Banksy (14 page)

He has effectively stumbled into a place where he can pronounce on everything from the Israeli wall – ‘the most politically unjust structure in the world today’ – to the
art world – ‘it’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious and the weak’ – and be regarded as something of an anonymous authority. But retaining this
anonymity has been a very calculated and determined act. He hires a public relations agency both to garner him publicity and to protect him from it and, when necessary, he hires lawyers to protect
him even further.

Colleagues were usually amazed when I told them that Banksy had a PR agent – somehow it does not quite fit the image of the anonymous vandal. But he is now so famous that a sort of public
voice is essential, even if it is only to deny that a ‘Banksy work’ is by Banksy. As soon as I started on this book I wrote a letter to this PR agent, Jo Brooks, at her office in
Brighton, enclosing my last book so she could see how I wrote, advising her that I was writing this book and saying that I would very much like to talk to Banksy at some stage. As the deadline
approached I made a more formal request for an interview, repeated it and repeated it once more. Eventually, with the deadline even closer, I had a note back asking for a copy of the manuscript.
Since this is not an authorised biography, I declined this request. I was then told, ‘We are keen to
fact check.’ I replied that this would change the nature of
the book: ‘The first thing to go in would be his name (which is not in at the moment) and I would then ask you to fact check if it was correct or not, etc, etc.’ Instead I repeated my
request for an interview to cover the wide range of subjects raised in the book, but heard nothing back. (Towards the end of these negotiations I was asked for questions to be emailed, but since
the usual pattern has been for some questions to be answered and other key ones simply ignored I declined.) Although he has given a considerable number of emailed interviews when he has wanted to
publicise an exhibition or a film, Banksy otherwise says nothing. Paul Wood, tracking him down for Radio Four’s
PM
programme at the time Banksy was painting Israel’s West Bank
wall, said, ‘I’ve had negotiations with wanted terrorists which have gone more smoothly than our attempts to speak to Banksy.’

A trip to Bristol showed me just how determined he was to protect himself. One of the reasons I went there was to discuss with Simon Cook, deputy leader of the city council and its executive for
culture, the extraordinary success of the exhibition that Banksy had staged in 2009 at the Bristol City Museum. Part of the reason for the success of the exhibition was the element of surprise: it
had been planned in complete secrecy and then, as the city’s
Evening Post
said, ‘appeared out of nowhere’. So I asked Simon Cook, when did he first know that the exhibition
was going to launch? ‘Sorry, I can’t answer that.’ It seemed an innocent enough question so I tried again, this time hoping that if I was a bit more ingratiating it might help:
‘I was told you only knew about it a couple of days before it opened and that you were very supportive?’

‘Well, as soon as I saw the exhibition I was very supportive. But
I can’t really answer. It’s a question to do with the planning of it and I can’t.
Sorry, it’s just in breach of contract.’ The contract that Banksy’s lawyers had persuaded the city to sign before he staged the exhibition had tied everyone up in such knots of
secrecy that even an innocent question about the planning, asked almost a year after the show’s closure, somehow became a breach of contract. Mr Cook is an intelligent and enjoyable
politician, so at least he could see the funny side of it: here was the city’s most notorious ‘vandal’ using the full majesty of the law to protect his anonymity.

There are other instances too where the Banksy organisation appears to have moved swiftly to protect him. The copyright of the supposed photograph of Banksy shot while he was at work in Jamaica,
used in the
Mail on Sunday
during its investigation of his identity, was bought shortly after publication by a PR company. The price was said to be £10,000, although this figure has
never been substantiated. Selling the rights to use a photograph is how photographers make their money – and it remains their copyright to sell again and again. Selling the copyright, in
other words the ownership of the photograph, is unusual. The photographer has always refused to talk about the arrangement he made.

A website that did use the photograph received a letter from media lawyers who were representing the PR company and have represented Banksy in the past, demanding that it be taken off the site
within twenty-four hours or they would ‘escalate’ their action. The whole thing reads like a bad detective story: any link to Banksy could always be denied, but the PR company that
bought the photograph has also represented Blur, a band with whom Banksy has had close links ever since he came to London. There is no evidence that the PR company had been instructed by Banksy to
buy the photograph but it is impossible to see why the
company would want to buy the picture other than to protect Banksy.

If he needs to call in a favour to prevent a chance of him being recognised he will do so, however small that chance is. In 2003 the
Observer
launched the first issue of its
Music
Monthly
with a cover of Blur shot in front of a wall which had been specially painted by Banksy. One picture which the newspaper later used in reporting the whole shoot showed Banksy cutting
the stencil he was going to use on the wall. The editor of the music magazine, Caspar Llewellyn Smith, says it was shot so you saw the back of his head, ‘you couldn’t tell who he really
was at all. But he rang me saying, “Can you have a word and get rid of that picture off the system?” He made a real point of saying, “You have got to get rid of that picture, no
one knows what I am like, I am asking you as a mate and as a favour and will you do that please.” And I think I probably said to someone, “Do you mind just sort of losing that
quietly,” which I suppose I shouldn’t have done.’ The picture disappeared and the photographer, who has remained friends with Banksy, declined to talk about it.

Banksy is helped by the fact that people appear to enjoy a celebrity mystery just as much as they enjoy learning the ‘secrets’ of a celebrity – it lends a little variety to
things. These are loyal fans who are determined not to know who he is. The
Mail on Sunday
reader who expressed anger at the way the paper had exposed Banksy’s identity –
‘You have ruined something special’ – finds an echo in the galleries where Banksy’s art is sometimes on sale. Robin Barton, whose Bankrobber Gallery specialises in trying to
sell street works by Banksy, says: ‘People really don’t want to know who Banksy is. Even collectors don’t want me to tell them who he is. It’s weird but that’s what
keeps it fresh for me. In the same way
I don’t want people to know who he is. Everyone can find out, it should be pretty easy, but it’s more fun and much more
profitable not knowing.’

And these are just collectors or fans who have no connection at all with Banksy other than their enjoyment of what he does and, importantly, who he is or who they imagine him to be. When you get
anywhere near anyone who has had any contact with Banksy, the loyalty is even more intense. When I told a writer friend much more experienced in the alternative lifestyle to be found in the West
Country that I was writing this book she emailed me back: ‘Between you and me, would you secretly like to unmask him? I am sure you must be intrigued about who he really is.’

And I confessed: ‘No, I don’t have a desire to unmask him; but I do have a desire to join Club Banksy – the “I know who he is and I have met him, but I am not going to
tell you” club.’ It is the joy of being an insider matched against the outsider who is treated as something of a leper. No matter how many times I said I was not going to expose his
identity, I was not after interviewing his mum and dad, I did not want to know what he ate for breakfast, it was not enough. If I approached anyone for an interview the first question I was nearly
always asked was: ‘Has Banksy authorised this request?’ The irony of this question was simply never even considered.

Even someone like Acoris Andipa feels it. He talks about the Banksy camp: ‘They are who they are and they do business in the way that they do it and nobody can crack into that – or
definitely somebody like myself can’t crack into that because I represent something that they want to be seen as not being involved in.’ So does that bother him? ‘On the
professional front, no. On the personal front, kind of. Because I put my heart and my soul and
my money into it. It would have been nice to get some sort of recognition, like
“Look, we can’t do business with you, but thanks mate, you’ve helped along in your own way.” But I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.’

When I travelled to Bristol planning to see Simon Cook, I had also made an appointment to meet a graffiti artist who used to paint with Banksy in days gone by. He had agreed to this interview on
the strict understanding that we would not talk about Banksy’s identity. But soon after I arrived in Bristol I received a text: ‘Hi there Will. Pest Control have been in contact today
and would rather I didn’t meet with you, so therefore, as this is the case I won’t be. If you can clear it with them and I hear from them – great. But until then I am sorry I
cannot meet up.’ I learned later that he had received a call not only from Pest Control but also from Banksy himself. (The artist was so torn between his loyalty to his old friend via Pest
Control and guilt about my wasted hours in Bristol that he kindly called again later that day and we did meet for a drink, but only on the understanding that we talked about anything other than
Banksy – a surreal but enjoyable evening.)

It can of course work the other way. Old mates who have fallen out with Banksy might grumble about him, but they never want to grass him up. But people who have come across him later in life are
not necessarily so loyal. I had one proposal, offering ‘pretty much what every journalist/writer would like to know about Banksy and
Exit
’ and then asking how much money I would
pay him for all these promised goodies. The answer was no money, and I never heard from him again.

Bristol is a danger for Banksy; too many people there know him from the past. If he is waiting for a train back to London he tends
to sit hiding behind a newspaper in the
hope that no one spots him. Another danger is when someone comes up to him unexpectedly. Caspar Llewellyn Smith was at the Roundhouse in November 2006 listening to Daman Albarn’s new band,
The Good, The Bad & The Queen, when Banksy emerged from nowhere and came over to start chatting with him. Llewellyn Smith says, ‘Here is a guy who doesn’t want people to know who he
is, and I had a slight sense that it probably gets quite lonely sometimes. If he is in a room which is a big social setting and it’s a room where there are lots of people who seem to know
each other it must be quite nice for him to have someone to talk to.’ That was fine, but there was a problem: coming back from the gents to rejoin Llewellyn Smith was another journalist, Ben
Thompson. What was the protocol, what introductions was Llewellyn Smith going to make? ‘He said simply, “Oh, this is my friend Ben,” and Banksy replied, “Hi, I’m
John.” Then he just sort of disappeared into the crowd. He had obviously had practice.’

So what kind of man lurks behind this well-constructed moat?

A man, one suspects, who enjoys what he is doing but who has trouble dealing with the fame, however anonymous it is, and the money that has come with it. After his triumphant show in Los Angeles
in 2006 he said, ‘The attention weirded me out so much, I refused to sell anything new for two years.’ Yet he went to Los Angeles to do a big, big show to which he or his minders
invited the likes of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, the star of the show itself being a live elephant which enraged animal lovers and amazed visitors. These were hardly the actions of a man who
didn’t want anyone to know he was in town.

A certain anger – jokey, but anger nevertheless – runs through both his early books and interviews. For instance, in
Banging Your
Head Against a Brick
Wall
, self-published in 2001 before he had gone more mainstream, he writes: ‘You could say that graffiti is ugly, selfish and that it’s just the action of people who want some
pathetic kind of fame. But if that’s true it’s only because graffiti writers are just like everyone else in this fucking country.’ Is he condemning himself along with
‘everyone else’? In one of his first interviews he refers to the poll tax riots and says ‘I like to think there’s a side of me that wants to smash the system, f**k s**t up
and drag the city to its knees as it screams my name.’

But those were the early days. Now he is thirty-eight years old and married to someone he sometimes calls his ‘wall widow’, the time is long gone when, as he told one colleague, he
had no bank account and used to keep his cash ‘under the bed’ or give it to a friend to put in the bank.

He had always been involved in music – for a time in the early 1990s he had linked up with the self-described ‘losers, boozers, cruisers, chancers and dancers’ of
Nottingham’s DiY free party collective. And it was through music that he gained the use of his first studio in London. Soon after he arrived in London he linked up with Mark Jones, founder of
the independent Wall of Sound records – and then with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, co-creator with Albarn of the cartoon ‘band’ Gorillaz. Jones allowed him to use a Wall of
Sound studio on Acklam Road, west London, conveniently placed next to the tube tracks, and the arrangement was that instead of paying rent he would do the record label’s flyers. One of his
most memorable images, a partially masked demonstrator who despite radiating pure aggression is about to hurl not a Molotov cocktail but a bunch of flowers, first evolved in these early days in
London.

The fashion designer Fee Doran, married to Mark Jones at the
time, used the same studio. She remembers Banksy as ‘a really nice guy, a man who was certainly up for a
laugh’. They would have a drink, have a smoke and then he would ‘go out and do some spraying’. She sometimes forgot how anonymous he wanted to be, a couple of times shouting
‘hello Banksy’, much to his dismay, when she saw him out on the street.