by David Lines
Destination: Skipton. Another North Yorkshire market town, but much bigger and busier than Helmsley. Total travelling distance: fifty-four miles. It was a blisteringly hot day, and we spent most of the ride in tandem, discussing the merits of shaving our legs like Tour de France riders. I’d made a special Jam cycling compilation tape and it worked well with some ultra-fast tracks at breakneck speed and then some slow ones mixed in. Their mood captured perfectly our terrain and somehow seemed to lift the countryside as we pedalled through it. The stench from the fertiliser that mixed with the fumes from passing cars seemed sweeter as we cycled through them; Paul’s voice spurred me along.
First stop was the Skipton branch of Boots where we purchased a pair of leg-waxing kits. We had lunch in an old-fashioned pub and were pleased to find it equipped with a fantastic jukebox as well as a pool table. Rik trounced me four games to one but I put that down to being distracted by his cycling shoes.
We checked into the hostel, delighted to find a party of Italian sixth-form schoolgirls were also staying. We set about waxing each other’s legs (me and Rik, sadly, not me and the jaw-droppingly stylish and sexy Italian bombshells). The pain was like pain I’d never known before but I got my revenge on Rik for not tipping me off on making shoes like his by tearing the strip off his shin with great ferocity. I also made a mental note to do his absurd moustache one night whilst he was asleep. Shoes were my thing, not his.
Into the shower, feather-cut teased, on with the white 501s and then out into town. We visited a couple of pubs that were full of farmers harping on about the harvest. Sticking a record on the jukebox was clearly a hanging offence so we moved on to a younger pub and found it full of younger farmers all harping on about the harvest. We played some more pool and ended up playing doubles with a couple of Worzel Gummidge types in their early twenties. When we told them we were en route to see The Jam they told us about the time that Smokie came to Skipton. Rik drank three pints of cider and told them that back home he’d got a brand new combine harvester and he’d happily give them the key. They, equally happily, gave Rik a black eye and we got out of there sharpish.
That night I hardly slept a wink – not just because of the Kiwi backpacker on the bunk below who must have been captain of the Under 21s All Black Olympic Wanking Team – and who spent the entire night practising – but because the next day we set sail for Bridlington – to go and see The Jam! This was our first ever Jam concert and we were up most of the night talking about what we thought it would be like. It was a great distraction, being away from home, not thinking about revising again, instead getting worked up about Weller, Buckler and Foxton in the flesh. What would they play? Who was the support? Did I care? Would we get near the front? What would Paul be wearing? Tomorrow we were going to see The Jam – live!
We were up with the lark, and got off lightly with the hostel chore which was to Hoover the lounge. We were away by eight-thirty on the long and winding road to Bridlington, seaside Mecca of the North. It was a sixty-three-mile journey, but the feverish excitement building up inside us at the prospect of seeing Paul in a few hours’ time drove us along at a furious pace and after just two and a half hours of serious non-stop pedalling we pulled into the seaside town in perfect time for an early lunch. I was knackered.
Fish and chips on the pier, scooters everywhere. Harrington jackets and fishtail parkas, button badges and bowling shoes, Jam shoes, white socks, Crombies and crew cuts stared back from every corner. Candy floss and Kiss-Me-Quick hats. It was straight out of Quadrophenia, and I jumped up onto the harbour wall and looked out to sea to watch the gulls following the trawler and the light on the silvery water and I turned and looked in, out over the sea of green parkas and scooters and smoke and I closed my eyes very slowly, storing the scene away in the back of my mind and climbed back down. This felt like a dream that I dreamed a thousand times before.
The hostel didn’t open till four, so we went to a Spar and bought a bottle of vodka and a carton of orange and pegged out in the grounds, dozing under a willow tree talking about the night and how it’d really feel to see them in the flesh after so long. I felt like I was going to meet my maker – I was nervous about seeing Paul. The vodka numbed me nicely, the slight afternoon sun warmed my face. That, and all the cycling, made me drift away to sleep.
I was dreaming I was riding my bicycle, at night, down a never-ending country lane which was lit only by the light of the moon. It was the height of midsummer and the midnight air lay heady with night-scented stock. I pedalled gently away and as I turned a corner the path turned into a great, long moonbeam which stretched away, far over the fields and arched up, up into the night sky and led all the way through the tiny clouds to the bright and distant moon.
The moonbeam twinkled with space dust and in the distance someone sang a song. I steered the machine onto the moonbeam and we travelled towards the planet and slowly, very slowly, I felt myself leaving the ground. It felt so real, I really was flying. I looked down and suddenly it wasn’t my bike any more, it was a Lambretta. I was riding a very special Lambretta – it had magic pedals like a bicycle and I saw twenty of my faces beaming back at me from the twenty chrome mirrors and the higher we flew, the brighter the stars shone.
I was so high above the fields and it felt like I could reach out and lick the moon. There was a man on the moon. He stood on the far side and it was he who was singing. He walked towards me and stretched out his hand and beckoned me to go to him and my legs were going like pistons and there was laughter in the air and I stood up in my seat to exert more power and I was almost there, I was almost there! Just as I got to him, just as he reached out his hand, the laughter became almost hysterical and it snapped me out of my dream and I sat bolt upright, opened my eyes and there were the beautiful Italian sixth-formers.
They pointed at me, laughing like Venetian drains. Two of them had found me being asleep so hilarious that they were on their hands and knees and banging their fists on the ground. What was so funny? Oh, then I saw. No wonder the dream felt so real – for however long I’d been asleep on the grass I’d been pedalling like crazy with my legs in the air. I must have looked a right prize prick. They pointed and screamed at me – ‘Il che morindo mosca! Il che morindo mosca!’ I hadn’t a clue what they were on about and I certainly didn’t want to know, so I just waved back like some grinning idiot and sloped off to check in. I got into the shower and washed off my embarrassment. I watched it dripping off me and down the plughole and I wondered when I’d finally manage just a degree of cool. The only saving grace was that Rik wasn’t there to witness it; he’d gone off to buy pork scratchings.
We only had three hours to go till The Jam were on stage. I’d done good work on my feather-cut and had opted for white 501s, black Lonsdale t-shirt and my navy and white bowling shoes. Pubs were packed with fans before the gig, everywhere was pretty much elbow-room only and we ended up in some place called the Admiral Nelson, standing at the bar getting just nicely pissed on rum and Coke. Again, there was no problem getting served – half the kids in there looked younger than I did. There was no chance of a police raid – it was so packed they wouldn’t even have got through the door. I wasn’t going to go too mad with the drink before the gig – I’d waited so long for that moment, I wanted to remember every single detail for every day of my life. We supped up our rum and headed for the venue. I literally had to stop myself from skipping down the street.
We were early, it didn’t start for almost an hour, but it didn’t matter because we wanted to get in and get right down the front. Outside, in the queue, I overheard snippets of conversation from fellow fans and I was struck by the variety of different accents: Geordies, Yorkshire, Scouse, Mancunian, even Welsh. They were all talking about roughly the same thing – will they have the electric acoustics out for ‘Entertainment’, will they play this, will they play that. Someone was banging on about what a ‘frigging great scrap’ his lot – ‘The Cross Gates Stylists’ – had with ‘The Kippax Casuals
’ at a previous gig on this tour earlier in the week. I didn’t fucking get it, and I still don’t – mods fighting other mods? What was the point in that? It was a touch intimidating, being in the middle of all that aggression, but somehow it all added to the electric night through which I fizzed.
Getting inside the Pavilion was like stepping into a furnace. The floor swam in warm beer and the air was thick with smoke. The noise from the chanting, baying crowd drowned out the support act – a skinhead poet who went by the name of Seething Wells. I could hardly believe it, I mean, putting on a poet to entertain The Jam Army? Then I got it. I got it right there and then what Paul was trying to do. He could have stuck anyone on as support and they wouldn’t have survived the audience who were so desperate to see The Jam they would have even booed The Beatles off stage. Paul was also trying to make his audience see that by having someone as support come on and recite poetry, he was distancing himself from the ‘Jam Army’. Seething Wells, however, was on fire. I don’t mean he was on top form, I mean the man had been set alight. The record company were handing out album sleeves on the way in, and someone had set fire to one and sent it, flaming, spinning through the air, skimming the heads of the crowd like a fiery frisbee onto the stage where it caught the sleeve of his green bomber jacket and in precisely three seconds flat the thing went up like a bonfire. Seething was seriously seething and frantically tried to get his jacket off but it had started melting into him, a roadie ran on with a bucket of water and chucked it all over the poor fat poet and then Seething ran off – it was like a trip to the fucking circus – and then, from nowhere, John, Paul’s dad, was on stage and a mighty, mighty cheer went up … ‘For those of you sitting down at the back, please be upstanding for … The Jam!’ The place exploded.
We were as close to the stage as we could get without being crushed to death. I was in prime position in front of Paul’s mike stand and they opened with ‘The Eton Rifles’ and I was lost in the crowd as we moved together, heaving, swaying, jumping as one. The feeling of togetherness, the feeling of coming together with thousands to become one was … religious. I looked over at Rik, looked down and saw that his Special Jam Shoes were completely cabbaged from the trampling. He didn’t care, and I certainly didn’t care, because it was like I’d lived all my life for that moment and there, in the middle of all of those strangers, those lifelong friends, in front of my god, I was reborn.
The Jam played every song I could wish for. There was something from every album and one number I’d never heard before. Even though I loved the show, I hated it in parts. I hated it every time the band stopped playing, not because there was no music, but because the mod army struck up and they chanted away like football hooligans and they weren’t here like I was, for Paul, they might as well have been Chelsea away to Sunderland as far as I was concerned.
It had been a glorious set. That’s right, glory was what I saw in Paul’s face that night. And maybe just a hint of desperation, but he must have been shagged out – I had no idea just how energetic it would all be. After the encore, when they played ‘Little Boy Soldiers’, ‘Butterfly Collector’ and ‘When You’re Young’, the emotion swelled in my stomach and tears rushed down my face and the joy washed over me and it felt like I was being bathed, baptised maybe, but then I realised some twat had spilled his pint down my neck.
Afterwards, we hung around backstage for a while but there was no sign of anyone coming out. ‘Bugger. I wanted to get Paul to sign my shoelace.’ Rik’d got a shoelace which he said came off the stage and swore was Paul’s. I hadn’t got the heart to tell him that Paul was wearing white loafers, and just beamed back at him as he waved it under my nose.
We got talking to a mod from Macclesfield who told us he very nearly didn’t make it to see them because the exhaust fell off his scooter halfway down the motorway. He asked us if we came on our bikes as well. ‘Yes, brother, but we don’t tend to get those kind of hiccups with a ten-speed racer.’ He cleared off and we found an off-licence and bought four cans of Tetley’s and half a bottle of Lamb’s Navy Rum and sat under the cloudy black night beneath the branches of an oak in the hostel garden and we talked about the gig for hours, not that we could hear what either of us was talking about because we both had tinnitus.
We didn’t get in, the manager had locked up at midnight and the bell wasn’t working but we didn’t mind, we slept under the stars. In the morning, we packed slowly and quietly, exhausted from it all. I’d got a crick in my neck which felt like someone had taken an axe to it. We were to set off after breakfast on the first homeward leg of the trip. We got the AA road atlas out and opened it up over the hostel kitchen table. Rik looked deep in thought as he studied it. ‘Right, Dave. Where are we going?’
I don’t think, today, twenty years later, that having your life mapped out for you is a good thing. In fact, I think it’s the worst thing you could wish for. It’s far from realistic, it’s limiting, it narrows your life in every way and, back then, I didn’t have a clue where I was going. All I knew was that I wanted to write, or at least try and write. Rik was going to work in the bank with his dad or be a brewer. He had it all mapped out. ‘I don’t know, Rik,’ I said. ‘You decide.’
I felt let down by something; I didn’t know what and I didn’t know why. It annoyed me and I finally thought it was because I’d expected Paul, Bruce and Rick to smile a bit more. I knew it was stupid of me, but I just wanted them to look like they were enjoying it as much as I had. Maybe the urge to go and see The Jam wasn’t just about seeing The Jam. Maybe it was about escape more than anything else. About getting out of Garforth under my own steam, not sitting on a train or in a car or a plane or getting a bus out of there. I think physically propelling myself out of the place was the point. Perhaps it was some sort of primal urge, probably sexual in origin, I don’t know.
We set off for Scarborough, Rik still in his Jam shoes and the wind was in our hair and we simply bowled along. I played the gig over in my head and it dawned on me that Bruce and Rick weren’t simply Paul’s backing band. Something happened when the three of them played together, some immense chemistry. There was an energy all of its own, a fire that burned so bright inside all three of them and I guessed that, like me, they must have been lost in the music that night. The power and the glory of The Jam, the raw balls of the music didn’t come from one man alone – it came from all three. The Jam were three people and always would be, forever and ever, amen.
We stopped cycling after an hour. Rik needed the loo and had to nip over a dry-stone wall. I thought he just needed a piss: ‘I haven’t got any paper, Dave. Go and buy a hot dog from that burger van – he’s bound to give you a serviette.’ I did as I was told and the man in the van handed me a stinking, tepid brown log in a stale bridge roll, squirted red sauce on and wrapped it in a serviette. I walked back, across the deserted Dales road and handed Rik his dog over the top of the wall. ‘There’s no onions, Dave.’ There’s gratitude for you. After Rik finished we took off on our bikes. We arrived in Scarborough late in the afternoon. The sun shimmered on the road and bounced like sparks off my spokes as we coasted down the coast road and into the hostel. The manager was unlocking the door, just opening up. We were surprised, to say the least, to find him in full make-up, a slinky little black cocktail dress and high, strappy heels. Turned out he was an amateur dramatics enthusiast and was understudying the mother in A Taste Of Honey. The girl who was due to play her pulled out due to water retention.
I’d quite like to have gone, to see more theatre, but Rik wanted to go and check out the pubs on the seafront so after I’d showered and dealt with my hair that’s what we did. I was waiting for Rik in the lobby and the phone was free. I hadn’t planned it, but I stuck ten pence in and phoned home. ‘Hi, Mum. It’s me …’
‘Oh, hello David. Thanks for ringing – we were all getting quite worried about you.’
‘Sorry, but the queues for the phone have been about two miles long every night. It’s taken me more than an hou
r to wait for this one.’
‘I’m just glad that you’re safe. You are safe, aren’t you?’
‘I am, I’m very safe. Last night’s gig was just brilliant – I really enjoyed myself. Is everyone OK there?’
‘We’re well. Are you eating properly?’
‘Certainly am. The fish and chips are terrific.’
‘That’s good, because you’ve got to keep your energy up on those long rides.’
‘Don’t worry – I will.’
‘Good boy. I’ve got to go – there’s cod for tea and I think the bag’s boiled dry.’
‘OK. Bye. Lots of love to everyone.’ And I placed the receiver back down in its cracked, black Bakelite cradle and sat down on the step and thought about home. I missed my family. From the moment we walked into the nearest pub I knew I was going to get properly hammered. I ordered Scotch, for no other reason than Grampa Lines used to drink it. I remember wondering whether we drank Scotch for the same reason: to escape.
The next morning we were bound for Whitby, home of Captain Cook. Well, it would be if he weren’t dead. Rik wanted to know why I’d got so pissed the previous night.
‘Because we’re on holiday, right?’
‘Yeah, but that was a bit spooky.’
‘My head hurts. It feels like some twat’s camping in there.’ We left it at that. I didn’t tell him about missing Mum and Dad and Chris and Phil. Why couldn’t I tell him things like that? We just left it at that.
On the way to Whitby I got a puncture. The tyre burst and I hurtled down a hill with a one-in-four gradient and articulated lorries crashed past me, just millimetres away. I struggled to stop the bike from falling over and I just about managed it, but not without spraining my ankle slightly as I instinctively put my foot down to stop it. There was a small hamlet signposted half a mile away, so we pushed the bikes there to change the inner tube, get out of the traffic and grab something for lunch. I must have been getting old … I never knew that a cheese ploughman’s could ever cheer me up so much.