Old songs mangled into new shapes, while the most recent ones suddenly took on the new, urgent life they had refused to find in rehearsals. The magic of their being together took over from their individual discomfort and the crowd felt its charge, rode on it. Up on that tiny stage with the condensation flooding down the graffitied walls in danger of electrocuting the lot of them, Lynton had felt truly alive again. Afterwards, he had stood open-mouthed in amazement as not one but two Ramones came up to offer their congratulations.
He and Steve had ended up at some wild party on the Lower East Side that night, being offered every form of vice that the Big Bad Apple had to offer. In the high of the moment, they had managed to convince themselves that maybe everything would be all right.
They’d been allowed one day to rest and recover after that gig, then they’d been gathered together by the young guy Tony had sent with them to be their tour manager, an executive posing as a positive punk who spelt his name ‘Nik’ and attempted to dress the way the band did. Only he made such fundamental errors as wearing their T-shirts to their gigs, under the pinstriped suit jacket and skinny jeans he thought made him look the part, with a fluorescent pink skinny tie knotted round his neck and worse still, matching fluorescent pink plastic winklepickers. Nik was full of the genuine enthusiasm of one who had no idea of what he was letting himself in for.
They were slightly more heartened to make the acquaintance of their driver for the next month, Earl, and his gigantic articulated rig. They’d never seen a lorry so big or so gleaming as this mobile Silver Bullet, as Steve immediately christened it; it certainly put the British standard tour coach to shame. Inside it had bunks at the back and a lounge in the front, with its own fridge and a Hi Fi that looked like it had been designed by NASA. With a roadie from New York, a young Italian American who looked like Travis Bickle and rejoiced in the name of Mouse, in the middle of a hailstorm, they started their journey across the badlands.
The novelty of the coach’s luxuries began to fade when they slowly realised that, for the next month, they’d be spending about fifteen hours a day confined in it, with only a couple of overnight motel stays on the way. Just as the novelties of the truck stops with their bizarre novelty shopping items – replica route signs; glow-in-the-dark Jesus pendants; Real Truckers’ tapes; fundamentalist preacher stickers; and the hornet-coloured tablets called Stingers that were like legalised speed for roadhogs – began to pale next to the sour looks and muttered comments of the folk inside them.
Outside New York, to the rest of America, they were a travelling freak show.
The further south they went, the more Lynton had the unnerving sensation they were moving back in time, into a world of swamp and cotton and white clapboard churches that had forever been hostile to a man with black skin. A world his jazz heroes had told him all about was now prickling at the core of him, almost as if his own blood was singing him a warning. Maybe it was; maybe his ancestors had toiled in servitude in similar lands, fashioning the music that kept their souls alive even as they broke their backs labouring. He wouldn’t ever know. But he felt. And it seemed his instincts were quickening. Earl, who himself looked like a bowlegged cowboy with a drooping moustache and a black Stetson parked firmly on the back of his head, seemed to stay closer by his side when they got out to stretch their legs and eat. He didn’t say anything, but Lynton just knew he was watching his back.
He stared at the back of Earl’s head now, at the neck thick with muscle and the long black ponytail that snaked out of the Stetson and ran halfway down his back. At the jaw that stoically chewed tobacco in time to the Hank Williams tape he listened to as he drove. Lynton had never particularly liked country music before, but Hank’s lonesome keening had lodged itself permanently in his brain, as haunted and lost as the landscape they travelled through. It mingled there with Billie Holliday’s lament of strange fruit, hanging from the trees. He realised he was drinking almost as much as Steve now, although it didn’t seem to afford him the respite that was coming in loud snores from behind him.
Washington DC was the last place where Lynton had felt safe. That had been a mainly student gig with a fairly polite audience, all with white faces, he noted. Their playing had not quite been touched by the quicksilver magic of New York that night, but it was still enjoyable enough for them to forget their differences for the duration.
But since then…
Baltimore, the venue half empty. Norfolk, Virginia mainly hostile stares and indifference, just a handful of the local weirdos making a show of themselves in front of the stage. Steve disappearing with a couple of girls afterwards, a nervous, two-hour wait for him to get back on the bus, Nik pacing and wondering if he hadn’t been mugged down some dark alley, infecting the rest of them with his fretful agitation. Steve eventually turning up arseholed, singing ‘The Irish Rover’, something that freaked him out when Lynton tried to joke about it the next day, because Steve couldn’t remember any of it and worse than that, it was his Da’s favourite song.
Tonight’s gig, left four hours ago in Atlanta, had been heavier going still. Two good old boys had parked themselves right in front of Lynton, giving him knowing winks and then making gestures as if they were jerking a rope around their necks. At one time, Vince would have picked up on this, would have been down off the stage sorting them out in a second. But Vince didn’t seem like he was entirely on the same stage as the rest of them. Vince was glassy-eyed and mumbling his words, tearing off his shirt and then falling over. The first beer cans had started coming their way at that point, gathering momentum as Vince staggered back to his feet and flapped his arms, shouting vague, incoherent threats. Steve had saved the day by catching a full one as it flew in an arc towards his head, then, without missing a beat, bowling it straight back over-arm to his attacker. That had raised a cheer, bought them a bit more time. Steve had seized it, deftly segueing the hideous non-version of ‘The Crooked Mile’ they’d been demolishing into the viperous opening chords of ‘Grumble’ and then, as if this ancient routine had awoken Vince from his narcotic haze, they had pulled it all back from the brink.
It was only during those fraught few minutes between disaster and redemption, when Steve searched out Lynton’s eyes for support, that he had finally noticed the Dukes of Hazzard down there. In an instant, he had come over to Lynton’s side of the stage to grind his Les Paul at them from his sweaty leather crotch, with his top lip curled and an expression of pure psychosis in his eyes. Pulling expressions of disgust, they’d moved away, but Lynton could still feel his heart hammering all the way out of the venue. In the car park, Earl was lounging by the bus, idly swinging a metal baseball bat. As if he had known.
Lynton couldn’t stop his eyes from darting around the darkened lot, couldn’t stop his hands from shaking until he was safely back on the bus and they were on the highway out of town.
Then it had gone into what was becoming their routine. Vince and Sylvana went immediately into the bunks at the back of the bus. Nik counted the money, doled out the PDs, put everything else in his little safe box and then retired with it clutched to his chest. Sometimes he’d try and stay up drinking with the rest of them, or sit up front and bother Earl, but not tonight. Lynton, Steve and Kevin sat around in the front with Mouse, who, as usual, was spilling over with enthusiasm to recount his Tall Tales of CBGBs.
They all liked Mouse, they really did. He seemed not to mind working his arse off for fuck-all money so long as he got to hang out with the bands he thought were cool. He was funny too, with his quickfire delivery and his pained attempts to keep his hair perfect against all the odds of his chosen profession. But none of them wanted to know about it that night. All Mouse could have heard was the continual cracking of cans being opened and Zippos clanging open and shut. In the end he’d gone up the front to sit with Earl, leaving them to their introspective misery.
Kevin was the only one who wasn’t numbing himself with drink or some kind of drug, legal or otherwise. Kevin still read the local
papers and fanzines he picked up wherever they went to try to get a better idea of this strange new country they were in. Kevin still got his camera out and faithfully recorded each venue and truckstop and sight of interest along the way. He still had a notebook in which he diligently wrote down notes on each gig and ideas for new songs. Lynton guessed that, unlike the rest of them, Kevin was doing this to try his best to hold on to some sanity and normality, the way he had always done.
Keep your head down, Kevin, and with luck the fists will fly above your head. He had gone to his bunk about two hours ago with the earplugs they’d been given on the plane.
Lynton and Steve had carried on ploughing their way through tonight’s slab of Budweiser. ‘Fucking weak, pissy, Yankee crap,’ was Steve’s opinion on that. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a decent pint of Tetley’s. I tell you what, Lynt, I’d rather be back in Hull.’
Then he’d done his trick of falling asleep with the crushed can still inside his fist. He’d fallen over sideways since, into a foetal position, his Homburg hat tipped over his eyes.
Lynton wished so hard that he could sleep. He’d thought that reading might help him nod off. But maybe it had just been the wrong choice of book, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.
The sign flashed past in the Silver Bullet’s huge headlamps as Earl steered them into the next state.
The Heart of Dixie. Sweet Home Alabama.
Load in was at 4pm at Cropper’s Lounge, a long, low building made out of clapboard with a big neon sign over the door, on the Southside of Birmingham. This was supposed to be the liberal side of town, where a cabal of artists and writers had set up shop in the early seventies. The youthful rebellion had slowly spread out from their revolutionary bookshops, coffee shops and bars to fashion the area into the live venue hub of the city. So Kevin informed them, as Earl drove them in from the motel on the outskirts of the city where they had been allowed to crash out for most of the day.
Lynton vaguely took in what he was saying, staring out of the window at the high ridge of the Appalachian mountains, which rose up like great, jagged giant’s teeth, green and grey under the scudding clouds. They were so much bigger than any mountains he’d ever seen before that they almost looked as if they had been painted onto the sky.
He hadn’t managed to sleep until they’d disembarked the Silver Bullet at four in the morning. Then, when he’d finally got a surprisingly enormous double bed in front of him, he’d crashed straight out. Luckily, Lynton got to share with Kevin on this tour; Steve was bunking in with Mouse, so he didn’t have any of the usual snoring and farting to put up with. His slumbers had seemed blissful at the time, but now he felt woozy, the way you did when you’d slept through the middle of the day, and he’d woken up with the same headache, a dull fuzz in the side of his head.
Kevin had some headache pills; they came in a little plastic dispenser here like Tic-Tacs back at home and were just about as effective. Maybe what he needed was some food; they were due to get some once they turned up at the venue.
Marty Cropper, the guy who owned the bar, was obviously one of the old hippies from Kevin’s guidebook. A tall, rangy man with long frizzy hair tied back into a ponytail, and a matching handlebar moustache and sideburns that had probably been bright red once, but were now softened out with an abundance of grey. He and Earl greeted each other with slaps on the back as if they were friends from way back. They certainly had the same aura about them, like two outlaw bikers who had come to heel a bit in their middle age, but not that much.
Inside Cropper’s Lounge was a horseshoe bar with a seating area to the left, red leather booths around the outside, smaller, round pine tables in the middle and the obligatory pool table. Narrow and skinny from the front, it went back a long way, with a big dance floor and a wide stage beyond it, decorated with steers’ horns and red velvet drapes. Psychedelic posters covered almost every wall, but there were a few more modern ones: the London Calling cover and Never Mind the Bollocks.
Lynton started to relax a bit as he looked around; this wasn’t the hillbilly hellhole he had been expecting. Genial Marty ushered them into the booths, brought them pitchers of cold beer, iced water, corn chips and salsa and the menus. The freak show divided into its usual components: Vince and Sylvana sat with Nik, the rest of them took over a corner. The only difference to usual was that Earl joined them this time, when he normally ate alone.
The food came fast and the plates were piled high. Once he had half a warm, spicy burrito inside him, Lynton found he was actually enjoying himself.
‘Hey Earl, you know this guy?’ asked Mouse, after Marty had deposited another jug of beer and iced water and taken away the empties.
Earl, sucking the meat off a spare rib with his moustache drooping over the side, nodded his head. ‘Uh-huh. We were in the Marines together.’
‘No way!’ said Mouse. ‘That’s some coincidence.’
‘Not really.’ Earl put the gnawed bone down and reached for a toothpick. ‘We buddied up in Korea, rode together for a while after we got back. His interests have always been the same as mine, ’n’ this job takes me out this way often enough.’ He nodded towards Nik, sitting across the room listening avidly to whatever Sylvana was saying as he picked daintily through a salad. ‘I always try and make sure if I take a band out, they play a night in this place. Marty’s good people. You don’t get a lot like him out these ways.’
‘Where exactly you from, Earl?’ Mouse continued his interview.
‘Bacon County, Georgia.’
‘You’re shitting me?’ Mouse laughed.
Earl grimaced stoically, as if he was used to this response. ‘Bacon County, Georgia. You look it up on the map, dumb rodent.’
‘What’s it like there?’ asked Steve.
‘Shit,’ said Earl, simply. ‘Hard land, hard people. I signed up for Korea, they didn’t have to come and git me. That’d tell you just about all you needed to know.’
Steve nodded admiringly. ‘Right. Mebbe they should twin it with Hull, where we come from.’
‘You folks all come from Shit too?’ Earl let a small smile curl around his top lip. ‘Well, apart from Mouse here, ’cos we all know he come from Fairyland. It ain’t so bad though, is it? Think about it. If we all didn’t come from Shit in the first place, we wouldn’t have had nothin’ to get away from.’
His words stirred something in Lynton’s brain. ‘That sounds like a line from that book I was reading.’
‘Flannery O’Connor, yes, sir, it is,’ Earl winked at him. ‘I saw you reading that. That’s a great piece of art, that book.’
‘Get to fuck!’ exploded Mouse. ‘Earl’s an artist and we didn’t know it.’
Earl’s sardonic grimace returned and he cuffed the roadie round his shaved head like a large bear might reprimand his cub. The laughter went on as Mouse rolled about in his seat, squeaking expletives and pretending to be mortally injured. Earl got to his feet, shaking his head. ‘Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m headed back to my bunk. I’ll see y’all later.’ He doffed his Stetson and turned to go, then had another thought and turned back to look at Lynton.
‘You folks take my advice and make the most of ol’ Marty’s hospitality here tonight. There ain’t nothing else worth seeing round here, you don’t mind me saying.’
As he said it, that tiny worm of fear started to uncoil again in Lynton’s stomach and the smile froze on his face as he watched Earl walk away.
No one else had read any other meaning into those words. They all carried on laughing and joking. He tried to push it out of his mind, reassuring himself that nothing bad could happen to him here, not in a liberal hippy place owned by an ex-Marine who could probably dismantle a redneck with his bare hands.
But that worm, it wouldn’t go away. It wriggled all through soundcheck, so he had to concentrate hard on what would normally come naturally, so that he was all fingers and thumbs over the easiest of parts. It twisted and turned as they met the support band, a local three-piec
e called Three-Legged Dog. It wouldn’t let him take in what they were playing when it was their turn to warm up, except that the singer had one of those harsh old Appalachian voices he would have expected to hear from a grizzled old man who played a banjo, not a regular-looking guy with short hair who was about twenty.
Give me a beer, the worm seemed to say to him, give me a beer and I might go away. All right, he thought. I’ll make the most of ol’ Marty’s hospitality.
Marty’s backstage spread was the best they’d ever had. More Mexican food, a bottle of tequilla and decent-looking beer called Dos Equis. Lynton started getting stuck into those, and felt an immediate relief as the first one went down. Then Vince picked up the tequilla, holding it up to the light and studying the yellow liquid. ‘I’ve heard this is good,’ he said. ‘Anyone want to give it a try?’
‘You wanna be careful on that,’ Sylvana warned him. ‘That stuff can turn you funny.’
Vince looked at her with the most disdainful expression any of them had ever seen him use on his new bride. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘isn’t it time you were powdering your nose or something?’
Lynton saw the shock and hurt bloom in her eyes. Then she meekly caved in. ‘Sure, honey,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to cramp your style.’ She sat back down in the furthest corner of the room. Nik jumped up and went over to her side, started gabbling away to try and hide the embarrassment of the moment.
Vince didn’t even bother to look her way. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Lynton. ‘Lynton,’ he said, his eyes glittering. The bleary mess who’d so nearly ruined everything the night before seemed to have vanished. In its place, spruce Vince looked razor-sharp in the Smith & Wesson T-shirt he’d picked up in a truckstop, black Sta-prest trousers and his big brothel creepers. ‘You game?’
The Singer Page 38
