at the sodden ground, protecting the fag from the rain with my head. I spat the dog-end into the gutter as I walked under the railway line and out of Ferguslie Park.
The Union was warm and noisy. The beer cost twenty pence a pint and it was only fifty pence to see the band. I knew a few people in the bar, and nodded, grinned, said a couple of hellos, but really I was there on business, so I was trying to look serious and distracted and generally as much as possible like a man with more serious things on his mind than standing around talking and drinking and enjoying himself. I would probably have been like that even if there hadn't been any women there, but to be honest it was mostly for the chicks. I was a man with a mission, a young fellow with the future history of the popular song resting next to his breast. I was going places; I was important... or at least I was very obviously going to be important, and soon.
I took my pint of lager down to the Union's modestly proportioned lower hall, usually used as its snooker room. The Union building, an off-grey edifice on the side of a hill facing the Gourock-Glasgow railway line, was Paisley's old Social Security office, and had — consequently, apparently — been designed in an appropriately depressing blind-cubist-with-a-hangover style. The low-ceilinged room where Frozen Gold would have their unwitting appointment or near-miss with Destiny was already smoky and warm. I could almost feel the steam coming off my wet clothes; I could smell my own body, too. Nothing too offensive, quite comforting in fact, but I was standing beside a couple of girls for the set and I wished I'd gone home first and put on some aftershave.
Frozen Gold were a five-piece band. Lead, rhythm and bass guitars, drums and Hammond organ. Three mikes, including the one for the drummer. The equipment looked surprisingly new; the amps and speakers were hardly battered at all, and the Hammond was in mint condition. They even seemed to have their own two roadies, who were finishing the setting up. No sign of the band themselves yet. It puzzled me that a fairly well-off band should be playing this small, hardly publicised gig. Somehow it made it even less likely they'd be what I was looking for. If I hadn't just started my pint I'd have left then, drained the glass and swept importantly out of the building, into the rain and back to the flat. Another evening in, sitting in front of the one-bar electric fire, watching the black and white telly with the lads, or reading my library books, or messing about with Ken's acoustic guitar, or playing poker for pennies, and maybe a pint or two in Bisland's before ten... but instead I stayed, though I felt a sense of incipient hopelessness.
The band; four guys, one chick. The two girls standing nearby clapped enthusiastically and shouted; the band smiled and waved; the girls seemed to know them by name. 'Ayyy,Davey...!' they yelled; a young blond guy, about my own age and carrying a Les Paul, winked at them, then plugged the Gibson in. He looked like a male model; perfect hair and teeth and skin, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He took off a black leather jacket that looked too soft to be real leather and too expensive to be anything else and revealed a white shirt. Silk, my brain told me, though I didn't remember ever seeing a silk shirt in my life before, not in the flesh. Faded Levis. He adjusted the mike. He was a little smaller than I'd thought at first. He grinned out at the gradually gathering audience. I caught a glimpse of a guy's watch in front of me; good grief, they were starting on time!
I didn't notice the other three men; by then I was looking at the chick. Blonde too, quite small, semi-acoustic guitar, dressed very similarly to the bloke; white and faded blue, reading from the top. Again, about the same age as me, maybe a little older. A looker, I thought. Bet she can't sing and the guitar's not even wired up properly. What a face though. Just on the plump side of beautiful, if you were clutching at straws to find something to criticise. Nobody could look that good and have a voice too.
Jesus ... and what a smile... I was left metaphorless before the warmth of a small, shy grin. She looked from the audience to the Les Paul Adonis and gave him a smile I'd have killed a higher vertebrate for .
I didn't know what this lot were doing here, but they weren't for me. They hadn't played a note but they just
I was wrong about the girl. She and the Greek god led off together; lead and rhythm, both singing. 'Jean Genie'; recent Bowie. She could sing and he could play. In fact, she could play too; perfectly decent rhythm guitar, steady and energetic at the same time, like another storey on top of the bass line. The bass was a factory; big, regular, efficient... the chick's rhythm guitar was an award-winning office block, glossy but human. The blond guy's lead was... Jesus, a cathedral. Gothic and Gaudi; by the Late Perpendicular out of the NASA assembly building. It wasn't just speed; he didn't just play fast, like there was some sort of world lead-guitar-playing sprint record waiting to be broken; it was fluid, it just flowed, effortless, natural, perfect. He made all the local board merchants sound like lumbering Jumbos, and this guy was an F1-11 doing aerobatics.
They didn't stop at the end of Bowie's song; they launched straight into the Stones' 'Rock This Joint', then Led Zep's 'Communication Breakdown' ... played a little faster, if anything, than the original.
I came to be cynical, and for the first thirty seconds of the Bowie song I was, just because I was a hopeless musical snob and Bowie was too 'commercial' for my taste; they were on more credible ground for me with the Stones and the Zeps ... but that feeling didn't last long. I ended up stunned. They were doing just by playing what I wanted to do by writing. There were rough edges, sure enough; they weren't all that tight, the drummer was more enthusiastic than his skills would let him get away with, the guy with the Hammond seemed to want to show it off rather than play with the rest of the band, and the chick's voice, though it was technically good, and powerful, sounded too polite. Classical training, I decided immediately, trying hard to find something analytical to hold onto.
Even the lead guitarist occasionally tried riffs he wasn't quite capable of, but watching his face as he twisted and screwed the notes out of the Les Paul, I got the impression he'd get there one day, before too long. He would give a little grimace, even a small smile and a shake of the head as he lost his way in a torrent of notes heading for a climax and had to back off, settling for something a little more conventional, as though these were partly scripted little exercises he'd worked on and could play in rehearsal and get right most or some of the time but hadn't quite managed tonight.
In short, they were good. Their choice of material was about the only thing I really took issue with. They didn't seem to know where they were going; the first half of their set was a mish-mash of stuff from sources as far apart as Slade and Quintessence, some of it obviously chosen to let the lead player show off (including a couple of Hendrix tracks he did no injustice to, just followed The Man's line a little too closely), and some chosen just as your average stomping good-time dance music.
Messy, but good fun. Rather like sex had been described to me by my older brother. By the end of the first half I was sweaty, my feet were sore and my ears were ringing. My lager was warm and I hadn't drunk more than another two mouthfuls since I'd entered the room. A fag I'd started during the first song had burned right down and singed my fingers; my head was throbbing and my brain was vibrating with crazy possibilities. These people were all wrong, not at all what I wanted, not really... but; but but but but but...
I don't know what my face must have looked like, but one of the two girls I was standing beside looked up at me and was obviously so carried away with the band her enthusiasm overcame her natural and understandable reluctance to have anything to do with the tall, ugly, staring-eyed loony at her side. 'Magic, aren't they?' she said. Both girls were looking at me now. 'Whadjey think, eh? Good eh?' The second one said. I was so knocked out by the band I didn't even register that I was in conversation with two quite attractive chicks, and they had started talking to me. I nodded rapidly, swallowing on a dry throat.
'V-v-very good.' Even my stutter didn't put them off.
'Ah think they're fuckin brilliant,' the first one said. ' Abslutely fuckin brilliant. See them? They'll be bigger than...' she stopped, searching for an adequate comparison. 'Slade.'
'Or T Rex,' her friend said. They were both small and had long dark hair. Long skirts. 'Bigger than T Rex.' She nodded vehemently, and the other one agreed, nodding too.
'Bigger than T Rex, or Slade.'
'Or Rod Stewart,' the second one said.
'He's no a band, he's one guy,' the other said.
'But he's goat a band; the Faces; ah saw themm at the Apollo an ...'
'Aye, but...'
'D-d-d-' I began.
'Bigger than Rod Stewart, defnitly,' the second girl announced.
