SUGGESTED LISTENING: Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual (Warner Bros, 1990)
Now, that name
rings a bell.
Remind me who
they were?
Okay. It’s 1:30 a.m. after one of the more unusual days in my life, and there are five things to report. Some good, some bad.
Webster showed up (good).
I’ve had more interesting conversations with my toilet seat (bad).
I think his cat’s on the way out (bad).
I’ve just been out on a date with the Other Vet (good).
She just left (bad).
Blame Snow Patrol for that last one. And Coldplay And possibly Keane, although I can’t really remember now. And, in a roundabout sort of way, Lance Webster.
I’ll try to race through the day’s more mundane elements. Picking up the vet’s van on Sunday night was a relative doddle, for I had the genius idea to call my mother and suggest an impromptu Sunday lunch visit (“Oh, darling! What a lovely idea! It’s not like you to actually volunteer to come round”), then announced to my dad halfway through my second helping of pudding that I needed a lift to Stanmore. Even the most cursory of glances at the map had baldly displayed Jackie’s woeful understatement with regard to Van Man’s house being twenty minutes’ walk from the tube station. It took virtually twenty minutes to get there by car. The other thing she had neglected to fully describe was how much of an utter nightmare this boxer dog Nigel was. “Frisky” my arse. I’m usually all right with animals, having harboured a few in my time, but f*cking hell. He spends most of his time trying to walk on his hind legs, “affectionately” biting everything in sight. He’d eaten almost all my jumper by the time the pets were in the vehicle. On a previous jaunt he apparently managed to undo a cage door and swallow a whole chinchilla, so now he has to ride up front with the driver. He did most of the steering on the motorway. I decided to stop at Alan’s house for a break, also to tell him the good news about my impending meeting (“Sod off and don’t come back ’til you’ve got something proper to tell me”)—when I returned to the van Nigel had chewed the road atlas to shreds, changed the channel on the radio and taken off the handbrake; the van had rolled backwards and was resting perilously against the bumper of Alan’s Mini. That Alan didn’t notice is a bloody miracle.
It’s also somewhat miraculous that I was able to safely transfer the various creatures into the back room of the surgery, inexpertly shove some food in their direction and take up my position at the front desk before Lance Webster himself strode through the door at ten to eleven. Trust the contrary bastard to be early. I was hot and sweaty from my exertions and had damn near forgotten what I was there for in the first place. He was looking shabbier today, unshaven, wore a pretty hideous striped granddad shirt that suggested a rather ill-advised purchase from Marks & Spencer, and eyed me with a look of distrust that made my body temperature drop about ten degrees.
“Where’s Jackie?”
“Jackie?”
“The usual assistant,” he responded crisply.
“Oh, Jackie. Well, she …”
I froze midsentence. He was doing it again! Narrowing his eyes at me strangely! He’s exactly the same. With shorter hair. I might as well have been sixteen and back at the Harlow Square. What is it with that look?
“She’s picking up her mother. I’m the … um …”
“Well, I’ve got a cat to pick up: Jessica.”
He fiddled about in his pocket and gave me a handwritten chit, which I studied blankly. My eyes were doing that annoying thing they do when I’m really nervous, which is water, basically. I could vaguely make out “Jessica—Webster” and the date. Not that it mattered.
“Is she back?”
“Um, yeah, I’ll go and get her,” I spluttered, and hurried off down the corridor. Weird. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but he seemed … rude. Without actually being rude. The best that could be said for the whole thing so far was it proved I’d not been tripping and that it actually was him. Oh, the hilarity, if the chit had said “McAllister” or whatever.
I unlocked the back-room door and was greeted with a gargantuan lick from the perpetually upright Nigel. I’d tied his lead to the handle of a filing cabinet in the far corner, which he’d pulled right across the room.
“Not now,” I growled, pushing him away and grabbing the yellow cat carrier which contained Jessica. But then I stopped for a second and took a few deep breaths, marvelling at the surreal position I’d squeezed myself into. I reflected that if it all ended now, at least I’d have done this. At least I’d have returned an ailing cat in a yellow box to my all-time musical hero. All was suddenly quiet. Even Nigel was momentarily still. I let Lance Webster (yes!) wait for a few seconds longer, then pushed open the door.
He was alternately glancing at one of those information posters (“Is your pet overweight?”) and texting someone when I reached the waiting room. One of the two activities must have cheered him up a bit, as his manner was appreciably different.
“Ahh …” he smiled, upon seeing his moggie. “How’s she been?”
Oh, no. Please don’t start asking me technical questions.
“Okay,” I replied. “She’s, um, eaten some breakfast.”
“Good.” He poked a finger through the mesh door of the carrier, which Jessica acknowledged with a sniff. “It’s just prolonging the inevitable, of course, but …”
“Ah.”
He sighed, sadly. “Yes. Mind you, it would help if the other one wasn’t terrorising her the whole time. Actually, while I think of it … have you got any of that hormonal stuff that you spray to stop them urinating everywhere?”
Thank God I once owned a cat.
“Feliway? Yeah, I think so …” I looked at the products stacked up on the shelf and located a little purple box. I then tried to hand it to him, but he was still busy with his creature, so I was left standing awkwardly with my arm out for a few seconds. I was going to say, “Here’s your spray,” but that sounded peculiar, so I settled for a cough.
“Oh! Sorry!” he exclaimed, took the box, looked up and then treated me to a full-strength, 1991-style Lance Webster grin, dimples and everything. Blimey. Christ knows what sort of look I must have given him in return. I fear that my eyes probably widened, my mouth opened slightly, as if I’d just been injected with something. We held this tableau for what seemed like about five minutes, then Webster himself coughed.
“So … are you going to take some money off me?”
“Oh, shit! Yes.” I moved round to the other side of the desk and sifted through the bills that Jackie had clipped together. “That’s … wow, five hundred and fifty.”
“Plus this?” he asked, waving the spray.
“Ah. Sorry. I’m, um … new here. Has it got a price on it?”
“No, not that I can see.”
“Right.” I fought the temptation to say “Hey!—have it on the house. Have an operation, get the pissing spray free.” Instead, boringly, I settled for phoning Jackie. Webster didn’t seem to mind. He sat down while I rang, busying himself with his chequebook. Finally she answered and gave me the correct price.
Thinking back now, from the vantage point of lying on my bed in the small hours drinking the last of a bottle of leftover wine, it seems hard to accept there was nothing I could have done to take more advantage of the situation, but I’m afraid it’s probably true. I’d like to be able to say it was enough, just as it was with Bj?rn from ABBA, to share the company of musical brilliance for a few fleeting minutes and, in this case, at least to talk about something; but I don’t think I can. I was pretty pissed off as he left—bearing his doomed animal, still grinning, admittedly a far cry from the curt so-and-so who’d entered the building five minutes before—although of course I didn’t show it. I even managed a proper smile. I toyed with the idea of saying “Thanks, Mr. Webster” just for a laugh, but thought better of it. I shut the door behind him and then took a look at his cheque. HSBC. Reading Broad Street branch. Funny, you don’t expect people like him to bank in normal places—but I suppose that’s just silly. His writing was a mess. “Five-six-seven-fifty.” How strange. He writes cheque amounts like Ron at work. Now I think about it, his dad was an accountant. That must be it. Then I eyed his signature. Mr. G. W. Webster. Funny; I thought he’d changed his name to Lance by deed poll. Clearly not.
I fished around in my bag for Alan’s scrapbook, which I’d brought along for moral support. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Please excuse the fact that Alan is going through his “interesting handwriting” period and seems to have abandoned the use of most uppercase letters:
FRIDAY 24 AUGUST 1990
mega city 4, mudhoney, MAGPIES, faith no more
f*cking brilliant only gonna be breif cos the pens running out, what a cracking day. janes adiction pulled out which was a right pisser but megas were amazing, mudhoney good stuff although had to pick clive up about 4 times because we’d had about three bottles of mendip each, some shit irish band came on and nick cave was well boring so we just drank more then MAGPIES who were absolutely splendid, lance on good form, he did this brilliant thing before look who’s laughing cos there were loads of rockers showed up to see FNM. he made all the rockers put their hands up, then all the indie fans, then got the indie fans to go to the rockers and say “good evening, welcome to reading festival, this is our festival now but thank you for coming anyway, this is the thieving magpies who are from reading and they’re about to do one of their top ten hits”—it was well funny, the bloke I said it to was okay but clive’s told him to piss off after about five words, I reckon there must have been some fights. then FNM played who were great but their sound was shocking, patton finished hanging off the scaffolding, didn’t bother with the cramps but went and found a magpies bootleg and lisened by the tent with more mendip but the BEST THING WAS that I met LANCE BY THE TOILET after FNM and got his autograph, all right it’s a bit [word I can’t make out, but I think it’s probably “unco,” i.e., uncool] but I was laddered and couldn’t be arsed to think of anything good to say. READING IS AMAZING … neds tomorrow
You can imagine what Alan’s entries were like when he wasn’t being “breif.”
Stapled to the page is a label from one of the bottles of “mendip” (full name actually Mendip Magic, a strong cider we had bought in bulk from a crustie) which Alan had hastily ripped off and presented to the passing Webster. I remember being obscenely jealous of this. Alan had a knack for spotting members of bands while out and about, often for striking up relaxed banter with them. I never spotted them, apart from that one time in Harlow. But Alan was constantly seeing the f*ckers, like he had a sixth sense for it. And in the most incongruous places. He once saw Carl McCoy from Fields of the Nephilim in Boots. Barry Mooncult from Flowered Up in (honestly) a florist’s. Andy whatsit from New Fast Automatic Daffodils on a platform at Manchester Piccadilly station (he even claims they went for a pint together). I remember wandering around Reading that year desperately trying to spy my own exciting crop of indie celebs, but to little avail (I think the best I managed was Jonathon, the indie DJ at Camden Palace, but you saw him everywhere). So, anyway—Webster’s autograph is just a scribble and the originally black ink has turned browny-green over the years, but I held up his cheque and compared the two scribbles, made under such wildly different circumstances, and I have to admit the similarity sent a little tingle down my spine.
I sat back in the vet’s now silent waiting room (apart from the occasional muffled whimper from the perpetually vocal Nigel) and my mood plummeted. Not only had Lance Webster already been and gone, leaving me with bewilderingly few options for taking the matter further, but I still had a day’s arsing around with animals to get through. For free. I glanced at my watch and, to be frank, the idea of f*cking off occurred to me. The Other Vet would be arriving any minute. If I just left the keys on the desk and snuck out the door, letting it lock behind me, that wouldn’t be too bad, would it? The animals would only be alone for, what, two minutes. I’d helped them out with the day’s most important and arduous task; they could surely manage the rest of the day? I mean, what would they have done if I hadn’t offered? I gathered up my belongings and stood up, giving myself a last-minute karma check. Was this okay?
But by the time eleven o’clock had struck, two things had magically happened: one, I had been transformed into a selfless hero of the hour, possessed of endless public spirit and generosity, sensitive, thoroughly modern, masculine and (perhaps) attractive; two, I had decided to rub along through the day after all. The power of women, eh?
All right, bearing in mind that our fourteen-hour relationship has just come to an abrupt and fairly acrimonious end, by which I must be slightly influenced, I can still say that she wasn’t that attractive. I think it was more the initial shock of her bursting through the door (carrying her bike), actually being female and close to my age, then the fact that she spent the next five minutes telling me how wonderful I was for giving up a whole day and how much she’d heard about me from Jackie (eh?), all the time flashing her eyes and doing that tactile thing. I mean, I suppose it’s just nice to be flirted with, and complimented and stuff, because to be frank (and I don’t mean the violins to come out here) it’s been a while. So when she finally put on her white tunic and disappeared inside the consulting room, I was gasping a bit. Okay, I’m being unfair. It’s also because she’s … you know. Pretty. An ingredient not lost on me when, some eight (nonetheless knackering) hours later, she (yes, she) suggested we go for a drink.
Now, before you start worrying that this is all getting perilously close to the Nick Hornby zone, there’s a good reason for telling you all this. Here we have, or had, a fairly standard thirty-year-old London-dwelling Englishwoman. Born in Kent, I think, normal school, studied to be a vet in London. Likes doing normal London things: drinking, partying, eating out, going to the cinema. Clearly—although we didn’t discuss it properly until much later—enjoys music, as she mentioned she had tickets to this year’s Glastonbury But halfway through the evening, which was going very nicely, thank you (a few pints in, chat flowing, the pub buzzing but not too crazy), the following exchange occurred.
“Well, at least you only have to talk to them on the phone,” she was despairing, on the subject of the general public. “I actually have to meet the f*ckers. Tell ’em what’s wrong with their bloody pets.”
“You don’t enjoy it?”
“I love the animal part.”
“You love animals’ parts?”
“Silly,” she laughed. “I love the actual vet bit. It’s the bloody public-relations bit I can’t bear.”
“Right.”
“You know what I wish?” she began, playing with an empty crisp packet. “I wish it could be a vet drive-through. They drop the animals off at a kiosk, bugger off and wait in the car park. Then they get called over the loudspeaker when I’ve finished, drive to a second kiosk where they get their pet back and a printout of what’s wrong with them.”
“That’s a great idea. I should think they’ve got those already in America.”
“Probably.”
“But you do get relatively interesting characters in your place,” I suggested, deciding the time was right.
“Like?”
“Well, the guy today, who picked up Jessica the cat. Just before you arrived.”
“Jessica? That old tabby with lymphoma?”
“Lymphoma,” I winced. “That’s like cancer, yeah?”
“It is cancer. Poor thing.” She drew her index finger sharply across her neck and shrugged.
“Curtains?”
“Weeks, I’m afraid. Maybe less. The guy’s heartbroken, though. He keeps taking her in for pointless treatment. Seems to not care too much about the cost.”
(Ah. So maybe he has got a few bob stashed away somewhere.)
“Well,” I confided, “you know who that guy is, don’t you?”
“His name is … um … Webster.”
“Yeah,” I smiled, patiently. “Lance Webster.”
“Okay,” she nodded, still expecting something more.
“Lance Webster,” I repeated. “Used to be the singer with Thieving Magpies?”
She frowned and swallowed a mouthful of beer.
“Now, that name rings a bell. Remind me who they were?”
There it is.
I mean, I ask you. This kind of bloody thing happens all the time. Remind me who they were.
Usually, depending on who has said it and how much I’ve had to drink, such a comment heralds the arrival of a rather large argument. Not because I’m offended, you understand—it’s just that I’m genuinely confused. Nah, bewildered. Flabbergasted. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t compute with the way my brain operates.
Who were they? Only the biggest British alternative band in the world, between the years 1991 and 1995. With the arguable exceptions of The Cure and Depeche Mode. Oh, and maybe New Order. “Bad Little Secret,” their biggest UK hit (although far from my favourite song of theirs, as it happens), held the number-two position on the singles chart for three weeks (only kept from the top spot by that stupid “Please Don’t Go” song). Bruise Unit, the 1992 album that propelled them into the same arenas around the planet as the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and REM, shifted four million copies. Between 1989 and 1995, the Thieving Magpies sold out Brixton Academy a record-breaking twenty-five times, including three four-night runs. In addition to goodness knows how many NECs, G-MEXs and festival-headlining slots. But no one ever remembers all this. They just have vague memories of a band who were kinda fun down at the student disco, but who were ultimately forgettable. Or, if a music journalist is talking, an outfit who represent quite how bad indie music managed to get, before Britpop came along and, by the grace of its f*cking hairdo, corduroy jacket and afternoon drink at the Good Mixer, saved us all.
Or, even worse, a recollection like the one my “date” offered me.
“Oh, I know—they did that song that went ‘Nothing ever happens, dum-dum de dum-dum de dum…’”
“No, that was Del Amitri.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I have no idea how people do it. But they do.
“You remember,” I coaxed. “‘You still don’t know how … look who’s—’”
“‘… laughing now,’”she finished off.
“There you are! You know them.”
“Yeah, I know that one. Christ, that was him?”
“Yup.”
“Blimey,” she remarked. “I always kind of preferred the Mondays and the Roses, though.”
“Ah.”
“You’re a big fan, I take it?”
“Um, yeah,” I mumble.
“Wow. So it must have been quite a kick for you, meeting him today?”
“Sort of, yeah—I’ve met him before, though.”
Technically not lying, but all the same I decided it was a good time for a toilet visit. The last thing I wanted was my noble, gallant and (not to mention) date-acquiring day’s activity to be exposed for the devious, self-interested and ultimately useless exercise that it really was. I regrouped with the assistance of the mirror in the gents’; I get pretty flustered on this sort of occasion and need to check that I’m still with the programme, especially after a minor blow like this one. It’s funny, if I’d mentioned the Magpies and she’d exclaimed, “Oh my God! Not them! He was the most hideous creep and all their videos sucked!”—I’d have been happier. Marginally. But it’s the indifference that does my head in. The predictable, let’s-ring-up-XFM-and-ask-them-to-play-“I Am the Resurrection”-for-the-fifteenth-time-today-style ennui which leaves me gagging. The sort of musical apathy that drives a listener straight into the arms of … well. You’ll see.
Having said all that, I am nothing if not a nine-months-single, thirty-something loser with a few pints inside him who wouldn’t mind a shag. I returned from the loo and the evening rolled happily along, music remaining firmly on the conversational reserve bench, and before I knew it they were chucking us out of the pub. How the decision was made to come back to mine I can’t now remember, but I do recall being glad that Polly was still at her parents’ house, and then having a bit of a snog in the kitchen. That, unfortunately, was as good as things got.
“You got any music?” came the enquiry, after I’d poured us a glass of wine each.
“Of course! What do you want to hear?”
(Mental note: never ask this question. Just select. It’s so much easier.)
“You know what I love, love, love to listen to on nights like this?” she enthused, already starting to dance a bit.
“No,” I replied, hoping I had whatever it was.
She took a sip of wine and proclaimed, with some drunken passion:
“Snow Patrol.”
Oh God.
“If I lay here … If I just lay here …”
She closed her eyes and started to sway her hips.
“Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”
“Oh, really?” I asked, feigning innocence.
“Have you got that?” she beamed. “Or Keane?”
“Um …”
“Is it any wonder I’m tired … Is it any wonder I feel uptight … Oh, such a good song.”
“Yeah, I suppose … I’m not sure we have it …”
She clapped her hands, gave me a big kiss and asked excitedly, “Okay, what do you have? Show me. Which one’s your room?”
Before I could respond she’d skipped off down the corridor. I followed, hoping my quarters weren’t in too much of a state. She turned into Polly’s room and snapped on the light.
“Ah, that’s my flatmate’s room.”
“Bloody hell, what a tip! So this one must be yours,” she smiled, bursting into the room opposite. “Oh, such boy colours …”
She settled down next to my unruly stacks of CDs while I folded a few items of clothing and generally tidied up a bit. Her fingers skipped through some titles that clearly didn’t register and it was a while before she spoke; each time she did, it irritated me.
“Nirvana, cool … Oh, you’ve got the Pulp Fiction sound track! Excellent … Mondays … Oh, I love the first Oasis album … Who the f*ck are they? [I think she was eyeing a Butthole Surfers album at this point] … The La’s. Oh my God, ‘There She Goes’ is so amazing … Loads of people I’ve never heard of! … Oh, here’s a Thieving Magpies album—let’s have a look … Oh my God, it really is him!”
“We could put that on if you like?” (It was the MTV Unplugged album.)
She frowned. “Not terribly romantic stuff, though, is it?”
I was rapidly losing interest in the whole thing.
“Chili Peppers … Oh, it’s an old one, though … Wonder Stuff. Has this one got ‘Dizzy’ on it? [I didn’t bother to reply] … Christ, have you actually got anything recorded recently?”
“Yeah, loads! I think there are some Elbow albums in there …”
“Boring.”
“Fratellis? Boards of Canada?”
“Yeah, shall we try to stick to people I might’ve even vaguely heard of?”
“Or Arctic Monkeys?” I held up their CD hopefully.
“Bit punky for late at night, perhaps?”
“There’s vinyl too …”
“Oh, bit of a palaver. Has your flatmate got some music?”
Without my say-so, she strode back into Polly’s room and to her diminutive CD rack, where, I knew full well, some true horrors lurked. I hovered in the doorway, huffing a bit.
“Oh, this is a bit better! … Bj?rk … Moby … Scissor Sisters … Oh my God, she’s got Snow Patrol! [She extracted this for later use and continued] … Bluetones … Leonard Cohen … The Verve … Oh, Joni Mitchell. I love this … Coldplay! Is this the one with ‘Fix You’ on it?”
“It had better not be,” I grumbled.
“Cheer up, Granddad!” she laughed. “Can we hear this?”
“Um, I’d rather not …”
“Oh, come on. It’s gooorgeous. Better than your Snoozing Magpies,” she chuckled, giving me another kiss. My sour face must have said it all. She frowned again, this time genuinely. “Seriously, Clive, brighten up! It’s only music.”
“It’s not only music,” I snapped, and stomped off to the kitchen.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. She’s right. Lighten the f*ck up, sad boy. Let her stick on her Chris Martin claptrap, or whatever she damn well wants, have another drink, forget about it, and get ready for some action. But no. I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m getting old—or older, at least—but I can’t be arsed with that sort of thing anymore. I was going to spare you the cringesome details of the next ten minutes but you ought to hear them, really, as it gives you some insight into what really goes on in my head. Put differently, it demonstrates what a f*ckwit I am. Especially when I’ve had a few.
She followed me into the kitchen, her face a picture of uncertainty; although it was pretty close to a certainty that the useful part of the evening was already over.
“I’ve a feeling I’ve done something to offend you,” she began gently, “but I can’t say I know what it is.”
“No, it’s not you,” I sighed.
“Well, that’s good to hear,” she commented, with a healthy twist of sarcasm.
“It’s just … oh, I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t know, then …”
“Sorry,” I muttered, taking a swig of wine. Bloody hell, I thought I’d seen the back of this kind of discussion.
“Is it your ex?” she asked suddenly.
“My ex?”
“Well, in the pub you said your ex had pretty shit taste in music.”
“Well … yeah, but not really,” I dithered. “But I suppose it does still kind of depress me that, um … it begins with having sex to Kings of Convenience, then finishes with fighting for the CD player over Queens of the Stone Age versus KT Tunstall.”
“Uh-huh … it sounds like it is your ex.” She picked up her mobile and checked her text messages: always a sign that an evening is going well.
“But then, you think … if it begins with fighting for the CD player, then where does that take you?”
She looked up, appalled.
“Oh, what the f*ck is your problem? For a start, we weren’t fighting for the CD player; you were. And plus, what makes you think this is the beginning of anything? We were having fun, having a laugh, and now suddenly you’ve made it into something awfully heavy and boring.”
“Oh.”
“And what the hell is wrong with KT Tunstall?”
“Um, nothing, it’s just …”
“What?”
“Um … what she represents.”
“Oh, do yourself a favour, Clive, take a load off.” Gathering up her bag now.
“You going?” I asked, downcast.
She shrugged. “You tell me.”
And then for some reason I still can’t really understand, maybe because I correctly figured that the evening couldn’t get much worse, I did this:
“I’m writing a book about Lance Webster. I’m trying to interview him. That’s why I volunteered to work at the vet’s for the day.”
Now here’s the interesting thing, if you’re interested in atmospheric shifts. Instead of storming out, hurling abuse (“How dare you deceive me!,” etc.)—she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with her bag on her knee, her facial expression flattened, and she nodded, bidding me to continue. But from that split second onwards, it permanently ceased to be a romantic evening.
“I discovered he lives on this street, so I followed him on Saturday.”
“Why do you want to write a book about him?”
“Vindication. Among other things.”
“For you, or him?”
I smiled at this. “Him, really.”
“Why does he need to be vindicated?”
I sighed. “Because everyone’s forgotten who he is.”
“How do you know he’s not pleased about that?”
“Well, I don’t. But that’s what I want to find out. Do you remember … well, maybe you won’t, but … he had a bit of trouble, just before the band split up … he got drunk onstage at a festival, had a fight, got arrested …”
“Actually, yeah … I’ve a vague memory of something.”
“Well, after that, the Magpies were forgotten within six months. Virtually erased from the rock history books, as though Lance had been arrested for child molesting rather than simply having a pissed punch-up.”
“What was the fight about?”
“No one knows. There are all sorts of rumours.”
“Like?”
“This friend of his had vanished a few months previously. People reckon he was told she’d been found dead that night, or something. The guy he punched was just a security guard. It’s pretty clear he was just … you know.”
“In the line of fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he go to jail?”
“No, but I think he got fined or something. But that was basically the end of his career.”
She shrugged again, and stood up. “Well, I don’t know … but if I were you I’d be careful. People don’t usually enjoy reliving shit like that.”
“Do you want another glass of wine?” I asked, aware of the fact that I’d enjoyed the last minute or two more than I had the rest of the evening.
“No, I’d better be going, Clive. It’s really late.”
As I let her out, she gave me a look such as you might give someone who’s about to climb a skyscraper without a rope.
“Take it easy, will you?”
“I’ll try. Oh … and sorry.”
“Yeah,” she nodded, and was gone.
So there we are. Yes, I am alone on my bed—no night of hot passion for me—but at least I told the truth. In the end. And I don’t have to pretend not to be disgusted by some turgid musical bollocks that, in truth, would have been liable to seriously affect my performance anyway.
But I’m still wound up. If tonight has done one thing, it’s helped to crystallise my feelings regarding the Magpies’—and all their ilk, as a matter of fact—having been effectively wiped from the parlance and playlist of the musically savvy, and the knock-on effect this seems to have on people like The Other Vet. It really is remarkable. I plonk my wineglass on my bedside table and turn to my much maligned piles of CDs, eventually locating another battered jewel case with a familiar picture of an empty hospital bed in an empty room, above which the handwritten statement THIEVING MAGPIES/BRUISE UNIT is crudely but unmistakably scrawled. Lance’s voice leaps out of my speakers: “I’m ready for the tears … I’m ready for the nausea”—and we’re off.
It’s never been difficult for me to understand why, back in 1992, this record was outselling its nearest British rivals by something like two-to-one. The reviews at the time say it all, with unanimous word-processor ejaculation (“the sound of a band who have REM, Nirvana, U2 and Guns N’ Roses firmly in their sights, and are ready to fire,” decided Q magazine). But looking closely, there’s always been a difference with the Thieving Magpies. A subtle difference-practically invisible in 1992 and barely noticeable in 1993—but a contradiction nonetheless existed that would become crucial to their survival, or lack of it, in music lovers’ hearts and minds beyond their eventual demise. The fact was: they had little or no influence over any other groups. There was a small clutch of imitators just after their debut album, as there always would be, but from about 1990 onwards you’d be hard pushed to find Thieving Magpies listed as a reference in any “musicians wanted” advert, let alone quoted as an inspiration by a hotly tipped newcomer. Of course, this doesn’t always matter; in fact, U2 have been the biggest band in the world for more than twenty years, and aside from a few losers doing impersonations of The Unforgettable Fire in 1986 they’ve hardly influenced a soul. But it doesn’t matter, because U2 are just so damn successful and so damn good at being U2 that no one cares.
And it didn’t really matter either with the Magpies, until Lance’s colourful evening at the Aylesbury Festival. The world-straddling Bruise Unit tour rolled on into 1993, they had a bit of a break, Lance rather ill-advisedly tried his hand at acting (a small role in the television adaptation of Stephen Fry’s The Liar), the band reconvened in the autumn of 1994 (“back for the Christmas term,” as Lance put it) to record what would be their final album, The Social Trap. It was released in May 1995—and it simply didn’t matter that, in the meantime, Kurt Cobain had died, pulling the carpet from under every other alternative rock band’s feet; it was of no concern that Britpop had arrived, that everyone was suddenly singing in cockney accents about making tea or cleaning their teeth, or that the major cultural concern was what Noel would say about Damon next, or vice versa; it didn’t matter—not when the music was as good as it was on The Social Trap, with its healthy pair of singles, “Retro Hetero” and “Contribution.” The album entered the UK charts at number one and lingered within the top forty for the following three months. The singles easily graced the top ten. The tours sold out. Aylesbury, a three-day bash in only its third year, shifted most of its weekend tickets immediately after Thieving Magpies were confirmed as Saturday-night headliners. In short, there was nothing to worry about.
Then Lance got drunk, and the rest is … well, tragedy.
All right—so fifty thousand loyal fans were cheated out of a gig and insulted, but that goes no way towards explaining the speed at which The Social Trap flew out of the world’s album charts and into its charity shops. The few onlookers who have since bothered to apply rational thought to the deletion of the Magpies from the world’s musical hard drive have argued, with some substance, that while Britpop was unable to harm a popular band, it was certainly capable of inflicting lethal damage on an ailing one; but they offer no reason for why, a decade later, the Thieving Magpies are still pretty much absent from any retrospective compilations, pop cultural histories, “best album” polls or “classic indie” club nights (and I think I’ve heard “Look Who’s Laughing” once on the radio in eight years).
My own rather meagre explanation is that as they were merely popular, rather than having any real influence, it’s been very easy for the Magpies to be completely forgotten, because hardly any bands have had to alter anything about themselves in order to do so. Looking at it another way it would be impossible even to attempt to forget a band like Joy Division, because so many musicians would instantly lose their entire careers.
Not that the Magpies are the only group in this predicament. There’s a whole crop of them. A lot of these bands were listed by that cretin Tony Gloster during the final, fateful Magpies press conference at Aylesbury: Carter USM, Jesus Jones, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff, The Mission (he also mentioned The Cure, who now seem to have been vindicated thanks to the undeniable length and quality of their career, and some recent name checks from the young and hip). To Gloster’s list I’ll also throw in the Levellers, EMF and—f*ck it—Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Let’s analyse them all for a moment. Between 1988 and 1994, all these bands had large fan bases, big indie hits, albums that sold respectably, extensive tours abroad and high-billing (in some cases headlining) festival appearances.
Okay. Here we go.
But so did: The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The La’s, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans. In some cases, these bands were less commercially successful than those in the above paragraph. But the highbrow alternative pop fraternity still, more than ten years after they played their final, off-key note, go potty over The Stone Roses. They still call Shaun Ryder a “genius” or a “poet.” They refer to The La’s sole album as “the greatest debut ever made.” They cite Screamadelica as “a pivotal moment in the history of popular music.” They constantly request “This Is How It Feels” and “Saturn 5” in indie clubs and on radio shows. And there’s a nice little comfy chair set aside for dear little Tim Burgess at the right hand of Noel Gallagher, even though The Charlatans haven’t made a convincing album in a decade.
So—why? Well, I will venture two possible reasons. Both of which combine to form one big, fat, intangible and thoroughly irritating reason.
Reason Number One. If you think of Britain as a country of two latitudinal halves, with its “equator” bisecting the island at a point roughly in line with Nottingham, all the bands in the first group—with the exception of The Mission—were from the South.
All the bands in the second group were—or are—from the North.
The North, we are taught, is traditionally grittier, harder, more industrial, somehow more real, and—due to its widely alleged and lamented habit of being forgotten by the southern jessies in Whitehall—is the perennial underdog. That very British preoccupation. Therefore the idea of gritty, hard and real rock music coming from the North is an infinitely more attractive and sexy proposition than having it performed by someone from Wiltshire. And if there’s any remaining doubt, the North is, I need hardly remind you, where The Beatles came from.
Reason Number Two. If you think of British rock music as an art form bisected by the two types of refreshment that fuel it, i.e., drugs and alcohol, then all the bands in the second group made music that is inseparably—in some cases heavily—linked with taking drugs. Most of these bands make you think of acid, ecstasy, being “blissed out” or at the very least stoned off your nuts, sometimes more. Indeed, the histories of two of the bands—Happy Mondays and The La’s—have been almost entirely dictated by the presence of drugs.
But all the bands in the first group, with the possible exception of EMF, had no such association. They were booze bands. They make you think of cider, snakebite and black, a few pints of cheap lager at the very least, sometimes of being violently sick outside the student disco. How dreadfully gauche.
There you are. Two reasons.
And the one big, fat, intangible and thoroughly irritating reason that they join forces to create?
The bands from the second group … are COOLER than those from the first.
That’s it.
I’ve said it.
It doesn’t make it any better, but I’ve said it. That’s what I reckon.
What does it mean? I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But I’ve said it.
And having said it, and having had a pretty rancid day, and being finally pissed from the cocktail of beer, wine and no dinner inside me, and not having the single f*ckingest clue what to do next with the whole Lance Webster debacle, I’m going to bed, probably for the rest of the week, so good night and f*ck off.