‘What did you buy?’
‘
Fire and Water
, Free. My copy had got scratched when someone borrowed it and I saw it in the sale. I’d missed hearing it, but I couldn’t bear to play it damaged. Now I’ve got it on CD, too.’
‘With bonus tracks.’
She laughed. ‘Not you too.’
‘Hell, yeah. Free, Zeppelin, Cream, the Stones, Purple. Got to be done. Old blues and rock and roll might have got me into music in the first place, but those guys fired me up like nothing else when I was a kid. They’re the reason Tom and I moved to London and stuck with it when things were tough.’
Alex grinned. ‘Page or Clapton?’ This was an old game she had played with Fred.
Johnny didn’t hesitate. ‘Page.’
‘Rodgers or Dio?’
‘Tough … Dio, but by a whisker.’
‘
Stairway
or
Child in Time
?’
‘Both.’ He took the Muddy Waters album from her and put it on the turntable. ‘Let’s play this, I haven’t heard it in ages.’ As the blues started playing, she relaxed and lost herself in the music.
Over dinner that night, Indian food they ordered in, Johnny made a suggestion.
‘How do you feel about living here while we work together? It seems mad you staying at the George and travelling backwards and forwards all the time. And to be honest, Baker and I would enjoy the company.’
‘If you’re sure. It does seem to make sense.’ Maybe she’d be able to get things back on track if she spent more time with Johnny.
‘Great, that’s settled then. You can pick up your stuff in the morning.’
Chapter 29
Next day Alex went to the George and Dragon to pack up her things and settle her bill. She explained to Gerry that she was going to be staying at the house with Johnny for the remainder of the job.
‘Got your feet under the table, then?’
‘It just makes sense, Gerry. We’ll be able to get more done. At the moment, if I read over what we’ve got and I have questions, I have to make notes and clear things up the next time I’m there. It all takes time. This way I’ll be able to move things on faster.’
Gerry nodded. ‘If you say so. Don’t forget to come and have a pint with us now and then, though. We’ll miss you here.’
***
Later, after she’d settled in and she and Johnny were chatting at the kitchen table, Carol’s words drifted into Alex’s mind. Her instincts told her that Johnny Burns was a genuine, decent man, but what if they were skewed? She’d admired his music for a long time, and now felt she might be falling for him. Was it real, she wondered, or was it because she was on the rebound from Dave?
She had begun to admit to herself that when she had chosen not to call ahead the day she caught Dave and Molly together it had been a dare, a kind of a test: daring herself, testing Dave. There had been no sudden hang-ups when she answered the phone, no whispered conversations that petered out when she came back from the bar or into a room, no loaded looks she’d intercepted, nothing like that at all. Just something in his eyes, his touch, a distance between them. A feeling she remembered from a long time ago, when she was at sixth form college and had dumped her bloke when she found out that he’d been riding the school bike behind her back.
Alex had been ignoring it, the feeling she had about Dave, had thought she’d sensed it once or twice before over the years. Then she felt she had to know for sure, had dared and tested and had been right. She wondered about the earlier times, then tried to let it go. It would do her no good to have her suspicions confirmed, would change nothing to know that wasn’t the first time he’d strayed.
She dragged her mind back to the present, focused on what Johnny was saying.
‘Playing with Heartbreaker had always been good,’ he told her, ‘but when we started to get some critical acclaim, it kind of gave things an edge.’
‘Can you describe what it felt like when you were on stage?’
Johnny thought for a moment, then shook his head as if to clear it. ‘I don’t know … there was something almost magical about what we did. All hell would be breaking loose, the noise was incredible out front, and there we were, safe in the eye of the storm. When I was up there onstage with that group of people and everything was going crazy; I mean controlled, we were crafting something, but something that took on its own life; there was no finer place in the universe I could imagine being. We’d be in the middle of a song and then one of us would play something, or Andy would sing something, and bingo! We were all there, going off at a tangent, but together, and we all seemed to know just when to bring it back again, as well, to get back on track. Touring honed our performances, we developed an almost telepathic understanding. We’d just look at each other and grin like loons, we couldn’t believe anything could be so good.
‘There was this one time, I’ll never forget it, we were touring
Rescued
and we were playing Newcastle Mayfair. The crowd was amazing, there was always a great atmosphere there. It was a hell of a gig.’
Alex nodded. ‘My brother Fred saw you play at the Mayfair. He had to sneak in, he was just a kid, but he loved it.’ She laughed. ‘His ears were ringing for about three days afterwards. He always reckoned the best way to enjoy a gig was to get right up front and stick your head in the bass bin.’
Johnny laughed with her. ‘My hearing’s not what it should be due to my doing similar clever things. That and the fact that everything was permanently taped on “twelve”.
‘I remember we started playing
Long Way from Home
, you know it’s got that really loose section in the middle? Well, Paul started drumming something, I can’t remember what, some old rock and roll number. Andy picked up on it first and started singing, then the rest of us joined in. After that, I kicked off
Somethin’ Else
, then we did
Reelin’ and Rockin’
: it just flowed, it was great and the crowd loved it. They probably thought we’d rehearsed it, which we hadn’t, not that time at least. Then we all just looked at each other and nodded, and ripped back into the riff again, back to
Long Way from Home
for the finish.
‘We had some new toys for that tour as well. I’d got a Gibson Maestro Fuzz Tone, which was better than the box I’d been using, and I’d started putting my Strat through a Leslie; I liked the sound. Colin’s wah-wah pedal had got nicked from his pedal bag somewhere along the line, so he picked up a new one and kicked the arse out of it in true Carson style, played Huggy Bear music, you know?’ Alex nodded. ‘Every bloody sound check he was cranking out what sounded like bad porno backing tracks. He only did it to make Tom crazy and it worked. He was terrified of Colin doing something like that during a gig; it didn’t fit in with the white-boy-blues image Tom had of us. He was in orbit by the time I confiscated the damn thing. I kept it until Col found another way to bug Tom, then gave him it back. Later, we invested in bass pedals and a Fender keyboard bass, so we could play some of the stuff we’d created in the studio live on stage.’
‘You never smashed up your gear the way some bands did.’
‘We all got far too attached to it to smash it up. Besides, that wasn’t part of our act, that was the Who or Deep Purple. Among others. We wrecked our gear the same way Rory Gallagher and Led Zeppelin did; we just played it to death.’
He paused. ‘I’ve never had that kind of excitement with any other group of people, before or since. I’ve made some good music with some fine musicians, stuff I’m really proud of, but I’ve never found that magic, that extra dimension that we had playing in Heartbreaker.’
Alex nodded. No wonder they went ape after a performance; how else could you wind down after the kind of frenzy they created?
‘The best night that tour was when we played the Glasgow Apollo. What a gig. It was a really old venue and the way it was built, when you were onstage you were eye level with the first floor balcony. The crowd would stamp and cheer and the whole thing would bounce like a fairground ride. Christ knows how it stayed in place. When it came to
Rescued,
the Apollo Choir sang it and we backed them.’ He grinned. ‘Fucking awesome.’
‘The Apollo Choir?’
‘The crowd. They had a hell of a reputation for singing, they were incredible. I’ve still got a couple of Apollo Oscars knocking about somewhere. You used to get them if you sold the place out. It was a brilliant place to play.’ He ran his hand through his hair, suddenly more serious. ‘And the worst night that tour was the one I spent in Accident and Emergency in Liverpool with Tom.’
Chapter 30
1976
The boys were enjoying a rare night off and Tom and Johnny had decided to go on to a club when the pub shut. The others had headed back to the hotel, citing tiredness and the need for a good night’s sleep as their reasons for wimping out. Tom and Johnny were already buzzing and when they found that the club they were in was selling trebles for the same price as singles, they were soon clutching glasses that held far more vodka than tonic.
It wasn’t long before their Yorkshire accents were earwigged and they started getting hassle from a mouthy Scouser.
‘What the fuck are you two ugly cunts doing here?’ he demanded to know.
‘Just having a drink, same as you,’ said Johnny, refusing to rise to the bait.
‘Fuck off back to Yorkshire.’
‘Fuck off yourself, you Scouse cunt,’ Tom said.
‘Cool it, guys, there’s no need for this. Why don’t we all just have a drink and calm down?’ Johnny was doing his best to keep a lid on it, having clocked the crowd the boy was with. He and Tom were outnumbered and he didn’t fancy getting a kicking; too easy for their hands to get damaged and they were in the middle of a tour, for Christ’s sake.
The Scouse lad squared up to Tom. ‘I’ll ask you again: what the fuck are you two doing here?’
‘Looking for women.’ Tom leered at the lad’s girlfriend, busy checking him out from under her eyelashes. ‘She looks like she’d be up for it.’ He eyed the lad. ‘What do you reckon, mate; am I in with a shout?’
Johnny’s heart sank. Scouse let out a roar of anger and launched himself at Tom, knocking him to the floor. Johnny leapt back out of the way; he reckoned he was more use on his feet than on his arse. There was a mass of arms and legs as the lad’s mates piled into the fray. Johnny reached into the melee and grabbed Scouse by the back of the neck, started hauling him off Tom. He wasn’t going to give up that easily, though; he grabbed a glass that was rolling around on the floor and smashed it. As Johnny was punched and shoulder-charged into the bar, he shouted: ‘No! Tom, look out, mate!’ Then he went down in a heap, landing underneath his attackers, the breath knocked out of him.
Tom’s eyes were huge as he saw the lad looming over him, grasping the base of the broken glass, the treacherous, jagged teeth mere inches from his face. He tried to get his arms up to defend himself, but was being pinned down. Still grinning, Scouse buried the glass in Tom’s cheek.
‘See how many birds fancy you now, you mouthy cunt,’ he shouted as his mates cheered him on.
Too late to be of any real use, the bouncers arrived and the crowd scattered, leaving Tom and Johnny sitting on the floor of the club amidst all the debris. Tom was in shock, Johnny not much better.
‘Oh fuck, look at this,’ said one of the bouncers, taking in the scene. ‘Call an ambulance.’
Tom sat on the floor, bits of glass embedded in his face. He turned to Johnny. ‘Fucking hell. Are you okay, mate?’ he said.
Johnny nodded. He had cuts and bruises, nothing major. It hurt when he breathed in, but he reckoned that would pass. He was scared by Tom’s saucer eyes. He had no idea what to do for him.
‘Leave that where it is, son, let the medics sort it,’ said one of the bouncers as he saw Tom tentatively explore the shards of glass with his fingers. He winced as he took a look at the damage to Tom’s face. Thankfully the ambulance soon arrived and Tom and Johnny were led downstairs and loaded on board. The crew was matter-of-fact; they saw that kind of thing far too often to be shocked.
***
‘So we spent the night there, got back to the hotel at about five in the morning. Tom was patched up by then, although it took them a while to dig all the bits of glass out of his face.’ Johnny gave a wry smile. ‘Needless to say, no one at the club had seen anything, so the kid got away with it. Evil little bastard.
‘It turned out okay for Tom, though. He got so much sympathy for being wounded, he had women queuing up to kiss him better. Although by the time he had perfected his version of what had happened, he’d taken on an army of Scousers single-handed and won. He was left with a scar, but even that didn’t spoil his chances. The chicks loved it. They thought it was cool, sexy. I remember one of them told him it looked like the moon and stars, the crescent moon on one side and the stars on the other where the glass hadn’t broken the skin in a complete arc. He liked that.’ Johnny shook his head. ‘Bizarre as it sounds, it suited him.’
Chapter 31
The next weekend, Alex went home again. She had told Isabel and Robert that she had moved into Johnny’s house to work on the book, but wanted to tell Carol to her face, not on the phone. It might mean a row, but Carol was her friend. They’d get over it.
On the drive home, Alex thought about the ground that had been covered over the past week. Johnny had told her that Dan Cross never understood why record companies seemed to make more money than the artists they signed and perhaps because he didn’t have the kind of background that other managers they’d met did, he refused to accept it. Dan always made sure that the band got a decent cut.
They had so far skirted around the hedonism that had become a part of the legend of Heartbreaker on tour, but that issue would soon have to be confronted head on. She would have to encourage Johnny to be open and honest about everything that had happened. Alex was sufficiently astute to realise that a full and frank account of the whole Heartbreaker machine in action, warts and all, was their key to success.