Stories We Could Tell

by Tony Parsons

  She meant it. He knew she meant it. Crazy lady was dead right. And although it was crazy – Dag Wood might be already inside! – Terry couldn’t be angry with her. This craziness had been one of the reasons that he had fallen for her so heavily.

  He remembered the early days, just before new year, when the rest of the world was still worn out by Christmas, and her ex-boyfriend, the old boy, had stood vigil outside Terry’s bedsit, crying his heart out in the snow, and they had sneaked past him giggling, and run around London as if they owned it – jumping over fences, scaling walls, climbing trees in royal parks in the middle of the night, wandering across the pitch in some empty football stadium. She wasn’t like any girl he had ever known. But he wasn’t tempted to turn and walk away from the Western World. They had the rest of their lives to drive all night.

  ‘Come on, Misty,’ he said gently. ‘Dag’s waiting.’

  And she smiled at him, not minding at all, and he loved her.

  They walked to the front of the queue, and Terry was proud in the knowledge that their names were permanently on the guest list of this special place. He clocked all the familiar slogans of sedition scrawled on shirts, trousers and school jackets. ANARCHY. DESTROY. CROYDON SUCKS.

  A wild-eyed apparition emerged from the queue. He wore a suit jacket that seemed to have been made out of a Union Jack. His two front teeth were missing. Terry, Terry,’ he lisped, ‘he is here! He walks among us! Dag Wood is in the building! I saw him go in!

  Brainiac was one of the veterans of last summer. Terry had first seen him in front of the stage at a Clash gig with blood all over his face, giving him the appearance of a cannibal at teatime. Some dancing partner had just taken a bite out of Brainiac’s nose. Brainiac didn’t care, he just grinned foolishly, showing his gappy teeth, as if losing the odd limb was all part of the fun. Some said that Brainiac had invented vertical dancing because there was just so little space to move in their subterranean haunts. The only way was up and down. Nobody knew where Brainiac came from – he seemed to appear fully formed, as if the madness and the Union Jack jacket had always been there, as if he had always been Brainiac.

  Terry had heard that Brainiac had once been Brian O’Grady, and that he had come to the Western World via a large London Irish family, a scholarship to a public school (apparently Brainiac’s IQ was off the radar, and Terry sort of believed it) and then, after his first nervous breakdown, a mental hospital. But nobody knew for sure, and it didn’t matter anyway. Brian was gone and Brainiac was here now. They were all here now.

  ‘The great Dag Wood is in the building,’ Brainiac insisted, his fingers clawing at Terry’s Oxfam jacket, sweat and rain dripping all over his ecstatic face. ‘The only man to get up their kaftans at Woodstock. Your piece – extreme gonzo – if I may say so.’

  ‘Is he?’ Terry said. ‘Is he really in there? Dag?’

  It seemed too good to be true. But Brainiac nodded excitedly, and Terry patted him on the back of his Union Jack jacket, thankful for the happy news. Then he stared at his hand. It was covered in grime.

  ‘You may come in with us,’ Misty said, and Brainiac fell into step behind them, babbling happily.

  Terry spat on his hands and rubbed them together. Brainiac had been wearing the red, white and blue jacket the night he almost lost his nose, and it was filthy beyond belief now. Terry didn’t say anything because Brainiac was only about seventeen years old and he liked him a lot. And Brainiac was one of the originals. But as they moved closer to the front of the queue, Terry saw with a sinking feeling that the crowd was changing.

  It had been so good at the start. The best time of his life. For the second half of last year and the first half of this one, all through that blazing summer of 1976 and the freezing winter that followed, Terry could come to the Western World and know every face in the club. It felt as if everyone was a musician, writer, photographer, band manager, fashion designer – or at least, that’s what they were trying to be, as they all searched for an escape route from their old lives and stifling normality. Their own private gin factory, Terry thought. Brainiac himself talked endlessly about the perfect band that existed in his head. They were all hungry for new experience, starved of life, ready for anything.

  There were just a few of them back then. One night Terry had watched the Jam play at the Western World when the only other people in the audience were three members of the Clash and Brainiac. Afterwards Brainiac and Terry had helped Paul, Bruce, Rick and Weller’s dad load their gear into the van for the long drive back to Woking. It was a good night. But that was when all of the new bands were unsigned. That was when they were all just starting. Now most of the groups had records out, and some of them – the ones that didn’t have any ideological objections to the show – had even appeared on Top of the Pops.

  Terry thought that what was so perfect about the early days was that it felt like they were all in this thing – whatever this thing was – together. But now he couldn’t help the Jam to load their van. They had roadies to do that sort of thing, and he had his fragile dignity to preserve. They were professionals now, or pretending to be.

  Terry knew those early days had been strangely innocent, no matter how many outraged headlines there were in the newspapers. Although they had all dressed up as if they were ready for a fight or a fuck or both, there had been a real sense of community. But now there were mean faces waiting outside the Western World, and they glared at Terry and Misty with naked hostility as they bypassed the queue. ‘Careful, careful – strangers,’ Brainiac hissed at Terry’s shoulder, seeming on the edge of tears. ‘Strangers are here.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Terry registered three youths who didn’t spike their hair but shaved it – ferocious, gleaming bald heads, like extremist skinheads. One of them was tall and sickly thin, the other beer-drinker porky, and the third built like a refrigerator. Through dull, sullen eyes they watched Terry walk by with Misty holding his hand.

  ‘What else you get for Christmas?’ one of them shouted, and the others chortled in perfect harmony.

  Terry didn’t know what it meant exactly, but he knew it was an insult. And he knew now who they were. The Dagenham Dogs.

  The tall and thin one was called Junior, and the nearest thing this crew had to a leader. Under Juniors right eye there was a tattoo, or rather three tattoos – a trio of dark teardrops, the colour of melting black ice, small, medium and large, growing in size as they ran down his face.

  There were about fifty or sixty Dagenham Dogs, all from the badlands of the East End-Essex border country. They followed and fought for a band called the Sewer Rats the way – less than a year ago – they had followed and fought for West Ham United.

  The Sewer Rats were decent middle-class boys – well-spoken political science graduates who gave thoughtful interviews where they talked about oligarchy and permanent revolution, Mao and the MC5.

  Terry had gone on the road with them and found them charming. But there was something in the toe-tapping, bitch-slapping brutalism of their music that was irresistible to what Ian Dury had defined to Terry as lawless brats from council flats. Not the ones like Terry, who knew he would never be as tough as he wanted to be. The real thing. The real dead-end kids.

  You saw Junior and the Dagenham Dogs at Sewer Rat gigs, slamming into each other in front of the stage – a strange new thing, something that had never been seen at shows before, a violent evolution of Brainiac’s pogo dance – fighting with each other, fighting with anyone, shrieking at the moon, covered in gore, nothing to lose. You were seeing more and more of their kind around. They didn’t care about the art school rhetoric of the new music, or theories about teenage boredom, or Vivienne Westwood T-shirts. They were here for the riot. They were here to have a laugh, to get out of their heads, to smash the place up if the mood took them.

  Terry didn’t look at them as they eye-balled him from the queue. They scared him. If they had said something about Misty then his code of honour would have insisted that h
e confront them, and accept a good kicking, for he knew he had no chance in a scrap with the Dogs. But they didn’t, and he was hugely relieved. ‘Just ignore them,’ Misty said.

  ‘You think I’m scared of them?’ Terry said, keeping his voice down.

  Ray was waiting for them at the door, looking uneasy.

  ‘Need your tape recorder,’ Ray said, his words coming out in a rush. ‘Mine’s buggered.’ His hair fell down and he didn’t push it back. ‘Have you got your tape recorder? And some batteries. And a C-90 tape.’

  Terry looked at him. ‘Why’s that then?’ he said.

  ‘Because I’m going to interview John Lennon.’

  ‘It’s in the car,’ Misty said, taking out the keys and handing them to Terry.

  Terry contemplated the keys. ‘Why do you want to talk to John Lennon? In seven years it’s going to be 1984. You think anyone’s going to remember the Beatles by 1984?’

  The queue began easing past them into the club. Make-up streaming, bodies steaming. Ray sighed. ‘Can I just have that tape recorder?’

  ‘Come inside for a minute,’ Terry pleaded, slipping the keys inside his Oxfam jacket. ‘Have a beer. Then we’ll go and get the tape. You know who’s going to be down here tonight? You know who I’m going to introduce you to? Dag Wood.’

  Ray was unimpressed. ‘What do I want to meet Dag Wood for?’

  Terry looked hurt. ‘Dag was at Woodstock!’

  Ray laughed. ‘Yeah, where he was bottled off stage.’ He looked at Terry and Misty. He was anxious to get on with it, but in a way he didn’t mind delaying his quest. Because even if he found John Lennon, he didn’t know how he could ever talk to him.

  ‘All right, one beer,’ Ray said, and he had to smile at the delight on Terry’s face. The three of them went inside, past the bouncer, through the lager-stained lobby and into the darkness. Terry could feel the music hammering his eardrums, and then the noise began to translate into a song – it was Billy Blitzen who was on stage downstairs, doing his big number, ‘Shoot Up, Everybody’.

  Juddering Eddie Cochran riffs made Terry’s jawbone clench, and his eyes misted over with bliss. It was like getting off the plane in some exotic country. You were hit in the face by this other world – the noise and the heat and the smell of sweat and Red Stripe and ganja. Suddenly there was less air to breathe. And Billy Blitzen was live on stage.

  Five years ago Billy had been in a band that Terry had loved – the Lost Boys, native New Yorkers who sang about scoring junk uptown and girlfriends crying in shower stalls, all that Manhattan Babylon stuff but given a sassy mid-Seventies sheen, and stuffed into platform boots. And Billy was a friend of Terry’s now, maybe his best friend outside The Paper- one of those Americans, a graduate of CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City and the Bottom Line, who were flocking to town, actually moving to London, sensing the gold rush to come. They could all hang out together, Terry thought happily. Dag Wood and Misty and Ray and Billy Blitzen. It was going to be a perfect night.

  Pierced, painted faces stared out of the gloom. Faces shone in the darkness for a moment and then were gone. There was Brainiac, grinning like a mad man, taking alternate swigs from the cans of Red Stripe he held in each hand. And there was the nearly famous Grace Fury, the girl of the moment. Grace Fury – red hair, black tights, some sort of PVC corset and a tartan mini-kilt that would have just about covered her pants, if she had been wearing any. Terry felt Misty’s hot breath on his neck and tried not to stare at where the skirt ended and the legs began. Maybe Grace could hang out with them too.

  A crush of bodies pressed against him. Some kid who looked barely into his teens had shredded his school blazer and put it back together with safety pins. Because the grown-up world was too slow and stupid to sell it to them, and because they had no money, most of their stuff was customised or home-made. Like Terry, many of them were wearing a dead man’s jacket.

  Maybe Grace Fury’s gear was from the far end of the King’s Road, but all around him were mail-order catalogue T-shirts subverted with rips, pins and slogans borrowed from records by the Clash – WHITE RIOT, UNDER HEAVY MANNERS, 1977 – and rendered with toy printing-press stencil sets or wonky Biro.

  As they moved slowly through the crowd, Terry could feel Misty behind him, her arms around his waist, and Ray trying to stick close by his side. According to Terry’s calculations, Ray was only the third person with long hair ever to enter the Western World. The other two had been Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, who had turned up on separate nights to check out this new scene. Because nobody knew if this music was going to dominate everything for the next ten years or fade away to nothing, nobody knew if this time next year these bands would all be signed and rich and famous, or signing on the dole, or dead. That was what was so wonderful, Terry believed. Nobody had a clue what was going to happen next.

  They went down to the basement, feeling the semi-derelict wooden staircase creaking dangerously beneath them, having to step over a young man in a Lewis Leather and a pink tutu who was comatose at the bottom, and then there it was – the basement of the Western World. Terry had to smile.

  In front of the bouncing mob, Billy Blitzen was on a low stage the size of a snooker table – Billy dapper and beautiful in his soiled three-piece suit, his pomped-up black hair flying, letting his Fender swing at his side while he stabbed an imaginary syringe in his arm. ‘Whooh!’ Billy sang, and the crowd went stark raving mental. ‘Shoot up, everybody!’

  Then Billy grabbed the guitar’s neck and tried to do a Chuck Berry duck walk in the confined space. Terry’s eyes shone with joy.

  Billy’s group, the P45s, were a pick-up band of jobbing local musicians, who had chopped their hair off and dyed it metallic silver. This time last year Terry guessed they had looked like pub rockers – all shiny-arsed suits and Dr Feelgood swagger and a snout permanently on the go. Unless Billy got a deal, this time next year they would again have different trousers and haircuts. But Terry knew that Billy was happy with them because they all knew their five chords and where to buy drugs in Chalk Farm, and they didn’t matter anyway, for Billy Blitzen was essentially a solo act now, well on his way to perfecting his stage persona as the Dean Martin of the new music. ‘Whooh! Shoot up, everybody!’

  Needles had yet to really surface in London, but to a New Yorker like Billy they were old hat, a way of life, something to brag about, sing about, and a way of pulling rank over all the little London speed freaks and spliff smokers. The Americans already knew how hard drugs could be, and they flaunted that knowledge like a college degree. Terry sang along at the top of his voice to ‘Shoot Up, Everybody’ and he couldn’t hear a word. Needles still had a dark glamour for him. He hadn’t seen any yet.

  ‘There’s Dag! Misty said, starting to jump up and down. And Terry gawped at her, momentarily stunned. Jumping up and down? He thought she only did that for him.

  Yet then Terry was looking at Dag Wood and grinning shyly. It was really happening, the moment Terry had yearned for all the way through Berlin. Dag Wood – hero, rock star, friend – was in the basement of the Western World, looking like an exiled king or something. There he was at the back of the basement, as far away from the stage as he could get, in the only place where the crowd thinned out and you could sit down at a rickety table. Dag’s face looking like it had been hacked out of granite, his lank white hair pushed back, his huge bug eyes surveying the heaving basement as if it was his own underground fiefdom. His silk shirt was half off, and his muscles rippled. Holding court, that’s what he’s doing, Terry thought. Dag was surrounded by people – his musicians, his slick chubby manager, a dark-haired German woman called Christa, who was maybe his girlfriend or maybe his drug dealer or maybe both, plus some of the bolder regulars who had worked up the nerve to approach their tables. Everybody else, the ones who were not watching Billy Blitzen, was trying to be cool and not quite managing it. Kids who never changed the bored-witless expression on their face when they spilled a beer over a Buzzcock or peed next to a Sex
Pistol or stood on the toe of a Strangler, stared with swoony wonder at Dag Wood – the Godfather, the thorn in the side of the Woodstock generation, the man who had started it all. And Dag Wood saw Terry Warboys and laughed.

  ‘You did it, didn’t you?’ Dag said, coming over to him, the voice surprisingly deep and booming. He slapped Terry’s shoulder so hard it hurt. ‘You got me the cover. You are a good writer, man.’

  Terry’s face ached with the grinning.

  Oh, he knew how it worked. He knew that he had the ability to make rock stars his temporary friend if he got them the cover of The Paper. But Dag was different. He wasn’t some snot-nosed opportunist who had been a prog rocker with a mullet six months ago. Dag was the real deal – he was crawling across broken glass in Texas biker bars when the Beatles were sitting at the Maharishi’s feet, spitting blood and telling the world to shut its fucking mouth long before it was fashionable. And they had really connected in Berlin, Terry believed. What he had with Dag was like the thing he had with Billy Blitzen. They respected each other’s talent.

  ‘Hello, stretch,’ Dag said to Misty, who was hovering at Terry’s shoulder. ‘How are you tonight?’

  And Terry thought – stretch? What does that mean? Is it – what? Because she’s tall or something? Terry thought – I don’t get it.

  ‘Love the dress,’ murmured Dag, narrowing his eyes.

  Misty was laughing brightly and Terry was telling Dag her name, and then he was trying to introduce Ray, but his friend hung back, half-turning away with a fixed grin on his face, his hands stuffed deep into his Levi’s, letting his fair hair fall into his face, hiding behind it, and Terry felt a twinge of annoyance and disappointment. Ray had a way of just shrinking into the background when he felt uncomfortable. And it was too late anyway, because by then Dag had taken Misty’s hand and was guiding her past the sticky tables occupied by his musicians who – Terry couldn’t help noticing – casually sized up Misty as they sucked from cans and rolled joints and scanned the club to see who they might take back to their hotel tonight.