five

It turned out that Barry was a pretty good drummer. Shareen didn't want him in the band because he kept on calling her a Paki, but Barry wasn't really the kind of bloke you could give the elbow to.

After our first practice Barry waited until Shareen and Tony had gone and then he took me to one side and said, "I ain't forgotten what you called me the other day."

"Sorry mate," I said. "I went a bit mad. It was a mistake."

"You're telling me," said Barry. "You're a lucky cunt you are. If you weren't playing guitar in my band I'd break your fucking fingers." (And he wasn't joking either!)

"I'm sorry," I said. "It won't happen again."

"Fucking right it won't," he said. "I don't give no second chances." He stared me straight in the eye and we shook hands. And as he crushed my skinny little fingers in his huge chunky ones he said, "Understood?"

"Yea, understood," I said, then paused and added. "There's just one thing."

"Yea?" said Barry.

"Don't call Shareen a Paki," I said.

"Why not?" asked Barry sneering at me.

For once in my life I actually thought before I spoke. And during that pause I had the foresight to pull my lighter and a pack of ten John Player's from my pocket and offer them to him.

"If Shareen quits the band, where're we going to get another singer with a pierced nose from?" I said.

Barry took a fag from the packet and lit up. He stared at me for a moment, then his sneer slowly turned into a grin and he laughed, or rather he sniggered - the high-pitched snigger of a cartoon dog.

"You're a daft cunt," he said.

But, after that, he did only ever called Shareen a Paki on one or two occasions.

That night I slept easier than I had for a long time. I was friends with Barry Slater, the band had a drummer and I had a sneaking suspicion that Shareen fancied me. As it happened I was wrong about Shareen (which was not surprising really considering my gangly awkwardness and rampant acne). However, over the next few weeks the band went from strength to strength. And we became eager to perform the set of cover versions we had put together.

Unfortunately, we were far too young to play the local pubs and clubs circuit. We couldn't even play at the school youth club because the bloke who organised it was a Jesus freak. He told us, after he had come along to hear us rehearse, that he was 'rather unsettled by the anarchic sentiments of our songs.' He promised to pray for our deliverance from evil and all that shit, which was all very well. But, to be honest, I'd rather he'd just given us a gig.

We'd almost given up hope of ever getting to play anywhere, when Tony had one of his brainwaves. 'Why don't we play in the school assembly?' he suggested. I could think of a hundred reasons why not (not the least of these being that there was absolutely no chance of us being allowed to play). However Tony was adamant. In a fortnight's time it was to be the turn of the tutor group that he and Shareen were in to do the assembly in the main hall. They had been asked to put forward ideas for a ten minute performance on the theme of Decades (it being 1980 and everything).

It just so happened that the latest Joy Division album, Closer, had recently been released. And there was a song on it called Decades, which we had just learned. It turned out that Shareen and Tony's tutor, a graduate English teacher called Miss Moore, was a big Joy Division fan. She had seen them play live a couple of times when she was at Manchester Poly doing her teacher training, and persuaded Mrs Hawthorne, who was in charge of assembly arrangements, that a short rendition of the song Decades would be an apt introduction to her tutor group's presentation on that theme.

The song had a keyboard part in it that Shareen used to play on the school's portable organ and I used to do the vocal. Although I was looking forward to our first gig I was also a bit nervous about singing in front of all those people. The night before the gig Tony came round to my house and we sat up in the bedroom I shared with my brother and for the thousandth time went over the lyrics for the song.

Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders

Here are the young men, well where have they been?

We knocked on the door of hell's darker chamber

Pushed to the limit we dragged ourselves in

Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying

We saw ourselves now as we never had seen

Portrayal of the trauma and degeneration

The sorrows we suffered and never were free

It was quite hard to decipher all the words because Ian Curtis, used to sing in this really deep and muffled voice. It was strange really. He was certainly one of the greatest lyricists that ever there was, yet you could never hear his words properly. But maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe it was a manifestation of Ian's self-destructive passion; that perverse desire (which seems so often to go hand-in-hand with the deeper of creativities) to painstakingly create a work of art and then smash it up the moment it's complete. Maybe Ian was deliberately destroying his poetry by muffling his voice; exorcising his tormented emotions by turning them into words, but by delivering those words without clarity somehow denying the darkness at their source. Perhaps his was the voice of a man on a street corner who offers something illicit, unmentionable, and thus must always speak in whispers and metaphors. Probably that's a load of bollocks. Probably Ian Curtis sang the way he did, because that was simply the way he happened to sing. Whatever the reason was, we will never know. Ian Curtis killed himself on 17th May, 1980.

It happened shortly after we'd played our version of Decades in assembly. Tony heard about it on the John Peel show on Radio One, one night. They played New Dawn Fades as a kind of tribute. We used to joke that perhaps the two events were related. You know, that Ian Curtis had killed himself because somehow he had heard about the terrible version we'd done of his song. It wasn't a particularly funny joke, but to those who witnessed our rendition of Decades that morning, the joke would certainly have induced a wry smile.

There's one fundamental lesson I have learned from gigging with bands over the years, never take anything for granted, be it human or electrical. Be assured, no matter how professional your attitude, no matter how well you prepare for a performance, whenever you play live some disaster is bound to befall you. It may be a relatively small disaster, a couple of broken strings, say, or a faulty effects pedal. Or it may be a relatively major disaster like having all your instruments stolen five minutes before you are due to appear on stage.

It's incredible really. A band can play for week after week in a rehearsal room and they never go out of tune. The drum stool never collapses. The guitarist's leads all work perfectly and his amp never bursts into flames. The lead singer never turns up pissed out of his skull. And the batteries in the bass player's effects pedals seem to have been blessed with the gift of eternal life. Yet the moment you appear in front of an audience you can bet your last plectrum that something will always, but always, go horrendously wrong.

Unfortunately, that fateful morning me and Tony and Shareen and Barry played our first (and, as it turned out, last) gig together we were blissfully unaware of the certain calamity that awaited us. Initially, when we all gathered on stage in the main hall forty minutes before the assembly was due to start, we were all excited and looking forward to the gig. We presumed, you see, that everything would sound the same (and everyone would behave the same) as during our practices in the rehearsal room.

It was only when we started to set the gear up that we discovered that there was only one plug socket working, that someone had ripped the head off the microphone lead, that the bass amp wasn't loud enough and that Barry had disappeared. All we could do was plug the keyboard and bass through the guitar amp, turn down the volume so that the vocal might be heard and pray that Barry hadn't chickened out at the last moment and done a runner down town. Suddenly the school hall seemed very large and we seemed very small.

About fifteen minutes before assembly was due to start, Tony and Shareen's tutor, Miss Moore came in.

"How's everything going," she asked. "In fine voice this morning Shareen?"

"Sharpy, I mean Peter's singing miss," said Shareen. "But the microphone don't work."

"The bass amp isn't working properly either," said Tony despondently "I'm sorry miss. It's not going to sound right." He sighed and sat down on the edge of the stage with his head in his hands.

"Don't worry," said Miss Moore brightly. "I'm sure you'll sound just fine.....And is Barry Slater performing with you this morning?"

"Oh yes miss," said Shareen. "He'll be back soon. He just went off somewhere."

"Wonderful," said Miss Moore cheerily - although you could tell by the way her bony fingers clawed the sleeve of her jumper into woollen furrows (as severe as those lining her brow) that she would rather we had anyone but Barry Slater on stage with us.

As it happened, Miss Moore was right to have her doubts about the suitability of our drummer.

Me Shareen and Tony were all ready to play an acoustic version of Decades, when Barry finally appeared. Miss Moore was reading out some stuff about TB inoculations and a Help the Aged lunchtime jumble sale when from behind tall curtains of faded red cloth, half-drawn across the stage, I heard Barry's hushed voice.

"Oi Sharpy!" he called to me. "Oi Sharpy! Got a handkerchief or somethink?"

I turned round and there he was, crouched behind the curtains, his shirt and face covered in blood. At first I thought he had a nose bleed, brought on perhaps by the excitement of the approaching gig. Then I saw, stuck through his nose, a bloody great silver safety pin. There was also blood pouring from a small wound by his mouth where he had tried to pierce his cheek.

I shook my head, partly to tell him that I had no hanky and partly because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I gestured at him to stay behind the curtains. But Barry either didn't understand or (more likely) choose to ignore my frantic waving. Then Miss Moore uttered those immortal words, "now over to the tutees of 2E for a short review of the last ten years, but first let's hear Decades!" And, bang on cue, Barry strode on to stage dripping blood, sat down at the drums and started to play.

Of course, Barry didn't know that the bass amp and microphone weren't working properly so he played as he usually did (i.e., very loud). I was stood right in front of the drums and couldn't hear the keyboard or the bass at all, but I started to sing in what I thought was the right place. It must have sounded appalling. And it was really no surprise when some of the kids who were watching us started to giggle and cover their hands with their ears and boo and hiss.

Miss Moore went all red in the face and got to her feet and shouted out, "Silence! Everyone please do be quiet."

But, because she was quite young and new at the school, some of them ignored her, and continued to boo, the more daring among them breaking into a chant of 'what a load of rubbish.'

Miss Moore looked despairingly to the headmaster. But he sat there tight lipped and scowling with his arms crossed and made no move to silence the shouting. The headmaster could quite easily have quelled the rowdy elements at once with a single gesture or word. However he obviously appreciated the propaganda value of the developing chaos, just as a government in power relishes riots in support of its opponents.

Beside the headmaster sat the Jesus freak youth leader. He smiled sadly and nodded knowingly, certain that the response to our music was due to its intrinsic anarchy-inducing nature rather than its appalling quality. He looked at once both smug and concerned as if the rowdy reaction of the audience vindicated every fear he had ever expressed about the degeneration of the nation's morals. In his eyes dwelt a certainty that if we played for very much longer our devilish music would cause the chanting children to pull animal masks from beneath their blazers, gather together with lighted torches and burn the school down, rendering it a literal inferno of corrupted souls.

Meanwhile, Miss Moore's knuckles went white and sharp, like a row of miniature mountain peaks, as her fingers finally stabbed through the sleeve of her jumper. Her mouth moved silently like that of a woman drowning. Mr Mammoth seeing that she had lost all control of the situation leapt on stage. The chanting immediately stopped.

"Sorry this can't go on," said Mr Mammoth. "The boy's bleeding all over my snare drum."

Me, Shareen and Tony, were happy to end our humiliation and stopped playing at once. But Barry had worked himself up into a frenzy and just kept on bashing away at the drums spraying blood everywhere.

Mr Mammoth tried to reason with Barry. "OK, come on. That's enough."

But still Barry kept on playing. Mr Mammoth had to literally force the drum sticks from Barry's' hands. Emulating Keith Moon, Barry kicked over the drums and cymbals. For a moment a shocked silence filled the hall. Then Barry went to the front of the stage, picked up the microphone (which he didn't know wasn't working) and yelled, in true punk tradition, "You lot are all fucking wankers!"

At this point the headmaster decided it was time he took charge of the situation. He got up on stage and yanked Barry away from the microphone, by the collar of his shirt. Barry immediately froze, in the way a kitten does when dangling from the mouth of it's mother. Pleased with this response, the headmaster continued to hold onto Barry as he addressed the pupils who were by then sitting orderly and meek but fidgety and fearful, like lambs in transit to a slaughter house.

"As you appear to have taken advantage of the liberal approach favoured by my good colleagues Mr Mansworth and Miss Moore, I will have no alternative but to deal with this myself."

He paused to cuff Barry Slater round the back of the head. And then slowly shook his hand as if to dislodge some invisible layer of grime he had picked up in the process.

"I can well understand," he continued, "that you were appalled, as indeed I was, by the disgraceful apology for music that has ruined this morning's assembly." He shook his head grimly. "As you know I am always keen to encourage self expression among the pupils here at Manor Park Comprehensive." He smiled momentarily, then once more became stern."However, I cannot condone such flagrant abuses of discipline that we have witnessed among a troublesome minority of our community this morning. As I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with each miscreant individually I have no option but to ask each and every one of you to return to the hall every break time and lunch time for the remainder of the week and sit here in silence for the duration."

He put on a caring voice. "I understand that this may be unfair for those of you who were not involved in this morning's shambolic events. However you know who is responsible for this." The head master turned round and stared intently at me and Shareen. "Whilst I believe Mr Mallon may have been unwillingly roped into this charade, you may be tempted to deliver some form of retribution to Miss Carter and Mr Sharpe." He paused, with eyebrows raised, to gather nods of willingness from certain vindictive elements of his audience. "Whilst I will show little sympathy to either Miss Carter or Mr Sharpe, should they come running to me complaining that they have been sent to Coventry," he sneered, "I will not, I repeat will not, tolerate any excessive use of physical violence against either of them." He drew himself up to his full height and concluded, "That is not the way we do things here at Manor Park. Am I understood?"

"Yes Mr Yardley," chorused the pupils.

"Right then. Sharpe, Carter. When you have finished clearing up the mess you have made of the stage. I will see you in my office where you may each collect a detention card for this coming Wednesday afternoon. And I will expect to see you and everyone else back here at ten thirty sharp!"

After the headmaster had frog-marched Barry Slater from the stage, the hall slowly emptied to the clatter of chairs and the various murmurings and mutterings of teachers and pupils alike. Me and Shareen stood there in despondent isolation and started to pick up the drums and unplug the guitars and things. Not even Mr Mammoth was able to offer us any comfort as he helped us carry the things back to the rehearsal room. All he said was, "I'm disappointed in you Peter."

When Mr Mammoth had gone I muttered to Tony, "It's not fair. It isn't my fault Barry Slater's a flaming psycho."

"It isn't," agreed Tony neatly coiling a guitar lead. "Mind you, your mum's going to kill you, when your brother tells her you got a detention."

"Thanks," I said, bitterly wiping a blob of Barry's blood from the side of a tom-tom.