by Jim Pollard
‘Know Your Own Personality,’ Jonathan interrupted, taking a book off the shelf and announcing its title. He treated the Carters’ place like home. He’d known Cal since they were four. You could hear the familiarity in the way he spoke to Cal’s parents.
‘I don’t think we want to know your personality, John-boy,’ said Terry.
‘It’s Eysenck,’ said Cal, ‘Psychology.’
‘Introversion and extraversion,’ read Jon. ‘Have you ever done something for which you feel truly guilty?’ He looked around the room. ‘Terry, perhaps we can start with you?’
‘Know your own personality,’ Terry scoffed. ‘You might as well have a book, Discover Your Own Shoe Size or Find Your Own Dick Length.’
‘If you don’t know yourself by now, Jon,’ shrugged Charlie, ‘heaven help you.’ He smiled simply.
‘Come on, it’ll be fun,’ said Jonathan, ‘you just write down whether you agree or disagree and then add up the scores.’
‘Are you putting us on, limp-dick? What is this? Jackie magazine?’’
‘Do you ever have any problems sleeping?’
‘No.’
‘I bet you do. I bet you do.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. All that testosterone’s got to go somewhere.’
‘This isn’t a proper argument,’ cut in Charlie. ‘You’re just contradicting everything he says.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Terry.
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Aren’t you prats interested in improving yourselves,’ demanded Jonathan, slamming the book shut.
‘Fuck off, you cunt,’ laughed Terry. Then he tossed Jonathan the sweetest of sickly smiles. ‘Sorry, sir, you want an argument? This is abuse. You want the room next door.’ By now Charlie and Terry were creasing up. I looked across to Cal, buried in a bean-bag, and he was laughing too. Misquoting Monty Python sketches was on its way to becoming a teenage obsession to rival spot squeezing and masturbation.
‘It’s at the end of the corridor,’ Charlie was choking, barely able to get the words out. The laughter was bouncing around the room. I nearly fell from my chair. Even Jonathan was smiling now. Each time it threatened to dissipate so a meeting of streaming eyes or the eruption of a rogue chuckle would ignite it again. We laughed as the minutes multiplied. When, at length the laughter expired and we slowly came to, we were all looking around the room at each other, looking for the next.
Despite the bean-bag, Cal struggled to his feet and with his index finger indicated that we were to wait. He was out of the lounge for ages. The Carter’s house was a large one but Cal was gone long enough to conduct the most intensive of searches of all of its many rooms. Jonathan had taken to reading out questions again and even Terry was occasionally answering them. Then we became aware of a knock-knocking on the lounge door. A puzzle.
‘Come in,’ I said after the fourth insistent rap.
Cal entered, his briefcase held aloft like a proud chancellor. He took some hesitant forward steps, obviously in role. ‘I’d like to register a complaint,’ he ventured. We started clapping and whooping like the audience on the Live At The Hollywood Bowl album.
‘I bought this parrot not half an hour ago from this very boutique.’ More claps and cheers. I rose to my feet.
‘The Norwegian Blue, sir,’ I said. ‘Beautiful plumage.’ They whistled and yelled.
Cal held the briefcase up, poking at it like a cage. ‘I took the liberty of examining this bird,’ he announced. ‘And the only reason it was sitting on its perch at all was because it was nailed there.’ Our audience were prompting us now when we weren’t word-perfect.
‘Had to, sir. Very excitable, the Norwegian Blue.’ Dramatic pause. ‘Beautiful plumage.’
‘Get on with it,’ shouted someone.
‘This parrot is no more,’ Cal clutched at a line, the script slipping away. ‘Pushing up the daisies, it rests in peace in the garden eternal. A celestial sparrow. It is demised, defunct. It has ceased to be. It is...’ and with this Cal whipped the briefcase over, ‘an ex-parrot’. From the briefcase onto the carpet fell a dead budgerigar.
Terry, Charlie, Jonathan, they all visibly leapt and I, I am sure, leapt the most. Cal’s pealing laughter drowned our collective intake of breath. He was hooting like a parade of parrots himself.
‘Where the fuck did you get that?’ said Terry, when he recovered. He prodded the bird with his toe and it rolled over onto its back.
‘I found it in the garden and embalmed it with my chemistry set at the age of 11,’ said Cal. He shook his head. ‘Your faces.’ I noticed a label attached to the bird’s leg which confirmed these facts.
If this were a novel, I’d tell you that it was Scratch, but of course I can’t be sure and I want to tell you the truth. It could have been him. I can’t claim Scratch had any distinguishing marks, no grey feathers or a bent beak (or if he did, I never noticed them). This bird was simply the right age and the right colour. The effect of its entrance was to render me speechless. For a split second I thought I might cry as if a friend had deliberately punctured my football but I was a 16 year old youth with a silver medallion and Blakeys in all my shoes so there was no danger of that. On my way out half an hour or so later I did pause for a moment. I sat on the garden wall behind a row of trees out of the way of the house but I wasn’t sad, more melancholic.
A car pulled up. It was old and dirty but the engine sounded souped up like the Cortina that bloke who worked with Dad had. The door opened and a woman stepped out, brushing her hair with a giant brush. She looked like Cal’s mum but she was younger. Cal’s mother looked young but not that young. Had she been to a health farm? She was battling with the brush, tugging her hair, pulling it. It was long, thick and honey coloured. I’d never seen so much hair. Or such long eyelashes. Or such, well, legs. Her skirt flew a bit as she turned to wave at the car as it shot away. She blew a kiss. Unless you count grazed knees or bruised shins or other football injuries, I’d have to say I honestly hadn’t taken much notice of legs before.
When you’re a teenager, you know straight away when a girl is pretty because they make you feel a bit sick in your stomach when they smile at you.
‘Hello,’ she said and I thought for a moment my stomach was about to burst from my body. ‘You must be one of Calum’s little friends.’ It was Cal’s sister Wendy, of course. I’d seen her before on a number of occasions but this time she looked different. Then, as I looked up and smiled limply, I knew it wasn’t that she looked so different, it was that I saw her different.
‘You’re Frankie, aren’t you?’ She stopped as if to talk and I was terrified.
‘Yes, I’m feeling a bit sick actually.’
‘I wondered what had happened to that cute smile.’ She laughed to herself in a way that I didn’t really get. ‘I’d invite you to my 21st but the invitations have already been finalised.’ As she walked away she ruffled my hair and then turned back. ‘Do you want me to get mum to give you a ride home?’
I leapt up. ‘No, I’ll be fine. Thanks.’ I was walking away before I knew it. I looked back over my shoulder. She’d gone. The last time I’d seen Wendy hadn’t been so long ago - perhaps a month. She’d been with that boy then come to think about it, I remembered the car. What had happened since?
When I closed my eyes I had a vision of that boy standing in front of me in a white shirt with twin crescents of lipsticks planted poutingly on the butterfly collar. As I walked home, the image wouldn’t go away. I coughed. I had a feeling like my voice was breaking again. The collar flapped up and down and the lips tormented.
This is the promised land calling…
14
Wardour Street, 1976
When I went to my first proper gig, we were still largely in flares and smoking No. 6. Me, Cal, Terry and Charlie. Cal had a two tone
blue and green cross-woven jacket which no tie could match. He hadn’t tried and had settled for a black bootlace - not a bootlace tie but a bootlace from my size ten boots. Terry had a bandsman’s jacket that could have come from the sleeve of Sergeant Pepper. On one shoulder sat an epaulette as large as his chip. On the other, the officer’s pips had become detached and the embroidered strip of material flapped up and down as he hopped from foot to Dr. Marten-clad foot in his familiar nervy manner. ‘Too hot to fucking shag,’ he announced.
‘I should co-co,’ said Charlie automatically but the weather didn’t seem to be bothering him. He was wearing a simple white cap-sleeve T-shirt and the sweatband he always wore for football. We were standing on the corner of Wardour St. wondering which pub to choose. The Intrepid Fox was a gay hang-out then - ‘notorious’ according to Terry. ‘That’s where we’ll find Jonny boy, I’ll give you a pound to a prick,’ he said. He reckoned The Ship was where Jimi Hendrix used to go drinking. Charlie started his usual game of pointing out the location of the apparently legendary 2i’s coffee bar where in 1956 Tommy Steele first introduced London to rock’n’roll guitar. To my certain knowledge this steamy-windowed cafe was the fifth alleged site. ‘This is definitely it,’ Charlie said. I told them The Flamingo Club at No. 33 had witnessed the impromptu first British performance of Simon And Garfunkel in 1964 but it didn’t seem to carry quite so much weight. ‘Berties’ music,’ said Terry. We were walking now, apprentice preening.
On the corner sat a wino accompanied by a brace of Double Diamond bottles and a smell. When he looked up at us he had to lift his whole slow head because his eyelids alone seemed too heavy. Such sights were not then part of London’s street furniture. With a jacket and trousers from different suits and a too-tight waistcoat, he reminded me of an older Uncle Alan. Cal gave him some money.
There were posters everywhere for films I’d never heard of - X certificates mostly with explicit titles. We were in the broken heart of the British film industry but I wouldn’t have known. The movies weren’t for me - I couldn’t sit still for an hour and a half. Terry reckoned his old man took him to Last Tango In Paris when he was 13 but none of us believed him. ‘“Teenage Virgins In Need”,’ he announced, reading, pointing at the poster, ‘That’s what we want, lads.’
‘Needy’s not enough. They’ll need to be fucking desperate,’ said Charlie, flicking at Terry’s loose blue shoulder apparel.
As we crossed Brewer Street, cabbage leaves bounced and bustled across our path, congregating in the gutter with the newspapers and other litter. There were rotting carrots, cabbages and several handfuls of tomatoes. It was like this was the place where the dustmen emptied their vans. Other sharper swifter feet took it all in their stride. Terry kicked a light wooden fruit crate. From Berwick Street we could hear the clatters and shouts of the street market closing.
‘Here it is,’ said Charlie. The Marquee looked even grottier than in its pictures. Above the door, the name was stencilled in black sans-serif type, bold verticals and narrow horizontals. How could a shabby black and white shop-front be so exciting? There was a poster depicting an immaculately coiffeured youth with a big motorbike and a pistol to his temple. Eddie And The Hot Rods, it said.
Cal had been quiet. Now he strode up to the ticket box like a professional. It was just a hole in the poster plastered wall. There was a sliding glass window reminiscent of the one Aunty Anne had on her sideboard. The dust on this would have had her in a Mr Sheen frenzy.
‘Calum Carter plus three,’ Cal said.
The woman looked at him with empty eyes. He leaned on the counter and lit a cigarette as she ran her painted fingernail down the guest list.
‘There’s no Colin Carter here.’
‘Calum Carter.’ He inhaled.
‘There’s no Carters at all.’ She looked up and scowled. She’d been here before. The rest of us coughed, shifted our weight, made like we weren’t with him. Cal slid his finger down the edge of the glass window like it was the blade of a flick-knife.
‘Ed must have forgotten. Can you get him?’
‘Do what?’
‘Ed must have forgotten. Can you get him?’ No fluster, simple repetition.
When the woman smiled she was sexy like Cruella DeVille. ‘A bit of advice. There isn’t anyone called Eddie in Eddie And The Hot Rods. It’s 75p each.’
He wasn’t playing; he was ignoring her. ‘Can you get Ed Hollis the boys’ manager for me please? Tell him it’s Cal.’
When she picked up the black bakelite phone on her desk and dialled, it rang and rang. Receiver lodged between her ear and shoulder, she counted a wodge of pound notes held together by a bulldog clip. Cal turned to the bouncers. He was becoming exasperated. ‘Have either of you seen Ed?’
The bouncers were as tall as basketball players, as broad as American footballers. They dwarfed Cal as he questioned them. ‘It’s OK, doll. You’re from the label intcha?’ said one. Cal nodded like a patient teacher. The other one opened the door and we were in. I tried to walk as tall as Cal. The woman was unconvinced. Terry’s epaulette flapped and bounced like a pepped-up puppet.
‘It’s Island innit, Mag. They employ anyone.’ The bouncers laughed like boxers. ‘Any size.’
Inside the Marquee was black as a catacomb with a heady smell - a cocktail of damp and cigarette smoke. Even the walls were sweating and we were happy to pay ten-bob for our beer. ‘Cocky cunt,’ said Terry, but really he was toasting Cal.
Perhaps there wasn’t much room that night because they were recording the gig. There were leads and cable and roadies in black T-shirts everywhere. The T-shirts were too small and said things like Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake And Palmer. They were using a mobile recording unit, according to Terry. I didn’t know what that was then but it was taking up half the floor. It was called The Moulin Rouge. Cal explained that this was French for red windmill which was even more confusing. We were examining it like men round a reluctant car engine.
As a result of the unit’s presence, it was crowded down the front by the stage. ‘Fucking swarming with punters,’ Terry pronounced over the rim of his plastic pint glass. There were elbows and big backs everywhere making drinking hazardous. Cal knocked his down in one. ‘Come on. Let’s get closer.’
There was no pogoing or slam dancing. Not yet. Just lumbering Godzillas jerking their recalcitrant weight from sweat-stained sneaker to sweat-stained sneaker. Dunlop Green Flash. There were a few bondaged proto-punks who looked a bit scary and a bit silly at the same time. It was early. Punk rock - the English version, anyway - was still in nappies. Eddie and the Hot Rods played loud, fast and distorted but they still called themselves r’n’b. Maximum r’n’b they were like The Who when they played The Marquee.
Terry got into a fight with one of the sound crew that night - the mixing desk was in his way and Terry always needed to be given space - and you can actually hear it on the record.
The rest of us have been captured - imprisoned - on many recordings down the years but, so far as I know, this is Terry’s one and only appearance. If you know when to listen and you’ve got loud enough and sensitive enough stereo equipment, you can hear him between ‘96 Tears’ and ‘Get Out Of Denver’, just before the Hot Rods’ singer Barrie Masters asks the crowd if they’re all right. ‘Fuck off, you ponce,’ Terry’s saying.
Charlie still likes it so much that he wanted to sample it for the last album. I say don’t tamper with it. What’s past is past.
15
We practised enthusiastically seven days out of seven. Sometimes I appeared with my guitar in time for breakfast. Running up and down the scales, finding new starting positions, faster and faster, all over the neck. As we did so we stumbled upon riff after familiar riff: ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’. It was slowly becoming less mysterious and sometimes your fingers even seemed to know where they were going.
A
couple of times when Cal was in the loo or getting more orange juice or raiding his father’s wine rack, I picked up the Tele and put it through my paces. The action, the space between the strings and the fingerboard, was much lower and it made your fingers fly. The lighter strings fairly crackled beneath them. After the thick trunk of the acoustic, the neck was narrow and every stretch, every new shape, arrived that much more easily. The Telecaster made you feel like a guitarist and by turning up the gain knob on the amp you could make it buzz and pound. Once or twice when Mr Carter was late going off to work I could hear raised male voices downstairs as I played - on those days Cal would return with even more goodies than usual including crisps and sweets.
One time I heard Mr Carter bellowing, it must have been along the hall because there was a hint of an echo, ‘But I don’t understand,’ he was saying. ‘You can have anything you want Calum.’
‘Yeh,’ Cal shouted back, ‘so long as it’s what you’ve already got.’
I just turned the amp up even louder so I couldn’t hear. That time Cal came back with a bottle that he said was the best in the cellar - a vintage that had been laid down. As always when he returned, he was impressed by my progress.
‘You want to play lead?’ he asked, offering me the opened bottle of wine.
I shook my head.
‘It’s no problem,’ he said. Picking up the old acoustic he started to use the cork like a bottleneck, sliding it up and down the strings. ‘Who let the cat in?’ he asked. It was the sort of thing my Mum would say but when Cal said it, it didn’t sound like a voice from ancient history. The wine tasted rich.
We were late getting to The Roebuck and Dave was well into his set. This time the guitar was already with him. He smiled as we walked across the floor and kicked into his version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. It was busier tonight: the regulars in ones and twos, some new couples and a group of girls in the corner of the lounge. I could see them from the other side of the bar. So could Cal if he peered round the beer pumps or stood on the support of the bar stool.