Block Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
# 17 The Rolling Stones

Stories that didn’t make it into the published version of Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down continued…

London, May 1982
I wake up like Anne Frank. In a panic, someone hammering at the front door. Who is it? Some black-shirted bully in jackboots? No. Worse than that, it’s legendary Melody Maker lensman Tom Sheehan, clearly not in one of his better moods. He’s standing there when I open the door, positively fuming. Steam coming out of his ears, fire shooting out of his ass. That kind of thing. Turns out he’s been banging on the door for about 15 minutes, a taxi waiting in the street behind him, its meter ticking, the driver reading a paper and contemplating early retirement from the fare he’s cheerfully running up.
“Jump to it, Welsh, for @#$%&’s sake,” Sheehan is telling me now. I stare at him in stunned amazement. What’s he doing here this early on a Saturday morning, especially after the night I’ve had, which seems to have only recently ended. To tell you the truth, when Sheehan’s infernal battering startles me from dreamless unconsciousness, I wake up wondering who I am, where I am and what calamitous behaviour may have brought me to this current bewilderment. It takes me longer than it probably should to realise I’m in my own bed. Anyway, I’m lying there, the bedroom rotating, pitching and generally moving in ways that makes me bilious when it strikes me that the percussive hurricane of slaps, kicks and knuckle-bruising wallops that have stirred me from my stupor means there’s someone at the door demanding my attention.
At which point, trying to spring gazelle-like from under the duvet, I merely fall out of bed, onto the floor, where I am no more than a crumpled heap. I get somewhat unsteadily to what I presume are my feet, giddy, dehydrated. About then, I become painfully aware of the state I’m in. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, is totally @#$%&.
And now, on top of this self-inflicted misery, here’s @#$%& Sheehan to contend with. The furious lensman strides into the basement flat, starts marching about the place like Patton organising his troops for the audacious counterthrust that will relieve besieged Bastogne and win the Battle Of The Bulge. He’s barking orders, telling me we have – what? – like, five minutes, before we have to roll, get on the road to Wembley. Why? Because we are supposed to be covering The Rolling Stones at the Stadium. It comes back to me now. The rash moment when I volunteered us for the gig, Sheehan unhappy from the start and telling me I’d live to regret such impetuousness. Which is what I’m doing right now, slumped and incoherent in a chair, chopping out a couple of lines. It’s the only thing that’s going to get me moving this morning. I offer Tom a toot. But he’s surprisingly abstemious.
“Not my game, Jones Boy,” he says. “Work comes first, and all that,” he adds reprovingly, throwing my trousers at me. “Get those on and let’s go,” he says. And then we’re off.
Not much later, we’re stuck in traffic in north London, somewhere near Kilburn, I think, heading towards Wembley, but not at any great speed. Sheehan’s mood is by now murderous.
“Welsh,” he says, tugging at the zip of his leather bomber jacket, always a sign that he’s perilously close to self-combustion. “This is a total @#$%& nightmare.”
Poor old Tom. He’s been buggered round all week by the Stones office, who’ve seemed curiously reluctant to hand over his photo pass for today’s show. He is further aggrieved when he finds out they’ve sent his pas to the NME. “I bet David @#$%& Bailey doesn’t have to put up with this @#$%& nonsense,” he simmers on hearing this.
The great man’s also sulking because he’s spent most of the last week in Scotland, covering the first dates of the Stones tour. He hasn’t enjoyed himself at all, as he’s now telling a girl from one of the Fleet Street papers who we bump into at the Crest Hotel in Wembley where Tom finally gets his photo pass.
“We’re talking absolute @#$%& herberts, love” Tom says of the Stones, laying it on with a trowel here. “Worst @#$%& band in the world. The old prancing prat whips his shirt off, everybody starts screaming their bloody heads off, the songs all sound the same. And they go on for @#$%& hours.”
The girl from Fleet Street thinks this afternoon’s line-up is a tad curious. A mix of Black Uhuru’s reggae, The J Geils Band’s blathering rock and the Stone’s vintage shtick. Sheehan manfully attempts to explain the thinking, as he sees it, behind the bill.
“See, they drag in the old reggae chaps for a bit of credibility because the Stones think it’s still 1975 and they get someone like J Geils because they’ve just had a hit, but they’re not really very good and they won’t show the Stones up. Simple, really.”
It’s time for us to quit the hotel for the Stadium, where things will shortly kick off.
“If there isn’t a bar in there somewhere,” Sheehan says menacingly as we climb towards the fabled Twin Towers, “someone’s going to get a nervous @#$%& coshing.”
We make our way into the stadium.
“I think we’re talking windswept dreadlocks out there,” Sheehan says as we take our seats in the Royal Enclosure, the noise Black Uhuru are making on stage reaching us on what’s become quite a stiff breeze. The J Geils Band are up next. Sheehan thinks they are noisy, American and rubbish.
“It’s really good to be back in London Town,” vocalist Peter Wolf is telling the crowd. “I’d really, really like to thank The Rolling Stones for inviting us here…”
“What a crawling @#$%& toady,” Sheehan says, out of his seat and heading for the Royal Enclosure restaurant. Sheehan unloads his camera bags and takes a seat at a table from which it looks like he will not easily be budged.
“Get ‘em in, Welsh,” he tells me.
I walk cheerfully to the bar.
“Four pints of lager, a couple of tequilas and a large brandy while I’m waiting, please.”
What the barman then tells me sends a chill through my very soul.
“Bar’s closed,” he says.
“Bar’s what?” I ask, astonished. Surely I‘ve misheard him.
“Closed.”
“Closed?”
“That’s why I said.”
I’m shocked, no other word for it.
“Closed,” I say again. “In what way exactly?”
“Closed,” the barman says. “As in not open.”
“There’s got to be a mistake,” Sheehan says when I break the appalling news to him. He’s on his feet now, heading for the bar, a little juggernaut. He raps on the bar when he gets there.
“Mein host,” Sheehan calls to the barman. He’s trying to sound jovial, carefree. But there’s a tightening in his voice he can’t quite disguise. It’s the sound of rising panic, unfettered alarm.
The barman saunters over. Sheehan tries to be tactful, something he’s not well practiced at being.
“Look,” he says. “There’s a couple of living legends ‘ere, and apparently, we can’t get a drink. What’s the @#$%& story, squire?”
“We’re closed,” the barman tells him. “That’s the @#$%& story and this is the @#$%& end of it.”
He brings down the shutters on the bar with a terrifying clang, no arguing with them.
“This is the worst day of my life,” Tom says, utterly disconsolate, bereft, abandoned. “Fact.”
We sit for a while in silence, Sheehan giving me the evil eye and probably wishing upon me eternal damnation, an afterlife of flames, torture and associated unpleasantness.
The lensman’s mood is about to plummet further when there’s a bit of a kerfuffle at the doors to the Royal enclosure. In sweeps Sting, a Sun King with an adoring entourage. A small army of attendants now swarms around Sting and his party. They’re escorted to a large table. Someone whips out a crisp white tablecloth, spreads it on the table. And what’s this? Looks like a couple of ice buckets. Looks also like bottles of champagne in the ice buckets. Sheehan’s eyes light up.
“We’re not dead yet, Welsh,” he says. “Give your old mate a wave.”
Sting’s still talking to me in those days, so I do as I’m told. I give Sting a wave.
To my surprise, Sting waves back. More than this, he gets up from his table, walks over to where I’m sitting with Sheehan. He’s wearing a jacket and pants made of leather that hangs on him like silk.
“How are you?” he asks me.
“He’s thirsty,” Sheehan says, before I have a chance to answer.
Sting looks confused.
“They’ve closed the bar,” Sheehan explains, “and we can’t get a drink,”
There’s an uncomfortable lull in the conversation that Tom now fills.
“See you’ve got some champagne, though,” he says to Sting, who’s still a bit flustered.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, we do.”
Sheehan just stares at him. Sting finally gets Tom’s drift.
“I’d…I’d send some over,” he says. “But you don’t appear to have any glasses.”
He walks off, back to his table.
“GLASSES?” Sheehan fairly shrieks at Sting’s retreating back. “Bugger the @#$%& glasses. Just send over a @#$%& BOTTLE. We’ll drink out of that. @#$%& glasses, my @#$%& arse.”
Which is about when we have to go back into the stadium to see the Stones.
What are they like?
Absolutely @#$%& blinding. Exactly as billed on the ticket. The greatest rock’n’roll group in the world.

With that lede, I can see why it didn't get published.

That is ... not good.

Yeah it's a lot of over-written uninteresting tripe...

And that “Four pints of lager, a couple of tequilas and a large brandy while I’m waiting, please.”. Does the man try to outdo Keith because he covers a Stones gig?
Stupid, stupid, stupid...

"I wake up like Anne Frank.
In a panic, someone hammering at the front door."

Whoever this guy is...he is an idiot.

Uncut's founder and former editor, that's a very poor version of his back-page Stop me if you've heard this before' rock war stories schtick, which can be entertaining at their best!

Too bad they just didn't overdose on the blow and end up turning blue on the bathroom floor.

It just sounds too much like a Lester Bangs outtake. I used to read his "reviews" and think, just tell us how the bleeding RECORD sounds, not how wasted you were when you heard it!

jb



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-18 04:03 by jbwelda.

Quote
TooTough
"I wake up like Anne Frank.
In a panic, someone hammering at the front door."

Whoever this guy is...he is an idiot.

Agree!

Quote
jbwelda
Too bad they just didn't overdose on the blow and end up turning blue on the bathroom floor.

It just sounds too much like a Lester Bangs outtake. I used to read his "reviews" and think, just tell us how the bleeding RECORD sounds, not how wasted you were when you heard it!

jb

This was more in the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson, wasn't it - only poorer.

Yup, lost me at the Anne Frank reference.

This is very typical of rock journalism of the time when they (the journos) thought readers were actually interested in them rather than the (classic) band they were meant to be reviewing.

Quote
johnnythunders

London, May 1982

we have to roll, get on the road to Wembley. Why? Because we are supposed to be covering The Rolling Stones at the Stadium.

Nobody noticed the anomaly? Wembley stadium + May 82? You're even worse as fans as this guy is at journalism!
(just kidding!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-04-18 21:50 by dcba.

Quote
dcba

Quote
johnnythunders

London, May 1982

we have to roll, get on the road to Wembley. Why? Because we are supposed to be covering The Rolling Stones at the Stadium.

Nobody noticed the anomaly? Wembley stadium + May 82? You're even worse as fans as this guy is at journalism!
(just kidding!)

No wonder the bar was closed...

Dandy when I read this article for the 1st time I, for a minute, thought the guy had a ticket for the May 31 "100 Club" London club-show!

Is this the reason that the magazine was dubbed ‘U C*nt’ in the offices of the rest of the British press?

What a load of sef-obsessed shyte.
Poor journo got free tickets in the Royal box and all he can do is bitch because the bar is closed. Of course, our tickets explicitly stated no bottles, no cans.
Meanwhile the rest of us were struggling just to get to the gig with our overpriced tickets - there was a tube strike going on - Thatcher's Britain at its finest.