The Alternative Hero (14 page)

“Um … what she represents.”

“Oh, do yourself a favour, Clive, take a load off.” Gathering up her bag now.

“You going?” I asked, downcast.

She shrugged. “You tell me.”

And then for some reason I still can’t really understand, maybe
because I correctly figured that the evening couldn’t get much worse, I did this:

“I’m writing a book about Lance Webster. I’m trying to interview him. That’s why I volunteered to work at the vet’s for the day.”

Now here’s the interesting thing, if you’re interested in atmospheric shifts. Instead of storming out, hurling abuse (“How dare you deceive me!,” etc.)—she sat down in one of the kitchen chairs with her bag on her knee, her facial expression flattened, and she nodded, bidding me to continue. But from that split second onwards, it permanently ceased to be a romantic evening.

“I discovered he lives on this street, so I followed him on Saturday.”

“Why do you want to write a book about him?”

“Vindication. Among other things.”

“For you, or him?”

I smiled at this. “Him, really.”

“Why does he need to be vindicated?”

I sighed. “Because everyone’s forgotten who he is.”

“How do you know he’s not pleased about that?”

“Well, I don’t. But that’s what I want to find out. Do you remember … well, maybe you won’t, but … he had a bit of trouble, just before the band split up … he got drunk onstage at a festival, had a fight, got arrested …”

“Actually, yeah … I’ve a vague memory of something.”

“Well, after that, the Magpies were forgotten within six months. Virtually erased from the rock history books, as though Lance had been arrested for child molesting rather than simply having a pissed punch-up.”

“What was the fight about?”

“No one knows. There are all sorts of rumours.”

“Like?”

“This friend of his had vanished a few months previously. People
reckon he was told she’d been found dead that night, or something. The guy he punched was just a security guard. It’s pretty clear he was just … you know.”

“In the line of fire?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he go to jail?”

“No, but I think he got fined or something. But that was basically the end of his career.”

She shrugged again, and stood up. “Well, I don’t know … but if I were you I’d be careful. People don’t usually enjoy reliving shit like that.”

“Do you want another glass of wine?” I asked, aware of the fact that I’d enjoyed the last minute or two more than I had the rest of the evening.

“No, I’d better be going, Clive. It’s really late.”

As I let her out, she gave me a look such as you might give someone who’s about to climb a skyscraper without a rope.

“Take it easy, will you?”

“I’ll try. Oh … and sorry.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, and was gone.

So there we are. Yes, I am alone on my bed—no night of hot passion for me—but at least I told the truth. In the end. And I don’t have to pretend not to be disgusted by some turgid musical bollocks that, in truth, would have been liable to seriously affect my performance anyway.

But I’m still wound up. If tonight has done one thing, it’s helped to crystallise my feelings regarding the Magpies’—and all their ilk, as a matter of fact—having been effectively wiped from the parlance and playlist of the musically savvy, and the knock-on effect this seems to have on people like The Other Vet. It really is remarkable. I plonk my wineglass on my bedside table and turn to my much
maligned piles of CDs, eventually locating another battered jewel case with a familiar picture of an empty hospital bed in an empty room, above which the handwritten statement
THIEVING MAGPIES/BRUISE UNIT
is crudely but unmistakably scrawled. Lance’s voice leaps out of my speakers:
“I’m ready for the tears … I’m ready for the nausea”
—and we’re off.

It’s never been difficult for me to understand why, back in 1992, this record was outselling its nearest British rivals by something like two-to-one. The reviews at the time say it all, with unanimous word-processor ejaculation (“the sound of a band who have REM, Nirvana, U2 and Guns N’ Roses firmly in their sights, and are ready to fire,” decided
Q
magazine). But looking closely, there’s always been a difference with the Thieving Magpies. A subtle difference-practically invisible in 1992 and barely noticeable in 1993—but a contradiction nonetheless existed that would become crucial to their survival, or lack of it, in music lovers’ hearts and minds beyond their eventual demise. The fact was: they had little or no influence over any other groups. There was a small clutch of imitators just after their debut album, as there always would be, but from about 1990 onwards you’d be hard pushed to find Thieving Magpies listed as a reference in any “musicians wanted” advert, let alone quoted as an inspiration by a hotly tipped newcomer. Of course, this doesn’t always matter; in fact, U2 have been the biggest band in the world for more than twenty years, and aside from a few losers doing impersonations of
The Unforgettable Fire
in 1986 they’ve hardly influenced a soul. But it doesn’t matter, because U2 are just so damn successful and so damn good at being U2 that no one cares.

And it didn’t really matter either with the Magpies, until Lance’s colourful evening at the Aylesbury Festival. The world-straddling
Bruise Unit
tour rolled on into 1993, they had a bit of a break, Lance rather ill-advisedly tried his hand at acting (a small role in the television
adaptation of Stephen Fry’s
The Liar)
, the band reconvened in the autumn of 1994 (“back for the Christmas term,” as Lance put it) to record what would be their final album,
The Social Trap
. It was released in May 1995—and it simply didn’t matter that, in the meantime, Kurt Cobain had died, pulling the carpet from under every other alternative rock band’s feet; it was of no concern that Britpop had arrived, that everyone was suddenly singing in cockney accents about making tea or cleaning their teeth, or that the major cultural concern was what Noel would say about Damon next, or vice versa; it didn’t matter—not when the music was as good as it was on
The Social Trap
, with its healthy pair of singles, “Retro Hetero” and “Contribution.” The album entered the UK charts at number one and lingered within the top forty for the following three months. The singles easily graced the top ten. The tours sold out. Aylesbury, a three-day bash in only its third year, shifted most of its weekend tickets immediately after Thieving Magpies were confirmed as Saturday-night headliners. In short, there was nothing to worry about.

Then Lance got drunk, and the rest is … well, tragedy.

All right—so fifty thousand loyal fans were cheated out of a gig and insulted, but that goes no way towards explaining the speed at which
The Social Trap
flew out of the world’s album charts and into its charity shops. The few onlookers who have since bothered to apply rational thought to the deletion of the Magpies from the world’s musical hard drive have argued, with some substance, that while Britpop was unable to harm a popular band, it was certainly capable of inflicting lethal damage on an ailing one; but they offer no reason for why, a decade later, the Thieving Magpies are still pretty much absent from any retrospective compilations, pop cultural histories, “best album” polls or “classic indie” club nights (and I think I’ve heard “Look Who’s Laughing”
once
on the radio in eight years).

My own rather meagre explanation is that as they were merely
popular
, rather than having any real
influence
, it’s been very easy for the Magpies to be completely forgotten, because hardly any bands have had to alter anything about themselves in order to do so. Looking at it another way it would be impossible even to
attempt
to forget a band like Joy Division, because so many musicians would instantly lose their entire careers.

Not that the Magpies are the only group in this predicament. There’s a whole crop of them. A lot of these bands were listed by that cretin Tony Gloster during the final, fateful Magpies press conference at Aylesbury: Carter USM, Jesus Jones, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Wonder Stuff, The Mission (he also mentioned The Cure, who now seem to have been vindicated thanks to the undeniable length and quality of their career, and some recent name checks from the young and hip). To Gloster’s list I’ll also throw in the Levellers, EMF and—fuck it—Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Let’s analyse them all for a moment. Between 1988 and 1994, all these bands had large fan bases, big indie hits, albums that sold respectably, extensive tours abroad and high-billing (in some cases headlining) festival appearances.

Okay. Here we go.

But so did:
The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The La’s, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets, The Charlatans. In some cases, these bands were
less
commercially successful than those in the above paragraph. But the highbrow alternative pop fraternity still, more than ten years after they played their final, off-key note, go
potty
over The Stone Roses. They still call Shaun Ryder a “genius” or a “poet.” They refer to The La’s sole album as “the greatest debut ever made.” They cite
Screamadelica
as “a pivotal moment in the history of popular music.” They constantly request “This Is How It Feels” and “Saturn 5” in indie clubs and on radio shows. And there’s a nice
little comfy chair set aside for dear little Tim Burgess at the right hand of Noel Gallagher, even though The Charlatans haven’t made a convincing album in a decade.

So—why? Well, I will venture two possible reasons. Both of which combine to form one big, fat, intangible and thoroughly irritating reason.

Reason Number One. If you think of Britain as a country of two latitudinal halves, with its “equator” bisecting the island at a point roughly in line with Nottingham, all the bands in the first group—with the exception of The Mission—were from
the South
.

All the bands in the second group were—or are—from
the North
.

The North, we are taught, is traditionally grittier, harder, more industrial, somehow more
real
, and—due to its widely alleged and lamented habit of being forgotten by the southern jessies in Whitehall—is the perennial underdog. That very British preoccupation. Therefore the idea of gritty, hard and
real
rock music coming from the North is an infinitely more attractive and sexy proposition than having it performed by someone from Wiltshire. And if there’s any remaining doubt, the North is, I need hardly remind you, where The Beatles came from.

Reason Number Two. If you think of British rock music as an art form bisected by the two types of refreshment that fuel it, i.e., drugs and alcohol, then all the bands in the second group made music that is inseparably—in some cases heavily—linked with taking drugs. Most of these bands make you think of acid, ecstasy, being “blissed out” or at the very least stoned off your nuts, sometimes more. Indeed, the histories of two of the bands—Happy Mondays and The La’s—have been almost entirely
dictated
by the presence of drugs.

But all the bands in the first group, with the possible exception of EMF, had no such association. They were booze bands. They make
you think of cider, snakebite and black, a few pints of cheap lager at the very least, sometimes of being violently sick outside the student disco. How dreadfully
gauche
.

There you are. Two reasons.

And the one big, fat, intangible and thoroughly irritating reason that they join forces to create?

The bands from the second group … are
COOLER
than those from the first.

That’s it.

I’ve said it.

It doesn’t make it any better, but I’ve said it. That’s what I reckon.

What does it mean? I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But I’ve said it.

And having said it, and having had a pretty rancid day, and being finally pissed from the cocktail of beer, wine and no dinner inside me, and not having the single fuckingest clue what to do next with the whole Lance Webster debacle, I’m going to bed, probably for the rest of the week, so good night and fuck off.

Alan William Potter—thirty-four, slightly padded around his middle and hanging on for dear life on top, wearing a beige sweatshirt he wouldn’t have been seen standing next to at a bus stop six years ago—finishes his bacon cheeseburger with a wince (it’s probably the cheapest meat he’s eaten in months), takes a long drag on his Kronenbourg and reclines, his eyes following the path of one of the prettier bar staff as she saunters round the pub collecting pint glasses. Clive Beresford (my parents mysteriously neglected to bestow me with a middle name)—thirty-three, just a touch more portly than a garden rake, lanky hair with a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper and in need of a cut, the same competition winner’s XFM T-shirt I’ve worn for years in the hope that someone will think I work there-gathers up the remaining peas on his plate with a dollop of mashed potato and wishes, not for the first time, that he’d ordered the steak. You’d think I’d have mastered the strategy by now: if Alan is paying, order big.

“Nice?”

“Yeah,” I splutter. “Thanks.”

“Where the fuck’s she gone with my card?”

I watch my old friend’s beady eyes as they try to make sense of the developing debate behind the bar. I finished recounting the
Webster/day-at-the-vet’s saga some forty minutes ago and, while it’ll hardly win prizes for the most gripping story of the year, I’m still rather dismayed that Alan has yet to ask me a single question about it, much less give any advice on how to proceed. Instead I’ve been treated to a brace of mundane details about the fortunes of his business and an update on Jocasta’s latest cute-toddler antics, which today I’m not really in the mood for.

“Gotta go back in soon,” I sigh, eyeing the clock as it nears half past one.