38. one number and off
Even darker back here.
The spotlights from the far end of the hall, they blast the stage - but when you're behind it, at ground level, the beam goes over your head. Some serious chiaroscuro, though I'm not sure anyone else saw it like that - because I was the only one wearing sunglasses! I'd forgotten the Magdalen Clerks pisstake.
We weren't even aware of the last act before us. You could say we were in the zone. Playing live was just something we did.
In Patrick's view, the timing of the show was 'perfect. All of us full of confidence in our ability to entertain'.
Now, this may sound strange. You could even think Pat's specs were rose-tinted. I mean, we hadn't 'entertained' a number of audiences. Even students weren't always enthused (think St Peter's and the Cape).
But I know what he means. We had a feeling this crowd would like what we played. If nothing else, it was a rocker. And our confidence was obvious to other people too. It got a mention in a review of the contest. We were so self-assured we didn't feel it.
Which means we weren't cocky. Just comfortable, safe. When you write your own songs, you play to your strengths, disguise any liabilities. I'd written long lines, so I could talk them and not have to hold any notes. When I raised my voice for the chorus, it didn't require any change of octave as far as I knew.
And the music was co-written, which brings you together because you've all had an input. Pat planned a particular lead break, Bill came up with his clip-clops. Harry would take it away when the song stopped dead after every chorus. Bernie had the very last note.
This turns you into a team, a gang. Us against them, even though the audience were on our side. That makes complete sense.
We'd never been so well prepared. The prospect of a big crowd had focussed a few minds. I didn't have to whip anyone into rehearsing, so no fucking about, no jamming. Standing behind the stage now, organisers buzzing around, someone wishing us well, we were ready.
A rock donkey was about to kick ass. How could we fail...?
*
The act before us came off. But we didn't go on.
No last-minute preparations or pep talk. I just wanted to hold back.
Give the audience a proper break between performances. That's what happened all night. Nobody was in a hurry for the event to end. Including us. So we stood and did nothing for a bit.
Eventually one of the organisers appeared, a small guy from behind us. Ready, lads?
I told him we wouldn't be long. Just waiting for someone.
We weren't. We were all there. But I thought a few more minutes would build the anticipation. Bill's tapping things with his drumsticks. Not out of nerves, just something he did.
Looking across the stage to the front of it, I spot a pair of monitors. Squat chunky black things, facing in from the right and left hand edges. I'd seen real bands use them in the Corn Dolly. Looks like I'm about to hear myself properly for the first time. Oh well, couldn't avoid it for ever.
The little guy's back. Everything alright, fellas?
Sure, I said. Any minute now.
When he disappeared again, I told the others to hang on a bit longer. Patrick chortled and Bernie puffed one of his long breaths, so I knew they were with me. Meanwhile I'm listening to the audience. When the hubbub's died right down and I think they're oven ready, I have a last-minute idea, something I hadn't planned.
I turn to the left. I remember it was my left.
Harry.
Yah.
Go up on your own.
He looks at me.
Right.
There's a short flight of narrow wooden steps, maybe half a dozen, going up onto the back of the stage, near the left-hand corner. Harry tucks his guitar under his arm, walks up, and strolls across the stage to the front. There he stands and smokes a cigarette.
It's one of his usual roll-ups. You see them in a number of photos, sometimes when he's playing live. He didn't smoke many and they were very thin. He looks down into the audience as they watch him smoke. It's all he does, but it's an extra touch of theatre, another sign of our confidence as a group.
People in the crowd know him, and someone calls out his name. He's side-on from where I'm standing, so I can see his withering look of mock contempt, which raises the odd chuckle and whistle. He paces the boards while demonstrating various ways to smoke a roll-up, sometimes just holding the fag while he surveys his surroundings. We're here to perform, not just play.
Harry Hatfield wasn't your obvious extrovert.
I'm not saying he was shy. Just self-contained. And he had a sense of humour. But generally speaking he didn't put his head above parapets. He was part of the band's rhythm section, not its guitar hero or show-off singer.
Yet here he was, on stage alone, with just a cigarette as a prop. And he looked completely at ease. You'd even say the crowd were in the palm of his hand. If I'd tried the same stunt, I'd have fallen flat (remember: people hate the lead singer). I knew what I was doing sending Harry up there. Interesting what people have in them.
It helped that he looked the part. Good-looking guy in black suit and tie, trousers tight at the ankles in the Sixties style, long black shoes. A classic rock 'n roll uniform under the lights.
His whole smoking routine lasts about a minute, which seems longer when there's nothing else to watch. Harry takes his last drag, then stubs out the roll-up by rubbing it between finger and thumb. I can still see the ash sprinkling in the spotlight. Now he plugs in his guitar. My cue to lead the rest of us onstage.
That's when memories diverge. No surprise after 45 years.
Harry had only five strings on his guitar, not six. That much we agree on. The thickest one was missing. I don't know if it broke and he didn't feel the need to replace it, or he removed it on purpose, like Keith Richards. Bernie says it makes the sound 'cleaner'.
But according to Patrick, all this time later, Harry did have all six. Except he'd replaced the bass string with one made of...string!
Obviously you can't play that. Pat swears Harry put it on so he could take it off. He pulled it away from his guitar with a flourish, to chuckles from the audience.
It's possible, but it's not just me who can't picture it. Harry can't either! I suspect it's something Pat remembers from another gig. But it doesn't matter either way. HH had done his job as a warm-up artist. We stormed the stage in his wake.
*
There's two mike stands up there, but we'll be using only one. I walk up to it.
It was right at the front, with the rest of the band further back. This makes me look a lot taller than them in photos. I was anyway, but tall men look really tall on stage or film, almost too much. Pete Garrett was a skyscraper with a dome, while Roger Daltrey didn't look short at Charlton.
I'm scanning a giant's causeway of heads. I can't see details because I'm wearing shades and the spotlight's in my face, like a proper band on a real stage.
First thing Bernie does is turn his amplifier down. There was no audience at the sound check, the room was largely empty - so the engineers set certain levels. But five hundred people change the acoustics, muffling the high notes so everything sounds too deep. Bernie finishes twiddling his knob.
I always said we don't need the bass.
Very funny, frontman. They'll hear you better now.
I knew the microphone worked. It was mine. The amps and speakers were ours, Bill had his own drums. I can't remmeber any of us putting them in place.
One of the show's sponsors was Happy Jack's, which rented out musical equipment. Bernie used to hire gear from them for all our gigs, leaving the same £50 cheque as a deposit. He'd cross out the date every time and write a new one.
He's on my right tonight, beyond another mike stand and almost in the wings. Bill's behind me but slightly to my left, so people will get to see him.
Pat and Harry stand close together on my left, Harry near the wall on that side. He's not far from his amp, but Patrick's guitar lead stretches seven or eight feet from the amplifier behind me on the right. If I lurch backwards, I'll bounce off that lead like one of the ropes round a boxing ring.
We're spread quite far apart, unusual for us, we didn't normally have this much space. As a result, we were quite a touchy-feely band. If things were going well, Bernie would sidle up alongside me, or I'd glance to the right and Harry would be close by.
None of that tonight. You're on your own, idiot singer. Out in front with a proper PA. Soon find out if your confidence is well placed.
*
I tested the mike by addressing the assembled multitude. Starting with a weak joke.
I said I'd like to introduce the best reggae band in Oxford.
Pause, then I added 'Wouldn't we all? Instead this is the worst rock 'n roll band in town.'
While they were still rolling in the aisles, I told them at least we'd be singing about a hero of the Wild West.
You've heard of Rin Tin Tin. This is the ballad of Dinkey Donkey Doo.
When Patrick started the intro from Carol, someone shouted 'Chuck Berry!' from the darkness. A crowd ready for a rock 'n roll climax.
Instead, the intro, which is short, stops dead at the end. In place of the twelve-bar beat, the start of Tom Dooley, which is slow and laboured. While Patrick stretches out the chords, Bill uses his sticks on the rim of his drums.
Normally you do that to accentuate the noise. Hit the edge of the snare drum at the same moment as the middle and you get an almighty crack. But Bill tapped along like a donkey's hooves, a comic touch that worked.
Me, I pretended to be taken aback by this unexpected departure from rock 'n roll. I let out a drawn-out hiss for the start of the word 'shit'. I thought a Disgusted Punk look might add some humour. If it didn't, nobody would remember it anyway.
On the last note of Tom Dooley, I thump my left heel down on the boards to signal another change, back to a rock number. I stamp that foot in rhythm as the song starts to accelerate, gradually but relentlessly, the bass pumping up. When we reach the right speed, the rock 'n roll verses come in, at a dance tempo, and we're away.
As John Otway says at the start of Beware of the Flowers, 'OK, let's make this the big one, proper.’
*
As soon as I recite the first couple of lines, I realise the monitors are doing their job. I don't listen out to hear if I'm ever in tune (what could I do about it anyway?) - but it does mean I don't have to shout for a change. Lets you concentrate on phrasing instead of straining to make yourself heard. A world of difference.
At the end of each verse, there's a brief chorus, then the song stops dead before Harry takes up the slack with a Status Quo intro. After two rounds of this, that rock 'n roll wonder: the one-note lead break.
Couple of years later, I see one of these on TV. Ian Dury's appearing live, but luckily I catch only the bit where he invites Mick Jones on stage, from the Clash.
Dury can't resist a put-down. This has more than three chords, Mick!
Fucking cheek. The Clash were one of the best bands in history, Dury not much more than a rhymester (Clever Trevor, Billericay Dickie). Spasticus Autisticus tells us something about his polio, but Rhythm Stick is just a dirty song with smartarse lyrics (ich liebe dich - gettit?). For some reason, we had a go at a Dury track, but it never left the rehearsal room.
Says something about me that I'd have preferred Paul Simonon as our bass player to the one in Dury's band, who was technically better and replaced him on the Clash's unspeakable final album.
Maybe Mick Jones was taking the piss too. You think we play only three chords? See how you like this, cunt: just the one. The Ramones did it too, on I wanna be sedated.
A single-note guitar break is uncompromising and exciting. It seems faster than it is. And it tests a drummer's wrists and patience. Bill had the build for it, though even he was glad when Patrick eventually broke ranks and played the virtuoso part of the solo.
While all this is going on, I'm doing very little. I tended not to move a lot during Pat's lead breaks, so I wouldn't distract attention. Pumped my fist in time, but that's about it.
And I didn't use the moment to check how we were going down in the paid seats. Photos show me looking into the mike again - but this time there was no point raising my eyes. Wearing shades in that semi-darkness, I couldn't see much at all.
End of guitar solo, then one last verse and chorus. We planned an abrupt finish, which needs good timing. Get it right and you sound cool and assured.
Right at the end, I spoke the three words of the title. In between each one, the band played a quick round - until the last word, when we closed with Bill hitting the cymbals, me intoning a single syllable, then a final note from Bernie's bass.
Tisk!
Doo
Boo!
The lighting people had obviously paid attention at the sound check. Because the instant Bernie flicked his bass string the last time: whoom. All the lights went out. Through my sunglasses, a complete and utter blackout.
There's a beat. Couple of seconds silence.
Then a roar of applause. A roar.
Feet stamping, people clapping and whistling, and it doesn't stop. I stand there, grinning in the dark.
Jesus, Bern. Listen to that.
I can hear it. Come on, get off.
Yeh but listen to it! Who'd have thought?
I know. Marvellous. Let's go.
Hey, we should do an encore -
Get off, you prat!
And he grabbed my sleeve and dragged me away, exit stage right. The others followed and I heard Bill laughing.
When Bernie thought a gig wasn't going well, he'd sidle up to me and make a joke of it: 'Two numbers and off!' Sometimes he'd say it if the show was going really well.
Of course, I wasn't serious about the encore. I just wanted to stay up there as long as possible. Even after we left the stage, the noise didn't die down for a while. We must've won on the clapometer!
A fucking ROAR.