The Man Who Lived by Night by David Handler Read Free Book Online Page B

it was incredible. The sound reverberated. It was alive.
    Hoag: Did you and Rory have any sense of your individual talents this early on?
    Scarr: Hmm … good question.
    Hoag: I try.
    Scarr: Rory had a knack. He would toy with a progression of chords, and have it come out sounding like something. He could invent. Me, I was the one ready to stick m’bleedin’ neck out. Comes time for the vocalizing, for showing some personality, a lot of the blokes faded to the back of the stage with their guitars. Not me. I wanted the mike. I wanted people paying attention to me, thinking I was special.
    Hoag: You still say you were doing all of this just to meet girls?
    Scarr: Don’t get deep on me, Hogarth … Of course, I also had poetry inside me, though I didn’t know that yet. There were plenty of unknown R and B songs around for us to play. Didn’t need to write our own for years.
    Hoag: You mentioned there were other guys at school forming groups.
    Scarr: Scruffs and misfits, all of ’em. Jim McCarty and Paul Samwell-Smith were at Hampton. They ended up forming the Yardbirds with Chris Dreja, Keith Relf, and Top Topham. Then Top left and Eric Clapton took his place. I got to know Eric and Keith a couple of years later when we were at Kingston Art College together.
    Hoag: I never knew you went to college.
    Scarr: Not college— art college. Every bleedin’ rocker in the U.K. went to art college, Hogarth, except for Michael Jagger, who went to the London bleedin’ School of Economics. Lennon went to one. Keith Richard, Townshend, Ray Davies of the Kinks, Eric, Pagey, Ron Wood, John Mayall … Know the old saying about how whores turn to religion when they get old? Rockers turn to painting. Art college is why. Art college and acid. (laughs) It was where they stuck us if we were dim and contrary and weren’t in prison yet. I reckon they thought we’d be pacified by playin’ with the finger paints. It was all a goof. Plenty of free time. Plenty of dollies in black stockings going through their artistic phase, if you know what that means. The only one who actually took it serious was Townshend, who to this day thinks he’s not so much a rocker as a bleedin’ concept artist, whatever the fuck that is … Where were we? … Yes, there were a few other blokes at Hampton playing. And we needed one to play bass—Derek. Rory and I both knew him, though not well. He sang in the choir. Was very popular. Good-looking. Nice clothes and manners. The sort that even the loveliest dolly birds wanted to stroke on the head. Christ, the teachers loved him. He had a few bob—dad was a dentist. Underneath, though, Derek was really a scruff, very into the Everly Brothers and Duane Eddy. Got a girl preggers when he was fourteen.
    Hoag: Is that so? What happened?
    Scarr: She had the baby, I believe. Of course, it was all hushed up good and proper when we hit it big. You’ll have to ask Derek about it. I’m sure he’ll recall—it isn’t as if he’s come in through the front door much since then, has he?
    Hoag: He had a guitar?
    Scarr: A Watkins Rapier. When we told him we wanted to have him in the Rough Boys to play bass and sing harmony with me, he said, “No problem.” That’s what he said to just about everything through the years—“No problem.” An agreeable bloke. Any group that stays together has to have one or two like him, with all the madness around … We took his Rapier to Bell Music and had it restrung as a bass. Derek kicked in for a microphone for us to sing into. (laughs) You know how on stage he always came over and sang his harmony into my mike, standing there face to face with me?
    Hoag: One of your trademarks. Sure.
    Scarr: That came about because one mike was all we could afford that day at Bell Music.
    Hoag: How did you three sound?
    Scarr: Awful. Derek didn’t know how to play the bass. But he picked it up soon enough. And he had that sweet, high-pitched voice that sounded good against mine, especially as mine got