It’s six o’clock by the time we arrive at The Shepherd’s Bush Empire and people are already queuing up outside the venue. I can’t believe we’ve made it. I can’t believe the kebab van has pulled us through the whole tour. It’s filthy. It smells. Its guts are stuffed with newspapers and burger wrappers and bundles of empty beer cans and bags of ten-day-old sport socks as stiff as wood.
Most of the silver paint has peeled off in the rain. You can just about make out the stick men and the stars, but you can’t read the name of the band any more. The name of the band has all but washed away.
Upstairs in the dressing room our spirits are temporarily lifted. There are good-luck messages from all of our friends: a home-made Bruce Lee card from Sheila, a plate of stuffed vine leaves from Mrs. Kostas, a bottle of champagne from Alison, and a handwritten note from my mum. She wishes me luck. She hopes the gig goes well. She wants to know if I’ve heard back from any of the Russian cruise ships yet.
And then Scarface’s tour manager knocks on the door. And ruins everything.
“All right, boys?” he says, sitting himself down and helping himself to one of our vine leaves.
“Not bad,” we say, wondering what he wants.
“I suppose you’ve heard about Scottie, then?”
“The sound guy?”
“Yeah. He got hit by a lighting truss when we were packing down yesterday. Broke his arm in three places.”
“I take it he’s not going to be doing the gig tonight, then?” says Vince, attempting to look concerned.
“No,” says Malcolm, wiping a dribble of grease off his chin. “We had to get someone else. He did a few dates on our American tour so he knows most of Scarface’s set already. Bit of a bastard for you lot, though.”
“How do you work that out?” I say, wondering how things could possibly get any worse.
“Well, Ike’s a bit jittery. He wants to have a super-long sound check to make sure everything’s OK. I doubt you lot will even get up onstage.”
“You do surprise me,” says Vince.
“Yeah, well. Sorry, guys. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Not much else I can do for you, I’m afraid.”
We’re fucked. This is the worst possible outcome. We won’t get a chance to check our amps or get a feel for the venue. We won’t even get to play through a song. I can feel my stomach churning. I can feel my nightly pre-gig nerves kicking in. I can feel Vince prodding me sharply in the ribs with his elbow.
“Come on, then,” he says, ‘let’s get ourselves down there.”
“What for?” I say gloomily. “You heard him. We aren’t even going to be allowed up onstage before the gig.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got an idea, haven’t I.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well,” he says, taking his wallet out of his pocket, ‘we’ve still got three hundred quid left in the kitty, haven’t we?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“So let’s get down there and offer it to the new sound man to sort us out. See what he says.”
“Do you think it’ll do us any good?”
“I don’t know, mate,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but the way things are going I reckon it’s our only chance.”
By the time we get downstairs Scarface are just finishing up their last song. Ike has jumped down off the stage to have a chat with the new sound man and it’s pretty obvious that he’s talking to him about us. I can see the sound man nodding his head. I can see Ike handing him a brown paper envelope stuffed with cash. I can see flecks of white spittle glinting on Ike’s lips as he smiles and walks towards us and waves. And then I notice something. And my jaw drops. And I’m convinced that there might actually be a God.
“It can’t be.” “It can.” “It isn’t.” “It is.” “Is it?” “You’re right, mate, it is.”
“No way. Wow, Vince Parker and Danny McQueen. I had no idea Dakota was you lot. Stroll on, who would have thought it? How long has it been now?”
“A good couple of years, I reckon.”
“What about you, Clan? Must be six years or something?”
“More like ten, I’d say.”
“Ten years? Blimey. Only seems like yesterday, don’t it?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Fuck. Where was it we used to rehearse in them days?
Somewhere down Stratford way, weren’t it? What did they call it, that place? Fucking dump.”
“Broken Lives.”
“That’s it. Broken fucking Lives. Shit, takes me right back, that does.”
“It’s good to see you again, Woolfy.”
“Yeah, too right. It’s good to see you lot an’ all.”
It takes us less than five minutes to sort things out. Woolfy waves away our offers of money and promises to make us sound better than we have in our lives. It turns out Woolfy is one of the most sought-after sound engineers in the country these days. He’s even done monitors for Uz. He doesn’t think very much of Ike, though. He reckons Ike is the most miserable git he’s ever had to work for. It’ll be his pleasure, he says. To help us get our own back.
We can’t help smiling when he tells us what he’s going to do.
Almost everyone I know is out there: Kostas and Mrs. Kostas, Ruth and Ruth’s partner Bob, Kate and Shelley and Allen and No Knob and any distant acquaintance whose name was even vaguely legible in my 1990 Musicians Union diary that I could phone up and persuade/beg/convince to come down.
The record companies have all turned up. I know. I’ve checked. I’ve read and reread the guest list, checked and double-checked with Kostas, and I’ve even trudged all the way down to the box office and back twice to make sure that they’ve definitely come in. The box-office lady was very helpful. And not at all rude. Even though the queue was very long. And she didn’t really have a lot of time to talk to me.
And somewhere out there is Alison. The woman I love. The woman that I haven’t seen for the longest two weeks of my life. Who hasn’t seen me for a month.
“Can you see her anywhere?” says Matty, peering into the crowd over my shoulder.
“No,” I say, “I can’t.”
“Don’t worry, mate,” says Vince. “She said she’d be cutting it pretty fine, didn’t she. I’m sure she’s out there somewhere.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know she is.”
There’s half an hour left before show time and Vince suggests we go back up to the dressing room for some peace and quiet. He likes to gather his thoughts before a gig and he’s insisted that no one comes backstage to bother us before we go on.
We sit in silence. We creak and fidget on the sofas, slurp up the foam from our beers, try on the crushed-velvet bell-bottoms that Vince has chosen specially for our last night and conspire to hide
our nerves. In less than an hour it will all be over. All three of us will know where we stand. It’s unlikely we’ll carry on if we screw this one up. I doubt we’ll get a chance this big again.
“Right then,” says Vince, rubbing his hands together. “There’s ten minutes left. Better get off for your pre-gig shit.”
“No, you’re all right,” I say. “I don’t think I’m going to bother.”
“Come off it, Danny. I don’t want you ha ring off-stage in the middle of the gig with a nuclear dose of the squits.”
“No, I mean it. I don’t think I’m going to bother.”
Vince and Matty exchange worried glances.
“Honestly,” I say, picking up my guitar and giving it a quick tune. “I don’t even feel that nervous. I reckon I’m going to be all right.”
Vince gives me one last chance to change my mind, and at five minutes to eight we make our way through the warren of breeze-block corridors and take our places at the side of the stage. I lean my head round the curtain to take a final look at the crowd. It’s rammed out there. Even in the balconies. It’s easily three-quarters full. I wonder why they’ve all come so early. I wonder if it’s got anything to do with us. I wonder if that’s the sound of people cheering as the lights go down or if it’s just my imagination. Too late. It’s time. Vince shoots me a quick wink and we walk out on to the stage, plug our guitars into our amps, and wait for what seems like a lifetime for Matty to begin the first count.
“One, two, three, four…”
Go.
It’s difficult to convey what it feels like when everything goes right onstage. It’s effortless. It feels like everything in the room is connected: the band, the instruments, the amps and the crowd, even the plaster on the walls. My mind never wandered for a second. There was no place left for it to go.
We sounded brilliant up there tonight. I could tell by the
reaction of the crowd. We carried the whole audience with us. From the first to the last. From beginning to end. From the opening click to the last dying chord, and we never dropped the pace for a second.
We don’t say a word as we walk off the stage. We know we don’t need to.
“Hie, woo pah woopahhhb! Mega. Hie hie. MEGAAAHHH! Hie. Woopahr
Matty is so excited that he has the hiccups. He’s sat in the middle of the dressing-room floor with a towel wrapped round his head, a stuffed vine leaf sticking out of his mouth and a magnum of champagne clutched under his sweat-soaked armpit. He hiccups and yells and hiccups and woopahs and bursts the cork out of its tight green neck with a hugely satisfying pop.
“Here you go, then, here you go,” he says, pouring the champagne into cups and passing it round. “I love you guys, I do. Hie. You were brilliant tonight. Both of you, hie. Completely brilliant. Especially Vince. And especially Danny. And especially, hie, most especially, Meeee! Woopahhhh. Hie. I am great. Hands up who thinks I’m great. Hands up who thinks I’m the best. Hie. Hands up who thinks I’m the best fucking drummer in the best fucking band in the whole of the whole fucking worl—’
“Excuse me, guys, not disturbing you, am I? Is it OK if I come in and have a quick chat with the three of you?”
His name is Colin Drapper. He’s from Diablo Records. He’s their top A’n’R man. He’s their only A’n’R man. He wants to know if any other companies have spoken to us yet. He wants to know if we can call in to his office early next week. He thinks I’m a talented songwriter. He thinks Vince is a bit of a star. He has a very important proposition for all three of us. He wants to offer us a deal.
I can’t quite believe it. I can’t seem to take it all in. I may be mistaken but I think I might want to go for that shit now.
The dressing room fills up quickly. Matty is deep in conversation with Kate, Kostas is deep in conversation with Ruth’s partner Bob, and if I’m not mistaken Vince is deep in conversation with his ex-girlfriend Liz. What a dark horse. He never even told me he was inviting her. I wonder if he knows where Alison is. I wonder if she’s on her way up yet.
And then I spot her. Walking through the door with a half-drunk beer in her hand. Smiling at me. Waving. Winding through the crowd like an elegantly stoned cat.
She looks stunning. She’s wearing low-slung jeans that cling to her hips, a low-cut T-shirt that clings to her breasts, and a giant purple flower pinned tightly in her hair. I can’t wait to talk to her. I can’t wait to tell her what’s happened. I can’t wait to see the look on her face.
“Hey,” I say, handing her a cup of warm champagne.
“Hey,” she says, kissing me on the cheek.
“Come over here and sit down,” I say. “I’ve got something important to tell you.”
“So that’s it really,” I say, lighting us both a cigarette. “We’re seeing him first thing next week.”
“And you think he’s going to offer you a deal?”
“Yeah. They’re only a small label so I don’t suppose they’ve got very much money or anything, but if we put out a couple of EPs with Diablo we stand a pretty good chance of being picked up by a major later on.”
“How long would it take?” she says, fiddling with the label on her drink.
“How long would what take?” I say, wondering what she means.
“You know, recording the EPs, putting them out, getting picked up by a bigger record company.”
“Well, that sort of depends,” I say. The Diablo guy thinks we need to develop our sound a bit more. He thinks we should ditch some of the samples, Pare it right down, you know, get back to the basic instruments.”
“Right.”
“He thinks Vince has got a wicked voice, though,” I say, wondering why she looks unconvinced. “And he thinks I’m a top-quality songwriter.”
“Right.”
“So, what do you think, then?” I say, attempting to gee her along.
“About what?”
“About everything I’ve just said. It’s great, isn’t it? It means we don’t have to give up after all. A record deal or a job, that’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
“Danny, I didn’t really—’
“OK, so it’s not like I’ll be bringing in much money yet, but we’ll be all right, won’t we? For the next year or so? I can carry on working at the video shop while we’re getting things sorted out, you’ll get another top-notch job when you come back to London, so—’
“So nothing changes, then?”
“Alison, what do you mean? Of course it does. Everything changes. Did you hear what I just said? We’re going to get a record deal. An actual record deal.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I heard you.” And then she says she needs to take a piss.
Alison has been gone a long time and I’m beginning to wonder where she’s got to. I’ve been making polite conversation about hard drives and soft drives and weekend breaks in Marrakech for almost an hour now, and it feels like my head is about to
explode. No one wants to talk about anything interesting; like *
the width of James Caan’s shoulders in The Godfather or how |j long Nick Cave has been dyeing his hair. x
It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have got myself stuck with (tm)
Ruth’s partner Bob. He must be the most boring man on the jr.
* ‘ASSE
planet. I’m considering poking him in the eye. I’m so desperate for someone else to talk to that I’m even considering striking up a conversation with Ruth.
“Hey, Ruth,” I say, interrupting Bob’s fascinating discourse on the single European currency, ‘you didn’t happen to notice where Alison went, did you?”
“Yes,” she says, smiling at me strangely. “I’ve just seen her. She’s outside in the corridor.”
Alison is outside in the corridor. She’s sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped round her knees, staring lazily into space.
“I wondered where you’d got to,” I say, sitting down next to her and trying to catch her eye.