Naked

by Kevin Brooks

  Puzzled, I moved back a few steps and stood by the wall and watched as Curtis turned back to Kenny. Still smiling, still holding the bass by its neck, he glanced briefly at the broken machine head.

  ‘It was an accident, Kenny,’ he said softly. ‘Lili didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I know –’

  ‘If she’d meant it, she would have done this.’

  He stepped back and raised the bass above his head, holding it by the neck in both hands, and then he spread his legs and swung the bass like an axe, crashing it down into the floor. The body of the bass cracked in half, and a pick-up went flying across the room. But Curtis hadn’t finished yet. As Kenny stepped back, his face pale with shock, Curtis raised the bass over his head again, and this time he just started pummelling it into the ground, over and over again – bam, bam, bam, bam – until all that was left of it was a mess of broken wood on the floor, bits of plastic and metal all over the place, and the remains of the snapped-off neck in his hand.

  Curtis was still smiling.

  ‘Here,’ he said to Kenny, tossing him the broken neck.

  ‘What the fuck –?’

  He shut up suddenly as Curtis stepped towards him, thinking – as I was – that Curtis was going to hit him. But he didn’t. Instead, he bent down and gathered up as much of the broken bass as he could, cradling the bits in his arms, and then he straightened up, looked at Kenny for a moment, and started lobbing the broken bits at him. Kenny caught the first one or two, but after that his hands were full, so all he could do was try to get out of the way.

  ‘There you go, Kenny,’ Curtis said, throwing another bit at him, a bit harder this time. ‘Here’s your bass back. Thanks for letting us borrow it.’ A lump of wood hit Kenny’s shoulder. ‘Whoops,’ Curtis said. ‘Mind your head.’ As he flung another piece at Kenny’s head, Kenny turned, ducking his head, and started heading for the door.

  ‘You’re fucking insane, Curtis,’ he muttered. ‘You’re out of your fucking head.’

  ‘Send me the repair bill, Kenny, OK?’ Curtis called out, laughing now as he chucked a big splinter of wood at his back. ‘And feel free to come and see us any time … any time at all.’

  Kenny had reached the door now. He paused for a moment, looking back over his shoulder, and he was just about to say something when Curtis stepped forward, swung his arm, and whipped a chunk of metal across the room at him. Kenny legged it through the door, slamming it shut behind him just in time. The chunk of metal crashed into the door, leaving a fist-sized dent where Kenny’s head would have been.

  No one spoke for a while.

  Curtis looked at me, breathing hard, but still smiling. I looked back at him, too stunned to say anything. And after a few moments, we both looked at Stan. He was just sitting there, as blank as ever, idly whirling a drumstick in his fingers.

  ‘Well …’ I said eventually.

  Curtis lit a cigarette. ‘Well what?’

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to buy myself a bass now.’

  11

  Getting a new bass wasn’t a problem. All I had to do was ask my mother for some money, take a trip to Charing Cross Road with Curtis, and let him do the rest. He knew all the music shops in the area, and once I’d told him that I simply wanted to buy another Fender Mustang, exactly the same as Kenny’s, and that I didn’t care how much it cost, he just led me along to a specialist guitar shop and we picked out a brand-new Fender.

  ‘Do you want to try it out first?’ he asked me.

  The shop was full of people trying out guitars and basses, all of them looking very serious as they showed off their rock ’n’ roll skills. Most of them, for some reason, seemed to be playing Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

  ‘No,’ I told Curtis. ‘I don’t want to try it out. Let’s just pay for it and get out of here.’

  My mother had given me more than enough money, so I bought myself a nice hard guitar case and some extra strings too. As I handed over the cash, and the shop assistant started putting the bass into the case, I looked at Curtis and saw him shaking his head.

  ‘What?’ I said to him.

  He smiled. ‘Nothing … I was just thinking, that’s all. Maybe you could ask your mum to buy me a new guitar.’

  I knew that it was meant as a joke, or at least that he didn’t really mean anything by it, but just hearing him say the words ‘your mum’ suddenly made me realize how rarely he ever mentioned her. Apart from things like, ‘Do you have to ring your mum?’, he never asked me anything about her, never talked about her, never showed the slightest interest at all. And while that had never really bothered me before – at least not consciously – it just seemed to hit me at that moment, and for a few fleeting seconds I kind of hated him for it.

  ‘What?’ he said, frowning at me. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, letting it go. ‘It’s all right … I just …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I smiled coldly at him. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  We talked over with Jake whether we should try to carry on as a three-piece or start looking for a new rhythm guitar player.

  ‘I mean, we can do it as a three-piece,’ Curtis said. ‘It’s not a problem. There’s nothing we can’t play without a second guitar, it just means that the sound’s going to be slightly different on some songs.’

  ‘In what way?’ Jake said.

  Curtis shrugged. ‘A bit emptier in parts, maybe. Not so full.’

  We played through a couple of songs to show him what Curtis meant, and Curtis was right – it wasn’t a problem, we could play them as a three-piece, and to most people they probably wouldn’t have sounded any different. But we could tell the difference. We knew that we’d developed the songs to be played with a second guitar, and that they sounded better with a second guitar. So, for us, there was really no argument.

  ‘I know a few people who might be all right,’ Curtis said. ‘But it’s not just a case of how good they are. I mean, Kenny was a pretty good guitarist, but he was never right for Naked, was he? So I don’t know … I’m not sure the people I know would fit in.’

  ‘We can advertise,’ Jake suggested. ‘Put an ad in the NME.’

  ‘Yeah … if we put it in this Thursday’s, we could hold auditions at the warehouse next weekend.’

  ‘You’ll still have to play this Friday with just the three of you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if that’s what we have to do …’

  The advert appeared in the Musicians Wanted section of the NME on Thursday 5 February 1976.

  Rhythm guitarist wanted for

  gigging band. Pistols, Dolls,

  Stooges. No hippies, no

  Kennies. no limits.

  ‘No Kennies?’ I said to Curtis when I saw it.

  He just smiled.

  I said, ‘Is that how you spell “Kennies”?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who cares?’

  Friday’s gig at the Conway Arms went ahead as usual, and apart from playing a slightly shorter set – missing out a couple of songs that we hadn’t had time to rework for just the one guitar – everything else was fine. It was kind of strange playing without Kenny, and we all had to work a little bit harder to make up for his missing guitar, but we soon got used to it. And by the end of the set, I think we all realized that we somehow felt a lot closer as a band without Kenny. We hadn’t changed our minds about needing another guitar player, but with Kenny gone … well, it just seemed to change the dynamics of the band. With the four of us, there’d always been a sense that the band was split down the middle, with me and Curtis on the one hand, and Kenny and Stan on the other. But now, with only the three of us, that split was gone. We were all on the same side now, we were all working together.

  We didn’t actually talk to each other about this, and I was only really guessing that Curtis and Stan felt the same way as me. For all I
knew, I could have been totally wrong. I did try asking Curtis how he felt after the gig, but, as usual, he was too busy with his post-gig socializing to spend much time with me. He had people to talk to, autographs to sign, drinks to drink, drugs to take … and that night he also had potential rhythm guitarists to see. At least, that’s what he told me. And I did see him talking to a couple of vaguely familiar faces who, according to Stan, had both ‘played guitar in some shitty little band from Paddington’. But later on, when I went downstairs to use the toilet, I also saw Curtis talking to Charlie Brown.

  They were in a little booth together at the back of the bar, and although they weren’t alone – one of Charlie’s friends was there too – they were definitely sitting too close to each other for my liking. And the way they were talking to each other – eye to eye, intimate and intense – they might as well have been alone. As I stood there staring at them from across the bar, Curtis suddenly looked up and saw me. For a very brief moment, he had the look of someone who’s been caught out – a quick flash of surprise, embarrassment, panic – but almost immediately his face broke into a welcoming smile and he casually waved me over. I held his gaze for just a second, keeping my face as blank as I could, then I looked away and headed off into the toilets.

  Neither of us mentioned this little episode until a few hours later when we were lying in bed in Curtis’s room back at the squat. It was around two o’clock in the morning, and for once the house was relatively quiet. Someone was playing an acoustic guitar somewhere, picking out some nice lazy blues riffs, but they were at least a couple of floors away, and it was quite a relaxing sound anyway.

  I still didn’t really like staying at the squat, but it wasn’t quite so bad now that Curtis had made an effort to make his room a bit more comfortable. He’d furnished it mostly from skips – there was a manky old armchair, a reasonably clean settee, an old kitchen table and a couple of hard-backed chairs – and the room always felt slightly damp, and smelled slightly musty. But, all in all, it wasn’t too bad. The bed wasn’t actually a bed, just a secondhand mattress on top of a wooden pallet. But, again, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. At least it was our secondhand mattress.

  Curtis, as usual, was too wired to sleep that night, and as I lay there, turning things over in my mind, he was sitting up in bed beside me, smoking a joint and reading a book about Paul Verlaine. I knew in my heart that there was really no point in saying anything to him about Charlie Brown, because whatever I said, and however I put it, I knew that he’d have an answer. So I kept telling myself to just forget it, just stop thinking about it, keep your mouth shut, and go to sleep. But I knew that was never going to happen.

  ‘Curtis?’ I said quietly.

  ‘Yeah …?’

  ‘Did you have any luck tonight?’

  His breathing stopped for a moment. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said you were seeing some guitar players. I was just wondering how you got on.’

  ‘Oh, right …’ he said, breathing out. ‘Yeah, I spoke to a couple of people I know …’ He puffed on the joint. ‘I don’t think they’re right for us, but I told them to come along to the audition anyway. Jake’s booked the warehouse for next Friday and Saturday. Oh, and there’s no gig on the Friday, by the way. The Conway’s closed for a couple of days for some renovation work or something.’

  ‘Right …’ I said. ‘Is Charlie going to be auditioning?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Charlie Brown … the swastika girl. You were talking to her in the bar tonight –’

  ‘Yeah –’

  ‘So I just assumed, you know, that she was one of the guitarists you told me you were going to see.’

  There was a moment’s silence then, and although I was facing away from him, I could sense that Curtis had put down his book and was looking down at me.

  ‘She’s just someone I know, Lili,’ he said softly. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Right …’

  He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Come on, Lili … hey …’ He leaned over me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing …’

  ‘Look at me.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Lili, come on …’ He gave me a gentle tug. ‘Just look at me a minute, OK?’

  I sighed, rolled over, and sat up.

  Curtis smiled at me. ‘Look, I was only talking to Charlie because she knows Siouxsie Sioux and some of the others from Bromley, and some of them know people who’re getting bands together, so I just thought that Charlie might have a few ideas about guitarists –’

  ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’

  He took hold of my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I’m not lying to you, Lili. I mean, do you really think I fancy Charlie or something?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  He shook his head. ‘She means nothing to me – honestly. Absolutely nothing.’ He cupped my chin in his hand and spoke softly. ‘You’re the only one for me, Lili … you know that. There’s no reason for me to want anyone else. I mean, how many times have I told you that you’re the most beautiful girl in the world?’

  ‘Once.’

  He smiled his most irresistible smile. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  I really wanted to talk to him then. I just wanted to talk. I wanted to tell him how I felt about things, how I felt about myself, about my mum, about him, about us, and I wanted him to listen to me … but as he took me in his arms and kissed me, and we lay down on the bed together, I knew that the time for talking was over.

  You should have listened to yourself before, a voice in my head said as Curtis climbed on top of me.You should have just kept your mouth shut and gone to sleep when you had the chance.

  12

  Curtis and Jake took care of all the arrangements for the auditions – sorting through the replies to the advert, deciding who to see and who not to see, working out how long it would all take, and so on – and all I had to do was be at the warehouse, with my bass, at two o’clock in the afternoon. I had no idea what to expect – how it was going to work, how many people would be there – and when I got to the warehouse for the first day of auditions on the Friday, I was really surprised to see a good dozen or so people already waiting outside. They were a real mixture – young and old, cool and not so cool, short-haired, long-haired, tough-looking, weird-looking. The only thing they had in common, apart from being male, was that they all had guitars.

  When I went into the warehouse, the others were already there. Curtis and Jake were setting up an amp and a mike in the middle of the room, and Stan was sitting at his drums as usual, tapping out a rhythm on the rim of the snare. Chief was there too, squatting on the floor at the back of the room, reading a Batman comic.

  ‘Have you seen how many people there are outside?’ I said to no one in particular.

  ‘There should be thirteen of them,’ Jake said. ‘And tomorrow we’ve got another twelve.’

  ‘Why don’t you let them wait in here?’ I suggested. ‘It’s really cold outside.’

  ‘Pressure,’ Jake said, looking far too pleased with himself. ‘It’s all part of the audition process. We keep them on edge so we’ll find out how they cope with the pressure.’

  ‘They’re guitar players,’ I said. ‘Not astronauts.’

  Stan laughed.

  Jake gave me one of his creepy – and condescending – little grins, then turned to Curtis. ‘Tell her, Curt,’ he sighed.

  ‘Tell her what?’

  ‘What we said, about making them wait –’

  ‘No, Lili’s right,’ Curtis said, smiling at me. ‘Go and let them in, Jake. There’s no point keeping them out there.’

  ‘Yeah, but –’

  ‘Just do it, OK?’

  It turned out to be a long and fairly tedious day. One by one, Jake asked the guitarists to step up to the mike and plug in their guitars, and then after he’d asked them a few simple q
uestions – what’s your name? where are you from? what kind of experience have you got? – Curtis took over. His audition technique was pretty straightforward.

  ‘All right?’ he’d say.

  And the shy ones would just mumble something back – ‘Yeah, thanks,’ or just ‘Yeah …’ – while the more confident characters might try to start a conversation – ‘Hey, yeah … how you doing? This is really great, by the way … I mean, I’ve seen Naked so many times …’ – in which case, Curtis would just let them ramble on until it finally dawned on them that they were talking far too much.

  Then Curtis would simply say, ‘OK, play something.’

  I thought that this was kind of cruel at first – and I suppose, in a way, it was – but as the day went on, I began to realize that it was actually a really efficient way of finding out what we needed to know, because each guitarist dealt with it in his own individual way.

  Some of them just looked confused.

  Others said, ‘What do you want me to play?’

  The ones we liked the best – the ones who understood that we were looking for a rhythm guitarist – they just kind of nodded, looked down at their guitars, and started playing chords, some of them just strumming, others really hammering away, and others giving us a mixture of both.

  The ones we liked the worst were the ones who immediately began showing off, playing really difficult stuff, guitar-hero stuff, or those who just played stuff they’d copied note for note from other bands … there was even one guy called Damon who started playing the riff to ‘Smoke on the Water’, for God’s sake. As soon as Curtis realized what he was playing – which took him about two seconds – he just stood up and said, ‘Yeah, thanks, Damon. We’ll be in touch.’

  Out of the thirteen candidates, there were only two who Curtis thought were worth a second listen. They were both about eighteen or nineteen, and they were both pretty good, and so Curtis sat them down and quickly taught them how to play ‘Naked’ – which, out of all our songs, was easily the simplest to learn – and once they’d got the hang of it, we asked each of them to play through the whole song with us a couple of times.