12. beats working
Tensions or not, you could get used to this.
Being in a rock band, of all things. Becoming sure of my place in it.
For a beginner, rehearsals are always fascinating. Now they were getting easier. We were getting better.
Actually I'm not sure you could say that about everyone - because the rest weren't bad from the beginning.
I never paid much attention to Bill's drumming. By which I mean there were no mistakes to notice. I wouldn't have recognised what was good and what wasn't, so his rolls and fills all sounded convincing. But I understood rock 'n roll rhythms a bit, and he never seemed to miss a beat.
I don't know if it's something all drummers can do, hear a guitar riff and immediately lock in behind it, but he certainly could. We were lucky to have him.
In fact I couldn't help thinking he was just practising till something better came along. But it was only one gig, and he seemed up for it, sticking out rehearsals with a bad singer. If he looked elsewhere after that, his job was done and va con dio.
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Same with Pat Slade.
From the start, Bernie was a big fan of his. But he had his own way of expressing it.
'The Beatles played Rickenbackers and Hendrix played a Fender Stratocaster. None of them could make either brand sound like someone strangling a cat!'
Patrick knew how to strangle every cat he came across. He was like Bill that way. Mention any song and he either knew it or nailed the guitar part as soon as he heard it. To a non-muso like me, this was sorcery. I thought there was nothing he couldn't play. Until I suggested Peggy Sue.
The lyrics are typical Fifties high-school luv syrup. And I'd have skirted the trademark hiccups. But it absolutely fucking rocks, with those thundering drums and chopping lead break. That's the part Pat struggled with.
Really, maestro?
He explained why, though of course it went in one ear and out. Buddy Holly rises even higher in your estimation. The Beatles and Steve Marriott were big fans, and we've all imagined what he would've achieved if he'd lived beyond 22.
Pat's glasses were better, though.
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I couldn't hear anything wrong with Bernie either. There again, I couldn't tell what he was playing!
I just wasn't attuned to the bass guitar. I never listened to it on records. There'd be something on a jukebox, or in Howard Street, and Bernie would say 'good bass line'. But all I could hear was a deep noise under everything else; I could never pick out an actual bass riff. In the '60s, bass and drums were generally left low in the mix. So it was a shock when they miked up Bonham's kit, or Sunshine of Your Love sounded too deep and dark. Bass and drums were now officially scary.
But in the songs I liked, the bass was just something you missed when it dropped out. I can pick it out nowadays, through earphones, but at the time a lot of rock 'n roll was mono, and remember Bernie described his red Hohner as flatulent. Nothing as clear as the Stranglers, where the bass crunches in like a road drill on Something Better Change and especially Hanging Around.
Still and all, it was obvious he knew what he was doing. You could tell a rehearsal was going well when Bernard Cook flicked his forefinger off the strings with a flourish.
Mind you, I told him he had the easy job. It took Paul Simonon only three weeks from picking up a bass to playing in the Clash. It's got only four strings: how hard can it be?
Feel free to try it, smartarse. Except we haven't got three weeks.
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Wasn't just me having to learn on the go. Without a piano, Harry switched to rhythm guitar.
Now, anything that's not lead guitar isn't that hard (Bernie showed me), but you have to do what's on the tin: keep the rhythm. The bass and drums do that, but you can't have a rhythm guitarist who doesn't keep time.
Harry had no trouble doing that - even though he was a piano player by calling. Patrick was always strumming, just like Bill was always tapping things. Harry not so much - but that helped the overall sound.
Pat had a natural swing to his playing. Harry didn't. You could joke that our rhythm guitarist lacked rhythm, but that wasn't true at all. He was simply more straight up and down - which gave us a harder edge. Every song had to have real poke, as Bernie put it. Harry helped give us that. Without him, we'd have been too Buddy Holly.
Talking of whom, we avoided Peggy Sue but did use one of his songs. After it passed through the Stones, of course.
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johnny b better
As for me, I was learning to sing in public.
Not learning to sing properly, you understand. We're not talking miracles. But some of the mechanics.
You get to realise why singers add a word before starting a line. It's usually 'oh' or 'well', or 'I say', 'you know'. Soon you're using them without thinking. They're crutches, to help with coming in, yet they make you sound confident. Contrary but true.
Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceship flying
I said, something better change
First cut is the deepest
Baby I know, first cut is the deepest
Like bouncing a tennis ball before serving. It gets you into the rhythm.
And I was working out tricks of the trade to persuade a rock crowd.
Arrive at a note you can't hold: talk it instead. But disguise that by putting on expressions, affecting an attitude, camping it up sometimes. Act a bit demented, so people think you might be dangerous in real life. If they just hate you, that's better than them listening to your singing! Gesticulate to distract from the voice. The acting I'd done at school came in useful. I'd been quite good at that.
It's one reason I never had trouble learning lyrics. A lot of songs, some with a lot of verses. I couldn't sing them in tune, but reciting was never a problem. To learn languages, even to university standard, all you need is a good memory.
As a frontman, you should move about. If you're a lead singer without a guitar, you can't just stand there. Well, you can (one of the most incendiary gigs I ever saw was the Proclaimers at UAE, and Shane MacGowan was too pissed to move) - but it's rare. Francis Rossi, fellow italian in Status Quo: 'Energy. To me it's synonymous with doing rock 'n roll. If you don't commit physically, rock 'n roll doesn't really work.'
That's why the Beatles were crap on stage. They just stood around grinning. McCartney copied Little Richard's whoops but not his movement. Made sense that they stopped playing live and disappeared up themselves into the studio.
But even in rehearsal, with just the rest of the band as audience, you act it out. Maybe you're subconsciously trying to make them think their tone-deaf singer might cut it as a performer - but really you behave like you're on stage because you can't help it. You can't sing rock songs like reading the telephone directory.
If I was enjoying the practice sessions by now, the gig itself might be alright on the night...