Flying Saucer Rock & Roll

by Richard Blandford

  So that was the summer. A smaller golden age within the larger. Sunny days on the grass, sitting on denim jackets, kissing with tongues. Beautiful. I didn’t want it to end. But of course, with the autumn term and the return of Neil into my life it did end. Little did I know that another golden age in miniature was just around the corner.

  12

  Here’s a little loose memory I found from that summer. A tiny thread, and not a knot in it. This one’s even in colour.

  I’m lying on the grass by the sports centre, and I can see the basketball court and the mini-golf course and the little amusement place where they have the tiny go-karts for kids and the swingboats. It’s a really beautiful summer’s day, the sky’s a deep blue, the grass is the greenest green, and there’s one of the gang, Alex, and a girl called … I forget. Anyway, Alex has a rugby ball, and he throws it to me, and then we pass it to each other, the way you do in rugby, always throwing behind you, so one of us throws it, then the other catches it and has to run ahead before he can throw it back. We’re doing that, and then the ground begins to slope down, and we end up going faster, until we’re going really fast, and then Alex doesn’t catch it, and the ball rolls off down the slope. At the bottom of the slope is this path, and the ball goes on the path, right in front of this cyclist, who nearly hits it and has to swerve to avoid it, but then he skids and falls off his bike. He’s OK, but he’s probably grazed himself pretty badly. And he’s saying ‘fuck’ over and over again, and he looks up, really pissed off, and we’re thinking we’d better say sorry, but he’s just some weedy guy wearing bloody cycling shorts, and a helmet, and nobody wore cycling helmets in those days, and he sees that we’re metallers and that Alex has a leather jacket, which he wore even when it was fucking hot and he was running about. And this guy just gets on his bike and cycles off, wobbling from side to side like he’s bricking it. He must have thought we were going to do him over or something.

  So then me and Alex go back up the slope, just laughing at this bloke, and then that girl whose name I can’t remember, she’s sitting on her denim jacket in the shade under a tree, wearing a Def Leppard T-shirt, I think, red hair, well developed, very well developed actually, pretty, freckles, and she calls out to me to rugby-tackle Alex for dropping the ball and I do, and we both roll down the slope, and we do that loads of times and then … and then … that’s where it ends.

  13

  Three weeks into the new term and we still hadn’t found anywhere to practise. It was frustrating, no one’s parents would have us round their house, and we were all too young to afford a proper rehearsal space. When I say we, I mean the band as was, not Neil. Because even though Neil was now technically in the band, I was still doing my best not to speak to him. I was delaying the inevitable, obviously, but I just wanted to enjoy those few extra weeks of not being associated with him. I’d worked hard to maintain my playground cred, even to the extent of being allowed on Thomas’s grass verge, but a hell of a lot of that would disappear as soon as I was spotted in Neil’s company again, I was sure.

  Not that it stopped Neil trying to talk to me. Every so often he’d spot me across the playground or in the corridor and sprint over before I’d had a chance to find a reason for turning the opposite way, and once he’d cornered me, he’d always say the same thing. ‘Chris, do you know when we’re practising yet?’

  And I’d say, ‘No, not really. I’ll give you a ring when we know, yeah?’

  ‘OK,’ he’d say, his goofy grin no doubt hiding his disappointment.

  Except finally he didn’t do that. Instead, he asked, ‘Is there a problem? You haven’t practised for weeks.’

  ‘Oh, nothing, really,’ I said. ‘We’re still looking for a new place to practise in. But we’ll probably have somewhere very soon, so we’ll ring you then.’

  Then he said, and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to us before, but he said, ‘Why don’t we practise round my house?’

  Yeah, why not? I thought to myself. His mum wouldn’t mind, because she was mad, and neither would his dad, because he didn’t live there. No one knew where or who he was, probably not even his mum. It was a perfect set-up.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we probably won’t have to, but I’ll put it to the guys, and if our other leads fall through, which they probably won’t, then I’ll get back to you about that, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, before realising his company was no longer welcomed, and scarpering.

  So that Saturday, two o’clock, me and Ben were in Neil’s front room, with Neil, sitting in ancient armchairs that were falling apart, awkwardly quiet, waiting for Thomas and Jase. Oh Christ, that house. That house smelt. It was because they had that big stupid dog, I expect, that St Bernard, which mercifully his mum took for a walk when we practised. It just stank the place out – the smell of wet blankets and dog food everywhere. Disgusting. And you’d always feel what were probably fleas. Not only that, but all the furniture was literally falling apart; the chairs and the sofa were torn, with stuffing coming out, and you could feel the springs in some of them. I mean, it was dirty. Or was it? It felt dirty, that was the thing. I don’t have an actual memory of there being dirt as such, and at that age why would I care? But it felt dirty. You felt like being sick when you went there. Besides the crumbling furniture, it was decorated with stuff from the seventies that everybody else’s family had thrown out years ago. Lurid wallpaper, horrible paintings of sunsets over mountains in Switzerland. Just crap she’d brought back from holiday years ago. There were so many clashing colours in that place it looked radioactive. I’d never liked going round there when we were growing up, and I don’t think Neil could have liked it that much, seeing as he was always trying to spend so much time round mine. But you never heard him complaining. He never said anything bad about it or his mum. Not outright.

  God, his mum. Absolutely fucking hatstand. I mean totally barking. She had the loudest voice in the world, and she laughed a deep booming mad laugh. ‘Har, har, har, har,’ it went. Uncombed corkscrew hair, and wonky teeth. She worked as a dinner lady at the primary school we’d gone to. And she’d always say totally mad things, like she’d say out of the blue that she always thought I looked a bit Chinese, but then she looked at me again and decided I didn’t look Chinese after all, more Spanish. And seeing as I’m quite fair-haired and light-skinned, they’re both pretty fucking bizarre conclusions to come to. Or if it was raining and you didn’t have a hood, she’d offer you a plastic bag to put on your head. Nobody took one, not ever. And she always bought Neil’s clothes from charity shops. Once, someone’s mum gave their jeans away to Oxfam and Neil turned up wearing them on non-uniform day.

  Yeah, she was a fucking nightmare. No wonder Neil ended up such an outcast. But Neil didn’t seem to mind, he always acted as if he really loved her, far more than a teenage boy should be seen loving his mum. Embarrassingly so, in fact. At least it was like that most of the time, but every so often, very rarely, she’d be being her usual weirdo self, and Neil would say something back that, if you took it a certain way, could be making fun of her. Or she’d make a stupid point and he’d say, ‘Mum, if you went on Mastermind, the chair would win.’ It would throw you. She didn’t appear to notice, but, I don’t know, it seemed to signal, to me, anyway, that Neil’s away-with-the-fairies routine was covering some stuff up, a bit.

  So there we all were, in Neil’s front room. It hadn’t got off to a great start. As soon as he’d walked in, lugging his amp, Thomas had taken a big sniff and exclaimed, ‘Jesus! What’s that smell?’ Neil didn’t answer. He didn’t look bothered, though. Not even when Ben mumbled, ‘Yeah, fucking stinks in here,’ from his armchair.

  Me and Ben had got there first, followed by Thomas about a quarter of an hour later. Neither Ben nor Thomas granted Neil a ‘hello’ or any other form of communication except vaguely hostile body language, leaving it to me to fill the awkward silence while we waited for Jase to turn up. Every so often, Neil would get excited about some band
or other we’d never heard of, and he’d just be met with silence or an ‘Oh, right’ from me. Not that it dissuaded him from having another go a few minutes later with a different band we were bound not to know about.

  But then Jase arrived. ‘Hi there!’ he said to Neil as he opened the door for him. ‘I’m Jason. I’d shake your hand but I’m carrying all these drums.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Neil, obviously a bit surprised. I doubt anyone had acted pleased to see him in months. ‘We’re through here.’

  Jase followed him into the front room, and set his drums down where we’d left a space for him. His dad appeared out of nowhere, with his beard, trainers and tracksuit bottoms, carrying the cymbals and a drum stool. ‘All right, lads,’ he said. He made a face in our direction, fortunately away from Neil, that was obviously meant to say, ‘What is that smell?’

  Jase and his dad went in and out a few times fetching stuff from the car before his dad left, agreeing to pick Jase up at four. Neil waited patiently at the mike that Ben’s brother had lent us. We’d plugged it into my practice guitar amp because it was the only thing we had to put it through, seeing as we couldn’t afford a PA on our pocket money and paper-round wages. It distorted the mike input like fuck, and wasn’t that loud. Neil would have to do some serious bloody screaming to be heard over the rest of us.

  So Jase was setting up his drumkit, and he was talking to Neil. ‘Really liked what you did at the talent show,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ said Neil. The only other person who’d said they’d liked it, out of an audience of one thousand two hundred, was Miss Millachip, the lesbian art teacher.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jase, ‘totally fucking mental. Great stuff.’ Thomas threw daggers at him from across the room out of his jam—jars.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Neil, quietly.

  Jason finished setting up and started beating the shit out of his drums. Immediately Thomas shouted at him to shut up, and after a few minutes of standing by his head, miming hitting a punching bag, he succeeded.

  ‘Right,’ said Thomas, ‘what shall we do, then?’

  ‘“Johnny B. Goode”?’ suggested Ben.

  ‘Nah, let’s do “Soul in Torment”,’ said Jase.

  ‘OK, if we must,’ said Thomas.

  Jase handed Neil a sheaf of lyrics. ‘It’s this one here,’ he said.

  ‘This is the verse, and this is the chorus. There’s a bit of an intro, but watch me, yeah, and I’ll nod when it’s time for you to come in.’

  ‘Um, what’s the tune?’ asked Neil.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t really have one,’ said Jase. We all knew he did write tunes secretly and sing them to himself in his bedroom. But the only way he was going to preserve them was by singing in front of us, and as he wasn’t about to do that, they were doomed to be lost for ever. ‘You can make up your own.’

  ‘Right,’ said Thomas. ‘I’ll count us in, shall I? One, two, three, four.’

  We started playing the dirge-like and frankly overlong intro. It seemed to last even longer than normal, as we all waited apprehensively to hear what Neil was going to do, that is, if we could hear him through the tiny amp. Jase nodded.

  And the most out-of-tune, out-of-time honk of a vocal you could ever imagine cut through everything, loud and unfortunately clear. God, it was dreadful. I mean, really, really bad. It just didn’t seem to bear any relation to what the rest of us were playing at all. Ben shot me a despairing glance. We got through verse one, the chorus and the second verse, and it wasn’t sounding any better. I was dreading finishing because, looking at Thomas’s face, I could tell he wasn’t impressed. In fact, he was seething. By that point, I knew that Depper seethe only too well.

  Then, on the second chorus, Neil started doing something different. Not that he sang in tune, precisely, or even in time, but he started doing something with the words that meant that it didn’t really matter. It was as if he was hiccupping, almost. Like he’d go, ‘Soul in,’ and do it low, then up high for ‘tor’, and then down again for ‘ment’. And then he’d start doing it really fast: ‘Soul in TORment! Soul in TORment! Soul in TORment!’ Then he’d just go, ‘TorMENT! TorMENT! TorMENT!’ And then, ‘TorMENT-MENT-MENT-MENT!’ Followed by, ‘F-F-F-flowing through me like elec-lec-lec-lectrical c-current.’ And back to ‘Soul in TORment! TORment! TOR-TOR-TORment!’ It was all very strange. I didn’t like it very much.

  We took that as a good place to end the song. There was a moment of quiet, filled only with the buzzing of the amps and the last resonations of the high-hat. Neil blew his nose. We all looked at each other. Then we looked at Thomas. We needed to know what he thought before any of us would ever dare to venture our own opinion. At least I felt like that. ‘What?’ he said, aware he was being stared at. Neil carried on blowing his nose, a sound not unlike his singing, to my mind.

  ‘Well,’ said Jase, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Thomas, turning to Neil. ‘Well, you started out shit, but towards the end, that was … OK actually.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Neil, from his tissue.

  ‘Well, I thought it was absolutely excellent,’ said Jase. ‘Bloody brilliant, in fact.’

  ‘And thank you,’ said Neil.

  So what did I say? Well, I said the thing that seemed most sensible at that moment. ‘Yeah, I … liked it too,’ I said. ‘What did you think, Ben?’

  He shrugged. ‘S’all right,’ he mumbled, pretending to be looking at some tourist trinket on the wall.

  ‘What shall we do next?’ said Jase.

  ‘“Johnny B. Goode”,’ murmured Ben from his armchair.

  ‘OK,’ said Jase, with enthusiasm, as Neil hastily leafed through the paper for the words. ‘Let’s go. One, two, three, four.’

  Ben played the riff. He hadn’t even got to the end before Neil made his entrance. ‘WAY down! WAY down! WAY down! In the WOODS! WOODS! WOODS …’

  14

  It was after the practice. Ben’s dad had picked us up in his taxi and we were back at his house, up in his bedroom listening to AC/DC.

  ‘How’d you think it went?’ I asked him.

  ‘Fucking shit,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘He can’t sing for shit,’ said Ben.

  ‘Too fucking right.’

  ‘I mean, listen to this, right, this is fucking proper singing right here. Bon Scott doing “Highway to Hell”.’ And then, with his guard down, Ben ripped into the most uncanny Bon Scott impersonation. It was the first time I’d heard him sing. He’d obviously been practising in his bedroom too. Startled, it didn’t occur to me that it might actually be significant, other than fleetingly suggesting to me that Ben might be slightly gay, or offer any alternative to the problem of Neil. ‘“I’m on the hiiiighwaay to Helllll!”’ sang Ben. ‘And not the “HighWAY! HighWAY! HighWAY!”’

  We both cracked up laughing at Ben’s wicked impression of Neil. Soon we were both going ‘HighWAY! HighWAY! To HE-e-e-e-E-ell!’ We were in hysterics for ages.

  And then Ben said, ‘Why’d you say you liked it when you fucking didn’t? We’re fucking stuck with him now.’

  ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I didn’t exactly hear you giving your opinion.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t say I liked it, did I?’ said Ben, grumpy now. ‘I just didn’t say I fucking didn’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fucking fat lot of fucking good.’

  ‘Yeah, well, at least I didn’t fucking lie and say I liked it, did I?’

  ‘No, I guess not,’ I said. ‘Look, I just didn’t want to piss off Thomas right now.’

  ‘S’pose.’ That was Ben’s new word. He’d say it to practically everything. ‘Do you want a can of Lilt, Ben?’ ‘S’pose.’ ‘Ben, do you fancy that girl you were talking to just now, the one with the gorgeous tits?’ ‘S’pose.’ ‘Do you want to join Motörhead, Ben? There’s a vacancy going for lead guitarist.’ ‘S’pose.’ Soon Thomas was saying it all the time too just to take the piss, then he forgot that he was m
eant to be taking the piss, and he just ended up saying it to everything too.

  As for my lying about Neil, I didn’t need to explain it to Ben because I knew that he understood. As long as the band was safe, then we both had our place on the grass verge. But more important, now that the summer was over, was the youth club. This was the new hanging-out place for Thomas and his gang. And it was working out very well for us, in regard to girls and stuff. The club was in some church hall in Quireley, the other side from the Fields and the sports centre. Baptist or Pentecostal or something, not C of E. It’s not there any more, got burnt down a couple of years ago. No one knows why. So this youth club was on Friday nights, and it was run by a bunch of young God-botherers, but it wasn’t religious in nature – I mean, they didn’t make you pray or anything. I think the idea was to keep us off the streets on a Friday night so we didn’t wreck bus shelters or smoke crack or whatever. Really, all we did, or were meant to do, was play badminton or kick a sponge ball about. But that’s not what we were all there for. We were there to meet girls.

  We weren’t the only ones. There was a bunch of Quireley spazzers there trying to get some action too. Obviously they didn’t get any because they were spazzers, or mongers I should say, because round about that time, probably during the summer, at the sports centre or the Fields, Ben’s phrase had caught on, and we all used it – well, all the boys anyway. Some of the girls thought it was cruel and nasty, and didn’t like it when we said it, either ‘spaz’ or ‘monger’. If girls wanted to label someone like that, they’d just say they were ‘sad’, which was crueller in a way. But the fact that the girls didn’t like it couldn’t stop us saying it among ourselves. It was addictive. You just had to say it, you were compelled to. Monger.

  So there were some mongers there, hiding in corners and every so often nervously shuffling up and trying to start a conversation with us, only to be told to fuck off. Or they’d hit on a girl and just get slapped down, and we’d all have a good laugh. But not only were there mongers, but would you believe, the Horned Gods. They’d always stand at the opposite end of the hall to us, in the leather jackets their rich dads had bought them. It was like two magnetic poles, us and them, with girls and mongers being pulled one way or the other. The mongers would get pushed away again, but the girls we’d try and keep hold of, as long as they weren’t plain or ugly, or at least as long as Thomas didn’t think they were. Then we just left them for the Horned Gods or the mongers.