The Rock and Roll Years

As anyone who has been in a band before will tell you, it has this way of taking up all your time. Even when you’re not actually directly doing anything to do with it, you end up musing on plans, songs and such. It’s equally exciting and exhausting.

Despite having taken up actually playing music instead of just listening at the age of 16, fired up on a diet of Peter Hook, I never actually got my arse in gear properly till I was in my mid 20s. The university I attended was curiously short of musos, so instead I settled into a routine of heavy drinking, browsing the local record store for cheap vinyl and the odd spot of DJing at the student union. Happy days.

On arriving in Manchester, however, I decided it was time to sort myself out. For the first time in my life, I had a bit of cash to spend, so I bought a decent set-up and stuck an ad in Affleck’s Palace. I got two replies, the second of which came so long after I’d put the note up that I’d totally forgot about it. Luckily, the guy could play guitar really well – without hyperbole he was the best I’d heard.

Not that things started happening overnight. Indeed, there was a period of two months where I didn’t hear from him and I started jamming with another band. But they seemed to be heading in the direction of Oasis-lite and I took off on holiday wondering if the whole idea had been a mistake. Another few months later, the guitarist from before rocked up on my doorstep, stating he wanted to try again. He’d been playing in some wretched punk band and wanted something more. Being a bit older, with a decent record collection, I guess he thought I was the guy. He stated he’d front the band and I agreed, which in hindsight was a mistake, as he was armed with a thin voice that just managed to stay in tune.

Over the next three and a half years, playing in the band was my primary focus, the one thing that got me through the tedium of workdays. We wrote a load of songs and armed with a second guitarist who was limited to Johnny Ramone shapes and a drummer, we managed to play some gigs around town. Some went great, some were in front of ten disinterested students. Before each, my nerves would go into meltdown and I’d wonder what the hell I was doing getting up on stage.

In a stroke of good fortune, our singer/guitarist was also a bit of a whizz when it came to using his 10 track recording unit. When our drummer quit, stating he was going deaf from the volume of our songs, we spent a summer recording an album of songs. Watching them take shape was a huge buzz, as he dropped in little bits of synth, sampled noises and the like. When it was finished, I was proud as hell. It sounded great, and I felt I could state in confidence that we were streets ahead of any other band out there.

When we found another drummer, we got back on the circuit, but it was growing increasingly frustrating as we never seemed to be getting anywhere. As I remember it, our second-to-last gig was to a few hundred people who happened to be there and we went down well to the point we had to play a few ropey covers to satisfy demand for us to play more. Then, weeks later, we were stood in front of a few bored looking punters.

As happens, we argued about new songs. I figured we should push ourselves further – the rhythm guitarist had started using more than barre chords, which was a start. The others figured we should be more punky, as it was “what people wanted”. It wasn’t getting anywhere, certainly with my defining character trait being ‘stubborn’. Eventually, the singer decided to pack it in with vague words of staying in touch – I got the impression his mother saw me as a better influence than his friends back over in Salford.

I was fairly despondent about years of work leading up to not much. Then I found out that the singer and guitarist (who grew up on the same street) had got in another rhythm section and were carrying on under the same name. Finding this out led to a terrible few months where I barely wanted to talk to anyone about anything. In the end, I think they played two more gigs before splitting up, though that knowledge didn’t help sate my anger/depression.

In Head On, Julian Cope talks about the sacking of Mick Finkler, the original guitarist in the Teardrop Explodes. Having spent a couple of years seeing him every day, writing songs and touring with him, he only spoke to him two more times. “Bands are like that”, he says, and he’s dead on. In the three years since I got kicked out of the band, I’ve spoken to the rhythm guitarist once and none of the others. I did hear that the singer was trying to get my phone number, but I wasn’t interested, holding a grudge being another trait of mine. Especially against those who can’t show loyalty.

Now I’m going back in to that world again. Perhaps it helps this time that I’m surrounded by people I can have a conversation with. Having someone who can actually sing fronting the band helps too. Maybe it’ll all turn to ashes again, and I know that if we ever get to the stage of playing gigs, I’ll be hidden away in a corner beforehand, crippled by nerves. But the process of writing songs remains the thrill it always was, and it gets me out of the house, right?