Julia Gets a Life (23 page)

            But there
is
life after having babies. And I am certainly a role model for that. Tonight I have spiky hair, a leather necklace, glow in the dark club style earrings, khaki lipstick, a g-string, trainers with little silver reflector bits on them, and a robust looking piece of laminated card on a string, which says
Access All Areas
. Happening or what?

            The look is somewhat spoiled by my camera looking like a big black willy protruding from just above my crotch but then I am
in the business
. Hey, it’s cool.

            Have borrowed Emma’s
Kite
CD (
Flying High
- their second, and billion, squillion, zillion selling album) for research purposes. It contains the lyrics, the credits, some pretty ropey but presumably meaningful artwork, plus a montage of colour and black and white photos, depicting our heroes in a variety of locations, with wacky/morose/reflective/ebullient/love lorn expressions on their faces. Plus obligatory beer, fags, hamburger boxes parked on all available horizontal surfaces.

            Kite
are;

            Craig James - Lead Guitar/Vocals/keyboard (the good looking, cocky, laddish one)

            Tim ‘Oiler’ Linseed - Bass guitar/backing vocals/Mandolin (the good looking     moody one)

            Jonathan Sky - Rhythm Guitar/sax (the not so good looking but artistic,             sensitive, ex-art college one)

and       Davey Dean - Drums/percussion (the balding oaf)

            Craig is credited with writing the music and a few of the lyrics, Jonathan Sky (understandably) with the bulk of the lyrics and Davey and Tim with ‘arrangements and wanking’.

            In the interests of capturing the essence of my subjects’ personalities (and, therefore, attempting to shoot them with due attention to capturing the juxtaposition of disparate images and so on) I have studied this slim tome at some length. I have also made a respectable attempt at getting to know the songs and can now sing along to most of them. And it has to be said, (though not to Emma, as it will be distressing for her - it is bad enough that I don’t wear a pinny), I really quite like the sound of them. Their songs somehow speak to me; not to my inner child exactly, but to my pubescent female full of angst yet ultimate optimism, coupled with adrenaline rush upon sight of any attractive male in vicinity, alongside crushing insecurity about shape of legs/nose/tits etc and inability to hold intelligent conversation about Manchester United type area. Sort of.

            In life, of course, they all look like sixth formers.

            Which isn’t true of course, but my first impression, on meeting
Kite,
is spots, hair and pants. Not that any of them have excessively lengthy hair - just long, floppy fringes that hide half their faces, and (cause and effect?) a fair sprinkling of zits. And being young (and on drugs?) they’re all lean and smooth skinned, and to a man, they’re all naked, except for their pants. Fortunately, these are of the baggy, boxer short variety, so I don’t have to stare hard at the middle distance in an attempt to impose discipline on any wayward glances. They are all eating. Hamburger and chip boxes litter the floor, and there are milkshakes in place of bottles of beer. No one makes any reference to the clothing shortage, but then it is a hot night.

            Kite’s manager is called Nigel. He is a short man of about forty, with a shock of ginger hair and a livid scar across his forehead, which sits somewhat at odds with his cheerful persona. For he has the sunny and deeply obliging manner of a man on a fat percentage. He says;

            ‘Boys, you know Jax...’ mutter, mumble, chew, ‘..who’s going to be covering the gig, and this is Julia Potter...’ chew, grunt, nod, ‘...who’ll be doing the pix. I think,’ he turns to me, ‘you’d like to get a few shots done beforehand, wouldn’t you?’

            Flushed and slightly breathless from the march along endless corridors, up and down endless flights of stairs and through endless unmarked fire doors that has brought us to their inner sanctum, I say,

            ‘Yes. In fact, I’d really like to have you in your pants.’

            Upon which, and in conjunction with a whole body, spontaneous combustion of a blush, I find myself the subject of jeers, titters, arm lock gestures and assorted invitations to extend my carnal repertoire.

            But being blokey young blokes with six packs,
Kite
seem quite
happy to be posed and arranged semi naked, and made to squirt ketchup artistically and leer at the camera, while being quizzed on their set for tonight and their latest album. They may be boys, but they’re pros. They are
stars,
I guess. Coo.

For a pop concert you need

Big boots

A hard head

Very little clothing

Water

Ergo
Waterproof make-up

Aggressive elbows but a very smiley face (
or
tattoos/shaven head combo)

To know that it’s actually called a gig (for cool)

To know all the words (for interaction)

To be tall

Or
to be able to jump up and down on the spot a lot (and if so, panty liners)

Or
a ticket for a seat at the back, with the old folk.

*

            I am strenuously trying to recapture the essence and spirit of my pre-marital existence. Therefore, though I do not recall much of the concerts I went to back then, as I was usually drunk or blindly in love with whoever I went with and therefore suffering from sensory deficit in all but
Lurve
department, I elect to really
commune
with this musical feast.

             At the end of the concert, therefore, I am wet, smelly, and have multiple cramps. I am crouched in the little space between the stage and the audience, which is fenced off and affords a good view of the band. Its been policed by six mean looking but relentlessly cheerful roadies, whose job it has been (pretty much every ten minutes, all show) to manhandle the stage divers from the heads/shoulders/faces of the throng, and shimmy them back to the floor without cranial injury or limb damage. Then to steer them, none too gently, to the side, from where they would then generally make their tortuous way forward, climbed on some more heads and do it again.

            I’ve been up on the stage itself, and down in the pit with the moshers at the front, but it is from here that I’ve taken a lot of my show shots. Despite a (literal) run in or two with the guy from the record company who is making a video and has therefore been whizzing up and down adjacent to me on a little track, tutting, I’ve got what I think are some pretty impressive pictures - including a perfect moment when Craig James, having jumped a good four or five feet from the ground, flings his head back and launches the sweat from his fringe in a perfect arc behind him. Which is exactly the sort of thing any lead singer worth his substances would do. Isn’t it? I’m well chuffed.

            But the bright lights soon dispel the atmosphere. Where only five minutes earlier, the place pulsated with the combined waving of several thousand teenage arms, (and the smell of several thousand teenage armpits) it now has the ambience of a church hall following a particularly well attended jumble sale. All around me are hair slides, scrunchies, bobbles and cigarette packets, strewn among wet T-shirts, sweatshirts and vests. The floor is a sea of ripped plastic cups, which bob, like empty alien egg pods, on a thick muddy slush of fag ash and beer.

             Jacinta finds me - she has made her report from the less hectic surroundings of the seating area at the back. She looks as fresh as it is possible to look if you’re a goth and very taken with kohl and smoking.

            ‘Yo, Julia!’ she calls out. ‘Lets hit the party!’

            In fact, I end up hitting the party on my own. Once I’ve showered and changed, Jacinta has already vanished, so I make my way down to the function room alone. There seem to be two kinds of people at this party. People who either seem to be working hard at pretending they are really
in
with the band, or those affecting an air of total disinterest. By skilfully combining the two I manage to get close in no time at all. To Craig James, who looks like he should be in bed. He is being talked at by just about everyone in earshot, and I join them to ask if he minds me taking a couple of shots.

            ‘Must you?’ he says.

            ‘She must.’ This is Nigel,
Kite’s
manager, who seems never to take his eye off his ten percent.

            ‘Oh, don’t mind me, I’ll just sort of shadow you all for a while...’

            So that is what I spend the next hour doing. What we have is a deal whereby I can take any pictures I want as long as they get to see them all before any final choices are made.

            And it’s fun. After the initial half hour I spend trying not to gawp at the bounty of faces and names that were now assembled, I find that there are advantages to coming to this sort of thing later in life. While being interested, beguiled even, endures for some time, being awed is short lived - these are just people at a party, after all. Rich and famous people, certainly, but still only people. Some of them even have M and S clothes. I am touched when a star from a leading soap asks me if I’d mind snapping him with the band. He’s never, he says, made
Depth
up to now.

            And I find that I am really enjoying a bit of spontaneous, seat of the pants, unstructured photography for a change.

            I spend a fair while getting society page type pictures - the place is teeming with long legged blonde women in very small skirts who all look related (did the record company ship them in as a bulk purchase?) and who seem to pop into the frame at every opportunity, clackety-clacking their ridiculous nails and parting glistening lips to show off their veneers. Jacinta weaves smoothly and confidently between them, scribbling things on her pad that they’ll no doubt regret later. All very buzzy, very slick, very showbiz. And then I get punched on the nose.

            I don’t think I’ve ever been punched on the nose. I’d certainly no idea how much it hurts. But if you’re going to be punched, who you’re punched by does matter. I did, I concede, do rather well. I got punched on the nose by Heidi Harris, no less; heroine and pin up and Queen of the Teens - the presenter of
Saturday! Happening! Live!
Max and Emma
would
be pleased.

            Heidi Harris, (as I find out much later) has a bit of a
lurve
thing with Jonathan Sky. Except that so has one Kayleigh Wilson, who is Jonathan’s girlfriend (and childhood sweetheart, allegedly) and to whom he is due to become engaged. Last month, it seems, at some music award bash or other, Heidi Harris was spotted moving in for some serious mouth action, by a secretary (and spy) from
Gig
magazine, who passed on the good news to the incandescent Kayleigh, and then sat back to watch, as the two of them squared up to each other tonight.

           
Stop Press! Headline News! Potter’s Best Snap!

            Leading pop photographer, Julia Potter, narrowly escaped permanent disfigurement tonight, when she stepped in to separate two warring women at the glitzy aftershow that mega-group, Kite, put on, after their sell out gig in Cardiff’s CIA.