Sick On You Page 4

  The negs are, number one, the drummer, number two, the fact that only one guy looks what I would call right for my band—that’s Roger—and, number three, that we need one more musician. I know it’s nowhere near “my band,” but now I’m on the inside and, as everybody knows, that’s where all the best revolutions start.

  * * *

  A pattern develops. I work all week at Moss Bros. I rehearse Saturdays and Sundays in Stanmore. At nights during the week I write, read, or skulk around with the lights off, trying to see the naked lady on Ifield Road.

  When the church hall is unavailable the band decamps to a couple of other places for rehearsal. The first is a huge room in Brunel University that Nigel (a student, apparently, not a geography teacher) somehow finagled. He says this joint is famous for the most suicides of students per annum of any university in the UK. I’m not surprised. It has cold, concrete-bunker esthetics with all the elegance and style of a women’s prison in Murmansk.

  Our rehearsals here are enough to send me suicidal, though. We grind through a torturous hour trying, for some reason, to wrestle “Morning Dew” into submission, and spend another on the relentlessly plodding blues dreck of “Rock Me Baby.” This bunch have obviously been spinning the Truth LP by the Jeff Beck Group this last week. The lyrics are killing me. Take “Morning Dew.” Yeah? You’re walking in the morning dew? Right. You apparently heard a young girl cry. No kidding? What happened, then? Why is she crying? What’s the story? Nothing, there is no story, just this plodding, melody-deprived, monotonous drone.

  Then there’s “Rock Me Baby.” The writer wants her to rock him, I get that. And the length of time he wants her to rock him for is, imaginatively, all night long.

  Sheesh.

  The blues. I just don’t get it. The repetition utterly baffles me. Why do they always repeat the first line? It drives me nuts—it’s eye-rollingly boring.

  Afterward, driving me back to the Tube at Harrow on the Hill, Tim sighs and says, “Too bad you don’t sing like Rod Stewart.”

  It’s a long ride home.

  * * *

  The lads have a third rehearsal space. This one is frigid cool. Through some connection of Tim’s we get to rehearse at the Railway Hotel in Harrow. This being the venue made famous—fabulously famous—by the Who when Pete Townshend accidentally stuck his guitar into the ceiling during a particularly flamboyant move, yanked it out, and, for the first time ever, smashed it to smithereens in front of a frothing mod mob.

  The room is a narrow rectangle, the stage a mere ten inches off the floor, and there, above center stage, is a hole in the ceiling. Tim points to it. That’s the hole, he says.

  Roger and I begin to develop a bit of an affinity. We go out for a pint or two. We crumble up hashish, stick a chunk on the end of a pin, and take turns inhaling the junior dragon tails curling upward. He’s a japester and a quipster and delivers both in an arid, droll style that has me convulsing with laughter. He is a bachelor with sharp suits and a job at Boosey & Hawkes in North London, putting saxophones together. He drives a green Zephyr. He takes me under his wing. Back at his dad’s place in Hatch End he teaches me how to iron that lethal crease in my trousers. He takes me to clubs. And he’s always got flocks of girls around him. In his presence I feel a bit of a green Zephyr myself. But I do all right.

  I ask Tim, the de facto leader, “What’s the name of our band? We don’t have a name.”

  Tim suggests I make a move from Earls Court to Harrow. Says there’s a place for rent on Blawith Road, just down the street from him, and also he’s got the inside track on a job for me. Makes sense. The band’s here, rehearsals are here, the clubs Roger and I frequent are here, and it’s a long, noddy haul back to the old Aussie ghetto after a night out.

  One Thursday night I am lying on my bed reading a biography of Napoleon when there is a knock at my door. It is a middle-aged chap with a sad look and a sadder voice.

  He tells me his dad is dead, and his dad was my landlord. Back on my bed with Napoleon on my chest I think of my landlord, whom I’ve only met once, his interesting flat, his open nature, and his gentlemanly bearing. I wish I had spoken with him again.

  Next morning, I do a runner.

  * * *

  On Friday I give my five-hour notice at Moss Bros. Goolam seems sincerely sad. “Mister Andrew, what will I do? What will Miss Moss Bros do?”

  “What about Miss Moss Bros?”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. We all know.”

  “Know what? I had a cup of tea. And who is ‘we all’?”

  “Your workmates, you silly, silly man. And you will go to play music in Harrow. Do you know what is in Harrow? Do you?”

  “No. What’s in Harrow, Goolam?”

  “Skinheads, you silly. Don’t you know? With their boots and their braces.”

  Goolam is exasperated with me. It seems he’ll sincerely miss me. In truth, I will miss him too. He walks me out to the street and shakes my hand, and then waves me good-bye.

  When I get to the corner I turn back. Goolam is still there, waving. “I will see you on Top of the Pops,” he shouts. I smile and salute, then turn and go.

  VI

  I move into 52 Blawith Road in Harrow, a semidetached house owned by an Indian family. The husband is a short man with a wide smile, blue teeth, and hair like Roy Orbison. Tim has arranged a job for me at the NATO base in Northwood as a gardener. You get security clearance and you’re buzzed in to mow around all the nose cones of the intercontinental ballistic things. It’s a doddle, really, and I get paid £21 a week.

  The first flush of being in a band has worn off and I’m worried about the sound. Not only does the drummer stink, the whole affair sounds decidedly thin. We need another musician. I don’t know where these boys got their keyboard fetish. Personally, I’d like another guitarist.

  You see, the situation is a bit pressing because Tim has set up a gig in three weeks’ time at a club in Ware, Hertfordshire.

  Two weeks and a dozen rehearsals later, we’ve got a couple of sets worked out, basic blues rock with a splash of grease. Not horrible, not great. But we still haven’t found a guitarist and we still haven’t got a name.

  Tim comes up with a stopgap guitar solution, which involves driving to the guy from Mungo Jerry’s house in Harrow and begging some guitarist parading around with the moniker Snowy White* to help us out. Snowy is a blond guy (who’d have guessed?), about twenty-three, and comes fully equipped with a Les Paul, a Marshall stack, and the cutest little ego you’ve ever seen.

  We stand there, in the front room of 32 Mungo Jerry Drive, with caps metaphorically, except in Tim’s case, in hand. Tim plights our troth as Snowy reclines on his sofa like a bored, mid-limbo limbo dancer, playing elaborate guitar figures, complete with grimaces, on his unplugged gold Les Paul while staring at Opportunity Knocks on the telly. Finally, reluctantly dragging his eyeballs away from Hughie Green, Snowy agrees to one whole rehearsal and the gig itself with the bored magnanimity of an Arab potentate. Gee, thanks, oh mighty Snowy.

  The rehearsal has its pros and cons. On the pro side, we’ve never sounded better. A plodding rock yawner like “Rock Me Baby” is now exciting, with structure and real dynamics. Snowy’s solos are excellent in that fifty-note-per-bar, ridiculous-pained-facial-expression way that people seem to love in modern guitarists. On the con side, he of course susses the Nigel problem instantly, and also shortly afterward decides that he can’t stand me, which gets on my wick. One more eye-roll and he’ll have a fake Shure rammed in his yap.

  While driving home from rehearsal with Roger and Tim, “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces comes on the radio. For some non-drug-induced reason they decide to call us Itchy Coo.

  On the day of the gig the members of the newly minted Itchy Coo load the gear and pile into the Humber van for the drive up the M1 to Ware. I’ve got a wire hanger with stage clothes: red velvet jacket, Mr Fi
sh shirt, black strides, and stack-heeled daisies. Needless to report, I am the only band member with “stage clothes.”

  We’re buoyant, we’re kickin’ the stall, we’re ready to strut whatever stuff we think we have. We are joking and laughing. I’m lounging in the back, stretched out on one elbow on a PA column, gabbing with Roger and Nigel. And I’m grateful because I’m miles away from the exalted Snowy sitting up front in the passenger seat, talking guitar chops with our chauffeur for the evening, Tim.

  Finally, we’re there. Where? Ware. Now we have to find the place. We drive down one street then another. We have to back out of a tight cul-de-sac. We find ourselves driving down a street we’ve already gone down. We drive down a one-way street and, lordy, we see two good-looking babes walking on the pavement toward us on the passenger side.

  “Ask them, ask them,” comes the chorus from the boys in the back to the boys up front.

  Tim pulls up beside the girls, who react with giggling wariness, stopping and holding on to each other’s arm. Snowy rolls down the window.

  “Uh, hi. I was just . . . we . . . do you . . . uh—”

  “Are you a band?” interrupts one of them mercifully. They are both great-looking, close up: fab hair, pink lips, legs way up to their afterthought miniskirts.

  Too bad the “eloquent” Snowy is our front man at this delicate moment. Anybody else would be preferable. Roger would be perfect and he’s almost clambering over the seats to get to the front line. Too bad Snowy’s the man to answer.

  “Uh, yeah . . . yeah, we’re playing here tonight.”

  “You are?” The girls perk up. They’ve unlinked arms. They’re leaning on the van, ducking and peering in to see the rest of us in the back. One strokes the van’s aerial up and down, suggestively. Well, suggestively to those of us sporting a below-the-belt brush cut, whose sex life of late has consisted of nothing save groinal infestation and amateur voyeurism. She pings the aerial back and forth with languid forefinger flicks. Snowy continues in sparkling vein.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

  “Where are you playing?” asks one.

  “Can we come?” asks the other.

  Snowy, clearly unused to interest from anyone other than fellow blues aficionados, stutters, “Yeah . . . uh . . . yeah, sure,” while from the back of the van Roger leads the choir in variations on the theme of, “Yes indeed, come to the gig.”

  “So, where are you playing?” asks babe number one, flicking her locks over her shoulder.

  “The Youth Club,” says Roger.

  The girls recoil from the van as though they’ve touched a hot stove. “The Youth Club?” says babe number one. “The Youth Club?” says babe number two, looking aghast at babe number one. Then both stagger off down the street, bent over and laughing hysterically.

  Evidently in Ware, among local hipsters, the Youth Club is not quite the preferred venue du jour. Abashed but intrepid, we eventually find the place, set up, and play the gig. Surprise, surprise, it goes quite well judging by those out front who, in truth, don’t seem to expect much. Everybody in the band rises to the occasion, even Nigel. The place is packed, albeit with “youths,” but we do get them hopping.

  On the long drive back to Harrow I think to myself that it’s not a bad start, but I don’t delude myself about the long slog ahead.

  Coming into London on a lonely stretch of highway, we run over a rabbit with a soft, slithery thump—despite Snowy’s desperate warning scream. At three in the morning, as I’m dropped off bleary-eyed at Blawith Road, Tim gives me a couple of quid, my share of the gig money. Chickenfeed. Cluck cluck. Most of the gig dosh goes to the Snowman.

  * * *

  Tyrannosaurus Rex are now called T. Rex, a saving of four syllables, and they’ve got a new single out, “Get It On.” Its skeleton is “Little Queenie,” the Stones version from Ya-Ya’s. I can’t believe nobody in the press is mentioning it. Just goes to show that risible lyrics need not be a deterrent. This thing is rocketing up the charts.

  I spend most of my time in my room writing and reading, with towels and T-shirts stuffed in the cracks around the door to keep out the stench of Indian food. In a used bookshop on Harrow Road I spy a novel that I buy just because of the author’s name: Richard Matheson. I’ve always liked the name Richard. It costs 40p. The title is I Am Legend.

  Roger and I go out to pubs and clubs, especially one club we’ve discovered in Watford: the New Penny. It is always packed and throbbing, plus it has a decent restaurant serving great steak and chips. The main barmaid is a pretty girl, a friendly sort, by the name of Carole.

  * * *

  Nigel the drummer finally gets the hint, packs up his kit, and takes his elbow patches back to where they belong, to Brunel, academia’s concrete suicide hot spot. Tim puts another ad in the Melody Maker, for a guitarist this time and a drummer.

  Next Saturday, and what shows up in Stanmore in response to the ad but, of all things, a couple of Australians. Mal, the guitarist, is ten feet tall, skinny as a coatrack, with hair like a big ball of tumbleweed scotch-taped to his skull. Martin, the drummer, is not what I would call classically good-looking; rather, he’s the absolute spitting image of Yosemite Sam. You know, that Looney Tunes, Bugs Bunny–nemesis cowboy chap? The resemblance is uncanny, right down to the handlebar mustache. Every time he does a drum roll I keep expecting a “Yee-haw!” Still, he is a slight improvement in the timekeeping department.

  Mal’s got a black Stratocaster and a Marshall stack and he can play, in a tame, tentative kind of way. His playing seems a natural extension of himself, quiet and thin. I turn up his amp when he’s not looking. We plug in and give it a go. It’s not so bad. We’re a few planets away from a great-looking band dressing sharp, playing fast and nasty. But it’s a start. Again.

  One day after rehearsal, driving back to Blawith Road in the van with Tim, he asks me if I’ve got any ideas for lyrics. Do I have ideas for lyrics? I’ve been doing nothing else in my Harrow garret. Night after night I’ve been writing away until I nod off. I dash into the house and emerge with a sheaf of things I’ve written lately. I hand them through the van window.

  He puts it into first gear. I watch the blue Humber exit down Blawith with my lyrics. I plunge my hands into my pockets and slink off back into the house of Roy and Mrs. Orbison.

  Two days later Tim hands them back, saying, “I can’t do anything with these, too many words.”

  In the New Penny, for the sixth night in the last ten days, I’m standing at the bar with Roger, knocking ’em back, when a song comes on that is the best thing I’ve heard for months. I’d be willing to bet my life there is not a beard or gong involved in the band that’s making this noise. As soon as it ends I actually squirm my way through the dancing mob to ask the DJ what it was. It’s “Get Down and Get with It” by some bunch called Slade.

  * * *

  It’s October. “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart is number one. I get laid off. No reason, I’m just invited to get lost. No more money, no more Yankee grub—this is serious. A week goes by, a week of peanut butter sandwiches and Roy Orbison hanging around the front door asking for the rent. I’ve only got maybe eleven quid to my name. What to do? Roger and I go out to the New Penny.

  Carole overhears my tale of woe in the way that barmaids do, from the other side of the bar I’m propping up at the end of the evening. No problem, she says, come and stay at her house. Her man won’t mind and they’ve got loads of room. Next day, I exit the house in Blawith Road early and lurk in the bushes across the street until Roy goes to wherever it is he goes, then I sprint up the stairs, throw the clothes, the records, and the peanut butter in the cardboard suitcase and hare off to Harrow & Wealdstone station.

  Another runner.

  One hour later, I’m knockin’ on the door of 112 Bradshaw Road in Watford.

  “Hello, Andrew, lovely to see you, come on in,” says Carole. “Pop
your suitcase in the front room. I’ve got to dash but Bruno will be here any minute. Actually, now that I think of it, I forgot to tell him about you.” And with that she’s gone.

  She hasn’t told him? I’m sitting on the couch, suitcase at my feet, waiting for Bruno, whom I’ve never met, to come home so I can tell him I’ve been invited by his woman to move in. And, truth be told, I don’t even really know Carole. I’m already terrified of Bruno. This is his castle, after all, and that’s a knuckle-dragger of a name if ever I heard one.

  If I were a nail biter my fingers would have been bloody stubs in the near hour it takes Bruno to get home. Only it’s not Bruno; it’s Brillo. I misheard his missus. This guy is named Brillo for the visually obvious reason that you could quite easily use his head to scrub burned pots and pans. Add some Vim and rub his bonce back and forth across a countertop and you could remove even the most stubborn stains. I’ve never seen a white chap with such a hairdo.

  Turns out he’s a great lad. Sense of humor well intact, looks a bit like John Cleese from the Pythons.

  The house is a two-up two-down wreck, freezing and damp. The loo is outside. Trains to Euston and the North rattle past the rotting back fence every twenty minutes. Black smoke rises in a thin, acrid spiral from a permanent rubbish fire smoldering inside the backyard air-raid shelter, the curved corrugated-iron roof barely visible amid a jungle of stinging nettles, automobile skeletons, broken glass, and rusty tin cans.

  There’s no place like home.

  VII

  Kit Lambert, the Who’s manager, called it “a version of Hell.” Pete Townshend’s schoolmate described it more succinctly as “a dump.” It is a pile of chipped bricks and crumbling mortar leaning out over railway tracks, held together on the outside by moss and soot, and on the inside by stained wallpaper and reeking red carpets. When the trains rumble by, the bones of the building rattle, and plaster stained from the smoke of a million cigarettes falls in puffs and chunks like yellowed snow from the ceilings.