Dashboard Elvis is Dead, page 14
Ah want ma notebooks back, he yelled, referring to those old reams of paper and the poetic words they bore.
Roll them up an’ fucken smoke them, ya junkie, I said to him. They were total shite, anyway, I lied.
Ah fucken will, he said.
And the whole point of the argument was lost.
Brian called everyone a cunt, then, before storming out, spat in my face for good measure. I let it pass. Collateral damage. It was over and done with.
He phoned that night, from a call box. And he reversed the charges. Not to apologise. To accuse me of having stolen everything from him, leaving him with nothing. He made no sense. Buzzed from all the junk he was spiking into his arms. It would’ve been better if I’d said nothing in response. But instead, I said:
Cheer up, mate. Jesus, things could be a helluva lot worse. Ye could be a Rangers supporter tae.
He didn’t appreciate the logic, but from the outside looking in, it’s so obviously true. Unless you’re being strapped into the chair and the metal plate is being fixed to your shaved skull before a charge shocks the life out of you, then yes, someone else will always be worse off.
Fucken cunt, ye! he said. You better watch yersel.
A week later, Brian moved out of his family’s house in Mount Vernon. Or was thrown out, depending on whether you believed him or Annabelle. He moved into this filthy Bridgeton squat saturated with opiates and their abusers, and with items of his sister’s stolen jewellery riding on his hip.
As I said, I felt bad about the way it ended. Except, it hadn’t ended.
4
August 1982. The Hyptones debut single, funded by Ronnie Mason, was released. Annabelle made it clear to us that her father’s support was conditional on Brian having no access to the finances.
Fine by me, I told her.
This arrangement put my girlfriend in charge of the meagre band accounts. Despite the proliferation of ‘she wears the trousers’ piss-taking from the others, all seemed content with this arrangement. Especially since Annabelle had promised them a weekly subsistence if the record took off.
The single secured airplays – thanks to Reef pounding the streets with flyers and posting cassettes to local and national radio stations, rather than any acuity on Kenny McFadden’s part. We got swept along in the buzz created in Glasgow by Postcard Records, and that was all fine. Our stock rose. The gigs multiplied. Fifteen pounds a week per band member became the established remuneration. We became a slick touring unit, with Kenny McFadden organising and driving us further afield. We had also constructed a bombastic set. Musically aggressive, lyrically sharp. It brought more favourable attention. Wider appreciation. And then, three weeks before Christmas, Brian Mason resurfaced.
How’s it goin’, lads … Bingo?
The high-pitched, drawn-out gallus drawl of the Glasgow smackhead; as unexpected as it was unwelcome. I turned sharply and there he was, fidgeting and toe-tapping in front of the Tiffany’s stage, acoustic guitar draped down his back, tied to him by a piece of frayed blue rope. No-one knew what to say. Eventually Bingo:
You aw’right, Brian? What’s happenin’, man?
Where’ll ah plug in? said Brian.
We’re done, mate, I said.
We were almost finished with the soundcheck. But that wasn’t what I meant.
Nae problem, pal, said Brian.
The tone betrayed the false bravado. He was zooming. Eyes like kaleidoscopes. Unrecognisable from the shy fifteen-year-old he once was.
When are we oan then, J? Brian clambered awkwardly onto the high stage.
The guitar strap broke. The instrument fell and the neck split. He seemed unconcerned. I could see anxious looks coming from the burly road crew working for the headliners.
Is he wi’ you? A thick Dublin accent from the midst of them.
Aye, said Brian, in response. Ah’m in The Hyptones. In fact, ah am The fucken Hyptones, in’t that right, ya cunts?’
The mask slipped. The mood shifted. Brian was here for aggro, or retribution, or both; the drugs coursing around his system providing him with armour against the coming attack. Helpfully, or unhelpfully, depending on the perspective, the rest of the band decided to leave me to deal with Brian. Kenny McFadden was, once again, absent at a time I needed him most.
Brian, mate, fuck sake … look at the state ae ye, I said. Ye need tae get yerself sorted. Cleaned up, mate. Maybe then ye can come back.
I hoped this olive branch would temper the inevitable onslaught.
Sorted? he countered, arms out, open and inviting attack. Ah’m totally fucken sorted, pal. This is ma fucken band, mate. Mine! The Hyptones, eh? Ma songs. Aw those lyrics, ya cunt … mine … Ma da’s dodgy fucken cash proppin’ it aw up. Whit else needs sortin’?
Another guitar got lifted from its stand. Thick black strap unstrapped, Brian readied himself to swing it. I weighed up the options of letting him. And of it connecting. How sore might that be? What damage would it do? Would our band be dropped from our major hometown gig supporting Irish wonder boys U2? That night would be the biggest crowd we’d played to yet. A massive opportunity for us. Wasted though he was, Brian knew that too. That’s why he’d shown his desperate face. It might come down to money eventually, I figured, but for now it was just a battle of wills.
Fuck it. Just take the punishment. I owed him that at least. Despite it being his own doing, his fall from the band’s grace didn’t sit easily with me. If it came to it, I could explain it away as a minor falling-out between former friends. Musical differences happened all the time. In the end, Lennon didn’t have to kill McCartney. He just needed to walk out on him.
You’re done, Brian, I told him. Yer no’ in the band anymore. You’re a fucken liability an’ we cannae have that now.
Now that we’re getting somewhere is what I meant.
That you talkin’? he said. Or fucken Yoko?
What d’ye mean by that?
You fucken know, ya cunt. She’s pullin’ yer strings, ma cow ae a sister.
Gie’s peace, Brian, I said. I moved closer to him. But only to limit the backlift. He didn’t swing the guitar though. The fake swagger went out of him. He looked deflated. Resigned. As if a lever inside him had switched his status from ‘wired’ to ‘withdrawn’. He calmly reached into a pocket. And then, just when it seemed the storm had passed, he pulled out what I thought, in the late afternoon gloom of the unlit Tiffany’s stage, was a knife. Instinctively, I headbutted him. Hard. Caught him on the bridge of the nose. The bone cracked loudly. Blood spurted from the burst. Heroin had consumed his bulk, leaving little but skin and sinew. Brian went down, backwards, and easily. Into Chic’s drumkit. A foot going through the floor tom. An arm sending a high-hat careering across the stage.
What the fuck’s goin’ on here? I heard from behind me.
This cunt’s just pulled a fucken chib, I shouted.
Breathless. Disbelieving. Brian clawed himself up. The roadies rushed in, tattooed fists and steel capped boots laying into him, putting him down again. His pitiful face stared up at me. As three of the crew bundled him out, my only thought was, Thank fuck I won’t have to see him again.
I stood on something. I looked down, and it glinted as I rolled it with the sole of my shoe. It wasn’t a blade. It was a ballpoint pen. My da’s inscribed silver pen. I’d handed it to Brian three years earlier in my room. He’d written pages of lyrics with it. He’d kept the pen. For luck, he said. I kept the words and the music he’d written with it.
Three days later, the stupid bastard was dead.
He’d gone back to Mount Vernon. He must’ve watched everybody leaving and broke in when no-one was home. He ran a bath. Injected the smack. Washed it down with a carafe of Pomagne. And fucking drowned himself. Ironic, since we’d both previously confessed that drowning was our biggest fear. A sodden handwritten note was found on the bathroom floor. The ink had run, rendering most of the words illegible. Apart from the final sentence:
That’s one soul less on yer fiery list, ya cunt!
When Annabelle told me this, my first thought was to ask what a carafe was. I followed that by quizzing her on how long they had been out, since running a bath at our house took about three hours. Everything about it screamed middle-class indulgence, I told her.
The night before the funeral I had a dream. In it, though Brian was slight by the end, I strained under the weight of the coffin as we carried him into a chapel. And then again as we lifted him off the wooden runners at the grave. The heavy box determined to push me down into the soft turf. Then, a hand on my shoulder. Ronnie’s. Standing immediately to my right. Sensing my struggle but not comprehending the root of it. We lowered Brian into the ground. Close family were preparing to recall fonder memories and recollections of whatever joy he brought them during his twenty-one years. I was cord seven. The melancholic minor seventh. Neither happy, nor sad. Ultimately relieved.
Forget him, son, said Ronnie. He was a cunt ae a boy. Better off dead. You’re aw that matters now.
I looked around but only the two of us were left. Everyone else had gone. Ronnie handed me a spade and the two of us filled the hole with soil as torrential rain that could strip a tattoo from your skin turned the grave’s edge to thick mud, our ankles sinking down and disappearing into it, and me screaming:
Yer a long time starin’ at the lid, Brian, ya cunt!
I borrowed a suit from Kenny McFadden for the actual funeral. Turned up the trouser legs and safety-pinned the side panels to make it fit better. Reef fabricated an excuse, which I had to pass to Annabelle. Bingo and Chic showed up for the buffet. The service was well attended by the great and the good and the debtors and the creditors who orbited Ronnie Mason’s world. There was nothing revealed about Brian that I didn’t already know: talented, young, determined. A great young footballer and promising musician. The world at his feet. Taken from us far too early, etc, etc.
He’d have fucking hated the false piety. The daft cunt took himself from us, after all. And I was ashamed because, despite the intolerable pain it was causing my girlfriend, I was glad he had. It was one less explosive distraction. One less aggravating obstruction. One less soul on my fiery list.
The regret I was sure I could deal with. Like all bad things, it would surely pass.
5
A week or so after the Razzle Club fiasco, Annabelle and I reached San Francisco, and I won money on an unexpected Giants victory over the L.A. Dodgers. I didn’t understand baseball, the structure of the innings or the player positions. But there was a winner and a loser, and that was enough for me to speculate on.
Annabelle and I spent the time and the unexpected cash boost on getting married. I can’t confirm or deny if I was the instigator or not, but that doesn’t matter. The reasons I did this aren’t complicated: everyone had gone home. She’d stuck with me – despite my mistreatment of her. After what I’d done to her brother, committing to her just seemed like the right thing to do.
I remember that time in California as being an all-too briefly happy one. Annabelle looked beautiful, which to be fair to her, she did most of the time anyway, and without effort. And I felt like a hulking weight had been surgically removed from my shoulders. The painkiller buzz must have been a big contributor to the positive view I took on our future life together, a young, newlywed couple in our early twenties. We had no income, no obvious future direction to speak of, but for me at least, the benefit of no impending band commitments. The American dream was over for The Hyptones. Seymour Stein’s admiring gaze had settled on the winners of the talent contest, a group called Love Tractor from the American South.
With no organised marketing effort to sustain it, ‘Independent State of Mind’ dropped like a stone out of the UK charts. The media had no interest in our disastrous trek across North America. We’d held off on signing a deal for an album, hoping to return triumphant from the States, stimulating a lucrative bidding war amongst the majors. The possibility of that had gone. I was in no rush to head back home, but with no possibility of extending our visas, the only option was booking one-way tickets on the first available flight out of San Francisco. The last two seats available. Annabelle and I separated by the length of the plane. The honeymoon very much over, I didn’t even consider asking if the man seated next to me would be prepared to swap with my new wife. I often ponder the trajectory our lives might have taken if he had agreed to.
6
Inky? Jesus Christ, it’s difficult to know where to start.
His name is Innes. He is my older brother. Everybody called him Inky, going right back to his primary-school days. Only our ma stuck with ‘Innes’ when talking to, or about, him. My da used the nickname warmly. We had different fathers but mine preferred the son that wasn’t biologically his. I had no problem with this. My da was a bastard who bequeathed me nothing other than his selfish, bad-tempered belligerence. And his love of the bookies. Inky was my relentlessly optimistic, bottle-half-full counterpoint. White to my black. But I didn’t resent him one iota. I envied him his sunny disposition. I loved him.
As we grew from children into men, Inky became more assured. More self-reliant. More certain about the future he wanted. I think it was this quality more than any other that endeared him to my da. He was less trouble than I was.
Ah’m gonnae be a fireman, he’d said.
It was during a Christmas Day dinner in the early seventies. The fire engine he’d been given that morning was in front of him.
An’ what about you, son? our ma asked me.
Ah want tae be him, I’d said, pointing at the television set as Marc Bolan glittered and glammed his way through ‘Ride a White Swan’.
My father’s disgust was evident. Fucken typical, he’d said; my ma chastising him for the festive profanity.
‘Wee poofter’ was thrown in for good measure.
George! she shouted, and the route map to a battering was set. It was just a question of which one of us would be on the receiving end.
Ah’ve asked Suzy tae marry me.
Inky informed me of his plans in my tiny bedroom in early 1979. He’d just turned nineteen. A little more than eighteen months older than me. But stronger, physically and psychologically, and infinitely more mature.
What? I said. Surprised, but not surprised if that makes any sense.
She said aye, he told me. Ah want you tae be ma best man.
Fuck me. When? I asked him.
1985, he replied.
And I laughed because it seemed ridiculous for someone so young and from our background to have their early adult life mapped out so clearly.
What if she dumps ye? I said.
I knew she wouldn’t though. Guys with solid prospects like Inky didn’t get dumped. Young working-class lassies had stereotypically domestic priorities back then. Fucking gap years schmoozing around the Andes? Aye, right.
A week after their engagement became official, Inky had taken up his invitation to the Cowcaddens training centre in Cheapside Street. He had his eyes assessed. His height and weight checked. He then underwent chest x-rays before a selection day at the Fire Department HQ in Hamilton. Inky passed the interview with flying colours, a proud George announced, when the envelope containing the job offer was opened by him, and not the person it was addressed to. All that paternal pride building up over two decades itching to be released.
Inky went to Gullane for his residential training. Without his equilibrating influence, the situation he’d left behind worsened. Why was I not more like my brother? Why couldn’t I get a proper job? Why couldn’t I just fucking grow up? Why didn’t I just fuck off? Inky was the pacifier our family needed. I was glad when his stint away was over. Those months as a punchbag were taking their toll.
Inky’s subsequent probationary posting was in London Road. He returned to stay at home with us. I can’t recall exactly when this was, but it must’ve been mid eighty-one. Inky had brought home the Bunnymen album, Heaven Up Here. I spent so much time playing it, learning the chords to ‘Over the Wall’, that he told me just to keep it. He was great like that, always giving me stuff of his that he knew I liked but couldn’t afford myself.
Inky was responsible. He saved his money. He planned and prepared, and all the while I courted the disdain of both my parents by messing about with Brian, then Reef. But even when the band started to take off, my parents still couldn’t find it in themselves to offer praise. Encouragement only came from my half-brother.
Five years after picking up the Evening Times and clipping out the Strathclyde Fire Brigade job advert, Inky passed his final exam first time. He waited until getting a full-time posting on the southside before arranging his wedding. Then, the week before the band flew to America, he bought a lovely wee first-floor flat. Inky was the only person I knew who had a mortgage. And owning property outright was something that only rich people like Ronnie Mason did.
With no forward planning whatsoever, I eventually followed my brother’s lead and left home. Having little alternative, Anna and I had moved in at Mount Vernon on our return from America in the late summer of 1983. For the first month or so, I was put in Brian’s old room. And rather than break my legs, Ronnie let me work off the band’s debts by first working in, and then eventually running, one of his betting shops just along from Parkhead Cross. And while he reluctantly accepted that Anna and I were still together, Ronnie insisted on overseeing the legal annulment of our spontaneous American marriage. I was calmly informed of the change to our status one evening – and in the same sentence was asked to pass the salt. I didn’t receive, nor did I ask for, any evidence of the annulment. This might’ve been for the best. I didn’t have to contend with whatever justification was used. It mattered little to me anyway.
My ex-wife Anna went back to university or college or somewhere, studying for a nursing degree. And, over time, we settled into a bearable if claustrophobic routine. Anna and I in her room, dutifully fucking each other in respectful silence to pass the time between my shifts and her lectures. Ronnie ducking in and out, and Brenda, his third wife, keeping so much to herself that weeks could pass without encountering her at all. All things considered, it was still far better than life at my ma and da’s place.
