Losing It (7 page)

‘I’m not sure. Reading, maybe. She’s always got a bag full of books.’

‘And what do you know about books?’

‘Not a lot,’ I say, truthfully. The last book I read without having to was probably something by Roald Dahl.

‘Well, find out what she likes and read that. Then it’s a couple of drinks, some old pony about Harry Potter or whatever and it’ll be all systems go for the old pink Polaris.’

‘Will it work?’

‘Of course it will. You’re on your own with the fucking books though.’

Roger pushes the button on the compactor, which starts rumbling and clanking. Now he has to shout to make himself heard over the grinding and mangling of metal going on in the belly of the machine. ‘Only things I ever read are Millwall programmes,’ he says, then there’s something I can’t quite make sense of, but it sounds like, ‘And fucking Vasari.’

I can’t just sit there, so I get up and start helping him feed the compactor from a tangled heap of rusting scrap. I’m quite enjoying the mechanical nature of the job as we both take an end of something heavy and drop it into the hungry jaws of the machine. I’m knackered after about three minutes, but I’m liking that feeling which all manual workers must get when they work up a sweat from honest toil. And I’m thinking how noble it is to work with your hands and satisfying to have your muscles ache at the end of the day, when Roger stops the machine to clear an obstruction.

‘That’s helped you, has it?’ he says.

‘It’s certainly an idea,’ I say.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘And now I’ve helped you, you’ll remember to help me, won’t you?’

I look around at the patch of flattened earth where one of the many heaps of scrap had been. It’s now reduced to a couple of neatly compacted bundles. ‘Not with that,’ Roger says. ‘With Clive. You’ll stand by your promise?’

‘Promise?’ I say. Had I actually promised anything?

‘You know what I mean,’ he says. Roger sees something in the long grass and picks it up. It’s one of Clive’s old Action Man figures, now naked and headless. ‘I don’t mind you, Brian, so we’ll forget about last night and start over. I know you won’t let me down again.’

He drops the little figure into the machine. Any thoughts I’d had about Roger actually being ‘a bit of a pussycat when you got to know him’ wither entirely as he nails me with a loaded look.

‘Of course I won’t,’ I say. ‘You can count on me.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Roger says, and digs his hand into his Speedos to offer another imaginative configuration of his cock and balls.

C
HAPTER
6

Do You Remember the First Time?

‘We used to play this, remember?’

That’s Faruk, who can use the jukebox for free.

He sits down and begins to rattle his teaspoon on his coffee cup to the sound of Motorhead’s
Ace of Spades
while his sister Deniz shoots him looks from the other side of the counter.

‘To be accurate,’ says Clive. ‘We tried to play this.’

Clive has remained tight-lipped about last night, all the way from his house to the Casablanca.

‘We weren’t bad,’ says Faruk. ‘Just different. And that’s no bad thing, innit?’

I’m remembering The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’s debut gig, also our farewell gig, as it turned out.

‘We were different,’ says Clive, ‘in the way that being good is different from being crap.’

Faruk messes with his kebab, opens it up, injects more sauce. ‘It’s not an easy song,’ he says.

‘It’s three chords,’ Clive says. ‘How much easier could it be? How could we balls that up?’

‘The audience was expecting a Craig David covers band,’ Faruk says.

Faruk finishes his kebab while Clive watches people passing up and down a rainy street. The girls who are giggling in the corner booth look like the ones who were giggling at our car the other night.

‘Well, at least we know Paranoid doesn’t work as an
a cappella
version now,’ I offer.

‘No,’ Clive says. ‘We know that it doesn’t work when we do it.’

‘I said the Masons’ PA would be dodgy,’ Faruk says.

‘It wasn’t the amps, it was the wiring wotsits,’ Clive says. ‘It won’t have powered anything more serious than a three valve radio since the war.’

‘And that was one tough audience,’ I say.

Everyone nods, lost in thought.

‘Did you see the looks we got when we played
Last Handjob Before I Die?’
Faruk says.

‘I didn’t think Masons could be so rude,’ Clive says.

‘That stamping they did,’ I say.

‘The slow hand clap,’ says Faruk, shaking his head.

‘Even your dad was shouting, “Get off!”‘ Clive says.

The girls start giggling again. Perhaps they can hear us.

I’m remembering how Dad’s Masonic lodge had been blown out by the band they’d hired to give one of their fundraisers some youth appeal. (The accordionist and the xylophonist had contracted flu and the singer was ‘feeling poorly’.) Dad was in charge of entertainments and it was down to him to find a replacement act at short notice – not easy, with the money the Masons were offering.

As a last resort, he asked me what I’d been up to with that guitar of mine. He’d seen me taking it in and out of the house and might have heard me practising
Smoke on the Water
or
Seven Nation Army
once or twice in my bedroom. ‘So, Brian,’ he said to me one day, as I was headed out the door for band practise in Faruk’s garage. ‘Am I right in thinking you’ve joined a musical combo – you know,’ and here he winked, conspiratorially, ‘a band?’ He’s not often right in what he’s thinking and his idea of a band (which, ten to one, will be three Brylcreemed boys and a cheeky drummer), would not have been Donny Tourette’s, for example.

But I nodded and smiled, pleased that he was taking an interest in me, for a change. ‘I thought as much,’ he said. ‘Now what do you say to this? Your old dad has only gone and got you your first engagement!’ Like playing for a lot of old knackers with
funny handshakes was doing us the favour, and not him. And like Faruk’s saying now, loudly enough to earn him disapproving looks from his sister and one more burst of giggles from the party ordering the nitrous oxide in the corner, that gig was ‘a fucking disaster.’

The career of the Four Horsemen was one marked by frequent differences of opinion regarding the group’s identity and future direction. And now, months after the disbanding of
Britain’s Most Exiting Newcomers
(I quote from the flyers Clive printed up, complete with prophetic misprint), we’re at it again.

‘The problem was your keyboards, really,’ Faruk is saying.

‘What was wrong with them? At least I got my grade three piano.’

‘We were a death metal band. There’s not even supposed be keyboards. And definitely not Liberace playing them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That silver jacket you wore. With the sequins. That quiff. You know.’

‘But we weren’t a death metal band,’ Clive protests. ‘I wasn’t in a death metal band.’

‘What were you, then?’

‘I don’t know. Indie, maybe. With a hint of early Abba.’

‘You were death metal, weren’t you, Brian?’

‘Well, yeah, sort of,’ I say. ‘With other stuff thrown in, you know?’

And that was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, murdered by musical differences before we’d even begun. Well, not only musical differences – while Faruk had his own guitar, Clive, Diesel and me had taken summer jobs at Henshaw’s Chickens to pay off our second-hand instruments. Nigel Henshaw is head honcho at the Masonic Lodge and shifts at his factory became rarer than hens’ teeth after our gig and our instruments were duly repo’d.

What was most annoying about this was the waste of hours of
preparation that had been put into the project. I’m not talking about rehearsal time, I’m talking about the time and effort I put into writing and designing our album covers, in case we got a record deal. They were bloody good, though I say so myself. We all got dressed up in leather jackets (borrowed from Faruk’s cousins, who are in a motorcycle gang called Allah’s Angels), persuaded my neighbour Jane Gallacher to do our make up and spent an afternoon taking photographs of each other jumping off walls, leaning over balconies, pointing menacingly at camera, striking phallic poses with our axes and generally looking like death metal hombres about to kick musical ass. I Photoshopped the best of these onto a series of mocked up album covers for CD and, to add retro appeal, old-style vinyl gatefolds too. We foresaw a multiple album deal once we were discovered, so I was working flat out for several weeks before the sleeves were completed and I was happy with the result.

The first album’s front cover featured a black and white shot of The Four Horsemen in a grimy alley, which looks like it might be somewhere in the Bronx but is actually the one where the Casablanca keeps its bins. We look appropriately mean and moody. Diesel manages an Elvis lip-curl and stands, hands on hips, snarling at the camera. Behind him, Faruk, Stratocaster copy over his shoulder and a fag smouldering between his lips, is plainly looking for trouble. Clive leans against a wall wearing sunglasses and trimming his nails with what might be a flick knife but is actually only a nail file. He’s always doing that. And me, I’m in there too, sporting fake designer stubble thanks to a bit of pointillism from Jane Gallacher’s eyebrow pen and I’m wearing a seen-it-all, fucked-it-all expression. We look the business. In fiery contrast to the grainy monochrome image is the splash of blood-red lettering spelling out the band’s name and along the bottom is the title of the album, Slaves to Sex.

The back cover features the other pictures we took on the afternoon’s shoot, one or two with the camera’s self-timer feature,
some others taken by random passers-by. All these images, which for the sake of contrast were in colour, had been exposed to the full range of available effects and filters. Particularly effective is the one where we’re shaking our fists at a nuclear holocaust sky, the environmental message as clear as day. And in a text box on the right of these is the track listing:

1
Dog’s Bollocks
(Dalziel/Dyson/Osman/Johnson)

2
I’ve Had Her
(Dalziel/Osman)

3
Death’s Handmaiden
(Dalziel)

4
Gonna Make It Big Tonight
(Johnson)

5
Teenage Gunman
(Dalziel/Osman)

6
Black Death in Mordor
(Dalziel/Johnson)

7
Apostles of the Apocalypse
(Dalziel/Osman)

8
Acne Carriage
(Dyson/Johnson)

9
Pox on your House
(Dalziel/Johnson)

10
A Last Handjob Before I Die
(Dalziel/Dyson/Osman/Johnson)

11
Larger Than Life
– bonus track (Johnson/Dyson)

And beneath them, in another text box imposed over police mugshots of the band members (bits of blackboard/chalked names/photo booth) were the sleeve notes, some provisional copy which would promote us with interested record companies and to which minor adjustments and updates could be made for sake of veracity, at a later date:

Every so often a band comes along which blows away everything in its path and changes the course of rock music forever. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and The Sex Pistols were all such bands. Now comes The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an outfit of such raw energy and startling originality that the music press has not only sat up and taken note, it has prostrated itself before them. The Four Horsemen pride themselves on well-crafted songs, delivered with all the power of an Airbus A-380 on takeoff. Their recent barnstorming British tour, which culminated in a show-stopping performance at the Wembley Arena, has confirmed the
Horsemen as the UK’s No I rock act. Their forthcoming tour of the United States and Asia is expected to take Britain’s best to the next level
.

Then there are some faked-up clippings looking like they’ve been torn from newspapers and pasted into any spare spaces. These aren’t actually the clippings I used on the versions I showed the band, but ones that I personally prefer:

And another one, about how things might develop, given time…

I’m still thinking of how things might have been when Clive puts down his Cherry Coke and points at something in the street, where the rain is coming down like sackfuls of silver nails. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

We wipe spaces in the fogged window to see someone in a bright red, hooded sweatshirt dodging traffic as he crosses the road and trots briskly towards the Casablanca, casting furtive glances over his shoulder as he approaches.

‘Teletubby coming,’ Faruk says.

‘Eh oh!’ Clive says, as Diesel opens the door and pulls off his hood.

He sits down, picks up the laminated menu and calls out, ‘Usual, please, Deniz, with an extra sausage and a slice on the side.’

‘What’s that?’ says Clive.

‘What?’

‘That red thing?’

‘It’s not mine. Have you finished with those chips?’

‘It’s no excuse.’

Clive has firm ideas on fashion.

‘How long for that special, Deniz?’ Diesel calls, his mouth already full with Clive’s cold chips.

‘It’s hideous,’ Clive proclaims, of Diesel’s sweatshirt.

‘You’re like Red Riding Hood. Only redder and more of a twat,’ Faruk offers.

‘In case you haven’t noticed, it’s completely hosing it down out there,’ Diesel says. Deniz, long brown hair pinned beneath a white cap, voluptuous arse encased in a tight pair of black jeans, parks Diesel’s recommended calorific intake for the week in front of him: two eggs, three sausages, beans, mushrooms, extra chips and a doorstep of bread and butter. Watching Diesel eat is an acknowledged source of free entertainment. We’re still amazed and genuinely impressed at the speed of the operation: the grey blur of the fork as he scoops up monumental piles of food like a souped-up JCB clearing hardcore. Today’s is a bravura performance, probably knocking five or six seconds off his record and that’s with the extra sausage. The rest of us exchange looks, privileged to have witnessed this special moment together. While Diesel mops his plate with the slice of bread and butter, Faruk tells him what we’ve just been talking about.

‘Great days,’ Diesel agrees, still chewing. ‘The band and all the other stuff too.’

‘It’s like we’ve all known each other for years,’ I say, apropos of not much.

‘I’ve known Faruk for thirteen years,’ Diesel says.

‘Though we didn’t see each other for the last six of them,’ Faruk reminds him.