Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  TB dismounted instantly and didn't even stop to growl; he ran off past the pulpit and towards the pile of crates, knocking over a free-standing lamp cluster as he did so; it crashed across my Charles Rennie Mackintosh chair and whacked one of the security monitors, which fell to the tiles and imploded.

  'TB!' Tommy yelled, then ran after the beast as it disappeared between unopened cases of Bulgarian sewing machines and boxes of Russian ear-muffs.

  McCann and I doubled back and started running, keeping to the east aisle. McCann was laughing as he ran. 'TB!' Tommy shouted again, hidden by crates of Czech televisions. 'Heel, boy. Sit! Sit!'

  'Some dug that, eh Jimmy?' McCann panted as we neared the main doors.

  'I'll kill it.' We rounded the corner by the dump truck and skidded to a 'top at the same time as Tommy, coming from the opposite irection. 'You see him?' he asked. We shook our heads. Tommy scratched his. 'Shit. I lost him. Sorry about this, Jim. He's not usually like this. I thought he could hold his drink.'

  'Never mind,' I said.

  'Tell ye what,' McCann said. 'Open one a they big doors and we'll go back tae the pulpit, form a line, and flush him oot. He'll head fur the door when he sees it's open.'

  Tommy was indignant. 'He might run away! He might run into the street an get run over!'

  I said nothing. McCann snapped his fingers. 'We'll put a big empty packin case just the far side aw the opening, so he'll run into that.'

  Maybe I'd had more shandies than I thought, but this sounded like a good idea. We opened one of the St Vincent Street doors by a couple of feet, put an empty tea chest on the top step outside, then ran back to the pulpit. I thought I could hear the sound of running water somewhere inside the piled crates; about level with the boxes of Polish jam. We formed a line with Tommy in the middle and started down the floor of the building, McCann and I taking an aisle each and Tommy clambering over the mountains of cases and boxes. I found the remains of a trainer as we passed the kitchen in the west transept.

  'Got him!' Tommy shouted, from somewhere in the middle of the pile. There was the sound of wheezing, scrabbling claws, and glass breaking. Then Tommy said, 'Aw ...'

  'Did ye get him?' McCann shouted from the other aisle.

  'Naw, but Ah must have givin him a hell of a fright. Jeez ... this is honkin. Whit a pong. Sumhin wrong wi that dug's guts...

  McCann's quiet laughter echoed from the far aisle. Tommy said, , Ah really am sorry about all this, big yin. I'll clean all this up after we've caught him, okay?'

  'There he is!' McCann shouted. There was a noise of claws skidding on tiles from the far end of the folly, near the doors, and McCann's running feet. I started running too.

  I got past the bulldozer in time to see TB's rump and hind legs fly over the packing case we'd positioned outside. McCann tried to follow the dog, but hit the case and sprawled, cursing. Tommy ran up behind me and we pushed the door open to get out.

  TB stood at the bottom of the steps, on St Vincent Street, breathing heavily and looking rather unsteady on his feet. He was staring at us. I helped McCann to his feet; he was rubbing his skinned palms with a grubby hanky. Tommy started down the steps, slowly, holding one hand out to the panting beast. 'Good boy, TB; here boy...'

  TB stood looking at him, saliva dripping from his mouth, tongue lolling, flanks pulsing, then leaned forward, opened his mouth and threw up onto the pavement and keeled over, flopping sideways onto the sidewalk in front of a young couple walking past. He lay there, flat on the ground, legs straight and eyes closed.

  Tommy straightened, stuck his hands in his pockets. 'Aw, shit.'

  'Is he all right?' McCann asked, putting his hanky back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

  'Aye,' Tommy said, going down to the recumbent hound. 'He's just drunk.' He shook his head. The beast was still breathing. 'Ah suppose Ah'd better get him back to ma maw's. She'll no be very happy.'

  'I'm going for my coat now " I told Tommy. 'If I find anything in the pockets...' I pointed at the dog, which had started to snore. I left the phrase hanging and went back into the folly for my greatcoat.

  'Is that curry Ah can smell?' McCann said as I kicked the tea chest back through the doors.

  Apart from a few hairs, the dog had left nothing on or in the coat. I turned the power off to the smashed TV monitor and closed the door leading to the tower. There was a smell of dogshit in the nave.

  Tommy's mother expected him and the dog home for their tea. She lived about quarter of a mile away, on Houldsworth Street. McCann was nursing his grazed hands, and limping. Tommy took TB's front legs, I took the rear. The dog was as limp as a sack of potatoes, but heavier. We tramped through the darkening street, getting the occasional funny remark, but nobody stopped us. McCann sniggered every now and again.

  'Must have been the curry,' Tommy said. 'He was obviously hungry or he wouldnae have eaten the wee fork as well.' The dog grunted as though in agreement, then resumed its snoring.

  'Aye,' McCann said. 'Some dug that. Can ye rent it oot? Gie it tae people ye dinnae like?'

  'Never thought of that, Mr McCann,' Tommy admitted. My shoulders were getting sore. I took a better grip of the animal's legs and looked down distastefully at it; the dog was quietly pissing itself.

  The urine was soaking into its belly hair and running down its flanks and round to its back, to drip off there, onto my latest new pair of trainers.

  'What does "TB" stand for anyway?' I asked Wee Tommy.

  He looked at me as though I was an idiot, and in an almost resentful tone said, 'Total Bastard.'

  'Oh, yes,' I said. 'Of course. Obvious really.'

  'Ye mean there's nuthin wrong wi its lungs after aw?' McCann said, disgustedly.

  'Not compared to its bladder,' I muttered, trying to keep my feet clear of the dribbling canine pee.

  'Naw, it's perfectly healthy,' Wee Tommy said. 'It's just...' he shrugged, shaking the totally relaxed and snoring hound '... it's an animal.'

  'Fair enough.' McCann said.

  We tramped across the motorway by the St Vincent Street flyover; the rain came on.

  We all got wet.

  SIX

  The weirdness began about the end of '74, after we'd finished the album, before anything had really started happening. We'd worked ten and twelve hour days in the studio, used shifts of technicians, seen virtually nothing of London except the inside of the studio in Ladbroke Grove and the flat off Oxford Street. We still overran by a week, but taking a month to do an album — even with the mixing still to be done — was hardly slow. Some bands take that long for one track.

  I got out of the flat exactly once, to wander down Oxford Street and Carnaby Street (it was a relic even then). Bowie clones and skinheads; platform boots and every now and again the confusing sight of people wearing narrow-legged jeans but otherwise looking ... I don't know; up to date, fashionable. There was change in the air: I could almost smell it. I got back to the flat feeling relieved to be out of that bewildering gaggle of styles and sensations.

  I still don't understand fashion. Why do people dress up in new styles in the first place if they're only going to act all embarrassed and ashamed about them later? So flares and platform boots look stupid now; just wait till you see how sniggeringly daft spikey hair and torn black T -shirts look in a decade's time. At least flares had the practical advantage of making it possible to change your jeans without taking your boots off. Try that in drainpipes.

  I remember thinking it Meant Something that hippies seemed to grow out of the ground and be fuzzy round the edges; the loon pants like stems, the puff-ball hair, the leather fringes and flared, open cuffs; hippies seemed to be part of what was around them; they faded out at the periphery. The harder look inspired by punk (but now very much post-punk) has meant definite boundaries; straight legs, very assertive looking footwear, and no-nonsense upperworks; so now everybody looks like para-civilians; streetwise combatants in the battle for jobs.

  But that's now and this was then, in th
e very best age there ever is; when you're young enough not to have lost that head of enthusiasm, and it's still possible to feel this is where the wave breaks, with you and your generation; now the same old rolling bore breaks up and the frothy fun starts; surf's up!

  Well, maybe next time...

  We were back in Scotland for a month, in a curious limbo. We'd been excited and frightened and nervous making the album. Studios, approached correctly, are just great big toys, and immense fun to play about with, but we were a little intimidated by it all. We'd been living on a sort of continual high for that month — a natural high, apart from the odd spliff in the flat to relax before crashing out, and one occasion when we took some speed to get us through a long session on 'Answer and Question', which we were determined to finish that night.

  Once it was over, and we were back in Paisley, it all seemed unreal. I had to tell myself it had really happened, and I think my flatmates thought the whole deal had fallen through, or I'd made it all up. My ma obviously hadn't heard that it was a cliche for the mothers of budding rock stars to lament the fact their sons or daughters didn't have a real job.

  I was being careful with the money. Once I'd worked out how much I'd have to save for tax, and how much just living would cost if we had to move to London — which looked likely — my share didn't look all that immense after all. Also, I think I was being superstitious. I felt that if I spent it too showily, I'd be punished. Not God but Fate would turn everything round again; the album would flop. There would be no single, the band would fold, or they'd find somebody else to play bass and write their songs... the best tactic was not to have too high a profile. Then Fate wouldn't notice. Intense hubris, tasteless extravagance, would attract some terrible reckoning.

  I always meant to look Jean Webb up, to keep in touch, to take her out for a drink or a meal, or just pop round to her mum's to say hello, but I never quite got into the right mood; I always felt there'd be a better time, when my future was more settled, when I had some really good news. For whatever reason, I never did get around to it, even though I still thought about her now and again.

  So we practised the songs from the album — which we were now heartily sick of — and started on some new tunes. I had worked on these latest songs for much longer by myself, with what I thought was my new-found mastery of compositional technique, before showing them to the others. I wanted these to be mine. Having Dave and Chris rework the first batch of songs, and then, just when I was starting to get used to the material in that form, having it all altered again by Mike Milne, our producer, had been a traumatic experience. This time I wanted to present them all with something more like the finished product (that was how I thought of it. This was before I developed my hatred of the word 'product').

  We played some gigs in Glasgow and Edinburgh; my first on stage. To my extreme and delighted surprise, I enjoyed it. I did keep in the background, and though there was a spotlight on me, that was only lit when the rest of the band were spotlighted too; I was never singled out.

  I refused to do a bass solo. This was almost unheard of for any band hoping to be classed as anything like 'progressive', but I was adamant. I wore dark clothes on stage, I already had the mirror shades and I'd started growing my beard the day I left Paisley for London and the recording studio.

  I was getting my act together, man. The record company wasn't too keen on this at first; they wanted us all to be nice, outgoing kids with bright smiles. Having a six and a half foot semi-scrofulous mutant in the band wasn't really what they wanted at all, but as I did write the songs they couldn't get rid of me, so they must have hoped they could take the rough edges off my strangeness. Some hope. They were confused at first, uncertain whether our youth and the good looks of Dave and Chris meant they ought to try aiming us at the teenybopper market, or Dave's guitar-hero style and my unorthodox but still hummable songs suited us for the progressive charts. Singles or albums? Sensibly, they eventually went for the latter .

  Albums were outselling singles by then anyway, and even a record company exec high on coke and his own creative genius knows there's more staying power in a 'serious' rock band than a short-lived teenybopper phenomenon (though of course your teenybopper band will shift a hell of a lot of product very quickly, which means they'll sell all their records while under your contract and not have the time to head for another label offering better royalties).

  Mike Milne had had a lot of pressure on him from the company to do his bit in packaging us; they wanted a strong 'credible' album, but they wanted a single too; something smooth and easily marketable, something ideal for Radio One, something they could sell. A cheaper producer would have given them just what they wanted. Milne's time was expensive because he came fully equipped with brains, including the bit people call heart, or the soul.

  Somehow, he could immediately sense the weaknesses and strengths in the groups he worked with. While everybody else was still worrying about whether they should change their names and what colour they should all dye their hair, Milne would be working out how to play to those strengths and develop whatever worthwhile qualities he'd found in the band. It was a sixth sense very few people seem to possess; common sense.

  In us he seemed to have a strategic view while all around him were looking only at the tactics of marketing us efficiently. He made a virtue out of the necessity of recording the album in a comparatively short time; he kept the sound rough and ready in places, giving it a raw live feel, and he used those of Dave's solos which sounded the most exciting, not the note-perfect, technically impressive but finally rather heartless examples Dave produced when he was trying too hard.

  And, thank God, he didn't let us over-indulge in solos. This was the age of the half-hour drum solo; Jesus, I could see the point of a five-minute solo on stage, to give the rest of the band time for a pee or a quick jay — I've known guys who go backstage for a quick blow job off some adoring fan during their drummer's solos — and certainly it keeps the drummer happy (a lot of them get fed up sitting back there, mostly hidden, doing all the hard work), but who the hell actually wanted to listen to thirty minutes, or even fifteen, of mindless look-how-fast-I-can-play drumming (on the other hand, who the hell ever wanted to be spat at, either)?

  But quantity was quality then. The bigger your sound system, the faster you could play, the longer your double or triple concept album, the longer your tracks, the longer your solos, the longer your hair, the longer your prick (or your tongue), the wider your loon pants... the better you were.

  At least it was simple. We had no taste whatsoever but we did have values.

  So that first album had ten tracks on it, played for forty-two minutes, and had no drum, bass or vocal solos. The guitar solos, like the songs, were kept short, leaving you wanting more, making you want to play that song, that side, the whole LP again. It was brilliantly but not overly produced, and it had... energy.

  We all went back down to London to give our uneducated opinions and make our usually ignored suggestions during the final week of mixing, and as soon as I heard that first playthrough, I knew it was all going to be just fine.

  We sat there in silence in front of a mixing board about the size of a squash court — we were only using a fraction of it, but Mike Milne liked to work with the best — and I thought, 'That's it. We've done it', and I didn't even feel terrified at entertaining such a fate-tempting thought. I knew.

  I was so certain we were going to be incredibly famous and rich I got depressed about it. It ought not to be this easy. We'd pay. I would, anyway. This wasn't the way I'd imagined it at all. I thought I'd find my band of rough-edged rockers, we'd argue and fight and eventually get a few tunes together, play small gigs in Paisley, then Glasgow, maybe a club or two in London, be dead broke, have vans break down on the M6, borrow money from parents and friends, have a session played on John Peel's show, accept an offer from a tiny shoestring-budget label that'd go bust, play larger pubs, gradually gather a small but fanatical bunch of followers, hav
e continual and confusing changes in line-up, eventually pay for our own single to be pressed and do the labelling ourselves, be taken on by a sharp manager who'd subtly rip us off but get us on as support band for somebody else's nation-wide tour, at last sign with a big company, produce at least one album that did nothing, build up a following in the record-buying public over the next couple of years, have all sorts of legal and contractual wrangles with our management and the record company, play the universities for a while, think about giving up, and then bring out an earth-shatteringly good album, or have a brilliant but seemingly non-commercial single that topped the charts for two months... that was how I'd imagined it: lots of hard work.

  I'd been prepared for that, I'd already accepted all that hassle and effort. It was a profoundly unsettling and disturbing experience when it didn't work out like that at all. Sure, I always thought we'd be accused of selling out, that was only natural... but I thought we'd have the chance to be sold in, first.

  Our manager was Sam Emery, a big man with thick grey-white hair and an even thicker East London accent who'd have looked tall if he wasn't so wide as well. We'd all taken some convincing that we really needed a manager, but Rick Tumber — now effectively our liaison officer at ARC — explained it all to us, and we accepted we did need something else apart from ARC Records between us and both the rest of the industry and the public. Big Sam came highly recommended, and with a reputation for being straight that had me instantly suspicious; the guy must have worked out some really clever scam to have fooled everybody in this business, I thought.

  Big Sam arrived in time to provide the last push we needed to make success rapid as well as inevitable. It was a simple idea, but the good ones usually are. It was also, again, as commercially good ideas tend to be, rather dubious morally.