Adventures of a Waterboy by Mike Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

a few years previously (which we’d heard on bootlegs), but it didn’t matter; we were seeing Dylan!
    After the show we decided to try our usual meet-the-band tactics, though we knew Bob’s security arrangements would be a little different from those at Edinburgh punk gigs. We waited outside Earls Court as close to the artists’ entrance as security would allow. Soon a great wheezing steel gateway opened and a single-decker bus rolled out. Its inside was lit and we could see members of the band, their heads framed in the windows. And there was Bob! He had shades on, looked just like one of his mid-sixties album covers, and was looking round quizzically. We waved to him and he waved back. Z wrote ‘Good luck Bob’ on his concert programme and held it up. Bob waved again, with a nod of thanks. The bus wheeled past us and out onto the streets of west London. We stood dazed, recovering from the shock of having communicated, even wordlessly and through glass, with Bob Dylan. Then we looked at the disappearing bus and noticed it was moving slowly; the streets were jammed with all the cars leaving the concert. The same thought struck us simultaneously – we could follow the bus on foot and see Bob in his hotel!
    This unlikely plan worked. The bus proceeded, mostly, at such a snail-like pace that we were able to always keep it in sight. Forty minutes later, out of breath and with very sore legs, we saw it come to a definitive halt in the semi-distance outside a massive brightly lit building at the far end of Kensington High Street. A few minutes later we caught up and discovered this was the Royal Garden Hotel, a swanky joint on the corner of Hyde Park. And there was the bus outside, now empty. We ascended the steps to the hotel doors, suddenly conscious of our ragamuffin appearance (both in punk uniform of motorcycle jackets and ripped jeans), wondering whether we’d be allowed in.
    We found ourselves in a cathedral foyer of glass and marble. Looking up and down its length we saw at the open doors of the hotel bar and headed towards it, feet sinking into the plush carpet. We peered in: the bar was full of wealthy-looking people enjoying shorts and cocktails at low-lit tables, jazzy music playing over a hubbub of conversation. Our hungry eyes scanned this tableau and swiftly found their quarry. Bob was sitting, hunched in conversation, with a few people at the far end of the room. As if drawn by a magnet our feet started moving towards him. We drew closer and closer. We were going to meet and shake hands with him!
    Two thirds of the way across the room, a couple of dark shapes sprang from either side of us, barring our way. One of them, a heavily built bearded gentleman in a black bomber jacket, said to us with a kind of pleading sadness in his voice: ‘Bob’s done his job. He’s given everything. Let him relax now and have his peace.’ Z and I, though sympathetic to this argument, still thought Bob might have just enough time and energy left to say a short hello to us, but there was no dissuading these guys. The game was up. As they escorted us out of the bar I asked the bearded man if he was one of Bob’s roadies, but he just shook his head sadly and ushered us out of the bar. In the corridor two silent security guards took over and deposited us back on the pavement where we belonged. A few years later I saw the burly gentleman on TV. He was Harvey Goldsmith, the biggest rock promoter in Britain – and I’d asked him if he was a roadie!
    A week before the Dylan shows I’d left university, dropping out after a first year spent attending almost zero lectures and countless punk gigs. And the following autumn, still in Edinburgh, I started my first serious band, Another Pretty Face, which comprised myself and three pals, all veterans of my teenage bands in Ayr: John Caldwell (talented, dour, handsome guitarist, and my co-writer in the band), Jim Geddes (still a scarf-toting Stones fan) and Crigg (still a wiggy mod