At in-store album signing sessions we’d work our way through one large Vodka Sprite after another to spruce up the inevitable hangovers. Detroit springs to mind as a memorable one. The place is full of oddballs, a refreshing antidote to the sheer antiseptic alikeness we’d experienced elsewhere in the so-called ‘land of the free’. There were wonky teeth here, cauliflower ears there, hare lips, films over the eye, cleft palates, crossed eyes, protruding kneecaps, inverted nipples – a carnival of inbreeds to enchant our tour-heavy hearts. Because, after all, weren’t we cut from that very same cloth ourselves?
OK, Dan had his ‘bat wing’ ears fixed as a child, but Justin’s teeth where wonkier than Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, I was ET’s ugly cousin and Ed was just plain batty. Freaks are meant to be rockers and rockers are meant to be freaks. What else are freaks supposed to do? They can’t all just go and live in Detroit.
So here we were in our spiritual home, ‘Detroit Rock City’, signing autographs. A twitching, skeletal teen jostled into view, with what looked like a stuffed puppy dog under his arm. It was a stuffed dog, but not a puppy, more like a Pekinese. (I’ve never been much good at dog breeds.) ‘Hey, you guys are awesome! Would you sign my dog for me?’ Why would he want us to sign his stuffed dog, we wondered, charmed by the sheer silliness of the request. ‘He [the dog] used to belong to my grandpa, who I couldn’t stand, he was a real piece of shit. When he died he left me his dog and when the dog died I wanted him stuffed as a memento. Now I want you guys to sign him, ’cos my grandpa hated heavy metal.’
He’d obviously put a lot of thought into this. We each of us happily obliged, of course, and, for the coup de grâce, Ed signed his name with the ‘E’ on one bollock and the ‘D’ on the other. Proof that, in Detroit at least, our drummer really was the ‘dog’s bollocks’.
Disturb stupid people – their thoughts are worth nothing anyway.