Tim Thornton

by The Alternative Hero (v5)

  “I’ll be really careful with it.”

  His frown becomes a glare.

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Clive, no. You don’t understand. That thing is under lock and key.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s falling to bits.”

  “I know! I won’t take it anywhere.”

  “That book is valuable. Some of the ticket stubs are worth—”

  My turn to scoff. “Worth what? They’re fascinating, but they’re not worth anything.”

  “That Jesus Jones ticket, man. Kilburn National, May 1990. Blur first on the bill, Ned’s second. That’s worth money, man. The geezer on XFM said so.”

  “Well, whatever. It’s not really the ticket stubs I’m interested in. It’s the other stuff.”

  “Why do you need it?”

  “Partly for research purposes. But … well, put it this way, if … sorry, when I meet the bloke, I’m gonna look a whole lot more impressive with that on my bookshelf.”

  “You actually reckon you’re going to get him round to your house?”

  “I’m using the word ‘bookshelf’ figuratively.”

  “Yeah, exactly—which is another way of saying my precious scrapbook will be knocking around in your bloody rucksack for weeks on end. I tell you what, man, you set up a meeting with him, or provide me with some … evidence that you’re making headway, and you can borrow the book.”

  I shake my head in disbelief.

  “Arse. ‘Provide me with some evidence’—for God’s sake, you’re beginning to talk to friends like you’re conducting an audit.”

  Alan shrugs, Shylock-style. “Those are my terms.”

  “Thanks, but it really would be better if I could have the book first …”

  “Perhaps, but I’m not budging on this one. Not after what happened to my Curve twelve-inches.”

  “Oh, come on, some of the reviews in there are mine anyway.”

  We continue in this manner for another ten minutes, after which an unsteady compromise is reached. I will be able to view the scrapbook within the confines of Alan’s house, but it is not to be removed until some contact with Webster has been made, the nature of which will be evaluated by Alan at the time. I am happy with this, up to a point. The next debate is whether my initial scrapbook visiting time could be this very afternoon—which, after some resistance, I win.

  We jump into Alan’s Mini and head to Crouch End. He goes a really stupid route via Highbury Corner so it takes ages and I have to endure most of the Kooks album, but the en route banter suggests he is a little more upbeat about my proposed project than he originally let on. Finally he swings the little car into a spot outside his palatial residence.

  I cannot possibly overstress how different Alan and Liz’s place is to the sort of dwellings that Polly and I end up grumblingly sharing. Potter Heights, as only I call it, is a four-storey town house entirely owned and occupied by the Potter family and their Bulgarian nanny, who has her own flat on the top floor. It’s clean and immaculately decorated; carpet in rooms that require it, real varnished wooden floors in those that don’t. It’s always warm. Alan and Liz each have an office on the first floor. The lounge cum dining room, which can be one or two separate rooms depending on what mood you’re in, is bigger than our entire flat. The basement is the kitchen, where the fridge groans with produce from posh local delis and organic-mongers. There are five loos. It’s the sort of house even Alan’s parents describe as large. All of this from a bloke who only five years ago was living on 25p packets of noodles, sneaking cans of lager into the pub and buying albums on cassette in their first week of release.

  We go inside and, emphasising that this is strictly a business mission rather than a social call, Alan leads me straight up to his office.

  “Coffee?”

  I can’t help giggling.

  “Yeah. And a blueberry muffin.”

  Alan laughlessly pads over to the corner of the room where he unlocks a large, battered and sticker-covered record box (some things thankfully never change) from which, with the greatest of care, he extracts the bulging, spiral-bound A5 notebook and solemnly places it on his desk in front of me. He looks at his watch and almost, I am convinced, says something like “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” but clearly thinks better of it and departs for the kitchen. Strange bastard.

  But never mind all that. For the item now in my hot little hands makes everything worth it. Alan’s greatest labour of love (apart from his daughter, perhaps). A chronological record of every gig he attended between 1988 and 1995. A total of 284 separate events: where they were, who he was with, a list (where possible) of what songs were played, the ticket stubs, press cuttings, sometimes his own photos, even details of how he got home—all brought to the thin sheets in glorious Anal-Alancolor. It’s been almost half a decade since I held this masterpiece of indie-pop accountancy, so this afternoon’s rifling session is particularly satisfying. Aside from the first few pages (when I was probably sitting at home memorising French irregular verbs), I can open the book anywhere to be instantly assailed by the most vivid of memories: PJ Harvey at the White Horse in Hampstead, The House of Love at Cambridge Corn Exchange, EMF supporting Carter USM at ULU (“They were great, some cocks tried to attack the singer, though … Neil Tennant showed up”), Paris Angels at Manchester Hacienda (“I have seen the Paris Angels and I believe”), Power of Dreams at Camden Palace (“They’re amazing, why aren’t they massive?”), Loop at Our Price in Reading (“Without question the best thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life”), Madonna at Wembley Stadium (“Me and Clive were the only people wearing Ned’s Atomic Dustbin T-shirts in the whole place, which kind of made it worthwhile”), Björk at Wembley Stadium, supporting U2 (“She was so good we decided to leave straight afterwards”), Nine Inch Nails at Wembley Stadium supporting Guns N’ Roses (“They were so good we decided to stay for Guns N Roses”), Jane’s Addiction supporting The Wonder Stuff at Brixton Academy (“I thought they were shit, Clive thought they were amazing—big row”). And of course, looming large throughout the volume, no less than eighty-six entries concerning the Thieving Magpies.

  Although not the very first band Alan saw (that honour went to—oh, the shame of it!—The Blow Monkeys), the Magpies were certainly the first group whose live appearance Alan deemed worth commemorating. The opening entry was probably made a while after the occasion itself (he actually chanced upon a supporting set of theirs while seeing, as further disgrace and hilarity would have it, Status Quo) and in fact is executed in such an uncharacteristically girly way one would almost suspect Alan’s younger sister were behind it. Spread over two pages, an early, catalogue-esque photo of each band member is glued in and framed with multicoloured felt-tip flourishes, their names written lovingly underneath, the ticket proudly displayed above, with the Quo’s name blacked out and the Magpies’ logo glued over the words “plus special guests.” And, weaving its way around the pictures and assorted bunting, Alan’s hysterical write-up—again, one suspects, written with the benefit of hindsight:

  Tonight we saw the group that’s going to change my life, weren’t expecting much when they walked on but oh my God they were brilliant. The energy was mind-blowing, they started with “Scared of Being Nice” and then roared through the rest. Lance took the piss out of the crowd, telling them Francis Rossi had an accident and was going to play in a wheelchair. All the songs were well good, “You’re Still Ugly” and “Have You Stopped Talking Yet” and “Siamese Burn” and “Marlow Meltdown” (B-side of Soapbox) were all WICKED. Brill bit in “Chopped Heart” when he started singing “Pictures of Matchstick Men.” I don’t think the audience thought it was funny. But fuck, I’m going to see them again … loads … this is the beginning of the future!!!

  Indeed, how prophetic. Although, as if to prove he hadn’t quite left mainstream late-eighties hell, the second entry was a very small passage concerning a Steve Winwood concert.

  I sk
ip to the end. It’s some token of the huge part the Thieving Magpies played in this music fan’s life that his tome is bookended by accounts of their performances: the first bursting with naïve colour, fresh, exciting discovery and a fifteen-year-old’s unjaded optimism; the last, black as fuck and weighed down to drowning point with bitter disappointment, as the last spluttering breaths of a golden era and its crowned champion went gurgling down the alternative-rock drainpipe. Alan must have used the entire contents of a permanent marker to blacken the two-page spread, the centrepiece of which bears the succinct description “TWAT” scrawled in red across a cheery snap of the man himself. Above, meanwhile, an advert boasting the Aylesbury lineup is roughly pasted, a neat rip straight through the heart of the very same band logo so proudly boasted seven years previously, and languishing below, the entry’s sole—and the scrapbook’s final—sentence:

  CONGRATULATIONS, ZEITGEIST MAN, YOU’VE DONE EXACTLY WHAT THOSE BASTARDS WANTED YOU TO DO.

  Alan had angrily ripped out the book’s remaining few blank pages.

  But like all intense love affairs, Alan’s with Webster and his group didn’t end as instantly as his final instalment suggested. For many months afterwards he continued to scour the pages of the music press and expectantly phone the Thieving Magpies fan club for any sign that normal service would be resuming, and their final album remained in perpetual proximity to his CD player. But, as sales of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? went stratospheric, while Tony Blair contacted removal men for his imminent arrival at Downing Street—and bands like Rialto suddenly discovered they had a career—something definitely withered and died in Alan. I suppose it would have died eventually anyway, few people are able to sustain the same level of fanaticism for something as frivolous as a pop group once real life kicks in, but for Alan, when Lance Webster stormed off that stage in a blaze of violence the proverbial dream really was over. The very next week he went and got his hair cut.

  “Eurghh,” Alan cringes, returning with the coffee. “For Christ’s sake, don’t show him that page.”

  “That’s the best bit.”

  “The sentimentality of youth,” he frowns, handing me a muffin. When you ask for something to eat at Alan’s, you get it. Even if you were joking.

  “So I’m just trying to find,” I begin, leafing through the book, “the gig that we spoke to him at.”

  “Beef, I think. New Cross Venue.”

  “The Heart Throbs at the Square,” I correct him.

  “He was at that gig. But it wasn’t where we spoke to him the first time. Sorry, Clive, could you be a bit more gentle with the pages?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It was the Beef gig. I approached him halfway through that cover they used to do.”

  “‘You Sexy Thing’?”

  “No, the other one. ‘These Boots …’ and so on.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sure it was at The Heart Throbs.”

  “Depends which conversation you’re talking about. I’ve had more than one chat with him, you know—”

  “Here it is,” I interrupt, triumphantly. “The Square, Harlow, the seventh of April nineteen ninety. ‘We spoke to Lance Webster!’—in very excited prepubescent handwriting, I must say.”

  “Piss off.”

  “ ‘We asked him what the real lyrics were to the bridge of “Me in a Room.”’”

  “Oh, that conversation,” Alan huffs, tidying some papers.

  “‘Dominic drove us, but finally was a wanker.’ Ha! I remember what that’s about.”

  “He was never quite as useful as we planned, was he?”

  We had befriended Dominic Browne for the sole reason that he’d just been given a car by his wealthy and spoiling parents. Driving the family jeep while holidaying in Spain meant that he was ready to pass his driving test practically by the time he’d finished breakfast on his seventeenth birthday. I was still sixteen at this point; Alan, much to his annoyance and embarrassment, had already failed the test twice. Credit where it’s due, Dominic had a fairly respectable alternative track record: he’d attended both Glastonbury and Reading the previous year, he’d used his new set of wheels to follow Claytown Troupe around the country during half-term and had already, we were envious to learn, been to a Faith No More show. The items that weakened his case to be a genuine gigging companion were that he excelled at sport and academic work, drank little, insisted on wearing a rugby shirt and proper shoes to indie clubs, was generally a bit full of himself and, we suspected, wouldn’t deliberate too long about screwing you over if it made his own life easier: a hunch that was conclusively proved correct that particular evening in Harlow.

  The three of us had piled into Dominic’s convertible Volkswagen Golf (a car that further downgraded his indie credentials, we considered), ploughed up the M11 and, tradition dictated, necked a few cans of Strongbow before our arrival at the Square, an externally unpromising club that had nonetheless already played host to some pivotal musical evenings for me. We were standing around watching the support band, trying to think of witty chat-up lines for some of the tie-dyed lovelies scattered around the room—when Lance Webster ambled past, followed, as was often the case, by the pile of blonde dreadlocks known to most as Gloria Feathers.

  “Did you see that?” I whispered to Dominic (Alan had gone to the toilet).

  “Yeah,” he shrugged. “So?”

  That was the other thing about Dominic. A fan of pretty much all the other bands we liked, he thought the Magpies were “a bit too commercial.” Whether he really believed this or just said it to endow himself with a highbrow opinion, I never quite worked out.

  “Fuck,” I muttered to no one in particular. “I’ve got to try and speak to him.” Cautiously I looked over to where he and Gloria stood. A third party had joined them now, perhaps The Heart Throbs’ guitarist. As usual Gloria was doing all the talking.

  Alan returned from the loo and instantly noticed the new arrival.

  “The fuck’s he doing here?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Maybe he goes to the out-of-town ones so he doesn’t get hassled,” Alan mused.

  “Funny that, I was thinking of hassling him myself,” I commented.

  “Forget it, man. You’ll never get past Gloria.”

  The support band finished and the DJ, perhaps thinking it would serve as a welcome to the venue, stuck on the Magpies’ “Me in a Room.” I glanced in Webster’s direction; he had rolled his eyes and buried himself deeper into the conversation. Dominic feigned disgust and went to get another Diet Coke; Alan and I, normally happy to dance anywhere, self-consciously swayed a bit and tried not to mouth the words. I couldn’t relax, knowing who was a few bodies away from me. I needed to somehow reach out to him, give him some small indication of the happy turmoil he was helping my life plunge into; but without appearing to be some kind of gibbering Super Fan. Whatever I said to him needed to have a point. A minute later the angrily sung, incomprehensible middle eight of the song kicked in and the man himself gave me my answer.

  “I’m going to ask him what he’s singing here,” I declared to Alan suddenly.

  “Okay,” Alan nodded, without debate.

  “Can you come with me?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. In case Gloria hits me or something.”

  We paused for a moment. I felt like I was standing outside my headmaster’s office, preparing to knock.

  “I’m not sure, man,” admitted Alan. “He might tell us to fuck off.”

  “Part of me doesn’t care.”

  “Shall we try and have a drink first or something?”

  The DJ swapped the Magpies tune for “Sensitize” by That Petrol Emotion. A small whoop went up from Webster’s corner and Gloria skipped off to dance near the stage with some others.

  “Now,” I commanded.

  We nudged our way past a few people until we were directly in front of him. We stood there foolishly for what seemed like ten minutes until I remembered I was meant to
be doing the talking; I drew breath to speak but then heard Alan’s voice next to me.

  “Er, excuse me, man. Sorry to bother you … you can tell us to fuck off if you like …”

  Webster grinned cheekily. “Fuck off, then.”

  We all laughed. Phew!

  “We were wondering,” I continued, taking the reins back from Alan, “what the lyrics were to that bit in ‘Me in a Room’?”

  “‘Me in a Room,’” Webster repeated, narrowing his eyes at me strangely. He’s short, I thought. He’s wearing a long, brown and decidedly non-alternative suede jacket. His hair looks scruffy and knotted. But—he’s Lance Webster.

  “The bridge bit,” Alan added.

  “Sounds like you’re singing ‘the system eyes all grind around the fuck,’” I pointed out, laughing nervously.

  “That’s probably because I am singing that,” he smiled. “I think it began life as something else, perhaps ‘I sit, I stand, I sleep, I drink, I fuck,’ but we recorded it one night when I got pissed out of my head on Black Russians and had to keep doing it over and over … the more pissed I got the more I changed it, until it just became that. I can’t believe it, you bastards have picked my one nonsensical lyric!”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “We never play it live anyway,” Webster sneered. “Shit song.”

  “No, it’s great,” Alan and I chanted in unison.

  “All right,” Webster laughed, “you really can fuck off now.”

  Class dismissed.

  “Nice one,” stammered Alan, turning to go.

  “See you at Rivermead,” I said stupidly, and followed.

  We returned to where a smirking Dominic stood, clearly delighted at how short the exchange had been.

  “So, what did he have to say?”

  “What a geezer,” Alan began.

  “Top bloke,” I added.

  “Yes, but what did he actually say? For God’s sake, Beresford, your bloody hands are shaking.”

  He was right. My adrenaline rush had reached its peak, coupled with the sweet satisfaction at having actually pulled off a Nice Little Chat with my hero. Just like three mates, we’d been, shooting the breeze in a bar before watching a great band. I was one of them. Despite the fact he’d essentially told us to fuck off twice in the space of one conversation.