PLUME: What was the culture like at that time, in San Francisco?

NORTON: Do you know, it’s odd. San Francisco hasn’t really changed at all. I went back there a couple years ago, and I was really surprised at how similar it is. That mix of kind of … it’s odd, because there’s a lot of old money in San Francisco as well, and that’s always quite visible. You know, all that kind of Presidio and the opera and all that sort of stuff. Then you’ve got the Bohemian blender – it’s just a town full of people escaping from wherever they were. It’s a very happy place to go, because you just meet lots of people who are in the same boat as you.

PLUME: I’ve heard it described as a pirate town…

NORTON: Yeah, I think – except it’s a mild-mannered pirate town, I would say. It’s people trying to live their dreams, isn’t it? It’s just a place where it’s possible, because everyone went there with the same view, I think. It’s a very non-judgmental town. They just let people get on with it.

PLUME: You lived in, what, a commune at that time?

NORTON: Yeah. It was one of the people I was referred to knew them, so they got me in touch with them. They had a room to rent, so I rented a room and then, in the end, they said a room came up in the place. So I said, “Can I join?” I mean, you still paid rent – it’s just you weren’t in one of the hostel rooms, you had a nicer room. So, I joined it and lived for a year. It was called Star Dance at that stage. Now I think it’s called The Purple Rose Collective. But it’s still going on.

PLUME: What was commune life like?

NORTON: I was a student and used to shared accommodations and things, to me, that’s all that was like. It was just like, “Well, isn’t this just a big house share?” But I presume it meant more than that to the people who lived there, because they were living there by choice. They liked the whole communal thing. So it was all about sharing chores and having house meetings and blah, blah, blah. I just liked it because it was company, really. Which, is that what communal living is? I don’t know.

PLUME: I guess, to some extent. It’s better than living with the dead rat.

NORTON: Yeah, you see? Really, how bad could a hippie be? He’s got to be able to beat a dead rat.

PLUME: Something that was related to the commune – I know that in one interview you had mentioned that it was chaste living?

NORTON: It was quite chaste. It wasn’t like wild orgy, hippie commune.

PLUME: I know in San Francisco at that time, that was when the major outbreak was happening?

NORTON: Which of course, clueless Graham arriving again, like I say, from Ireland – I think I’d read one tiny sidebar in a newspaper about the whole AIDS thing. The day I arrived, I got off the bus and it was one of those kind of – oh, for God’s sake, you couldn’t put that in a film, how clichéd and awful – the day I arrived was the Gay Pride Parade. So I was walking around with my backpack, and there were like truckloads of screaming queens and drag queens driving around.

PLUME: But that was an everyday occasion in Ireland, wasn’t it?

NORTON: The thing is, I thought it was an everyday occasion in San Francisco. I sort of thought, “Oh wow, everything they said about this town really is true.” There were all these kind of statues, and they had these kind of AIDS armbands on. People were marching with banners and things, and I kind of thought, “Oh, right, AIDS. What is that again?” And it was really weird how huge it was there, and how little impact it had had in Ireland at that time.

PLUME: Was it even a known quantity in Ireland, at that time?

NORTON: I doubt as of that point there had been any diagnosed cases in Ireland. I doubt it very much. Because even when I came back and was living in London in late ’84, early ’85, it was only really beginning to make an impact in Britain then.

PLUME: If you had not had your experience of witnessing it in San Francisco, would it have been different if you had encountered it first in Ireland or the UK – just as an exposure to the fact that this thing is out there?

NORTON: Funny enough, I suppose luckily for me, in a way I suppose – I wasn’t actually active at all when I got to San Francisco. So, earlier than a lot of British people my age, I became aware of it. So I think a lot of people my age did become infected because they’d become sexually active before they’d ever heard of it, so they weren’t protecting themselves.

PLUME: To some extent, then, being a repressed young Irishman was a boon in that situation?

NORTON: Yeah, it was. It was.

PLUME: Did you get a job while you were in San Francisco, or was it basically just living off that 200 Pounds?

NORTON: Yeah, I’m the Jesus of Pounds. I just made them laugh. No, I did get a job in a restaurant called Vie de France. It’s weird that I’m talking about this now, because on Saturday night I just had dinner with the maitre d’ of that restaurant. I haven’t seen him for 20 years, and he got in touch through my agents and everything. He’s American, but he’s now running a sandwich shop in York, in the north of England. He had photographs of me, when I was working in the restaurant. It’s so frightening to see them. I look – I mean, I’m describing myself as an international 13. I look like an international 10. I just couldn’t have thought how anyone would ever filled me a drink or gave me a job. I look so young, it’s weird.

PLUME: So when are these going up on the website?

NORTON: Never.

PLUME: You have to show them sometime.

NORTON: Oh, I will at some stage. When I’m over the shock.

PLUME: How did those around you treat you while you were out there?

NORTON: People were really lovely. Particularly people in the commune – they were very kind of protective of me, because they knew that I was an innocent abroad. Then I was working in a restaurant, so I was working with people who were like me – they’d just come to San Francisco to have some fun, and we all had disposable income. I was getting drunk – I was having a good time. I had kind of a weird, double existence, because there was the hippie commune where it was all kind of vegetarian stew and holding hands, and then there was the restaurant down in the financial district, where we were living the high old life – oh, what’s that Bret Easton Ellis novel? Less Than Zero…

PLUME: Well, what actually then caused you to go back home?

NORTON: Weirdly, my parents. I was worried about them, and I missed them, and I just felt like I had to go home. I remember just being on the plane going home, and the person in the seat next to me asking me that very question, “Why are you going home?” – and I really couldn’t verbalize why the hell I was leaving. But I guess I knew that if I was going to start my life properly, I needed to do it where I understood the grid reference. I just didn’t know how to even begin in San Francisco… I was just kind of treading water and having a laugh. I knew that if I was going to kind of get serious about my life, that was going to be back in Europe, in Ireland or England.

PLUME: You would be a bigger fish in a small pond?

NORTON: Well, not so much that… I knew at least where the ladder was, no matter what rung I was on, no matter how lowly a rung I might be on – I knew how to find the ladder. Whereas in American, I had no idea. I didn’t know if they had a ladder. Even after that time, it was a big mystery to me. I think, in order to make that leap, you need some comfort zones around you, you need some bit of familiarity.

PLUME: Did you have any idea at that time what that leap would be?

NORTON: I was going back and I was going to apply for drama school, in England, and that’s what I did.

PLUME: Did that throw your parents?

NORTON: I think they were so glad that I was back.

PLUME: So you actually worked that quite well.

NORTON: Yes, well, again – you do things, and then tell them. I think they were just glad I was back. Annoyed I wasn’t going to university, but you know …

Continued below…

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