‘Hey! Hey! Philip! Where’s Shane?’ they called down.
‘Give us twenty minutes, will you?’ Philip called up to them in a surprisingly cheery voice. He wiggled his hands by his ears and looked for something he pretended he’d dropped on the floor.
‘Where’s Shane? Has Shane gone? He’s bloody pissed, ain’t he? Hit the turps again! What a bludger!’
Joey shone a torch along the line of heads above the curtain.
‘Give the band a couple of minutes, please,’ he said. ‘Just be nice and fuck off, will you?’
Spider pulled his face out of the towel and kneaded it in his fingers. He was clenching and unclenching his jaw.
‘FUCK OFF!’ Spider yelled, with so much force that his voice broke into bleating. ‘JUST FUCK OFF AND LEAVE US ALONE!’
No sooner were the words out of Spider’s mouth than he clasped his towel over his face and started to wave, frantically. I handed him a bottle of water from the table next to me. He took the towel from his face.
‘Bin!’
I managed to slide a large vinyl bin lined with plastic between his knees. He hugged the rim and gave himself up to violent retching. When he’d finished, he wiped his face. I was horrified to see that the towel was stained with blood.
‘You’re throwing up blood,’ I said.
‘Am I?’ he said. He looked at the towel, glanced inside the bin. He quivered with wrath.
‘Cunt! Cunt! Fucking cunt! Waste of fucking space!’ Spider said.
‘I’d like to say that as soon as Viv’s back with the van, we’ll get the fuck out of here,’ Joey said. ‘But I can’t, because Frank wants you to meet the Irish Ambassador.’
Not only did we have to wait for Lees to come back with the van, but also we had to wait for Andrew who was still in the kimono he put on after gigs. We were further delayed by Ambassador Burke’s wife who wouldn’t let go of Andrew’s hand, so concerned was she about how much weight Andrew lost in the course of a gig.
Charlie Malcolm, our new roadie, a guy from Dublin with crossing front teeth, announced the van’s arrival. Saying nothing to Frank or to the ambassador and his wife, we left for the hotel.
We climbed into the van. The air inside smelled of recent cigarette smoke. ‘Where’s the cunt?’ Spider asked.
‘I took him back,’ Lees said. ‘Charlie helped him onto the van and I helped him off.’
‘You should have heard the fucking crack when he hit the pavement,’ Charlie Malcolm said.
‘He bumped his head slightly,’ said Vivian.
I thought so little of Shane that I couldn’t care less. I laughed with everyone else at the idea of Lees, who was otherwise so even-tempered, who had once held Shane in such high esteem, who loved our music, being driven to such a length as chucking him out onto the pavement outside the hotel.
We all went to the room Jem and Darryl shared. We were grateful for one another’s company, grateful for Darryl’s beloved house music, grateful to be away from Frank, and Shane, to be by ourselves. Spider seemed to have recovered. He hoisted himself onto one of the beds and started to roll a joint.
There were two loud raps on the door. Darryl turned the cassette player down and got up to answer it but Frank was somehow already standing in the room. His face was red. He moistened his lips with his tongue.
‘Guys!’ he said. Though his face was haggard and his eyes dull with drink, there was an edge about him. His mouth was adhesive. He sucked air through his teeth.
‘I just want to express my distaste at the shoddy way you treated the ambassador at the gig tonight,’ he said.
‘What?’ Andrew said.
‘Coming backstage like that can be intimidating enough at any time,’ Frank went on. ‘The least you could have done would have been to show a bit of civility.’
‘Civility?’ Andrew snorted. ‘The Irish Ambassador is the equivalent to Les Patterson. His wife wouldn’t let go of me.’
‘Is this a joke?’ asked Jem.
‘For once, this is not a fucking joke!’ Frank said. He put a finger beneath his nose, as if to take a moment or two to calm himself. ‘These people are important people to be polite to,’ he said.
‘If they’re so important,’ Spider said, ‘where was Shane?’
‘The fucking Brits can have him,’ Frank said. ‘He’s no use to Ireland.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Spider said. ‘Shane’s on a roll!’
‘I’m going to fucking hit you, Spider!’ Frank said. ‘Fucking smart-arse digs all the fucking time, all the fucking time!’
‘Oh Frank,’ Spider said. ‘Just fuck off, will you?’
Before I knew it, Frank had lunged at Spider and with the heel of his hand in the middle of his chest had stuffed him into the pillows on the bed. Spider began gasping. I jumped on top of Frank, locked him around the neck and pulled him backwards off the bed. I dumped him on the floor and fell backwards over the chair at the vanity table.
‘DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!’ I shouted.
‘For fuck’s sake, Frank,’ Spider grunted. Jem and Andrew clambered over the spare bed to stand over Frank in case he got up. Terry stood shaking his fists.
‘You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot!’ Terry said.
‘Get out, Frank,’ Jem said. Frank hooked his elbow over the corner of the bed, crouched and heaved himself up.
‘You don’t know what a mistake you just made,’ Frank said.
‘No!’ Jem shouted. ‘You don’t know!’
Frank stood staring at us all.
‘I’ll fucking hit who I fucking want in this group!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll do what I fucking want with this group! You don’t fucking know anything!’ He chopped the air. ‘You-don’t-fucking-know-anything!’
Terry went over to him holding his arms out, tilting his head and smiling and closing his eyes.
‘You’re wrong. You’re wrong,’ Terry said. ‘You’re wrong, Frank. You’re wrong.’
‘Fuck off away from me, Terry,’ Frank said.
‘I think it’s time you left, Frank,’ Andrew said. Frank snatched his sleeve from Terry’s grip and strode out of the room.
Spider felt around for his packet of cigarettes, pulled one out, ruffled his hair, propped himself back up against the pillows. He adjusted the magazine in his lap and carried on rolling the joint.
‘Frank ought to be the Irish Ambassador,’ Jem said. ‘Canberra’s his kind of town.’
*
Over the next week, Frank put on a show of bonhomie and optimism that was so buoyant that I felt sorry for him.
‘Just go up on that stage and do your best,’ Frank said as we lined up along the wall before the gig in Wellington, New Zealand. ‘Play to his strengths.’
‘What strengths would those be?’ Andrew said.
It had become Shane and Charlie McLennan’s custom, each night before the gig, to find a room and lock themselves in it for twenty minutes. A couple of lines of amphetamine would at least give Shane a wire to walk. That night, Charlie McLennan didn’t come to lean out behind the curtains to wiggle his Maglite at the back of the hall. The house lights sank the auditorium into darkness without Charlie’s cue. A roar went up. We held back, waiting for Shane.
‘He’s on his way,’ Joey said. ‘Go, go, go!’
We stepped up between the high black curtains and out under the lights. Terry held out a hand in greeting to the horde receding into the dark. Spider weaved up to the centre mike with his head bowed and then held aloft his tin whistles in a clenched fist. Frowning against the lights, he looked out into the crowd – a stew of sweating faces, rat-tailed hair, oily and bare arms, gaping mouths and someone whirling a pair of trousers above his head.
‘’OW ARE YA?’ Spider said. ‘YAWRIGHT?’
Plainly, amid the roaring of the crowd, someone below him shouted out:
‘FUCK OFF! WE WANT SHANE!’
We stood around waiting. There was no sign of Shane. I dragged a chord or two out of my accordion, prete
nding to make sure it was working. Jem was standing at the far side of the stage with his hands folded over the top of his banjo, waiting. With his cheeks stained by the puce blotches of his stigmata, his face was even more lugubrious. Darryl paced about with his bass, going over to his amp to adjust something. Andrew, sleeves rolled up, bent down to tighten a lug nut on the rim of one of his drums and then looked up at the empty place where Shane should have been. Philip stepped back and forth in his tight suit, tweaking a string into tune. Terry with a slightly pursed mouth peered at the row of knobs along the top of his amp.
Alerted to a movement at the side of the stage, I watched Charlie McLennan and Charlie Malcolm drag Shane out of the gloom, an arm slung round each of their necks, between flight cases, over cables, to the side of the stage where Charlie McLennan’s chest of drawers stood. Charlie Malcolm stood Shane on his feet to face the stage and steadied him for a moment. Charlie McLennan wiped the powder from Shane’s nose. I saw Shane hold out his hand. Charlie McLennan looked at him, baffled. Shane wafted his arms and then buckled over, shouting. Charlie patted his pockets, looked round in panic and shone his Maglite over the top of his chest of drawers. In the end, while Charlie Malcolm held Shane up, Charlie McLennan bent down to rummage through Shane’s trouser pockets. He fished out a pair of sunglasses. Shane snatched them out of his fingers.
When Shane had teetered to his microphone, he grabbed it to his mouth and screamed into it.
‘YAAAAAAAAAAAGH!’
I had to clap my hands over my ears. Terry retracted his head like a tortoise. With a knitted brow, D.J. located a button on his mixing desk and, with a forefinger, prodded out most of the noise. It continued through the front-of-house speakers and only stopped when Shane’s lungs gave out, when he twisted round to glare at Andrew, histrionic in his fury that Andrew hadn’t yet counted in the first song.
‘COME ON!’ he shouted. He lifted up the stand to bang it back down onto the stage. Andrew sat for a moment, taking his time, making him wait.
‘ONE TWO THREE FOUR!’ Andrew eventually shouted.
In the middle of the set, in the middle of a song, what energy Shane had, gave out. He dropped to the ground and sat splay-legged with his back to the audience. We looked from one to the other. We didn’t stop playing. Shane bent over, brought the microphone to his mouth and gave vent to a desperate, anguished and lung-emptying howl, which, once finished, started up again, and again, relentlessly, as if he feared interruption.
I became aware of Jem walking slowly across, still playing his banjo. He stopped to stand over Shane, the stigmata under his eyes livid in the stage lighting. Shane became aware only when Jem stopped playing to touch him on the shoulder. Shane looked up. Jem shook his head slowly.
With the microphone stand for support, Shane managed to heave himself up to tower above Jem. Ignoring Jem, he staggered round, staring balefully at each of us. He started to drive the base of the stand repeatedly onto the boards. With each bang I saw the speakers in the front wedges flutter. It was all I could do to ignore the pounding, focus on Andrew’s drumming, Philip’s guitar, and confine myself to the song it seemed wholly pointless to continue playing but impossible to bring to an end.
Eventually the song staggered to a standstill. Yet Shane carried on driving the base of the microphone stand against the stage.
‘Get that fucking thing off him!’ I heard Frank shout from the side.
Jem stood in front of Shane, his hands folded one over the other. Shane stared with malevolence at him for a while until a haggard contrition began to suffuse his face. He mauled the stage with the base of the stand one last time and finally relented. The crowd roared – with disapproval or ridicule I couldn’t tell. A shoe bounced off the edge of the drum riser.
After the gig, in the tiny dressing room at the foot of the couple of steps from the stage, we sat for a long time, stunned, dejected and exhausted. At the near end of the grimy plum-coloured velvet sofa, Andrew sat in his kimono, leaning on his knees, pulling angrily on a cigarette. Next to him Frank, his face in his hands, stared into middle distance between his fingers. Jem and Darryl stood with their arses on the edge of the table opposite. Philip squatted on the top step from the stage next to a grimy washstand. I sat with a towel wrapped around my waist on one of the metal-framed chairs and waited to see what was going to happen next, if anything. At the far end of the sofa with his head in the corner of the wall, Shane slouched in an attitude of defiant incorrigibility, opaque behind his shades.
Still wearing his black suit and with a glass of champagne trembling in his fingers, Terry spoke up.
‘Don’t you understand?’ he said. ‘We try and try and try, Shane. That’s all we can do.’ He had already had a couple of drinks. He was on the verge of tears.
‘Give it a rest, Terry,’ Frank said. Terry went to sit down next to Philip, shaking his head. He stared at Shane with mournful eyes.
Shane sniffed scornfully and said:
‘Sawon giyia si-rett!’
There was a brief silence.
‘What!?’ Spider laughed.
‘CI–GA–RETTE!’ Shane enunciated elaborately. ‘SAWON GIMME A CI–GA–RETTE!’
None of us went to our pockets. None of us wanted to give him anything. To come forward with a cigarette would have been tantamount to treachery. We sat ranged against him in mute hatred.
Suddenly his back arched, his elbows dug into his sides and he lifted his face to the ceiling. The thud of his head against the wall made me jump.
‘SAWON GIMME A SI–RETT!’ he screamed. The artery at the side of his throat swelled with the effort. Frank uncovered his face.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Give the twat a cigarette, will you Andrew?’
‘I’m not giving that cunt a cigarette!’ Andrew shouted. He dashed ash from the end of his cigarette onto the carpet and glowered down the sofa at Shane.
‘Why should I do anything any more for that cunt piece of shit waste of fucking time doesn’t fucking do anything for fucking us does he piece of shit waste of space MACGOWAN!’
Shane wiped his forearm under his nose, coughed, clawed up his bottle which was standing on the floor between his feet and upended it in his mouth. He shook the last of the wine into his throat and then let the bottle dangle between his legs.
‘Cunt,’ he said, bored.
Andrew exploded across the bench behind Frank to get at Shane and when he did, he pummelled him with the heels of his hands, pushing Shane off the bench onto the floor. A galvanised bucket had been standing under the washstand. Shane’s mouth hit the edge of it with a clank. Andrew continued to shunt Shane further under the sink with his palms.
Frank and Joey jumped up. There was a scuffle with grating heels, clatters and grunts, after which Andrew ended up lying on top of Joey’s hips and Joey face down on the floor. Frank knelt over Andrew with his hands on his knees, panting and red-faced. Shane lay twisted under the sink.
‘Calm down, Andrew!’ Frank shouted into Andrew’s face. ‘Just calm the fuck down, right?’
Shane’s mouth had filled with blood, bubbling through the stumps of his teeth. He sat up a bit and felt his face for his shades. They had fallen off somewhere. His eyes were swimming. He closed them, it seemed from pain. When he opened them again, he looked across at Andrew, in defiant puzzlement.
‘What’s matter with you?’ he said.
Spider burst into a cackle of disbelief and stared at the floor, barring his face with outspread fingers.
‘Christ!’
It took Shane a moment to locate Spider’s voice.
‘What?’
‘Are you fucking DENSE?’ Spider said. Shane pursed his lips and shrugged. Cradling the bucket, his head dithering, he attempted to get up but the bucket spun out from under his arm. A second attempt resulted in his bonking his head against the underside of the sink. He sat back down against the wall.
Frank and Joey hoisted him out and up by the armpits and began to walk him back to the bench. Sha
ne, catching sight of a packet of cigarettes on the table, wriggled Joey and Frank off and sidestepped to pick the packet up. It had been floating in spilt drinks. The cigarette that was in it was sodden and split. Shane stood shivering for a moment looking at it. He slammed his hands down on the table, bent forward towards the wall and screwed up his eyes.
‘ALL I FUCKING WANT IS A FUCKING CIGARETTE!’ he shouted. His voice had gone and he was crying. ‘CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND ALL I FUCKING WANT IS A FUCKING CIGARETTE!’
‘Here!’ Andrew shouted, digging into his kimono pocket. ‘Have a fucking cigarette!’
He brought out his packet and, one by one, pelted Shane with all the cigarettes there were in it. Shane tried to catch some of them but they tumbled through his fingers and rolled across the carpet, under the sink, under the bench. He gave up trying and stood as they hit him in his bleeding mouth, in his eyes and bounced off his chest.
Charlie Malcolm and Lees came in to take Shane back to the hotel. We watched in silence as they helped him out of the dressing room. Charlie handed him a cigarette and lit it for him. When they had gone we started to try and talk about something else but it was no use.
Charlie Malcolm and Charlie McLennan husbanded Shane through the rest of the tour. During the day the former watered down his drinks. In the evenings, before each of the remaining gigs, the latter ushered Shane into an empty room and locked the door behind them. A grim lassitude descended on us. We were desperate to get home, ruefully counting the days until we could be rid of Shane, however temporarily, full of fear for the future.
Thirty
In the third week of June, four months after coming back from Australia, I packed up my clothes, a couple of instruments, notebooks and my typewriter, and headed out on the Great Western Railway past Oxford and across the Severn, to record at Rockfield Studios. Rockfield was a refurbished farmhouse a couple of miles outside Monmouth. Not only had the likes of Van der Graaf Generator, Hawkwind and Black Sabbath made records there, but also it was where ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ had been recorded.
Charlie McLennan picked me up from Newport railway station. We sped up the A449 to Monmouth. He sat nibbling the fingers of one hand. His other lolled on the steering wheel. Neither of us spoke much. Charlie wasn’t a person for talking. Charlie went about his life seemingly sealed off from what was going on around him, his blue eyes absent, inwardly focused, preoccupied with some business or other, his layered blond hair carefully coiffed.
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