They were all there. I was late; one of my small brothers had been using my guitar's lead to tie up another small brother while they were playing Americans Interrogating Vietnamese.
'Oh, hi... Weird,' Dave Balfour said. He was sitting on a white iron garden chair, tuning the Les Paul. Christine Brice was sitting on another seat, scribbling away on a sheet of paper. She looked up and nodded. The others were footering around with various leads and amps. The big garage was warm and well lit, and empty save for the band and its gear.
'Hullo,' I said.
'Woolie's guitar, eh?' The Hammond player said, looking at the plastic bags.
'Aye,' I said, resting the bass against a wall. The drummer was holding a joint.
'Smoke?' He said, holding it up. I nodded, took it from him, drew on it lightly. Dope was something I was still a bit unsure about. I was taking very little while I waited to see if my three prod student flat mates — all heavy users — degenerated into giggling basket cases. So far they just seemed to be having a lot more fun than I was. The compensation was that when they were really wrecked it was easier to take money off them at poker. I didn't really want the joint the drummer offered me, but I didn't want to seem churlish. I took a couple of moderate tokes and passed it to Dave Balfour.
'You know the others?' he asked me. I shook my head. 'That's Mickey.' He indicated the drummer, a curly- haired guy with a scrunched up face and glasses, who nodded.
'Weston...' This was the Hammond player, a thick-set youth with very long black hair who scowled at Balfour and said, 'Just Wes,' to me.
'... and Steve.' The bass player. A little fidgety guy with the making of a beard and very long sideburns.
'This is W...'
'Just c-call me Danny,' I said, grinning nervously at each one in turn. Christine Brice looked amused.
I sat comfortably enough for a while, listening to them warm up and practise a few songs; mostly ones they'd played when I'd seen them the previous night, and mostly songs from the second half of the set. Dave Balfour didn't say anything about the criticisms I'd made. He came over as their natural leader; some bands work best when nobody tries to lead, others would work better if somebody does but they all want to be the one, and some, like this one, had somebody who could make the decisions, easily and reasonably, without being autocratic. The others deferred to him happily most of the time, but he listened to and took account of any suggestions. I experienced again a little of that feeling from the previous night; that I wasn't necessary to these people, that I was a foreign body here. But still, all the songs they were rehearsing were other people's.
After an hour or so, I was wondering whether they'd forgotten about me. They were trying to work out chords for a Jack Bruce song, 'The Consul At Sunset', and I was sitting finishing my sixth fag, toying with the idea that they — effectively Dave Balfour — had only invited me along to humiliate me, just because of the things I'd said were wrong with the band and their set. An empty feeling started to form in my belly. My face felt warm and my forehead prickled and itched. I fumbled with the cigarette packet. What was I doing? Why had I come here?
The bastards; the smug middle-class shits with their blond hair and their silk shirts (not that they were wearing those just then). I'd get up and tell them I was popping out for more fags, and never come back. Bugger off back to the flat and leave the self-satisfied wankers to it. The hell with the bass in the Woolie's bag; I'd abandon it; I had my pride. This wouldn't stop me; they wouldn't stop me. It would only make me even more determined to make it one day; let them fart about with other people's material for a year or two, even a record or two... when they saw me with my number one album and single on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time, then they'd be the ones who'd feel sick.
'Glad somebody's finding this fun.' Christine Brice sat down on a chair beside mine. 'Can I bum a fag?'
I realised I'd been smiling. I blushed and held the packet out. I lit the cigarette for her; she had to hold my hand because it was shaking, but she didn't say anything. She sat back and watched the others, still huddled round the drums, arguing, tapping out beats, playing snatches of music. 'You remembered me from school yet?' she asked.
I nodded. 'You knocked me b-b-back for a d-dance once,' I blurted.
She looked shocked. 'Did I? When was that?'
'Christmas... ssschool dance... three years ago, I think.'
She looked thoughtful, then nodded, pulled on the fag. 'Oh, aye; I was dead shy then. Couldn't help thinkin; I'll be staring at his chest.' She laughed, shrugged. 'Sorry, Danny.'
''sall right. C-c-can't blame you. Didn't b-bother me anyway.'
'What about these songs then?'
'Got them here.' I patted my bulging jacket.
'Can I see?' She held out one hand. I hesitated, then gave her the sheaf of papers. She put one boot onto the other needlecorded knee and rested the sheets there, smoothing them out. She looked at them for ten minutes or so, putting the fag out on the sole of her boot. 'Funny chords, Danny.'
'Yeah I know; not my st...rong point. Still learning.'
She nodded, flicked through them again, looking thoughtful. 'Hmm,' she said. She got up and went over to the others, talked briefly and came back, holding her guitar. 'They'll be messing about for a while yet. Come on and we'll form a sub-committee. Get your board.'
We went into the house; it was Dave Balfour's parents' place. There was something I now know was a utility room; at first I thought it was a very bare kitchen, with its sink, freezer, automatic washing machine, and tumbledrier.
The kitchen was the size of my ma's living room, but far better furnished. Everything seemed to be wood. As we went through, there was just one small light on, under a long dark line of cupboards, shining down onto a cooker set into the gleaming working surface. It all smelled fresh and somehow expensive, and my head swam for a second.
Beyond that, the house smelled of furniture polish and fresh apples. We went into a huge hall with a wide staircase; Christine stuck her head round a door and talked to somebody inside the dimly lit room, then showed me into a room opposite. The furniture looked too good to sit on. There was an upright piano against one wall. The room was warm; hot air came out of little rectangular grilles set in the floor.
This was 1973, and there were probably hundreds of far grander and more modern houses within a few miles of this one, but to me it was like landing on another planet; I'd only ever seen places like this in films, and somehow hadn't taken them any more seriously than the big-budget film sets that got blown up at the end of James Bond movies. I was out of my depth.
'Okay,' Christine said as she sat down at the piano, guitar over her back. 'Let's get tore into these songs, then.'
It was awkward. I was frightened about her playing the piano too loud and disturbing whoever was in the dimly lit room across the hall from us, and something in me was reluctant to describe just how I wanted the songs to sound, the ideas I'd had on how to arrange them. The whole idea of putting chords to the melodies still tripped me up continually; I was used to whistling tunes and imagining the backing in my head, almost subconsciously. I knew the sound I wanted, but I had no idea how to make it.
Christine could read and write music with a fluency beyond me. She briefly scanned and then offhandedly trashed the chords I had worked and fretted over for days if not weeks, then quickly began scribbling in replacements, testing them on the piano and strumming them on her guitar. I sat beside her on a thin-legged chair I was sure was far too delicate for me and was certain to give way beneath my hulking weight at any moment, and felt quite left out. The bass remained in its plastic bags.
Christine got a few comments from me when she first looked at each song, then ignored me for ten, fifteen minutes at a time, only occasionally asking what I meant here, what I thought I was doing here, how I got to there from here, why this went to that instead of the other... did you
'Too many words... doesn't scan... been done... sure I've heard that before...' Her muttered comments, spoken— to be fair — as though I wasn't there anyway, were hardly more encouraging.
