Hightown Pirates, played their last gig on February 8th 2019 at a little club in Hackney called Paper Dress, it was busy, it was neither the best, nor worst show we’d done, but I’d just lost Carrie, Luke and Earl in the space of 18 months and If my songs were to mean something to me, and something that might suggest to other musically minded people that you don’t have to use alcohol or drugs to do the thing you love the most and perhaps, do it better than ever before, then I decided that ‘we’ all do it clean, or we don’t do it at all.
I miss those three troubled souls, I really do, but sometimes it seems that certain people are just too sensitive for this world, a description I think applied to them all. Carrie could be a monumental drama queen I can’t pretend otherwise, but the more I found out about her, the more I understood exactly why she found this life so hard. One of the higher strands of thinking that is embraced within our recovery communities is the idea that we don’t shoot our wounded, the flip side of that, is that we don’t need to, they often crucify themselves anyway. I don’t know why, if I did, I’d write a proper book about that sort of stuff, but I don’t so this will have to do. Luke was the same, he got clean around the same time as Carrie and I, we did the same meetings, hung out, walked the walk, as they say, but he also decided a few years in, to try and drink alcohol in a ‘normal’ way. He never got back, and he died years later, his body was found in a backpacker’s hostel in Cambodia, dead from a heroin overdose. And Earl? Perhaps the most sensitive of them all, a truly gifted guitarist, as was Luke, I would watch them both with amazement as their fingers did magical things re-interpreting other people’s songs. It’s not my place to talk about why they were, the way they were, they’re not here anymore, wherever they are though, I hope it’s a happier place. There is no joy in any of this of course, just a great sadness that is echoed every time we lose another of our tribe, sometimes that echo seems to build into a crescendo of noise that permeates and saturates those of us who remain, blocking out almost everything else until there is some respite, a moment of relative calm, and then just the empty silence of the reality of addiction. If there is a chink of light in all this, a momentary breath of relief, it is when, as a fellowship of recovering addicts, we can join together and pay our respects to those we have lost. Our friends, so often derided by societies opinions, judged, and condemned for being weak-willed or selfish because they couldn’t stop hurting themselves and sometimes, even when they have. I recall one such event in Yorkshire as over 100 of us attended the funeral of a true giant among men, Chris F. He was the gentlest of souls, never too busy or too tired to try and help others. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone, he always remained humble and grateful for the modest life he built in his recovery. He died suddenly, still clean, and I think the day of his funeral was a demonstration of the respect he had from so many of us, and perhaps gave those members of his family who we shared that day with, some understanding of just how loved and admired he was. In his youth he was a regular at the Wigan Casino and The Twisted Wheel, a true northern soul, who as far I know, never put ferrets in his pants.
“Do I love you? Indeed, I do.”
Keep the faith big man.
I got home after the Hackney gig, after paying for rehearsals, people’s expenses, chucking the support acts a few quid and venue hire, I’d again, lost more money that I couldn’t afford to lose. The hernia-inducing manual labour at the warehouse had done what it said on the tin, I now had a hernia the size of a golf ball, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I’d created a band that wasn’t a band, by which I mean, entirely of my own volition, I’d always been the one to find the money to continue, some of it was mine, a lot of it came from other people who supported my ideals. Everyone involved had given their time and ridiculous talent for free and occasionally at their own expense when for whatever reason I couldn’t pull up the funds to cover everything, but it was an untenable situation that had to stop. Besides, on March 5th, 2019 I asked my girlfriend Becky, to marry me and she was crazy enough to say yes, so I had other things that needed to be taken care of now.
Maybe it was time to grow up and stop pretending to be a teenager with a lived-in face and weary heart? Maybe if I wanted to tell more stories, I needed to find another way? Maybe I just needed to shut up for a while and get over the disappointment of the previous few years? Maybe the reason that the songs I’d written had failed to impact upon more than a small number of people, is that they simply weren’t ‘good’ enough?
Or maybe it wasn’t.
Come on, you didn’t really think I was ready for my pipe and slippers just yet, did you? You clearly don’t know me very well at all, I’m stupid remember?
I had an album to make, an album dedicated to all those people I loved who were no longer here because at the end of the day, that’s the best way I can honour them, they were nuts too and they’d be gutted if I didn’t at least try.
So.
Maybe it was time to get in touch with Bristol’s most celebrated painter and decorator again, I needed his help.
Chapter 33.
Here comes your man.
Easton, Bristol, 1997.
Two men are having a bit of a tussle in the street, one of them is really angry that the other, who is visiting from London, has brought his dark cloud of self-centered, junkie anguish and selfish behaviour, into the flat he shares with another of his friends here in Bristol. In polite terms, you might say that the first man is, in his own way, just trying to knock some sense into the other, however, the object of his anger, frustration, and disappointment, is so out of his mind on heroin, he doesn’t really care, he’s actually incapable of doing so, nor does he feel the slap on the face he’s just received either. To the casual observer passing by, it’s just another comical, playground, dust-up between two men old enough to know better, two men, whose lives are about to move in two vastly different directions. The first man has been plotting his course, diligently, obsessively and with a discipline and dedication so intense, it is actually not surprising that what happens to him ultimately manifests in the way it does.
The second man, is a junkie, currently equally dedicated to his own demise, with as much denial and obsessive thinking and behaviour as his friends more positive beliefs, and guess what? It’s not exactly surprising that what occurs in his life, does so with such predictable and painful results either.
It is a measure of the first man’s faith in the human spirit and its recuperative powers, that less than two years later, he asks the first man to be his manager. Which is testament to his unbridled belief in other people’s ability do remarkable things, having been convinced by the first man, that he has now got his life back on track and, NO, he’s never really had a problem with alcohol so he’s ok popping the occasional pill, smoking weed and drinking Special Brew every now and then. Which is a testament to the cunning nature of addiction and its ability to turn otherwise intelligent people into dunces.
The second man declines the offer of assisting in his friends’ career, which is shortly about to go supernova, his reason being, “There’s no money in graffiti mate.” Which, in hindsight was probably a good thing, as his own life was about to implode again, into a smack-saturated black hole. At this point in proceedings, they are both living a few minutes’ walk from each other in Stoke Newington, London, but just as one of them is eyeing up the stars and perhaps more pertinently, the walls of this city, the other is casting a jealous glance at the gutter and beginning his final decent into it, leaving all who care about him, holding their breath and, for their own sanity, leaving him to wherever it is he seems determined to go as they get on with the task of taking part in life. The first man gets the occasional phone call from the underworld over the years, half-truths, and emotionally unhinged postcards from somewhere nobody really wants to be, the final dispatch from the trenches comes in May 2006, a plea for money to escape certain death in the Spanish countryside. Possibly against his better judgment, but also because, despite of everything, he does still have the faintest glimmer of hope, he sends the money and gets on with being a bit of a genius, fully expecting to have to take a break from all that shortly, to attend a funeral.
“And my telephone don’t stop ringing my friends are really sick, you get no peace from the wicked, ‘cos they know every fucking trick, yeah, yeah, yeah. “
Hightown Pirates, A Sunday Sermon.
February 19th, 2018.
Bristol, The Fleece and Firkin.
The second man has just come offstage after his band have acquitted themselves remarkably well considering they rarely rehearse and now seem to have an ever-changing line-up. There were moments onstage when everything clicked into place and there were some people there, albeit to watch the headliners, who showed their appreciation, so he’s happy enough which is still, very much an ‘understanding’ he sometimes tarnishes slightly because not enough people seem to want to listen to what he thinks this is all about. It was, more or less, a hometown gig, the hometown he left a lifetime ago and a place he has made a few snide remarks about both in print and on social media, which might explain why nobody from there makes the 40 min journey to come and cheer him on tonight?
*Point of interest*
There were a few people there, from the land that time forgot, my sister, her partner and a couple of others, I’m just being childish and petty. I probably need to do a step-four around some of this stuff, which is recovery-speak for get over it, you twat.
As he’s busy trying to figure out how much money they’ve lost on this particular expedition from the metropolis to the land of dangerous cider and webbed feet, he gets a tap on his shoulder, turning to be greeted by man number one.
There is a bit of a “Oh wow” silence, then a hug, a big, big, hug that may well be long overdue, or entirely at the right time, depending on who you ask. Either way, it’s been a while, but at the same time has enough genuine sincerity as to make it feel like it was only yesterday when the first man was trying to stop the second man from creating the circumstance that would mean this current situation, would need, as long as it needed, to occur.
“Sorry I was such dickhead mate, it’s good to see you, thanks for coming.”
“We all were a bit like that back then mate, I thought your band was great tonight, you look the part, I’m glad I came.”
I do love a happy ending, don’t you?
There is a postscript to this too, fast forward to February 2019 and as I’m attempting to come to terms with the loss of my three friends, Carrie, Luke, and Earl, and now having decided to try and make an album only working with musicians that are in recovery, I needed to make a few enquiries as to the who, where and most problematically, how, I might get this done, me being me, I sort out the who bit first.
*Note to self *
That’s quite a nice play on words in that last sentence considering the opening two tracks to the album that you were about to make, are indeed your own personal homage to those four blokes from West London formally knowns as The High Numbers. If this paragraph makes no sense to the reader, it’s because they clearly haven’t listened to the album or don’t like The Who, and therefore you don’t care whether it makes sense to them or not.
My friend, The Boy in the Doorway, aka the artist John Gosnell, mentions to me that we have a mutual friend who has a recording studio, an un-stoned, stone’s throw away from where he and I currently loiter with intent. The intent being that we are both happily embarked on the daily pursuit of achieving another day clean to add to the respective days clean we have already accumulated.
The studio, is operated by another two wonderful people who,
*drum roll. * are also walking that particular path as well, which means unless the studio is either, really expensive or I’m not feeling the vibe, it’s obviously exactly where I need to go to record the new album. A few days and a short tube ride later, I find myself walking into a park in Holloway Rd, on a remarkably warm and sunny February afternoon, my google map directs me towards the church situated in this park, a park I’d not been in since I was resident in that particular area, almost 20 years ago to the day. When I say resident, I mean, in rehab, there is a photo of me, in Too High, taken while I was there, I am holding up the Evening Standards headline, Models fatal heroin fix. I start to get that ‘Liz Taylors on her way, feeling again.
Not only is this the first time I’ve been back to that park, situated almost exactly where that photo was taken, but it turns out, that the studio is situated in the crypt underneath the church.
For those of you who’ve never been to rehab, as is also the case with moving in anywhere, there is some form-filling required. A hotel for example, will want to know who you are, when attempting to go to rehab, one possible outcome of which might be getting an idea of who you actually are, those in charge, will want to know what you’ve been putting into the person, you think you are.
But might not be.
I recalled filling in my application to enter that particular establishment all those years ago and in the section, which asks you to indicate what substance you have been terrorising your veins with of late, there was a bit of a multiple-choice section. Have you recently used,
A. Heroin or other opiates.
B. Cocaine or Crack Cocaine.
C. Alcohol.
D. Benzos (Valium etc)
E. Cannabis.
My answer was to add, F. and write, all of the above.
Obviously.
And because as I’m someone with atheist leanings, I thought that recording and album with a bunch of ex-addicts/alcoholics beneath a church in the park where I’d once filled out a form to go to rehab with my standard, All of the Above signature, well, what else could I possibly call the album?
The studio is fantastic, the people who run the studio are also a bit tasty as far as knowing their stuff goes and their mates-rates, day rate is within the budget that I don’t yet have but, after I’ve rounded up the necessary musicians and see what they need to get paid, well I’ll go and find the money from somewhere won’t I?
Yes of course I will, I’m on a mission from a god that I don’t believe in
.
⭐️💥☠️🏴☠️🧿✊🏼
Brilliant words, again. ✊🏴☠️