The Alternative Hero

by Tim Thornton

  Or, even worse, a recollection like the one my “date” offered me.

  “Oh, I know—they did that song that went ‘Nothing ever happens, dum-dum de dum-dum de dum…’”

  “No, that was Del Amitri.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  I have no idea how people do it. But they do.

  “You remember,” I coaxed. “‘You still don’t know how … look who’s—’”

  “‘… laughing now,’”she finished off.

  “There you are! You know them.”

  “Yeah, I know that one. Christ, that was him?”

  “Yup.”

  “Blimey,” she remarked. “I always kind of preferred the Mondays and the Roses, though.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re a big fan, I take it?”

  “Um, yeah,” I mumble.

  “Wow. So it must have been quite a kick for you, meeting him today?”

  “Sort of, yeah—I’ve met him before, though.”

  Technically not lying, but all the same I decided it was a good time for a toilet visit. The last thing I wanted was my noble, gallant and (not to mention) date-acquiring day’s activity to be exposed for the devious, self-interested and ultimately useless exercise that it really was. I regrouped with the assistance of the mirror in the gents’; I get pretty flustered on this sort of occasion and need to check that I’m still with the programme, especially after a minor blow like this one. It’s funny, if I’d mentioned the Magpies and she’d exclaimed, “Oh my God! Not them! He was the most hideous creep and all their videos sucked!”—I’d have been happier. Marginally. But it’s the indifference that does my head in. The predictable, let’s-ring-up-XFM-and-ask-them-to-play-“I Am the Resurrection”-for-the-fifteenth-time-today-style ennui which leaves me gagging. The sort of musical apathy that drives a listener straight into the arms of … well. You’ll see.

  Having said all that, I am nothing if not a nine-months-single, thirty-something loser with a few pints inside him who wouldn’t mind a shag. I returned from the loo and the evening rolled happily along, music remaining firmly on the conversational reserve bench, and before I knew it they were chucking us out of the pub. How the decision was made to come back to mine I can’t now remember, but I do recall being glad that Polly was still at her parents’ house, and then having a bit of a snog in the kitchen. That, unfortunately, was as good as things got.

  “You got any music?” came the enquiry, after I’d poured us a glass of wine each.

  “Of course! What do you want to hear?”

  (Mental note: never ask this question. Just select. It’s so much easier.)

  “You know what I love, love, love to listen to on nights like this?” she enthused, already starting to dance a bit.

  “No,” I replied, hoping I had whatever it was.

  She took a sip of wine and proclaimed, with some drunken passion:

  “Snow Patrol.”

  Oh God.

  “If I lay here … If I just lay here …”

  She closed her eyes and started to sway her hips.

  “Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, feigning innocence.

  “Have you got that?” she beamed. “Or Keane?”

  “Um …”

  “Is it any wonder I’m tired … Is it any wonder I feel uptight … Oh, such a good song.”

  “Yeah, I suppose … I’m not sure we have it …”

  She clapped her hands, gave me a big kiss and asked excitedly, “Okay, what do you have? Show me. Which one’s your room?”

  Before I could respond she’d skipped off down the corridor. I followed, hoping my quarters weren’t in too much of a state. She turned into Polly’s room and snapped on the light.

  “Ah, that’s my flatmate’s room.”

  “Bloody hell, what a tip! So this one must be yours,” she smiled, bursting into the room opposite. “Oh, such boy colours …”

  She settled down next to my unruly stacks of CDs while I folded a few items of clothing and generally tidied up a bit. Her fingers skipped through some titles that clearly didn’t register and it was a while before she spoke; each time she did, it irritated me.

  “Nirvana, cool … Oh, you’ve got the Pulp Fiction sound track! Excellent … Mondays … Oh, I love the first Oasis album … Who the fuck are they? [I think she was eyeing a Butthole Surfers album at this point] … The La’s. Oh my God, ‘There She Goes’ is so amazing … Loads of people I’ve never heard of! … Oh, here’s a Thieving Magpies album—let’s have a look … Oh my God, it really is him!”

  “We could put that on if you like?” (It was the MTV Unplugged album.)

  She frowned. “Not terribly romantic stuff, though, is it?”

  I was rapidly losing interest in the whole thing.

  “Chili Peppers … Oh, it’s an old one, though … Wonder Stuff. Has this one got ‘Dizzy’ on it? [I didn’t bother to reply] … Christ, have you actually got anything recorded recently?”

  “Yeah, loads! I think there are some Elbow albums in there …”

  “Boring.”

  “Fratellis? Boards of Canada?”

  “Yeah, shall we try to stick to people I might’ve even vaguely heard of?”

  “Or Arctic Monkeys?” I held up their CD hopefully.

  “Bit punky for late at night, perhaps?”

  “There’s vinyl too …”

  “Oh, bit of a palaver. Has your flatmate got some music?”

  Without my say-so, she strode back into Polly’s room and to her diminutive CD rack, where, I knew full well, some true horrors lurked. I hovered in the doorway, huffing a bit.

  “Oh, this is a bit better! … Björk … Moby … Scissor Sisters … Oh my God, she’s got Snow Patrol! [She extracted this for later use and continued] … Bluetones … Leonard Cohen … The Verve … Oh, Joni Mitchell. I love this … Coldplay! Is this the one with ‘Fix You’ on it?”

  “It had better not be,” I grumbled.

  “Cheer up, Granddad!” she laughed. “Can we hear this?”

  “Um, I’d rather not …”

  “Oh, come on. It’s gooorgeous. Better than your Snoozing Magpies,” she chuckled, giving me another kiss. My sour face must have said it all. She frowned again, this time genuinely. “Seriously, Clive, brighten up! It’s only music.”

  “It’s not only music,” I snapped, and stomped off to the kitchen.

  Okay, I know what you’re thinking. She’s right. Lighten the fuck up, sad boy. Let her stick on her Chris Martin claptrap, or whatever she damn well wants, have another drink, forget about it, and get ready for some action. But no. I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m getting old—or older, at least—but I can’t be arsed with that sort of thing anymore. I was going to spare you the cringesome details of the next ten minutes but you ought to hear them, really, as it gives you some insight into what really goes on in my head. Put differently, it demonstrates what a fuckwit I am. Especially when I’ve had a few.

  She followed me into the kitchen, her face a picture of uncertainty; although it was pretty close to a certainty that the useful part of the evening was already over.

  “I’ve a feeling I’ve done something to offend you,” she began gently, “but I can’t say I know what it is.”

  “No, it’s not you,” I sighed.

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” she commented, with a healthy twist of sarcasm.

  “It’s just … oh, I don’t know.”

  “Well, if you don’t know, then …”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, taking a swig of wine. Bloody hell, I thought I’d seen the back of this kind of discussion.

  “Is it your ex?” she asked suddenly.

  “My ex?”

  “Well, in the pub you said your ex had pretty shit taste in music.”

  “Well … yeah, but not really,” I dithered. “But I suppose it does still kind of depress me that, um … it begins with having sex to Kings of Convenience, then finishes with fig
hting for the CD player over Queens of the Stone Age versus KT Tunstall.”

  “Uh-huh … it sounds like it is your ex.” She picked up her mobile and checked her text messages: always a sign that an evening is going well.

  “But then, you think … if it begins with fighting for the CD player, then where does that take you?”

  She looked up, appalled.

  “Oh, what the fuck is your problem? For a start, we weren’t fighting for the CD player; you were. And plus, what makes you think this is the beginning of anything? We were having fun, having a laugh, and now suddenly you’ve made it into something awfully heavy and boring.”

  “Oh.”

  “And what the hell is wrong with KT Tunstall?”

  “Um, nothing, it’s just …”

  “What?”

  “Um … what she represents.”

  “Oh, do yourself a favour, Clive, take a load off.” Gathering up her bag now.

  “You going?” I asked, downcast.

  She shrugged. “You tell me.”

  And then for some reason I still can’t really understand, maybe because I correctly figured that the evening couldn’t get much worse, I did this:

  “I’m writing a book about Lance Webster. I’m trying to interview him. That’s why I volunteered to work at the vet’s for the day.”

  Now here’s the interesting thing, if you’re interested in atmospheric shifts. Instead of storming out, hurling abuse (“How dare you deceive me!,” etc.)—she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with her bag on her knee, her facial expression flattened, and she nodded, bidding me to continue. But from that split second onwards, it permanently ceased to be a romantic evening.

  “I discovered he lives on this street, so I followed him on Saturday.”

  “Why do you want to write a book about him?”

  “Vindication. Among other things.”

  “For you, or him?”

  I smiled at this. “Him, really.”

  “Why does he need to be vindicated?”

  I sighed. “Because everyone’s forgotten who he is.”

  “How do you know he’s not pleased about that?”

  “Well, I don’t. But that’s what I want to find out. Do you remember … well, maybe you won’t, but … he had a bit of trouble, just before the band split up … he got drunk onstage at a festival, had a fight, got arrested …”

  “Actually, yeah … I’ve a vague memory of something.”

  “Well, after that, the Magpies were forgotten within six months. Virtually erased from the rock history books, as though Lance had been arrested for child molesting rather than simply having a pissed punch-up.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “No one knows. There are all sorts of rumours.”

  “Like?”

  “This friend of his had vanished a few months previously. People reckon he was told she’d been found dead that night, or something. The guy he punched was just a security guard. It’s pretty clear he was just … you know.”

  “In the line of fire?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he go to jail?”

  “No, but I think he got fined or something. But that was basically the end of his career.”

  She shrugged again, and stood up. “Well, I don’t know … but if I were you I’d be careful. People don’t usually enjoy reliving shit like that.”

  “Do you want another glass of wine?” I asked, aware of the fact that I’d enjoyed the last minute or two more than I had the rest of the evening.

  “No, I’d better be going, Clive. It’s really late.”

  As I let her out, she gave me a look such as you might give someone who’s about to climb a skyscraper without a rope.

  “Take it easy, will you?”

  “I’ll try. Oh … and sorry.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, and was gone.

  So there we are. Yes, I am alone on my bed—no night of hot passion for me—but at least I told the truth. In the end. And I don’t have to pretend not to be disgusted by some turgid musical bollocks that, in truth, would have been liable to seriously affect my performance anyway.

  But I’m still wound up. If tonight has done one thing, it’s helped to crystallise my feelings regarding the Magpies’—and all their ilk, as a matter of fact—having been effectively wiped from the parlance and playlist of the musically savvy, and the knock-on effect this seems to have on people like The Other Vet. It really is remarkable. I plonk my wineglass on my bedside table and turn to my much maligned piles of CDs, eventually locating another battered jewel case with a familiar picture of an empty hospital bed in an empty room, above which the handwritten statement THIEVING MAGPIES/BRUISE UNIT is crudely but unmistakably scrawled. Lance’s voice leaps out of my speakers: “I’m ready for the tears … I’m ready for the nausea”—and we’re off.

  It’s never been difficult for me to understand why, back in 1992, this record was outselling its nearest British rivals by something like two-to-one. The reviews at the time say it all, with unanimous word-processor ejaculation (“the sound of a band who have REM, Nirvana, U2 and Guns N’ Roses firmly in their sights, and are ready to fire,” decided Q magazine). But looking closely, there’s always been a difference with the Thieving Magpies. A subtle difference-practically invisible in 1992 and barely noticeable in 1993—but a contradiction nonetheless existed that would become crucial to their survival, or lack of it, in music lovers’ hearts and minds beyond their eventual demise. The fact was: they had little or no influence over any other groups. There was a small clutch of imitators just after their debut album, as there always would be, but from about 1990 onwards you’d be hard pushed to find Thieving Magpies listed as a reference in any “musicians wanted” advert, let alone quoted as an inspiration by a hotly tipped newcomer. Of course, this doesn’t always matter; in fact, U2 have been the biggest band in the world for more than twenty years, and aside from a few losers doing impersonations of The Unforgettable Fire in 1986 they’ve hardly influenced a soul. But it doesn’t matter, because U2 are just so damn successful and so damn good at being U2 that no one cares.

  And it didn’t really matter either with the Magpies, until Lance’s colourful evening at the Aylesbury Festival. The world-straddling Bruise Unit tour rolled on into 1993, they had a bit of a break, Lance rather ill-advisedly tried his hand at acting (a small role in the television adaptation of Stephen Fry’s The Liar), the band reconvened in the autumn of 1994 (“back for the Christmas term,” as Lance put it) to record what would be their final album, The Social Trap. It was released in May 1995—and it simply didn’t matter that, in the meantime, Kurt Cobain had died, pulling the carpet from under every other alternative rock band’s feet; it was of no concern that Britpop had arrived, that everyone was suddenly singing in cockney accents about making tea or cleaning their teeth, or that the major cultural concern was what Noel would say about Damon next, or vice versa; it didn’t matter—not when the music was as good as it was on The Social Trap, with its healthy pair of singles, “Retro Hetero” and “Contribution.” The album entered the UK charts at number one and lingered within the top forty for the following three months. The singles easily graced the top ten. The tours sold out. Aylesbury, a three-day bash in only its third year, shifted most of its weekend tickets immediately after Thieving Magpies were confirmed as Saturday-night headliners. In short, there was nothing to worry about.

  Then Lance got drunk, and the rest is … well, tragedy.

  All right—so fifty thousand loyal fans were cheated out of a gig and insulted, but that goes no way towards explaining the speed at which The Social Trap flew out of the world’s album charts and into its charity shops. The few onlookers who have since bothered to apply rational thought to the deletion of the Magpies from the world’s musical hard drive have argued, with some substance, that while Britpop was unable to harm a popular band, it was certainly capable of inflicting lethal damage on an ailing one; but they offer no reason for why, a dec
ade later, the Thieving Magpies are still pretty much absent from any retrospective compilations, pop cultural histories, “best album” polls or “classic indie” club nights (and I think I’ve heard “Look Who’s Laughing” once on the radio in eight years).

  My own rather meagre explanation is that as they were merely popular, rather than having any real influence, it’s been very easy for the Magpies to be completely forgotten, because hardly any bands have had to alter anything about themselves in order to do so. Looking at it another way it would be impossible even to attempt to forget a band like Joy Division, because so many musicians would instantly lose their entire careers.

  Not that the Magpies are the only group in this predicament. There’s a whole crop of them. A lot of these bands were listed by that cretin Tony Gloster during the final, fateful Magpies press conference at Aylesbury: Carter USM, Jesus Jones, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff, The Mission (he also mentioned The Cure, who now seem to have been vindicated thanks to the undeniable length and quality of their career, and some recent name checks from the young and hip). To Gloster’s list I’ll also throw in the Levellers, EMF and—fuck it—Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Let’s analyse them all for a moment. Between 1988 and 1994, all these bands had large fan bases, big indie hits, albums that sold respectably, extensive tours abroad and high-billing (in some cases headlining) festival appearances.

  Okay. Here we go.

  But so did: The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The La’s, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans. In some cases, these bands were less commercially successful than those in the above paragraph. But the highbrow alternative pop fraternity still, more than ten years after they played their final, off-key note, go potty over The Stone Roses. They still call Shaun Ryder a “genius” or a “poet.” They refer to The La’s sole album as “the greatest debut ever made.” They cite Screamadelica as “a pivotal moment in the history of popular music.” They constantly request “This Is How It Feels” and “Saturn 5” in indie clubs and on radio shows. And there’s a nice little comfy chair set aside for dear little Tim Burgess at the right hand of Noel Gallagher, even though The Charlatans haven’t made a convincing album in a decade.