The Alternative Hero

SUGGESTED LISTENING: Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, 101 Damnations (Big Cat, 1989)

That’s a bloody
silly name for a fanzine, man

Alan William Potter—thirty-four, slightly padded around his middle and hanging on for dear life on top, wearing a beige sweatshirt he wouldn’t have been seen standing next to at a bus stop six years ago—finishes his bacon cheeseburger with a wince (it’s probably the cheapest meat he’s eaten in months), takes a long drag on his Kronenbourg and reclines, his eyes following the path of one of the prettier bar staff as she saunters round the pub collecting pint glasses. Clive Beresford (my parents mysteriously neglected to bestow me with a middle name)—thirty-three, just a touch more portly than a garden rake, lanky hair with a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper and in need of a cut, the same competition winner’s XFM T-shirt I’ve worn for years in the hope that someone will think I work there-gathers up the remaining peas on his plate with a dollop of mashed potato and wishes, not for the first time, that he’d ordered the steak. You’d think I’d have mastered the strategy by now: if Alan is paying, order big.
“Nice?”
“Yeah,” I splutter. “Thanks.”
“Where the f*ck’s she gone with my card?”
I watch my old friend’s beady eyes as they try to make sense of the developing debate behind the bar. I finished recounting the Webster/day-at-the-vet’s saga some forty minutes ago and, while it’ll hardly win prizes for the most gripping story of the year, I’m still rather dismayed that Alan has yet to ask me a single question about it, much less give any advice on how to proceed. Instead I’ve been treated to a brace of mundane details about the fortunes of his business and an update on Jocasta’s latest cute-toddler antics, which today I’m not really in the mood for.
“Gotta go back in soon,” I sigh, eyeing the clock as it nears half past one.
“How’s it going in that dump, then?”
“Same-old, same-old. Moving offices on Friday.”
“They making any money?”
I start to reply but his attention wavers after less than a syllable, the barmaid hurrying past with an order of nachos.
“Love, sorry … any chance of getting my debit card back before this evening?”
She blushes and apologises; I decide my lunch hour is over.
“I’m going. Thanks for the meal.”
“Shit, man, I never asked—what are you gonna do next with Webster?”
“F*ck knows. See you.”
“Vorsprung Durch Peanut?” he calls, with a gratifying hint of guilt.
“Vorsprung Durch Peanut,” I reply, adding a little twist of misery and dejection to the final word. Ha. He deserves it, anyway. Even if he did pay for lunch.
Vorsprung Durch Peanut.
So what does it mean? It means nothing.
It was the first term of A-level history, you understand. Bored out of my mind after the euphoria of doing relatively okay in my GCSEs, I was sitting next to Billy Flushing—who was an incredible saddo really, but could be quite good value—and we’d been to see Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, a band that I’d decided to check out (as hundreds of others did) purely on the strength of their name. Despite Billy’s lingering love for all things Genesis, Marillion and Rush, he’d taken a passing interest in the new tangent my music taste had taken, and over that long, hot, final summer of the eighties we’d attended a handful of shows together (The Primitives, REM, um … Simple Minds), my parents recognising in Billy an adequately reliable companion (my mum knew his mum from Conservative Party functions). Billy remained largely unimpressed by these fairly standard rock outings, dwelling as he did in a world of comics and graphic novels (every trip I took with him to central London included a torturous thirty-minute section when I would wait outside the Forbidden Planet shop while Billy did … well, Christ knows what, really), but the slightly less obvious stuff I placed in front of Billy he loved. Carter—two punkist, anti-Thatcherite late twenty-somethings with their cheapo drum machine, Rottweiler guitars and pun-tastic lyrics—turned out to be right up his street. A more compelling draw for me was that Alan Potter, whom I was still desperately trying to impress, appeared to have little idea who they were.
“Who’s that, man?” he asked, when I sauntered across the school playing field wearing one of their T-shirts (that one with the baby on it).
“Oh, Carter,” I replied, with all the nonchalance I could summon.
“Right … yeah … saw ’em once, supporting someone. Can’t remember who …”
“I saw them last week at the Powerhaus.”
“Any good?”
“Fantastic. The ruck was brilliant. Stage-dived, too [this bit was a lie].”
“Hmm,” Alan murmured, idly watching some girls limbering up across the pitch. “I remember their drummer being great.”
I was delighted at this gaping hole in Alan’s usually spotless knowledge, though it presented a dilemma. Should I reply truthfully or, in the name of harmony, let his clumping error lie—but potentially leave myself open to looking similarly ignorant later on? Just as I was deciding, Billy showed up.
“Good grief, Charlie Brown,” he blethered, with his rather awkward chuckle.
I shrugged at Alan apologetically.
“That’s, um, one of Carter’s song titles.”
“That’s our favourite one,” Billy continued, beaming, his forehead bearing its usual sheen of sweat. He twitched, pulling his rucksack further onto his shoulder—an endlessly uncool manoeuvre. “The other good one is [and here he fully broke into song, head bobbing and everything] ‘Pump it up, Jack, pump it up, Jack—pump it up!’”
Again, I sighed and explained to Alan, “That’s, um, this song, on my T-shirt.” But it was too late.
“Laters,” Alan muttered, and wandered off.
“Billy!” I snapped, once Alan was out of earshot.
“What?”
“Couldn’t you be a bit more … ?”
I regarded him, his confused expression, his mum-cut hair, his relentless habit of pushing his glasses back up his nose. No, he probably couldn’t. Oh well.
“Want to go for a milk shake?” he enquired excitedly. I pondered my wealth of more attractive options.
“Yeah, all right.”
Anyway. Summer came and went, GCSE results arrived and suddenly we were sixth formers. Thinking this might mean a marked improvement in Alan’s at-school attitude towards me, I bowled up to him outside the assembly hall on the first day back and asked him how Reading Festival was.
“Um, yeah, it was wicked, man,” he responded, then frowned, played with his floppy hair and wandered off towards a group of people from his own year.
So there we were, Billy Flushing and me, halfway through an interest-free ninety minutes during which some old teacher, the identity of whom unsurprisingly escapes me, furnished us with riveting details of Bismarck’s progress up the Prussian power ladder. We started mumbling things to each other in stupid German accents, certain phrases from our life at the time: “I’ve got my spine, I’ve got my orange crush;” “Don’t ask any more stupid questions;” “Take me down to the paradise city” (all hilarious, I assure you), eventually coming across “Ich bin ein Berliner,” which Billy tried to convince me actually translated to “I am a jam doughnut” (which is kind of true, but I’ll let someone else explain that one). Finding this vastly entertaining, I shortly uttered those fateful words “vorsprung durch peanut.” And why? On account, obviously, of “Vorsprung durch Technik,” that nifty piece of eighties sloganeering, but also the aforementioned track “Good Grief, Charlie Brown,” which had led Billy and me to decide, just as fans of the Grateful Dead were known as “Deadheads,” that Carter USM fans should be known as “Peanuts” (it didn’t catch on).
Gawd. Sorry. It’s like describing an episode of a bad sitcom to someone.
And what, you may quite reasonably demand, was the earthly point of telling you all that?
Well, over the summer I had decided to start a fanzine. Apart from the fact I enjoyed writing, it seemed the only way of arranging my various ideas and opinions regarding this peculiar music whose trickle towards my eardrums had rapidly turned into a torrent, with all the attendant phrases, attitudes, subgenres and items of merchandise. What I wanted to achieve was something indie laymen could read and feel comforted by, reassured that they had a sane companion on this journey into the wide alternative yonder. As I knew comparatively little myself at this point, there would be a strong atmosphere of mutual discovery in my fanzine’s pages, with irreverent explanations of the various acts I encountered (Pop Will Eat Itself: “They’re white, they’re from Birmingham, but they rap! No one knows why.” The Pixies: “Completely barmy, the band all seem to be playing different songs to each other, apart from ‘Here Comes Your Man,’ which sounds like The Archies’ ‘Sugar, Sugar’ after a few pints.” The Stone Roses: “I thought they would be really good. They’re not”). The name of this nascent publication was originally going to be something to do with the Thieving Magpies, but I correctly figured it was likely to be taken more seriously by Alan Potter if it wasn’t. I had toyed with Info Freako but this also seemed too obvious. After that history lesson with Billy Flushing there was little doubt it should be called Vorsprung Durch Peanut. Billy had offered to be involved, and despite some reservations, I agreed.
The thing with Billy—and I think we’ve all had a friend like him at some point in our youth—was that you could have real, childish, eccentric fun with him, without caring for a second about how cool you ended up appearing. When I was with him, I sank (depending on one’s perspective, of course) to his level, and became a super, hyper, f*cking supernova geekboy, a nerd incarnate, laughing at things that weren’t funny, entertaining possibilities that a four-year-old would dismiss as immature, and crucially, because I was slightly higher up on the school food chain, could temporarily feel as cool as a bastard by comparison. But the problem was, should anyone arrive on the scene who displaced me from this little hierarchy—one of the “hard lads,” or Alan Potter, or any member of the opposite sex—I instantly wanted Billy Flushing to be swallowed up by the floorboards or to spontaneously vaporise. This facet of our friendship eventually gave rise to One of the Nastiest Things I Have Ever Done Ever—but we’ll come to that.
Alan Potter himself was a big part of the fanzine strategy though he was presently unaware of this. You may wonder why on earth I was still set on the idea of befriending the graceless sod when he was so blatantly uninterested in acknowledging my existence; here I must hold up my hands and utter two words of explanation, two timeless teenage preoccupations which, as we streak into the iPod-filled, MySpace, my-arse, your-Facebook latter half of the first decade of the twenty-first century, show absolutely no sign of waning: Girls, and Music. Alan seemed to know a lot of both. Billy Flushing, for all his entertaining observations and ability to make double history pass more quickly, had precious little of either commodity. My plan, then, was to get the first issue of the fanzine out as quickly as possible, making it so exciting that Alan Potter wouldn’t be able to resist getting involved with the next one. Cue: doors opened to a wealth of newly discovered bands, easy access to gigs (Alan had many friends who drove), respect from the sixth form at large, with particular focus on the female half. At least, that was the theory.
Work began in earnest, Billy on the design, me on the actual content. I had spoken to one of the trainee teachers—a lacklustre undergraduate known as Mr. Eversmith, who looked a good deal younger than us—and he had agreed to sneakily let us use the art-room photocopier as long as we provided the paper. Here Billy once again proved his worth: his elder brother worked for a stationery company. A tentative date in December was set for our first issue’s launch, but it quickly became clear that an extra ingredient was required. We couldn’t very well fill an entire organ of twenty (or even ten) pages simply with my ramblings on whoever ignited my interest from the pages of Melody Maker (which I’d recently abandoned Smash Hits for). Original material was necessary, and not just my ham-fisted attempts at album and single reviews. We needed a proper interview feature.
The most impressive coup for me would obviously have been an interview with Lance Webster, but superficial enquiries confirmed this was way out of our league. Further brainstorming boiled down to an unnatural selection of the acts Billy considered “not boring,” those whom I na?vely felt were within our grasp, and people we’d actually heard of: All About Eve’s Julianne Regan, Jesus Jones’ Mike Edwards, New Model Army’s Justin Sullivan and The Sugarcubes’ Bj?rk were all mentioned, among a very few others. We wrote to their record companies and were greeted, predictably, by deafening silence. After waiting vainly until half-term, I agreed to an idea Billy had suggested ages ago but for some daft reason I had rejected: try Carter USM.
Carter were a completely different matter. Slated as “ones to watch” (their anthem “Sheriff Fatman” had begun to work its magic on the more adventurous of the country’s indie clubs, and I’d noticed one of their badges had by now appeared on Alan Potter’s school jacket) but still hardly significant players even in the alternative sector, theirs was the only record sleeve I owned which bore a residential address. We fired off another letter and forgot about it. A week or so later I got home from school to a frosty reception from my mum, furious to report that someone from “one of those dreadful sex companies” had been on the phone for me.
“What did they actually say?” I demanded.
“Oh, it’s just too awful for words …”
“No, no, Mum—what did they actually say?”
“He said he was the boss of a sex machine,” she moaned, extracting the leftovers of a roast chicken from the fridge. “I can’t bear it, I never thought you’d get involved in anything like that …”
“Adrian Boss … and he manages Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine!” I exclaimed, as if this would improve matters. My mum blinked at me for a few seconds, then sat down and started angrily pulling bits of chicken off the carcass.
Of course she’d refused to take a number, but directory enquiries were useful for once and I was soon nervously speaking to the manager himself. Carter had a show at the Marquee the following Tuesday, he explained; there was a gap in their schedule after sound check, around seven-ish, when I was welcome to join them for a pint at a pub called the Blue Posts, “just north of Oxford Street.”
“Excellent!” exclaimed Billy, when I phoned him straight afterwards. “I think I know where that is.”
I had been so breathlessly excited about the whole thing, I’d forgotten to get a more detailed address.
“It’s not far from Forbidden Planet.”
“I don’t like Forbidden Planet,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but I do. I can nip in there before we meet them.”
Oh dear.
“Um, Billy … I was thinking … I’m not really sure we both need to go?”
“Eh?”
“Well, I reckon it would, you know … look a bit more professional if it was just one of us—otherwise it’ll just sort of look like two mates who want to meet their favourite band.”
“Which it sort of is,” Billy pointed out.
“Well, I don’t really see it that way. I mean, this is a big deal for us!”
“I agree. But as it was my idea, perhaps it should be me who goes.”
Strange thing about Billy: as awkward and difficult to take seriously as he was in person, he was actually very good on the phone, almost businesslike.
“But the whole fanzine idea was mine in the first place,” I countered, “so it should really be me who goes.”
“All right, how about you do the interview, I come along and take some photos?”
The thought of Billy bumbling around with his camera while I attempted to interrogate the duo was more than I could deal with.
“Billy, sorry—no. Next time. Once we get going. There’s just a bit too much riding on this first one. Please let me do it by myself. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
I felt pretty rotten. But sod it. I had an interview with Carter! How many other sixteen-year-olds could claim that? And the fact that they were on the cusp of some serious cult stardom (I knew this; I’d read it somewhere) meant I was officially going to be one of the hippest guys in my year. Schoolwide fame, popularity and gaggles of previously unobtainable girls were surely just the other side of the carol service. A state of affairs I sadly found too thrilling to keep to myself.
“You’re gonna do what?”
Guess who.
“Interview Carter,” I breezed, ladling some custard onto my sponge pudding. “Tomorrow evening.”
“Where?”
“Oh, up in town. Before their Marquee show.”
“What for?”
I grabbed some cutlery and mooched off with my lunch to an empty table near the back of the dinner hall. I didn’t even need to look back. As if I was pulling him by a string attached to his nose, Alan Potter followed, and put his tray opposite mine. Oh, the power.
“What for?” he repeated.
“Oh, for this fanzine I’m starting next month.”
“You’re starting a fanzine?”
“Yeah. Carter are going to be the first cover stars.”
I tucked into my curried something-or-other while Alan looked helplessly around him, frowning with the bewilderment of a dog who’d just had its ball taken away.
“What’s the fanzine called?” he asked, finally.
“Vorsprung Durch Peanut,” I enunciated, after swallowing what I had in my mouth.
“That’s a bloody silly name for a fanzine, man.”
“All fanzines have bloody silly names. That’s the deal.”
He stared down at his suddenly unappetising plate of chips.
“We wrote them a letter, the manager phoned back,” I continued. “They like doing fanzine interviews, apparently. More than they do for the proper music press.”
“Who’s we?” Alan enquired, with a suspicious glint in his eye.
“Me and … you know, the others involved.”
“You’re not doing it with that dweeb, are you?”
“Who d’you mean?”
“That knob in your year, with the glasses and the hunchback.”
“He’s not got a hunchback,” I protested.
“Yeah, he has. Quasi-Flushing. Billy-modo. So he’s doing it with you, yeah?”
“No. He’s helping out a bit, you know, providing some of the paper. But he’s not part of it.”
The shame of it. It gets worse, unfortunately.
“So, what are you going to ask them?”
“Well, a few things. About the album. About, you know … how far they want to go. About the lyrics. And stuff.”
“You must have a list of questions,” Alan improvised, forking some chips into his mouth, his appetite regained. “You’ve got to have your strategy worked out, man.”
“Strategy?” This was a concept that hadn’t occurred to me. I was interviewing them, not trying to beat them at chess.
“Yeah, sure,” Alan rambled, like the expert he wasn’t. “If they smell a rat, if they think you’re not for real, they’ll be out of there.”
“Really?”
“Of course, man.”
“But this is Carter. They’re, you know …”
“One of us?” Alan laughed.
“Yeah!”
“Don’t believe it. That’s how they come across, but if those guys want to get anywhere they’ll be complete bastards like everyone else. Especially to the press.”
It was my turn to look confused, as my mental picture of two chummy, wacky-haired men-of-the-kids drifted down the gutter.
“Don’t let that put you off, though, man!” Alan beamed, slapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll come along if you like, give you a hand.”
Without a second’s hesitation, I nodded vigorously.
“Okay, yeah! That’d be great.”
Hmm.
Well, the next day and a half passed with agonising lack of speed until, at last, we were alighting from the train at Euston. At this point in my life central London was a relatively unknown quantity to me. I fancied that I possessed passable awareness of its rough shape and contents, but in reality this consisted of little more than Trafalgar Square, Harrods, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Oxford Street and whatever other snippets had engraved themselves on my cranium from the occasional half-term shopping and “culture” trip with members of my family. Plus, as I acknowledged to myself with a hefty slab of guilt when Alan and I emerged from the tube at Tottenham Court Road, the bit of New Oxford Street that was then home to Billy’s beloved Forbidden Planet. It was a mildish November evening, which I was glad about; I was dressed in a black, long-sleeved Thieving Magpies T-shirt but had forgone any sort of jacket as none of mine was remotely what one would wear to meet a pair of fledgling alternative superstars. Alan, on the other hand, looked irritatingly cool in a Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother’s Milk T-shirt and a black leather jacket (which I later discovered was actually his brother’s). We sauntered down the rapidly emptying shopping strip and came to a halt at the corner of Newman Street, on which, Alan had assured me, resided the boozer in question.
“We’re a bit early, man—let’s walk round the block a bit.”
Alan’s standoffishness towards me had thawed considerably on the journey up (just as it had materialised on the way back from the first Magpies show). Rather than being pleased about this, I was actually pretty pissed off. Was he so surgically attached to school etiquette that he felt unable to communicate with me in a civil manner within a ten-mile radius of the place? How “alternative,” then, did that really make him? I planned to firmly ask him, as soon as the interview was behind us. But for now we nattered amiably about the musical concerns of the day.
“When’s it out?”
“Monday.”
“You gonna get it?”
“Dunno, man. I’m not really that keen on it.”
“Me neither. I prefer the other side.”
“You heard it?”
“Yeah, Janice Long played it.”
“I was thinking of just buying it on seven-inch so it gets a good chart placing.”
“Ian Brown reckons it’ll be number one.”
“He would. He’s full of it, that guy.”
“So what d’you reckon it’ll get to?”
“Top ten? Maybe.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Pisses me off, though, man. They’ll beat the Magpies to it.”
We rounded the corner and found ourselves outside the pub itself. Two minutes to seven. There was a moment’s awkward silence; I was feeling pretty wretched with nerves, and it wasn’t easy to tell whether I felt better or worse for Alan’s presence. On balance I think I probably felt worse. I was certainly going to be even more self-conscious with his seemingly unflappable confidence next to me, and was foreseeing all sorts of horrific tripping-over-word scenarios. So you can imagine how much better I felt when, just before we entered, Alan was the one to say it.
“I’m shitting it, man. I hope they’re nice to us.”
“We’ll be fine,” I smiled, and pushed open the door.
The first thing we noticed was the pub did not contain Carter. The second was that it was fairly hard to imagine it ever doing so. The youngest person there was about fifty-five. The barman looked about seventy, and more important, far from the sort of guy who’d be relaxed about the drinking age. Most people in the room looked up as we entered, then returned expressionlessly to their pints. A raddled old mess in the corner nursing half a stout looked like he’d recently died.
“You sure this is the place?” Alan whispered.
“What are you asking me for?” I hissed back. “You led us here.”
“But they definitely said the Blue Posts, right?”
“Yes!”
The decor was plain, unadorned dark wooden panelling, and probably hadn’t changed since the war. It was a good few years before the benefits (and the irony) of visiting such an establishment would occur to younger folk, and as we gingerly approached the bar the landlord smiled dubiously at us.
“Looking for McDonald’s?” he gruffed.
Alan coughed anxiously.
“Um … can we have a couple of pints of cider and black, please?”
“And you are, of course …”
“Eighteen,” we chanted.
He gave us a long, hard stare, then to our amazement started to pour our pints.
My drinking career still being in its infancy, there was quite a kick to be had from sitting in a pub with a pint. I hadn’t much affection for the bittersweet red liquid which I now sipped; it was simply a relatively palatable way of ingesting alcohol. (Lager made me gag after a few gulps, wine was considered far from appropriate and the only other drink I could tolerate was Southern Comfort and lemonade—although this was solely reserved for the purpose of getting pissed.) Still, I felt pretty pleased with myself as we occupied our table in the corner, and I almost forgot what we were really there for. After ten minutes or so, the novelty for Alan was clearly wearing a bit thin.
“Dunno, man …”
He took a large swig of his drink and frowned around the room. Everyone seemed engaged in dull conversations about work or sport. The pair of men nearest us were discussing the trials and tribulations of being employed by the Royal Mail, which had a large sorting office across the road; it’s likely this pub was the de facto company bar.
“I’m not convinced, y’know …”
“They’ll be along in a minute,” I asserted.
“It’s just that … I can’t think why they’d want to come and drink in a place like this.”
“Maybe they like the prices?” I mused. “That was a bloody cheap round …”
“Yeah, but …”
“… and there’s nothing wrong with it,” I continued, lowering my voice. “It’s not unpleasant. Just a bit … you know, old.”
“Yeah, but I’ve seen the sort of joints these people go for, man. Are you sure he said the Blue Posts?”
“Yes!”
“And you don’t think he was winding you up?”
“No!” I exclaimed, starting to get a bit irritated. “I had a long conversation with him. He was totally genuine. He went on and on about fanzines being the backbone of the independent music industry, all that stuff. Carter are a bit different, you know. We’re not dealing with Bon Jovi here.”
“Hmm. Maybe it’s something else, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe they’ve forgotten, or something better came up.”
“Bollocks,” I stated, quite enjoying bossing him around a bit. “It’s only twenty past seven. The sound check might be overrunning. It could be anything. Just relax. Shall we have another pint?”
Of course the answer was yes, but as the bottom of that next glass came into view even I was beginning to have my doubts. Fifty minutes seemed pushing it. I stood up and fished around in my pocket for some change.
“What you doing?”
“Thought I’d give my folks a quick ring,” I replied. “See if they’ve phoned to cancel or something. I dunno. Just an idea.”
I didn’t let on, but I’d also allowed myself to slip into the unfortunate habit of speaking to my parents halfway through an evening out to tell them I was okay, a policy I vowed to discontinue as soon as I hit seventeen. I ambled over to the pay phone at the end of the bar, recognising the still relatively uncommon feeling of booze kicking in, my legs feeling a bit light and my eyesight blurring a little around the edges. I dialled and pushed in a coin at the sound of the pips. Although the ensuing exchange with my mother was unremarkable, the ancient landlord started to eye me strangely towards the end.
“Yeah, I will … No, I promise … Well, I can’t have much more anyway, I’ve only got two pounds left … No, I’ve no idea … We’ll just wait a bit longer, I suppose, and then I dunno … come home or something … No, the Blue Posts … as in signposts … What was that? … What did he ask? … Of course there isn’t another one. How could there be another one? … Well, maybe, but not in the same area … I know … Well, they’re not pop stars yet, but … Yeah, okay, I will … See you later …”
I replaced the receiver and started back towards Alan when the landlord stopped me.
“Just a minute, my lad. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.”
“Uh … yeah?”
He’d finally twigged my real age, I was certain.
“Your father’s right.”
“My what? … Ah, yes. I was just, er …”
“There is another Blue Posts around here.”
I gaped at him.
“Is there?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “We call it the Teenage Posts, although it’s actually older than this pub, strange as it seems. But full of teenagers, y’see. Snotty little place, in my opinion, but I guess you’d prefer it.”
“What? Oh, shit!”
This met with a stern frown.
“Sorry, sorry! I don’t suppose you could tell us how to get there … Alan!”
A minute later we were sprinting back the way we’d come, veering left and left again into the alleylike Hanway Street, where we slowed to a fast walk. There was a palpable shift in ambience as we hurried past a few unnamed drinking dens and characters of questionable occupation. A skinny woman lighting a cigarette in a doorway asked us if we wanted to come in and play with her Lego.
“F*cking patronising cow,” Alan growled under his breath. “I’ve been going out round here for ages.”
But not, as it turned out, long enough to be aware of the funny-looking pub at the Tottenham Court Road end of the street, with a wonky Courage brewery sign bearing its name. It didn’t look like many London boozers I’d ever seen, the outside resembling a narrow shop or funeral parlour rather than a pub. But it did look suitably old and tatty, and the colourful movement we could detect through the frosted glass suggested a place considerably livelier than the one we’d just left. It was also infuriatingly close to the tube exit we’d surfaced from a little over an hour ago.
“Hang on, let’s get our breath back,” I commanded, leaning on a lamppost. Alan was frowning, looking up and down the street.
“Shit, you know … I think I have been to this place.”
“Yeah,” I replied, unconvinced.
“D’you reckon they’re still in there?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
“F*ck, man. What are we going to say?”
“The truth,” I shrugged. “That you got the wrong pub.”
Alan drew breath to protest but I was already heading through the door.
It was as obvious that Carter would frequent this Blue Posts as it was doubtful they’d ever darken the threshold of the other one. Crunchy indie music was merrily careering out of a copious-looking jukebox; young alternative-esque people of various shapes, sizes, hairdos and T-shirts were lounging around smoking and notching up empty pint glasses; and the bar staff looked tame. It was clearly a place we’d want to spend time in, Carter or no Carter. Which was just as well.
“Throwing Muses, man,” commented Alan, nodding at the jukebox speakers.
“Never mind all that. Where the f*ck are Carter?”
Not there. The pub was small enough to ascertain this within seconds. They might have both been in the loo, but this seemed unlikely. All the more galling was the distinct impression that they had been there; I could see several Carter T-shirts in the room, most tables had more empty glasses than seemed possible for the amount of drinkers present, and the general atmosphere was laced with anticipation. This was indubitably the pre-gig drinking hole, and Carter weren’t really big enough yet for there to be several of them. I locked onto an appropriate-looking group of folk and, fortified by the pair of pints inside me, stepped forward.
“Er … excuse me, this may seem like a silly question, but …”
A girl with cropped bleached hair and slightly mad eyes looked up.
“Hahaha! How silly?”
“Er … pretty silly,” I admitted. “You know the band Carter?”
“Yes?”
“You just missed them actually, mate,” volunteered a bespectacled bloke who sat next to her.
“They were here?”
“They were,” confirmed the girl, pointing to a couple of empty chairs. “Right here. And now they’ve gone. Haha!”
“F*ck,” I gasped, turning to Alan.
“Do you know them?” Alan asked the girl.
“Sort of,” she smiled.
“Did they say anything about being interviewed?”
A long-haired guy in a Mega City Four T-shirt across the table suddenly wagged his finger.
“Oi! Are you the fanzine?”
Gingerly I raised my hand.
“I am the fanzine.”
The whole table erupted with laughter and suddenly everyone seemed to be pointing at us. Alan and I stole a quick glance at each other for support.
“You knobs!” screeched the girl. “They’ve just been sitting here slagging you off for the last half an hour!”
“Really?”
“Yes! Hahahaa! ‘These bloody fanzines,’ they kept saying, ‘they always stand you up.’”
“Are you serious?” frowned Alan.
“Yeah!”
“Shit. We were in the wrong pub,” I explained. “It was his fault.”
This heralded another volley of mirth. (“Oh noo, it was his fault!”) Alan looked like he was ready to punch someone, probably me.
“It’s all right,” laughed Mega City Four bloke. “They weren’t proper narked off, just taking the piss, y’know.”
“You can apologise to them at the gig if you like,” suggested the girl.
“Ah …” I began. “The problem is, we’re not actually going, um, to the gig …”
“Why not? Come on, it’s only three quid.”
I turned to Alan again. If I’d spent much of the evening feeling relatively grown-up, I now felt about twelve.
“I haven’t enough cash … have you?”
“Um, yeah … but …”
“We’re on the guest list,” the girl continued. “We could try sneaking you in too if you like?”
Once again, all faces seemed to be on us. Alan was clearly finding the situation very tricky to deal with.
“Um … I think we need a private meeting for a moment, man.”
“Okay,” I nodded, and followed him to the door.
“I can’t go,” he hissed into my ear.
“Why not?”
“I promised my mum I’d be back by ten. I’ve got a mock tomorrow.”
“A mock?”
“Mock A-level, dumbo.”
Blimey. First the wrong pub, and now this. The famous Alan Potter was seriously starting to ruin my week. I suddenly caught a mental image of Billy Flushing, grinning stupidly as he always did—but also leading me to the correct pub and then on to the gig, chuckling like a lunatic, arm in arm with the mad blonde girl. I shook my head and he vanished.
“Sorry,” Alan murmured. “I’ll make it up to you. We don’t have to leave just yet anyway. I’ll buy you another pint.”
The Carter guest list crowd had finished their drinks and were now gathering by the door to leave.
“What’s the verdict, then?” beamed the girl. “Are you there, or are you square? Hahahaha!”
The final nail in Alan’s coffin of credibility was still to come. After we’d made our excuses to the group I sat back in one of the pub’s well-worn seats, contemplating this impressive start to my career as a music journalist while Alan went to buy another round. A minute later he was back.
“Cunts wouldn’t serve me,” he announced, flopping down on the seat opposite.
We stared at each other for a moment, swirling the incalculable futility of the evening around our heads like a vintage cider. But I had a plan.
“Shall I have a go?”
“No,” Alan stated firmly.
“No, really. It might be all right for me. You’re taller, but I’ve got an older face.”
“That’s utter bollocks.”
“Just give me the money. What have we got to lose?”
I didn’t tell him I’d suddenly remembered I had a dog-eared photocopy of Billy Flushing’s brother’s driving licence lurking in one of the pockets of my bag. Billy had made one for each of us (with little thought for what would happen if we presented both at the same time). He used his regularly to buy certain extreme items of literature; I had never tried using mine. It put me, if memory served, just a few days shy of nineteen, but was worth a go.
“Two pints of cider and black, please.”
This particular girl behind the bar had a permanent frown, a fierce-looking nose ring and a GBH T-shirt, none of which assisted my acting skills.
“Got any ID?”
“Yeah,” I replied, scrabbling around in my bag and hoping the thing was in one piece. Just about. I presented it to the barmaid.
“You’re almost nineteen,” she noted, scrutinising the threadbare document.
“Yup.”
She shrugged and handed it back.
“Okay, whatever.”
The thrill of having trounced Alan Potter at the booze-buying game sent a flood of confidence through me. I looked over at him (he was flicking through the jukebox selection) and winked. He mouthed “F*ck off” and turned away.
“Did you put something on?” I asked, as I returned with the drinks and a packet of Quavers.
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“You’ll see,” he grumbled, taking a gulp, as the intro to something I didn’t recognise started up. We sat and listened in silence. “Did I get any change?”
“Yeah,” I replied, handing him a few coppers.
“F*ck’s sake.”
More silence.
“F*cking hate not getting served, man.”
“That’s okay, I did!”
“That’s not the point,” he glared.
I was starting to get the distinct impression Alan was slipping back into school mode. The guy on the record seemed to be singing “Why can’t I get just one f*ck,” but I was sure I’d misheard.
“So who is this, then?”
“Violent Femmes.”
“Ah.”
I pulled open the bag of Quavers and grabbed a handful.
“So I was wondering,” I began, between crunches, “whether I should just go ahead and pretend we actually met them, for the purposes of the fanzine.”
“Could do.”
“I could make up a few answers, y’know … what I think they would say, study a few of their interviews, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t be too naughty really. This first edition’s gonna be too small to really get noticed anyway.”
Silence.
“Are you all right?”
“Sorry, man. I’m just in a wig. Hate not getting served. Hate the fact that we f*cked it up this evening [I decided not to suggest he change the “we” to “I” at this juncture]. Hate being at school. Hate the fact that people in my year are all wankers. Hate having to work at bloody Sainsbury’s. Hate looking seventeen. Hate being seventeen. No one ever told you it was this shit. They say going through puberty and stuff is bad, but that was a f*cking breeze. I didn’t even notice it happening.”
I kept quiet for a moment, considering his points.
“Right,” I finally said encouragingly. “Anything else?”
He looked up.
“Failed my f*cking driving test yesterday.”
“Sorry. That’s a pain.”
“Yep.”
(“Don’t shoot, shoot, shoot that thing at me, you know you’ve got my sympathy, but don’t shoot, shoot, shoot that thing at me …”)
“I thought a few people in your year were all right, though? Simon Goodfellow? Eric Bastow? He’s a good bloke, isn’t he?”
Alan looked at me like I’d just suggested he eat the contents of the ashtray.
“What gave you that impression, man?”
“What about some of the girls? They seem human. Claire Batey?”
“Slapper.”
“Joanna Clerk?”
“Rich bitch.”
“Gemma Holdingford? I see you hanging out with her a bit.”
“Only so I can copy her biology.”
(“… oh my my, my my mother, I would love to love you lover…”)
“Nicola Cartwright?”
Alan said nothing and sipped his drink. I let the Violent Femmes complete their strange rant and waited for the next song to kick in. Another unfamiliar introduction, but different this time, less quirky, a one-note guitar riff backed by some jangling, midtempo pop. Then the words started and I almost spat out my drink with mirth.
“I don’t know why I love you…”
“Ah, I see,” I chuckled. “Nicola Cartwright.”
“F*ck off, man.”
“No, that’s fine … I mean, she’s nice! I would.”
“Don’t f*cking tell anyone.”
“I promise,” I smiled.
(“How can I get close to you, when you got no mercy, no you got no mercy…”)
“Has anything happened so far, then?”
Alan frowned and took a Quaver.
“Almost, Sunday night before last. We were at the Three Crowns with some others.”
“And?”
“I chickened out.”
He looked so genuinely heartbroken that I decided to stop taking the piss.
“How long have you liked her?”
“F*cking ages, man. I mean, you know, she’s always been pretty and stuff, but there was this nice warm day in September, I bumped into her in the park … she was sitting by herself, wearing … F*ck, man, you’d better promise not to tell anyone this shit!”
“Honestly, I won’t.”
“She was wearing this summer dress and she had her hair in pigtails, totally different to how she looks in school, and some eye makeup, almost … gothic, you could say. But she hadn’t overdone it. So I said hello and she took off her headphones, asked me to join her … She showed me this compilation tape she was listening to, and man … I just had no idea. You know what I mean? Some of the stuff on there …”
He sipped his drink, overcome with the romance of it all. He nodded up to the speakers.
“There was these guys …”
“Sorry, who are these guys?”
“House of Love, man … and The Cure … and I’m not talking about the pop shit, she had ‘Fascination Street’ and ‘A Night Like This’ on there … ‘Birthday’ by The Sugarcubes … ‘Shelter from the Rain’ by All About Eve … some Pixies and that Violent Femmes one … some Smiths, I think … April Skies’ by the Mary Chain … even that Primal Scream one, ‘Please Stop Crying,’ or whatever it’s called …”
The House of Love finished their ditty and another, more abrasive track started up.
“This one wasn’t on there. I just stuck it on ’cos I like it.”
I shook my head ignorantly Shit. Third song in a row I didn’t know. I may have won the getting-served match, but Alan had won the music game hands down. That was probably the idea.
“‘Wedding Present,’” he obliged. “So anyway, she offered me one of the earphones, and we just sat there listening while the sun went down … I know, man, it’s corny as f*ck, but … by the end we were holding hands.”
“Why didn’t you just go for it there and then?” I asked (like I’d have had the guts to do such a thing).
“I was just about to … but then she stood up and said she had to get home.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah. Since then I’ve kind of been in limbo. She says hello briefly at school, smiles occasionally, but … it’s like I discovered a different person that day.”
“Maybe you did. Maybe she has a twin.”
“Anyway, I had this plan to invite her to see All About Eve, but that got f*cked up ’cos of my mocks.”
I pondered Alan’s predicament for a moment.
“So … would you say all this has made you a little … er … preoccupied around school?”
“Yeah, course.”
“So is that why you’ve been bloody blanking me all over the place?”
Alan looked up, frowning. “Nah, man, there’s other reasons for that.”
“Which are?”
“Well, you know how it is, with the whole different-year thing, for a start …”
“Bloody hell. Isn’t that a little bit childish?”
“Well, yeah, but it still makes a difference, man. Girls have a memory for that sort of thing.”
“What, they won’t talk to you ’cos you’re friends with a lower-sixth former? Bullshit.”
“Some wouldn’t.”
“Not the ones worth knowing,” I countered, enjoying myself again. “I bet you Nicola wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, she doesn’t talk to me anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“So is this really all about girls?”
Alan looked down sheepishly. I swigged my pint, looking away with calculated indignation.
“It’s also about that cock you hang out with, man,” Alan admitted suddenly.
“Billy?”
“Yeah. He’s a total loser.”
I found myself jumping to my much maligned acquaintance’s defence.
“He’s a lot more intelligent and fun than you might imagine, actually.”
“Don’t care, man. He’s off the scale. You want me to talk to you when we’re at school, ditch the dweeb.”
Ditch the dweeb.
This phrase has festered in my head and formed a little guilt-edged frame around my conscience ever since that night, over seventeen years ago. Alan and I debated this topic until the end of our drinks and part of the way home, but that was essentially what we agreed: I ditched the dweeb, and Alan became my friend.
Although obviously, school being school, I couldn’t completely cut Billy off just like that. I still sat next to him during history, where we enjoyed a muted form of our previous capery, and I still oh-so-graciously allowed him to help with the first issue of the Peanut, but he only once again accompanied me to a gig (the less said about that episode, the better), and I kept contact with him outside the confines of a classroom to a minimum. After a month or two he got the message and, quite understandably, stopped bothering with me altogether. The only reminder of our former bond came from my mum (who, incidentally, disliked Alan from the moment she first heard his name) when she occasionally returned from a Conservative Party do and asked why Billy never came round anymore.
Ho-hum. There’s still a part of me that wants to go back in time and give the sixteen-year-old me a good kicking, tell the seventeen-year-old Alan Potter to piss off and stop being so ridiculous, and politely suggest to Billy Flushing that he simply get a decent haircut and perhaps some contact lenses. But what can I say? Other than: I have always had a vague feeling that my actions of winter 1989 will catch up with me one day.
Alan never did get hold of Nicola, by the way. A week or two later we beheld the sight of the delectable Miss Cartwright strolling arm in arm with one of the biggest, meanest rugby players our school possessed, with whom she was also seen dancing at the Christmas ball to—among other things—a Jive Bunny record. Whether she privately exposed this chap to the delights of The House of Love, All About Eve or the Violent Femmes was never clear, but we certainly never saw that side of her again.
Not that it mattered much to Alan, however. For within a month, he (and I, whenever the chance presented itself) was happily shagging anything in a tie-dyed skirt that drew breath.