8. a cracks singer
So. No piano.
Two guitars instead. But that was fine. It's what the Stones had.
We found a rehearsal room, too. The one in Pat's basement flat. Plus the drummer Bernie went on about. What more could you want?
Yeh, well.
We didn't just do Johnny B Goode, of course. Everything else was a struggle too. And not just my voice and when to use it. Three of the others had played with other people in the past, but not that many, and this was Harry's first band - so all five of us were feeling our way.
As the weeks went by, we improved. Well, I say that. We must have. But it didn't always feel like it. I didn't rate a couple of the songs we were doing, and Patrick didn't help by being constantly late. A whole fucking hour one day, whereupon the rest of us stopped fuming and just walked out.
Even that wasn't a damascene moment. His timekeeping did get better - but only because Harry started lying to him about when we were starting!
Maybe Pat was late because his enthusiasm was waning. You could say he wasn't altogether sure about this new supergroup. 'I'm not having my party ruined by this load of rubbish!'
Blimey, boss, don't sit on the fence.
His birthday bash wouldn't be short of live music - he was already in a jazz band - so he didn't need a support act that wasn't working out.
This led to me telling Bernie we'd have to be careful, 'because Slade's a cunt'.
Now.
Take it from me and everyone who's known him. No-one has ever been less of a cunt than Patrick Slade. There's not a cunt in his whole body. He's always been universally liked - as well as being the only person I ever heard say 'Steady on!' And he wanted to play guitar in a rock band.
But he could still have pulled the plug at any minute, and I'd come this close. If the notion of a rock Portsmouth Sinfonia hadn't come to anything: well, it was just a whim. But now I really wanted to play live, just the once. If Pat called a halt, I wasn't going to resurrect a concert by a deliberately bad band. So I would've put in all this time and struggle for nothing. Sometimes the atmosphere wasn't great.
Part of this was down to people not talking. I mean some of the band didn't say what they thought in front of the rest.
I was Bernie's friend. And I was alright with Pat and Harry. But I didn't go to the pub with them on their own, and nor did Bernie. Bill was young and just wanted to drum. There was a certain shyness in all of them, maybe classic english reserve. There wasn't any in me, the italian loudmouth. So I had to do more than my share of communicating, pulling things together. Difficult if you're not a natural diplomat.
Take one example.
Bernie told me, just the two of us, that something needed doing on such and such a track. When I mentioned it at the next rehearsal, I said the suggestion came from him. Well they weren't going to listen if it came from me. Afterwards, Bernie gave me grief for 'putting him on the spot'.
Fucksake. Why didn't you tell them yourself, then? You're the musicians. I shouldn't be a fucking go-between.
I mean, it's cliché, right? Bands tell each other everything. Shouting matches take place. They hate each other sometimes. But it clears the air, brings them closer. If you form cliques, in bands or football teams, you're screwed.
All this and my voice wouldn't go away. Though some people wanted it to.
*
Without a PA, my microphone had to be turned down to avoid feedback. And we didn't have any monitors. So I couldn't really tell what I sounded like.
There was the novelty of hearing yourself through an amplifier (I'd never even talked into a mike before) - and I thought it seemed generally OK, authentic rock 'roll almost. If nothing else, I was acting the words, telling the story in the song. But amplifying my voice wasn't going to make it better.
Most people hate the way they sound on a voice message. I always think I come across as a school prefect.
No idea why I sounded half posh. I was brought up in something near poverty, quite normal for working people in the Sixties. We had a house, but the toilet was at the end of the garden (found a hedgehog there one day) and we didn't have a bathroom. A classic tin bath instead, like in an old film about miners.
My brother grew up with a local accent, but english wasn't my first language, I didn't speak it till I went to school. Even so, I was under five at the time, so why did I end up with RP? Maybe because I learned a lot of english from books, and they were written in BBC english at the time - but I really don't know.
I had this accent, then. And I couldn't sing in tune. So even if it didn't sound too bad to me, through a speaker, I was surely singing in the cracks.
The phrase comes from a story, probably apocryphal, of a singer berating a piano player during a duet. Madam, he replies, I am playing the black notes and the white notes. You are singing in the cracks.
And I was obviously disappearing down those gaps - because people noticed. Not just an exasperated Pat Slade but his flatmates. One or two were often around while we rehearsed, and anyone listening to me must've thought shit I can do better than that.
Well, true. But a couple of things. First, it's not as easy as you think. Secondly: piss off. This is not your bloody band.
There was one in particular.
Roger Proctor had long black hair and glasses with thick black frames. Replace the specs with shades and you had a cross between Joey Ramone and the guy in the Cars. Years later, I went back to Oxford for a party, and his sister was there, looking a lot like him, same black hair and glasses. Attractive - but I was in love with someone and I'm not saying his sister would've been interested in me.
Brother Roger was a really irritating presence. He used to stand very close sometimes, like a groupie ghoul, even walking among us while we were playing, a wannabe Bez. It came to a head one day when he sidled right up and looked like he was about to try the microphone. My singing must've been particularly me that day.
Can I help you, Roger?
Now, I've never been a fighting man. And I was only twelve and a half stone at the time (I reached fourteen when I started using gyms in the Eighties). But I tackled hard on a football pitch, and Blond Steve said I was the one player he wouldn't like to foul, because he didn't fancy my reaction. The last person I ever punched was in a college kickabout.
Of course it was never going to come to that, for christsake. But a shove or two didn’t seem far away. Luckily Proctor saw the look on my face and never ventured again.
This is the kind of thing I had to put up with. It felt like I was having to sing while fending off people trying to nick the mike.
But I wasn't going to let anyone take my place in a team I'd put together. Patrick might've preferred one of his flatmates as the singer, and Bill might've gone along with that. But they'd have had to look for a new bass player, and how good were the Roger Proctors on stage?
That's something I did have. A sense of rhythm, up to a point, and no fear of an audience.
As well as writing two house plays at school, I acted in them and two school plays, taking the lead role in the second one. Enjoyed the fuck out of it. Working to a script is the same as singing words, and I'd be speaking most of them anyway!
What's the old line? I had to break into song because I couldn't find the key.
Meanwhile I always liked dancing at college and parties. For a while, it was the only music I listened to.
Blond Steve: A song doesn't have to be a dance number to be good.
Me, after some reflection: Yes it does.
The sense of rhythm may not be as good as I like to think, but most people don't have any at all. I'd follow the loudest drum (snare or tom-tom) with my left leg, something a lot of rock singers do, punks too. And it came naturally, at least with rock 'n roll. Reggae I can't dance to at all - but with the numbers we played, I didn't have to think about the speed I was going. Once I learned when to come in, I sang in time if not in tune. Better than nothing if you ask me.
*
I did another job, too. In front of the mike.
All musicians love to jam. Leave them alone for a minute and they won't stop all night. But I'm not a musician, so this lot couldn't go off on endless blues explorations or album-orientated bollocks. Unless you're Lynyrd Skynyrd or some prog rock bollocks, you can't just play for an eternity while your vocalist stands and watches.
So they had to rehearse. Fuck, how we needed that. I used to make us do the same section over and over, or work on the endings (you can't fade out on stage). Occasionally I'd allow them ten minutes improvising - Patrick used to sing a particularly irritating version of Hand Jive! - then I'd clap my hands: now then children, back to work.
I also won a minor battle with Pat.
He wanted to play a slow number or two. Not a ballad with me singing - he wasn't that daft - but a slow blues or something. But I wouldn't allow it. We couldn't have people just listening to us. Every track had to be something they could move to.
What if they want to take a break from dancing?
They can sit one out. It's called free will.
I won my case with the others, which was a relief. I really couldn't face standing around shaking maracas while Pat sang Hand Jive better than I could!
*
Even if you can't sing, you can listen. You have the right to make suggestions.
If something didn't rock, I'd tell Pat and Harry to 'attack their guitars'. It became a running gag. Meanwhile Harry found the right phrase. He said we didn't have time for songs we found hard to do. They all had to be minimum input, maximum output.
Naturally he was thinking of me more than anyone. He tried to get me to hit a note once. Bless him.
We were looking at the Stones' All Over Now. The verses you can talk through, but the chorus starts with 'Because I used to love her' - and you have to go up on the 'used'. I thought I was doing that, but obviously I was going up to the wrong height. Harry had several goes at showing me how it should sound, then we dropped it. And he wasn't going to sing it himself. See the next chapter.
But one way and another, with contributions from everyone, things were getting done.
*
And I've been giving the wrong idea.
In trying to highlight some of the underlying issues, I've made it sound like rehearsing was a chore, a tense slog for six weeks.
But this wasn't schoolwork. We weren't going down the mines. It was a rock band, for fucksake. With an audience to come. Every schoolboy's dream.
And here's a major consideration. This was our first. For all of us, give or take. We were excited to be doing this.
Patrick had been in a band at school (I like the name: Baby), but nothing in two years at college. Bill had only just arrived. Harry played classical piano, and I can't believe he ever thought of being in a rock group.
Meanwhile Bernie wanted to move on from time-wasters and people who practised in their front rooms.
He'd played bass with a couple of mates, round one of their houses. The two who'd visited him in hospital. A singer with a piano, and Roger Wickstead on guitar. The singer wasn't bad, but Roger's resemblance to the frontman in Family 'stopped with his appearance'. They tried the Jerry Lee Lewis songs I mentioned, as well as Hall & Oates, who should've been left on a hillside at birth - and they had fun. But it was never going to turn into a band.
Bernie came late to the bass guitar. He played the violin in orchestras: one at school, the other at his nearest Mechanics Institute. And violin's not easy. For a start, it doesn't have frets, so you have to be precise where you put your fingers. Plus it's got a bow, which adds complications. Piano's easier because the notes are already in it, though Bernie was 'rubbish at it' despite playing for ten years. Blimey. I wasn't good at badminton, but I didn't spend a decade making sure.
So piano wasn't your forte...?
Oi, he said. I do the jokes, remember. Especially music ones.
I presume musicians gravitate towards instruments they're most suited to, even if they have to experiment for a while. When my wife worked for a publishing company, they brought out a book called The right instrument for your child. One of the photos was her own niece blowing a tuba. It argued that a gregarious kid might not take to the piano, which appeals more to introverts, which is why so many give it up. Tell that to Jerry Lee or Elton John - but you could say it was right in Bernie's case.
As a rule, bass players keep to the background - and it wasn't in his nature to step up and take centre stage. He sang in choirs as a kid but never solo (and never for us, of which more later).
Like many other bass players, he was a multi-instrumentalist. John Paul Jones, McCartney, Jimmy Lea from Slade. Bernie played keyboards, violin, accordion - and ukelele. Joe Strummer strarted out busking Johnny B Goode on a ukelele, but it's not a rock 'n roll implement. Bernie's definition of a gentleman: someone who can play the ukelele but doesn't. Oh, and 'never play an instrument you can readily ram up your arse (that could include microphones)'. I'll try not to remember that.
Rock bands can live without most of Bernie's specialities. So bass it was. Less intrusive, which suited his personality and gave you minimum input maximum output.
Before us, he'd never played it on stage.
He thought he was going to, when he was invited to join a band in Abingdon, a few miles from Oxford. He didn't have a car at the time, so he hauled his amp and speaker onto a bus. The band was run by someone called Will Pickup. If you know about electric guitars, you'll think that's been made up, like Joe Strummer. But no he was another Terry Chimes apparently: it was his real name.
They practised at the Old Gaol, and Bernie turned up four times. After the last one, Will Pickup told him he didn't think funk was Bernie's bag. He was right - but how did he know? He'd never heard him play! In those four practices, Bernie never even got to plug in his guitar.
There was always a new member arriving next week, or a replacement amp. No point starting before then. See what I mean about timewasters? At least we were going to actually perform.
That included me. Pat or Harry weren't going to take over behind the mike (I'd heard both of them sing) - and I never really believed Patrick would pull out. His party would be left with just a jazz band, and nobody wants that.