thirty-nine

Shortly after we'd been to see Curtis Cline, we got a support gig for this band called Free-Loader who were playing at the Asylum. Free-Loader were regularly on the Peel show, had supported Sisters of Mercy on part of their UK tour and had had a couple of EP's out, the latest of which had gone straight into the charts at number fifty eight (then down to eighty one and back out again). In hindsight, Free-Loader were a bunch of mediocre nobodies who didn't have a hope in hell of ever getting anywhere. But to us, at the time, they were superstars. And they behaved like it.

When they arrived at the Asylum (in a converted, purple hearse and a convoy of beaten up old Bedfords) they produced this long list of things that they required to be brought to their dressing room (i.e., the hut behind the club that had once served as a chemical store). I can't quite recall everything that was on that list, but I believe it included: a bigger table; a certain brand of beer, chilled and served in straight glasses; a couple of bars of Galaxy milk chocolate and a Toblerone; sandwiches made from medium-sliced brown bread spread with butter (not margarine), strong cheddar, salami and Helman's mayonnaise; half a dozen fresh, white flesh peaches; a large bottle of Jim Beam; copies of The Sun, The Guardian, The Dandy and What Car; and a large portion of chips fried in vegetable oil (but not too soggy) with vinegar but no salt.

At first the guys in the club thought the list was some kind of sarcastic northern joke, but it turned out the band were deadly serious and said that they wouldn't set foot on stage until they'd got everything they'd asked for. Whilst they were waiting for all their stuff to be delivered, we thought we might as well sound check, seeing as time was pushing on. And their manager went totally mental.

"What do you think you're fucking doing?" he said, and pushed Stewy's amp off the edge of the stage with his foot.

After we'd managed to calm Stewy down a bit (which basically amounted to four of us pinning him to the floor for half an hour until he'd stopped threatening to 'kill the fucking bastard,') we went to speak to Free-Loader. Partly this was to try and sort out when we would actually be able to do our sound check and partly to introduce ourselves out of basic politeness. Unfortunately, basic politeness didn't seem to be a concept that Free-Loader had really got the hang-off. When we knocked on the dressing room door and cheerily called out, 'Hi, we're the support band, we just thought we'd come and have a quick chat,' they replied, 'I don't give a fookin shit who you are mate, but if you ain't got me fooking sarnies you can just fook off,' or words to that effect.

At this point, Stewy muttered that he'd had enough and was going back to the house to get some Chinese. However me, Tony and Barry (our new drummer) stayed to check that none of our gear got nicked from where we'd been forced to leave it just outside the stage door. We were meant to be on stage at about half-past-eight. And at five-past-eight Stewy was still no where to be seen.

We weren't that bothered at first as he was always late. But when it got to quarter-past-eight we were starting to get genuinely worried. Then at just gone twenty-past Damien beckoned us over to the bar.

"There's a call for you," he shouted, holding out the phone. "It's Stewy."

I elbowed my way through the chattering throng of people waiting for drinks and grabbed the receiver.

"Where the fuck are you?" I shouted. "We're on in five minutes."

"I'm at the hospital," said Stewy (the echo of his voice, as he spoke, instantly conjuring up a vivid image of him clutching a pay-phone beneath a stairwell at the end of some sterile, white corridor).

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and shouted to Tony, "He's at the fucking hospital."

Tony slowly shook his head in disbelief.

"What's happened?" I shouted down the phone.

"It's Colin," said Stewy. "He's dislocated his jaw."

"Shit," I said, turning to Tony, "Colin's dislocated his fucking jaw."

It turned out that the dislocation had occurred as a result of a competition which involved Stewy and Colin trying to see who could fit the biggest prawn cracker into their mouth whole. Apparently, as Colin had dipped an outrageously large cracker in sweet and sour sauce, he had inadvertently picked up a chunk of pineapple (which he detested). With his mouth stretched wide open to admit the outsize cracker, the sudden sting of pineapple on his tongue had made him retch, and his jaw was suddenly dangling from the rest of his face in a loose sack of skin (according to Stewy) like a wing hanging off the side of an over-baked chicken.

"Sorry, there's nothing I can do," said Stewy. "I can't just leave him here. I guess we'll just have to call the gig off."

"Yea," I said. "I guess so. Well I hope Colin's all right."

"He'll be fine" said Stewy. The phone started to beep, hungry for another ten pence.

"I've got to go," he said.

"Yea, see you later," I said, and the phone went dead. "The stupid fucking cunt," I muttered, turning to Tony. "That's fucking marvellous. Our one chance to play a fucking half-decent gig. And old shit-for-brains has to fuck it up for us."

Tony was silent for a moment.

"I suppose I could play base," he said.

"You reckon?" I said.

"Might as well," said Tony.

"But what about the sound," I asked (not that I cared what the band would sound like as a three piece, but I was astonished that Tony, who usually insisted on spending several hours getting the mix right would sacrifice all that layering he was always going on about, just to get up there and perform)

"Just play what you normally do," said Tony, deep in thought as he spoke. "Keep it really tight and I'll add my bits on the bass."

"OK," I said. "Let's go for it."

If any one else had suggested they were able not only to take over the bass player's role without any practice, but also able to simultaneously simulate their regular guitar solos on the bass's upper strings, I would have laughed, packed my Telecaster away and gone to the bar to drown my sorrows. But when Tony said that he could do something, you somehow always believed that he could. Besides which we had worked bloody hard to get that gig.

On the insistence of the Free-Loaders manager we'd had to send him a demo tape before he'd deign to allow us to support them. So, having neither time nor money to go into a proper studio, we'd borrowed a four track one afternoon and made a demo in the rehearsal studios behind the music shop. Initially it sounded shit because we didn't have any means of recording the drums other than dangling a single mike over Barry's head, so we'd used a drum machine instead. It wasn't one of those modern machines that regurgitates digital samples of real drums, but an early Roland TR something-o-something; a hissing, blipping, popping box of electronically generated percussion sounds (the kind that featured heavily on early Depeche Mode and Soft Cell singles.) However, once the machine had a bit of reverb added, it didn't sound too bad. And, in the end, we were all quite chuffed with the way the demo turned out.

Along with the tape, we'd had to send the Free-Loader's managers a photo of the band. Colin'd taken the pictures with an old black and white camera in an overgrown graveyard, the four of us, thistles up to our knees, in the rain, draped over a stone angel (like something off the cover of a Joy Division album). I've still got the photo and, although it seems incredibly dated now, at the time we really did look the part.

However, despite all the effort we'd put into the demo tape and the photo, it had still taken Damien about a hundred phone calls to set the gig up for us. It had been on and off more often than Sandra Burgess's knickers (as Colin put it), before finally we were grudgingly permitted to be the support act. And, after all that, with or without a bass player, I guess we had no choice but to play.

Despite Stewy's unexpected absence, the band didn't sound too bad. All those years me and Tony had spent jamming together in each other's bedrooms, taking it in turns to play rhythm and lead, and picking out base lines on the lower strings of acoustic guitars, suddenly came good. The fragile emptiness of the single guitar and the bass, was surprisingly atmospheric. It was suddenly exciting to play again, to invent new guitar riffs right there and then, confident that Tony, after all those years, would know instinctively what I was going to play, and when he did predict correctly a change of tempo, a pause, a seventh chord, we would smile at each other and nod, and even laugh, enjoying the thrill of playing in way we hadn't done for a long time, relishing that closeness, losing ourselves within each others melodies, remembering, as we played, those times when we had long hair and used to dress up in Tony's mum's beads and pretend to be hippies, remembering that time Terri dyed our hair and my mum threw the salad bowl at us, remembering that trip on the train to Guitar Town, remembering the smell of dust burning on Bob (the big orange bastard's) glowing valves.

And, for a moment, as Barry thumped away on his tom-toms in the background, I felt so fucking close to Tony, a kind of brotherly love, a kind of emotion I could never feel towards my real brother, John, with his sloaney jumpers and prodigious mathematical ability. And, somehow, that excitement, that closeness between us, the sheer enjoyment of playing, infected the audience, who cheered at the end of every song, rooting for us, as they had done from the beginning of the gig when I'd told them, frightened of how we night sound, 'unfortunately our base player can't be with us tonight, he's had to go to the hospital, but we're here now, so we're going to do our best to play for you anyway, OK.'

And the audience, always favouring the underdog (and further encouraged by a half price promotion on Fosters), cheered us on, willed us to play well, the way they might cheer an injury-weakened non-league side playing an FA Cup tie against league opposition (or in our case the Free-Loaders). And even the Free-Loader's, with their pretentious list of special sandwiches and their earlier aloofness, clapped us at the end of the gig and, as we came off stage, smiled and told us how much they'd enjoyed our set, the way first division footballers, at the final whistle, impressed and startled, shake the hands of those non-league underdogs who have held them to an unexpected one-all draw.

After the gig I felt like I was fucking floating - like one of those patients whose hearts have stopped in the operating theatre and imagine themselves leaving their bodies and looking down at the surgeons sweating behind their green masks. It felt as if I were up among the rusted iron rafters of the Asylum, hand in hand with Tony, like two angels looking down at everyone with their trendy haircuts and half-finished pints. It was better than drugs, better than sex, better than fucking anything. In fact, I think that is probably just about the best I have ever felt.

The Free-Loaders despite (or maybe because) of their arrogance were actually very entertaining. They didn't play anything especially complex, nothing that me or Tony couldn't have played. But they were really tight and professional (slick as a seal on a greasy slide - as Colin would undoubtedly have put it had he not been in casualty with a dislocated jaw). They looked good too, all in matching black outfits, (in stark contrast to us in our random mix of jeans and T-shirts).

After the gig, the Freeloaders handed their guitars to their roadies and disappeared into the night in their purple hearse. As the roadies shifted the Freeloader's gear into their van, we shifted our stuff into the hut-cum-dressing room behind the club, where the smell of dope mixed sickly with the lingering smell of chemicals.

Barry surveyed the various bottles and magazines that had been left scattered around. "Maybe they're coming back later," he said, carefully wrapping a cymbal in blue tissue paper before strapping it into a stiff black case.

"I don't think so," I said, opening one of the cans of Holsten they'd left behind and taking a swig from it.

We arrived back at the house shortly after one o'clock, (Tony carrying his 'Casino' which he'd refused to leave locked in the hut behind the club with the rest of our gear, and Barry being carried by Stewy's mates).

Such was our euphoria at the success of the gig, we'd laughed and shouted our way drunkenly down the street, up-rooting For Sale signs, playing Frisbee with dustbin lids and flattening herbaceous borders like some delinquent hurricane (no doubt unleashing a tidal wave of letters to the editor of the Westing Chronicle, demanding that they bring back birching and make it illegal for anyone under the age of twenty one to enter premises (licensed or otherwise) for the purpose of consuming alcohol).

When we got in, we went straight down to the basement where Stewy was waiting for us alone (Colin having gone to bed with his face bandaged). As we stumbled drunkenly down the stairs, Stewy - who was sitting on the arm of the sofa, hands hanging limp and apelike between his knees - forced a sad, apologetic smile.

"Sorry lads," he mumbled, the words having obviously been recited in his mind a hundred times already. "There was nothing I could do. We had to wait for hours down in casualty. You wouldn't believe it. It's fucking mental down there. I only got back about an hour ago." He held his head in his hands. "Of all then times for that to happen. What a fucking...." Unable to think of a suitable word with which to sum up his disappointment, Stewy finished the sentence with a long drawn out sigh.

"Don't worry mate," I said, plonking myself down beside him on the sofa. "It went all right, even with just the three of us."

"What do you mean just the three of us?" said Stewy, looking down at me.

"I played bass," explained Tony, "and Pete played guitar."

"What? You played my fucking bass?" said Stewy, as if Tony had just revealed that he'd been having a secret affair with Shaz.

"Hey, take it easy," I said, reaching up to lay my hand on Stewy's shoulder. "We didn't have any choice."

Stewy brushed my hand away, like it was a lump of pigeon shit that had landed on him.

"Fuck off," he said.

"Look mate," I said, with defensive indignation. "We can't cancel a gig every time you and your brother decide to start fucking around with Chinese food."

"You fucking what?" said Stewy.

"You fucking heard, you ginger-haired twat," I said, my tongue having been loosened by a wild excess of Fosters (and a couple of can's of the Free-Loaders' Holsten).

I was told later that Stewy's punch lifted me off my feet. But I was too pissed to feel it at the time. In the morning (or rather early afternoon) when I awoke from my alcoholic stupor, I was aware of a pain on the right side of my face, but couldn't understand why it was there. I assumed I must have stumbled and banged my face against the wall or something as I staggered up to bed.

I couldn't remember anything of our brief fight, not even the apparently rather effective karate kick which had smashed into Stewy's chest. I certainly didn't remember threatening to kill Stewy as I was dragged swearing from the basement by Barry and one of Stewy's mate, leaving Tony and the others to take him back to casualty, for the second time that night, to have his cracked ribs seen to.

We made it up on the Sunday evening, hugging each other's arms in the kitchen (unable to embrace properly because of Stewy's ribs). By that time the bruise on my face had turned a mixture of Atlantic greens and blues, so I didn't feel too guilty about the unintentional severity of Stewy's injuries.

"Sorry Pete," said Stewy. "You shouldn't hit your mates....even if they are stupid cunts."

"Yea I'm sorry mate," I said looking suitably sheepish. "I never meant to...." I gently reached out and patted his ribs. "Are they all right?"

"Yea, no bother," said Stewy. "I would have done the fucking same, if you'd laid one on me."

"Yea, well. I guess we all got wound up about the gig and that," I picked a stray prawn cracker up from the kitchen table and absent mindedly cracked it in two. "What a fucking night, heh?"

"Too fucking right," said Stewy. "I don't fancy going through that again."

"Yea, they'll be giving you your own ward down at the hospital soon," I said wryly.

Stewy laughed and winced.

"Don't even fucking joke about it," he said.

And we smiled at each other, relieved to have reached some kind of a reconciliation.