The Drummer's Tale - A Novel Read online

  ‘Jules, Tom here... bad news about the drums I’m afraid.’

  ‘What’s that old man?’

  ‘Great Aunt Edith has left her estate to a cat’s home, so there’ll be no £200 for me.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sorry pal, but you’ll just have to find yourself another drummer.’

  Julian has been listening patiently and says, ‘If we do Tom, there’ll still be a place for you in the band.’

  ‘What playing, the spoons?’ I find it hard to hide my disappointment.

  Julian does not answer. There is a brief pause, during which time I can hear his light breathing. He is thinking, plotting; his resourceful mind at work.

  ‘I have a bit of an idea,’ he says. ‘How do you fancy a pint with Paul McCartney this evening?’

  *

  I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window of the Seacombe Ferry Hotel, a somewhat run down public house that overlooks the River Mersey in sight of the ferry boats and the ever-dwindling shipping traffic of the once great port. I look about twelve, in keeping with my schoolyard tag of ‘Shirley Temple’. My fair hair is shoulder length and frames a less than masculine face. I have had more than one person cross my path and ask if I was a boy or a girl, which is hardly the greatest confidence booster in the context of attracting the opposite sex. I am wearing a navy blue duffel coat with wooden toggles, not that different from the one I wore to primary school ten years ago. The only things missing are the plastic sandals from Woolworths and the ever present snotty nose. None of this helps to make me feel old enough to drink in here.

  I hide behind the slightly taller Julian as we enter; keeping my eyes glued to the baseball boots just visible beyond the sway of my loons. We slice our way through the blanket of cigarette smoke and move across the threadbare Axminster carpet towards the bar, where we are served by a stereotypical, brassy Northern barmaid, her ample bosom bursting out of her white blouse, clearly a couple of sizes too small for her. She could easily be taken for the elder sister of the girl in the photograph of the salted peanuts advert behind the bar... albeit an elder sister who has smoked a packet of Capstan Full Strength a day since the age of five and has survived on three hours sleep per night followed by a breakfast of Tequila and grits.

  ‘And what can I get you gentlemen?’ Before Julian can answer, she looks at me and says, ‘Mind you, I can see what he wants.’ She wobbles her chest and says, ‘Catch me later love, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  I blush as she laughs like Sid James, my eyes once again taking refuge in the scrutiny of my flares and footwear.

  ‘A pint of your best bitter and a Cinzano with lemon,’ says Julian, radiating self-confidence.

  He hands me the beer, and I am relieved that we choose to sit in a quiet corner, safe from prying eyes and busty sexual predators. Once seated, Julian pulls a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket.

  ‘Now this my dear chap is your passport to a brand new drum kit,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I am bemused.

  ‘I ventured to Rushforths in Liverpool this afternoon for this.’ He unfolds the paper.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A Hire Purchase Agreement.’

  I start to protest that this is neither use nor ornament to someone who earns a pound a week, but my friend holds up a calming hand.

  ‘Just watch this Tom.’

  He moves across to the busiest part of the pub, where I am flabbergasted to see Paul and Linda McCartney sitting around a table, drinking and smoking with various friends and family. It seems Julian had been serious about a drink with the ex-Beatle. When he had said that Paul was in town and likely to come here for a pint, I took it with a large pinch of salt. Yet there he is, as clear as day. I should have known better. Julian proving once again that he is truly well connected.

  I watch as my fearless pal taps Paul on the shoulder and hands him the HP document. The great man duly signs it, then turns to me with a trademark thumbs up. I wave back, a little gingerly, as Julian back slaps him, kisses Linda on both cheeks, before returning to our table.

  ‘Tops,’ says Julian, ‘absolute tops.’

  ‘What the hell was that all that about?’

  ‘I told him you were too shy to ask for his autograph. What he doesn’t realise is that he has just signed to be guarantor on a brand spanking new set of Olympic by Premier drums.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Julian explains that he posed as me in Rushforths and told the salesman that he was Paul McCartney’s cousin, and that he wanted to buy a drum kit on HP. The pretence worked a treat, and he arranged to return tomorrow with the countersigned hire purchase agreement. Julian is triumphant, but I am not too comfortable about the whole thing.

  ‘Surely if you were... or rather I was Paul McCartney's cousin, he’d just buy the drums for me. Let’s face it; he’s not short of a few bob.’

  ‘My dear chap, Macca is a man of renowned parsimony. See that older chap on his table in the donkey jacket?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s just bought the round of drinks.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Listen my man, if your Great Aunt Edith was the Queen of Thrift, Paul is certainly the Crown Prince.’

  As if to prove Julian’s point, the ex-Beatles knocks over a glass of wine belonging to one of the party. He half-heartedly rummages through his pockets in search of some change but is beaten to buying a replacement drink by the donkey jacketed man.

  ‘But how am I going to afford the instalments?’

  ‘Relax Tom. As soon as we start to earn some cash from gigging, we can pay off the debt. Stop worrying. It’s all fine.’

  I look at my enterprising friend with a mixture of disquiet and admiration. Julian Lord is probably the only living nineteen year old with the capacity to hatch such a plan and the audacity to carry it off. Perhaps in this particular instance, his resemblance to Paul has helped. He has the same good looks, dark hair and brown eyes, and he is currently sporting the same amount of facial hair. However, more significantly, he has such deep-grained self-assurance that whatever he chooses to do, he is never questioned, aided by the rich dulcet tones of his BBC voice, which permeates a natural authority people do not dispute. It would simply not have occurred to the man in Rushforths that this young guy was anyone other than Paul McCartney’s cousin, even though common sense might suggest otherwise. And so with Julian’s reassurance winning the day, I allow myself the dream of playing something other than a Parker-Knoll substitute.

  I continue to sip the bitter in our corner but can see the pub manager eyeing me up and down as he collects the empty glasses. He has a menacing look with narrow eyes, a greased-back hairstyle, and a red face he appears to have painted on with Dulux. Dressed in a greying bri-nylon shirt and black shiny trousers, he approaches our table.

  ‘Eh lad, we don’t serve kids in this pub, so piss off out of here.’ His face darkens to a shade of crimson.

  I am about to make a dash for the door when Julian intervenes. ‘Don’t worry Keith, everything is fine and dandy. This is Tom, and he is my guest.’

  ‘Oh, right, sorry Julian, I didn’t realise it was you there.’ The manager oozes remorse, and I stare in disbelief as he retreats to the bar, returning quickly with two more drinks on a silver tray. ‘Here you are gentlemen, a couple of bevies for you... on the house of course.’ There has been a complete transformation in the manager’s demeanour, and he withdraws meekly to carry on with the evening’s chores. Julian strikes again.

  We down our drinks and plot the next stage of the musical master plan. When it is time to go, the manager does everything he can to make our short journey to the pub’s exit a comfortable one, everything other than rolling out a red carpet and providing a trumpet fanfare. Before we exchange the cosy warmth of the pub for the crisp spring night air, I glance over my shoulder at the McCartney table. I am surprised to get another ‘thumbs up’ from Paul and somewhat astonished that he
follows this with his mimic of a drum roll. Or is this my imagination playing tricks?

  *

  Seven days later and a Rushforths delivery van is parked outside our house. Julian's plan has worked a treat. On the pavement, there are a number of black cases, each a different size to accommodate the varying dimensions of the tom toms, snare, and bass drums. There is also a flat case for the cymbals, and a mini treasure chest for the hit-hat, pedals, and other stands. This is so exciting. Jules is here to deal with the shop man in the brown coat, and he signs the requisite piece of paper before helping me with the cases upstairs to the box bedroom.

  This is empty other than for an old rocking horse that goes back a few generations and gives off an extremely lifelike odour. Nobody has the heart to throw it out, but there is probably more livestock in its rotting, wooden carcass than at a weekly beef market in a Herefordshire rural town. Once everything is inside, I undo the strap on the snare case, open the lid, and carefully extract the drum. It is a beautiful specimen, and I inspect the underneath. There is the snare assembly and a see-through skin that reveals a three-ply birch shell and a muffler. The outer casing is all bright red sparkle and chrome with a sober looking 'Olympic' badge riveted to the wood. The skin on the top is pristine, and it almost seems a shame that I will soon be battering it to high heaven with sticks.

  We remove all the other items, and it is pleasing to see that many of the cases stack within one another like a Russian doll. It means there is just about enough room to set up the kit in this spare bedroom and to put the cases in one corner.

  'Ginger Baker would be green with envy,' says Julian, as we both stand back to admire the aesthetics of my new pride and joy.

  'Well, shall I have a go?'

  'Why not old man.'

  When I sit down behind the set, Julian starts to laugh. ‘Here comes Jimmy Clitheroe on the drums.’

  The seat is far too low, and I adjust it until I am sitting at the correct height. 'Here goes.'

  I make a tentative start. One beat to two beats on the bass drum in normal time, with a driving beat from my right hand on the hi-hat and the main beat from my left stick on the snare. At the end of the first couple of bars, I strike a cymbal, and after a couple of minutes playing, I finish with a roll on the snare, moving down the toms tom to the floor tom and finishing with another crash of the cymbal.

  The decrepit rocking horse seems impressed. It is swaying gently and is either thinking Ringo Starr has moved in or there has been an earthquake.

  Julian applauds. 'Good man. I think you are going to be just fine. All that training on the settee has set you up beautifully.'

  'Perhaps I could be the Bert Weedon of Drums? Chapter 1 of my Play in a Day book would be called The Settee.’

  'There might be something in that old man.'

  We hear a heavy knocking at the front door. I know we are the only ones in the house, and so I make my way downstairs. Alan the next-door neighbour is standing there. He is built like the proverbial shithouse and has shoulders so wide; he would probably get stuck in the doorframe if he tried to come in the house. His face is not exactly that of a benevolent uncle. He has his front and bottom teeth clenched together like the thighs of a nun in the company of a frisky monk; and if his eyebrows were any lower in his face, his eyes would be in his chin. He is clearly not a happy chap.

  He opens his mouth, and the muscles in his face relax. His tone is that of a broken man. 'Four hours... four bloody hours!' He shakes his head.

  'Sorry Alan?'

  'She's a light sleeper you know. The slightest noise and she wakes... screams the place down.'

  'Who? Janice?'

  Janice is Alan's wife.

  'No, not bloody Janice. She sleeps like a bloody baby. It’s the baby... she's the one that doesn't sleep like a bloody baby. I finally had her with her eyes shut, and I was creeping slowly out the bedroom when from up there, there was BANG, BANG, BANG, CRASH BANG! And then she starts bloody crying again.'

  'Oh dear.'

  'What the bloody hell's going on in there?’ He stares at me pleadingly. ‘It sounded like bloody drums.'

  Alan is a big lad, and I sense that his despair may quickly oscillate into something a touch more threatening, so I avoid the confession that I am this road's answer to John Bonham.

  'Drums? Ha! As if.'

  'Then what was the noise?'

  'The noise?'

  'Yes?'

  'It's my friend's Hi-Fi, which is really high quality and very loud. He's got this album 'Sounds of Africa’ that he can't stop playing, though it's not my cup of tea really. I'll go and tell him to turn it down.'

  Alan is a spent force, and his face is now pink and blotchy as he returns to his nightmare. It is becoming obvious that the chances of practising the drums at home are likely to be as frequent as a pools win. I am going to have to continue with the settee a bit longer and find a venue where I can have a good belt. Understandably, I am starting to have doubts as to whether I will be able to progress at the same level as the other lads.

  I hear Julian having a go on the drums followed by a baby's piercing cry. I rush up the stairs to stop him before Big Alan resorts to jumping out of his bedroom window.

 

  *

  Within a week of becoming a proper drummer, we have the prospect of our first gig. The chap who lives in the flat above Ged is a singer with the Leasowe Minstrels who have a show at Wallasey Town Hall this coming Saturday. The basic structure of the Talent Aplenty concert revolves around the troupe miming and dancing to Al Jolson ditties with local artists sandwiched in between performing in a talent contest. The venue has a capacity of a few hundred people, and such is the popularity of the local Minstrels, the show is a sell out. However, when I contemplate the prospect of our debut, things look decidedly bleak.

  We have no songs, having spent all our time together either jamming or trying to think of a band name. And I have my own particular worry. Ged may be getting better by the day on guitar, and Julian might be looking the epitome of cool on bass, but what about the bloke on the drums? Dire... there is no other word for it. Well to be fair, there are a few more. How about crap? Or bollocks? I cannot drum in the house because of Alan and the baby next door, and my dad’s reaction has been predictable.

  ‘Why you had to choose the bloody drums, Christ only knows. What’s wrong with the mouth organ or the bloody Jew’s harp?’

  I am at least thankful that he has swallowed the story about the Olympic kit belonging to Julian’s cousin.

  The three of us are back in my front room where the serenity of the Nordic mural is being undermined by the smell of kippers frying in the kitchen. Ged is making farting noises sitting on the edge of the PVC armchair and is thumbing his way through a crumbling book of sheet music called The Real Book of the Blues. He comes across an old blues number called 'Junkie’s Fudge' and immediately proposes this as a name for the group. Having turned down dubious suggestions such as Piss, Hairy Fairy and Pythagoras Meat Pie, we are quick to agree. Junkie’s Fudge is born.

  We turn our attention to songs, revealing a pragmatic streak that panders to the Town Hall audience. Ged knows the chords to 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep', a massive 'novelty' hit last year for Middle of the Road, and we decide this is the number to launch our performing careers. I am unsure how to work out the drums, so I opt to play the tambourine instead. To any sane mind, it begs the question, 'Are you on drugs?'

  We need another song and start to jam. The guitars are unamplified, and I am back in my comfort zone playing the settee. Ged improvises a riff, Julian plays a blues bass line, and I mumble something about my baby across the sea. Three minutes later, and we have written our first ever song. We think it is a number one. In reality, it is probably a number two... in the colloquial sense.

  ‘Eat your fucking heart out Paul McCartney,’ proclaims Ged.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ I say. ‘He’s my guarantor.’

  *

 

 
It is the evening of the Talent Aplenty show, and we are on our way to the Town Hall, courtesy of Ged who is driving his brother's bright orange transit van with the words ‘Edward Nuttall Contractor’ plastered all over the bodywork. I gaze out of the window and catch a glimpse of a liver bird, green wingspan clearly visible, looking poised to crap over the passengers at the Pier Head. The Liverpool waterfront is famous the world over, and though partly due to the port’s unique maritime history, its current fame has more do with John, Paul, George and Ringo. Songs like 'How Much Is That Doggie' and 'Seven Little Girls (Sitting in the Back Seat)' left their mark on me at an early age. Yet it was only when The Fab Four came along with 'She Loves You', 'Twist & Shout’, and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' that the young Tom Kellaway, along with millions of others, became aware of this fantastic thing called pop music. I muse that not so long ago, The Beatles would have been experiencing the same kind of nervous anticipation that I feel now.

  ‘Do you think when John Lennon and Paul McCartney were on the way to their first gig, they felt like this?’ I ask the others.

  ‘Like what, soft lad?’ says Ged.

  ‘I don’t know... a kind of tingle inside.’

  ‘Eh, no fucking wanking in the back of my brother's van,’ he shouts to laughter from Julian. ‘I don’t want your sponk all over those seats.’

  The banter continues to be lively as we make our way through the streets of Wallasey, fuelled especially by Ged. He notices the cords I am wearing.

  ‘What the fuck are those?’

  ‘Split-knee corduroy loons.’

  I make the statement with the attempted confidence of Mary Quant, but it is not that easy. The offending trousers are coloured brown above the knee and cream from the knee downwards.

  ‘And here he comes, Geoff Boycott, opening batsman for England,’ says Ged, takings his hands off the wheel to mime an off drive to more laughter, including my own. I have to admit, they do look like a pair of immaculate cricket pads.

  In all our preparations, we have given little thought to our appearance. Ged is wearing a purple jacket with white spots and has a felt top hat on the front passenger seat, begging the question as to how he has the nerve to act as a fashion critic. Our very own bass playing Noel Coward is sitting there adjusting his bow tie and smoothing out the material of his smoking jacket. In truth, our outfits are as coordinated as Douglas Bader on acid trying to do the Twist, but I guess we are happy with the final image. We know that matching clothes are the remit of cabaret artists from Yorkshire or soul groups from Detroit. We are a rock band and proud of it, cricket pads or otherwise.