The Singer Read online

  Dunton took a swipe at him, trying to grab his bag from off his shoulder. Lynton jumped sideways like a cat, bag falling onto the concrete, his other arm coiling round into a fist, every inch of him shaking.

  ‘Get off me,’ he hissed, barely audibly.

  ‘Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!’ Lee and the Brothers Grim started making their monkey noises, bouncing up and down like they were baboons. Speccy Kev giggled nervously behind his hand.

  ‘All right, you bastards!’ shouted Stevie.

  The hard men stopped their ape japing and looked around, bewildered, in every direction but up.

  He actually heard Dunton go: ‘Durrr?’

  ‘Up here, you fuckin’ divs.’

  Five lumpy porridge faces cracked round in his direction, wet red mouths going slack when they realised from where and to whom they were speaking. Signs of astonishment betrayed.

  Dunton was the first to regain his composure. ‘Paddy,’ he sneered. ‘The fuck you doin’ up there, you spaz?’

  You had to hand it to him. Only the most vicious ginger cunt in the playground could rise to the top by being the first and most aggressive to racially slur everyone else.

  Stevie – whose accent was every bit as East Yorkshire as Dunton’s – broke into a broad grin.

  ‘You’re a funny bastard, aren’t you, Dunton? Real comedian. That were a good show you were puttin’ on there.’

  They couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, and in the seconds it took for them to eye each other, then him, then each other, Lynton took the opportunity to scoop up his schoolbag and race back towards the safety of the school.

  ‘Somethin’ wrong with you, Spudhead?’ Dunton had decided he was being mocked, although he still wasn’t quite sure how or why. Lynton forgotten, he squinted his piggy eyes, affected what he thought was a Brian Jacks judo stance in Stevie’s direction. The others moved in closer, formed a circle around their leader.

  Stevie belched loudly, taste of jam and sugar in his mouth. ‘Nowt much,’ he continued to smile. ‘Part from this.’

  Dunton, the brothers and Barney watched transfixed as Stevie Mullin casually unzipped his trousers and pulled out the most enormous cock any of them had ever seen.

  Stevie winked and affected his Dad’s Belfast accent. ‘It’s the luck of the Irish.’

  Their mouths were still wide open as the first splashes of hot piss hit Dunton’s lips. Only then did they all recoil screaming: ‘Ugghhh, Jesus! You dirty fuckin’ paddy bastid! You fuckin’ homo queer! What the fuck are you doin’?’

  Stevie’s whole body shook with laughter as he rolled his weapon round in an arc, catching all five of them with his deadly fire. He was still literally pissing himself when a sharp teacher’s voice demanded: ‘You boys! What’s going on out here!’

  And he couldn’t get it back in his pants quick enough to avoid the accusing fingers that shot up in his direction, the hard man voices now turned to whining, spragging victims: ‘It’s Mullin, sir, he’s on the roof and he’s pissing on us!’

  ‘Language!’ stormed Mr Smith, aka Herr Schmitler, the German master and worst of all possible teachers to be caught by.

  ‘Boy Mullin, what are you doing on that roof? Get down here immediately!’

  In his rush to hide his modesty, Stevie almost fell over backwards.

  ‘And you boys,’ he turned his attentions back to the others, ‘what do you think you’re doing here? You know this area is out of bounds at break-time. What are you playing at, eh? Eh?’

  Stevie almost got expelled that time.

  The cane, detention, his parents up the school to talk about his future; all that shit. It was all worth it for the expression on Dunton’s thick face, which would continue to keep Stevie happy for years to come. It gave him further pleasure that while his own reputation as a mad fucker not to be messed with was increased, Dunton’s became tainted by Chinese whispers that suggested he was some kind of sex pervert who liked drinking men’s piss.

  Stevie didn’t waste a moment of his month of detentions. While his right hand robotically wrote out I WILL SHOW RESPECT FOR SCHOOL PROPERTY AND SCHOOL RULES 1,000 times, his head neared completion on the notes for the Steve Jones riff. The left hand holding the paper down was at the same time forming chord structures with its fingers.

  From the classroom where he spent his penury he was able to make a further interesting discovery.

  A music group met after school every Thursday. He watched them going in and out of the school hall.

  One of them was speccy Kevin Holme. He was always carting the most kit into the hall, which meant he had to be a drummer. Away from his gang, he had a secret life.

  And finally, one Friday, as Stevie strolled out of the gates of the now deserted school at five o’clock, someone was waiting for him.

  Hanging nervously around the gates, left hand absently rubbing right bicep, eyes darting up and down the street, pegleg trousers halfway up his shins, blazer sleeves halfway to his elbows.

  ‘Ey up, Lynton,’ Stevie was surprised. ‘Waiting for summat?’

  Lynton glared up at him then back down at the ground. He took in bandy legs and drainpipe trousers, yellow socks and brothel creepers, white shirt and bootlace black tie, blazer slung over one shoulder. School uniform like no one else wore it.

  Lynton’s eyes both fierce and fearful. ‘I wanted to say thank you.’ His voice came out as barely a whisper, a southern accent with a bass rumble. Then his head came up again, eyes more fierce, volume turned up. ‘What you do it for, man? Why d’you help me out?’

  Stevie shrugged. ‘Dunton’s a cunt,’ he said simply, liking the way the two words almost rhymed.

  Lynton liked it too. Couldn’t suppress a surprisingly high-pitched giggle.

  ‘Dunton, Cunton, the fuck’s the difference? Reckon us paddies and nignogs should stick together against the likes of him.’

  Lynton stopped laughing for a minute, frown forming across his brow at the word ‘nignog’. He did look quite frightening when he scowled. Then he smiled again, a wide, brilliant smile that lit his whole face up.

  ‘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 unf
amiliar 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.’

  2

  Unknown Pleasures

  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 NMEs 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.’