Educating Peter

by Tom Cox

  Of course, whether any of these case studies had any relevance to Peter – or to an education in the real values of rock and roll – was very much up for debate. He was, after all, fourteen, not seventeen, but I felt that a journey inside my seventeen-year-old psyche was relevant, since a) Peter was advanced for his age, and b) the primary music-themed lesson from my fourteen-year-old psyche would have to be drawn from the somewhat limited source that was the theme tune to my Nick Faldo’s Golf Course video. Again, I didn’t tell him this. In the endless comparisons I’d made between Peter’s adolescence and mine, I’d never properly explained to him how desperately golf-obsessed and musically ignorant I’d been when I was his age. It would have taken far too long, and making the assumption that Peter now and myself at seventeen were one and the same seemed a good, lazy way of flattering him.

  I just wished he’d act a little more flattered.

  During the course of the afternoon, the cement had hardened on the union between Peter and Roland, and, while it was Roland who was doing most of the uniting, I could feel Peter drifting away from me again. I’m sure my habit of popping into Waterstones and Habitat between case studies and leaving the two of them outside, in the way that you might a couple of disgruntled pet dogs, wasn’t helping. But even without that indulgence, the anti-Tom propaganda would probably have been building at a similarly steady rate. From what I could overhear, most of this bitching seemed to be fairly harmless – thin-skinned or thick-skinned, it’s hard to feel genuinely hurt when someone’s main basis for grousing about you behind your back is the fact that you don’t listen to Half Man Half Biscuit any more – but I was starting to think that maybe I’d slipped up by inviting Roland on this section of our adventure. Before today, I’d been keen to show Peter that I hadn’t always been a boring adult. Now, not only did I feel like Roland was detracting from that, I also felt he was seriously detracting from one of the main lessons that I’d always thought, in order to fulfil my favour to Jenny properly, was essential to Peter’s studies: the lesson that said there was more to life than music.

  ‘I mean, it’s obvious,’ Roland told Peter, as we passed Langtry’s, a pub I’d once been thrown out of for pulling the stuffing out of a chair. ‘If you like U2, you’re a twat. Have you ever met anyone you enjoy spending time with who likes U2?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Peter.

  ‘Of course you haven’t! All twats. It’s the same with Pearl Jam. Liking Pearl Jam is, by definition, a sure sign of twat-hood. They are now, and always have been, the sell-out’s answer to Nirvana. How can you like them and not be an idiot?’

  ‘But I like U2. And Pearl Jam have done some alright stuff, too,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but you’re different, Tom,’ said Roland. ‘You’re just saying that for effect. One day you’ll come back to your indie roots, and I’ll be there to say I told you so.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Actually, Roland, you’re right. I can see that happening because, y’know, it’s loads more fun listening to bands who sound like something faulty you bought from Comet than listening to bands who write melodies and stuff. Music’s not just something you wear as a badge, Roland.’

  ‘Reactionary,’ said Roland.

  ‘Bigot,’ I said.

  ‘I like Rammstein,’ said Peter.

  Over the last ten years, Roland and I had had countless conversations like this one. This disagreement wouldn’t change the way either of us thought. The next time I saw him, probably in several months, we’d still be friends, in a circumspect kind of way. Roland would still ask me why I didn’t listen to Polvo any more and, while he wasn’t looking, I’d still write ‘I love REO Speedwagon!’ on his rucksack. That said, right now, the whole episode bugged the shit out of me. It was dispiriting to think that earlier I’d actually looked forward to being seventeen for a day – that I’d imagined it might involve fun things like climbing on scaffolding and insulting crusties, rather than going round in tiny-minded circles arguing about rock music.

  I’d been thinking about my relationship with Roland a lot recently. That was one of the side-effects of spending time with Peter: it got me musing wistfully about the nature of human change and friendships. I’d probably lost touch with friends I had more in common with than Roland over the years, yet the two of us chose to hold on, even though the only thing that seemed to bind us was the albums we’d taped for one another a decade ago – albums that, with the odd exception, I didn’t even like any more. The relationship might have seemed somewhat odd to an outsider, but it probably seemed odder to me. Peter, however, didn’t seem to think it was bizarre in the slightest.

  ‘I liked him,’ he told me later, after we’d dropped Roland home.

  ‘I don’t think he likes me much any more,’ I said.

  ‘Really? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘But surely you saw how much we argued about stuff?’

  ‘I thought that was kind of normal.’

  ‘For us, it is.’

  ‘He seemed kind of younger than you.’

  ‘Really? I mean, in what way? He’s bald!’

  ‘Mmm, I know. But he just didn’t talk about adult stuff like you do.’

  ‘What kind of adult stuff? You mean porn?’

  ‘No! I mean, y’know, how if we’re driving past a forest with some sheep in front of it or something, you’ll say, “What a great view.” Or when we’ve left your house sometimes, you say stuff like, “I hope I didn’t leave the coffee machine on.” I can’t imagine Roland saying stuff like that.’

  ‘No. Neither can I. I see what you mean. He still lives with his mum and dad – that might be something to do with it.’

  ‘No way! I hope I don’t still live with my mum when I’m his age. I want to be out of there by the time I’m seventeen.’

  ‘That’s quite early.’

  ‘Yeah. Goat Punishment are all going to get a house together.’

  ‘What? Like The Monkees?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Do you feel like you’ve learned anything today?’

  ‘I dunno. Er. I’m not sure. I kind of like it better when you write stuff down, when you’re telling me about what you did when you were younger.’

  ‘So there was nothing you felt you really learned.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say “learned” was the right word. Er . . . Roland liked Smashing Pumpkins. That was cool.’

  ‘Yeah. He likes their first album. It’s one of the few things we both still like from our Alternative Night days.’

  ‘Mmm. Yeah. I’m taping him their latest one . . . when I buy it, which is going to be really soon.’

  ‘You took his address?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you might end up being friends? That’s good.’

  ‘I dunno. Maybe.’

  ‘It’s weird. I really wish I had more in common with him these days. I mean, I’ve never really talked to him about girls or anything, apart from when he used to go on about the lead singer of Velocity Girl. It’s like music’s the one thing that holds us together. Do you have any mates that you feel like that about?’

  ‘I suppose it’s a bit like that with Raf.’

  ‘But you mess around together and jump around on space hoppers. I never really did stuff like that with Roland. I did that with my other mates, and they’ve never really got on with him. I mean, if you and Raf didn’t have music, what would you have left?’

  ‘Mmm. I’m not sure. I guess I’d have to think about that . . .’

  He went silent for a few minutes. I thought he looked troubled, but I couldn’t be sure. Like so many other times with Peter, I hoped I hadn’t got too deep with him and given him too much perspective on the kind of things that being a happy teenager is all about failing to dwell on. This teaching business, I reflected, was a difficult balancing act: how did you find the happy middle ground between too little knowledge and too much knowledge? I worried to myself briefly and scrambled for a less reflective conversation topic, but within a
few moments Peter was back from wherever he’d drifted off to, taking pleasure in breaking into a tub of Cadbury’s Heroes he’d purchased from a newsagent down the road from my old FE college. Suddenly enlightenment broke across his face – something truly revitalising to be a part of. Apparently, he’d never liked miniature Bounties, and now, as if answering his prayers, the manufacturers had ceased to include them.

  SMASHING PUMPKINS – MACHINA/MACHINES OF GOD (HOT RECORDS, 2000)

  TOM:‘FOR THE dizzy hippy posing as disaffected slacker, Smashing Pumpkins were the perfect band to help you dream your way through the grunge era. Their debut album, Gish, which came out on the same day in 1991 as Nirvana’s Nevermind, has been portrayed since as a kind of ‘Neverwas’, but it would have been an ill-adapted flagship album for grunge, more concerned with insects, wildlife and what colour beads to wear than with hating its parents and exploring the catacombs of existential doom. Gish was the sound of Black Sabbath on their backs in the Garden of Eden. Had it been the album that introduced grunge to the mainstream, Marilyn Manson, Offspring, Green Day mark two, and every other snivelling American oh-look-how-fucked-up-l-am-my-mum’s-cut-off-my-pocket-money excuse for a musician might never have existed. Imagine how much less irritating “alternative” teenagers might be today with the solid foundation of an album with no discernible messages other than “chill out”, “rock hard”, “cool sweater, dude” and “hey – look at that fluorescent rhinoceros in the sky”.

  ‘In the event, however, the scandalous underperformance of Gish did almost as much harm to the Smashing Pumpkins as the overperformance of Nevermind did to a generation of disaffected mid-Nineties teens. While grunge begat complaint rock, which begat shock rock and my-dad’s-an-accountant-but-feel-my-pain rock, the dreamy Pumpkins of Gish were replaced by self-righteous humanoids – a band who, since 1995, have done almost as much as anyone to endorse the commodification of self-loathing. “Despite all my rage, I’m just a rat in the cage!” they whined at middle-America. For reasons beyond human comprehension, they sold by the skipload.

  ‘The progress of Smashing Pumpkins over their last three albums – 1995’s Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, 1998’s Adore and Machina/Machines Of God – is similar to that of a laggard juggernaut attempting to manoeuvre out of an unusually tight parking space: a little bit forwards, a little backwards, a little sideways, but never more than a few inches in any direction. Compared to Adore (which exhibited singer Billy Corgan’s gruesome Eighties electro-rock obsession), Machina must be considered a slender move forwards, striving to recycle the pompous, transparent fury of Melon Collie, but with one wheel stuck in 1987, somewhere in the middle of a Mission b-side.

  ‘There are hints of the old Pumpkins here: “Stand Inside Your Love” could almost be a rewrite of “Cherub Rock” from 1993’s Siamese Dream album, and “With Every Light” is a distant, shrivelled relation to Gish’s “Snail”. But Billy Corgan, The Professional Awkward Sod Who Looks Like The “Monster-Monster” Bloke From The Fast Show, probably can’t even remember Billy Corgan, The Intriguing Bohemian Freak With The Pink Hair. Besides, why would he want to remember a time when no-one told him he was any good, when he’s so comfortable in the present, surrounded – no doubt – by legions of yes-men?

  ‘As the Pumpkins fluctuate between death fuzz (“The Everlasting Gaze”), plod whinge (“Try Try Try”) and cod prog (“Glass And The Ghost Children”), the root formula – over-coddled corporate goth-grunge – doesn’t change. The Pumpkins are now so million-dollar tried’n’tested that Corgan could put out an album of a cappella farmyard noises and receive his record company’s unconditional seal of approval. In fact, after Machina, it’s probably the next logical step.

  ‘The voice here is always the biggest hurdle: wailing, indulging, never giving its musical accompaniment chance to breathe, it manages to be both totally self-conscious and totally unaware of its own absurdity. The negative energy is immense, polluting the atmosphere for seventy-plus minutes without defining a source or hinting at a destination. Unlike early Smashing Pumpkins, who said ostensibly nothing but could be construed to mean a million things if listened to with the right amount of imagination, this band are patently bored, overindulged and, all in all, a bit like the half-friend you used to have who played the role of manic depressive purely for attention and out of fear that, if they chilled out, their non-personality might be revealed. Ignore them, and they might go away.’

  Peter: ‘My mate Sam – he’s like the second best guitar player in school, after Raf? – taped this for me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it before. I mean, I should have – it’s weird that I hadn’t read stuff about them in Kerrang!, ’cos I read that all the time, or used to, it’s gone a bit crap now. Anyway, they look a bit weird – that bloke who looks like the monster guy from The Fast Show, and the oriental bloke with the long hair, I thought he was a girl at first – but they’re really amazing musicians. The drumming is just . . . out there. The guitars remind me of squealing gerbils sometimes. Sort of goth, but sort of so . . . bizarre and more electronic than stuff I normally listen to. Not dance, though. I hate dance music. Me and Raf have formed this group outlawing dance. That’s what it’s called – Group Outlawing Dance. But we write the logo as God. But, yeah, that girl, D’Arcy, who plays guitar? Rhythm, I think. I think the bald guy plays lead. She’s fit. Sam has a picture of her taped to his Humanities folder. None of the girls in my year could ever look as cool as that, even when they’re, like, seventeen or eighteen. I haven’t got their other albums yet, but I’m going to get them now. Probably tomorrow. I dunno. It depends if my mum can pick me up from fencing or if I have to go home on the bus. Anyway – soon. Wicked. Nine and three quarters out of ten.’

  Tom: ‘Why did you knock a quarter mark off? I thought you were going to give it ten.’

  Peter: ‘That Fast Show guy gives me the creeps a bit, that’s all.’

  CHEATING

  DURING THE WEEK following our Nottingham trip, I emailed Peter to ask what he’d thought of a compilation tape I’d loaned to him, ‘Tom’s Peasant Island Discs 1993’. Much as I would have liked to deny it, I found email a much easier form of pan-generational communication than the telephone – not to mention a simpler way of getting feedback out of my pupil. In short: it was hard work to grunt via computer.

  Peter’s emails were terser than those of most of my other friends, dispensing with such pleasantries as ‘Hi’, ‘What have you been up to?’ and ‘Best Wishes’, but at least he made good use of the subject box and expressed himself in something approaching intelligible English. Whereas on the phone he might have gone into monosyllabic mode, paused for uncomfortably long periods and failed to express that, say, he’d enjoyed ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths, email seemed to loosen him up, giving his inner cultural commentator the forum for expression that it had been longing for. Either that, or he’d just really liked my tape. Peter might have failed to listen to a lot of the music I’d steered in his direction, but I had to give him his due: when he did listen to something, he really listened to it. In much the same way that I’d hoped The Best Of Grand Funk Railroad would, ‘Tom’s Peasant Island Discs 1993’, with its selection of forgotten leftfield rockers and bedsit poets, had really struck a chord with him, and before long he was quoting the soundtrack of my idiot years back to me. It was the kind of thing that, had I been Jim Eldon, would probably have had me blubbing into my keyboard, and I wished I could reciprocate by quoting from ‘This CD Will Self-Destruct’, the CD that Peter had made for me of his favourite nu-metal songs. Regrettably, though, my hearing wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate its sludge-laden guitars and Yeti-like bellowing.

  ‘I quite like the Kyuss track: it’s got a sort of stoner rock feel,’ I wrote of Peter’s CD. ‘Reminds me of Blue Cheer. But I’m not so sure about the one by Drowning Pool. It frightened the cats a bit. And why do Kyuss keep singing about bodies hitting the floor?’

  ‘It’s just a song
about death and destruction,’ Peter wrote in response. ‘It’s cool. But I think “Eyeless” by Slipknot is the coolest. I like that lyric: “You can’t see California without Marlon Brando’s eyes”.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I wrote.

  ‘I don’t know,’ wrote Peter. ‘It’s just really . . . thoughtful.’

  Peter’s emails didn’t just feature regurgitated lyrics; they also featured impenetrable slogans and surreal statements of a totally non-music-related nature: isolated sentences, occasionally of an unnervingly political inclination, bearing no relation to the remainder of the email. These tended to confuse me, and leave me feeling uncertain as to whether or not I was required to respond to them. Examples included:

  ‘What do Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Baghdad have in common? Nothing . . . Yet.’

  ‘Salute the carrot.’

  ‘Open the gates. What’s inside? DARKNESS.’

  ‘Icons are like shoes: a matter of opinion.’

  ‘Blair, Bush, bomb: things that begin with B. Question: what begins with Z?’

  And perhaps most perplexingly of all:

  ‘If a cauliflower is a dog in the animal world, what colour, in an ideal world, is a tree?’

  Was Peter reaching out to me in some obscure way? I wondered. Maybe. Was he trying to get me involved in a deep philosophical discussion? Perhaps. But more likely he was just fulfilling another part of his hormonal destiny. In the end I decided it best to ignore his statements. I would probably only have had to go back to South Nottinghamshire College and read the ancient biro inscriptions on the rubber desks to find that I, too, had once felt the need to expose the wider universe to my deeper, more surreal thoughts. And what had that signified? Precisely nothing. Ten years on, what was I? An apolitical Steve Miller Band fan whose most profound daily ‘statement’ involved inventing stupid names for his cats.