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They haven’t performed for a few weeks. Planned holidays have been taken, so it is
perhaps good to be back together and ready to play.
We leave London in two cars, around 5.00 pm for a soundcheck
at 6.00. Keys have been accidentally
locked into the boot. The culprit –
usually the band’s rock-steady Sergeant-Major – blames jetlag. His girlfriend lives in San Francisco. So rock and roll.
It isn’t a major hold up.
The M1 is relatively clear, then we crawl into St Albans, to a pub
called The Horn, on Alma Road. The
headline band – a local outfit - soundchecks (they’ve come in an aunt’s
large-booted Mercedes). Then the boys.
I’m wandering around St Albans thinking about food and
drink. Finally I settle on a £3 Tesco
meal deal. I’ve had a tooth filled in
the morning, so I want something not too challenging. Ham and mustard, packet of ready salted and a
peach tea. Kit Kat for pudding. I eat it
sitting on a rather grand bench commemorating the 800th anniversary
of the signing of Magna Carta.
I suppose I should have visited the cathedral, but I’ve been
before. I head back to The Horn, keep
away from the band meeting going on at one table, and apply myself to a regular
Coke (bottled) and Sudoku. Behind me, in
the rear of the building, support bands play, obviously local, with their young
mates claquing like billy-o. Nothing
that sounds unusual. Desultory drumming
and a bit of screaming.
So then the time comes.
I move next door. I’m not paying £7.00 and nobody seems to want to ask
me to (the invisibility of age), so I stand with a pint of water at the back of
the black room and watch the boys set up.
A family friend shows. I chat
with her. She has brought her mum, who
sometimes comes to see covers bands. The room has emptied until finally there
is a small core of four or five people, friends of our guitarist. It isn’t unusual to play to nobody, or at
least very few. My son, the singer,
rather enjoys these out of town shows where nobody knows who you are.
They open with a song, their new single. My son is clearly prepared to enjoy himself
and give it all tonight. He pirouettes
and bends and shimmers, a kind of angry wraith.
He wears the red trousers of one his mother’s suits and one of her black
silk shirts. Between numbers he raises his chin and pushes back his hair, or
takes on water, turns his back on the crowd.
The room gradually fills, not to bursting, but to a degree to which it
can be a manipulated thing, and my son begins to work on his audience,
eyeballing, and pointing, and drawing in.
His energy is directed towards persuasion; this is theatre. But it isn’t pretend. He leaves himself, everything, on the stage,
seeming to turn himself inside out.
Sweat and eyeliner make a mess of his face. The band, tight as a drumskin, likewise tear
into their beautifully constructed songs, big songs, songs too big for this
small dark backroom of a pub, but this is what they must settle for, for the
moment. Their time will surely
come. Wembley will have to wait.
They finish, as always, on an old, dark song from their
earlier manifestation, a song in a minor key, but with enormous swaying power,
that addresses some of the difficulty of adolescence. ‘Know’ it is called and
it explodes into a storm of motion and guitar crashing at its end, the band
moving as one animal. It ends neither in
a whimper not a bang, but in white sound, as the players leave the stage.
Afterwards, the dervish is put away and my son converses
happily, sane as you like. It is hard to
become a rock star, especially in an age when the rock star has been proclaimed
dead. So perhaps my son’s attempt will
end in a magnificent failure. I hope not
because as much energy and commitment has been poured into his making of music
as is put in by determined apprentice footballers or young philosophers. My pride is unshakeable. I remain almost disbelieving that a son of
mine can do this stuff. I have other
sons who also do other unbelievable things, but tonight this is my rock star
son’s night, and my cup runneth over.
We roll into our beds around 3.00 am. Rock and roll.
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