The Rise & Fall of the Miraculous Vespas

by David F. Ross

  Senga looked furious.

  ‘Look, speak tae him. Jist tell him tae lie low, eh? Ah’ll see ye, Senga. Take care ae yerself.’ And with that, he was gone.

  She stayed and watched him walk the length of the car park back down to Glasgow Road, and away back in to the heart of Onthank. She wasn’t quite sure what else to do.

  21

  1st March 1983

  7.21 pm

  ‘Mam? Whit’s the matter wi’ ye?’ Grant had just taken Senga outside to show off his new purchase. He could tell she really didn’t approve. ‘Look, it’s safe … it’s no like it’s a Harley Davidson or somethin’.’

  ‘Come in the hoose,’ she said tersely.

  ‘Christ’s sake, Mam. Ah’m no’ a wean,’ Grant pleaded.

  Senga slammed the door behind him. ‘Then stop fuckin’ actin’ like yin, Grant!’ she yelled. ‘Sit doon.’

  ‘Ah’m no’ sure ah want tae, if you’re gonnae be bawlin’ like a banshee,’ he said.

  ‘Grant!’ He sat down as instructed. ‘Ah told ye aboot that money … where it came fae. An’ ah told ye no’ tae be makin’ a show ae spendin’ it,’ she stressed.

  ‘Aye, an’ whit? Ah huvnae!’ His arms were outstretched, pleading ignorance.

  ‘So where did ye get that bloody motorbike then … The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop?’

  ‘It’s no’ a motorbike … exactly,’ said Grant. ‘It’s a scooter. A Vespa. That’s for the band, Mam. For press photographs an’ that.’

  ‘So, ye didnae buy it then?’

  ‘Well, aye … of course ah bought it! They wurnae givin’ them away, Mam. Look, whit’s the issue here?’ Grant was getting annoyed. Nine months ago, his mum had told him that his father had left him an inheritance of £20,000. She’d told him it was dodgy money, but she’d been economical with the truth. She’d put it in a bank account for him. It was his to do as he liked with. She’d told him other money left to Sophie and Andrew had gone into a trust fund for them when they turned twenty-one. He was getting his early on strict condition that he cut ties with Fat Franny Duncan and that he told no one about the money. Last Christmas, when she’d told him about the plan to go to Austria for New Year, she’d told him the full story. That the money was actually Fat Franny’s, stolen from the safe in the Fatman’s house by Grant’s father to give to them. He’d asked her if that was the reason he was dead. She’d told him she didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be completely sure. Fat Franny Duncan was a nasty piece of work, she’d said, but she couldn’t believe that he’d be capable of having his oldest friend killed. But you just never knew, she’d warned him.

  ‘How much ae it’s left, Grant?’ Senga now asked. ‘An’ whit’ve ye spent the rest oan?’ She had looked out a notepad and a pen, figuring it might be a long list.

  Grant told her about the guitars: three for him, and one new bass guitar to replace Simon Sylvester’s own one, broken in the flurry with Max. He also told her the hire of Jimmy Stevenson’s van, the amps and sound gear from the Hurlford shed of Hairy Doug in preparation for a couple of upcoming gigs that Max was working on. He omitted to tell her that the hire of the latter had now become a purchase, since Max had put his boot through a Marshall speaker during yet another violent disagreement with the bass player. He also avoided telling his mother about the whole Campervan story. That Grant had been forced into paying Rocco Quinn settlement money to prevent him destroying it. Needless to say, Maggie’s poker-victory version of the story was violently contested by her ex-boyfriend. Max Mojo was with Grant when Rocco and his baseball-bat-wielding brothers came a-calling. Max had brokered the pay-off after seeing Grant’s reaction when the Quinns explained their knowledge about the depth of his funds, but not before a mental calculation of how he might make use of such a surprisingly handsome sum. This clearly wasn’t the time for Grant to enlighten his mum about any of that.

  Another omission was that he’d subsequently been manipulated by Max Mojo into paying the band a modest weekly wage to supplement their dole money, and to ensure they kept turning up for rehearsals. Grant wasn’t even sure himself how that had happened but he had reluctantly agreed to it in return for a future 35 percent of all band-related profits. Max Mojo might’ve been a teenager but his ability to exploit those around him was truly strange. Max believed himself to be the reincarnation of Brian Epstein, Kit Lambert, Don Arden, Col. Tom Parker etc, and often the conviction with which he held to that belief was perversely inspiring.

  But Grant’s mother wouldn’t have appreciated that at this point. So he had to lie. He felt bad about it, but he couldn’t have told Senga that more than half of the money she’d given him nine months ago was gone. And that he’d told not only Max Mojo about exactly where it had come from, but also his unpredictable and untamed girlfriend, Maggie Abernethy.

  22

  11st March 1983

  3.16 am

  Max Mojo couldn’t sleep. He paced his bedroom floor. It was strewn with seven-inch singles. He was trying to galvanise an image in his mind of the band as they would appear on the poster for their first proper gigs. The Heid debacle a month before had now all but been erased for his memory as a gig, although Max knew it would reappear in countless biographies after The Miraculous Vespas had broken America. After they had played the Budokan. After they had been on Top of the Pops for four weeks running.

  Max Mojo had absolutely no doubt that all of these things would ultimately happen. First though, the band needed an image, and one that could compete in the eyes of teenage girls with those two pricks from Wham! He looked at the various pairs of stonewashed jeans and checked shirts he’d scored from the girls who worked at Jim Beam near the bottom of the Foregate, but nothing was jumping out at him. The shirts were a bit too Big Country or U2 for Max, although Eddie Sylvester fancied himself as The Edge, prior to his recent hypnosis. Maggie – or BB as Max now constantly referred to her – was never going to wear anything suggested by Max, but since she was in the back, and insisted on showing more flesh than not, Max felt he could compromise. Leather was a potential answer. Maggie, looking like she’d just crawled out of the jungle with Annabella Lwin, fronted by black-clad leather guitar heroes; that could work. But the music wasn’t rough or especially rocking. And since Max was insistent on keeping ‘Vespas’ in their name, the leather didn’t particularly fit.

  Paul Weller’s new look – European coffee-house modernist chic – was interesting, and ‘Speak Like a Child’ was a phenomenal opening statement of new intent in Max’s informed opinion, but he needed something more original. Weller copyists were everywhere, and charlatans like Secret Affair or The Lambrettas hadn’t faired well in that slipstream.

  Eddie Sylvester’s condition remained a concern. He had always been considered strange, especially by other kids at Kilmarnock Academy. His teachers branded him disruptive and aggressive, and in his second year he had been moved to the nearby Park School. It was formally referred to as a school for special pupils, but kids who went there were relentlessly and unfairly stigmatised for being stupid. Eddie and Simon’s mother had been killed in a gardening accident right outside their house, when the boys were only ten. The blades of the electric lawnmower with which she had been mowing the wet lawn had cut through the protective sheath of its electric cable. She hadn’t realised the live wires were exposed and had been electrocuted after reaching down to examine the damage. Much of Eddie’s short-attention span and belligerence had been put down to the trauma of seeing it happen from his bedroom window. As a result, his erratic behaviour was simply tolerated or often even ignored by his continuously stressed father.

  Simon Sylvester explained all of this to his fellow band members, not to excuse this latest mental hiccup, but simply to stop the aggravation Simon was receiving from the others. Eddie wouldn’t come to the church hall in advance of their first real gigs. He still wanted to be in the band, Simon confirmed, but he just wouldn’t be able to leave the house.

  This presented Max Mojo with a real
difficulty. He’d just confirmed that a three-gig mini-tour of Kilmarnock pubs had been secured. Grant’s money had paid an advance in order to book them, and it would also fund the promotional material for it, but more than seventy people paying £1.00 a ticket at each venue and the returns would wash the venture’s face.

  Max had no time to recruit another guitarist, and Eddie’s skill was one of the most immediate things about their emerging sound. It was a real conundrum.

  Ah’m a fuckin’ genius, by the way. That mornin’, wanderin’ aboot ma room, listenin’ tae Bunnymen an’ Simple Minds an’ that new Aztec Camera record, it came tae me. Eddie ‘fuckin’ Sylvester … The Motorcycle Boy!

  Ah fuckin’ hated the school for the maist part, but ah wis aw’right at English. A couple ae fuckin’ books that ah had nicked ootae the library had always stuck wi’ me. Ah read them loadsae times back then. Wan wis called The Outsiders an’ the ither yin wis Rumble Fish. Both written by the same geezer. Some fuckin’ Yank dude called Hinton. Anyway, the Motorcycle Boy’s this character in one ae them. Ah cannae remember which wan noo though. Every cunt thinks he fuckin’ mental … so, right up dopey Eddie Sylvester’s street, ken?

  Thing is, he isnae mental at aw. Jist nae cunt knows that he cannae hear right, ‘cos ae a fight he wis in, once. The Motorcycle Boy’s got a heidcase brother, an’ his ma’s buggered off tae. Ah’m thinkin’ ‘this is too fuckin’ good tae be true!’

  So, we call the daft cunt ‘The Motorcycle Boy’ an’ we aw agree that we’ll never tell any bastart whit his real name is … aw mysterious, like. But the best bit … the bit ye obviously ken aw aboot noo … we put a full-face motorbike helmet oan the cunt. Tinted visor, ken? Tae deal wi’ his aggravated-phobia. Daft bastart’s brain thinks he’s still inside his hoose. Fuckin’ genius!

  See that prick oan Top Gear, wi’ Jeremy fuckin’ Clarkson … the Spiv or somethin’ … well, ah invented that idea. An’ some daft indie band called themselves efter him tae. Ah shoulda fuckin’ sued the baith ae they them anaw.

  Any road up, at least we had an ‘image’ ae sorts.

  23

  27th March 1983

  ‘Everything alright, William?’

  ‘Aye, hunky dory. Mr McAllister. You?’

  ‘Well, ah’d been expectin’ the pleasure of your company a bit more often these last few moths, but apart fae that … aye, couldnae be better, son.’

  Don McAllister had shifted the regular rendezvous about in the last month. Wullie the Painter thought all of this was a bit over the top. He was hardly Huggy Bear after all.

  ‘So, whit’s the gen?’ said Don. It was so dark on the golf course that Wullie could hardly see his face even though it was only a few feet from his.

  ‘This no’ a bit … ah dunno, too Watergate?’ asked the Painter.

  ‘Would ye rather we met in the driveway ae the Fatman’s hoose?’ said Don.

  ‘Ah’m no’ that sure it wid actually matter, mate,’ said Wullie. ‘Franny’s doin’ fuck all these days. His Ma’s aff her heid, an’ he cannae go oot an’ leave her in case she burns the street doon. Dinnae get me wrang, ah’m no’ complainin’ but yer payin’ me for nothin’ at the minute. Fat Franny Duncan’s a busted flush. He’s old news, sir. Jesus, that’s why ah had tae take the P an’ D job affa Doc Martin in the first place.’

  ‘Aye. Ah know aw that,’ said Don calmly.

  Wullie the Painter was surprised. ‘Look, it isnae the bloody Cosa Nostra up in Onthank, ken? It’s wee stuff, man. Pounds, shillings and pence. A wee bit ae skag on the vans, mibbe, but that’s the limit. The rest ae it is jist sharkin’, an’ that shouldnae be botherin’ you. Maybe five, ten years ago, when the McLartys were aboot, an’ there were chibbins every week, but no’ noo. Every bastart’s skint … even the crooks,’ said Wullie. ‘Fuck, especially the crooks,’ he added, pulling his trousers pockets inside out.

  ‘The McLartys are comin’ back,’ said Don, lettin’ it sink in. ‘Ah’ve known for a while. Big deals goin’ doon in Glasgow, son. An’ noo they’re lookin’ tae move the money oan ootae the city an’ back doon here.’

  ‘Fuck sake,’ said Wullie. ‘Ye sure?’

  ‘Fairly certain, aye. So you’re role is gonnae change, wee man.’

  ‘Ach, Christ,’ said Wullie, head drooping.

  ‘Never mind Christ, son. Ye’ve had an easy ride so far. Ah’m boostin’ ye two hundred a month. There wis always gonnae have to be payback. In the words of the famous Glasgow prophet, ‘Staun up Wullie, your time has came’!’ Don McAllister laughed. ‘Charlie’ll fill ye in … mibbe literally, eh boy?’

  Don walked back towards the ninth tee and the small clearing behind it where his Jaguar was parked. As he disappeared completely into the darkness, Charlie Lawson emerged. Once again, he was only about five feet from Wullie before the painter could even see his outline.

  ‘Right, Mr Lawson, whit’s the script?’ said Wullie.

  ‘The boss wants ye tae get close tae Washer Wishart and tae they Galston gypsies as well. The McLartys are lookin’ for a route in, an’ word is they’ve got an angle wi’ each crew already. Mr McAllister wants tae know who it is. Any clues?’

  ‘Fuck sake, Mr Lawson, he’s jist told me aboot them comin’ back … ah’m no’ that quick aff the mark,’ said Wullie.

  ‘Well, here’s a few,’ said Charlie Lawson. ‘That dipstick Terry Connolly in your mob, for one. He’s gettin’ bigger and bigger stashes oan the vans. It’s comin’ fae somewhere.’

  ‘Pick the cunt up then! Whit d’ye need me for?’ pleaded Wullie the Painter.

  ‘Connolly’s still small beer. An’ he might be the road in tae the bigger gig. Mr McAllister’s plannin’ a major clampdown in East Ayrshire. He retires next year, an’ a big score would virtually guarantee a CBE or mibbe bigger.’

  ‘A CBE? Whit … aff the Queen, like?’ Wullie the Painter was impressed.

  ‘Aye. So things are gonnae get tough. If the McLartys move back, an’ if it’s off the back ae the drugs, well that isnae good for the Man. Got it?’ said Charlie Lawson.

  ‘Aye. Ah think so,’ said Wullie. Charlie Lawson handed him an envelope, which the Painter put in his inside pocket.

  ‘Jist keep yer eyes and ears open. Washer’s man, Benny Donald … he’s intae the McLartys tae. Spent too much up at the Clydeside Casino. Fucked, so he is. Washer disnae know. Get close tae him. Tell him yer lookin’ for a new gig ’cos Fat Franny’s oan the wane. An’ also, there’s Ged McClure fae the Quinn contingent. A bit ae intel on him tae. Anythin’ unusual, bring it back tae us. Okey dokey?’ Charlie Lawson smiled. His teeth were surprisingly white for a West of Scotland male, Wullie thought.

  ‘Ah suppose so, eh?’ said Wullie. Charlie Lawson patted his shoulder.

  ‘You take care now, y’hear?’ he said, patronisingly.

  Wullie the Painter waited for five minutes, like he’d been told earlier, and then he too walked back to the same clearing. His car was parked a couple of miles further on, in the village, and it had just started raining. As he reached the clearing an owl hooted loudly over his left shoulder, causing him to dive down instinctively.

  ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ! Aw the President’s Men, right enough, eh?’ he sighed, as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

  24

  2nd April 1983

  Despite a bit of the post-Rocco Quinn tension remaining between Maggie and Grant, rehearsals had been going well and Max Mojo was happy. Well, in between the random periods when the paranoia took hold, at any rate. When these happened he simply went out and shot at the arses of cows in the field at the back of the manse with his .22 air rifle. It wasn’t exactly a hobby but it was certainly therapeutic. It de-stressed him, allowing him to focus and get some equilibrium back. This morning was one of those times. As he waited for the band to turn up at the hall, he hung out of the rear casement window, firing intermittently into the crisp, spring air and scattering the Friesians. Iggy sang ‘No Fun’ on the Dansette, but on this occasion, I
ggy was wrong.

  The drummer and the singer appeared. Separately, and half an hour apart. Her in the Campervan; him on the Vespa. The Sylvester twins turned up in a taxi, The Motorcycle Boy now apparently warming to the full-leather, Mad Max vibe that his teenage manager had fashioned for him. The helmet stayed on and the visor stayed firmly shut until he was in the hall, on stage and surrounded by the others. Max Mojo was unsure whether the daft bastard actually had any form of open-space phobia, but he already saw the media angles of a mysterious guitarist who never spoke to the media and played, unidentified, with his back to the audience.

  It was crucial that The Miraculous Vespas now started to realise the emerging potential that Max Mojo saw in them. The often insouciant band members were crying out for his relentless energy and drive, although the flipside of that was the aggression and tactlessness that propelled him. They also needed his seemingly vast musical knowledge. Whilst Max was unable to play traditional instruments himself, and his singing was, for the most part, flat and tuneless, Max understood melody. Like a discount-store Phil Spector, he shaped their opinion about style, attitude and lyrical content. Max Mojo had gradually educated his older colleagues. Washer had gotten him a VCR from some fat guy who owed him a favour. With it Max recorded as much music as he could from The Old Grey Whistle Test, pouring over the stances of such as Tom Verlaine from Television, or using the unique ‘pause’ facility to write down – and then analyse – Vic Godard and Ian McCulloch lyrics. Over the last few weeks, he’d fashioned the four into a group; not simply four disparate individuals, all of whom were now competent enough in their own right. Max Mojo had learned that, in the recent punk context, managers were as important as lead singers. Dale Wishart might have been deluded in terms of his perceived musical talent, but Max Mojo had no time for such fantasies. Management was his forte. It required control and it would need a sharp rise in profile. If Scotland was the arse-end of the music business world, Ayrshire was halfway up its colon; out of sight and – unless someone had cause to stick an investigative finger up there – completely out of mind.