The Thrill of It All

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘The café au lait is a smacker.’

  ‘Lactose intolerant.’

  ‘Ah. Quelle dommage.’

  ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t respect me in the morning.’

  ‘I’d give you a rasher. Would that not do?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep with a man who had a heart attack last week.’

  ‘I’d die happy,’ I said. ‘And quickly.’

  ‘Couldn’t handle you, rudeboy. Never could. That’s a fact. Call me. I’m getting guitars.’

  ‘I’m not doing your gig, Trez.’

  ‘Yeah you are.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘You know you really want to.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  On the morning of the gig, I got to the venue around nine. Vicar Street in Dublin, a gorgeous clubby place. But if it had been destroyed by an earthquake the previous evening, I wouldn’t have minded too much.

  I returned to the underground and got into the car, gathering the togetherness required to get back out. Jimmy had wanted to accompany me but I’d managed to put him off. He needed to sleep. And I needed to be without him. A Bowie song came on the radio and I switched it off. It had been co-produced by Fran, who was playing guitar. Not something I wanted to hear.

  I walked down to the river, got a coffee from a petrol station. The sky looked like the sky in the opening sequence of The Simpsons, blue as your aunt’s hat, with neat white clouds. On a summer morning in Dublin the Liffey can seem pleasant, stretching like a mirror down towards Ringsend, the little smacks and cruisers all shining. Clusters of lads stood fishing on the walkway. A tourist boat was moored, her crew having breakfast on the quarterdeck. They looked peaceable, contented. Some were playing chess. One sailor, a shirtless black guy, was missing a hand. The scene was like something from a lesser known classical myth, a person who once failed Greco-Roman Civilisation might think.

  Shortly before nine. Everything was quiet. There was a time I’d be drinking by now. A couple of Bloody Marys to lay the foundations of the day. There are places in every city where you can get a drink around sunrise. In Dublin I knew where those were.

  A weird fantasy assailed me, to see if I could stow away. Anxiety about the gig was part of that, I guess. My stomach felt like a chemistry experiment, probably illegal, involving a jellyfish and a flagon of petrol.

  Nearly twenty-five years since that night in Barcelona, our final concert as it turned out, the worst we ever played. Wish I’d known at the time that we were saying ‘adios’. In truth, I can barely remember it.

  On a hoarding outside a derelict pawnshop was a billboard poster of three teenage faces: Seán, Trez, your hero. THE MARITIME VESSELS – AND FRIENDS. I felt uneasily that the whole idea of the gig had never been much to do with me, that I’d gone along with it out of misplaced politeness or a sense of what was owed, like the bride who didn’t cancel a wedding because the invitations had been sent. The cake was ordered. The tables were set. Stage fright exists for a reason. I didn’t want to play, didn’t want to hear the songs, was yearning to be back on the Grand Union Canal, phone switched off, tea brewing. I hate it when forlorn Americans say ‘I am not in a good place’, but the usage seemed strangely appropriate. My boat is a good place. I wanted to be there. But here I was in Dublin, looking at pictures from the past. Not a good place at all.

  I tried doing a trick once taught me by Trez, where I’d mentally project forward a number of hours, to the aftermath of the show, the limo-drive to the hotel, the party that would follow, the drinking. But it scared me to summon the moment when tonight’s gig would be over. I didn’t like to think about that.

  From my pocket sounded a bomp-a-bomp barrelhouse piano riff. I knew that ringtone. Meade Lux Lewis doing ‘Sixhand Boogie Jook’. Some winter morning when you’re finding it difficult to haul out of bed, try the Luxman. He’ll give you the sundance.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ said my daughter.

  ‘Hey, Molly. What’s the story?’

  ‘Fucked up. I’m in Glasgow. The flight got diverted.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Can they sort you with something else?’

  ‘Hope so. It’s crazy busy. Where are you?’

  ‘At the venue.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I like to be early.’

  ‘Someone’s with you, right?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Granddad Jimmy.’

  ‘They’re trying to get me on the eleven-thirty. But it’s full right now.’

  There was something she wanted to tell me, and I knew what it was. I found myself trying to think of a way she wouldn’t have to say it straight out because I didn’t want her taking anything on her shoulders that day. Eighteen is a tough age. Hell, all of them are tough. But she didn’t deserve to be anyone’s bad-news-giver.

  ‘Look, I guessed Mom isn’t coming,’ I said, ‘but don’t worry. I’m cool with it. There’s no problem. Okay?’

  ‘You’re really not pissed?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘She wanted to. Seriously. It’s just things got insane for her at work. You know Mom. She can’t say no.’

  ‘That’s why I married her.’

  ‘Stop changing the subject.’

  ‘Honest, she never promised. It’s all good.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I am. So I’ll see you lunchtime.’

  ‘Cool, Dad. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too, Mollzer. Be good.’

  Well, then she was gone. I let it sink in. Michelle wasn’t coming. There it was. Free country, I know. But you still have your hopes. The strangest thing – I’ll be honest – I would have given a lot to speak to Fran at that instant. I’ve no idea why. We’d have fought.

  I’d a powerful sense of him being in the same town, a few miles away from me, in Howth. Walking his gardens. Looking out at the sea. Moving through his rooms like the ghost of himself. I could be out there on the DART train in thirty, forty minutes. Telling you I didn’t consider it would be lying.

  Loss of face? I suppose. The loser begs his buddy. If you think I was pig-headed, I’ve no doubt you’re on the money, but would you want to be the leper at the millionaire’s gate? I was afraid of the self-abasement, the apologies and appeals, didn’t want to be the ex who won’t go away without a restraining order. God gave me many faults but I’m not a drunk-and-dialler.

  I looked at the river, tried raising Seán but his phone was switched off, so I counted the seagulls and thought about Michelle and tried to get my thoughts to alight in the same tree. A man I took to be homeless shuffled towards me with a demented grin.

  ‘Robbie Goulding, right?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Name’s Luke. They call me the Prof. Your sound man for tonight.’ Dublin guy of my own age, with straggles of grey hair, like a former member of Jethro Tull. ‘I’m heading up to the venue. You with me?’

  He led me up the hill and around to the truck dock at the back of Vicar Street, where a scruffy long-loader was berthed. ‘You’re fierce early. Will I see if there’s someone around? They’ll be flying the lights. Like a cuppa?’

  I asked if he knew anything about ticket sales but he didn’t. ‘Don’t be worrying, we’ll be jammed to the rafters. Smoke?’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You’re taller off the telly,’ said the Prof with a mild grin. ‘I saw youse once in London. Town and Country Club, Kentish Town. Special night, it was. Huge fan.’

  By now, a couple of roadies had appeared on the forecourt and were unloading bits of the rig from the truck. Lighting-spars, speaker cabs, the Bechstein for Trez, wires, flexes, cables, effects-boards. The roadies must have been wondering why I was there at all. I guess I was wondering too.

  The Prof led me upstairs to Catering and got me a brew.

  ‘That Seán. He’s some drummer.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Trez on the bass. What a line-up.’

  ‘I guess.�
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  ‘We’ll have a great night. I won’t let youse down. Honour to work with you.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Ever see himself these days?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The bould Fran.’

  ‘Not in a while.’

  ‘Worked with him once. Some character. Bit mad. But Christ, could he sing. What happened him anyway, to send him the way he went?’

  ‘Long story,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t want to bore you.’

  ‘Doesn’t buy you peace. In’t that what they say? The money, the fame, when you think of all he’s got. Guy could buy Dublin. Does an awful lot for charity. But is he happy?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Sit down over there.’ He pointed to a bench. ‘Make yourself at home. You’re in your granny’s.’

  There were posters on the walls: Sinéad O’Connor, Neil Young. As he buttered bits of toast, he hummed to himself. ‘There’s a bicky around somewhere. Tuck in.’

  ‘I’m grand.’

  ‘Show you something? Give you a laugh?’ He pulled a picture from his notebook, a photo of Fran, Trez and me, circa ’85, snipped from a newspaper and folded so many times that its creases had worn a way through. We were on Camp Street in New Orleans, Trez wearing a leather twinset, Fran in ripped black bodice and trews. ‘The wife give us that. Donkey’s years ago now. It’s autographed by Head-the-Ball. D’you see, in the corner?’

  If there was one subject I didn’t want to talk about, it was Francis Xavier Mulvey. But you don’t like to be ungracious. I told the Prof I remembered the day, even remembered the photographer, a snake-hipped little oldster who’d once met Little Richard. It was taken during a three-weeker we did around the Southern states. This was back in the day, before we were known. The snapper was only there doing stock shots for a portfolio, but Trez informed him we were megastars on the slippy way up, and he laughed and pointed his Leica.

  War stories. I got them. They floated around me. I spun them to Luke, the sound man at Vicar Street, as the cooks scrambled eggs for the roadies. He’d laugh from time to time, or shake his head in marvel. Trez and I in the Holiday Inn St Louis on the night she wrote ‘Send it High’, staying up until dawn, taking turns to get coffees from the machine in the lobby. Seán meeting Ginger Baker backstage in Chicago. Fran being photographed for the cover of Rolling Stone, garbed and made-up as Tretchicoff’s Blue Lady. Our four faces on a Times Square billboard, Christmas Eve ’86.

  ‘Great days,’ Luke said. ‘Please God they’ll come again.’ It was a kindly way of letting me know that even a fan can hear enough. I appreciated the tact, the articulate gentleness you sometimes see in men that age. I talk when I’m nervous, an affliction of old. Would I like to see the dressing room now?

  Up many stairs he led me. I lay on the couch. In a moment I was in the sailboat Michelle and I once owned. I wouldn’t call it a dream, more a flicker of pictures. As I woke, I was blood-sugary and hot. When Molly was a kid she wrote a story about a fictional street called Parallel Avenue, where you lived your other life, the one you’d be living had you taken alternative turnings at every junction. A cop would be a robber, a beggar a merchant banker. She won a prize for it at school. The essay was dedicated ‘to my daddy’. I kept it when her mother threw me out. A painful season. But the story tapped at the windows, that morning in Dublin. I found myself wondering what mine would have been, who’d be living in my house, or sleeping beside me.

  You need to be careful when that old song starts. It isn’t a help, and it’s wiser switched off. Parallel Avenue Blues.

  12:03

  Seán was standing alone on the Vicar Street stage, staring at the Paiste crash cymbal he had in his hands as though trying to see his reflection in the brass. I knew he’d be there by noon. Creature of habit. Doing his own set-up was always a rite, even in the days when success meant you could have a techie for every drum in your stack and a different masseuse for each wrist. He liked and respected the roadies. He’d join them on the razz. But no one was permitted to build Seán Sherlock’s kit.

  I watched for a while. He pointed a zapper towards the PA. Nothing much happened. Then ‘Message to You, Rudy’ burst on. Fat parps of trombone and luscious harmonica. The Prof appeared from off-right, dancing with himself, in a dirty, too-small T-shirt whose slogan made me laugh. TOO OLD TO DOWNLOAD. TOO YOUNG TO DIE. Trez’s grand piano getting wheeled up the ramp. Forests of clamps and mic stands.

  Encircled by a fairy ring of Yamaha and Akai flight cases, Seán got down on his knees. Largest case first, then every other box in a sequence of decreasing size, next the packets containing the bolt-nuts and washers and tuners, and the quiver of sticks and brushes. Only when every piece was out on the floor would he commence the process of assembly. It used to drive Fran and me batty, his scrupulous insistence on performing any act in the right order. Watching him make a pot of tea or dress himself or shave could reduce me to arse-clenching rage.

  He won’t mind me saying he’d gained a pound or two down the years. The fortnight over in Dublin to rehearse the show had done little to lower the jean size. His phone rang and he answered it, now noticing I was there and beckoning me over with the cymbal. He’d done up a set-list, and I tried reading over it as he talked to his Consuela, who was calling from their beautiful home in Thousand Oaks, California, the only musician’s house I know where everything works and light bulbs get replaced the day they die.

  Nicotine patch on his forearm. His jaws mashing rhythmically, with the toffee-crushing intensity of someone who doesn’t like the double-strength spearmint chewing gum he’s pretending to prefer to a smoke. The shirt was sharp, Gabicci Vintage. Good pair of brogues, the whole bit. The sideburns tapered to a point that could cut you. A fat Mod granddad. Not uncool.

  ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Connie sends her love.’

  ‘Right back to her.’ I nodded. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘I’m actually late. Gimme two.’

  He went back to his call, talking in a Spanish I found affecting since it was delivered in a strong Lewisham accent. His eldest daughter, Luz-Maria, had a baby last year and their first grandchild, Adoncia, brought great joy to Seán and Consuela. ‘We was hoping they’d call her Beyoncé,’ he told me at the christening, not entirely ironically, I felt.

  Call done, he regarded me with amiable tiredness as he fingered the lapels of my anorak.

  ‘You look like you woke up in a skip,’ he confirmed. ‘Call that a shirt? I ain’t going on stage with no hobo.’

  ‘Building your kit?’

  ‘Want to help? Over there.’ He gestured towards the floor tom and I went to pick it up. ‘Gently,’ he chided. ‘It’s an instrument, not a coal sack. Guitarists. You don’t know shit.’

  Assembling drums is complex. We didn’t say much. He was looking forward to seeing Molly – his and Consuela’s goddaughter – and he asked about her plans for college. It always tickled him to think of her making do on my houseboat, a humble enough vessel for a girl accustomed to walk-in closets and air-con. ‘That kid is gonna make one unusual lawyer,’ he said, ‘with her knowledge of low-life ways.’

  He showed me a photograph of Adoncia, taken by her dad, then gnawed off a length of gaffer tape and fixed the picture to the top side of his bass, so he could glance at it now and again while playing. A touching thing about Seán was that he always went in for such totems while mocking the slightest belief in them.

  Gaunt roadies were building his riser up-stage. They looked like the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin, only with additional facial injuries. He asked them to centre it a little, which put them into a huff. I could have told them there was no point in resistance, he must be permitted to prevail; else he’d take it apart personally and move it the two and a half inches to the left that can make all the difference in show business. An impossible man. They did as requested. He sorted his colour-coded sticks.

  It was cold in the auditorium. Cleaning-staff were hoovering. My
headache was bad, and I hadn’t put in my lenses, with the result that I couldn’t actually make out the back wall in the distance.

  The Prof checked his grid. It was tricky, but he had it all straight. Above us, in the flies, crew were locking off. Two young women who worked in the box office showed up backstage and came over to say hello.

  Seán switched on the charm, Twinkle-Eyes in his XXL polo shirt. You’d wonder at the unfairness that makes some people have it, when so many millions don’t and never will. He’s fat but he’s suave. That combination isn’t legal. They shake hands and tell him their mums used to fancy him rotten and he’s deploying his Bill Clinton aw-shucks grin and inviting them to have a bang on his snares, the bad bastard, and offering them coffee and buns. Now he’s breaking my balls for being ‘a filthy-looking scruff-bag’ or, his worst of all insults, ‘a rocker’. And they’re laughing like sunbeams as he imitates my glower and my tight little knot of a smile. They’re asking him for autographs. Would he mind a quick piccy? ‘Huddle up, ladies, the glamour makes me thin. Now, smile at poor Rob. It confuses him.’

  A bald Buddha who could use his belly as a parachute. ‘It’s the shoes, mate,’ he says, with a slappable smirk. Just like the days of old.

  Back then, you couldn’t get Fran into a suit unless you tranquillised him first. But Seán, even when poor, spent every spare penny on clothes. He’d scrimp six months to buy a jacket or a pair of suede loafers. Twice a year he’d voyage to a Mod boutique in exotically distant Leeds, for the cult was always stronger in the northern regions. Once, he ferried to Belfast for a soul all-nighter. I didn’t even know they had Mods in 1980s Belfast, an unwise city to be walking around with a target on your back.

  Seán wasn’t an admirer of ZZ Top, but he felt there was a truth in their hit ‘Sharp-Dressed Man’. This was in an era when I regarded matched socks as not worth the drivetime and shoe polish as a cheaply available inhalant high. His habitual mode of turtleneck, mandarin collar and chessboard-pattern Ben Sherman sent Fran right out of his mind. ‘The boy wears a tie-pin. What’s he trying to prove? Cuban-heel boots and a crombie coat. Fukken reject from Quadrophenia.’ Through all of it, Seán would smile peaceably with his ski-bum’s white teeth or run a hand through his lustrous mop-top. Nobody had white teeth in 1980s England. I think he must have imported them without telling us.