by Willow Sears
Sometimes, when she is in full flight, I want to gather her up and spirit her away. You see, when she is all alone with you, just tranquil and relaxed, that is when she is really beautiful. I try to always see this side of her, whatever antics she is up to. That time I took photos of her on her knees, sucking the stiff cocks of the All Star’s bassist and lead singer, alternating between them, it wasn’t her mouth that had my heart going and my thighs squeezing together. It wasn’t those fingers with their painted nails, lightly resting on bare hairy thighs and still gripping a just-lit cigarette. It was her eyes, closed but not tightly, just like they are when she is asleep. She looked angelic – until, obviously, you got down to the mouth. She looked serene and I think that is all I have wanted for her: some peace and gentle happiness away from the crescendo. I am beginning to fear that she can’t possibly outlast all of this to find some.
Chapter Four
Meet the Band
Underneath all that hair there may be a musical genius trying to get out. It is lank about the shoulders, the fringe constantly down over the eyes. Have I ever seen his eyes? I have, of course. They are brown and slightly intense, bright but a bit cagey. The head seems ever shyly bowed, either when sitting like this or when on stage, strumming away at his instrument. He might play with a wide-legged stance but he is still the most reluctant guitar hero I can imagine. The lights may be on him and those fingers may be dancing on the strings but he always seems to wish his head elsewhere, away from the spotlight. Because of his demeanour he melts into the background. There are so many others here demanding one’s attention.
If he has tats they are not in places I can see them. He is tall and a little wiry, perhaps a tad ungainly. His daily garb consists of dark T’s and jeans, nothing more ostentatious. For a rocker he is something of a wallflower. He is possibly the only one on this tour who might not feature in my idle-hours bus game of Who Has Had More Sex than Me? Any sex he has seems to be done quietly, slipped into without the fanfares his bandmates certainly like to share with everybody. He is Benno Shay, lead guitarist of Death in Venus, and without him none of us would be here.
They wanted him to be called Ben Blade, or even Ben Blaydz. He stood his ground, both because any such name is ridiculous and because he thought it might encourage deranged fans to demonstrate their love of sharpened edges upon his person. I call him by as many humorous variants of the name Benjamin or Benji I can think of, although in truth he wasn’t actually christened with the long form of the name, being simply Ben O’Shea. The fact that he has ended up with anything like a stage name is not his doing at all, it instead being down to how it appeared under a picture in a local paper after one of their first gigs, the journalist hearing it said and recording it phonetically.
I don’t talk to him much. Any conversations are stilted and he seems to go all flushed and stammer-y. It can be like trying to getting blood out of a stone and I haven’t much patience for that. Shame, really, as he seems like the only one round here resembling a normal human being – other than me, obviously. He is mid-twenties and there are some signs that his complexion might once not have been too clever, but he also has these sharp cheek-bones and a long face, narrowing to a small chin which makes him look almost like a cartoon figure and gives him character. Interesting he no doubt is, possibly even handsome at a real push, but it is all hidden under those terrible locks. He would look much better if he had it all cut short, and his hair seems to know this.
“Benjamint,” I say, watching his cheeks start to colour just from me looking his way, “I think you should get your hair cut short. I think you should do it right now.”
“The fuck?” intercedes Russell, sat opposite. “We are a heavy metal band, not some gay church choir.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to go walking around looking like a bunch of untended crotches,” I retort.
Russell mutters some bizarre threat about short hair equalling an instant end to any band he was in. He looks at Vinny sat next to him with that familiar screwed up, what a stupid bitch face. These two are the Beavis and Butthead of my current world. In the Middle Ages they would have been burned as twatting idiots. The first time I encountered Vinny he was there goofing around at rehearsals, making a bad noise on his bass guitar.
“That’s a twangy sound,” I said, when Sindee introduced us, not knowing what else to say. He was clearly a little put out by this.
“It’s a Fender, man!” he said, although I didn’t know what relevance he was trying to convey with this.
“Did you steal it off a car?” I said. I thought this was quite funny under the circumstances but he looked at me with a face like he had just eaten his own arse, so I decided there and then not to bother making too much more conversation with him any time soon. I was right to do so. His given name is Vincent Samuel Waller but he felt the uncontrollable urge to change it by deed poll to Vinny Fat Swallah. I looked blankly at him whilst I was informed of this. I had heard of ‘Fats’ Waller but this man before me was merely a bit chunky rather than overweight, not black, and very unlikely to be asked to join any jazz bands – not with the way he played.
It took him a while to explain so I will paraphrase: the moniker is meant to suggest that his sexual organs are more than a mouthful for any females looking to orally pleasure him; ‘Swallah’ as in ‘swallow’. As well as being a tedious contrivance it isn’t actually particularly truthful, but for him the more girls there are out there who can contradict the boast first-hand, the better. I see him as a bit of an uncouth oaf, so he is the perfect rhythm section partner for Russell – who, despite the stupidity, the dreadful hair and clothes and tattoos along with the slight chubbiness and slight manhood of his best friend, still sticks charitably to calling him either ‘Vin’ or ‘Vinny’. If ever I am required to do so, I tend to refer to him as ‘Fat Twat.’
Sindee and Ben make up the rest of the band and for a four-piece they make a big noise, mainly down to Ben’s playing expertise and his complex pedal-board. Don’t worry – I don’t know what any of this technical stuff means either. It seems inconceivable that this is not Ben’s band, him being the only one with anything like a musical gift, but that is one of the many foibles of the industry. Russell and Vinny started it, despite their dubious song-writing skills. Ben auditioned using a few of his own songs and they quickly realised they were much better than anything they could do and quickly got him on board.
They did, in fact, kindly allow him to write all their songs for them, although they drew the line at having him name the band, bastardizing his Death in Venice suggestion because they thought they knew best. He was astute to know that, good songs or not, they weren’t going anywhere without a killer vocalist. He, being into music generally, had gone out to see the other bands in the area, rather than just lounging on a couch watching the Kerrang! channel and drinking beer all day. He was also shrewd enough to seek out Sindee without his bandmates in tow. When he played her a couple of his songs she knew his material was way better than anything her goth revival group had. Without Sindee there would be no Thunderhed support slot, but without Ben there would be no band at all.
It is just us in the hotel. We all gigged nearby last night and should in theory have had a couple of day’s rest before the next show but our manager spotted an opportunity and got us a guest slot tonight, supporting a local thrash metal outfit who have a good following. Apparently any chance of swelling our fan-base should outweigh the need for rest, so we have been left behind. Incidentally, for ‘manager’, don’t think sharp suits, sharp wits and a loving fatherly attitude towards his charges. Think grubby jeans, hideous shirts and a barely disguised urge to double-cross even his own grandma at every opportunity. He has had to hire us a clapped-out shitmobile van to reunite us and our gear with the rest of our party tomorrow. And I thought this tour was going to be wall to wall glamour.
Sometimes you have to pinch yourself that you are on this ride at all, watching adrenaline-raging, soul-billowing shows from
the sidelines, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, attending the incredible parties at incredible venues, having everything on a plate and yet not having to pay for any of it. Other times you could punch yourself in the face for signing up to the mind-numbing tedium, the crassness, the immaturity and constant conflict. Any given day can see you scooped from the pits of despair and lifted to the highest high – and I don’t even touch drugs. Imagine what it’s like for those in the majority here who do.
On the face of it there doesn’t seem to be a downside. The tour has the feel of an eternal, fun-packed spree of freedom and excess, like your first holiday abroad with your friends rather than your family, but magnified a hundred-fold. You get to travel all around and be taken to countries you never thought you would go to. You work mainly at night so the days are your own. You get everything laid on for you and are catered for by excellent chefs. Everything is there on a plate, and I mean everything. There are weary-faced managers to iron out all the problems and you feel untouchable.
You get to watch all the shows and hear ten, thirty, fifty thousand fans singing and going mad for the songs you begin to think of as your own. You get to go to festivals and watch days of brilliant bands and then chat to them backstage without feeling like a star-struck fool. You get to be a part of it, to belong to it. When I’m introduced they say “she’s with the band”, and that is the only explanation required. The tour brings everything with it, like a travelling circus, and each member is part of the extended family. My necessity on this tour is absolutely nil, yet I could sit down with a member of one of the biggest heavy metal outfits in the world – and maybe with his Hollywood star friend who has come along to see the show – and chat with them as if the part I played was as intrinsic as the keyboardist’s, the lighting rigger’s, the chief roadie’s. Don’t get me started on name-dropping, because you will spontaneously combust before I’m even half way through my list.
Then there are the fabled sexual excesses which, along with the excitement of the gigs, make the whole thing so endlessly compelling. The World of Rock can often seem much like the World of Porn, only with better music. Touring with a rock band is like living within a never-ending skin flick. Everywhere are episodes trying to be more shocking or depraved than the last. Just in the last couple of weeks I’ve seen a singer walk five naked girls through a hotel foyer and up to his room. I’ve seen two bandmates ‘spit-roast’ a groupie whilst eating slices of pizza off her back. I’ve seen a heated debate on a tour bus about which Motörhead album was the best, whilst directly opposite the protagonists an open-legged girl was loudly masturbating with the aid of a beer bottle. They never even looked at her.
Just the other week, in a swish kitchen during a house party in some record producer’s mansion, I had a mad ten-minute argument with a bespectacled, pig-tailed Danish girl (we weren’t in Denmark) who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. This was due to me not giving her the phone number of a certain bassist who I had in fact never met, and wasn’t even on our tour. She just expected me to know it. From being aggressive she then switched tack, promising me I could commit any kind of kink upon her person that I fancied in return. She listed some quite incredible ideas. Such things must be saved for the Fuck Journal I’m never going to compile but think of the most truly crude act that you can and it was on her list, and worse. When she finally stormed off I saw that her short skirt was all rucked up and she had a false fox tail hanging from her otherwise bare behind, clearly attached to the dildo housed inside her. I saw her again later, having what looked like trifle spooned inside her before being tag-teamed by two of our roadies.
All of this can make your head whir. It can make you feel dirty and soulless but when it isn’t happening you yearn for it. However, you pretty quickly learn that your whole existence is tied to the tour. If a traveller to England asked me for tips on wonderful places to visit I wouldn’t immediately pick Milton Keynes, but that is where the Bowl is and so that is where we are to end up. Plus, the tour is tied to a schedule, so if you do happen to be in a nice place and want a look around, but you need to be at the next place and it takes nine hours to get there, then immediately off on the tour bus you jolly well go. The schedule can sometimes make this easy, touring in a sensible order, but too often, especially now the festival season is upon us, it can have us darting back and forth – in Norway one day, then over to Germany for the weekend festival, then back to somewhere else in Scandinavia, then back to Germany for another festival.
You travel around so much it becomes a blur, and you can be too tired to care where you are. Your visit to a country might consist of one hotel and one venue, or maybe just the venue and the tour bus out of there. Cas Casanove has a runner whose job consists entirely of providing him with Jack Daniel’s and Coke of both varieties during shows, and sticking a big piece of paper to the stage to tell the singer which town or city he is currently in, and indeed in which country that is. Shouting “Let’s tear this fucker up, Kraków!” does not go down well when you are actually in Katowice.
Then there is the boredom. It can be great fun just sitting and shooting the breeze but emotions are easily strained. A misconception of mine before all this was that bands were made up of great buddies who went way back and loved everything about each other. Some might be but others are simply professional musicians and the band is their work. They might have nothing more in common than two random office workers but they end up living in each other’s pockets for weeks on end. I can’t imagine Ben wanting to spend a single second in the company of Russell or Fatso Vinny outside of work but here he has to do a whole tour of Europe with them, having to hear their tireless drivel day on day.
I play a bit of backgammon with Ben when I’m not trailing after Sindee with camera at the ready but hobbies aren’t particularly conducive to a life on the road – unless, like Sindee, your hobby is sex. Why do I find it unable to indulge myself as she does? I mean, I’m sat here incredulously listening to Russell regaling Vinny with the tale of the time he was “poking the shit out of that half-deaf emo bitch whilst sexting the red-headed chick” who had blown him the night before. I’m doing nothing and these two clueless imbeciles are discussing incredible adventures of the flesh. I’m bored and I’m way too delightful for that.
I’m sat silently next to Ben, doing nothing. Should I not be creeping my hand over his be-jeaned crotch, using his shyness to my advantage, leading him off to my room? I have already established that apart from being essentially a mute, is not bad looking. Is that not enough? Would it be enough for Sindee, who judges everyone purely on how much pleasure they might be able to give her? I just can’t be like that. It has to mean more. It cannot be throw-away. You have to come away with something that you want to keep precious down the years.
I don’t know where I get this idea that each person you share your bed with must have some kind of emotional value. It is certainly not a very modern approach. I’m quite sure that the idea of not putting yourself about on moral grounds was a clever ruse invented by men to keep the females they lusted after chaste whilst they themselves went on shagging crusades across the world, so today’s women should perhaps be doing everything they can to pay them back for that. Sindee seems certain to die smiling from her sexual conquests and maybe that is all life is about. However, giving yourself cannot be a casual thing, surely? It means sharing your most intimate secrets, which are bound to get spilled in one way or another.
Maybe you could do this a couple of times, a few times, if you know for sure you won’t ever meet that person again. But those secrets are part of your worth and therefore precious. They should be hard-earned and never frittered. They need to be shared with people who value them. You should never be able to walk past or sit in a room ignoring someone who knows all the perfections and imperfections of your body, your foibles, how you taste. There might be room for maybe a few spontaneous episodes, especially in far-flung places you will never visit again but I do wonder how much you can water i
t down before none of it means anything anymore. Maybe my touring companions are all correct. Maybe I have turned frigid. What a waste that would be!
Chapter Five
Showtime
Sindee is happy because she’s met the band we are supporting tonight and they are all over her. Like so many Eastern European guys they are big and muscular, as if they had been doing hard labour since they hit their teens. They are all clad in loose leather dungarees, bare beneath so that we got to see all the smooth skin and hard muscle, the solid biceps and rippling pecs. I have a feeling my camera is going to be called into action later.
They looked almost menacing stood around her, as do the crowd as I sneak a peek with ten minutes to go before show-time. However, one thing you quickly learn about the world of heavy metal is that, wherever you are, all those involved are a universally great bunch of people. They might all look like axe murderers but there is such a bond, such a feeling of togetherness – perhaps because they see themselves as outcasts together. The atmosphere is always charged but amiable. They live for this music. They support it and anyone else who shares their love. We might be in unfamiliar territory and without the safety of the other bands around us but I never have a moment’s doubt that this crowd won’t get behind us. Those guys out there rock!
The nerves become almost sickening and I’m not even the one about to perform. It’s not like doing a school play, where the audience sit benignly, giving the odd laugh or gasp amidst the stifled coughs, yawns and belches. Here the crowds are alive. The energy comes off them in waves. They jump, they thrash, they sing, they surge, they cheer. The music is all through you. It races faster than your heart can beat. When they scream at your solo or sing your chorus you could fucking die and not be happier. It is like tearing along on the crest of a hundred-foot wave.