Naked

by Kevin Brooks

  ‘I must have left it in one of my pockets,’ Curtis told me. ‘Mum probably found it when she was doing the washing.’

  ‘What did your dad say?’ I asked him.

  Curtis laughed. ‘He asked me what it was, and what the bloody hell I was doing with it.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘The truth. I told him that it was just a bit of dope, and that there was no need to make a big deal about it.’

  ‘I bet that went down well.’

  He laughed again. ‘Yeah … he just started yelling at me then, screaming at me like a crazy man. I thought his head was going to explode. And the more he shouted, the more Mum cried … which made him shout even more. It was ridiculous. After a while, I just turned round and started to walk out. But then Dad grabbed me again and started spitting out all this stuff about no more stupid music, no more pop groups, from now on you do what I say … I didn’t even bother saying anything, you know? I just stood there and stared at him. Then he said something about coming straight home from school on Monday, and I told him that I wasn’t going to school on Monday, that I wasn’t going to school at all any more, and then it all kind of kicked off again. In the end … well, he came up with that old “my house, my rules” thing, so I just told him that he could keep his fucking house, and I walked out.’

  ‘So he didn’t actually throw you out then?’

  ‘Shit, Lili, whose side are you on? I mean, Jesus …’

  ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter …’

  ‘What doesn’t matter?’

  ‘Any of it … all of it. I don’t know …’

  There was a silence on the line for a while. I could hear Curtis breathing, short sharp breaths. I heard him sniff a couple of times. I imagined him in the phone box, chewing his lip, his eyes darting around, watching the traffic outside.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ he said casually, trying to sound upbeat. ‘I’ve moved into the squat, that room we were in the other night. I’ll get it cleaned up, get some furniture in, a chair, a proper bed …’

  ‘What will you do for money?’

  ‘Sign on, like everyone else.’

  ‘What about all your stuff?’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘From home … all your records, your clothes –’

  ‘I don’t need them. I’ve got my guitar here, that’s all I need.’

  ‘Oh, Curtis …’ I sighed.

  ‘Don’t pity me, Lili,’ he said coldly.

  ‘I’m not –’

  ‘This is what I want, all right? This is how it’s supposed to be.’

  Over the next month or so, things began to settle down a bit, and I managed to establish some kind of routine in my life. During the week, I’d get up every morning and go to school, where I’d try to forget about everything else – my mother, Curtis, the band – and just concentrate on schoolwork. After school, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I’d go straight home. Tuesdays, I’d travel by underground to the squat for a band rehearsal, and after that I’d usually stay the night with Curtis. Fridays, I’d rush home after school, quickly get changed, then head off to the squat to help load up the van and get everything sorted out for that night’s gig at the Conway Arms. After the gig, I’d stay the night with Curtis again, and then – more often than not – we’d spend the rest of the weekend together, rehearsing again on the Sunday, after which I’d finally get the tube back to Hampstead.

  The Friday night gigs at the Conway were getting better and better all the time. Curtis was writing better songs, we were getting better at playing them – both individually and as a band – and the audiences were getting bigger every week. We were starting to build up a following, and after about the second or third gig I was amazed to see people in the audience singing along to our songs. Not everyone liked us, of course, and there was always some kind of trouble whenever we played. Fights would break out in the audience, bottles and glasses would get thrown, idiots would try to get up on stage to attack Curtis. There was always a threat of violence at a Naked gig. And if the threat didn’t materialize of its own accord, Curtis was always more than happy to stir things up. He liked causing trouble. He enjoyed the thrill of it, the adrenalin rush, the natural high …

  Not that he needed much of a natural high.

  Since moving into the squat, his use of drugs had steadily increased, and by the end of January, I began to realize that he was under the influence of something virtually all of the time. I guessed that this was only partly due to the increased availability of drugs at the squat, and that Curtis himself had much deeper reasons for wanting to be out of his head so much, but whenever I tried talking to him about it, he’d either shrug it off – I’m just having a good time, that’s all – or he’d lose his temper – who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? – or he’d simply ignore me, play deaf, and change the subject.

  So, in the end, I simply stopped trying.

  His drug-taking still bothered me, and I wished he wouldn’t do it all the time, but it hadn’t yet reached the stage where it got in the way of everything else. I mean, at that point in his life, Curtis was still a long way from being totally out of control … in fact, if anything, I’d say that it was around then that he was at his creative peak. His new songs were fantastic, his singing and guitar playing were out of this world … he even looked more amazing than ever. And when he was on stage, doing his thing, his presence was so electrifying, so captivating, that even I found it hard to take my eyes off him.

  When he wasn’t on stage, and when he wasn’t hanging around the squat getting stoned, Curtis spent most of his time with Jake, trying to find other gigs for us, or trying to persuade record company people to come and see us at the Conway. But they didn’t have much luck. Although the Sex Pistols had played a few gigs in London – and there were rumours of other punk bands starting up – it would still be a good few months before the punk scene really got going, and even longer before the record companies began to show any interest. At the same time, most of the regular venues around London were still only booking either big name bands or ‘pub rock’ bands like Eddie and the Hot Rods, who basically played fast rhythm and blues. And Naked, of course, didn’t fit into either category. Jake tried lying about us, pretending that we were just another pub rock band, but on the couple of occasions that this actually got us a booking, the gigs weren’t all that good. We were as good as ever, but we weren’t right for the audience, and they weren’t right for us.

  Mind you, it was actually one of these gigs that got us our first NME review. It was only a couple of lines, and it only really mentioned us because we were supporting a band called Roogalator, who just happened to be the NME’s pet band at the time, but still …

  It was a review.

  And it called us a ‘shit-hot new band from North London’.

  So we weren’t complaining.

  Talking of complaining, though …

  At around that time, towards the end of January 1976, the people who lived next door to the squat started making complaints about the noise. Apparently, it wasn’t so much the general noisiness of the squat that bothered them – the all-night music, the constant to-ing and fro-ing, the occasional drug-fuelled revelry – it was, quite specifically, the sound of us rehearsing in the basement that caused all the problems. Which wasn’t really all that surprising. For a good few months now we’d been rehearsing twice a week, and we always played as loudly as possible, for at least a couple of hours, so I didn’t really blame the neighbours for eventually getting fed up with it.

  But Curtis did.

  When Jake told him that we’d have to find somewhere else to practise, he went completely ballistic.

  ‘I don’t have to listen to them, for fuck’s sake. Jesus! Who do they think they are? Fuck them! What are they goi
ng to do about it anyway?’

  ‘They’ll probably call the police,’ Jake explained calmly, passing Curtis a joint. ‘And if the police come round here …’

  He didn’t have to explain any further.

  Curtis took the joint, looked at it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jake told him. ‘I’ve been looking for a better rehearsal place for you anyway. And I’ve found this place just up the road that’s absolutely perfect …’

  The rehearsal building that Jake had found for us wasn’t quite as absolutely perfect as he’d made out, but it was a lot better than the basement. And it was just up the road too – about five minutes’ walk from the squat, at the south end of West Green Road. It was a big old brick-built warehouse, with high ceilings and thick walls and a solid stone floor, and it was set back from the street behind a fenced-off area of wasteground. There were no residential properties close by, and the nearest buildings were a row of takeaway food places on the other side of West Green Road. So, basically, we could play as loudly as we liked without any problems.

  When Curtis asked Jake if we had – or needed – permission to use the building, and if so, what it was going to cost us, Jake just touched his finger to his nose and said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s all sorted.’

  And it was here, in the warehouse, that the final bust-up between Curtis and Kenny took place … the bust-up that would eventually lead to everything else that happened that summer.

  10

  The showdown between Curtis and Kenny was always going to happen at some point, and the only real surprise when it finally came about was that it hadn’t happened before. They were polar opposites in almost every way – in their attitude, their outlook, their behaviour – and although it had always been fairly obvious that they didn’t particularly like each other, their relationship now had deteriorated to such an extent that they barely even talked to each other any more.

  The friction between them had been simmering for so long that I think we all knew it could erupt at any point, and we also knew that it wouldn’t necessarily take anything major to spark it off.

  And we were right.

  It was a Sunday afternoon and we were rehearsing at the warehouse. It was only the second time we’d practised there, and I, for one, really liked it. It had windows, for a start – unlike the basement – so it didn’t feel like we were stuck in a dungeon, and unlike in the cramped confines of the basement, there was plenty of room to move around, which should have meant that there was less likelihood of us bumping into one another, or causing an accident, or breaking something …

  But, ironically, it was precisely this freedom of movement that led to the accident that eventually led to the meltdown between Curtis and Kenny.

  And it was all my fault.

  As far as I can remember, I was actually in a pretty good mood at the time. I don’t recall why, exactly – although it might well have been simply because we weren’t at the squat – but, whatever the reason, I’m fairly sure that in the moments before everything kicked off, I was feeling uncharacteristically light-hearted. Earlier on, Curtis had suggested that it might be a good idea if I tried moving around a bit more when I was on stage.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I’d said.

  ‘Well, most of the time you just stand there –’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing … it’s just … well, apart from me, we probably come across as being a bit kind of static on stage, you know? Kenny doesn’t move, Stan can’t move …’

  ‘You want me to move?’

  He smiled at me. ‘It’d give us a lot more energy if you did.’

  ‘I’m not dancing –’

  ‘You don’t have to dance. Just, you know … move around a bit.’

  ‘What, like you?’

  ‘However you want, it doesn’t matter. Whatever feels natural.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ I said hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure I can play and move at the same time.’

  Curtis shrugged. ‘Just try it, OK? See how it feels.’

  And that’s what I was doing when it happened. We were in between songs, and Curtis was talking to Stan, trying to work out a tricky little drum section, and I think Kenny was just standing around, not doing anything as usual … and I was off on my own, doing what Curtis had asked me to do. I’d turned down the volume on my bass, and I was practising playing and moving at the same time, and – to my surprise – not only could I do it, but I was actually enjoying it too. Skipping around, jumping up and down, moving to the rhythms inside my head … it was fun. In fact, I was enjoying it so much that I got a bit carried away. I was trying to see if I could play the bass and spin round in circles at the same time, and at first I couldn’t work out how to do it without getting my legs tangled up in the guitar lead. But then I realized that if I spun round in one direction for a while, then stopped and spun round the other way, the guitar lead would unravel itself from my legs and I’d be free to keep on twirling. Unfortunately, I forgot all about the dizzying effect of whizzing round in circles, and as I whirled across the room like an idiot, still playing the bass, my legs went all wobbly, my head started spinning, and I totally lost control of where I was going. I didn’t even see the wall, I was just kind of tottering around, trying to stay on my feet, and the next thing I knew I was crashing backwards into the warehouse wall and slumping down to the floor. I didn’t hurt myself or anything, and I probably would have just laughed it off if it wasn’t for the fact that as I hit the ground I heard something snap, and almost at once I realized that as I’d fallen I’d slammed the bass into the hard stone floor.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ I heard Kenny shout. ‘What the fuck are you doing with my bass?’

  I sat up, still quite dizzy, and looked at the bass. I couldn’t see any damage at first, and I thought maybe I’d imagined the snapping sound, but then I heard Kenny’s angry voice again – ‘You’ve broken a fucking machine head!’ – and I realized that he was right. The E-string machine head – the metal peg for tuning the string – had snapped off when the bass had hit the floor.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Kenny –’

  ‘I knew this would happen,’ he spat, striding towards me. ‘I fucking knew it.’

  ‘I’ll get it fixed,’ I told him. ‘I’ll pay for it –’

  ‘Too fucking right you will.’ He stopped in front of me, staring down at the broken bass, angrily shaking his head. ‘Jesus Christ …’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, OK? It was an accident –’

  ‘An accident?’ he hissed, glaring at me. ‘You were spinning round all over the place, you stupid fucking –’

  ‘Hey, Kenny,’ I heard Curtis say. ‘That’s enough.’

  We both looked round at the sound of his voice. He was standing a few feet away from Kenny, fixing him with a steady gaze.

  Kenny turned towards him. ‘She broke my fucking bass –’

  ‘She?’

  Kenny hesitated. ‘Look, I know she’s your girlfriend and everything –’

  ‘Her name’s Lili, Ken. Not she, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, well … maybe it’s about time that Lili started using her own fucking bass instead of borrowing mine all the time, OK?’

  ‘No,’ Curtis said calmly, ‘it’s not OK. We’re supposed to be a band. We do things together, we own things together, we break things together … and we don’t fucking blame each other when something goes wrong. We’re all in this together –’

  ‘Really?’ Kenny sneered.

  ‘Yeah, really.’

  ‘So how come you auditioned for another band a couple of weeks ago?’

  There was a deadly silence for a few moments then, with everyone staring at Curtis, waiting to see what he’d say.

  Eventually, after staring really hard at Kenny for a few seconds, he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talki
ng about.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I haven’t auditioned for anyone.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard.’

  ‘Really?’ Curtis smiled. ‘Go on then, tell me who I’ve been auditioning for.’

  ‘London SS.’

  Curtis laughed.

  Kenny shook his head. ‘You can’t deny it, Curtis. You were seen –’

  ‘So fucking what?’ Curtis said. ‘I know them, all right? I hang around with some of them sometimes. And, yeah, I might well have been around when they were auditioning … but you know what London SS are like, for Christ’s sake. They’re always auditioning. That’s all they ever do. I mean, they’ve never played anywhere, they’ve only got about two songs, and they’ve never had the same line up for more than a week … do you really think I’d want to audition for a band like that?’

  Kenny said nothing for a while, he just stared back at Curtis, and it was clear to me from the look in his eyes that he knew that this was the moment … the moment when he either stood up to Curtis, or backed down again. And he knew that if he backed down this time, having gone so far as to accuse Curtis of being disloyal to the band … well, he just couldn’t back down after that.

  ‘You know what, Curtis?’ he said slowly. ‘I think you’re full of shit.’

  Curtis smiled. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Curtis carried on smiling at him for a while, not saying anything, then – with a slight shrug of his shoulders – he turned to me and held out his hand. I was still sitting on the floor with the broken bass resting in my lap. ‘Are you all right?’ Curtis asked me.

  ‘Yeah …’

  He reached down, took my hand, and helped me to my feet. ‘Here, let me take that,’ he said, reaching for the bass. I lifted the strap from my shoulders and let him take the bass off me. Holding it by the neck, he smiled calmly at me. ‘You might want to move back a bit.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  He nodded his head. ‘Just stand over there.’