prologue

The audience is really buzzing tonight, I mean really buzzing - all ten thousand of them jumping and dancing like the floor's on fire. And as the band approaches the end of the second chorus where my guitar solo is due to start, I feel that collective buzz fizzing through my bones, fuelling my body with more power than the fifty thousand watt mother of a PA system that towers behind me. And I know, just know, as I stomp on the overdrive that it's going to be one of those perfect guitar solos, maybe the perfect solo.

As the last beat of the last bar of the chorus ends, I guess I feel how a surfer must feel just before catching the perfect wave or how a footballer feels just before scoring the perfect goal. It's as if the moment your board touches the spray, or your boot touches the ball or (in my case) your fingers touch the strings, you sense that this is the big one - that elusive moment when everything seems to flow with effortless clarity.

As I launch into the solo my confidence is justified. Tonight my White Falcon is blessed by the Great God Gretsch and the twin reverberating saints of Fender. But this is no easy ride. The feedback is right on the edge. Bending the strings is like balancing barefoot on barb wire. One false move and this beautiful moment could end in an ugly scream. But I'm hanging in there floating down to the front of the stage, grinning at ten thousand ecstatic faces.

Suddenly, one face, a promising brunette in a sea of insipid blondes, catches my eye. And I give her my most intimidating rock god stare. But instead of looking bashfully away as they usually do. She stares defiandy back at me. And I know tonight she's the one. And suddenly it's as if I'm playing just for her.

Moving closer, I kneel down and bend two strings into the feedback like I'm penetrating her with the sound. And as the sustain echoes sweet as sweet can be, I swear I can see her nipples stiffen through the tight white cotton of her T-shirt. With studied petulance, I turn my back on her and run across the stage, skipping wires to leap impishly up onto a speaker stack (sustain still going strong) amidst shrieks and squeals of adulation.

But just as my solo is about to reach it's earth-shatteringly orgasmic peak, I glance up and notice a roadie waving his hairy arms at me and the spell is broken. I lift my hands from the guitar and go over to where he's stood at the edge of the stage. I see he is miming (with extended thumb and forefinger) a fist clutching a telephone. What a time to get a call!

Grudgingly, I unplug my guitar and follow the roadie off stage down a maze of corridors until I reach a room with the obligatory star on the door (not mere gold but platinum, of course, like the band's latest CD). I push the door open and see the room is lined with William Morris wallpaper and full of cushions amidst which rests a purple telephone. As I settle back on the cushions (the White Falcon's sweaty strap still hanging heavy round my neck) the wallpaper starts to move round and round - a repeated pattern of leaves and birds vividly circling the room as if suspended on a series of conveyor belts.

I casually reach out to answer the phone. But as my fingers touch the purple plastic, the images begin to fade. The ringing gets louder and louder and cuts deeper and deeper through the surreal fudge of shallow sleep until into my head seeps a strange reality, an after-midnight reality of sweaty sheets and rotating ceilings, and suddenly the night pours in harsh and cold, bucketfuls of freezing blackness thrown in my face.

I am properly awake now and realise the phone really is ringing. From the darkness of the room I guess it must be about six or seven, and wonder who on earth it can be. Some anxious mother calling to cancel her son's guitar lesson? Kidding herself she will save his weekly fee by ringing early?

Reluctantly, I unfurl from the duvet, prickly as a hedgehog disturbed in mid-hibernation and glance quickly at the clock. Its fluorescent green hands are raised like the arms of a goal-scorer in a luminous victory V that tells me it's ten minutes to two.

Ten to bloody two. Who the hell?

Sudden panic. A death in the family perhaps. No too obvious. Most likely a wrong number. Maybe someone after one of those adult chat lines you used to see advertised in tabloid papers on the pages before the racing results. Yes that's probably it - a lonely pervert in a dingy bedsit somewhere, trousers round knees, fingers wrapped ready for the husky confessions of a rubber-clad nympho who (for just forty-nine pence a minute) promises to quell the throes of sleeplessness.

Maybe I shouldn't answer. Imagine that, expecting Lovesick Lesbian Lizz at the end of the line, but instead only hearing me blearily mumble my name and number, unwittingly causing the task in hand to be postponed until some while later, when the relief of fantasy can less guiltily spray forth through that lonesome fist. The phone keeps ringing. Better answer. Might be important. Some nervous night-sergeant bearing bad tidings of failed brake-pads on Bev's rust-riddled Fiesta (and no little damage to the ivied trunk of an oak ill-placed on the apex of a slippery bend). Or a sudden choke on a fish bone grabbing the breath from grandad's poorly lung sooner than anyone could possibly have expected.

I pick up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Hi Pete. Hang on a moment," says a cheery voice.

Who the hell would call at this ungodly hour just to tell me to hang on? The voice returns.

"Sorry about that. I had my glass caught in the wire. How are you?"

It's the Kid. Relieved but still peeved at my rude awakening I ask, "Have you any idea what the bloody time is?"

The Kid puts on his American accent, which I have to admit he does quite well these days, him spending so much time in the States.

"It's almost six here in LA, the sky is a crazy hazy blue above the Sunset Strip. It's seventy-five degrees in the cool Pacific breeze down on the beach. And the breakers are totally awesome!"

"Oh great. Well it's two in the morning here. It's probably raining. It's definitely cold. And I'm fucking knackered," I snap. "What are you doing in LA, anyway. I thought you were supposed to be in New York?"

"No we're going to mix-down in New York next week sometime. I'm still laying down the master for the new version of 'Time Keeps Moving On' - trying to get the sound right on the lead guitar using multiple reverbs. You know, splitting up the source signal with a four-by-one stereo switching unit and running different settings in parallel."

"Yea? Sounds fun," I say, not really understanding.

These days when the Kid tells me what he's up to in the studio it's like he's talking some strange kind of dialect. I mean, I recognise some of the words, but I'm buggered if I know what the hell he's on about.

"Sorry for ringing so late," says the Kid. "I forgot the time gap was so big."

"Hey no worries," I say, sorry for snapping at him, because he isn't the thoughtless type. I mean, he's reckoned to be one of the top producers in the world now, but he's still as shy and polite as he always was. He'd never dream of calling if he thought you might be asleep. It's just that when he's in the studio and everything, he gets so caught up in getting the sound right, sometimes I'm sure he doesnlt even know what day it is let alone what the time is.

"Sorry if I sounded a bit off," I say (I know he'll worry himself sick if he thinks he's annoyed me). "I was just in the middle of a really good dream."

"Yea?" says the Kid. "What was it about?"

"Oh I can't really remember now," I lie. "Anyway how are you keeping?"

"Busy," he says. "How's the guitar teaching going?"

"Oh, you know. None of them ever practice. But they all still think they're going to be the next Jimi Hendrix."

"Still, it beats driving a van," he says referring to my former occupation.

"I guess so," I sigh.

There follows a moment's silence - partly due to the time taken for my mumbled answer to bounce off some satellite high above the Atlantic, and partly because we share little common ground these days upon which to create casual conversation.

"How's Bev?" asks the Kid.

Bev's my girlfriend, well more of a lady friend really. She's quite a bit older than me. We kind of look after the Kid's place for him whilst he goes gallivanting off to the States to produce some megastar's latest album.

"She's fine," I tell him.

"I hope I didn't wake her up as well," says the Kid gloomily.

"Hey, no problem," I assure him. "She's not even here."

"Where is she?" asks the Kid (he's not really nosy, he just likes to know these things).

"She went out with Rebecca and all her cronies from the aerobics club. A kind of girls night out."

"It's a bit late to be out isn't it?" says the Kid.

"No. She's staying round at Becka's," I exlain.

"Oh right, fine," says the Kid. He sounds relieved.

"So you've got the house all to yourself then. How is the old place anyway?"

"Oh, it's all right except the bloody heating's packed in."

"Shit, what have you done to it?" he asks.

I can understand him blaming me as I have this perverse Midas-like ability to destroy any electrical object with a single touch. I mean, I only have to look at an amplifier or an effects pedal and it blows up. But, honestly, the central heating system wasn't my fault.

"I haven't done anything to it," I tell the Kid indignantly.

"The time switch on the thermostat thing's knackered. It won't click on properly. I rang up the service engineer and apparently its a design fault. But don't panic. He's coming round tomorrow to look at it. And he said he'll fix it for free. "

"Don't worry about the money," says the Kid (that's been one of his favourite phrases since he became a dollar millionaire).

"Just so long as you're comfortable there. You know I appreciate y.ou looking after the place."

"It's a pleasure," I say. And I mean it. Jacuzzi, sunken bath, indoor swimming pool, pool table, two pinball machines, a thirty-two track recording studio, ten grand's worth of hi-fi equipment and thirteen thousand records to choose from. I mean, it's real hardship looking after the Kid's place for him. I mean, doesn't your heart just bleed for me?

"Hey, did you ever get that Easyrider remix?" asks the Kid.

Easyrider's this Scottish band he's been producing lately. They've just released a cover version of that song by the Temptations, the one that goes 'I'm doing fiiiiiine on cloud nine.' Apparently, last week the Kid asked the record company to post me a copy of the record (or, should I say, the CD single), which they probably did. The trouble is I've been kind of busy recently and have got a bit behind with the post. In fact, to be honest, there are currently about a hundred letters and parcels waiting to be opened and sorted. I expect the single is in there somewhere. But I daren't tell the Kid I haven't found it, let alone listened to it, yet. The kid has always been finicky about his music, especially the stuff he's done with Easyrider. But since their first album, Southern Comfort, got nominated for a Brit Award he's been like a man possessed.

He's even got me to put graphs up on the wall of how many thousand copies of the album they've sold each week in various different formats in different countries. It was quite fun doing the charts at first, a bit like doing a weather project at school (you know, recording how many inches of rain have fallen overnight and all that). But after the album had been in the chart for twenty-seven weeks it started to get a bit tedious. In fact, I only have to see a bottle of Southern Comfort now and I start to develop a nasty headache.

Actually, the album should have been called Southern Comfort, Rustler Magazine and Long Distance Calls, which is the name of one of the songs on it. But the record company didn't think the reference to Rustler was particularly politically correct! It's a good song though. It's about this boyfriend/girlfriend/college situation, where a girl who has gone off to study in some far-off town sends her best mate round to keep an eye on her boyfriend whilst she's away (which turns out to be a big mistake, as eventually the boyfriend gets fed up with whisky, wanking and waiting for his girlfriend and ends up going off with her best mate instead.)

The song was too long to be a single, but it's definitely the best track on the album. The backing is a mixture of synthesisers and twangy guitars, over which the singer narrates each verse (almost like a rap) in a fake American accent. And then there's a really catchy chorus with harmony vocals which I think sounds a lot like the Gratiful Dead (much to the Kid's dismay!!). Recently journalists have started referring to Easyrider as techno hippies. Which the Kid really hates.

He has become quite notorious for endlessly arguing with certain members of the music press about which other bands Easyrider are or are not supposed to sound like. However, there is one thing that everyone agrees on. And that is that they are a shit-hot band and witty with it. I must have listened to the title track of Southern Comfort a hundred times, but it still makes me smile. Shame it never got much air-play. Still, the Easys (as they've come to be known) had a couple of top twenties with other songs off the album, so they can't complain.

It's amazing really. A year or so ago the band were going nowhere on the college circuit. Then they sent the Kid a tape of their songs, which had a lot of jingly-jangly guitar on it, you know all that REM-cum-Johnny Marr stuff. Personally I thought they sounded just the same as a million other reasonably proficient guitar combos. However, the Kid somehow sensed they had that little extra something and offered to produce a couple of demos for them on the studio he's installed in the summer house down the bottom of the garden.

So, the summer before last, Easyrider caught the intercity down from Glasgow and stayed for a couple of days. They were nice guys actually, especially the drummer, Graham. I played a lot of pool with him whilst the rest of them were pissing about in the studio. And, as usual, once the Kid had worked his magic on their songs, the majors were fighting each other to sign 'em up.

The Easyrider sound is (as I have inferred) kind of difficult to classify. It's a bit of a mixture really - a kind of cross between seventies soft rock and acid house, like the Eagles on ecstasy, if you can possibly imagine that. But, even though the band's songs are all slightly weird, they're incredibly popular right now. The band's never off MTV and they're just sorting out this massive world tour. So, what with merchandising deals and all that shit, they are starting to make serious money (and of course, you can bet your bottom dollar the Kid's going to get a hefty slice of the pie, the jammy bastard).

Talking of money, one of the gimmicks that record companies have now for boosting their singles sales is to bring out all these different versions of the same song with different covers and all that. I think it's a bit of a con really, nothing but a cheap marketing ploy, but the Kid's always on at me to listen to the latest mix and say what I think of it.

"I don't know why you bother with all these remixes, they're just a rip off," I tell the Kid. "To make the fans shell out more of their hard-earned cash."

"Not if they buy the CD single," says the Kid. "It's got all the different mixes on for free."

"You don't get all the different covers though do you," I say.

"Obviously not," says the Kid impatiently. "So, have you heard the new Cloud Nine megamix?"

"Yea, it was on Radio One yesterday morning," I lie. "On the breakfast show."

"So what do you think?" he asks.

"Yea I liked it," I say.

"What about the bit in the middle?" he asks.

"Which bit?" I ask vaguely.

"The bit with all the drums and the sitar."

"Yea, great. Yea, I liked that," I say, trying to sound convincing. But the Kid senses the uncertainty in my voice.

"You don't sound as if you really liked it," he says.

"Sure I did," I lie. "Itls just a bit hard to get enthusiastic about things at two o'clock in the morning, however brilliant they are."

"So you did like it then?" says the Kid, obviously reassured by my use of the word brilliant.

"Yea, it was great."

"You don't think it was too over the top?" asks the Kid.

"What?" I ask.

"All those tom-toms," he says.

"No they were fucking brilliant, really," I say.

"Really?" he asks.

"Really."

"You know I always value your opinion," says the Kid, the patronising git. He's got a bit like that, actually, since he started recording stuff in Los Angeles and New York and everything.

"Sure," I say. "Anyhow, if we've finished playing Juke Box Jury now, I fancy getting some kip, if you don't mind."

"Yea, sorry," says the Kid.

"No problem," I say. "You still at the same hotel?"

"Yea. I've moved to a different room now. But if you need to get in touch, just ask for me by name. The girls on the desk'll know where I am."

"Sure," I say. "Well it's good to hear from you anyway. Sorry if I sound half asleep, but I am."

"Sorry I called so late," says the Kid.

"Hey, no problem. When do you leave for New York?"

"Thursday probably," he says. "Friday at the latest."

"OK, I'll give you a call sometime Wednesday evening."

"Right," he says. "Get that heating sorted out though won't you. If the water freezes it'll damage the pipes."

"Hey, don't worry. Pipes don't freeze in October and, anyway, the bloke's coming round to fix it tomorrow." I add caustically, "You go off and play with your reverbs or whatever and leave the heating to me."

"It's not just playing," says the Kid with sudden huffiness.

"Yea, I know, I know," I say. "Calm down. I was only kidding mate."

The phone goes silent and I guess he has gone into a sulk. He takes himself far too seriously these days - ever since that music magazine voted him producer of the year.

"Hey, look, I was only joking," I say, forcing a short laugh. But the kid is not placated.

"I know you think it's just messing around," he says. But it's important. It really is. You can't just knock these things together in a couple of hours. It takes time to get the sound right. It really does."

"I know," I say. "I know."

"Well, I better get back to the studio," says the Kid. I can tell he's just thought of something, some setting he meant to change on the mixing desk or whatever.

"OK," I say. "I'll ring on Wednesday then."

"Yea, see you," says the Kid and the phone goes dead.

And now, of course, I can't sleep. I lie there staring at the ceiling and worrying about Bev and stuff. You know the way you do when you are alone in bed in the small hours of the morning, imagining all kind of horrible things. Maybe I should give Becka a ring, I think, check that they got back all right. Then I tell myself to stop being so bloody neurotic. Just calm down and go back to sleep. But I can't go back to sleep and I'm more worried then ever, even though I don't know what it is I'm worried about exactly.

The phone call has unsettled me - filled me with a vague nagging fear. I try to rationalise my anxiety. I am only panicking because she is out of my sight. I feel like a blind man who fears that, unbeknown to him, a well-ordered room may have been rearranged, so that when he reaches out to touch a familiar piece of furniture, instead he will grasp at thin air or stumble over some unfamiliar object he didn't expect to be there. The blind man's panic is irrational. There is only a small probability that the room has been disturbed. However, because he cannot actually see the room that tiny probability becomes greatly exaggerated, hence his apprehension. This rationalisation, although quite satisfying, does little to ease my anxiety. Read a magazine, I tell myself, that'll help you sleep.

I switch on the bedside lamp and delve under the bed where I keep all my old copies of Guitar Player, Guitar World and The Guitarist. I don't know why I keep buying those mags really. They're full of the same old crap month after month. To be fair, there are always a couple of interesting articles and interviews worth reading here and there, one or two in every issue perhaps, but the rest of it you don't need to bother with.

If you've ever read a guitar magazine you'll be more than familiar with the kind of stuff I mean. Firstly there's all those old chestnuts like the blues scale for beginners (accompanied by obligatory interview with Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy), string bending techniques, how to solder a treble booster to the tone pot of your Les Paul copy, the history of collectable Gretsch guitars, etc, etc.

Then there's those tedious equipment reviews. Points out of ten for the very latest Taiwanese technology that makes a transistor amp sound exactly like a valve amp (I mean why don't they just stick fucking valves in them to start with?) Plus, of course, there're all the latest pedals: the delay, the compressor, the pitch-shifter, the phaser, the octave, the auto wah...the Fuzzomatic Hypermetal Thrasmaster...the Hi-band Super Stereo Flanger, Mark III Gti..... I mean, stick your guitar through that lot and whatever you play, it simply ends up sounding like the squeal of a tortured synthesiser.

Another thing they have in those magazines is thousands of ads for teach-yourself-guitar videos that will, with just ten minutes practice a day, supposedly turn you into a virtuoso performer (or your money back). A hundred killer chops by Alexxi the Axeman, lead guitarist of some American glam rock band you've never heard of.

I'm sure the only reason anyone ever buys those videos is so that they can take the piss out of the people who present them. I mean, it's hard to take the educational content seriously when Alexxi appears in lesson one with pink lipstick, pierced nipples and a pair of leopard-skin cycling shorts. Honestly, where on earth do they get these people from?

Imagine, right, if Alexxi the Axeman were your dad. Imagine that. You're sitting in class at school about seven or eight years old right. And the teacher does that thing that teachers always do, where they go round the class asking everyone what their mum and dad do for a living. All the other kids are saying stuff like, 'My mummy drives a big, big truck. It's got sixteen wheels and sometimes she parks it right outside the house, and in the holidays I ride around with her in it,' or, 'My daddy works in a bank, or a factory that makes computers, or a laboratory where they invent new kinds of paint,' or whatever.

What are you supposed to say? You can hardly admit to your classmates that for a job your dad lies on his back on top of a fifty thousand watt Marshall stack wearing a studded rubber posing pouch and waggles his tongue in and out whilst pretending to wank off the neck of his Gibson flying V. I mean, you'd be pencilled in for a date with the educational psychologist before anyone had time to say, 'Personally I blame the parents.' So, you have to lie and pretend your dad's a dentist or a plumber or something. Sheesh. Glam metal, eh - what the fuck are those guys on?

Anyway, despite the fact that guitar magazines are always packed with Alexxi lookalikes and all that other shit, I have to admit that there is something strangely compelling about them. And if I can't sleep or I'm bored, I invariably find myself reading through them for the umpteenth time. Honestly, I've got piles and piles of the bloody things going back years. Every now and then I sort through the most recent editions. I generally end up chucking most of them away or giving them to my students (which, sadly, in many cases amounts to very much the same thing). However, there's always a few magazines that I like to hang on to. Mostly they're the ones with blues articles in; BB King Interviews, the Blind Lemon Jefferson story, TAB transcripts of Elmore James riffs, all that stuff.

They're all quite interesting, the magazines I've kept. But there's one of them, a ten-year old copy of a little-known magazine called Little Red Rooster, that's kind of extra special. And the reason it's so special is because without it, I guess, there would probably be no Casino Kid and I wouldn't be lying here now in this house with the indoor swimming pool and the recording studio down the end of the garden. Because it was that magazine that kind of sparked off everything that happened. I'll tell you more about exactly how everything happened in a little while (honest). But firstly, lid just like to you to read something that was in that Little Red Rooster magazine - the life story of the legendary Delta guitarist DB Daniels.