5. basement rock
Right, then. Still fancy it?
Hm, he said. Dunno. I've got a lot of work on.
This was probably the first time Blond Steve realised I meant it.
A year earlier, when we're both enthusing over the Portsmouth Sinfonia and I mention forming a crap rock band, he chortles when I put him forward as its lead singer. Now, with the college year just starting, Oxford finals at the end of it, and a german girlfriend he's keen on, the prospect of such bizarre stardom isn't quite so appealing.
He didn't actually turn it down. He said he might join in later. Which meant he was turning it down!
Alright, I said, we'll wait till you're ready. But I knew I'd have to be the singer as well as the ace harmonica player. Maybe I should start practising. Except that's not what deliberately bad bands do. Anyway, far too fucking late.
I mean, I'd never even sung along to records. Never. The most I'd ever done was mime, in our front room in Reading, into a three-pin plug in my hand, the flex trailing down behind me, attached to the hoover or an iron.
I was probably thirteen or fourteen, ripe for the words to Pretty Flamingo by Manfred Mann.
Crimson dress that clings so tight
She's out of reach, she's out of sight
Though the image wouldn't have worked if I'd known what a flamingo's beak looks like!
When she walks by
She brightens up the neighbourhood
Oh every guy
Would make her his
If he just could...
Ha, if she just would...
I wouldn't let my mum in the room till I finished. I quite liked some of the music she put on, especially her LP by a spanish torch singer called Raphael, smouldering in a white shirt on the cover. I worked at understanding the words. Still got four of his songs on my iPod, including one that deserved better than 7th place in a Eurovsion - plus Pretty Flamingo.
But I never tried any of them with the band I was starting.
Couldn't take on voices like Raphael and Paul Jones? Hah, I'd have had a go at Franco Corelli.
Some things are too precious to be sullied by my voice? Nah, nothing was sacred. You just can't dance to Flamingo or Yo soy aquel.
Some sweet day
I'll make her mine
Pretty Flamingo
Then every guy will envy me
Cos paradise is where I'll be
The place I'd rejected with Melissa.
*
Steve may not have been ready to join the band, but we kept up a tradition of ours.
I've always been a bit of a night owl, so I never had breakfast in college unless I stayed awake right through. It was free and good and plenty of it, but I couldn't be arsed to get up at eight in the morning. If I did, I looked bad-tempered by all accounts.
I did have dinner in the dining hall almost every night. Even though Steve and I weren't allowed to...
It was our ritual at the start of every term. Go in the buttery and sign your name on every day of the diary. Meals were free - but if you signed out, you got money back (from your grant) for that particular dinner. We signed out every single night of term, then ate there anyway! We decided we weren't well known figures in college life, so the staff wouldn't recognise us. Different if we'd been captain of rowing or drew attention to ourselves. At the end of each term, we got thirteen quid back. Laugh, but it was a useful sum at the time.
Sometimes we spent the money we saved at the Nags Head on the bridge or the Red Lion by the bus station, occasionally Uddin's or one of the other three curry houses on Walton Street. But a scotch egg and salad or a korma couldn't quite match the three courses in college, so we didn't do it often.
When we moved into the house for the last year, I still didn't eat breakfast, and Steve had to make his own, a shock to the system after buffet service at Worcester. Had to make our own beds too. We'd had servants in college. They called them scouts, older men on a low age who cleaned up after young tossers like us. A throwback system that should've been scrapped centuries ago. Clean your own rooms, children.
*
The concept of a bad band. Can't remember when I finally put it to Harry, but very soon after the start of term.
I also asked him to ask Patrick, and soon after that I'm walking down Cornmarket, Oxford's main shopping street, when I bump into Pat, who's with someone else. I'm fairly sure it's the first time we ever spoke to each other.
Ah, Cris. So you're going to be our singer?
I was more bashful than I expected to be. This was a Proper Musician I was talking to. I hoped Harry had told him this was meant to be rubbish on purpose, for a laugh.
I said singer wasn't quite the word I'd use, and he smiled. I'm sure you'll be fine, he goes. Fine wasn't quite the -
Soon after that, I arranged a seminal moment in music history. Henry Francis Hatfield and Patrick Charles Gordon Slade: meet Bernard Stephen Cook. World: hold your breath.
*
Again, I can't recall the exact date, a crying shame for rock historians. Early October in 1976 - and I do remember the location: 122 Howard Street, off Iffley Road, one of the main drags out of Oxford.
You see these terrace houses everywhere, a lot of them in Reading. They're victorian, I presume. Tight arched porch next to a bay window. Short tiled path beside a tiny front garden.
Next time you pass the one in Howard Street, thrill to know that behind the downstairs window lies the room where the landmark first meeting took place. You could hear it from the street.
The main living room was at the back. The front was always full of stuff, including amps and speakers and general things musical. If you knock on the door and ask to view the hallowed space, remember the current owners have had their fill of pilgrims. Take them a bottle and pringles.
*
I think Bernie had just one amplifier in that front room. Fine to be getting on with.
You could plug three guitars into it, and we didn't need a socket for me, because I wouldn't be singing yet. Harry may have brought a guitar, though I was still imagining him playing the piano in the college music room and this first meeting was really about Bernie and Pat, to see if they could work together. A drummer never occurred to me. I didn't know any, and we didn't need one for what I had in mind.
So it's the four of us, gathered round this amp, a space-age alien contraption to me, standing around looking at each other. I can still feel the anticipation after all these years, and see the nervous smiles.
Um, right then (Patrick in his Home Counties tones). What shall we play?
'Ow about Johnny B Goode? (Bernie in prime Yorkshire).
Ah well, says Pat. That's about all I can play anyway.
False modesty at its most disarming. Butter really wouldn't melt in Patrick's mouth. Then he launched into that intro.
Say you're like me and unmusical to the hilt. You can still imagine learning to play something like Smoke on the Water or Seven Nation Army. But those Chuck Berry intros don't seem to come from guitar strings. They just sort of scream out of nowhere. The complexity and sheer speed are thrilling but a bit scary close up. I couldn't work out how Pat made those sounds by squeezing the strings together.
I'd seen him strumming in the college garden, but never heard him on electric guitar. When he started on Johnny B Goode - and I mean the very beginning, the first few notes - I thought oh wow. More importantly, so did Bernie. He broke into a grin, and I realised we were already on the way. But my wow was mixed with oh fuck.
Bernie comes in on the bass, and they go through part of the song. I don't know the words, so I don't join in (I think Patrick sang along for half a verse). Then they try a few more numbers and talk quickly in between them, so I know they're up for it. That's why I'm nervous. Because this is going to be serious. Maybe not much good, but for real.
The concept of a deliberately bad band died with that first intro. We were never going to be unique.
They both liked what they heard, and I immediately knew they'd want to do it as well as they could. In fact Bernie guessed it might work even before they played a note. When the three of us arrived at his front door, he thought Pat had the air of 'a trainee vicar'. To me, with his glasses on, Pat was a young Bamber Gascoigne. If you look like that, Bernie decided, stands to reason you can play lead guitar. Buddy Holly was proof.
From that first intro, he knew Patrick was better than the people he'd been jamming with and the posers he knew. Trainee vicars don't waste your time.
So a promising start. But not for me. Where the fuck did I fit in?
It's one thing telling the three of them I was planning a band that was crap on purpose. When it came down to it, I knew they wouldn't go along with that. I mean, it's a weird ask. They probably believed I was being modest like Pat when I said I couldn't sing.
While they're dabbling in a few tracks, I'm trying to think of any I could have a go at. Remember I'd never even sung along to anything. For some reason, what came to mind was the Rolling Stones version of Robert Johnson's Love in Vain. But it's a blues lament and you have to hold the notes. I was never going to get away with that - or anything else. Try to sing properly in front of these guys? Into a mike? Do that and people can hear you.
*
When Led Zeppelin first got together, Chinatown in 1968, their bass player was nervous. John Paul Jones had worked with Jimmy Page for years, and he'd heard good things about the teenage singer. But the drummer he wasn't so sure about.
'You soon know if you’ve got a duffer on board. When you’re young and come up through the bands you know immediately: well he’s not up to much or my god I can’t work with this bloke.'
But almost immediately after they counted in, Jones relaxed. Not only was Bonham someone he would function with, 'it was going to be an absolute joy'.
Page and Plant agreed. 'Really electrifying...It was remarkable: the power...The room just exploded.'
I wouldn't say it was exactly like that with us. Though we started in a basement too
*
Never mind Howard Street. The Banbury Road was where it really kicked off. That's where I made my rock 'n roll debut and raised the band's eyebrows. Imagine Plant singing for Page, but different.
The centre of Oxford is generally taken to be Carfax, which sounds like a company that lets you send messages from your dashboard but actually goes back to medieval times, a small square with an old church. Main roads radiate from it. Cornmarket, where I met Pat; St Aldate's, which takes you out of town past Christ Church College; the High Street. Go along Cornmarket from Carfax and you reach St Giles, a street wide enough to qualify as a boulevard, with colleges on both sides. At the far end, this splits into the Woodstock Road and Banbury Road.
Oxford has a number of thoroughfares named after places they take you to. Cowley Road and Iffley Road I've already mentioned. Same in Reading, only much more so - because people want to get out of there! There's an Oxford Road in Reading but no Reading Road in Oxford.
From St Giles, go a fair little way up Banbury Road and you're in an area called Somers Town. Number 88 is on the right.
In this final year at college, Harry shared the upstairs flat with Martin Neubert and two other guys from the french class at college. Patrick lived in the basement, 88a, with other students he knew. That's where we planned to rehearse. That's where I picked up a microphone for the first time in my life.
I can picture the scene to this day. It may be the last one to fade when my memory goes. The three of them are on a sofa facing me, like a trio of hanging judges. Can't remember what I sat on. Similar scene months later, when I'm confronted by a panel of Oxford examiners. Both times I know this is unlikely to end well.
All three of them are plugged into the amp. So am I. They've found a microphone from somewhere - a Sure Omni B, Bernie tells me. I know nothing about instruments. Pat Slade's guitar is a nice mid-brown wood, a Fender Stratocaster. Harry's is black, therefore a Les Paul. Bernie's bass is red, my voice is as ready as it'll ever be. Let's call this meeting to order.
OK then. What shall we play?
You might say my taste in music was a tad limited. It consisted mainly of Rolling and Stones. How about Midnight Rambler?
Yes I can play that, says Patrick, who likes the Stones too. Do you know the words?
We called them words. Not lyrics. Songs have words. 'Lyrics' is just an attempt to prettify them. Most rock songs are anything but lyrical.
I knew the words to every Stones song. All of them. One day in second year, a group of us were sitting in someone's room in college, listening to the last song on Goat's Head Soup, with naughty lines about a groupie. During the long fade out, I piped up with 'Do it again!', a throwaway line Jagger sang a few seconds later. Blond Steve and another guy looked at each other and shook their heads. I really did know every single word.
Including Midnight Rambler. But I don't know why I suggested it as our first song. It starts well, dark and brisk with menacing mouth organ, but you can't really dance to it and it goes on for ever, with an irritating bit in the middle where it stops dead.
Still, the words are creepy, and I thought I could get away with talking them, not singing. It turned out I could, sort of. But not just yet...
Patrick starts the count - but I stop him before he can play anything.
Um, when do I come in?
Oh, he says. At the end of the eighth bar. I've probably got the exact number wrong, but I think he said bar.
What's that?
He looks at me. Come in when I nod.
University boys have brains. I knew this wasn't a great start.
Patrick starts it up, Bernie's bass kicks in at the right place, and Harry knows the rhythm, so it all sounds pretty kosher. Then Pat gives me the nod.
Talkin' 'bout the midnight rambler
Everybody got to go
I've just prided myself on knowing every Stones song. I got this first one wrong! My opening line was actually the start of the second verse, the second line is the second in the first. Looks like my brain was scrambled by the pressure.
But no-one noticed the wrong word order. So it's not why they stopped playing.
That's right: they stopped dead. I swear: all three of them at the same time.
I'd talked the words like I said I would - and they downed tools. Like Italy conceding a goal in the second minute at Wembley: you know it might happen but not so soon. All three of them in unison, for fucksake. I said it was the only song where they got their timing right!
Bernie being a mate of mine, he doesn't say anything. It's left to Patrick, who's regretful politeness itself. When I'm beheaded, I want him to do it.
Ah, he goes. Then he adds 'yes' and 'um' or expressions of that ilk. Maybe I should have a go, he says.
That was it. My career in rock music ended after nine words!
My reaction? Fair enough.
Don't forget: I had previous. Left out of that choir at primary school. Banned from singing in Reading town centre. Men turning round at Wembley when I tried to hold a note.
The mike was on a mini stand. I handed it across the room and Patrick set it up in front of him.
Quite right too. What was I thinking? Me, of all voices, singing in a rock band, with people who could play? I'll be their manager or something. Their roadie.
But then something unexpected happened. Bit of a minor miracle.
They start the song a second time, Pat sings a couple of lines - and the other two stop! Again: gospel truth.
Bernie's only just met this pair, so still not a word from him. This time it's Harry who turns gentle executioner.
You know, that's not really much better...
Patrick's a true gent, so he takes it as well as I did.
Hm. It's going to be hard to sing and play at the same time.
And he hands me back the mike. Well, er, you hang on to that for a while.
The fastest comeback in rock 'n roll history.
If he'd been sung a fraction more convincingly that day, I would never have used a microphone in public. What a loss to the world of music.
*
In reality, they were never going to leave me out. For a start, it was my fucking band.
They might've decided not to join it, but the two college boys weren't going to jettison me and keep the bass player. Bernie wouldn't have allowed it. Musically, it might've made sense - but forming a band isn't about banging away on instruments. You're putting a crew together, a gang against the world, not a set of session musicians. You do it with people you like or grew up with. It's not enough to share an interest in the blues or ska. I couldn't see Bernie jamming with Pat and Harry then going to the pub with me.
So it mattered that all four of us got on. As for my singing voice, I didn't pretend I had one - so they knew I wouldn't be full of myself. There again, maybe they saw enough in my personality to think I could cut it as a frontman if not a proper vocalist. I had the chutzpah and a thick skin.
*
too good to be new
Anyway, I could claim their instruments weren't much better than mine.
Harry's Les Paul was a copy. 'A dreadful thing,' Bernie calls it.
Say what you mean, Bern. You're among friends.
Alright, 'it really was a heap of crap in every possible way!'
In contrast, Patrick's old Stratocaster 'was rather good'. But they both decided to upgrade - then stayed with their original guitars!
Bernie was there when Harry bought a 'real Gibson Les Paul Custom' from someone who claimed to be the bass player with Val Doonican. Hardly rock 'n roll credentials, and the guitar had a slightly bent neck, but it was perfectly playable. Harry probably kept it in its case as an investment (he was good at that sort of thing). It cost him a thousand pounds - worth several times that now - but he stuck with his Les Paul Custom copy, which probably cost 25 quid.
Meanwhile Pat retrieved a guitar from the pound.
A mate of his bought a Rickenbacker Cougar Custom in the Sixties. But it was aptly named. He hadn't been able to afford the import duty, so the customs people were going to keep it for six months before it became 'the property of Her Majesty', as Bernie put it. 'She's crap on guitar but can manage a weak twelve-bar after a few jars.'
Patrick got there just before the expiry date and paid the duty, 'thus taking possession of a rather nice guitar worth a fair few bob' which he also kept in mothballs, sticking with a Strat that 'looked like it had been used to dig holes in the garden at some point!'
Bernie wasn't just cheeky about other people's gear. He eventually replaced his own Hohner bass with a Fender Precision. Cost him £300.
I did the same with my instrument. Swapped my voice for one that used to belong to Corelli, the greatest operatic tenor of all time. But it would've been wasted on this band. Anyway, his vocal chords had a bit too much vibrato, which is why he changed his voice in due course. So I stuck to my old one. If something's not good enough for Big Frank, it's no use to me.
Quite enjoyed that last bit. I like a dose of sledgehammer wit. Trust Bernie to top it: 'Your voice could perhaps have benefited from Harry's twisted neck. Certainly worth a try.'
Here we were, then. Three instruments that needed revamping, including a farting bass and a lead guitar that sounded like a cat being stangled (guess whose description again). With a voice to match. And I didn't suggest playing the mouth organ on Rambler.
We didn't have to try to be bad. And what's this 'punk rock' that's reaching Oxford at last...?
*
We must've run through other songs that first day, and we agreed to meet up again. Despite my limitations, everyone had the feeling this might be an adventure - and there was no PA, so the vocals would be mixed down! We aimed to play on Patrick's 21st birthday, so our only gig was about six weeks way.
Maybe they assumed their crazy founder would improve his singing, especially if we picked songs that suited him. Either that or there was enough time (and I'm sure Pat had this in mind...) to find someone else. For the moment, I stayed in by default.
It was my main battle in the early stages. Keeping a place in my own band. That and learning the mechanics of singing. I was going to need every day of those six weeks.