Enormity

by Nick Milligan

  “That’s a nice pull quote,” I say.

  “Think I should use it?”

  “Only if Malcolm asks you for your opinion on child soldiers.”

  “That’s unlikely… could we tell him we’re releasing a song about child soldiers? That would be a tidy segue.”

  “Yes, but then we’d have to actually release a song about child soldiers.”

  “We could do that,” shrugs Dylan.

  “It would be easier to think of another pull quote.”

  “What songs are we working on?” asks Dylan. “He’s probably going to ask.”

  “Well,” I say, thinking. “I’m writing a song called ‘Comfortably Numb’.”

  “Cool, what’s that about?”

  “I don’t know. Drugs? Emotional distance? I’m writing another track I’m going to call ‘Ghost Of City Life’, which is about drifting through the streets in the early hours of the morning.”

  “I like it.”

  “I’m writing another song called ‘When The War Came’.”

  “Wow, that sounds a little dark. Is it post-apocalyptic or something?”

  “Ah, yeah. Maybe.”

  “War is a pretty bad subject. That’s probably going to shock a lot of people.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Yeah, well, you know…”

  “I never went to school, Dylan.”

  “Oh, of course. Yeah, sorry. I mean, well, the last war was like, hundreds of years ago. I can’t remember the date… I didn’t really go to school much either.”

  “Why hasn’t there been another war?”

  Dylan smiles. “They call it The Great Lesson. I remember my father trying to explain it to me once. He said that we saw the darkest part of our souls and we never looked at them again.”

  “At our souls?”

  “Shit, I don’t know,” says Dylan.

  I look back at the television. The news report on child soldiers is still running. Indeed, from what I’ve read, automatic weapons are about as advanced as the weaponry on this planet has become. I’m in a very peaceful corner of the universe, where full-scale war is virtually obsolete. People still kill each other. Occasionally. But violence is condemned and punished accordingly.

  Dylan points at a name in the itinerary. “We have a face to face with a girl called Mary-Josephine,” he says, a look of elation growing on his face.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’ve always wanted to fuck a girl with a hyphenated name,” says Dylan.

  “You have a hyphen fetish?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what it is. There’s just something adorable about it.”

  “Even hyphenated surnames?”

  “No, just the first. There’s nothing erotic about a hyphenated surname.”

  “So Mary-Josephine’s in a bit of trouble then.”

  “Yes,” says Dylan. “Someone should warn the poor girl.”

  “So what’s the plan? You say something charming and then she’ll just… pull your quote?”

  “That’s the idea… and don’t interfere either. I don’t want her pulling your quote. She has to pull mine.”

  “She’s a music journalist. She can pull any quote she likes.”

  “She can’t pull a quote if it isn’t offered,” says Dylan.

  “You don’t even know what she looks like. She’s a music journalist, so the odds are against you.”

  “I’ve met lots of cute music journalists.”

  “Name one.”

  “How about Destiny, that girl from Tastemaker?”

  I think for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose she was attractive. But she hadn’t done any research and her questions were completely inane. That’s a very ugly trait.”

  Dylan shrugs. “I think her disinterest really turned me on. She still slept with me, so she can’t be completely clueless.”

  “I remember her having a lot of tattoos,” I say.

  “She was covered,” nods Dylan. “Pretty hot. She had a lot of interesting pictures on her back. There was a lot going on. When I was taking her from behind it was almost like playing a pinball machine.”

  I nod and sip my beer. Then I see Amelia leading someone across the room toward our table. It’s Malcolm. He’s wearing black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. A satchel hangs from one shoulder and in one hand are a folded piece of paper and a pen. Malcolm has short dark hair, thick rimmed black glasses and his acne hasn’t improved.

  Amelia stops at our table, the clipboard tucked under her arm. “Boys, you remember Malcolm?”

  “How could we forget,” smiles Dylan, standing up to shake Malcolm’s hand.

  Malcolm gives a shy grin. “I think the last time I saw you guys was backstage at the Easton, on your last tour.”

  “Yes, I do remember parts of that evening,” says Dylan. “Things got a little hectic.”

  “That’s what rock stars do,” says Malcolm.

  “I’ll leave you with the boys,” says Amelia to Malcolm. “We’ll have to wrap it up in an hour, but if you don’t get everything you need I’m sure we can schedule some more time.”

  “Thank you,” says Malcolm, sitting down at the spare seat. Dylan sits down too. Malcolm then pulls a small recording device from his pocket and switches it on, sliding it across the table until it’s between Dylan and I. I look down at the little red light and watch the seconds tick over on the digital display. I eye Malcolm warily as he opens his piece of paper. His questions. It’s all very polite and friendly, but he’s not to be trusted. None of them are. They’re all smiling assassins. I then realise that he’s wearing a Known Associates t-shirt.

  “So how are you, Malcolm?” I ask.

  “Oh, uh, good. Very busy,” he says, almost stammering.

  “How’s everything at the magazine going?”

  “Excellent,” he nods. “I’ve actually been made deputy editor. From the next issue onward.”

  “Congratulations,” says Dylan. “Hey, do you want a drink? We’ve got a bottomless bar account here, so you should help yourself.”

  “Oh, um, okay,” says Malcolm.

  “What’s your poison?” asks Dylan, standing to go to the bar.

  “Uh, I’ll have whatever you guys are having.”

  “That’s a statement you should use sparingly,” grins Dylan. “I’ll get you a beer.”

  “I see you’re wearing a Known Associates t-shirt,” I smile.

  “Yes, they gave this to me yesterday. I did an interview with Damon. It’s so cool that you guys are on tour with them.”

  “Damon’s a sweetheart,” says Dylan, as he heads towards the bar. “We love those guys. Fuckin’ talented.”

  “Yes,” I say. “They’re certainly very popular at the moment.”

  “I was really surprised by your Dawn Of Man album. Did you have any ideas on how you wanted that album to sound before you started writing it?”

  “There was definitely a direction I wanted to go in,” I reply, the interview underway. “It felt like we had already conquered the epic song. We’d proven to ourselves that we could write music with broad brushstrokes and sweeping gestures. I still love doing that. But at the same time, I was having ideas for songs that didn’t fit that mold. They were simple chords, simple hooks. If you’re in a band of talented musicians, you can turn almost anything into an impressive song. But simplicity is the truest challenge. I wanted to make an album that was an exercise in brevity, but also an opportunity to be more aggressive and direct.”

  “And the rest of the band were obviously on the same page?” asks Malcolm.

  “Yeah, they’re very open to ideas. They like trying something new. I just said, ‘Guys, I’d like to put together some short, sharp rock songs.’ They were eager.”

  “Which songs were written first?”

  I think for a moment. “‘Up All Night’ was put together quite early. So was ‘Morning Glory’. ‘In It For The Money’ was written early too, and that really set a benchmark for the record.”
r />   Dylan returns with the male waiter, who is carrying three tall glasses of beer on a tray. He nods courteously and puts them on the table in front of us, then leaves.

  “Let’s lift a glass,” says Dylan. We each pick up our beer. “To being on tour and…” he smiles, “to our favourite music critic.”

  Malcolm grins, bashfully. “Stop it, Dylan.”

  “I’m serious!” replies my guitarist. “Love your work.”

  “I wanted to ask you guys how the song ‘Moving’ came together. Because it’s almost two songs rolled into one…” says Malcolm.

  Dylan points at me. “Jack can answer that. That song was all him.”

  “Well,” I reply. “I don’t know really. I’d had the verse in my head for many years now. I was playing at home on my own with an acoustic guitar and I was feeling a bit restless. A bit adrift. My life has been spent moving back and forth, all around the place. Never really tethered to anything. Even before the band got together. But, I couldn’t really find a chorus for it. Nothing seemed to fit. But then one day I was playing it to myself and the idea to really explode in the chorus came to me. I plugged in my electric guitar and found this, sort of, funk riff. For some reason the chorus felt like a good marriage for the verse I had been singing, even though they were so different. The song is a little bit like a carpet-ride. It’s got a serene aspect to it, but also an energy that’s completely arresting. I’m really pleased with that song.”

  “What was it like originally making that transition from a bedroom songwriter to being in a studio? Were you immediately comfortable with the recording process?” asks Malcolm.

  I sip my beer, allowing myself to ponder the question. “Well, to begin with, I barely had a bedroom. I was boarding in an abandoned building, passing the hours by playing songs,” I explain. “But now… yeah, recording is a strange process to me. Because in my mind a song is never complete. It is a living thing. It’s different every time you play it, just like a human is slightly different every day it wakes up. Recording music is like trapping ghosts. It’s like capturing someone in stasis, keeping them that way forever. So an opportunity to rework a song and add a layer of strings to it, like we have on Pulling Strings, is hard to pass up, you know. Yes, we record it again, but that’s what our listeners demand. They want to hear those captured ghosts.”

  “Captured ghosts, that’s good,” says Dylan, quietly, making an annoyed expression.

  “How did you find the new direction as a guitarist?” asks Malcolm to Dylan.

  Dylan shrugs. “I liked it. It’s fun to be a bit more abrasive. It’s nice playing long solos and arrangements and getting lost in all of that. But it’s a great… release, I guess, to crank up the distortion and get loose. I really like ‘Baba O’Reilly’. I think it’s a killer. It’s really fun.”

  “Do you have a favourite song on Dawn Of Man?” asks Malcolm.

  “I really like ‘The Bitter End’,” says Dylan. “I think it’s really sharp.”

  “I really like the grooves in ‘Rock The Casbah’ and ‘My Sharona’, so I’d probably choose either of those two,” I say. “‘You’ve Really Got Me’ is great too. But I love playing every song on the record. They all sound really massive live and there’s an energy about them.”

  Dylan points up at the silent television screen behind us, where the story on child soldiers is still running. “Look at those crazy kids,” says Dylan.

  Malcolm turns to look as the children are chopping pumpkin-like vegetables in half with their machetes, clearly practicing murder.

  “Looks pretty intense,” says Malcolm.

  “When I was their age, I wouldn’t have dreamed of firing a gun. All I wanted to shoot was my load, not bullets,” says Dylan.

  I shake my head at Dylan’s clumsy pull quote attempt. “That’s interesting, Dylan. It sounds like you were a lover, not a fighter,” I say.

  “I was just about to say that,” says Dylan, hiding his scowl.

  “Well, great minds think alike,” I smile.

  Malcolm turns back to us. “Great minds think alike… that’s a nice quote. I like that.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Dylan looks at me and shakes his head. He’s displeased. I pout at him, mockingly.

  “Now while you guys are extremely popular, not everyone out there loves your music…” says Malcolm.

  “What do you mean?” asks Dylan, who seems genuinely shocked.

  “Oh,” says Malcolm, “no, I’m just saying that a few people out there have said negative things about your music. Christopher Hunt at The Daily Observer said that your music and off-stage antics promotes and ‘glorifies behaviour that tears at the very fabric of society’.”

  “Not everyone can or will ever like our music,” I say, diplomatically.

  “That’s true,” says Dylan. “Here’s the thing. Sometimes in life, you’re going to meet people who don’t like you. All you can do is pray for them.”

  The anatomy of a concert. It’s a very complex organism and requires all organs to be functioning at a competent level. Its ideal genetic make-up is open to opinion and is dictated by those most holy of individuals. The ticket holders.

  No matter what a recording artist might purport, we all live and die by public expectation and how we dance with it. The seemingly smart ones employ the “I don’t give a fuck” attitude from the very beginning and use that as their foundation. Others fall into the trap of feeding the canine of the public too many treats as a puppy. Then your entire career is defined by hungry fans that don’t compromise on their unrealistic expectations of you.

  When Big Bang Theory was emerging, I was very careful to be dangerous. To be wild and deadly. To be unpredictable. The goal was to be defined by that unpredictability and for the most part it has paid off. I believed it would give me more legroom to cut loose and fuck up. But the truth of it is, no matter how you train that hungry, dewy-eyed baby dog, it will always expect too much. The better behaved and adoring it is, the more it starts to feel entitled to. That sense of entitlement is never stronger than when the puppy has purchased a concert ticket.

  From talking to people who go to gigs, you quickly gain an insight into that ravenous desire for satisfaction. When someone buys a ticket to a concert, they don’t see it as simply purchasing entry into the live performance of a band. That punter is buying a ticket into a gig that will fill their cup. The vessel that holds the volume of their personal satisfaction. Everyone’s cup is a different size. Some are bottomless. Some are quite shallow. But if you don’t fill their cup to the brim, then they’ll feel short-changed and they won’t love you as much as they did. If you overflow the cup, they’ll be impressed.

  The seemingly smart recording artists among us, who from the very beginning never promise to fill anyone’s cup, ultimately lose their way. The punter becomes tired very quickly of never having their cup filled to the brim. That empty space, that distance, manifests into many emotions.

  So no matter what any artist claims about their independence and whether or not they ever think about the public’s expectations or perceptions, deep down they know there’s a cup they have to fill. A doggy bowl for each panting, wide-eyed puppy. You can’t overfill it and you can’t leave it too empty. It’s about the happy medium.

  So what does this mean? The simplest way to explain it is this: Elvis Presley was never “the King”. He was just a very famous court jester. With that soul-destroying thought in mind, I approach every Big Bang Theory performance with great consideration. Even when I’m sweating bullets on a haphazard concoction of narcotics, I always intend to lose myself. Drugs often help. They’re that uncompromising social lubricant. The cure for all inhibition. They heighten your appreciation of music. No one can argue that that’s a bad thing.

  Right now we’re side of stage and out there in the darkness is a swelling orchestra of screams and cheers. Slow claps appear in the tumult, congealing and unifying as one synchronised demand for our blood. A demand for our b
odies and our souls and, while I’ve done many incredibly terrifying things in my life, I can never completely relax before walking those many miles up the small stairs to the stage. Crossing that threshold into oblivion is something I can’t become completely comfortable with. Stepping into the arena is an ascent into immortality.

  Big Bang Theory concerts never start off with a bang. It’s just not our thing. We appear in almost darkness. Just a few weak blue downlights. Our specters emerge as shadows, silhouettes divided by microphones and instruments. But they know we’re here and now there is nowhere to hide. Sometimes we start with ‘Closer’, which was originally written by Kings Of Leon. Or we build into ‘Corduroy’ by Pearl Jam or maybe even ‘The Rain Song’ by Led Zeppelin. On a few occasions I’ve stepped out on my own and sat at a piano to play Razorlight’s ‘Wire To Wire’. Sometimes it’s ‘The Funeral’ by Band Of Horses.

  Tonight we open with ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ by The Stone Roses and then break into ‘She Sells Sanctuary’. Then we play H.I.M.’s ‘(Rip Out) The Wings of a Butterfly’, Black Sabbath’s ‘N.I.B.’, ‘Pictures Of Home’ by Deep Purple and then The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’. These songs are a way of feeding the giant. They are big slabs of meat on the table. A feast of rock.

  The stage plunges into darkness and the wall of howls and wails hits me from the void like a black wind. The crowd cheers before the stage lights are slowly faded up. I step up to the microphone.

  “How you feelin’ out there?” I ask.

  A deafening reply returns from the audience and I can see hands waving in the air and dotted lights of mobile phones floating beyond the reach of the stage lights.

  “I feel a little exposed up here,” I smile. “Because you can see me … but I can’t see you.”

  As I say this, the house lights are turned up and the twenty thousand people in the auditorium become apparent.

  “Wow,” I say, looking at the endless faces and moving bodies. “There are a lot of beautiful people here. We’re very outnumbered.”