'Folsom Prison Blues'. Super Furry Animals briefly reunited, but appeared unable to resist the temptation of the fumes coming from backstage, and everywhere else.
Then to a loving crowd of all ages, Howard recanted a comic tale of recent desperation: a doomed job application for promotion from self-employed drug baron to the government’s drug czar. Despite his dismay at the pay cut to £73,000, he convinced us that his skillset and work experience would be able to end the consumption of all illegal drugs. How right he would be, if only our leaders had the bravery to take the advice of someone whose life has left him with more knowledge on the subject than most.
