20. little brother is watching you
Meanwhile, in the parallel universe that was Oxford University...
If your enthusiasm for your degree course is on the wane before you even start it, and you don't stay abroad when you're meant to, stands to reason it's going to show up in your results.
Instead of a year in France or Italy, I cleaned wards at the mental hospital in Stoke Row, which doesn't do much for your spoken french or italian. Oral tests were part of the course. Fail them and you got marked down. For all I remember, fail them and you didn't get a degree.
Blond Steve, who spent his year off in Germany, fluffed his french oral. I fluffed both!
It wasn't even close. I said I'm bilingual, and I am. But it's one thing being able to slip into italian for chats about football with your cousins, entirely another discussing literature with university examiners. Because I learned italian at home, I know the words for household things: dustpan, bowl, vacuum cleaner, dog lead, bleach. I don't know them in french. But they're no use in a college grilling.
The italian was bad enough, but the french was embarrassing. I talked like a kid on an exchange visit to Calais. I even admitted something was a weakness of mine - ma faute, which may even be the wrong word! Oh well, if you're going to fail, fail spectacularly.
The upshot of this was Steve and me having extra conversations with a frenchman, like a pair of remedial kids in a failing school. I didn't do the same with an italian.
The monsieur soon realised we were a pair of football heads, not classical scholars, so he let us natter about that, it was easier than getting us to talk about set texts. Johan Cruijff's Holland had just humiliated England at Wembley, and we went on about that. Using the term 'le playmaker' is cheating a bit, but the sessions worked.
I sat both oral exams again, in front of people in black gowns, and got by. Still not fluent, but enough to pass. First the penal exam for coming back early from Rome, now this. I was putting myself through the extra exams Oxford could punish you with, and this wasn't the last.
*
Thank fuck you're in a band, ay. One that's playing live. My turn to find us another gig.
I presume I spent my birthday with the girlfriend. I don't need to presume it was better than my last one, my 21st, when we broke up again! It would've saved a lot of aggro if we hadn't made up the same day.
This time round, we were together again soon after the birthday. I was constantly nosing around for unsuspecting events to attach ourselves to, and I found one close to home.
My brother was born four years and four days after me. He was about to have his 18th birthday bash, so naturally I suggested a band would be a bonus...
Strangely enough, he didn't agree.
He was pretty emphatic about it. One thing his party didn't need was a mob of undergraduates playing old rockers his mates didn't listen to. Playing them badly. And he knew about my voice.
It'll be fine, I insisted. We did well at the mental hospital!
I wore him down in the end - he added our name to the invitation - and although he was never particularly enthusiastic, he got to be in a rock band, which was good for everyone.
*
So here we were, Saturday 5 February 1977, hanging around outside Reading Station, and I still don't know why.
I say 'we'. There were three of us. maybe four. Me and my girlfriend and Bernie, possibly Bill too. We'd taken the train from Oxford to pick up lifts from Pat and Harry - though why we didn't all travel in their cars as normal...
Anyway, we're standing there in the cold, and standing longer than we should have. Pat Slade was late again.
That would've been bearable if he'd had a good reason. Instead him and Harry stopped off for a drink! A swift half while we're freezing our nuts off. I tore a strip off them. We're supposed to be a band, for fucksake, and anyway you can't treat people like this, etcetera. They mumble a defence, and the moment passes. But after that, the gig had better be a good one.
*
English Martyrs Church was at the other end of Reading now, but we used to go there as little kids, when we lived on the Tilehurst Road. Seven years old and I'm the eldest, taking my brother and sister on the bus like a trio of ducklings with a few old pence in my hand. You wouldn't be allowed to do that now. They pulled our terrace down the year we left.
I spent a year or so at English Martyrs School, and my sister was there too, but we left when my brother was only three, so he never went there. Which meant he missed out on the delights of Sister Anselm, a sadistic nun who slapped your legs. So did Mr Reddy, and he was stronger, so he hurt more. Years later, when I saw her again, she was very small suddenly, so I didn't hit her back after all, in case I sent her to hell with a single blow.
In his late teens, my brother was a kind of church youth leader, before he became an atheist (I did that when I was ten). So he organised events in the English Martyrs Centre, including his birthday party.
The room was a good size, and he had enough friends to fill it. Nice and dark, with enough booze for teenagers, who don't need much.
But because his mates weren't old-school rockers, we stuck to nine numbers, like the first ever gig. And there was never any question of an encore.
One of those nine was a new one, and one of the best.
It was yet another Chuck Berry. We should've used it to replace Around and Around instead of keeping them both, but we had to bring it in. Roll over Beethoven was worth its place in any pub band's set.
I'd seen Prism do it at the Corn Dolly. And I quite liked the ELO's version, which starts with the intro to Beethoven's Fifth, the only good thing they ever did.
There's one particularly great line. Not only is the great composer told to make way for rhythm and blues, he gets a dig in the ribs:
Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news!
Pronounced Shakowsky - the 'ow' as in ouch - which makes it even more irreverent and funny.
Beethoven rocks, though. The composer. All that power and depth of emotion. If you can play piano when you're stone deaf, you impress even Jerry Lee.
Roll over is one of only two Milkins tracks on my ipod, rescued before I binned the cassettes. The intro screams at a hundred miles an hour, and Chuck liked to compress a lot of words into small spaces (especially on Too much Monkey Business, which we covered too). I could do that (italians use a lot of words very quickly) - especially the line 'I caught the rollin' arthritis sittin' down at a rhythm review', which I I misheard as 'I caught the rollin' off a writer'. I had to rewite the lyrics on other things too, but that's fine. Who listens anyway?
The version on the ipod, the chant of 'Roll over Beethoven' at the end is right in your face with Patrick on backing vocals.
It lets the drummer show off, too. Bill rattled off the triplets just before the lead break.
But the great track was wasted on my brother's pals! Nothing we played was their kind of thing. At one point, during the interminable slow bit in Midnight Rambler, a young guy looks up from right underneath me (we're on quite a high stage) and shouts out 'Are you enjoying this?' We should've taken it off the menu after that night, but it stayed for a while.
When he said what he said, I started thinking on my feet. There were only two more numbers to go, and I got my brother up on stage for them. To distract attention from us, but also because it was his birthday and I thought he should be the centre of attention.
I handed him the maracas I'd used on Sympathy for the Devil. You couldn't hear them, but he leaned back on the wall behind us, stuck a fag in the corner of his mouth, and shook them in time, looking as if he belonged up there. The Freddi brothers were always comfortable on stage. Like me, he did his share of acting, and I saw him in a play at his college a couple of years later.
The ruse worked. His mates applauded him if not us, and those last two tracks went down well enough. Jailhouse Rock, with the maracas matching Bill's drum solo, and the trusty Johnny B Goode. Appearing on stage persuaded our kid I hadn't spoiled his party too much!
So he drummed up support for the Bloody Hat. Took the microphone to say we hadn't charged him a penny and people should show their appreciation. It made us a few quid more than last time, a grand total of £7 86½p. Yes I must've counted every last half-p - including the one in our first ever profit: after expenses for petrol, we made 8½ pence!
By now, passing a cap around was demeaning as well as irritating, so we stopped it after this, though it made an unwelcome comeback in our final term.
We didn't need it a week after tonight's show, when we played our first proper paid gig. Wish I could remember who was mad enough to hire us.