SUGGESTED LISTENING: The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses (Silvertone, 1989)
Why you’re sitting here
still thinking about
all this shit is beyond me
Well, for a start, I’ve sort of misled you about something. Two things, actually. One is that the teenage Alan and I didn’t take any drugs. The second is that we didn’t go a bundle on any of the Manchester bands. Both these things are slightly untrue. Not that I am suddenly revealing we spent all the early nineties off our tits, wearing flares and fishing hats, listening to Northside and informing all and sundry we were “havin’ it”—but we did indulge in the occasional smoke and, increasingly, as the nineties wore on, pill. It all started at Spike Island.
Not at the gig, you understand. On the way home.
Having spent an underwhelming New Year’s Eve in the local pub vainly trying to convince some girls that our tonsils would be worth investigating, we spent the first few hours of 1990 stretched out in Alan’s parents’ copious lounge, where—having initially dismissed it as drippy, tuneless mush—we finally “got” The Stone Roses.
“This stuff isn’t so bad, man.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “You just have to chill out to it.”
We listened on, getting appropriately excited when everything goes doolally at the end of “Resurrection,” then flipped over the disc and started again.
“What do you think about drugs?” Alan mused, munching a cream cracker.
“Not sure, really. Smoking doesn’t really appeal to me. I physically can’t do it.”
“Takes practice, man. But I was really thinking about the more chemical stuff. Speed … trips and so on. Ecstasy. I wouldn’t mind trying it sometime.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied. “It’d have to be the right occasion, I think.”
The right occasion presented itself when a month or so later The Stone Roses announced plans for their Spike Island gig. We ordered our tickets and spent the spring wondering how on earth we were going to get there. Despite the trouble we had getting back from The Heart Throbs gig in Harlow that April, we decided our budgets were too meagre for anything other than hitching. Alan’s dad gave us a lift to junction five of the M1 (the ridiculous sight of two indie oiks getting out of a spotless top-of-the-range Mercedes, then holding up a cardboard sign saying YOUNG AND SKINT, IN SEARCH OF PARADISE—BUT SPIKE ISLAND, CHESHIRE, WILL DO MUST have been a treat to anyone driving north at that moment). And there we waited, at eight o’clock on a thankfully dry May morning … for around two hours. At last an unmarked lorry stopped half a mile up the road and stuck its hazards on.
“Yer want Runcorn?” the driver yelled, once we’d reached earshot.
“Yeah, thereabouts!” I shouted back.
“Better check he means Runcorn, Cheshire, and not Runcorn, f*cking Scotland,” Alan grumbled as we trotted the final few yards.
I opened the passenger door and smiled uneasily at our driver. He was a short, stocky bloke in his fifties with grey hair and a red beard. He frowned at me and spoke in a breathless, prematurely irritated way.
“Yer getting in or not?”
“Er, yes, thanks, can I just check … you do mean Runcorn, Cheshire?”
“Yer know another one?”
“Ah, no. Thank you.”
It took us half an hour to fully realise he was drunk. Initially we just thought his truck was a bit dodgy—something about the wheel balance that kept sending us veering into the adjacent lanes—but soon the truck’s cab became sickly with booze fumes and he started taking large, obvious swigs from a hip flask. Finally he started to nod off. Alan and I exchanged worried glances, silently wondering if we’d live to see Birmingham, but just as we were passing Northampton a miracle occurred.
“I need a slash,” the driver spat, steering his lorry across two lanes to join the service station’s slip road. No indicators were involved in this action.
“Aw, shut the f*ck up!” he bawled at the resulting fanfare of horns.
He parked in the services’ lorry zone and wordlessly dismounted. We waited until he’d rounded the corner, then scarpered across the picnic area into some bushes.
“F*ck,” I spluttered. “What a total nutter.”
“I knew it,” Alan stated, in his usual worldly tone. “As soon as he stopped so far up the motorway, I knew it was a bad idea.”
“Yeah, sure,” I nodded sarcastically.
We hung out in the bush for a few minutes, then saw him in the distance, staggering back. He jumped back into the cabin, manoeuvred the truck out of the space and drove off. The memory of picking us up had simply ceased to exist, consumed by cheap gin.
“Mad old bastard,” summarised Alan as we brushed ourselves off. “He’ll be dead soon.”
Temporarily putting the problem of onward transport to one side, we grabbed a burger. We were sitting on the wall outside the services’ shoddy main building, silently chewing in the sunshine, when I spied a familiar figure making his way through the car park.
Even from this distance we could see Billy Flushing had committed not one but two style crimes: he was wearing a Stone Roses T-shirt (never, ever wear the T-shirt of the band you’re actually going to see), and his hair was slightly longer at the back than it was at the front. Alan and I were dressed in black jeans and carefully selected Thieving Magpies T-shirts (mine from a recent tour, Alan’s from much earlier in their career, which I was naggingly jealous of), our hair shorn around the edges but deceptively floppy on top. We considered ourselves the epitome of alternative cool, which Billy fell some considerable distance from. That said, I didn’t think he looked quite as horrendous as usual (he had at least traded his black school shoes for some DMs)—a view Alan was unlikely to share.
“All right, guys?” he beamed.
“Hi, Billy,” I murmured. Alan looked away and began to moodily study one of the picnic tables.
“You’re not going to Spike Island too?” he gushed.
“Uh … yeah, we are,” I admitted, feeling there was no point in lying.
“Silly! You shoulda told me; we coulda shared the petrol. Ah, well. See you there,” he remarked, bobbing off into the cafeteria.
Alan and I remained silent for another minute, after which—very gently—I cleared my throat.
“Don’t even think about it,” Alan snapped.
“Oh, come on.”
“No.”
“Alan, it is already eleven o’clock …”
“I don’t care.”
“Even if we drove straight there, we wouldn’t be there before two.”
“I don’t care!”
“And for all we know, we might have to wait another couple of hours for someone to—”
“I don’t give a shit. I’m not arriving with that knob.”
“Well, we can drop you off and you can walk the last mile or something.”
“I’m amazed he can even f*cking drive, man.” This, of course, was sour grapes.
“Yes, what was it you failed on?” I leered. “Parallel parking, was it?”
“Piss off.”
“Well, I think it’s bloody silly—he’s going exactly where we’re going. We don’t even need to hang around with him once we get there.”
“Too f*cking right we don’t.”
Billy came bouncing out at this point, happily slurping a milk shake.
“Still here? Not hitching, are you?”
And so, two hours later—Alan sulking in the back of Billy’s orange Vauxhall Chevette, me chatting to the driver but keeping the conversation free of our former lunacy—we finally approached our destination in a queue of like-minded vehicles on the M56. Billy was impossible to shut up; so much so that I began to agree that Alan and I should cover the last few miles on foot (“I’d better get in there early, if you don’t mind, Billy—to set up my fanzine stall”). He was commendably frank about his reasons for attending the gig: “I’m not too keen on the band, but I’ve heard girls are easy when they’re on ecstasy”—which proved the only sentence of Billy’s to prompt the slightest response from Alan (his then embryonic but now infamous sceptical belch-scoff).
The gig itself wasn’t up to much. That may seem something of a cop-out for what, in some circles, is seen as the crowning moment of Madchester, one nation under a groove, the pre-Britpop benchmark for what indie could achieve, and all that bollocks, but it just seemed like a lot of people hanging around to me. The weather was all right but the “support acts” consisted solely of tedious DJs; no one was remotely interested in the second issue of the Peanut (the five black splodges on the front were meant to be the Inspiral Carpets); and we couldn’t find any cider. Billy understandably assumed he’d be spending the rest of the day with us, which meant having to tolerate a grumpy, uncommunicative Alan. Even the famed ecstasy was unexpectedly hard to come by. When we finally found a suitable character bearing the inoffensive-looking beige pills at around half past seven, we painfully handed over thirty quid and waited for something to happen (Billy decided not to partake, knowing he’d be driving later). After an hour and a half the only detectable difference was I’d developed a headache and Alan claimed to be “hearing the bass more.”
The Roses came onstage at long last; we tried to push forward with our usual blend of rucking and going along with the “Mass Forward Movement,” but there really didn’t seem to be one. People were dancing but the only frenzied jumping up and down appeared to be taking place about half a mile in front of us. The sound kept getting blown around and was woefully quiet compared to the passable sound systems of earlier. During “Sally Cinnamon” I looked around at the darkening sky and reflected that this wasn’t really my scene. I longed to be back where the cider flowed freely and the bands crunched where the Roses drifted; the audience leapt, kicked and punched where this lot swayed and waved their hands noncommittally. Everyone seemed relatively happy but I couldn’t really tell why. The band cantered to the end of their set and everything got slightly more exciting during an extended “Resurrection,” then a semi-decent firework display was unleashed and the show was all over, bar thirty thousand sweaty kids squeezing back over the bridge to the mainland. Alan, in an interesting turnaround, started to make noises about finding Billy (we’d lost him just before the band came on).
“Oh, so you like him now, do you?” I joked.
“Don’t be daft, man, I just can’t be arsed to hitch.”
We stepped out of the stream of exiting punters and waited by a fence to see if we could spot Billy. An older guy was already standing there holding a large camera and sucking on a cigarette. After standing there for a minute, Alan sighed loudly.
“Well, those tablets were a f*cking success, weren’t they.”
I nodded. “Thirty quid down the drain.”
“Did you think the band were any good, man?”
“Nah.” I frowned. “Couldn’t hear a thing.”
“I’m gonna see if I can find some chips,” Alan announced, stomping off.
The camera guy turned round to me and smiled.
“Had a dud?” he asked.
“What?”
“Just heard your mate say you’d taken a ‘tablet.’ Hasn’t done you any f*ckin’ good, has it?”
“I don’t think it’s my thing, really.”
“Bollocks,” he pronounced, puffing smoke in my face. “How long ago d’you take it?”
I looked at my watch.
“About three hours ago?”
“Rubbish. You’ve been conned.”
“You mean they were … ?”
“Duds, yeah. F*ckin’ corn flour or summat. Here, try these.”
He handed me another couple of pills, white this time.
“Oh, no—that’s okay, thanks,” I told him politely, as if he was offering me some sponge cake.
“Go on! Take ’em. Don’t want you kids goin’ back down south saying our drugs are shite up here.”
And that appeared to be the end of the conversation. The bloke ambled off, leaving me to study my gifts. When Alan returned with his snack a few minutes later I recounted the episode; he immediately grabbed one of the pills and knocked it back with a mouthful of water, so I did the same.
“When in Rome,” Alan shrugged.
A minute after that, Billy appeared.
“Hi, guys, wasn’t that amazing?”
As we pushed through the partying throng back to the car, we discovered why Billy’s experience differed so dramatically from ours: he’d somehow managed to achieve his aim of accosting a loved-up female, with whom he’d had a “fiddle” behind one of the burger vans. Alan still refused all direct communication with Billy, but instead repeatedly murmured, “It’s all bullshit,” in my ears. Occasionally he’d offer Billy the packet of chips, but withdrew them when he tried to take one. By the time we reached the car I was getting pretty sick of this, but I was a little distracted by a strange tickling feeling I had behind my ears. As we started our long wait to leave the car park this tickling had spread to the joints of my mouth, and had also started to develop in my gut. Then my slightly frustrated mood lightened up a tonne-load, and before I really knew what was going on Alan and I were leaning out of the car windows, hollering back to the other cars in the queue, dancing to other people’s music, telling each other it was a great gig and ordering Billy to drive faster.
“How can I drive faster?” muttered Billy, still creeping along behind the other vehicles. “You guys are so weird.”
It must have taken us ages to get to the motorway but I didn’t care. I was too busy telling Alan that I wanted to go back in time, and asking Billy to change lanes because “it feels nice.” Finally addressing him, Alan asked Billy whether he had any dance music. Billy responded by putting on his tape of The Stone Roses. This was greeted with a roar of approval; and so, travelling at probably no more than twenty miles an hour back down the M56, Alan and I relived the Spike Island gig, the way it should’ve been: screaming out the lyrics to “Waterfall,” aping Brown’s crazy backwards-style warbling on “Don’t Stop” and waving frantically to other revellers during “This Is the One” as we all gradually sped up. We didn’t even mind when some geezer shouted “Thieving Wankpies!” in the direction of Alan’s T-shirt.
If only my memories of the evening could end there. If only we drove all the way back to Hertfordshire in those blissful spirits, Alan finally talking to Billy as another human being, perhaps even saying hello to him in school on the Monday. But no. As soon as we turned onto the southbound M6, Billy’s car started to make worrying noises. As we approached Knutsford Services these noises worsened: horrid, grinding sounds that seemed to emanate from the entire lower body of the car. In Alan’s and my heightened state of—shall we say—alertness, these struck us as variously hilarious (“Billy, man, d’you give your car curry instead of petrol?”) and scary (“F*ck, man, this is getting a bit hectic”). Finally the car started to lose power; we were doing a maximum of ten miles an hour as the car crawled up the services’ slip road.
“This is bad,” frowned Billy, remaining admirably calm as we limped into the petrol station. “Are either of you guys members of the AA?”
Of course the answer was no.
I’ve relived the contents of the following ten minutes countless times in my head, praying for them to turn out differently; like watching a disaster film when someone’s already spoiled the ending for you. But I’m always forced to endure the same grim details: Billy going inside the garage to be told there’s no mechanic around at this hour to look at his dying car; Billy phoning his dad to discover the AA policy doesn’t cover any other members of the family; Billy looking vainly inside his bonnet; Billy looking vainly inside his wallet. And Alan, oblivious to any of this, still pilling his nuts off, delightedly chatting and flirting with a pair of bubbly female Spike Islanders whose blue Fiat Uno had just pulled into the forecourt, their stereo pounding out the sound of Jesus Jones as they filled up the little car for their journey back to London. In truth, I too was still very much all over the place with the effects of the drug, and I can’t deny that the thought of a joyful ride home with these two sweet-smelling indie chicks was quite breathtakingly attractive, but I knew full well: this would be wrong.
“Come on, man,” Alan was blethering. “They’re giving us a lift!”
“We can’t!” I spluttered. “We can’t leave Billy here!”
Alan shrugged nonchalantly.
“It’s not your problem, man.”
It’s not your problem. Of course. It’s never your problem. I’d been proper friends with Alan for about six months now, and was familiar with his over developed sense of self-preservation—but this was pushing it even beyond his usual standards.
Billy was agog at the gathering atrocity.
“You can’t just f*ck off!” he yelped. I was standing in the centre of the forecourt, equidistant to the two vehicles. The girl driver had paid for her fuel and was skipping back to the car. Alan was already inside, leaning out of the window.
“Clive, stop being a knob! Come on!”
I looked helplessly over at Billy, who looked like he was going to cry.
“Billy I …”
“Well, at least give me some f*cking petrol money, then.”
I pulled my wallet from my pocket and tried to focus on the contents. There was nothing. It had all been spent on useless drugs. The girls’ car beeped its horn.
“Sorry, Billy,” I muttered, and ran off.
Ouch.
As you know, this wasn’t the last time I saw Billy, but that final glimpse of him from the Fiat’s back windscreen—tired, alone, penniless, accompanied only by a useless hunk of orange metal, stranded two hundred miles from home at two in the morning—has always lingered with me, like a massive glob of chewing gum on my shoe of conscience. To this day, I have no idea how he got home. When I next spied him in school the following week I was too guilt-ridden to go anywhere near him. Alan, of course, reverted to his standard behaviour of denying Billy’s existence. Yes, I allowed it all to happen. Yes, I went along with it, didn’t protest. But what can I say, your honour? It was all about the girls and the music. You know how it is.
Girls and music.
Having relived that sorry escapade on this pleasant Sunday morning as the bus trundles along towards Soho, I’m finding myself quite gut-wrenchingly nervous. I keep telling myself it’s only Billy Flushing I’m going to meet—Billy “Quasi” Flushing, who once managed to trip over his own arm in the school computer room—but it doesn’t help. It occurs to me that Billy’s the second famous person I’ve had drinks with in less than a month, and for some stupid reason this thought makes me feel a bit unusual. As I’m a bit early, I slip into Bar Italia to steady myself with a quick coffee.
I sit there in my silly smart trousers and silly shirt and even sillier jacket, and reflect that perhaps it’s not the fame that’s making me nervous. Perhaps I’m just subconsciously preparing for the paltry little achievements of my life to be hurled into Billy’s bottomless swimming pool of global success; even more so than with Lance Webster.
But what nonsense. It’s Billy f*cking Flushing. The dweeb I ditched. I neck my coffee, march across the road to the unmarked door and buzz the intercom.
“Forsyth’s.”
“Oh, hi, I’ve an appointment with … Billy Flushing.”
“Certainly, sir,” replies the female voice. “Come upstairs.”
This is one of those private members’ clubs that are so private you don’t even know you’re in a club. You just feel like you’re in some very rich person’s house. I trot up the carpeted steps and emerge into a dark, slickly furnished sitting room, with some more stairs ascending to my right. An extremely pretty girl (dressed, to my bemusement, in a cropped T-shirt and jeans) leaps up from behind her laptop and shakes my hand.
“You must be Clive,” she beams.
“Er, yes.”
“Have a seat. Billy will be with you in just a moment.”
I sink deeply into one of the black velvet sofas while the girl summons a colleague on a tiny CB radio.
“Leona, please tell Billy his brunch has arrived.”
She gives me a melting smile and settles back behind her computer. “Smart casual,” my arse. I feel like sprinting to Oxford Street and buying some proper clothes.
“Oh my God!” says a voice suddenly. I turn to where the sound comes from, and there he is, Billy Flushing himself, coming down the stairs. “Who the hell is that?” he laughs, bounding over to me and grabbing my hand before I’ve even had time to raise myself from the incredible sinking sofa. Our handshake morphs awkwardly into a strange sort of hug as I stand up; not that Billy looks remotely awkward himself.
“Clive Beresford, Clive bloody Beresford.”
“Billy Flushing,” I respond, trying to sound as natural as I can. I want the world to pause for a minute so I can study his appearance properly, but Billy has never been the sort of guy that does pauses. Now with his mantle of authority, he does them even less.
“What the f*ck do you look like, you lunatic? You look like you’re going to a boat race! Come on up,” he commands, turning back where he came from.
“Your PA said it was ‘smart casual,’” I protest. He glances round and shakes his head.
“Oh God, sorry. Emily is so bloody by-the-book with people. I need to have a word …”
There’s a distinctly transatlantic edge to his voice, I notice—you can hear it in the way he says his Ls. “Emily” is “Eh-mul-y.”—“Bloody” is “Bul-uddy.” Plus there’s a little roll on the Rs. I follow him upstairs and we come into a plush bar, where another stunning girl is opening wine.
“Kate, can we have some drinks on the roof? Bloody Marys? Clive, you wanna Mary?”
“Er, yeah …”
“Two Marys, and menus.”
Kate nods and grabs two tall glasses.
I only get a proper look at Billy once we’re on the roof terrace (a disappointing view, but the sun is shining; a man and a woman are already out here, drinking coffee). His face is certainly the face of Billy Flushing, not a lot has changed; but his skin looks healthy and taut, his big, chunky glasses look incredibly pricey, his black hair is scruffy but perfect and there’s no trace of the clumsiness or bad posture which engulfed him as a youth. He’s wearing rich, dark green combats and a perfectly fitting white T-shirt, a chunky silver bracelet and trainers that look like they’ve been biked over to the club just a few minutes ago. Although he probably wouldn’t be recognised if he walked across Leicester Square on a Saturday night, everyone he passed would know he was someone; it’s that kind of look. He’s also trim, muscular, and generally exudes health and vitality. The bastard. We settle ourselves at a table near the ledge and get started.
“So, Clive Beresford,” he smiles. “Clive Beresford. The highs—and indeed the lows—of the last sixteen years, if you please.”
You don’t require full details of the autobiography I embark on, but it’s important you should know that I manage to tell the truth. Though I also refrain from mentioning Lance Webster. At first. Towards the last five or six years of my dull story, when less and less of any conceivable merit took place, his face noticeably drops.
“So … who are you writing for now?” he asks.
“I’m … not. Myself, really.”
“You’re not? Clive, come on! What’s your job, then?”
“I’m temping. For a bank.”
“For a bank? Oh, Clive, no! We gotta sort that out, for a start. Have you got a girl?”
“Nah, split up eight months ago.”
“Well, I can’t help you with that one, my friend.”
“So, what about you?” I enquire, to which Billy grins and launches into his own rundown. Predictably it’s a lot more interesting than mine: aside from the success story you already know (which he continues to be appreciably modest about), the following facts emerge:
He moved permanently to New York a year ago, but still has a house in Rickmansworth and a flat round the corner from the club (“I’d invite you for brunch there, but I’ve forgotten where all the supermarkets are”).
He moved permanently to heterosexuality (as he describes it) two years ago, when he met his current girlfriend, Clara, but has essentially been bisexual since leaving school.
He runs a fledgling indie label in London called Civilian Flush, one of the reasons he’s over here this week.
Chatting to Billy produces a predictable blend of pleasure and misery. Obviously it’s great to see him doing so well and, encouragingly, he keeps saying stuff like, “I can put you in touch with the right guys, easy. You’re a good writer, man! I could get you writing in New York within a week. I assume you still f*cking hate comics, else I would have you working for me!” But throughout most of the conversation an enormous, vulgar-pink neon sign is flashing at me from behind Billy’s head, complete with accompanying music, asking the obvious question: WHAT THE F*ck HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE?
After a while, naturally, Billy asks me about one of my current “writing” projects, so I take the plunge and tell him about the recent Webster escapades. I tell him everything—or, at least, the first part: seeing Webster in the street, following him, working at the vet’s and then putting that stupid letter through his door. Billy is almost on the floor with laughter.
“Noo!” he hoots. “Clive, you f*cking nutter, man! You weirdo! That’s actually quite dark! I like that! And you’ve no idea what you wrote in the letter?”
I shake my head, glugging my drink.
“All I know is it had my email address in it.”
“How d’you know that?”
But of course, I can’t tell him. Not without telling him all of the next bit: bumping into Webster in the pub, not being able to say it’s me ’cos he sent the roadies round; calling myself Alan ’cos it’s the only name that pops into my head; having to pretend I don’t know who he is; looking at each other’s writing; him finally realising who I am and running off, blah blah. By the end of this saga Billy almost needs an ambulance he’s laughing so much, and the other people on the terrace have turned to look, perhaps thinking we’re engaged in a tickling contest.
“Oh, my God, Clive! You freak! This is too much! What have you turned into, man?”
“I know.” I sigh, chuckling sadly. “It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s desperate, that’s what it is, mate. We need to sort you out! Cheryl, two more here,” he instructs a passing waitress. “So, anyway—are you saying he’s emailed you since then?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d it say?”
“It was weird. It said he didn’t like being lied to, and he’d spent lots of time and money escaping from what he used to be …”
“So he was in therapy, basically.”
“Was he?”
“I dunno, I’m guessing.” Billy shrugs.
“Right. Then it said something about the past being dug up, and now he wants me to help him bury it, and to ‘be ready.’”
“Oooooh!” screams Billy, his campest utterance yet. “Wow! This is great! Why don’t things like this happen to me? That sounds spooooky!”
“Yeah. But there were no further instructions.”
“Aw, come on. Sounds like he wants you to get back in touch with him.”
“No.”
“He must do, man! It’s obvious! Why would this guy, after all that’s happened, give you his own f*cking email address?”
“Dunno.”
The next round of drinks arrives. Billy busies himself with the straw, and I get a brief flash of what he used to be like with a milk shake.
“Hmmm,” he ponders. “Lance Webster. Did they ever find out what happened to that crazy bitch?”
“Gloria?”
“Yeah! The one he was shagging.”
“They were never shagging,” I state firmly, to a stern look from Billy.
“Oh, Clive. Wake up, man! Everyone knows that! Even I know that, and I was never into the bloody band!”
“Well, I don’t believe they were.”
“You’d defend their honour to the death, wouldn’t you?” he sniggers. “Christ, Thieving Magpies, eh? I remember you guys … you and that cock Potter, in your little indie uniforms. Sorry, dude, but you guys were so sad. I mean, you probably thought I was a total loser at school, but you were like f*cking football supporters with that band …”
“Yeah, I s’pose,” I grumble. “I was never into football, so they were like my surrogate football team.”
“So, are you gonna reply to him?”
“I dunno yet. There was something else he wrote, a weird bit about thanking me for all I’d done.”
“For looking at his writing?”
“No,” I frown. “This was written to Clive, not the other guy.”
“But you are the other guy.”
“Yeah, but this was … different. I can’t quite describe it, but it was blatantly written to Clive, and not ‘Alan.’”
“And did you ever do anything for him?”
“Well … not really. Apart from writing a load of stuff in my fanzine, back when he was freaking out, and some letters in Melody Maker and so on. Y’know, supporting him. Telling everyone to leave him alone. Nothing he’d have known about, though.”
Billy giggles and shakes his head.
“Clive, I don’t mean to belittle you, man … but I do feel kind of sorry for you. Christ, I mean … you’re such a nice bloke, you always were, but you do end up sticking your neck out for people who probably don’t deserve it. Isn’t it time you put yourself first?”
“Well, I kind of am, really.”
“How so?”
So I spin him my usual yarn about Webster being forgotten, and how vindication for him would be equal vindication for me. I try Billy with my theory that all those druggie northern bands continue to bask in reverence while all the southern “booze” bands—particularly my beloved Magpies—are quietly swept under the carpet, and how I want to redress the balance. Billy waves all this away.
“What can I say? Sorry, Clive. Thieving Magpies were boring. Everyone knows that. Lance Webster’s one of the most boring men to sell a million records.”
“He’s not!” I argue hopelessly. “He’s got mystery. Who else had such a public fall from grace that’s never been explained?”
“Where’s the mystery in that? He was just pissed off his career was going down the pan.”
“But that’s the point,” I insist. “It wasn’t. Not yet.”
“Well, I dunno. He always seemed pretty dull to me.”
“He wasn’t dull in interviews,” I point out.
“Who remembers interviews? It’s all words. People only remember actions—visual stuff.”
“I don’t agree.”
“Yeah, well … no offence, Clive, but you’re not the sort of person that counts. Yes, you love Lance Webster’s witticisms, Carter’s puns, but God, how far down the food chain d’you think that shit goes? Do you know why I don’t get too involved in movie adaptations of my stuff? Because I can’t bear how much they have to cut out. So I just leave ’em to it. At the end of the day, audiences don’t wanna think. People like songs for the choruses and catchphrases. They like films for a cracking good story with some laughs, a few bangs and crashes and a bonking scene. They like interviews for quick sound bites, and rudeness. Not intelligence.”
“What about Morrissey?”
“Morrissey was in The Smiths,” he shrugs, indicating no further explanation is necessary.
Something about Billy’s directness is both appalling and refreshing. I expect I’ll come away from this experience feeling rather like I did the few times I’ve ever been to a gym: that I enjoyed little of it, but it was precisely what I needed.
“You hate Liam and Noel for being mouthy, arrogant a*sholes,” he continues, “but they’re loved by a billion people for precisely the same reason. Yes, Ian Brown says f*cking homophobic stuff in interviews and gets away with it, gets arrested for plane rage, and people still love him. But what do you want? Everyone loves a bad guy. I know it’s not fair. You know it’s not fair. But f*ck it, that’s life.”
He takes a fortifying swig of his Bloody Mary.
“But don’t think you’re the only one. I f*cking love heaps of stuff-music, comics, films—which doesn’t get anywhere near the sort of recognition it deserves, even from the ‘alternative mainstream.’ But I ain’t crying. You talk as though you’re the only person who still likes Thieving Magpies, or any of those bands. That’s bullshit! I’ll give you two scenarios, right? One: an alternative radio station, tomorrow lunchtime, plays ‘Wonderwall.’ Or ‘I Wanna Be Adored.’ Or, I dunno, that f*cking Verve song. What happens? Nothing. Scenario two: the same station plays ‘Look Who’s Laughing.’ Or ‘Sheriff Fat-man.’ Or ‘The Size of a Cow.’ What happens? Twenty, thirty people phone up and say, ‘Oh, that song’s so amazing, haven’t heard it in years, reminds me of going to the f*cking student bar’ or whatever. They’re loved, man. Rather than just part of the f*cking wallpaper. And in the States? Let me tell you. If Thieving Magpies re-formed tomorrow—God forbid, but let’s just say—where would they play? Madison Square Garden.”
“No …”
“Madison f*cking Square Garden! Guaran-teed. People in the States, and in Europe, they remember. But I’m telling you, the British press sends out a warped f*cking viewpoint on culture, man. What’s big and what isn’t. Particularly for music. Dunno why. And when I say Britain, I really mean England, and perhaps Wales. Scotland and Ireland, they’re f*cking on the continent by comparison. You’ve no idea. England’s a weirdhole. Thank f*ck I left.”
I remember the Irish girls who accosted Lance outside the art gallery. Goddammit, the man might be right.
“But Clive … this is all just the gravy. Why you’re sitting here still thinking about all this shit is beyond me. You’re thirty-three years old, boy. The only way you can get ahead in your life is to forget all that shit, and get on with what you want to do. You want to meet this guy? You want to finally get that story out of him? You’ve f*cking got to go for it. You email him back, demand he tells you what you want to hear. Make sure you lay it on really thick, all the guilt tactics, tell him you stuck your neck out for him, back in the day, tell him he owes you, then drag those f*cking sordid details out, whatever the hell they are … and then you move… the… f*ck… on! You want to write for somebody? Come to New York, I’ll hook you up. You want to sit around on your arse dreaming of 1990? Stay right here.”
Stay right here.
We stay right there for another hour, blethering about this and that, returning to our main subject every so often. We put away a delicious brunch, have a few more drinks, then the natural time to go approaches and Billy calls for the bill. I’m not quite sure why, but I’m a little taken aback when it arrives and, having captained the entire experience—drinks, conversation and meal, right down to ordering my own food for me (“I know the best stuff they have here, dude”)—Billy announces, “So we’ll split it, yeah? It’s eighty-two quid, so that’s forty-one each, plus tip is forty-five … forty-five pounds and ten pence each.”
“Er … sorry,” I splutter. “I haven’t … um, I’ve only brought twenty along with me …”
“Oh,” he frowns. “Damn. Well, there’s a cash machine up the street.”
“Ah, right,” I nod, and put my jacket on. “Well, I’ll be back in five minutes, then.”
“Yeah,” he grunts, already starting to text somebody.
Billy waits until I’m almost through the terrace door, then howls with laughter.
“Ha ha haaa!! You goon! Of course I’m paying for the whole thing!”
“Wha … uh?”
“This isn’t even a proper bill,” he continues, scrunching it up. “I don’t get bills here, man! I own half the bloody club. Ha ha haa!! Your face was so classic!”
“Okay,” I smile, dripping with embarrassment. “You got me.”
Suddenly Billy’s smile vanishes, he reaches out and shakes my hand with startling firmness.
“Now that was for Spike f*cking Island.”
Fair enough.
And so I leave the cosseted world of the extremely successful and mooch off into the warm, sleepy Soho Sunday afternoon. As usual at these junctures, the temptation to install myself at a nearby pub, phone a friend and let the rest of the day take its long, boozy course, is compelling. But Billy’s pro active words are ringing loudly in my ears and I’m driven by some invisible energy back up to Oxford Street and straight onto the bus. By the time we hit King’s Cross I’ve mentally composed three-quarters of my missive to Webster, and even consider jumping off somewhere to get it done in an Internet café before I forget. But I stay on, repeating “You owe me” like a mantra as we lurch up the Essex Road.
Once at the flat, I storm through the kitchen (where Polly is drinking Pimms, wearing a bikini and midway through a jigsaw), settle myself down and begin to write what feels like the email of my life. And oh, it’s a good one. It’s beautifully written, sincere but not too cheesy, impassioned but steering clear of the stalkerish vernacular which doubtless screwed up my previous effort, well-argued, well-intentioned (I only say “you owe me” once, and make plenty of references to it being for his own good), there are even a few laughs (I think) and, crucially—for this is a bad habit of mine—not too long. I finish it, step outside for some air, come back and edit thoroughly, remembering to add appropriate heartfelt apologies for having misled and repeatedly lied to him. It takes me the better part of four hours, no further alcohol touches my lips (but our kettle works overtime), and then, just when I’m scanning one last time before guiding my mouse to the send button, my computer dies.
No. It really dies.
It quite literally does nothing. It’s like it has suddenly refused to accept electricity into any of its circuits any longer.
“Polly!”
I am so pissed off, so knackered, so unable to even consider writing the whole thing out again from memory, that I grab Polly’s laptop, open up my email page, hit reply to Webster’s original message and simply type this:
From: CLIVE BERESFORD ([email protected])
Sent: 3 June 2007 20:02:31
To: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)
Dear Lance
I’ll gladly help you bury the past as long as you tell me everything about the night of 12 August 1995. I think you owe me.
Clive
p.s. sorry I lied to you
I add my mobile number to the bottom of the email, hit send and watch the little dial go round and round in the corner of the screen, counting down the milliseconds I have to stop the thing from leaving. I exhale as the confirmation page appears, shut the machine down and join Polly in the kitchen for a large Pimms. The email vacates my head for the rest of the evening, not returning until I’m halfway to work next morning, at which point I chuckle heartily at life, with all the funny twists and turns that propel one to send abrupt emails to ex-pop stars on random Sunday evenings in June. But the even funnier thing is—it works.