After the tour of Holland I spent all my time at secondary school trying to get people to form bands with me but to no avail (it’s hard to be taken seriously when you were the ‘La La La Humpty’ kid. And also Eco Man.) When I was fifteen I finally formed my first band, a nu metal outfit by the name of Pindrop. Nu metal is a genre that usually mixes metal with hip hop resulting in something that doesn’t sound as good as metal or hip hop. A lot of nu metal bands had the kind of name where you put two one-syllable words together to form a new word and ‘Pindrop’ was an absolute classic. You can do it with anything though: Gnomelord, Yakblood, Yaklord, Gnomeblood, Gnomeyak, Gnomedrop, Pinyak – the possibilities are endless.
There were four of us in the band – drums, two guitarists and a bass player – but none of us sang. There was no way in hell I was going to put myself forward to do vocal duty, no way no how. I don’t think I need to explain why to you either – if I wasn’t totally freezing up during the school play, I was belting out a nursery rhyme and becoming a slave to my own success. Nope, I’d learnt my lesson. But we were always looking for a singer and in our one year of playing gigs we went through several, the most noteworthy of which was Lloyd.
Lloyd was the perfect nu metal singer. He looked real cool (lip piercing, hair gelled into big spikes, symmetrical face) and could actually sing. There were a few different types of nu metal singer: rapper ones, nice sing-y ones, screamy ones, and any combination of the three. We wanted a nice sing-y one and Lloyd was just that. We had some top-notch band practices and he sounded spot on.
Our first gig with Lloyd was in a youth centre, in the back room where boxing classes usually took place, which meant the stage was a boxing ring. You’re right, that is the coolest thing you’ve ever heard. (What’s even cooler is the fact that this ended up being the final gig held in the boxing ring because shortly afterwards the youth centre received a health and safety inspection and were told by the fire safety guy that the room we’d been having gigs in was officially ‘a bloody death trap’.) We were the second band on that night, and although Lloyd seemed nervous we had full faith in him.
As I was setting up my drum kit he said to me, ‘You guys start playing the first song without me and I’ll come on later. Just keep playing that opening riff until I get onstage, OK?’ We hadn’t practised opening our set like this but it sounded like a nifty idea so we all agreed to give it a go. Obviously I was familiar with the technique Lloyd was suggesting: start off with a repetitive, almost boring refrain and then bring in the lead vocalist and completely change everything, resulting in pandemonium – sound familiar?2
And so at the start of our gig, the four of us began playing the opening riff to the first song. Then we repeated that riff, really building up the tension in the room, getting the crowd on tenterhooks. Then we repeated it again. At this point we were visibly looking around, trying to locate Lloyd, but he was nowhere to be seen. If he’d run away we had no backup plan. The riff was starting to wear thin now. The crowd were being nice, nodding their heads in time with the beat, but it was clear that they were patiently waiting for us to play something that wasn’t this riff.
But just when I started to believe he had definitely deserted us, Lloyd entered the ring. He had gone and got changed into a floral dress, something we weren’t aware he was going to do but that seemed kind of nifty; we were a nu metal band and we had a cool looking singer wearing a dress usually worn by elderly women – fuck the system. He picked up the mic, the crowd moving about a bit more now – this guy had stage presence, no question about it. He lifted the mic to his lips and we prepared ourselves for those sweet melodic vocals.
And then he shouted into the mic for half an hour.
From start to finish, just shouting. Not even in the same rhythm as the vocals he’d done in band practice, and not good shouting either, just unpleasant shouting like an old man with no teeth yelling at you for parking your car in front of his house.
After the gig ended, we were standing outside while our lead guitarist was smoking.
‘That was fun,’ said Lloyd. We shuffled around, looking at our feet.
‘Yeah . . .’ we all mumbled, unconvincingly.
‘Those vocals were different, Lloyd,’ I said.
‘Did you like them?’ he asked, and our guitarist, a boy by the name of Butler, fifteen years old but with a better beard than I can now grow at thirty-two, answered, ‘Not really. Do the proper singing next like you did in practice, mate,’ and the rest of us nodded while still avoiding eye contact. A look of understanding swept over Lloyd’s face and he responded in a surprisingly mature manner.
‘Of course, yeah you’re right, sorry guys, I don’t know why I surprised you like that, I’ll do proper singing next time, won’t happen again.’ Cool.
Our second gig was in a traditional English pub. Lloyd showed up, this time not wearing his dress, but once again appeared nervous. We’d had some good practices in between gigs, with Lloyd singing very sweetly, and we were looking forward to gig number two. Before we went on, Lloyd came up to me.
‘Hey, you guys start the first song without me and I’ll come on later, OK?’
I paused and looked at him uncertainly. He instantly read my mind.
‘I won’t shout again I promise, man,’ he said. ‘Look I’m really sorry about what happened last time, I shouldn’t have tried something new without asking you guys and you’re totally right it sounds better when I sing nicely. Honestly, it won’t happen again, I don’t know what got into me, to be honest.’
I nodded, the kind of nod you do when you’re trying to convince yourself that everything is fine by forcing your brain to move your head in a way that you’ve come to associate with everything being fine. ‘OK, all good.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘Great.’
Pindrop took to the stage, we played the intro for a while, then a while longer, and then Lloyd ran onstage wearing his floral dress. OK, I thought to myself, the dress is fine, we didn’t say don’t wear the dress anymore, we actually like the dress, it’s just that at the last gig the dress was the first of two surprises and the second one was very much unwanted. But just because he’s wearing the dress does not mean he’s about to shout – the dress could just be his stage outfit; we don’t know because we’ve never discussed it as a band because we’re all fifteen and haven’t learned tactful ways of bringing these kind of things up yet but just because he’s wearing the dress doesn’t mean he’s about to do shouting again.
And then he did shouting again. For the entire set, jumping around the stage, leaping as high as he could in the air and every time he landed he’d stick his middle finger up at the audience. Every time. Just shouting and flipping people off for a full thirty minutes then throwing the mic on the ground and running off stage again.
Once again we found ourselves standing outside after the gig, this time all looking at Lloyd with anger in our eyes.
‘I know,’ said Lloyd, holding his hands up, ‘I’m sorry, I know that wasn’t the plan, it just felt right at the time but I see now it wasn’t the right thing to do.’
Butler looked like he was about to punch him. ‘Just . . . don’t do it again, Lloyd.’
‘I won’t. You have my word. I will never ever do it again.’
*
Our third gig was in a community centre on the outskirts of town. We’d had some nice practices with Lloyd in between the second and third gig, with him singing very sweetly indeed but with us eyeing him with suspicion every time. Every practice would end with us saying to him, ‘And that’s how you’re going to sing at the next gig, isn’t it?’ and he’d reassure us.
‘Absolutely, I promise, I can’t apologise enough for last time.’
Now it was gig night and we were all on edge, more so than ever before. Lloyd, on the other hand, was cool as a cucumber. As we were setting up, Lloyd came up to me.
‘Hey, you guys start the first song without me and I’ll come on later, yeah?’
I looked at him for a long time, without speaking. ‘And then what are you going to do?’
He looked back at me like he literally had no idea what I was talking about. ‘I’ll just come on and sing, properly.’
Another pause. ‘Will you?’
Lloyd looked at me with a face like butter wouldn’t melt. ‘Yeah man, just like we practised.’
I went back to setting up my drums but turned back to face Lloyd after less than a second. ‘Because at the last two gigs you’ve told us to start without you and then you’ve run on and done shouting.’
He nodded disapprovingly as if we were both on the same team and were bollocking somebody else. ‘Those days are behind me now, I’m going to sing tonight, I am.’
I looked at him with urgency in my eyes. ‘You’re definitely going to sing?’
‘Definitely.’
We looked at each other for quite some time. ‘OK, fine.’
And so we started playing the intro to the first song. And we carried on playing the intro to the first song. Lloyd was nowhere to be seen. This was the longest we’d ever played the intro for. Where was he? After a full five minutes of playing the same riff over and over, we saw him. Bounding towards the stage in another floral dress. With a dick drawn across his forehead in eyeliner pencil. Just a full dick and balls drawn across his forehead. I had so much hope in my heart that he had decided to trade the shouting for the dick. Like maybe singing nicely with a dick drawn on your forehead is akin to simply shouting for the whole set? But another part of me, quite a big part of me, saw the dick as a bad sign. People who draw dicks on their foreheads are rarely on their best behaviour. As he got closer my faith waned more and more. He reached the stage, picked up the mic and sang incredibly beautifully for the first time ever.
Only joking. He screamed for thirty minutes. Screaming is way worse than shouting, by the way. At one point he took the dress off completely (he was wearing boxers), revealing that he’d also written ‘SUZEE WOZ ERE’ across his stomach with an arrow pointing down to his penis (his actual penis, not the one drawn across his forehead.) Who was Suzee? Suzee was a friend of his; she was in the audience and was the only person enjoying the set. I’m fairly certain she’s the one who drew all that stuff on him in the first place. He didn’t even try and sing and then resort to screaming; he just launched straight into it like it was plan A (which it clearly was) and we just had to keep on playing the songs. At the end of every song he would raise his arms in the air like a boxer who’s just won a fight, but to zero applause. He was ‘Ian Beale-ing’ pretty badly, as we say in the industry. He had to go.
We fired him eventually but it took weeks because there was never a good time. We wanted to do it straight after the gig but couldn’t because Lloyd got headbutted (by some troublemakers for no reason. Nothing to do with his performance) and it felt cruel to fire him while his nose was bleeding. The person who headbutted him ran away immediately, which I was disappointed about. Ever since, I’ve desperately wanted to know if the headbutter ended up with a faded dick printed backwards across his forehead.