Playing the Bass with Three Left Hands

by Will Carruthers

  Despite his earlier promises that the band would be a democracy and that we were all going to get an even split, Jason had approached me a couple of months earlier and mentioned that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to give Jonny and Mark an equal split in case they took the cash and ran. He’d mentioned putting them on a wage. He’d said that I could still have my cut of the advance but that he didn’t trust them.

  It was a strange conversation. I couldn’t understand his fears. Mark and Jonny were absolutely solidly behind the band and it seemed that his paranoia was the only thing that would cause that to change.

  The album itself had already been recorded, with the bulk of the tracks being laid down at VHF in Rugby. It had been cheap to record and it was sounding good. Jason then started mixing it, and, under pressure from the record company, he started to mix it at studios that weren’t cheap. He was mixing down at Bath Moles for a while, and then we had booked a studio called Comforts Place down in Surrey, ostensibly to record ‘Feel So Sad’. That single cost almost as much to record as the rest of the album. The high point of that recording, for me, was when a session singer had come down to do some female vocals.

  She told us that she had been the voice of the ‘Trio’ adverts that had been pretty popular when we were children. She sang the Trio advert a lot more times than she sang ‘Feel So Sad’ that day.

  Here I was getting into debt again, and there we were, in a hugely expensive studio which had tennis courts and a full staff to cook us breakfast in the morning and make our evening meals. There was a picture of the Bee Gees playing tennis on the wall. It was sort of glamorous, I suppose, but when you can’t actually pay your rent that kind of glamour is more expensive than you can imagine. Especially if everyone isn’t in the same position. And it seemed that we weren’t all in the same position.

  A mate of mine, an estate agent, had come up to me in a pub in Rugby where I had been having a pint and said, ‘You must be doing pretty well for yourself?’

  I half expected this to be another person in the pub asking me to buy them a pint because I had been on the telly, so I narrowed my eyes and said, ‘What do you mean? I’m skint. Midland Bank is paying for this pint I’m holding. I can’t even cover my rent.’

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Because your bandmate and his missus were in my estate agent’s the other day and they were looking to buy pretty big houses. They were talking about paying cash.’

  Shortly after this I had been talking to Mark about the rest of the advance money that we had been promised. It was overdue, and I was complaining about it.

  ‘There isn’t any more advance money,’ Mark said. ‘Didn’t you know? It’s all been spent on recording and mixing.’

  I hadn’t known, and when Jason had offered to put me on a low wage as a retainer sometime later it had all fallen into place, and it didn’t seem worth talking about, or trying to explain or understand. I made my decision quietly and then spilled my guts on that ferry ride back from Dublin. I still genuinely loved the band and I wanted them to do well. I wanted Pete to do well too. I wanted everyone to do well. Why not?

  So as we got into the van and rolled it off the ferry for the drive back to Rugby I explained that I didn’t want to leave them in trouble as far as any band commitments were concerned, and that I would do whatever had to be done until they could find a replacement.

  I had done a fair amount of psychedelics during the previous year, and I was bit peeled and sensitive in some ways. They probably thought I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had in a way, but it wasn’t the acid. I still turned up on time for every show and I had never blown a gig or been incapable of playing. I kept my shit together when I had to: music was always more important to me than drugs.

  Later, we agreed that the last engagement I was to have with the band was to be the Peel session that was booked to take place in a couple of weeks. There was no bad feeling. No arguments. We just agreed, and maybe nobody was happy about it.

  I didn’t even feel bad when it came time to do the session. We all made our way down to the BBC studios in London, and the atmosphere was fine, if a little strained. Most of that session was laid down live in one take, with a few horn overdubs laid on afterwards. We knew how to play the songs by that point. Towards the end of the session, Doug D’Arcy turned up to cast his well-manicured opinion over the proceedings.

  When Jason and I had first gone down to the Dedicated offices in London to present him with the final mix of ‘Anyway That You Want Me’ he had sat behind his expensive desk, smiled after listening to it, and said, ‘I think it needs some more guitars.’ That had surprised me a bit at the time, especially when Jason actually listened to him. We had been making music for quite a while by this point, music that had never been exposed to the creative opinions of a man who had never written a song or played in a band in his life. Regardless, Doug was in charge of the purse strings and he had also been fairly heavily stung off the back of the Spacemen 3 collapse, so maybe he owed it to his ego to have an opinion that we pretended to care about.

  He’d gotten a bit more guitar and he had also gotten a picture off my wall for the sleeve of the record. Natty had given me a painting he had done that was an aquatic blur of oil pastel colours. I had given the picture to Doug under the express condition that I was to get it back at some point because it was my personal property. It never did come back to me, despite my increasingly irate protestations to Doug when he would turn up at shows. He just fobbed me off with his little smile and said he would return it. I later found out it was hanging, framed, in the BMG offices. Maybe it is still there somewhere.

  Given all of this, when Doug D’Arcy appeared in the studio and walked into the control room to oversee what was to be my very last session with the band, I was not overjoyed. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit and he had on an unusual and expensive-looking pair of shoes which had little flowers embroidered onto them. Around the waist of his suit jacket was what looked to be a piece of garden twine. The piece of designer twine instantly took Jonny’s attention. He barrelled over to Doug, laughed, and grabbed either end of the twine.

  It wasn’t actually garden twine, of course, but very expensive material that had been tastefully sewn into the very tasteful jacket so that it looked like garden twine. When Jonny grabbed both ends and pulled them tight, Doug’s beautifully fitting suit bunched up in the middle, making him look very funny indeed. Jonny tied the two ends into a crude bow while Doug, very patiently and with barely discernible disgust, tolerated it.

  ‘You look like a tramp, Doug!’ Jonny said, laughing like a maniac. ‘Did you find this jacket down at the allotment?’

  Doug smiled his usual thin smile and patiently undid the knot that Jonny had so gleefully tied.

  ‘This suit cost more than you will earn all year, Jonny,’ he said, with a slightly more believable smile.

  Doug sat down and cast his discerning ear over the proceedings while smiling the same money smile. I decided it was time to go and pack my equipment for the last time. My work was done.

  As I wound my cables and packed the pedals away, I considered my choices and my reasons for them. I was fairly sure I was doing the right thing, even though nobody understood my reasons for leaving. It felt fucking awful, but it felt right.

  I picked my old Gibson Thunderbird off its stand, laid it in its case, and closed the lid. As I was snapping the catches shut, Doug came up behind me.

  ‘How are things with you then, Willie?’ he said, in an affable and reasonable tone.

  ‘Not too bad, Doug, thanks,’ I said. I asked him if he had enjoyed Christmas.

  ‘Yes, I did, thanks,’ he replied. ‘It was lovely. For the first time in ages we were all actually at our house in England. We have spent quite a few of them abroad in recent years, so it was really nice to have a good old-fashioned British Christmas at home for a change. How was yours?’

  ‘Well, Doug, to be honest, it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had. I am absolutely flat broke and
I spent most of the holidays carrying bricks at a slaughterhouse so that I could pay off some of the rent I owe. You know I’m a vegetarian, right?’

  He looked a little upset by the news, but nowhere near as upset as I had felt when I had been slithering around in the crap and mud carrying bricks on a freezing cold New Year’s Day at Midland Meat Packers.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Sorry to hear that. We really should go out for dinner sometime.’

  ‘No thanks, Doug,’ I replied evenly. ‘Can I have my picture back, please?’

  And that was the end of that.

  Part Four

  Living on Nuts and Berries

  Psychotic Reaction

  I hate myself for loving you.

  Written on a toilet door

  The first time I heard Spiritualized playing without me, I was sitting alone in my flat next door. Jonny had been sent round to make sure it was OK. Because I had no doorbell, he threw some tiny stones up to my window to get my attention. I leaned out and he smiled up to me and said, ‘Willie, we are gonna rehearse next door. Is that cool?’ He was as friendly and enthusiastic as he always was and hopefully always will be. Despite my misgivings, I couldn’t be a cunt about it. Being horrible to Jonny is like being horrible to life. What was I going to say?

  I was hurting, because, with all my heart I had loved the band and the music we were making, but I had left of my own accord. ‘Of course it’s cool,’ I lied, with a smile. ‘Have a good ’un.’ And then added some sarcastic comment about their recent publicity shot, where they were all wearing leather, trying to look rock and roll while lolling around in the back of a car. I was trying to make myself feel better. Jonny just laughed and I closed the window and sat down trying to prepare myself for what was to come. I told myself it was fine, made a cup of tea, rolled a cigarette and tried to relax.

  It never occurred to me not to sit and listen, which was, perhaps, a masochistic move too far. Whatever. I had made my choice and I bore nobody any ill will. I certainly didn’t want the band to suffer, but perhaps I couldn’t go as far as wanting them to be as good as they had been when I played with them.

  The first song started up and I heard it loud and clear through the thin fake wall that separated the two flats. ‘If I Were with Her Now’, with its offbeat rhythm that Jonny and I had come up with in the back room of the Imperial not even a year before. The way I had felt playing it and the way I felt listening to the sound of the song coming through the wall as I sat and listened seemed to come from different lives.

  It is a song of yearning, which contains the certain knowledge of redemption through the inevitable meeting of the subject and the object of their desire. The song talks about drugs being an unsatisfactory substitute for real love, and states as fact that the closeness of someone you love will change your state of mind for the better. Better than a hit. Better than a trip. Better than better itself. Being so close to the thing I had loved was like watching someone fuck the person you love as you stand helplessly behind a one-way mirror. I loved the music that band made, I loved being in the band, and now I had a ring-side seat for the grand betrayal that I had instigated by leaving. Everyone had told me I was crazy to leave, but I just had to. I knew what was coming and the least worst option had been to quietly turn away and take another path. Of course, love is not so easily broken and closely bound fates not so quickly un-entwined, so there I was, sitting alone and feeling lonely as my bandmates got ready for the honeymoon and the inevitable success of the album we had spent a year making and promoting, while I sat next door and listened to the party. Despite my own prickling self-defences and the disparaging voices in my head about the quality of the approaching bass playing, my heart was beating faster, and I was doing my best to stay calm. All of the contradictions I had felt on leaving the band were coming home to roost, and I was being forced to hatch the egg of my own choice whether I liked it or not. I was in debt, I wasn’t in love, and I wasn’t in a band any more. All of my dreams and ambitions for music were as threadbare as my bank account. My heart beat a little faster and my mind flickered between the choices I had made. I put a record on and tried to drown out the sound of the band I had been in with other music. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis unfurled like a ribbon of heavy smoke in the still room. It sounded resigned and steadfast, triumphant and defeated, and between each carefully measured note and beat could be heard stories of lost love, bum deals, hard times and hope. I couldn’t hear any of it at the time. Even as I was trying to block out the sound of the music next door with the sound of Miles Davis I was still listening through the trumpet for the familiar sound of the love I had left. I knew that if I were in there with them, playing the bass, I would change. That, given the familiarity of that warm sound and the closeness of the band, I would feel better, safe and sure, but I also knew that it wouldn’t change. The thing that had forced my hand and led me to resign was never going to change. It would only be ignored and postponed to a later time when it would be even more difficult to quit, like with any habit that refuses to acknowledge what lies beneath it. So there I was, getting ready for the kick and the withdrawal was going to be more brutal than I had imagined.

  I pulled the needle off the record, sat back in the chair, and resigned myself to the inevitable, as the band started playing ‘Run’. I took a grim pleasure in knowing that Sean wasn’t going to nail the bassline. The familiar drumbeat started up. I knew all of the exact cues for the song and where I should have been coming in. The beat hits hard for threes and then skitters away for the same time like a boxer coming in for three jabs before dancing away again, while the guitars keep the forward momentum and stay on the heartbeat with the kick drum. The bass sounded disappointingly correct on the verses ‒ missing a little of the easy groove that Jonny and I had found over the last two years maybe, but fairly tight for someone learning the ropes. It was the break that was going to trip him up, I knew that, and I moved into the kitchen to get a better earful of the mistakes I hoped were coming. I wasn’t hoping for the band to fail ‒ I was just trying to feel like I was worth more than I felt at the time, which was close to nothing. I had been replaced, like a punctured tyre or a broken window. Quickly and without mourning. At least that was how it felt. I would have done the same thing in their position, and I didn’t expect them to do differently either.

  The singing began and the familiar vocal refrain that had been borrowed from J. J. Cale and the Velvets drifted over the low frequencies that were coming through the wall. The lyrics talk about somebody on the run with nothing to carry and no soul. I guess I could relate to that in ways that were different now, even though I was in my own flat a hair’s breadth from beating my head against the wall to drown out the sound I had loved only a few weeks before. I started to feel itchy. I scratched at myself distractedly, hardly recognising the fact, caught up as I was in regret, recrimination and self-loathing. I paced the kitchen floor and the song ploughed on as I made myself increasingly agitated by what I thought was the dumbest damn decision I had ever made. I considered going next door and taking the bass from Sean and explaining I had been wrong. Apologising. Then I imagined us all laughing about it like it had been a temporary madness on all of our parts and that everything was going to turn out fine, like it had just been a big joke and how could we even have thought such a thing? ‘Hahahaha.’

  Deep down I knew it was bullshit. It was over and there was no going back. I scratched myself and realised that I was feeling weirdly hot and that the insatiable itch was spreading. As I rolled up my sleeves to examine my own skin I heard the words, ‘I love you,’ come through the wall. My skin began to tighten and the itching started to burn. My mouth was dry and my lips felt like they’d been stung by nettles. I scratched at myself and ran my fingers over the raising rash of tiny bumps and blisters spreading across my skin. It was turning into a scene from The Exorcist and I was beginning to think that, this time, I was truly operating under a curse of my own making. I stripped my clothes off and examined my
armpits. Sure enough, there the gooseflesh had turned a nasty shade of scarlet, and it was spreading fast. I could feel the prickling reaction running across my body and through my blood, raising angry points of flesh and turning me to fire inside. I scratched and scratched to no relief, as the music buried into me and my body reacted on a huge scale. I was going into anaphylactic shock and there were no obvious reasons why. I had experienced it once before as a teenager and I knew the symptoms well enough. My throat was growing tight and I was starting to swell up like a balloon, the skin stretching across every inch of me as my immune system started to go haywire and attack the rest of my body in defence.