Track 13: Look At Me Now

“What’s it like being famous?”

Ava the Avalanche asked me that on her doorstep last time I was outside Jimmy’s. Like I say, it’s not something I hear that often.

Obviously, I’ve become less and less tip of the tongue over the years, but I am still back of the brain. My face is familiar, my name rings a bell. People smile on the street without quite knowing why. Maybe they think they owe me.

More likely they reckon I owe them.

I heard once about this stand-up from back in the day. Big name, national treasure, one of the old school. King of the Christmas specials if you want to narrow him down, but I’m saying no more.

Anyhow, this man – this fella who twenty million of us would watch over our brandy snaps and trifles – could walk down his local High Street every lunchtime Monday to Saturday without once being asked to pose or have a napkin and chewed-up biro thrust under his chin.

How’s that?

Simple.

He made out he was talking to himself.

People don’t mind you being mad, not if you’re a national treasure. As long as they get to do the smile.

That traffic only moves in the one direction, mind. I can’t smile at you. Not at first. Oh, no.

I’m famous.

I’m different.

#

The Big Man would love to have been different.

God, he could play. Bass, of course. It’s more than just his shovel hands I inherited. A natural, he could pluck at a tea-chest or a Hofner and make them both sing equally as sweet. It was the long fingers – not delicate but dextrous. He had a voice on him, too. Before making his name swinging a four string and box-stepping for a variety of shiny-suited combos, The Big Man made a fair whack as a back-room crooner in the Mick bars on Scotty Road.

Of course, when the mop-top movement came, he was there with his Cuban heels and collarless jacket.

Him and the rest of Liverpool.

The You-Know-Whats had just hit big, so anyone on Merseyside with a full mop of hair and a guitar was being offered a contract. The Big Man was with The Mynahs at the time. Your typical four-piece, they’d got themselves signed to Northwest Artists Management and a Mr Ten Per Cent by the name of Julius Julius.

I kid you not.

Double-J had got the band a try-out in London with one of the producers who’d rejected the You-Knows and were now playing catch-up.

One of the many, many producers.

The Big Man’s due down on the milk train early of a Tuesday but on Monday night there’s a knock at the door. Double-J’s got some bad news.

The Mynahs have been talking. Well they do that, don’t they?

These three little birds had been getting all nervy about The Big Man’s domestic arrangements. It wasn’t that he was wed – a husband you could just about sell. There’s always the chance of a marriage ending. No, it was the fact he was married with a kid. Our Bridie was about two at the time.

You can’t divorce a nipper.

So it turns out the Big Man was different, just not in a way that worked for The Mynahs.

Given every story’s got to have an ending, why not give The Big Man one? One where he turns his back on the industry and finds inner peace as the most musical brickie in Liverpool.

One where he glides by without resenting his wife and his daughter, playing obscure clubs for love not money on the weekends, soberly raising his family and never looking back.

One where a maverick record executive realises the depth of his talent and signs The Big Man to the jazz label he deserves.

Why not, eh? Why not?

If he couldn’t live the dream, why not dream him a life? A life where he’s happy.

A life where he stays.

#

FYI, The Mynahs did get signed and released three singles. Not one made it into the Top Forty. A year later, they were dropped by the label.

Good.

#

“What’s it like being famous?”

Oh, to have been asked that question when we were all piled up in the Brixton squat. We made out like it was our constant query while posing in The Bunker.

But we knew. We knew.

The life we fancied was the life that would be ours. We knew it that day Kreuzberg Wiedersehen got pressed. The five of us out at a Middlesex plant, like a school party being shown how proper grown-ups work.

Or one of those programmes where a bunch of soft lads get to see Blackpool Rock being made. At the end, the presenters would hand the kids over a gift. Stickers or badges. Or rock.

We wound up with the first five singles off the line, each with an individual number carved into the run-out groove. It’s easy to forget Kreuzberg was a double A-side with Demolition on the reverse. But even then we knew which track was the hit.

Oh yes, we knew.

We knew.

We were the most special kids in the world that day. What we didn’t know was it was just a day. There wouldn’t be many others like it.

If you want the feeling of fame to last, though, there is an industry out there to help you. Reality shows, supermarket magazines, confessionals, endorsements, Christmas lights. The circus doesn’t ever have to leave town, though the tent may require constant repatching. Stay close enough to the ring and you’ll never need to queue for popcorn again.

And who doesn’t like popcorn?

#

One thing being famous doesn’t do is pay the rent.