thirty-eight

One gig I always remember particularly well was Curtis Cline at the Hammersmith Odeon. It was only me and Tony who went to the gig. None of the others - Stewy, Shaz, Stewy's brother, Colin or Barry (who'd just started playing drums with us) - were really into him.

"It's not that fucking awful country shit you listen to every Sunday morning is it?" said Stewy .

"He's not country," I said. "He's a bit of everything - blues, soul, folk. You should come along. You'd enjoy it."

"No thanks," he said. "The place'll be full of fucking cowboys."

As there were only two of us going, we decided it would be cheapest to catch the coach to London. We had thought about driving the van up the M4 and parking at Reading or Slough and catching the Paddington train from there. But the large amounts of petrol this would require and the large amounts of alcohol it would preclude, made it an unattractive option (myself and the van both being thirsty creatures).

We didn't talk much as we sat on the coach, travelling along the busy bypass up to the M4. I stared at my reflection against the darkness of distant trees and thought about Debbie, who after all of those years had fizzled out of my life. I could tell for several months that it was going to happen, lying there all those Sunday mornings alone listening to Curtis Cline. And as we thundered on towards Hammersmith, watching headlights part the darkness, the words of his sad songs pulsated through my head....

The desires that drew us together

are now tearing us apart.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy making love to you

but it's not like it was at the start.

Well your friends ain't my friends

so if we say goodbye we may never meet again

But maybe it's better to be free and alone

than shackled together by chains....

I drink ten cups of coffee each and every night.

Sit here watch TV pretend everything's all right.

Maybe we could work things out if I took back

those words I said.

But if I really cared, I guess, I'd go and find

someone less important to hurt instead...

It's amazing how quickly you can drown your sorrows in a plastic pint pot of piss weak lager whilst waiting for a gig to start. Doctors should prescribe it. It's not just the alcohol. It's the whole experience; the feeling of being surrounded by a thousand kindred spirits, musical comrades whose record collection overlaps your own, gathered round the bar like native Americans round a camp fire, waiting for the voice to come over the tannoy, five minutes ladies and gentlemen, take your seats please, five minutes, the signal that the ceremony is about to commence.

Due to my natural stinginess, I had bought the cheapest tickets possible for the Curtis Cline gig, way up in the gallery. At smaller venues it's quite nice to be near the front of the stage, crushed by sweaty bodies, jumping up and down like one great hundred-headed beast. But at big gigs I actually prefer to be up in the gods. You can see beyond the edges of the stage to where the lights hang from the scaffolding, flashing purple and blue against white backdrops, illuminating the road crew stood behind the speaker stacks, ready to run on with drinks, guitar straps, spare microphones and drumsticks, and, at the back of the stalls, the raised podium where the lighting and sound engineers sit in sweatshirts and jeans, casually smoking roll ups and twiddling with a few thousand pounds worth of mixing desk.

The only drawback of being up in the gods, back then, was that the performers seemed so small. Nowadays this has largely been rectified by those banks of TV screens which show live images of the singers in action, heads fifty feet tall (rather like the portraits you see painted on walls of religious leaders and/or political dictators) - idols carved in rock n' roll (twentieth century versions of those huge heads on Easter Island that stare mysteriously out to sea).

Towards the end of the gig, I grew quite envious of the people down in the stalls who had left their seats and were dancing down at the front, pressing up against the line of security men, who wore black Curtis Cline baseball caps and had linked arms to form a human barrier that divided audience from stage. During the second (carefully staged) encore, a girl (of the blonde hourglass variety) burst through the cordon, leapt up on to the stage and, to the biggest cheer of the night, started trying to ram her tongue down Curtis's throat (which was rather inconvenient seeing as he was attempting to sing at the time).

As the band played nonchalantly on, two security men jumped up onto the stage, flexing arms and fingers, ready to roughly prise the girl from around Curtis's neck. But with a regal wave of dismissal, Curtis shooed them away, gave the girl a long lingering kiss and led her to his amp on the edge of the stage, where he made her sit down. Then he sauntered back to his microphone, turning briefly to raise his finger at her (as if at a naughty puppy being trained to stay), and immediately immersed himself back into the song as if she were no longer there. By the end of the encore that girl was the only person in the place still sitting down, as Curtis linked hands with his band for one final bow, before leading the girl off the stage, her clinging to his sweaty arm with both hands (as if, to quote one of Curtis's lyrics, she were 'climbing a rope to heaven').

After the gig we actually went on a search for the stage door, because (ironic as it might seem now) Tony wanted Curtis's autograph. As we lurked in the darkness near the back of the Odeon (less than ten minutes after the band had left the stage), a car, a dark blue Mercedes, swept past, driven by the inevitable burly bodyguard in a black baseball cap. And there in the back seat, wearing dark glasses, with the blonde fan still clinging to his arm, was Curtis, a glimpse of him caught, as he disappeared round the corner for a night of unbridled pleasure, I guess, in some five star London hotel.

After the car had gone, I distinctly remember Tony standing there and staring up the street at the corner where the Merc had turned out of view, staring as if he could still see the car (the way after staring into the sun, you can still see its glare, even if you close your eyes).