One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel by Julian Cope Read Free Book Online Page B

head down! And so it was just as we began our slow descent from the heights of the Altopiano Campeda that my drug dependency and my career trajectory entered the discussion via Anna’s simple query.
    ANNA : You were
such
a good singer of Post-Punk times, Rock Section. Why you had to return as a Rave guy re-mixing with the other baggies? I liked your Dayglo Maradona a lot for dancing sure, (
suddenly squeaky
) but no voice?
    What a can opener! What a pest dispenser! What do I say without spilling my life into this sweet lady’s lap? Dayglo Maradona had been my re-birth. All that came before was just a prelude to the Storm. As a six-foot-two seventeen-year-old Jim Morrison wannabe, I’d stalked the streets of Eastwood with compadré Gaz Marshmallow, inching along the blue D. H. Lawrence heritage walks at about nearly m.p.h. Tripping and desperate for Culture, we’d both regularly sneaked into Lawrence’s
Sons
& Lovers
cottage on Walker Street until Gaz one rainy night spied the blue heritage line continuing up Lawrence’s path and became convinced it was leading the cops our way. Eastwood was too small-town for me; Nottingham too, I discovered. I had to get out of that crisp packet before I turned into a chewy. So I auditioned as vocalist for Arthur Tadgell’s epic Post-Punk band the Low Countries, and the first single we did was a hit! I’m not a songwriter, just a singer, but it was massive for that time. Not being from Liverpool and being so young, however, the dynamic in the band sucked shit and I had to be careful not to tread on toes. The singer/guitarist and the female organist were a couple. Until I came along, he wrote the lyrics and she wrote the music. Then after two singles for Arthur Tadgell’s label, the great entrepreneur one day returned to their rehearsal room from a Midlands shopping trip replete with a gift – one Rock Section: here’s your new lead singer, chaps and chappesses. Lump it.
    I was remembering all of these extraordinary details, moments, incisive Visions as though they were happening right
now
, and all in an instant. But I rose with great effort from out of my Cavernous Inner to address this sweet lady and her questioning.
    ROCK : If you liked my voice in the Low Countries, then I’m very happy. But I was still a kid and five years younger than all the others. The lady on the keyboards was very nice to me, but the guy songwriter resented me – they were a couple and he’d been singing their songs before I stepped in. It must have been humiliating. Then, in early 1981, we had a massive instrumental hit in Brazil with one of her tunes called ‘Ewerthon’. After the William Blake character. It went platinum and got bought up for a TV coffee ad! With no vocals onit, I had to mime bass on the video while her old man stood on a beach not even playing anything! That single was so successful that it split the band up. So she toured Brazil without us, and I withered for the rest of the Eighties, festering in a very crap flat and waiting for someone to write me a tune worth singing. And while I waited, I followed Nottingham Forest F.C. from afar and spent alternate Saturday afternoons at Liverpool F.C. right up close. I perfected my stencil-and-spraygun techniques and became a classy Graffiti act. And I used my VHS to watch the magical footwork of Diego Maradona. And I used his cocaine addiction to justify my own drug abuse. I was like Keith Richards claiming that the genius of his work on
Exile On Main Street
justified his heroin addiction.
    ANNA : (
Wide-eyed
) Keith said that? Maybe it’s a bit true?
    ROCK : Maybe. Anyway, watching Maradona over and over again gave me such belief in magic that I followed him like a guru. (
Portentously
) The way of Maradona! And then, just before Italia ’90, came the rumour that FIFA were on Diego’s ass for a blood test. The rumours continued that Diego had been whizzed over to Switzerland for a full-on blood transfusion, knowing he could still fall