by Mick Norman
‘Get your hands off my mohair suiting, sweetheart! I tell you I knew Gerry a year or so back. I was even in the quarry with him. And I knew Vincent and Kafka and ... and Rat. My name’s Rupert Colt, love. If I might coin a phrase quite stunning in its originality, would you please take me to your leader.’
The small publicity man was finally hauled down to the village, where the Angels were just finishing their midday meal. Two of the Welsh brothers brought him in – Cyllell and Bardd – the latter holding a large porcelain pill-box.
‘This poof reckons he knows you, Wolf. I think he’s a pusher. Look at this bloody big box. There’s speed for you. He’s a dealer.’
Rupert wriggled in the grasp of the big Angel. His silvered shades had been knocked crooked in the struggle and his voice was shriller than usual. ‘Gerry baby, good to see you. Get this gorilla to put me down and give me back my uppers and downers.’
Gerry grinned at the familiar face. And voice. He waved his hand at Bardd, and Rupert was unceremoniously dropped by the fire.
‘Nice to see you, Rupert. To see you, nice. Give him back his little helpers. Sit down, mate. If you’d been here a few minutes earlier you could have shared our sumptuous repast of sausages, beans and baked potatoes. As it is, I can still offer you a few cast-off skins. No. How about, a mug of coffee and a shot of Comfort?’
The small man grasped eagerly at the chipped blue and white mug of coffee, nursing it to warm his fingers. When one of the mamas brought in a cup of the thick, amber, peach-scented liquor, he drained it in one, feeling its warmth seep into his stomach.
‘Jesus H. Christ, Gerry. This is one hell of a place to find; you know that? I left my Impala about a mile away at the top of those fucking hills. I’ve nearly ruined my best boots climbing down here.’
Brenda had joined them. Although she had disliked him at their first meeting, he had tried to make the film venture work, and had gone out on a limb after the slaughter in the quarry to try and convince the media that the massacre had not been the fault of the Angels. Now, Brenda was more prepared to be tolerant to the little man.
She sat down, stretching her long legs out towards the crackling fire. She wore a thick sweater under her blue denim jacket, and jeans tucked into the top of thick-heeled boots. The leather was whitened by the salt air, and steamed in the warmth of the blaze. She refilled Rupert’s cup of Southern Comfort.
‘Nice to see you again, Rupert. What can we do for you?’
He brushed dust off his coat and grinned at her. ‘Straight to the point, eh, Brenda? Right. You get papers down here? Then you’ve seen about the rock tour that ran into a spot of trouble?’
A group of the other Angels had come into the room and stood leaning against the walls. At the words ‘spot of trouble’, one of them laughed raucously. It was a tall, slender figure, with white hair pouring icily over broad shoulders. A stark, pale face, with mad, red eyes gleaming like twin rubies set in polished bone.
Gwyn.
‘Wolf’s told us about you, Rupert. You’ve got a hell of a bloody nerve coming here and talking to us about having your ‘bit of trouble’. Over a hundred dead and injured. Jesus!’ He whistled his admiration. ‘You think big, boyo, if that’s only a bit of trouble. What the hell would you call having a lot of trouble?’
Rupert looked serious. ‘How about a rock tour without any kind of security? Is that big enough for you?’
This time it was the voice of Kafka. One of the oldest of the brothers, who’d lived through all the good old days; then the bad days of darkness and the underground life; now the days of the sun again.
‘That isn’t trouble. That’s fucking suicide. For the groups and for the money men.’ A thought suddenly struck him. ‘Hey! Wait a minute, Rupert. You haven’t come all the way up here just to show us your new coat and talk about the good old days. You cunning bastard! You and Rat could be brothers for sheer devious nastiness. Jesus! What a bastard!’
His eyes wide in bewilderment, Rupert turned to Gerry. ‘Honest to God, Gerry, I don’t know what—’
‘Stop wasting your breath, my little mate. He knows why you’re here. I know why you’re here. You know why you’re here. Some of these other brothers will have guessed as well. So, stop pissing us about and straight with us about this tour you’ve got coming up.’
Before he answered, Rupert opened his pill-box and tipped a handful of mixed colours into his palm. Following them down with a last gulp of Comfort, he knocked them all back. He looked round the low room, lit only by the flickering light of the fire. The plaster was chipped and missing in many places, exposing the broken slats. Graffiti smeared over the dirty walls, perpetuating the old jokes and the old myths. Many of them – the later ones – advocated activist politics for Wales, and they stressed the superiority of the natives against the English middle-classes that ravaged the land with their money and their second cottages.
At least one visitor from outside Wales had chosen to reply in verse. Not the usual ill-spelled poems that you find on walls, but a bitter summation of the troubles of the land, by a local priest and poet from Aberdaron – R. S. Thomas. Somehow, the bitter lines seemed the stronger, set among all the other trite scrawls.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics.
Then, someone had managed to rip through the next couple of lines, obscuring the words with a stump of burned wood. But, the last four lines could still be read:
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.
Rupert looked back from the wall to the Angels ranged round the walls, many of them Welsh, and he wondered whether what he was going to ask was, after all, a good idea. These were not men of the nineteen-eighties, used to slick suits and the soft answer. There was a primitive violence and strength in the Angels. A strength that he needed to tap and try and channel for his own ends.
For a moment, he shuddered as he remembered going to a cold, white-tiled morgue in Birmingham to identify what was left of his old boss, movie maker Donn Corman. He’d tried to use the Angels. Things had gone wrong, and he’d misjudged the situation; expected them to act in a civilised way. And, they’d killed him for it. Brutally and savagely.
He drew breath. ‘Well, Gerry. Right as ever, my love. I need your help, and I’m prepared to lay out a lot of bread to get it. We’ll iron out all the little wrinkles later, but this is basically the idea; I’ve got this big tour coming up in a week or so, and I need some heavies. Some very heavy heavies.’ Across the crowded room, Gerry saw Mick Moore looking at him. They exchanged grins. This was going to be it.
Four – I Lay Traps for Troubadours
An Extract from ‘There’s No Failure Like Failure’,
by Mark Olsen, published by Ortyx Press, 198–
Grab hold of the inside of your fluttering and heaving brains and latch onto one solitary Alcatraz idea. Security ain’t just a lock on the door or a bolt on the shuttered window in the west wing room that’s never opened. It’s not fuzz on every street corner, making sure your too numerous progeny make it back from schoolies without being flashed at by some lonely old pervert with a fat gut and a bald head.
Security starts inside. It’s what happens when the egg springs in the shell and the blue yonder comes rushing in with the Seventh Cavalry. ‘Never apologise, Mister; it’s a sign of weakness.’ And, God only knows, Big John Wayne knew about security if anyone did. But, the country was on the young side and God only came along for the ride.
Remember Woodstock? Holy Jehoshaphat; you’re older than you look! Peace, love, beauty and a lot of lovely bread for those sweet innocent organisers. And for the record companies. And for the filmmakers. And for you? Forget it, man.
Remember Altamont? Just another of those bitter days that the music died. I saw Satan dancing with delight. The Hell
’s Angels were dancing as well. On people’s faces. Beating their skulls in with lead-loaded billiard cues. That wasn’t the festival of peace that everyone hoped it would be. Maybe some of the people enjoyed it for some of the time.
You want to know one guy who didn’t enjoy it? His name was Meredith Hunter and he was black. The Angels didn’t like the way he looked so they outed him. Wiped him. Snuffed him. Made him defunct. Bye, bye, now baby, bye, bye.
Back in the white-cliffed palaces of England, it had seemed a good idea to use the Angels for security. Greasy kids’ stuff. Their mothers used to wash their colours for them! That was the crack. But, they were kids. Fresh out of school with no future and precious little past. So, that meant that life was for now and for living. But, they were still a little on the light side, compared with the San Berdoo heavies. Too many of them rode forty-nine c.c. Hondas, instead of the big Harleys. Electra Glide in pale pink.
It worked well to use them to keep back the mob in Hyde Park. So, why not still use their American brothers at the Altamont Festival? Now, you know why not.
Because the American Angels were the greasiest, dirtiest, meanest, heaviest mother-fuckers since the Mongol hordes took apart half a world.
Now, a new tour – in England this time – and again the Angels were called. But, this time it was different. The boys had grown up into men. And what happened?
Everybody knows.
Five – The Highway Is For Gamblers
So, it came to pass that the Angels agreed to help out with Rupert Colt’s rock tour, acting as the security cover to a million pounds worth of stars. The package was arriving secretly – for secrecy was the key to all the publicity. The only man in England who knew what groups were coming over was Rupert Colt. And the promoter. The man who put up all the money. Not even Rupert knew who that man was. He got all his instructions either by letter or by phone call. To get in touch with the man, Rupert had to go through a tortuous web of intermediaries – the Front man was Albert Donegan.
The press were going crazy trying to find out who it was that would be headlining. One paper’s aging pop correspondent had suggested that it just had to be Elvis, at last making the tour he had always promised. But, as usual, it was Mick Houghton who got nearest the truth. In his regular column in Rolling Stone he said: ‘The mix of middies and teenies has proved so successful in the last few months that it’s bound to be repeated in this ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. So, that means someone for the old and someone for the young. Despite all this facile concealment, there can only be two possibilities.’ And he named them.
Rupert, of course, denied the names. Then again, he was bound to really, wasn’t he? Otherwise, all that carefully arranged secrecy was going for nothing.
The tour was due to open in Birmingham on March first, then run to Glasgow on the second, Liverpool on the third, Cardiff on the fourth, Leicester on the, fifth and two shows in London on the sixth and seventh. Single shows each night. Otherwise security was impossible. It wasn’t getting the audience in for the first show. It was getting them out so that the second house could get in. There had been a fearful scene in Coventry when the first audience totally refused to move. Finally, the second house would wait no longer and stormed the theatre. Several people were killed in the ensuing crush, and nobody got to see the show. After that, it was once a night, one-nighters only.
The Last Heroes were due to appear at the press launch a couple of days before the tour. Rupert had discussed his plans in outline with Gerry and his inner council, but they had a final briefing in London, when they would actually meet the stars.
So, they had to get to London.
So, the best way was on a run.
When the Angels went on a run, they travelled in a surging convoy, weaving in and out through the traffic, sending the fear of God into the scurrying straights. The wind blew the wild hair of both brothers and old ladies, tugging at the frayed edges of their worn colours.
From the valley hideout, they had begun the run in high excitement. There had been a fantastic party on the night before, with music bursting out of their sound system. Oldies, from the great days at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties. Holly and Eddy. Del and Gene and Chuck. Raves from even beyond the grave. Some precious forty-fives and some of the great revival albums from the nostalgia group of the seventies – the immortal ShaNaNa.
A mass of food sizzling over open fires – sausages, franks, beans, baked potatoes. Plenty of insulation against the freezing Welsh wind that would rip at them on the run. Booze and dope. Vodka and Southern Comfort, with speed, acid, coke and hash. Monk had introduced them to the pleasures of mescaline, and Rupert had come prepared with some fabulous synthesised psilocybin. The chapter were heavily spaced-out and the party began to degenerate.
When they had wiped out the Ghouls in London in the previous year, there had been few survivors from the decadent outlaws. But, one brother had not only survived; he had even managed to get adopted by the Last Heroes. That was the fat, smiling Shelob. A righteous from well-back – whose memory of runs and action went as far as Kafka. The two older brothers had become close, and spent a lot of time in each other’s company.
That night they had danced together in the light of the fire, stamping at the springy turf. Moved doubled over, hands covering their crotches, shaggy and thick-set, like some dreadful Stone Age hunters, celebrating a ritual kill. They bellowed out the words of the songs, ‘He rides through the jungle tearing limbs off the trees!!’
Despite his age and experience, Shelob had not yet been made a full-patch member of the Last Heroes. There had been a lot of opposition, particularly from a group led vociferously by Rat, but Gerry had decided that this would be the best time to initiate him. He still wore the faded silk and satin finery that had been the colours of the Ghouls, but these were now ritually stripped from him. It was Kafka, in his role as Sergeant-at-arms, who brought in the denim jacket and jeans, hard and stiff with newness, and laid them gently on the ground.
Slowly, to the applause of the rest of the chapter – those who hadn’t crashed out – Shelob drew on the crackling clothes. On the back of the jacket was painted ‘The Last Heroes’, under a feral skull.
Holly suddenly shouted: ‘The fat bastard’s got no marks.’
Shelob looked round and grinned at her. Without any humour in his smile. ‘Right, bitch. I’m just about to get to tattooing. You can watch and fork yourself off on the blood.’
The reply brought a yell of approval from most of the brothers, who resented the female chauvinist attitude of Holly and Lady.
‘Anyone got a little knife?’
Almost without anyone noticing, a slight figure was standing alongside Shelob, a glittering blade in its hand. A tiny, needlepointed stiletto. An ideal weapon for a murder in the dark. A stabbing in the back.
‘Thanks, Rat.’
The big man took the knife and moved nearer to the fire, so that he could see better for the delicate work he was about to do. Although it was a cold night, and he wore nothing but the new jeans and armless denim jacket; he was still sweating.
‘Get back and give us a bit of elbow room. That’s a bit better.’
Using the point of the knife, Shelob tattooed himself on the left forearm, pricking out the words ‘Last Heroes’ and the date. Pearls of blood oozed thickly down the arm, spitting into the smouldering edge of the fire. Some of the wood had turned to charcoal, and Shelob put the knife down and crumbled the ashes into powder. Then, grinning steadily into Holly’s eager eyes, he rubbed the black ash into the bleeding wounds. Rat picked up the knife and; passed him a dirty rag, thinly disguised as a handkerchief, to wipe off the surplus blood and ash.
Shelob proudly turned his arm about, so that all the brothers could see the cleanly-marked letters and numbers.
‘Bloody nice! What d’you want? A fucking medal and a testimonial. Let’s get on with the initiation.’
The words had only just left her lips, when Gerry steppe
d forward and smashed Holly across the mouth, throwing her on her back into the fire. Cursing through the blood bubbling on her lips, she rolled away and stood up, brushing the sparks from her denims.
She wiped the blood from her mouth. ‘What the fuck was that for?’
Gerry smiled thinly. ‘You want to split and form your own chapter, then you go right ahead. If you don’t then you ride with us and you obey the chapter rules like everyone else. Those rules say that only a president runs an initiation. Not any jumped-up little scrubber who wishes she’d been born with a prick. Right?’
Holly stood silently. Gerry was aware of a slight movement behind him. Without turning round he said: ‘If your dyke lover moves another breath, I’ll personally take you both apart. You stupid cows!. His voice was thick with his anger and contempt. ‘You play around with kids and old men and that makes you tough. You plate each other and that makes you able to live without men. All right. But, don’t try to play with men. Because, you’ll get hurt.’
Another woman’s voice. Hard, with a silken touch of menace that probably only Gerry recognised. Brenda’s voice. ‘Cool it! Holly, Lady! Don’t try anything with Wolf.’
The moment passed and the tension went. Gerry breathed a sigh of relief to himself. For a moment there he had thought that Holly and Lady might both move against him, and he wasn’t that sure he could take them together. He’d seen them in action and they were lethal. Totally ruthless against men. Cripplingly effective.
After the interruption, the ceremony went ahead as planned. The details aren’t for the squeamish. The idea, you see, is for the full-patch prospect to show that he is so in tune with his brothers (and sisters) that he is prepared to undergo any humiliation at their hands. Endure any discomfort. Be ready to subdue himself to any ruling of the president and a majority of his brothers.
So, Shelob, late of the Ghouls, skull fighter, survivor of an unprecedented seven ton-plus wipe-outs on his hog, came to the Last Heroes. He lay on the ground on his face, hands and feet stretched out like a Saint Andrew’s Cross.
