The Singer (3 page)

‘You’re right, man.’ He held out his hand. His fingers were long and elegant, his palms light pink, which
further surprised Stevie, who had never been this close to a black person before.

Stevie’s own hands seemed big and clumsy in comparison, despite all the training he’d been putting his fingers through.

But they shook, and then Stevie clapped his new friend round the back, a gesture that almost winded the slighter boy, though he did his best not to show it.

‘So, Lynton,’ Stevie said. ‘What d’you
think of the Sex Pistols?’

‘The what what?’

They started to walk down the street together.

It was nearly the end of term, long summer holidays beckoning, and already the weather showed signs of repeating last year’s scorcher. Like every other town, city and village in the land, Hull was in the grip of Jubilee fever.

Red, white, and blue Silver Jubilee bunting fluttered from every lamp-post,
every windowsill and drainpipe. Some folk had even gone so far as to paint their houses with the Union Flag, from roots to rafters.

‘You never heard of the Sex Pistols? Don’t you watch TV?’

Lynton scowelled again. ‘You’re havin’ a laugh, ain’t you? There ain’t no TV programme called that.’

Stevie laughed. ‘S’right, mate, there’s not. Sex Pistols is a band.
They’ve been on the news an’ all sorts,
swearin’ at TV presenters and gettin’ their tour banned all across country. Loads of old women up in arms against them, forming prayer groups outside their gigs.’

Lynton’s eyes sparkled with wonder. ‘A band? What kind of music?’

Stevie’s smile broadened still further. ‘Punk rock is what it is. Music you don’t have to learn an instrument for. You just get up and do it, make all the noise you
like, and say what you like an’ all. That’s what they did. I read it in
Sounds
.’

‘Sex Pistols?’ Lynton tried the unfamiliar words out. ‘What kinda name is that? What does it mean?’

‘It’s a weapon. Same kind as I used on Bary Cunton.’

Lynton dissolved into another fit of giggles. ‘That’s funny, man,’ he finally said. ‘That is some good shit. Where do you get it from?’

‘Me? I stole my copy from
Sidney Scarborough’s,’ Stevie shrugged. ‘You can come round and hear it if you want.’

Lynton stopped his laughing and made a careful study of Stevie’s face.

It was a wide face with a thick nose and a generous mouth. Eyes that crinkled round the edges when he smiled. Thick blonde hair sprouting in all directions, haphazardly rising up off his crown and all over his forehead. Lynton couldn’t detect
any traces of mockery in that face, didn’t feel like he was being set up for an ambush this time.

‘I would like to,’ he said warily. ‘But tonight my mum is expecting me home. In fact, I’m late all ready.’

‘No bother,’ Steve shrugged magnanimously, ‘we can always do it another time.’

Lynton looked both relieved and grateful. ‘That would be good. Wh-why not tomorrow?’

‘All right, you’re on.’
They had reached the crossroads at the end of the street. ‘Which way you headed?’ Stevie asked.

Lynton lugged a thumb left. It wasn’t the way Stevie was going, but he was curious to see where his new friend hung out.

They crossed the road together. There wasn’t much traffic about. A few kids on Chopper bikes practising wheelies. Dogs lying down in driveways, panting in the heat. One of those
golden summer evenings that can gild even the back streets of North Hull.

‘D’you know how to play any instruments?’ Stevie asked as they continued on their way.

‘I’ve been trying to learn the trumpet for the last five years,’ Lynton sighed. ‘I wanna be like Miles.’

‘Miles?’

‘Miles Davis.’

It was Stevie’s turn to frown and Lynton’s to laugh. ‘You never heard of Miles Davis? You’re kiddin’
me! Miles is the king of jazz. He was the original bad boy.’

‘I’m just a pig-shit ignorant paddy,’ Stevie shrugged, putting on his Da’s voice again. ‘We only have the ceilidh in our house, the fiddles and the whistles and the bodhrans…’

‘Tell you what,’ Lynton was really pleased now. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll bring Miles and you bring your…Sex Pistols. Then we see what it’s really about.’

‘You got yourself
a deal,’ Stevie clapped his hand round Lynton’s back again, making the other boy buckle at the knees. ‘You show me yours, then I’ll show you mine.’

November 2001

By the time Gavin had been through his stash of old videos and we’d emptied all the cans in his fridge it was 5am on Sunday morning. Much too late for going home.

‘D’you wanna crash here tonight, mate?’ Granger read my thoughts, let his eyes travel from mine to the sofa. ‘I’ll get you a duvet.’

I was fast becoming a regular on that black leather couch, getting
used to the fact that, despite being a three-seater, it still wasn’t quite long enough for my legs. But, mildly uncomfortable though that was, it was preferable to going back to Camden Road.

‘Yeah, cheers,’ I gave him the thumbs up, lit the last of my packet of Camels and screwed up the empty box. My throat was already raw with the amount of cancer sticks I’d got through that evening, but I still
had half a tin of Red Stripe left and a drink was too wet without one.

Gavin left me like old man Steptoe, rolled up in a duvet, draining the dregs of my can and tipping the ash into its empty predecessor.

‘See you in the morning,’ he winked, shutting the door.

I’d first met Granger on a job two months ago. We were on a junket to New York to meet Sony records’ latest ‘alternative’ signings,
who ironically enough were actually from Oxford. But to convince us of their faith in whining psuedo-U2 miserablists, the men’s magazine I worked for and a bunch of other titles were being flown out
en masse
to the city that never sleeps.

Actually listening to them, at private showcase gig at CBGBs, was the only pain I felt, but even that was tempered by the new friendship I’d just struck up
with the photographer from a Sunday magazine.

I knew him by reputation first, of course, but who didn’t? Well, anyone who knew their past would know. Granger had been the
NME
photographer in the 1980s, his iconic black-and-white images of Ian Curtis, John Lydon, Siouxsie Sioux glaring dissent from every best-selling cover. He always managed to capture the pure essence of his subjects, the source
of their very difference: Curtis drawing on a fag, lost inside a greatcoat, already a ghost’s shadow imprinted on the grey Manchester streets. Lydon smiling through crooked teeth and manic eyes, the host of Death Disco. Siouxsie in bondage gear and cigarette holder, harsh, glossy ice queen.

I’d discovered all these while avoiding work at my former employer’s, a second-hand magazine and photo
stills shop in the dirty raincoat end of Soho. It was the Lydon cover I first noticed, Johnny’s first since the Pistols’ bust-up and the introduction of his new band, Public Image Ltd. Granger’s portraits were as edgy and fractious as his studies, like he really had managed to capture a bit of someone’s soul with the flick of his shutter.

When I had enough freelance work to finally stop working
with used linens, I took with me a stack of
NME
s bearing the Granger hallmark. For some reason they made me feel nostalgic for a time I was too young to actually remember. A time when music really meant something, really said something about the
times and people’s lives. When bands got together because they were mates, they could write their own songs and tie their own shoelaces. People like Lydon
and Curtis were men you could look up to, heroes, self-made, self-taught. Forged in the Winter of Discontent from the grimmest inner cities.

No more heroes in 2001, just endlessly manufactured, mix-and-match outfits, aggressively marketed at eight-year-olds. Boy bands to your right, girl bands to your left, comedy metal for the rebels and, worst of all, bands like the cunts I was watching on
this night – the thirtysomething angst bands.

Coldharbour, they were called, a name they probably picked at random off a map of South London and thought it gave them cred. The singer played a piano and wailed about the alienation he felt from his peer group of rugby-playing inbred Sloany tossers. Probably. He had one of those haircuts that screamed the name Jeremy, and much as he dressed himself
down in frayed cuffs and distressed denim it was blatantly obvious that neither he, nor his equally bland and innocuous band, had ever really been anywhere near a place like Coldharbour Lane.

‘Christ, what an arsehole,’ came a voice in my ear as the singer’s wailing reached crescendo.

Gavin Granger lounged against the sweaty CBGB’s wall. There was a camera around his neck that he was paying
no attention to, a bottle of Rolling Rock in his hand. He had a black shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist, and black pinstripe trousers. Big silver braclet on his wrist. Shaggy hair down to the shoulders, curling up at the ends with the humidity.

He looked a fuck’s sight cooler than anyone up on stage.

‘You read my thoughts,’ I laughed and he raised his bottle to clink it with mine.

‘Don’t
know what the fuck we’re doin’ here,’ he drew me into a conspiratorial whisper, gesturing at our surroundings, the fabled birthplace of American punk rock. A narrow little cave of a place with graffiti all over the walls, walls that leaked sweat
and stank of a million spilled pints, a million fag ends ground into the floor.

Only tourists came here now, to drink at the little tables that ran down
the side of the bar, buy the T-shirt, try and catch the memories that were fading as fast as the carpet.

‘Is this supposed to mean we’re witnessing the birth of a legend? Why don’t they be more honest and set up a showcase in a shopping mall.’

‘Are you supposed to be taking pictures of them?’ I asked him.

‘Yeeeaah,’ he slouched back against the wall, took another pull on his bottle. ‘But fuck
’em. I’ve got all I need for the feature we’re doin’. Don’t really need to waste any more film on no marks like these.’

‘Who are you working for now?’ I couldn’t help but ask, aware that my voice reeked with deference and fan-worship.

‘
Sunday Times Magazine
,’ Granger sneered. ‘You know the sort of pictures they’ll want. Although how you can make this look at all glamorous is beyond me.’ He started
laughing, pointing a long bony finger with a vicious-looking nail towards the postage stamp-sized stage.

‘This tosser here,’ he was singling out the plump bass player with the lights shining through his receding hairline, ‘already looks like my accountant. But…’ he stopped laughing abruptly, waved his empty bottle like a baton. ‘Guess that’s why they get into music these days. It’s a career choice.’

‘Join the manufacturing industry,’ I agreed. ‘Maximum exposure for minimum effort.’

‘You got that,’ Gavin nodded vigorously and I felt childishly pleased.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

Apart from the half-hour set aside for me to probe the deep recesses of Coldharbour’s collective mind, I spent the rest of the two days we had left in New York hanging on Granger’s every
word. Starting the moment
the gig finished and we’d said our fake congratulations to the PR and got the hell out of CBGBs. He knew a bar down the road in Tompkins Square Park that was like an English pub and had a punk rock jukebox. Over margaritas and beers and the good taste of Lucky Strikes he told me his rock’n’roll stories while the very people he was talking about blasted out of the speakers.

John Lydon, Ian Curtis,
Elvis Costello, Ian Dury – the whole post-punk spectrum caught in his lens. But he had one favourite, a bloke I had to admit I’d never heard of, who fronted a band equally unknown to me.

‘Vincent Smith,’ he said, eyes misting over. ‘D’you ever hear of him?’

‘Mark E. Smith,’ I misheard him. ‘The Fall?’

‘Nah, mate, although Smithy’s another one of the champions. Vincent Smith. He was in a band
called Blood Truth. They were the best bloody band I ever saw. Fuckin’ riots happened when they played.’

‘Yeah?’ I leaned closer to my source, hanging on every utterance. ‘How come?’

‘They used to do things like turn up, play one number, have a fight with the audience and leave.’

‘Wow,’ my jaw dropped open.

‘And you gotta remember, the audience in those days really wanted a fight. It was all
factions, and they’d all turn up at the same gig. Punks hated pyschobillies, psychobillies hated rockers, rockers hated everyone and goths were just in there for a punch bag.’ He chortled at the memory.

‘But Vince Smith, he was a big bastard, about six foot three. And the guitarist, Steve Mullin, he was a big bastard too. Very stylish with it. It was like Smith was Lee Marvin and Mullin was Robert
Mitchum, but they came from Hull which made them even harder. Yeeeesss,’ his eyes were far away, savouring the memories.

It pushed all the right buttons with me. Lee Marvin. Robert Mitchum. Blood Truth.

‘So they were, in fact, the Wild Bunch?’ I joked.

‘Fuckin’ right,’ Granger nodded. ‘About as far away as you can imagine from the bunch of wankers onstage tonight.’

‘I don’t know,’ I drained
my bottle and stabbed a straw at the remains of the ice in my margarita, aware it was my round next and wondering if the dollars in my pocket would hold up to it. ‘I can’t help thinking I was born in the wrong time…’

Granger’s eyebrows shot up quizzically.

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Well, you’ve just spent the whole evening pointing out why it was better twenty years ago than it is now. I’m twenty-nine
and the wildest thing I’ve ever seen is my grandmother loose at the January sales. If wankers like Coldharbour are the alternative choice then I don’t think there’s gonna be another John Lydon… or another Vincent Smith.’

‘
Touché
!’ Gavin laughed.

As if in agreement, someone put ‘Cretin Hop’ by The Ramones onto the jukebox.

I staggered towards the bar in search of more margaritas, the germ of
an idea already forming in my brain.