The Alternative Hero (7 page)

“All the more reason to try and speak to him.”

Alan makes that weird noise he always makes when he’s a bit sceptical, sort of a cross between a scoff and a belch.

“I’m not really sure how far you’ll get.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of doing something quite radical about it.”

“Like?”

“Spying on him for a few days.”

“Careful, man. You remember …”

“Yeah, I know, but I’d be really subtle. Nothing sinister, only to find out where he goes, what he does. Where he drinks. Where he eats. And then—go undercover.”

“Explain.”

“Like—I dunno, get a job in the pub he goes to, or—”

“You could start working at that dry cleaner’s,” Alan deadpans, sipping his drink.

“No, somewhere that might require banter. Like his music shop.”

“You’re mad. Anyway, I don’t think he even plays music anymore.”

“He’s bound to do something, though.”

“What does he look like these days?”

“Pretty much the same. Slightly fatter perhaps. Same kind of hair, like it was after he cut it. Receding a tad. Dresses smartly. A bit like Mick Jones, but younger.”

“Facial hair?”

“No.”

Alan ponders for a moment, then his eyes light up slightly. I think I’ve got him.

“I’d love to ask him about Gloria Feathers.”

I open my hands with what I hope looks like an air of benevolence.

“All this may be possible.”

Alan grins stupidly at me for a few seconds, like a toddler who’s just been promised an ice cream. Unfortunately it doesn’t last.

“So where exactly do I fit in?” he frowns.

“Well,” I smile greasily, “quite apart from wanting to share my plan and its subsequent progress with my oldest friend … I was sort of hoping you could lend me something.”

“What?”

“I’ll be really careful with it.”

His frown becomes a glare.

“Oh no.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Clive, no. You don’t understand. That thing is under lock and key.”

“I know.”

“And it’s falling to bits.”

“I know! I won’t take it anywhere.”

“That book is valuable. Some of the ticket stubs are worth—”

My turn to scoff. “Worth what? They’re fascinating, but they’re not
worth
anything.”

“That Jesus Jones ticket, man. Kilburn National, May 1990. Blur first on the bill, Ned’s second. That’s worth
money
, man. The geezer on XFM said so.”

“Well, whatever. It’s not really the ticket stubs I’m interested in. It’s the other stuff.”

“Why do you need it?”

“Partly for research purposes. But … well, put it this way, if … sorry,
when
I meet the bloke, I’m gonna look a whole lot more impressive with that on my bookshelf.”

“You actually reckon you’re going to get him round to your house?”

“I’m using the word ‘bookshelf’ figuratively.”

“Yeah, exactly—which is another way of saying my precious scrapbook will be knocking around in your bloody rucksack for weeks on end. I tell you what, man, you set up a meeting with him, or provide me with some … evidence that you’re making headway, and you can borrow the book.”

I shake my head in disbelief.

“Arse. ‘Provide me with some evidence’—for God’s sake, you’re beginning to talk to friends like you’re conducting an audit.”

Alan shrugs, Shylock-style. “Those are my terms.”

“Thanks, but it really would be better if I could have the book first …”

“Perhaps, but I’m not budging on this one. Not after what happened to my Curve twelve-inches.”

“Oh, come on, some of the reviews in there are mine anyway.”

We continue in this manner for another ten minutes, after which an unsteady compromise is reached. I will be able to view the scrapbook within the confines of Alan’s house, but it is not to be removed until some contact with Webster has been made, the nature of which will be evaluated by Alan at the time. I am happy with this, up to a point. The next debate is whether my initial scrapbook visiting time could be this very afternoon—which, after some resistance, I win.

We jump into Alan’s Mini and head to Crouch End. He goes a really stupid route via Highbury Corner so it takes ages and I have to endure most of the Kooks album, but the en route banter suggests he is a little more upbeat about my proposed project than he originally let on. Finally he swings the little car into a spot outside his palatial residence.

I cannot possibly overstress how different Alan and Liz’s place is to the sort of dwellings that Polly and I end up grumblingly sharing. Potter Heights, as only I call it, is a four-storey town house entirely owned and occupied by the Potter family and their Bulgarian nanny, who has her own flat on the top floor. It’s clean and immaculately decorated; carpet in rooms that require it, real varnished wooden floors in those that don’t. It’s always warm. Alan and Liz each have an office on the first floor. The lounge
cum
dining room, which can be one or two separate rooms depending on what mood you’re in, is bigger than our entire flat. The basement
is
the kitchen, where the fridge groans with produce from posh local delis and organic-mongers. There are five loos. It’s the sort of house even Alan’s parents describe as large. All of this from a bloke who only five years ago was living on 25p packets of noodles, sneaking cans of lager into the pub and buying albums on cassette in their first week of release.

We go inside and, emphasising that this is strictly a business mission rather than a social call, Alan leads me straight up to his office.

“Coffee?”

I can’t help giggling.

“Yeah. And a blueberry muffin.”

Alan laughlessly pads over to the corner of the room where he unlocks a large, battered and sticker-covered record box (some things thankfully never change) from which, with the greatest of care, he extracts the bulging, spiral-bound A5 notebook and solemnly places it on his desk in front of me. He looks at his watch and almost, I am convinced, says something like “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” but clearly thinks better of it and departs for the kitchen. Strange bastard.

But never mind all that. For the item now in my hot little hands makes everything worth it. Alan’s greatest labour of love (apart from his daughter, perhaps). A chronological record of every gig he attended between 1988 and 1995. A total of 284 separate events: where they were, who he was with, a list (where possible) of what songs were played, the ticket stubs, press cuttings, sometimes his own photos, even details of how he got home—all brought to the thin sheets in glorious Anal-Alancolor. It’s been almost half a decade since I held this masterpiece of indie-pop accountancy, so this afternoon’s rifling session is particularly satisfying. Aside from the first few pages (when I was probably sitting at home memorising French irregular verbs), I can open the book anywhere to be instantly assailed by the most vivid of memories: PJ Harvey at the White Horse in Hampstead, The House of Love at Cambridge Corn Exchange, EMF supporting Carter USM at ULU (“They were great, some cocks tried to attack the singer, though … Neil Tennant showed up”), Paris Angels at Manchester Hacienda (“I have seen the Paris Angels and I believe”), Power of Dreams at Camden Palace (“They’re amazing, why aren’t they massive?”), Loop at Our Price in Reading (“Without question the best thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life”),
Madonna at Wembley Stadium (“Me and Clive were the only people wearing Ned’s Atomic Dustbin T-shirts in the whole place, which kind of made it worthwhile”), Björk at Wembley Stadium, supporting U2 (“She was so good we decided to leave straight afterwards”), Nine Inch Nails at Wembley Stadium supporting Guns N’ Roses (“They were so good we decided to stay for Guns N Roses”), Jane’s Addiction supporting The Wonder Stuff at Brixton Academy (“I thought they were shit, Clive thought they were amazing—big row”). And of course, looming large throughout the volume, no less than eighty-six entries concerning the Thieving Magpies.

Although not the very first band Alan saw (that honour went to—oh, the shame of it!—The Blow Monkeys), the Magpies were certainly the first group whose live appearance Alan deemed worth commemorating. The opening entry was probably made a while after the occasion itself (he actually chanced upon a supporting set of theirs while seeing, as further disgrace and hilarity would have it, Status Quo) and in fact is executed in such an uncharacteristically girly way one would almost suspect Alan’s younger sister were behind it. Spread over two pages, an early, catalogue-esque photo of each band member is glued in and framed with multicoloured felt-tip flourishes, their names written lovingly underneath, the ticket proudly displayed above, with the Quo’s name blacked out and the Magpies’ logo glued over the words “plus special guests.” And, weaving its way around the pictures and assorted bunting, Alan’s hysterical write-up—again, one suspects, written with the benefit of hindsight:

Indeed, how prophetic. Although, as if to prove he hadn’t quite left mainstream late-eighties hell, the second entry was a very small passage concerning a Steve Winwood concert.

I skip to the end. It’s some token of the huge part the Thieving Magpies played in this music fan’s life that his tome is bookended by accounts of their performances: the first bursting with naïve colour, fresh, exciting discovery and a fifteen-year-old’s unjaded optimism; the last, black as fuck and weighed down to drowning point with bitter disappointment, as the last spluttering breaths of a golden era and its crowned champion went gurgling down the alternative-rock drainpipe. Alan must have used the entire contents of a permanent marker to blacken the two-page spread, the centrepiece of which bears the succinct description “TWAT” scrawled in red across a cheery snap of the man himself. Above, meanwhile, an advert boasting the Aylesbury lineup is roughly pasted, a neat rip straight through the heart of the very same band logo so proudly boasted seven years previously, and languishing below, the entry’s sole—and the scrapbook’s final—sentence:

Alan had angrily ripped out the book’s remaining few blank pages.

But like all intense love affairs, Alan’s with Webster and his group didn’t end as instantly as his final instalment suggested. For many months afterwards he continued to scour the pages of the music press and expectantly phone the Thieving Magpies fan club for any sign that normal service would be resuming, and their final album remained in perpetual proximity to his CD player. But, as sales of
(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
went stratospheric, while Tony Blair contacted removal men for his imminent arrival at Downing Street—and bands like Rialto suddenly discovered they had a career—something definitely withered and died in Alan. I suppose it would have died eventually anyway, few people are able to sustain the same level of fanaticism for something as frivolous as a pop group once real life kicks in, but for Alan, when Lance Webster stormed off that stage in a blaze of violence the proverbial dream really was over. The very next week he went and got his hair cut.

“Eurghh,” Alan cringes, returning with the coffee. “For Christ’s sake, don’t show him that page.”

“That’s the best bit.”

“The sentimentality of youth,” he frowns, handing me a muffin. When you ask for something to eat at Alan’s, you get it. Even if you were joking.

“So I’m just trying to find,” I begin, leafing through the book, “the gig that we spoke to him at.”

“Beef, I think. New Cross Venue.”

“The Heart Throbs at the Square,” I correct him.

“He was
at
that gig. But it wasn’t where we spoke to him the first time. Sorry, Clive, could you be a bit more gentle with the pages?”

“Sorry.”

“It was the Beef gig. I approached him halfway through that cover they used to do.”

“‘You Sexy Thing’?”

“No, the other one. ‘These Boots …’ and so on.”

I shake my head. “I’m sure it was at The Heart Throbs.”

“Depends which conversation you’re talking about. I’ve had more than one chat with him, you know—”

“Here it is,” I interrupt, triumphantly. “The Square, Harlow,
the seventh of April nineteen ninety
. ‘We spoke to Lance Webster!’—in very excited prepubescent handwriting, I must say.”

“Piss off.”

“ ‘We asked him what the real lyrics were to the bridge of “Me in a Room.”’”

“Oh,
that
conversation,” Alan huffs, tidying some papers.

“‘Dominic drove us, but finally was a wanker.’ Ha! I remember what
that’s
about.”

“He was never quite as useful as we planned, was he?”

We had befriended Dominic Browne for the sole reason that he’d just been given a car by his wealthy and spoiling parents. Driving the family jeep while holidaying in Spain meant that he was ready to pass his driving test practically by the time he’d finished breakfast on his seventeenth birthday. I was still sixteen at this point; Alan, much to his annoyance and embarrassment, had already failed the test twice. Credit where it’s due, Dominic had a fairly respectable alternative track record: he’d attended both Glastonbury and Reading the previous year, he’d used his new set of wheels to follow Claytown Troupe around the country during half-term and had already, we were envious to learn, been to a Faith No More show. The items that weakened his case to be a
genuine
gigging companion were that he excelled at sport
and
academic work, drank little, insisted on wearing a rugby shirt and proper shoes to indie clubs, was generally a bit full of himself and, we suspected, wouldn’t deliberate too long about screwing you over if it made his own life easier: a
hunch that was conclusively proved correct that particular evening in Harlow.