Educating Peter

by Tom Cox

  ‘Brilliant! A cider shed! Perfect!’ responded Michael later that day when I informed him about the gig.

  ‘A cider shed? What would we want to play there for?’ asked Emma, later still.

  One problem I found with managing Circulus was that it was easy to fall into the trap of thinking of them purely as a collective entity. This was no doubt because they were so pure, each member’s dress sense, musical taste and sleepy way of looking at the world fitting snugly into a bubble of idiosyncratic 1971 perfection that seemed to insulate them from a harsher reality containing nasty things like bandannas and Pete Waterman. I hadn’t bargained for the fact that such gentle, perfect musical creatures might be capable of disagreeing or not communicating successfully with one another.

  Nevertheless, I pressed on, despite Emma’s reservations.

  ‘Don’t worry. I hear it’s a really fun place. Apparently there’s a zoo and a car boot sale just across the road from the venue.’

  ‘And, like, hopefully we can get hold of some of those laser specs Michael was going to get you all to wear!’ added Petter.

  ‘What laser specs?’ said Emma.

  Exposing Petter to the harsh realities of rock management was something I’d never intended as part of our curriculum, but I could see that he was learning some valuable lessons. He was learning, as I was, that bands didn’t always communicate well with one another – even cuddly bands who periodically live together and act like one big chemically enhanced family. He was also learning that it was best not to get your band to say, ‘Welcome To European People-Free Day!’ to the thirteen people who had made the effort to come out and see you, when those people’s attention was in severe danger of wandering towards a man on enormous stilts performing on an adjacent stage. But, most pertinently of all, he was learning that it was a good idea to sort out money matters before your band played their gig, not afterwards. I hoped that Petter was learning from my mistakes, yet I also hoped that, were he to abandon his dreams of headlining the London Astoria with Goat Punishment in favour of a more behind-the-scenes role in the music industry, he’d be able to employ my fast-talking Colonel Tom-style as a blueprint for future success.

  During Goat Enterprises’ three-gig, two-week tenure as the commercial force behind Circulus, the band made a grand total of £67.38, not including travel expenses or replacement mandolin strings. During this time, they’d been ignored by an ageing border collie, Michael Palin and the Reviews Editor of Mojo magazine, continued to fail to get a record deal, and endured the misfortune of breaking down on the outskirts of Thetford. Even at my most optimistic and paternal, I had to admit it was all a huge disappointment. Sure, the music biz was experiencing a slump, but you only had to look at the career of The Stereophonics to realise that anybody could get themselves signed these days. Yet my band were photogenic, skinny, sexy and musically erudite . . . and nobody cared.

  Only Petter, it seemed, was coming round to their brand of psychedelic folk. He’d also seemed particularly impressed that the band had been paid entirely in cider for their final gig, and slightly disappointed that he’d had to travel back from Banham to West Norfolk with me in the Ford Focus, rather than to London with Michael, Emma, Leo and the cider in Alice The Retro Ford Escort, who’d now had her midriff bedecked with 200 pictures of Seventies Greek warbler Demis Roussos in a kaftan – a sort of hippie answer to go-faster stripes.

  On a chilly Sunday afternoon in early autumn, with the zoo and car boot sale not quite doing the business they had at the height of summer, Banham had provided a perfect example of Norfolk sleepiness – the kind of place where people say, ‘Drive you steady, Bore,’ as a form of farewell. We’d been slightly disturbed, upon arriving at the cider shed, to find a sign outside reading, in descending order, ‘Don’t Spook The Horse, Circulus, The Bleach Boys’, partly because we’d thought Circulus were headlining, but mostly because it wasn’t initially clear whether ‘Don’t Spook The Horse’ was a musical collective or a safety instruction to people in the general area. To our relief, it had transpired that Don’t Spook The Horse were a Neil Young tribute band who’d played the previous evening (The Bleach Boys were due to play tomorrow) and that Circulus had the stage to themselves. The gig had been a success, with Goat Enterprises’ number one export finishing their set to the sound of twenty-three ruddy-complexioned locals whispering, ‘Blimey, go you steady now, Bore – they’re even better than Headspace!’, but it hadn’t been enough to dissuade me from feeling that my continuing guidance would do my friends more harm than good. Petter had looked slightly sad, in a nonchalant kind of way, when I’d announced that Goat Enterprises would be folding, and Circulus Robin had been kind enough to ask the pair of us to stay on for a probationary period, but I had seen that I didn’t quite have what it takes to make it in the ruthless yet fatherly world of rock management. There was a limit to how many people’s dads I could be, and besides, I had an educational obligation to fulfil.

  Two days later, Petter and I, accompanied by Michael from Circulus, made our way down a pavement-free street in a leafy pocket of South West London, two of us doing our best to avoid getting the wide bottom part of our trousers caught on the brambles at the side of the road, the other one lagging a few yards behind, not seeming to care what the wide part at the bottom of his trousers, or the even wider parts in the middle and at the top, got snagged upon. It was to be our last adventure together. After this, Petter would be free, and only time would tell if I’d taught him something useful about rock and roll, or if I’d bumbled along uselessly, wasting his and Jenny’s time. Whatever the case, it was impossible to deny the relaxed feeling of end-of-term exhilaration as we rounded the corner where Gloria Jones’s Mini had skidded out of control.

  If you’d been in one of the cars that nearly knocked us into the undergrowth that day you might have been busy thinking about the stock market, or whether your spouse would have sex with you that night, or what wankers pedestrians were, but just maybe you might have wondered what these three people were doing: the man in the wide-brim hat and Cuban heels who looked like a Seventies singer-songwriter but slightly like a movie villain as well, the man in Seventies golf clothes, and the kid accompanying them in the big jacket and bigger trousers. I liked to think we made for a perplexing sight, but in the end we probably looked like three people going to pay their respects at the site of Marc Bolan’s death.

  I’d expected Bolan’s tree to be full of frizzy-haired men with glitter stuck to their faces, wearing platform heels. In reality, what we mostly spotted were tracksuits: blue ones, purple ones, red and yellow ones, even shiny ones, but tracksuits all the same. It was quite possible that we’d missed the big celebrations earlier in the day and caught the less fanatical tourists who slunk along afterwards, but that didn’t make it any less depressing. We’d arrived here with irreverence on our minds, but now we looked like the biggest T-Rex obsessives in town. Both Michael and I usually wore Seventies clothes from second-hand stores, but we’d imagined that they were the kind of Seventies clothes that signified a specific kind of Seventies music fan. In this setting, however, they just made us look like Seventies People – or, even worse, Bolan People.

  ‘Oh. Are you going to the tree?’ a teenage girl clutching a Penguin Classic had asked us as we’d crossed the bridge approaching the famous site. ‘Cooool. I’ve just been there. There’s a totally, like, mystic vibe. I wanted to stay longer and light some candles, but I’ve got yoga class tonight.’

  ‘Well, we’ll er . . . light one for you,’ I replied, before wincing in the direction of Michael.

  ‘Did she know you?’ asked Petter, a moment later.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never seen her before in my life. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason,’ he mumbled.

  The tree itself didn’t look all that threatening: you certainly couldn’t imagine it going around murdering glam rockers. Beneath it was a guest book, a bust of Bolan, which in reality looked more like the bust of Val Kilmer’s Na
tive American spirit guide, and a selection of flowers and poetry. Crouching down next to a Polish girl in a shell suit with abnormally sharp elbows, Petter and I examined some of the eulogies to the dead singer, almost all of which seemed to feature the word ‘star’ and a selection of clumsily scattered T-Rex song titles. Our five favourites were, in ascending order:

  Marc, you were a joy

  To behold

  You brought us a TELEGRAM

  And that’s wicked cos my middle name is SAM

  But you never really want away did you

  And I imagine your still giving your

  HOT LOVE

  In heaven

  Are there Rolls Royce’s they’re?

  All my love,

  Jackie – Tunbridge Wells

  Somewhere, in the night sky, a star shines so bright. Is it you, or is it kryptonite? I seeked you ought, and hoped that you found me, but you didn’t, but then again however though in a way I always thought you did. Your own little star (that setlist you gave me is in a framed now).

  My never dead devotion,

  Wesley ‘Faster Than Most’ Saeka – Madrid (46)

  Metal Guru, is it true?

  Riding a white swan, is it fun?

  Telegram Sam, are you a man?

  Getting it on, is it done?

  I know it is. Because it’s you. Marc, it’s you.

  See you in another twenty-five years,

  The Dandy In The Underworld, Stockport

  Rock gods came down. They gave us a star. A little one only, but she shined bright. Thank you for making those young years such a treasure to behold. Love and glitter – Marquette, 47, Essex

  Marc, you had silly hair and you were sort of pudgy – especially in the later photos

  Your songs all had the same tune

  And you weren’t a patch on David Bowie

  The band Cornershop once told me Dandy In The Underworld was a lost classic

  But I bought it for £1.50 and it was just as dull as all your other albums

  That said, I did once dance to Get It On when I was really pissed

  All my indifference,

  Tom (27), Norfolk

  Petter seemed to know more about Bolan than many of the other old-time stars who had featured in our studies. He’d seen him perform on Top Of The Pops 2 and was slightly curious about his hair (‘How does he get it to look so cool when it’s, like, so frizzy?’), but was as unmoved by T-Rex’s music as I was. Michael, meanwhile, liked Bolan’s early hippie strumming but hated the later glam stuff. Still, the three of us tried to keep a tight volume on our blasphemy. It was clear that there were people here who genuinely cared about Bolan – people who, despite their tracksuits, felt like they were a part of him. We didn’t exactly want to get into a conversation with them or be their telegram buddies, but we didn’t want to get kicked in the throat by them either.

  As we made our way back across the common, I reflected on how well Petter now seemed to be getting on with my friends – particularly Michael. Ostensibly, the two of them had very little in common: Michael was a cheery folk musician who liked to buy waistcoats and go on walks in the West Country; Petter was a heavy metal fan who liked to buy t-shirts with pretend blood on them and go on walks around Camden Market. Yet, ever since they’d tied carrots to balloons and shot them together, something subtle yet adhesive within their personalities had gelled.

  These days, I thought of Michael as a paragon of human goodness, musical taste and quality clothing. But I wondered if, at fourteen, or even seventeen, I would have got on as well with him as Petter was doing now. Vague memories came back of writing people’s entire personalities off, purely on the basis that they hadn’t ever attended Rock City’s Punk Night. My indie élitism had known few boundaries in the early Nineties, and I’m sure Petter’s nu-metal élitism knew equally few now, but the fact that he could find respect for sunny Michael somewhere in his gothic heart at least showed that there was hope for the future. He wasn’t going to be trading in his combat pants for a pair of corduroy flares any time soon, but he might, one day. I liked to think of it as another kernel of taste I’d planted in his brain, waiting to blossom in a more mellow time.

  By now, Petter had met a dozen or more of my friends, yet I was still to meet one of his. Shortly, however, I’d meet virtually all of them: Raf, Caroline, Zed, Jonti, Sam, Sally, Cauliflower Head and many, many others I’d forgotten but who had no doubt at one point done something really funny involving putting a pair of pants on their head. I thought back to my own school, and the fact that I’d lost touch with everyone I’d known there. At sixteen, when I left school, I’d been impetuous, judgemental, and keen to start a new life and get away from a tiny North Nottinghamshire world where not dropping your ‘h’s and using big words like, say, ‘typical’ qualified you for status as a ‘posh twat’. But I’d also been to school with some nice people: I know I hadn’t meant to lose touch with everyone. Did most young adults experience this phenomenon? It seemed so, from talking to my current circle of friends. Wasn’t this why friendsreunited, the website that helped put people in touch with old acquaintances from their youth, was so popular: because there were so many people like me out there, entering their late twenties, getting over whatever petty snobbery had governed their social actions, and just wanting to hang out with some nice, wholesome folk they felt comfortable with? How many of Petter’s friends would he fade away from over the next few years because of their differing taste in music or politics or clothes or food or drugs or nightclubs or shops? And would he regret it? And should I warn him, or just let him get on with it?

  This was Petter’s power over me: he turned me into a wistful, dewy-eyed wreck. It wasn’t just that I thought about how my musical tastes had changed when I was in his company; I thought about how everything about me had changed. Alarmingly often, before or after, I would find myself emailing a close friend and dropping subtle memories or enquiries about my old self into the text. Stuff like, ‘Do you remember Ellie’s parties? Is it just me, or do you miss those days at all? Call me stupid, but I liked sleeping with a basketball instead of a pillow . . .’ and ‘Did I really used to wear that Jacob’s Mouse t-shirt over a sweater, or is it just my imagination?’ I didn’t exactly miss my teenage self; I was just abnormally interested in him. Whether it was because I hadn’t been to a nightclub in nearly two years, or because, at twenty-seven, I finally felt that I couldn’t delay entering fully fledged adulthood any longer, I wasn’t sure. There was, however, a definite sense of leaving something behind.

  That night – the night before Axe Demons – I made two lists: one featuring things that I liked as a teenager but didn’t like now, the other featuring things that I liked now but had scorned as a teenager. Then, when I’d folded them up and put them in an envelope marked ‘To Be Opened In September 2012’, I made a further two lists: one featuring the passions that I thought Petter might abandon in his twenties, the other featuring those that I thought he might hold on to.

  Stuff That I Liked Then But Don’t Give A Toss About Now included:

  Chicken Ceylon Doc Martens

  Special Brew Bedroom wall murals

  Carter The Unstoppable Tiny, dirty coffee houses

  Sex Machine 6p indie crisps

  Cut-off golf trousers America

  Punk rock Girls in black lipstick

  Stella Artois Vegans

  Stuff That I Like Now But Hated Then featured such unhip pleasures as:

  Friends Bachman-Turner Overdrive

  Slippers Britain

  Normal golf trousers Chicken Rogan Josh

  Adult-oriented rock Girls in normal lipstick

  Habitat furnishings Historical novels

  Starbucks TV cookery

  Kettle Chips

  Stuff That Petter Likes Now But Might Tire Of In A Few Years featured:

  Slipknot Saying, ‘It was really

  Computer games funny . . .’

  Text-messaging Tattoos

  Put
ting pants on his head Trouser chains

  Smirnoff Ice

  Stuff That Petter Likes Now And Might Still Like In A Few Years included:

  Buffy The Vampire Slayer Cheap Trick

  AC/DC Beer

  Crisps The Simpsons

  Cadbury’s Heroes The Osbournes

  Circulus Goats

  I did think, briefly, of making another list – Things That Petter Hates Now But Might Like In A Few Years’ Time – but by this stage I was slightly tired of making lists. I’d had a couple of beers, and the whole exercise would probably seem fairly pointless in the morning. I toyed briefly with the idea of giving the last two lists to Petter, but thought better of it, opting instead to keep them for a few years and surprise him with them. I hoped I’d still be in touch with him when he grew up, and I was pretty certain my predictions, whether wrong or right, would prove to be a more interesting barometer of changing tastes than what I’d put in the envelope addressed to my thirty-seven-year-old self. I’m not sure I really believed late-thirties Tom would be very different from his late-twenties equivalent.

  But while I was changing less than ever, the transformations in Petter’s life seemed rapid and alarming. I’d only known him for six months, but in that time he’d grown an inch or two in height and three times that much in hair. He’d also decided hip-hop wasn’t crap after all, campaigned at his mum for his first tattoo, bought a coat as long as the one in his self-portrait, and – I suspected – become just a little bit more lenient in his loathing of psychedelic folk music. I found it all quite nauseatingly touching, and never more so than when Goat Punishment took the stage at Axe Demons for their rendition of AC/DC’s ‘Sin City’.

  The first thing I noticed at Axe Demons was just how big and mature Petter looked compared to the other kids of his age. In fact, no, that’s wrong. The first thing I noticed at Axe Demons was one of the parents – one half of a famous Eighties electro pop duo. The second thing I noticed was just how big and mature Petter looked compared to the other kids of his age. Everywhere you looked, there were half and three-quarter versions of Petter: kids carrying the same thoughtful, melancholy aura, but on a less gangly frame. Some of them wore their hair in spikes and squeaked out nihilistic punk songs that they’d written themselves. Others paced around the stage with bad posture and belted out note-perfect versions of songs by Hole, American Hi-Fi and Offspring. The boys were scruffy, but in a deliberate way. The girls were lean, with good complexions and an affable manner. Just one kid brought a more grown-up element to proceedings: a bigger version of Petter, with longer hair, a longer coat and a longer chain on his trousers, he hid behind the drum kit as a couple of kids an eighth of his size strummed the opening chord sequence to Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’. Then, without warning, he leapt out over the drum stool, pacing the stage like a caged animal, screaming, ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!’ at the impressed yet somewhat quizzical-looking artists, college lecturers, archaeologists and TV chefs in the front row. I’d guessed who he was before Jenny had even opened her mouth.