A sign says Brighton is only ten miles away.
‘I hope nobody burned that LP,’ remarks Griff.
‘I’ll show it to you when you’re next over,’ says Jasper.
‘Did you get your model Spitfire back?’ asks Elf.
There’s a pause. ‘I don’t remember.’
The Beast pulls into the Students’ Union car park, where Levon is leaning against his 1960 Ford Zephyr. Dean steers the Beast into the adjacent space and kills the engine. There’s no sign of Shanks’s van. We’re still early. The silence is sweet, as is the air as they climb out. Dean stretches. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ escapes from a nearby window. The moon is a chipped cue ball. The Beast is attracting attention: one passing joker calls, ‘Oy, pal, where’s Batman?’
Levon, too, assesses the band’s new purchase with interest. ‘Well, it’s definitely not a joy-rider’s magnet.’
‘She’s a sturdy workhorse, is the Beast,’ states Griff. ‘And, thanks to my uncle, it’s a fookin’ bargain.’
Levon scratches his ear. ‘How does she handle?’
‘Like a tank,’ says Dean, ‘’cept on corners, when she handles like a coffin. Won’t go above fifty, either.’
‘We bought her for lugging gear,’ says Griff, ‘not for setting land-speed records. When did you get here, Levon?’
‘Early enough to collect our cheque from the Students’ Union. Once bitten by the we’ll-post-it-on-Monday line, twice shy.’
A gum-chewing girl passes Dean and eyes him up as if she’s the guy and he’s the girl. Yes, he thinks. I’m in a band.
‘Well,’ says Levon, ‘this lot won’t lug itself up the stairs.’
‘Give our roadies the evening off, did you?’ asks Griff.
‘If you get a gold disc,’ says Levon, ‘we’ll talk roadies.’
‘If you get us signed,’ growls Griff, ‘we’ll talk gold discs.’
‘Play a hundred scorching shows,’ replies Levon, ‘and recruit a legion of fans, you’ll get signed. Until then, we all lug the gear. Three journeys’ll do it. One of us stands guard. If you never trust anyone older than five and younger than a hundred not to steal your gear, you might just hang on to it. What is it, Jasper?’
‘Us.’ Jasper’s pointing at a noticeboard.
Dean’s eyes skip over posters for ‘ANTI-VIETNAM WAR SIT-IN’; ‘BAN THE BOMB’, ‘JOIN CND TODAY!’ and ‘WHY NOT TRY BELL-RINGING?’ before finding his own face in a 2x2 grid of the band’s portraits, taken by Mecca. The reproductions have come out cleanly. ‘UTOPIA AVENUE’ is printed in a fairground font with an empty rectangle below for location, time and price, if applicable.
‘Welcome to the big time, boys and girl,’ says Griff.
‘It came out pretty nicely,’ declares Elf.
‘It looks like a Wanted poster,’ says Dean.
‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ asks Jasper.
‘It’s the rock ’n’ roll outlaw thing,’ says Elf.
‘Less “outlaw”,’ Griff scrutinises Elf’s portrait, ‘more “Employee of the Month”. No offence.’
‘None taken. Less “outlaw”,’ Elf studies Griff’s portrait, ‘more “Third in the King Charles Spaniel in a wig contest”. No offence.’
The venue is a long thin hall, like a bowling alley, with a bar up near the door and a low stage at the far end. Windows run down one side with evening views of a treeless campus. To Dean, the whole place looks like it’s made of Lego. The decorator was keen on glossy sewage brown. If full, the venue would hold three or four hundred. Tonight, Dean guesses, there are fifty. Ten more are gathered around the bar-football table. ‘I hope nobody gets hurt in the crush when we start.’
‘We’re not on till nine,’ says Elf. ‘Plenty of time for a cast of thousands to walk on. Any sign of the Gravesend mob?’
‘Obviously not.’ Stupid question.
‘Excuse me for existing.’
Two students approach from the bar. He has a musketeer’s beard, a mauve satin shirt. She has a black bob, big mascaraed eyes and a zigzag sleeveless one-piece that barely reaches her thighs. I wouldn’t say no, thinks Dean, but she’s staring at Elf as the musketeer speaks first. ‘I’m Gaz and my powers of deduction tell me you’re Utopia Cul-de-Sac.’
‘Avenue.’ Dean rests his amp on the ground.
‘Just my little jest,’ says Gaz. Dean thinks, He’s stoned.
‘I’m Levon, the manager. I’ve been dealing with Tiger.’
‘Ah, well, Tiger’s otherwise engaged. He asked me to stand in and guide you to the stage. It’s’ – he points – ‘there.’
‘I’m Jude,’ says the girl. She’s not stoned and speaks with a West Country twang. ‘Elf, I adore “Oak, Ash And Thorn”.’
‘Thanks,’ says Elf. ‘Though the music we’re playing tonight’ll be a little … wilder than my solo work.’
‘Wild’s good. When Tiger told me you were in the band, I said, “Elf Holloway? Book them now.”’
‘She did.’ Gaz puts a proprietary hand on Jude’s rear.
Dean thinks, A pity. ‘Better do the sound-check.’
‘Just play loud,’ says Gaz. ‘It’s not the Albert Hall.’
‘Could I ask …’ Elf peers at the stage ‘… where’s the piano?’
Gaz’s eyebrows fuse when he frowns. ‘Piano?’
‘The piano Tiger promised to have ready onstage and tuned for the show tonight,’ says Levon. ‘Twice.’
Gaz whistles softly. ‘Tiger promises a lot of things.’
‘We absolutely need a piano,’ says Elf.
‘Bands bring their own instruments,’ adds Gaz.
‘Not a piano they don’t,’ says Griff. ‘Not unless they turn up in a fookin’ removal van.’
‘I don’t care if Tiger’s otherwise engaged or not,’ says Levon. ‘He’s paid to do the logistics. Just get him here.’
‘Tiger’s undergone a metamorphosis,’ explains Gaz. ‘His Third Eye’s opened. Here.’ Gaz touches his brow. ‘He set out last Tuesday and no one’s seen him since. On the cosmic scale—’
‘Look, Gaz,’ says Levon, ‘I don’t give a shit about the cosmic scale. We’re on the we-need-a-piano-now scale. Get us a piano.’
‘Man, your aggro is bumming me out. I’m not your skivvy. Wrong attitude. I’m doing Tiger a favour just by being here. I’m not the ents officer. Bugger this, man.’ He glances at Jude, who looks pained, and heads for the exit.
‘Oy, Fuckface!’ Dean steps after the departing stoner. ‘Don’t—’
‘Don’t waste your energy.’ Levon grabs Dean’s arm. ‘I’m afraid it happens with student unions from time to time.’
‘You booked us this gig. Why are we even bloody here?’
‘Because student unions pay relatively well, relatively reliably, for relative nobodies. That’s why we’re here.’
‘But Elf needs a piano. How do we do our set?’
‘I knew we should’ve loaded up the Hammond,’ says Griff.
‘If yer knew that, Mr All-Knowing Wise One,’ says Dean, ‘why didn’t yer bloody say so when I said, “Shall we load up the Hammond?” and everyone was all, “No need, Levon’s checked twice and there’ll definitely be a piano”?’
Griff comes to within head-butting distance of Dean. ‘If anyone has the right to be pissed off, Mr Arseypants, it’s Elf. You’re fine. You’ve got your bass.’
‘It’s spilled milk,’ says Elf. ‘Next time, we’ll load the Hammond. Levon, what do we do now? Cancel the gig and go?’
‘Problem is, if the Students’ Union cancel the cheque, I can’t really get legal on them. If you can play for an hour, the money’s ours. Forty quid. Divided by five.’
Dean thinks about his debts and his bank book.
‘Let’s think of it as a band practice,’ says Jasper. ‘It’s not as if any press or reviewers are in the audience.’
‘But what do I play?’ Elf scratches her neck. ‘If I had a guitar, I could at least do a couple of folk numbers.’
A rowdy cheer explodes over at the bar-football.
‘Sorry to butt in,’ it’s Jude, who hasn’t gone off with Gaz, ‘but I have a guitar you could borrow. If you like.’
Elf double-checks this. ‘You brought a guitar here?’
Jude looks sheepish. ‘I was hoping you’d sign it.’
There’s still no sign of Ray, so Dean calls Shanks’s flat from a phone booth in the lobby – Ray has no phone – to see if they even left. Nobody replies. They’re late, they hit traffic, they got a flat, they forgot … could be anything. Back in the venue, night has blacked out the long glass wall. This place must bleed heat. A basic lighting rig hangs above the stage, but the lighting officer is on strike, so the bleak strip-lights stay on. ‘I’ve known morgues with better vibes than this,’ says Dean. Griff makes a few final adjustments to his kit. Off to one side, in a storeroom that smells of damp and bleach, Elf has finished tuning Jude’s loaned acoustic guitar, and is retouching her lipstick in a hand-mirror. ‘Any news of your brother?’
Dean shakes his head. ‘We may as well start.’
‘I don’t think anyone else is going to show up,’ says Jude.
‘The sooner we start,’ says Griff, ‘the sooner we’ll get home.’
‘Break a leg,’ says Levon.
‘Give me a list of legs to break and I’ll work through it,’ mutters Dean. They walk up the three steps to the stage. Sixty or seventy people stand in a loose clump nearby. A few of them clap, led by Jude. Dean walks up to the mic. The room is 90 per cent empty space. He’s suddenly nervous. He hasn’t performed live since the 2i’s show, and that was all crowd-pleasing R&B standards. Tonight’s set-list is based on their own songs: Dean’s ‘Abandon Hope’ and his Potemkin-era ‘Dirty River’; Jasper’s untested ‘Darkroom’ and an instrumental, ‘Sky Blue Lamp’; Elf’s ‘A Raft And A River’, written for piano, performed without a piano, plus ‘Polaroid Eyes’ and a few folkier numbers. ‘Okay,’ says Dean, ‘so we’re—’ The speakers howl feedback and the audience winces. That’s why yer do sound checks. Dean fiddles with the mic and shifts it forward a foot. ‘We’re Utopia Avenue. Our first song’s “Abandon Hope”.’
‘We already have done, pal!’ yells a wag at the bar.
Dean flicks an amiable V in the right direction, triggering a few gratifying ‘Wooo!’s. Dean makes eye-contact with Jasper, Elf and Griff. Griff takes a swig from his bottle of Gold Label. ‘When yer ready,’ says Dean. Griff flashes him the finger. ‘And a-one,’ says Dean, ‘and a-two, and a-one, two, three—’
Griff buries the end of a lurching ‘Abandon Hope’ under a rockfall of drums. It’s never sounded so shit at Pavel’s, thinks Dean. The half-arsed applause is more than they deserve. Dean goes over to Griff and says, ‘Yer played too fast.’
‘You played too fookin’ slow.’
Dean looks away in disgust. Elf’s strumming was pointless and her harmonies were off. Jasper’s solo failed to ignite. Instead of a three-minute firework display he offered a minute of squibs that went nowhere. Dean can’t blame anyone but himself for fluffing the lyrics in the third verse, or for the croaked, wobbled, missed notes. Until this evening, he believed ‘Abandon Hope’ was the best song he’d ever written. Was I kidding myself? He pulls Elf and Jasper into an emergency huddle, which Levon joins. ‘That was bollocks.’
Levon starts: ‘Oh, I didn’t think it was all that—’
‘If we try “Darkroom” without a piano,’ says Dean, ‘it’ll die.’
‘“House Of The Rising Sun”?’ suggests Jasper.
Dean’s unimpressed. ‘Without an organ?’
‘It’s an old American folk song,’ Elf points out. ‘It pre-dates the Animals by six decades, at least.’
Dean wonders how long he’ll be able to put up with her.
‘Are we holding you lot up?’ yells the wag at the bar.
‘What do you want to play, then?’ asks Elf.
Dean finds he doesn’t know. ‘“Rising Sun” it is, then.’
‘Once we win them over,’ says Jasper, ‘we’ll do an original.’
Dean goes over to Griff, who’s opening another bottle of Gold Label. ‘Forget the set-list, it’s “House O’ The Rising Sun”.’
‘Aye, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir.’
‘Just bloody play it.’ Jasper steps up to the mic. ‘This next song’s about a house of ill-repute in New Orleans, where—’
‘“There is … a house … in New Orleans …”’ begin the bar-football players, who haven’t stopped playing since they arrived.
‘Never heard this one before,’ calls out the bar wag.
Until now, Dean has thought of ‘The House Of The Rising Sun’ as an indestructible song, but Utopia Avenue are proving him wrong. Jasper’s vocals sound constipated, posh and twattish. Elf’s harmony is a distraction in a song about male remorse. Dean walks too far from his amp and his piece-of-shit guitar lead unplugs itself from his piece-of-shit amp. The audience laughs as he scrambles back to plug it in again. Jasper doesn’t cover for him and launches into the second verse without any bass to buoy it along. Griff plays ploddingly – a deliberate ‘fook you’, Dean suspects, for daring to tell him he was playing too fast during ‘Abandon Hope’. Nobody in the audience is dancing. Or even swaying. They just stand there, their body language saying, Well this is shit. A group breaks off and leaves. Jasper’s solo misfires again. If he was this useless at 2i’s, thinks Dean, I’d have never joined the band. The swinging doors over by the bar keep swinging. We’re clearing the place out. Dean joins the third verse, hoping Jasper will take the hint and drop away. He doesn’t. He fingerpicks the last four bars minus drums and bass, like Eric Burdon’s intro on the Animals’ version, but it just highlights how inferior the whole performance has been. Not an ounce o’ showmanship, thinks Dean. Hopeless.
On the final line, feedback jags out of the speakers. Not in a cool Jimi Hendrix way: in a bad village-fête-PA-system way. Someone shouts, ‘Heard better!’ Dean can only agree. He looks at Levon, who stands with his arms folded, watching the dwindling audience.
They convene around the drum-kit. ‘Pretty shit,’ says Griff.
‘“Pretty shit”’s too kind if yer ask me,’ says Dean.
‘What’s next?’ asks Elf. ‘“A Raft And A River” without a piano is going to sink without trace.’
‘What about an electric “Any Way The Wind Blows”?’ suggests Levon. ‘You’ve done it at Club Zed a few times.’
‘We were only pissing around,’ says Dean, who thinks Elf’s signature song needs drums like an albatross needs propellers.
‘We’ve nowt to lose at this point,’ says Griff.
‘Any Way the Wind Blows’ is the least worst so far. Griff keeps the tempo slower than on Elf’s recorded version, and Jasper ornaments each line. Dean finally clicks with Griff and they stay in lockstep. The mic barely picks up Elf’s guitar, but only twenty people are left watching. Jude is still there, clasping her hands. She smiles at him, and Dean tries to smile back. The doors at the back swing open. Six or seven guys barge in and Dean thinks, Trouble. They’re dressed more like mods than students. The barman folds his arms. A shout – ‘I said, FIVE fucking BEERS!’ – is heard over the music, and the surviving audience turn around to look. The band plays on. Dean hopes someone is calling for the cavalry, and that Brighton Polytechnic’s cavalry is more than a wheezing porter. Dean hears more shouts: ‘Yeah? If you won’t serve us, I will!’ There’s an exodus from the bar area. Even the bar-football players stop and scuttle off. The mods are helping themselves to beers. This should get the police involved, but Dean doubts they’ll be here any time soon. The band reaches the end of the song, but only Jude and a couple of others applaud. The others melt away as the mods approach the stage, holding beers. Their leader has a bullish neck, rat’s teeth and a shark’s eyes. He gestures at Elf. ‘When’s she flashin’ her udders?’
‘This isn’t that kind of show,’ says Elf.
‘Customer’s alwa
ys right, honey-pie,’ says Shark Eyes. ‘Boys?’ He and his gang link arms and perform the can-can with the jerky malice of mods on speed. They advance to within a few yards of the stage, where the can-can stops as suddenly as it began.
‘Play something, then,’ says a mod in a Union Jack jacket.
‘None of your hippie bollocks,’ warns another.
Levon steps in front of the stage. ‘Lads, we play what we play. If you don’t like the music, the door’s back there.’
Shark Eyes gurns mock astonishment. ‘A Yank? Fucksake. What are you doing here?’
‘Canadian,’ says Levon, ‘and I manage this band, so—’
‘If it looks like a faggot,’ Shark Eyes drops a glob of spit onto the floor, ‘dresses like a faggot and squeals like a faggot …’
‘You won’t like our music,’ says Jasper. ‘You may as well leave.’
‘“You may as well leave”!’ mimics Union Jack Jacket. ‘You beastly wuffians! Who are you? Little Lord Fauntleroy?’
‘OY!’ Griff stands up. ‘We’re FOOKIN’ WORKING.’
With his vest and wild barbarian hair, Griff looks crazy enough to be a threat – but not to Shark Eyes, who starts laughing: ‘A Yank, a toff, a hippie moo, and a Yorkshire Yeti! It’s like the first line of a fucking joke. What are you?’ He’s pointing at Dean. ‘The Pixie Bumboy?’
Off to one side, an arm swings and a projectile spins at Dean. He ducks, but Griff stumbles back clutching his head, falling over his drums. The cymbals clash like a punchline. Union Jack Jacket calls out, ‘One hundred and eightyyy!’ like a darts scorer.
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 10