Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson: ‘I would definitely tell myself not to take Class A drugs’

Jason Williamson was born on 10 November 1970 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. As a teenager he was expelled from school and then held a series of low-paid jobs, and after moving to Nottingham in 1995, spent a while playing various different bands before forming Sleaford Mods in 2007.

Willamson was joined by Andrew Fearn in 2012, and the pair are known for their abrasive, minimal style, releasing a series of critically acclaimed albums, with frontman Williamson’s lyrics touching on subjects like austerity, unemployment, capitalism and society in general. Such is their success, they played Wembley Stadium (supporting Blur) in 2023.

In his Letter to My Younger Self, Jason Williamson recalls his troubled past, including problems with his family and a debilitating drug problem. He also touches on his success, clean living and how he wants to be a good father to his son.

I was pretty lost at 16. I left school. I got expelled, actually. I think they were just wanting to get rid of me, really, because I wasn’t very good. I got caught trying to pierce my friend’s ear in the toilet. They took us to the office and said, you just may as well go. You’re just useless. So that gives you an idea of the kind of school I was at. I think my main motivations were to find something, to feel like I was starting to belong to an adult world. I really didn’t know what to do.

I got a job in a supermarket but I didn’t do any work. I just walked around looking at the shelves. I really didn’t take it in. I think, to be honest, the interview was them saying you’re going to be responsible for stacking shelves. But I didn’t connect the two things, looking at an empty shelf and thinking, I need to stack that shelf. The support around me was terrible, if I recall, I was just left to my own devices. Nobody said anything to me. So was it my fault? Or was it the total lack of communication and people not living up to the roles that they were paid for?

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My family is a difficult subject. I don’t talk to any of them, and it’s always been volatile. Back then it was kind of OK, but I was just too young to realise there were problems. My father was separated from my mother. I had a distant relationship with him. My mother was preoccupied with being a housewife to my stepfather, who was working six days a week. So we didn’t talk much.

If you met the teenage Jason you’d think he was really nice. He was genuine, wet behind the ears obviously, but you’d think he was a nice guy. At that time I was listening to a lot of pop like Mel and Kim, really, and Berlin, “Take My Breath Away”. I was listening to lots of film soundtracks, mostly the Rocky III soundtrack. I wanted to step away from this straitjacket of being into The Jam, the Sex Pistols, all these things that, to some degree, was forced on you at school. 

I think I’d still have things in common with the teenage Jason. I think we’d share a sadness, a loneliness, this feeling of dread all the time. I think that I would say to him, it’s going to be all right. There are things you’re going to have to grapple with and try and get through, but things will be all right. You’ll get to where you need to be. Back then I never thought for one minute I’d be successful.

I got into music off the back of not getting into any theatre schools. I went back to college after a year of working when I left school because I thought, this is not for me, working’s a bit shit. I went back and did my GCSEs and A-levels and then tried to get into theatre schools. But couldn’t get anywhere, because the course fees were just really expensive. If I’d had the money, I reckon that I would have got
in somewhere, definitely.

After that I just went back to work in a factory, and I started getting into music. I joined a band with a mate, and we did some stuff for a while. We did our first demo tape about 1991 I think. And I just carried on from there. I had years and years of being in terrible bands or bands that didn’t work, moving slowly into electronic music and realising that that felt more contemporary and more modern; more me. I really found it a burden to be in bands with real instruments. It was hit and miss whether you got with someone good. So it just became really boring. So I eventually slid into working with engineers in studios. That’s how Sleaford Mods got started.

For the first five years it was basically me on my own with an engineer. We made five albums that were released on CD-Rs. You can’t get them any more. You’ll find them on YouTube. I was writing about struggling, bitterness, fear, envy, anger, loss. A state of mind was born out of this struggle of trying to exist. There wasn’t anything to believe in any more. I fell so deeply into some kind of psychological void I became a very angry man, but at the same time, very passionate about music. I became motivated and determined to get somewhere.

After two or three sessions we found the formula. I was putting down songs that were extremely accomplished. I couldn’t believe it. I found my voice.

I was absolutely enthralled by this breakthrough for a while. Then obviously the honeymoon period wore off as I just didn’t manage to get anywhere with it. It was still too infantile. I was using samples from records constantly. So copyright issues would have been a problem, even if a record label showed any interest. But then I met Andrew [Fearn, co-member] and our first manager, who had a small record label. He suggested to me on Facebook that he’d like to release an album on the label. I couldn’t believe it. Anybody wanting to put a record of ours out was just beyond.

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The main misconceptions about us… god, I mean, where do you want to start? Posers. Heroin addicts. You name it, the list goes on. I don’t mind, people have been misunderstanding me since I was young. If I could go back I would give myself a hug, because nobody really took any notice of me and my sister, you know, they just squabbled over their stupid adult problems, while me and my sister were slowly becoming more and more abandoned. 

I would definitely tell myself not to take Class A drugs. I would tell myself to find different friends. As much as I love all my old friends to bits, I think I went down the wrong path. We all did. It cost me a good 20-odd years. I don’t think there’s anything to be cherished from spending most weekends off my head. I don’t even drink now, I’ve not done anything for 10 years. Drink was the gateway for cocaine. That was the gateway for everything. You name it, whizz, whatever, anything I could get my hands on. And it really ruined shit for a long time. As much as I had a good laugh, as much as I got lots of good ideas for songs from it, I wonder what life would have been like if I’d have just been stronger and persevered and pushed through on my own. 

I’m a father now. I can’t help projecting myself onto my son. He’s the age I was when my parents divorced. It just brings it out to you. I think it did kickstart a lot of issues. I eventually had to go to therapy and talk about this; why am I feeling this bad? I think my son being present just reminded me of those times in some respects. And it makes me look at my own parents differently, to the point that I no longer communicate with them. 

The music industry is hard work. You constantly feel like you’re not taken seriously. But I think that’s more of a me problem than it is a them problem. I need to start to value myself before I do anything else, currently. I think that’s important for me, and I don’t do that. I’ve got a lot of low opinions about myself, which I need to change. If I do, then I can get over this idea that I think I’m too old, or people feel that I’m too old for this game.

If I could go back to any time in my life it would be the summer of 1988. Because I passed my GCSEs. I got five GCSEs, and I went to visit my Nana’s grave, and I stood there and said, I’ve passed all my exams. I wanted to tell my grandparents. My grandma suffered from lots of mental health issues. My granddad died very early with lung cancer. So there were lots of problems. But they were always nice to me. So that day was a really good day, and I felt great. I felt like there was some optimism coming.

Sleaford Mods’ new album The Demise of Planet X is out now. Sleaford Mods tour the UK and Ireland in February and March.

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