by Mick Norman
Bringing up the end of the line was Brenda, in her colours, with a short riding crop in her hand, which she swished with alarming vigour and carelessness in the region of the girls’ naked backs.
When all four were roughly in the centre of the stage, Brenda made them turn to face the audience, then kneel awkwardly down, and bow till their heads nearly reached the floor.
Gerry had retained the hand-mike, and his voice swelled to fill the silent theatre. ‘I have told you why these girls have been treated this way. I would ask you to note that they have not been physically hurt, and they have not been sexually assaulted. When they go off the stage, they will be taken, as they are, to the centre of Birmingham and there released. The hair will grow back.’
Voices began to shout out, protestingly, from the crowd. Particularly from the older women. Gerry ignored them, and went on. ‘But, if any person attempts to wreck this concert, or tries to get on to the stage, they will be treated without any mercy. The brothers are under my instructions to hold back nothing.’ Finally, he acknowledged the growing protests with a wave of the hand. ‘It’s easy to scream now. But, the last concert resulted in deaths. Lots of them. I don’t want that. But, if there are to be people dying, they will not be the stars on this stage, and they will not be any of my brothers. No more of this unpleasantness. Gwyn, get these bitches off. Ladies and girls. Scream all you wish now. But, nothing else.’
From the centre of the stalls, a large lady, the wrong side of forty, in a pink, fun-fur skirt and jacket clambered from her seat, and began to squeeze through the seats towards the front. Above the noise of the rest of the audience, she managed to make her voice heard. ‘Sisters! Don’t let these male animals dictate to us. Look at the way they have treated those children. Let us rise against them. Now!!’
Nobody knows whether the lady would have roused her comrades to storm the barricades. Although both Holly and Lady were sitting in that part of the auditorium – disguised as teenies – Gerry was concerned to see that neither of them made any move to expend the troublemaker. It was Rat, sneaking among feet and knees, who suddenly popped up directly in front of her.
She towered over him, fully nine inches taller, armed with the righteousness of her own anger. But, she omitted to do anything to protect herself. There was a swirl of movement and Rat was suddenly standing alone. The lady vanished. As completely as though she had never been.
Distraction came with the perfection of timing, from Gerry up on the stage. At a wave of his hand the house lights flicked out. He shouted one word: ‘Foolsgold!!!’
Blackout.
In that darkness, the unconscious figure of the woman was dragged hastily out and given over to the tender hands of the Assistant Chief Constable’s men, who ringed the concert hall three deep.
Six angel brats, each bathed in a cone of white light. Snowy-suited and halo-headed, Foolsgold swung into their first forgettable number. Middies bounced in their seats, and a cascade of knickers fluttered to the floor of the theatre. But, the line of brooding, righteous brothers wasn’t even approached.
Gerry watched from the side of the stage, his fingers crossed. And, he wondered why Holly and Lady had withheld any movement.
Foolsgold ran through their shortish repertoire with the professional gloss and expertise that their fans expected. ‘Poor Little Love’, ‘Mother Love’, ‘Diana’, ‘Put My Little Shoes Away’, ‘In Praise Of Older Lovers’ followed each other with the same gentle and – some said boring rhythms. It was what Mick the rock critic christened ‘simp rock’ and found his abusive mail multiplied a hundred-fold overnight.
The group did a country medley, with some of the immortal Johnny Cash’s best songs put through the pulper. The teenies got in on the screaming act when the youngest of the six-boy ensemble – Little Tommy Bowdesire – hopped nimbly down from behind his drum kit and capered across the stage with his own version of the old Lou Reed biggie – ‘Walk On The Wild Side’. With slightly amended lyrics.
In the wings, Gerry was conscious of Gwyn standing at his elbow. As they watched the child star, noticeably overweight in his doeskin suit, hop through his act like an invigorated doughnut, the Welshman brought a grin to Gerry’s lips by giving a convincing impression of someone in the throes of agonising stomach pain, culminating in a superbly mimed Technicolor yawn.
‘At least they’re staying more or less in their seats!’ shouted Gerry, to be heard by Gwyn, less than a foot away.
‘Don’t speak too soon, boyo. The night is still young, and the action hasn’t started. By the time the next lot get on, half the audience’ll have forgotten our lesson.’
‘Maybe we’ll get a chance to give them another.’
The chance came as Foolsgold moved into their last number. They had a new album out, called ‘Night And Foolsgold’, which was the usual easy-listening mixture. The ace track off it was called ‘I’ll Let You Do Anything For Me’, and the words catered to all the imagination and fantasies of the middies.
The thought of being able to do anything for any of the fine young dudes was just too much for one of the middies. She forgot the WARNING and lost her COOL. Tears of passion streaking through her heavy makeup, her breasts swinging heavily inside her puce blouse, a middle-aged lover from Handsworth Wood made her run at the stage.
Maybe some of the brothers had just lost that edge of sharpness from the winter’s lay-off. Maybe the first part of the concert had gone so easily that they thought there wasn’t going to be any hassle at all.
Anyway, the middie made her run and actually got past the row of Angels, and scrambled inelegantly on to the stage, her short skirt riding up over her better-than-ample thighs, showing her laddered tights and crimson knickers to the world.
Deintydd – the Welsh name means ‘dentist’; he got the name by responding to a challenge to rip out his own teeth from a girl; after he’d done it, with his gums spouting blood, he grabbed the girl who’d made the challenge and ripped out the same number of her teeth – and Hanger John were both on the stage patrol, and they went for the middie at the same time.
Hanger John’s sharpened coat-hanger hissed at the woman’s out-stretched arms, making long, but shallow cuts. Deintydd got there slightly second, but his method was far more direct. Without checking his run at all, he launched his leather-booted right foot in a savage kick, which cracked home in the woman’s ribs.
The air whooshed out of the stricken middie’s lungs, and her scream was strangled at birth by a chronic lack of breath. The kick sent her rolling to the very edge of the stage, clutching at her body, and fighting for air. One of Foolsgold – Pete Greane – moved forward, as though to interfere, but he was checked by an urgent yell from Gerry in the wings.
The row of brothers at the front of the stage grabbed the woman, and hauled her off on to the floor of the stalls. There they worked her over, not causing any permanent damage, but giving the audience a salutary lesson in mob control.
There was no more trouble during the first half of the concert.
‘Two things, brothers and sisters. One, when the middie made her run near the end of the set, you were all too slow to get to her. Except you two on the stage. She should never have got that far. It’ll be worse if the teenies get up on stage, tooled-up. Stop them at the first moment. Once they’re really moving, they’re going to be that much harder.’
‘No way, man. No way!’ It was, of course, Freddie Dolan. Lead singer with Central Heating. ‘We’re used to having the chicks balling their way right up on the stage. Then, we have one or two men to pick them up and drop them back in to the front seats. That’s what I want to happen here.’
Without even looking at the skinny figure, Gerry went on. ‘Forget about what the old men up there on the stage want. Maybe they get their kicks being cut to bits by a mob of girls. But, we aren’t going to let that happen. Now, the second—’
‘Listen, man. I said I want the girls allowed to get near.’
Finally, Gerry acknowledged
Freddie by facing him. ‘I don’t know why I bother with cunts like you, I don’t. Tell me just one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Do you want your cock cut off and pinned to some teenie’s wall?’
‘No. But it’s absurd to think that—’
‘It’s not anything, baby. Gerry’s right. Your girls are in a different league to some of the harpies they have here.’
Gerry took Rupert by the arm. ‘Listen, sweetheart. I run this or you find another man. If I run it, then it’s my way. I say this only one time. This bastard stays away from me, and stops moaning on about how I run things. That way, I’ve got a chance of saving his rotten body from being chivvied. And you stay well back as well. Now, both of you. Out!’
Rupert patted Gerry’s arm reassuringly as he walked out of the room. Freddie turned in the doorway, and spat out: ‘Just you wait till Rick and his boys get over here from—’
‘We know. From Laurel Canyon. When they get here we might play a few games. Just to see who’s got class and who hasn’t. Now, fuck off!’
Once the door was shut, with what was intended to be a slam, but was defeated by the pneumatic device that closed it with a gentle hiss, Gerry continued his intermission tactics talk.
‘Time’s getting short, and we’ve got to be back in a couple of minutes. One other thing I noticed that worries me. Something that we’re going to have to talk about a lot more. Brenda, Holly, Lady; we’d be sorry to lose you all, but if you want to pack your things and split to form your own ladies’ auxiliary, then you’d better go. No, Brenda I There isn’t time here. There isn’t going to be enough time over the next few days either. So, what happens? When that old bag out of the audience started shouting, you two ignored her. It was Rat who outed her. I’m not having that pulling-out shit at this time.’
Brenda moved forwards to speak, but stopped when she saw the look in Gerry’s eyes. She had seen that look before, and knew that there was a time to talk and a time to shut lip. This was one of the times to shut up.
‘You’re all members of the Last Heroes, and that means you play your part for the chapter. When this tour’s over, we’ll get everything out in the open. That includes some of your old brothers from the hillside, Gwyn. Don’t look so fucking surprised, mate. I’m not blind. So, we all pull together, as they say. Until after the concert on the seventh. Anyone not want to go along with that?’
He looked particularly at Gwyn, then at the militant old ladies and mamas. All of them met his eyes, and all of them finally looked away. None of them argued.
The second half of the concert passed off quietly enough. Both Freddie Dolan and Jim Lawrence were more provocative and outrageous than usual. Lawrence wore crocodile-skin pants, and had a lot of trouble with the zip.
At the best of times that would have caused a near-riot. The teenies made their run. But, only some of them, and a lot of those went straight back when they saw what happened. Some were chopped down in their seats, while most got knocked back by the brothers along the front of the stage.
Only a couple reached the actual performing area, and they were heaved off with a surprising lack of violence. After the excesses of the Sundance, Gerry and Assistant Chief Constable Penn, had anticipated the use of knives. It may have been the WARNINGS, or the lessons so brutally demonstrated by the Angels, but the girls obviously decided that – at least in Birmingham – that kind of game wasn’t worth the risk.
There was only one fatality that evening. A teenie – near the end of the act –charged towards Freddie Dolan, with a long carving-knife gleaming in her dimpled fist. Gwyn stopped her with a chop to the neck, and the girl fell on her own blade, dying in hospital later that night.
After that incident, Freddie cooled his moaning for a bit. And Jim Lawrence’s trousers stayed together for the rest of the tour.
While the stars relaxed in their dressing-rooms – they either made a very fast getaway or they sent out stand-ins on dummy runs and remained behind themselves – sometimes for hours – Penn joined Gerry and the senior brothers for a glass or two, or three, or four, of good old Southern Comfort.
The theatre was quiet, though they could hear chanting and screaming from the thousands who still waited impatiently outside. Some of the chapter had already begun the long haul north towards the next gig in Glasgow. Gerry was due to lead the others on a run sometime after midnight.
Penn raised his glass. ‘To you and yours, Gerry. You did a good night’s work.’
Cochise lurched over from a corner. ‘What about the press, eh? There were dozens of reporters and cameramen there. What do you think they’re going to say about tonight in the papers.’
Rupert Colt was also there. Grinning all over his new lilac evening suit. ‘I can answer that, Israel. I’ve talked to a lot of the boys about that, and Mr. Penn here has also had a quiet chat. Some of them’ll have a go at strong-arm tactics, but most of them have been yelling for stronger security at concerts for years. Now they’ve got what they wanted. Cochise, my big lover, you needn’t lose any sleep over that.’
Gerry spoke quietly. ‘What was the score?’
The policeman pulled a small notebook from his pocket and opened it, peering at his own tidy writing as intently as if it contained the wisdom of the ages.
‘Not counting the four we had to start with. The girl that our pale friend over there knifed has been—’
Gwyn stopped him. ‘The one who fell on her own bloody knife. You remember that, copper.’
Penn carried on, unflappable. ‘…The girl that fell on her own knife has been taken to the General Hospital. My latest information is that she has severe internal bleeding and that it is more than possible that she will not live through the night. Outside, my men had a bit of trouble with pushing and crowding, and about thirty girls were taken away either to the hospital or the nick. From the ones you sent out to us, twelve have gone to hospital with injuries ranging from broken ribs to face cuts and bruises. Not really a bad night at all.’
Brenda drained her mug. ‘Gerry. Time we were off.’ Penn watched them preparing to leave. It would be easy for him; sleeping the night away in the back of his white Jaguar as he was carried towards Glasgow in style and comfort.
He waved his finger, beckoning Gerry over. ‘One last thing. My informants in Glasgow tell me that the local chapter up there feel that they might be rather better at providing security cover in their own city. They might try and prove something with you. Thought you’d be interested. Drive carefully, won’t you?’
Astride his Harley, Gerry warned his brothers-in-war that there might be a rumble up north. ‘The fuzz says that the Blues reckon they might be better than us.’
Riddler said what they all thought. ‘I hope the bastards really try something, Gerry. I’d like a go at something different from women. It was like I was either putting the boot to me kid sister or me mother. Bloody shame!’
It was raining for most of the long run up the teeming grey ribbon of the M6 to the border. Some of the hogs had ignition trouble, and the journey was less than fun and slower than fast. The worst moment was when the huge Mercedes armoured coach, carrying Foolsgold, Central Heating, and a crew of roadies and groupies, crashed past them when they were stopped on the hard shoulder.
Spray soaked over them, and they had one taunting glimpse of the warmth and light of the interior. Then the blackness and cold ripped back around them.
Gerry had hoped to get some sleep in Glasgow, but the trip took longer than anyone had reckoned, so it was straight round to the theatre – a gloomy Edwardian mausoleum disguised as a palace of entertainment. Penn arrived half an hour later, looking cool and immaculate, followed by the roadies and followed around midday by Foolsgold and by Central Heating.
Last of all, tripping away on – something – came Freddie Dolan, his high cheekbones stark against his pale face. The liveliest thing about him were his eyes, flickering like those of a malign elf.
He went straight to Gerry and flung his
arms round his, neck, kissing him on the cheek. Effortlessly, Wolf back-handed him across the face with an open palm. To everyone’s surprise, Freddie just sat there, spread-eagled on his ass, and roared with laughter.
‘I told them you weren’t fairies.’
‘Told who, Freddie? Told who?’
Dolan pulled himself to his high-heeled feet, still grinning. ‘A bunch of brothers from round here. They said to tell you that they’d heard that all English Angels were fairies – poofs, they said – and that they were waiting outside to show you that the Blues could,’ he hesitated, pretending to have forgotten the exact words; just to heighten the effect. ‘Could beat the shit out of the Last Heroes.’
Gwyn dropped a crow-bar he’d been fooling around with, the noise sounding thunderous in the suddenly quiet theatre.
‘Have we got time, Wolf? Have we?’
Gerry stole a quick glance at his watch. It was just after twelve. The show opened at seven. He and Penn had already sussed out the main features of the place – noted the particular dangers.
‘There’s time.’
The area outside the theatre was a mass of over-walks and under-passes, with steps spiralling up and down, and ramps and blocks everywhere. The Angels’ hogs were stored safely away in a back-stage area – away from the main carpark. It was on this car park that the Glasgow Angels – the notorious Blues – had gathered to taunt their rivals.
‘Where’re yer hogs, Vinson? Have yer ta’en to walkin’ now?’
The leader of the Blues was a gross man – over twenty stone – named Wee Georgie Bond. His hair dangled greasily over his shoulders, and his eyes were like two small marbles almost buried beneath layers of fat. Like most presidents of long-established chapters, he wasn’t young.
There were about fifteen of his brothers ranged in a half circle around him, mostly on the old Triumphs and Nortons. Gerry had roughly an equal number of Last Heroes. Behind the Glasgow contingent waited a couple of local police cars, with fuzz sitting tensely, fingers poised over their calling radios.
