Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands

by Will Carruthers

  ‘WHERE ARE YOU GOING?’ his wife screeched after him.

  ‘Bed,’ he said with firm resignation, and then he vanished into the darkened hallway at the foot of the stairs.

  The landlady looked at me with something approaching hate.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Our friends are leaving now and we all just want to go to bed. We are very tired.’

  She looked at me again in a way that I could physically feel. There was no way any mind tricks were going to work on her; she was too far gone. I wished I had never touched her precious water-bearer, even in a respectful way.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can stay. BUT NO MORE BLOODY FUNNY BUSINESS.’

  ‘OK,’ I lied.

  My bandmates returned to their rooms with a palpable sense of relief and the members of Electrahead, who had lost their chance of a warm room for the night, were ungraciously sent packing courtesy of my stupidity and the landlady’s hostility. ‘See you tomorrow, boys,’ I said, under the baleful stare of the landlady, while silently mouthing the word ‘sorry’ to them as they left.

  She looked at me again. ‘GO TO BED.’

  I knew when I was beaten.

  ‘OK,’ I said, and turned back to enter the room.

  ‘We had those Happy Mondays in here the other week, and you lot are worse,’ she squawked, as a parting shot.

  I was secretly pleased about that, to be honest.

  In the morning, we snuck out of the undestroyed rooms and left the B&B under the chilly wind of the landlady’s sullen and reproachful stare. All of her valuables were back in one piece, in the exact places I had disturbed them from the night before. I could barely look the water-bearing nymph in the eye as I passed her in the hallway and we said our goodbyes.

  We got in the van, leaving the chemical factories of Middlesbrough behind us, and made our way down the dreary motorway to the next show.

  At the venue, we met up with Electrahead and I apologised once again for the night before.

  ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter,’ said Steve. ‘It was pretty funny in the end. We drove down to the beach, parked up and slept in the van for the night. The weird thing was, in the morning we were woken up by all of these blokes outside in full-on moon-suits, and they were taking samples of the water. We didn’t bother going for a swim!’

  Despite our own occasionally stupid chemical indulgences we’d never had to face a hangover wearing fully protective chemical bodysuits and helmets, and we never polluted anything beyond our own bloodstreams, so I suppose that was something to be said in our favour.

  Little Thief

  When a large part of your job involves travelling, and the unsociable hours you work force you to rely on the muck-hole eateries that pepper the motorways you are forced to travel on in order to get home because you can’t afford a hotel, then motorway service stations are your friend, no matter how much they secretly despise you.

  I have no idea what makes people so placid in the face of service-station food in Britain. We all take it for granted that ten quid is a perfectly acceptable price to pay for a tepid cup of Nescafé, a damp and pale lasagne, and a cake as big as your head filled with chemicals that will cause your body to remain fresh in the grave like a crap vampire from a seventies horror film.

  That’s if you can afford to be buried.

  Welcome to the glamorous world of being in a touring band.

  Now, imagine you are lucky.

  Imagine you are getting paid.

  Imagine you are getting paid fifteen quid a day.

  Ten quid is quite a lot to pay for anything when fifteen quid is all you have in the world.

  Now let’s add some airports into this delightful mix, because you are now so successful that you have to travel the world to play for people. You still aren’t getting paid very much but let’s not dwell on that. Let’s imagine that this airport is in Scandinavia. Oslo, for instance. The band is hungry. They have travelled very far and they are tired. They have only eaten a tiny bag of pretzels in six hours. They forgot to bring a packed lunch again. Shall we just get something cheap to tide us over until dinner time, which will probably be at four o’clock in the fucking morning at some poison buffet in a field somewhere? Shall we have a pizza? It’s only cheese on toast, after all, and how expensive can dough and cheese be?

  Even with tomatoes.

  Even in Oslo.

  ‘That will be fifty-eight euros, please.’

  If I were paying to eat pizza out of the gilded crack of a supermodel while her friend was blowing cocaine up my arse with a straw I would still consider fifty-eight euros to be a little expensive for cheese on toast. Even if it was circular and it had some sort of sauce on top.

  When we toured Europe with Spacemen 3 in 1989 we were getting paid ten quid a day. Ten quid in Budapest paid for a three-course meal at a nice restaurant, with fizzy wine, polite waiters and clean white tablecloths. Of course, the restaurant was empty because most of the people were lined up in the freezing fog to eat a Happy Meal for the same price at the first McDonald’s to open in the Eastern bloc. Our visit to Budapest had coincided with the first appearance of everyone’s favourite clown. The circus was in town and so were we.

  Budapest was one thing, and Stockholm was another thing entirely. In Stockholm, ten quid bought us a loaf of bread, four squares of cheese, and a can of lager which we consumed in a park surrounded by gaunt speedfreaks whacking up bags of shonky sulphate. No wonder we had such a tenuous grip on reality.

  Look, I know other people have bigger problems. As I type this I can see the faces of drowned children swimming up through the fog of my dreams to scream at me while their parents sob endlessly on a blow-up boat in the Aegean as they try to escape the bombs that have been dropping on their villages. I know. I know people walk for miles just to get a mouthful of muddy water and camel piss. I understand that some people would just like not to get killed as they go to work. I realise that sea levels are rising and pretty soon the world will be full of desperate people with AK-47s and dirty bombs looking for a mangelwurzel and a dry rock to shit on. I know.

  But still, is it more difficult to transport a sausage roll to a service station on a motorway than it is to ship one to the Outer Hebrides? What are the logistical difficulties and additional costs involved in taking a sandwich to an airport that make it twice as expensive as its precious equivalent in a Spar in Hunstanton?

  God help you if you want a drink.

  God help you if you need a drink.

  ‘That’ll be eight pound fifty, please! SECURITY! SECURITY! Security to the imaginary lager section, please. Customer is showing signs of sarcasm and discontent.’

  It was around three in the morning when the van pulled off the M1 and took the slip road leading to that most fabled of British motorway service stations.

  Watford Gap has traditionally been a place of transport since Roman times. On a gibbous moon, it is sometimes possible to hear the ghosts of Roman centurions complaining bitterly in the car park about the quality and the price of the food on offer. Watford Gap is a name to conjure with, rich with history and a stopping place for every self-respecting band and traveller on their way up and down the country since the golden age of motorway travel began. Situated between two hills in the county of Northamptonshire and traditionally known as the official point at which the gentle civilisation of the south of England gives way to the wildlings and whippets of the north, it sits in the middle of the country like some festering belly button full of fluff, bits of crisps and stale spunk.

  The van parked up and we fell out of our varying degrees of uncomfortable sleep with a mixture of relief and disappointment.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Why are we?’

  This was no time for philosophy. It was late, we were hungry and the Little Chef was the only game in town. We had all earned our fifteen pounds and it would have been churlish not to spend it on something quite disappointing.
/>   ‘We are going to the Little Chef.’

  ‘Little fucking thief more like.’

  The little chef on the glowing red sign looked like a fat and hungry ghost carrying a plate of shit, or maybe like some off-duty Klansman who has rolled his hood up in preparation to stuff his face with doughnuts.

  ‘Have a fucking burger if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Why do we always have to eat here?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the Romans?’

  Anyway, a little lively and half-drunk conversation does wonders for the appetite at four in the morning.

  We walked past a large group of ravers who were dancing to their car stereos in the car park. They looked like itching phantom limbs enjoying the memory of a party they had once attended pre-amputation.

  ‘What are they doing?’ someone asked.

  ‘Taking drugs,’ came the fairly obvious answer.

  We passed the gurning ravers, casually swatting away their happy questions about where we were from and what we were on. We didn’t understand happy people when we weren’t on drugs.

  We made our way into the disturbing light and frightening aesthetics of the service station and were instantly attacked by massive and garish art that demanded we lose all reason and eat everything in sight. It was fucking horrible. The building was empty of everyone but the insane, the addled and the working. We fitted into all three categories.

  ‘What’ll it be? Burgers … burgers … burgers … chocolate and crisps? Or a proper meal?’

  ‘Let’s have some real food, shall we? I think I’ll die if I eat any more crisps.’

  So we entered the glum hall of the best restaurant at Watford Gap. It looked like a scene from a zombie film, after the zombies have eaten everybody and won and then died of starvation and turned to dust. Congealing puddles of nameless slop and glowering eggs sweated under the merciless heat lamps, and the air was wobbly with grease and desperation. It was like being in a sauna that smelled of meat and piss, where everything was too bright and expensive and none of it was particularly appetising.

  ‘Eight quid for that?’ someone said, ungratefully, pointing a scornful finger at a waterlogged shepherd’s pie made out of horse gristle and entrails. ‘I’m not paying that. I’m just having chips.’

  The chips were as hard as misery, as sharp as spite and cost as much as Christmas. An indestructible bun and margarine to grease it down was extra.

  ‘Watford Gap, Watford Gap … a plate of grease and a load of crap,’ somebody sang, mournfully, as the whirr of sinister motors signalled the attention of electronic surveillance.

  I couldn’t face anything.

  I couldn’t face my hunger, my wallet, or any of the food.

  Perhaps it was a combination of all three.

  A battle-damaged soldier was shouting post-combat death orders at the trifle. I made my way to the checkout, where a grim and pustuled youth was trying not to commit suicide. ‘All right, mate?’ I said, in a cheery fashion. ‘How you doing?’

  ‘All right,’ he said, but his eyes told a different story.

  ‘Bit depressing in here, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I hope they are paying you all right?’

  ‘Huh,’ he grunted, with a face somewhere between derision and hatred. ‘Not fucking likely.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘When they are selling toast at a quid a slice? That’s criminal.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I fucking hate it here.’

  ‘Look,’ I whispered, conspiratorially. ‘Can you help me out? I’m skint and I’m starving. Where are the security cameras?’

  He looked at me, winked, and said they were mainly watching him to make sure that he didn’t steal any money from the till.

  ‘Any cameras by the breakfast?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Nice one, boss,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave three quid on my table when I’m done.’ And with that I walked off, got myself a nice big breakfast, ate the whole thing, and then drank the grease off the plate with a slurp. Three quid was a fair price, and he looked like he needed a pay rise.

  Working on a Building

  One year after leaving the building site and paying off the Spacemen 3 debts, I was back on site and getting into debt again. The only difference was that this time I was still playing in the band.

  We had finished the recordings for Lazer Guided Melodies and it had yet to be released, but we had toured fairly extensively in Britain to try to kick-start the band and to promote the singles from the upcoming album. The band had received a fairly hefty advance for the record as part of the contract with Dedicated that Gerald had set up. This was a deal for five albums with an ever increasing advance on each one. All of the recording costs were to be paid for out of the initial advance, and the rest was to be split between the band. It all seemed pretty good to me, although I hadn’t been involved with the intricacies of the deal, nor signed a contract, nor talked to a lawyer about it all. I was still a trusting soul.

  Lazer Guided Melodies, on the whole, had been a joy to make. There were no bad feelings within the band; our main focus had been on making music. We had recorded ‘Anyway That You Want Me’ and from there we just carried on writing songs, gathering the ideas live in the back room of the Imperial and on the road, and working out the main parts in Jason’s rehearsal room later. Jason would often turn up with a couple of chords, or three, and a full song to sing. Sometimes the words would come later. Sometimes he would play one chord and we would play round it. This was not music of great complexity in terms of chords and key changes. The beauty of the creation lay in what was wound around the simple structures and in the melodies and lyrical sentiments. Nobody told me what basslines to play in that band. Often I would take home rough demo recordings and work out the parts on headphones with my bass plugged into the stereo. I would spend hours coming up with the various possibilities and then I would present them to Jason in the studio or the rehearsal room, where he would arrange them. Some of the songs we had worked up at rehearsals were played live at shows long before anybody had heard a recorded version of them. We were playing some of them before we had even recorded them. This brought the songs into tighter focus and we knew what would work before we took them to the studio. Jason was becoming a wizard with the desk, and with a full working band behind him he was inspired and inspirational in turn.

  There is a narrative that the public seems very fond of, and maybe it fits with the times somehow. The individual genius, with all of the parts mapped out in technicolour in a grand 3D map they carry around in their illuminated heads. None of the bands I have ever been in work totally like that. Genius steals and borrows, as does plagiarism, and there can be a fine line between the two if the genius in question lacks the self-confidence and the strength of character to admit their debts, however small or large they may be, monetarily or musically. It doesn’t matter anyway, I suppose. The music itself is what matters when all the bullshit is forgotten. In the meantime it’s all about getting paid and who’s in charge, right? It’s all about too many dogs fighting over too small a bone, and when nobody knows when the next pay cheque is rolling in, well, maybe it’s tempting to just grab what you can and hole up in the hills. Every man for himself. YODELAYHEEHOO. But, who are the winners when eventually that costs you some of the essential value of the thing you are selling? When it isn’t actually good for music? What does business serve when it actually kills the thing that gives it life? Who is the boss in that situation?

  Hard-luck stories are cheaper than musicians in the music industry, and most people just shrug and look at you with a kind of ‘what did you expect?’ expression when they hear another tale of woe. No one wants to hear about the bum deals and the bitterness. It takes the shine off the music and the dreams that we, as listeners, spin around the creation and its creators. If music is escapist in nature, who the hell wants to hear about the hard realities behind it? Nobody wants to hear about how good love turned sour, how your dog died and your woman done gone
and left you with nothing but a bottle full of pills for company. Not me, that’s for sure. Not unless it has a good tune.

  I think I got about five grand from Lazer Guided Melodies. For a year’s work. That is all I was ever paid and probably ever will be. I never understood about cross-recouping deals, or what had been signed and decided. Maybe dear old Gerald had never really had my best interests at heart when he made that deal.

  Maybe he was just tired.

  Me too.

  Fifty Tons of Blood

  John was a brickie and I was labouring for him. It was getting close to Christmas. He picked me up at seven in the morning in his battered car full of builder’s crap, cement and tools, which had a big ragged hole in the bonnet where he had used a claw hammer to get it open when the bonnet-release had stopped working. He said he loved his car. I mentioned that I hoped he treated his wife a bit better than the car. He just cackled.

  He had told me that the job was in Crick, a small village on the outskirts of Rugby, right next to the M1. As we were driving along the road that led into the village, John made a left turn that took us along an innocent-looking lane past some raised grassy mounds that barely concealed a large, dark factory. A big old smoky chimney and the roofs of some serious-looking, metal-clad buildings were visible over the pretty green embankments.

  I started to get worried. ‘Fucking hell, John, this is Midland Meat Packers. Are we working here?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ he replied innocently. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘No, you fucking didn’t,’ I shot back, getting increasingly agitated as we drew closer to the security gate that lay at the end of the little tree-lined lane. ‘You know I’m a vegetarian. I can’t work here, man.’

  John was ready for this. He had deliberately not told me that we were going to be working at the biggest slaughterhouse and meat processing factory in Europe because he didn’t want to upset me. ‘It’ll be good for you to have a look,’ he said, as if he were some sort of tour guide offering me a pleasant holiday. ‘Y’know, you can get an inside view on the place, like.’