As expected, there was considerable fallout in the wake of the talent show. Firstly, the ‘Foxey Lady’ kids – or the Horned Gods as they called themselves, which was a 2000 AD reference, as pointed out by Ben, obviously disgruntled that they were into his special thing – became instant school celebrities, which was very unusual for little kids. It went to their heads pretty quickly, because by the time I got round to talking to a couple of them a few days later, they were arrogant little shits.
I made a point of crossing the playground to talk to them, one the singer and rhythm guitar player, dark, nearly black hair, the other, the lad guitarist, fairer-headed, both metaller centre partings, both of them way shorter than me. It’s funny, in that moment I wasn’t checking out the competition, I was genuinely star-struck. I wanted a piece of them.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ one of them said, a look of amused condescension on both their faces. It said to me that I had one chance of proving myself worthy of their attention, and that I was already boring them slightly.
‘You were good at the talent show the other day,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ they said.
‘It was good that you won,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it was,’ they said.
‘I can play guitar too,’ I said. ‘Well, a bit anyway.’
‘Yeah?’ they said. ‘Big deal.’
‘Do you like Joe Satriani?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not,’ they replied, smirking.
‘Well, I think he’s good,’ I said.
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Well, I’ll see you around then,’ I said.
‘Hope not,’ they said, and made wanker gestures to each other as I walked away.
Over the next few days they alienated their entire fan base in a similar manner.
There were even fewer good vibes being sent out by the losers. I swear this is true, the break-dancers staged a sit-in in the deputy head’s office in protest at their defeat, doing back-spins on his desk to an audience that had assembled outside, peeking their heads through the window. They got weeks of detention for it, but they simply break-danced their way through it, to the delight of the other assorted troublemakers. In the end it was cancelled, as it was just providing them with a platform.
Similarly, Thomas Depper was not best pleased. I bumped into him in the toilets, using the long communal urinal that never quite managed to contain all the boys’ piss that passed through it.
‘Don’t look at my cock, you queer,’ he snapped as he caught me in his peripheral vision.
‘All right, Thomas,’ I said.
‘I was until you turned up.’
‘You did all right at the talent show.’
‘No I didn’t. Well, I was all right, but my band was fucking rubbish. Last time I play with those two spastics.’
He zipped himself up and made his way to the door without washing his hands. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t either, as I wanted to keep up with him.
‘I play guitar,’ I said, ‘a bit anyway.’
‘Do you?’ he said, sounding almost as bored as the Horned Gods.
‘Yeah, maybe we could get together sometime and jam or something?’
‘Yeah, maybe. Probably not, though.’
He walked out without saying goodbye, but, and this made me tingle inside, he held the door open long enough for me to catch hold of it before it swung shut. With Thomas Depper, this was an act of some significance.
But what of the real star of the talent show, Neil? I didn’t know all the details at the time, because like half the school I would cross the playground in the opposite direction rather than get anywhere near him, but what I later found out was this. Immediately after the end of the talent show, the deputy head had practically dragged Neil to his office, where he demanded to know what the hell he thought he was playing at. When Neil told him that it didn’t matter what he himself thought he was playing at, it was everybody else’s idea of what he was playing at that counted, the deputy told him not to act all smart and superior with him and gave him indefinite detention. But before Neil could attend his first session, he was saved by a furious intercession on his behalf by Miss Millachip, his art teacher. You know the sort, middle-aged hippy, beads, lots of hand-dyed orange and purple, probably a lesbian. Apparently, when she overheard the deputy head boasting about the punishment he’d doled out in the staff room, she ripped him apart on the spot, and could be heard right into the canteen, bellowing away in her posh north London accent, voice lowered by years of herbal cigarette smoking. She informed the deputy head that Neil was working in the confrontational tradition of performance art, an internationally recognised and celebrated art form, and just because it did not fit into his small-minded idea of what constituted worthy forms of expression this was no justification for punishing Neil. To do so, she declared, was nothing more than cultural fascism.
The deputy head relented, not because he understood the argument, he was overheard referring to Miss Millachip as a ‘mad old bat’ not long afterwards, but more likely because he just wanted her to leave him alone. Anyway, the end result was, Neil was free. Scarily so, in fact, literally, he had become untouchable. All the kids either pretended not to see him, and darted in the opposite direction like I did, or nervously shouted ‘Loony!’ or ‘Freak!’ or stuff like ‘Know any good songs, Neil? Don’t fucking sing ’em.’ But really all we were doing was covering up how much he’d stirred everyone up. Christmas was round the corner, and I didn’t speak to Neil in the last days of the autumn term at all. He phoned my house several times, but I got Nicki, who always answered the telephone in the hall in those faroff, lost days of the pre-mobile teenager, to say I wasn’t in. I spent more time with Ben, both of us excited about our imminent Christmas gifts of electric guitars and amps. Of course, in the event, while Ben got a Fender Strat like his brother and a big fuck-off Marshall amp, my ostensibly socially higher parents could only stretch to a crappy pink Argos catalogue job, and a little practice amp. I made an effort to look pleased on Christmas morning, but truthfully I felt a bit shafted. I pledged to get an evening as well as morning paper round to save up enough to get a proper amp at least. I could always spray-paint the guitar black to disguise its crappiness. When I showed it to Ben he laughed and called it ‘shit’, which made me nervous as I’m pretty sure my dad, who was in the next room, could hear. I think it was round about this time that Ben went to his first concert, Motörhead at the Hammersmith Odeon. He went with Ken. He said they both went right down the front and it was mental, everyone was head-banging and you couldn’t move, you just got swept along with the way everyone else was going. He said that if you’d fallen over you’d have died, and that his ears were ringing for a week afterwards. I had asked my parents if I could go and they’d said no.
Back to school too soon, and the New Year brought in strange, invisible changes, like a cold wind that blew through us. I bumped into Thomas Depper again, this time on the stairs, his Head sports bag hitting me in the back as he pushed his way past me.
‘All right, Thomas,’ I said.
‘Oh fucking hell, not you again,’ he said, but not in a harsh way, and slowed from taking two steps at a time to let me catch up.
‘Have a good Christmas?’
‘Fucking shit, mate. What about you?’
‘Not bad, not bad. Got a guitar and amp actually, well, a practice amp anyway.’
‘Did you really? Well, I was meaning to talk to you about that sort of thing.’
‘Oh right.’
We reached the bottom of the stairs. He stopped before the swing doors and faced me.
‘Listen, I was wondering …’ His gaze began to wander, sometimes on me, sometimes around me, his eyes little balls bouncing around in the transparent containers of his glasses.
‘Yeah, you see, the thing is, I don’t want to play with those twats I was playing with any more, but I’ve got to keep the drummer cos no one else owns a kit, but, well, do you want to play guitar with us?’
‘Yeah, sure, that would be great.’ There was no real way I could express to him how amazingly happy he had just made me, in case he took it as a sign of weakness, but I was elated. This was simply the best thing ever. I suddenly had a proper, functioning band, and not only that, but Thomas Depper had effectively just asked me to be part of his circle, or at least a satellite of it. I don’t think he’d asked anyone before, not that I knew of, anyway. But, wait a minute, what about Ben? Weren’t we meant to be the band …
‘Um, Thomas, I’ve got a friend, who plays guitar too, really well. Maybe he could be in the band as well …’
‘Oh, fucking hell, not that lanky twat you hang around with.’
‘Yeah, it is, sorry.’
‘Oh well, bring him along if you must. We can always kick him out later if he’s shit.’
‘OK, so when’s our first practice?’
‘Dunno, get back to you on that one. But we’ll go in the music hut after school sometime. Got to talk to the Queer about it.’
The Queer was the flamboyant music teacher, Mr Evans. Not in any way gay, but his taste in frilly shirts and velvet jackets and the bouffant quality of his hair were enough to mark him out as an object of ridicule. Even the staff thought he was fruity, and he was a constant thorn in their side, taking kids out of lessons for brass band and choir practice and afternoon concerts in old people’s homes. But he didn’t care what anyone thought, he really didn’t; all he cared about was the music.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll talk to my mate, Ben, and see what he says. But he should be OK with it. What type of music do you generally play, anyway?’
‘Oh,’ said Thomas, ‘stuff like Guns N’ Roses, Quireboys, INXS obviously, like to do some Def Leppard at some point. Hard rock mainly.’
‘Cool,’ I said. ‘What about Metallica, Iron Maiden, that sort of thing?’
‘We don’t really go that heavy, to tell you the truth. What about you?’
‘Yeah, I’m more into that sort of thing. But it doesn’t matter. I like the stuff you’re into too.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ll get back to you on that one. Right, see you.’
Thomas took a left. I went right and headed for the lavs. I tracked down Ben as soon as I could and told him about the opportunity.
‘Fucking hell,’ he said, grumpily. ‘Why would we want to play with those cunts? They play fucking gay indie music.’
‘No they don’t,’ I said. ‘They play hard rock. OK, it’s not metal, and some of it’s shit, like INXS, but it’s something. We can always make them play the music we like once we’re properly in the band.’
‘Yeah, I s’pose,’ he said, quietly, miserably, but with an air of resignation that signalled he was about to say yes. ‘OK then, I’ll fucking do it. But I’m not sticking with it if it’s shit.’
‘Course,’ I said. ‘I won’t either. It’ll be our band anyway.’
‘Better bloody be,’ he said, and though I could tell he didn’t want to, and he definitely didn’t want me to see it, he smiled.