It's face-crunchingly cringeworthy how far some folk go to appear rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll, after all, is an almighty religion, inspiring even the most timid of beasts to beat their chests and act silly after one too many lager shandies. While the messiahs of rock all seem to be cocksure, bonkers bagheads like Jim Morrison, Keith Richards, or Sid Vicious, many of its followers nowadays are merely tight-jeaned, boring bedroom-dwellers. The nearest most of them get to trippy, dippy self-destruction is accidentally tripping over their laptop cable on the way to the lav, or forgetting to save their latest Garbageband™ masterpiss.
If one of these sumptuous masterpisses happens to propel said bedroom-dweller on to the stage or into the spotlight, many of them feel the need to overcompensate for the years of reclusive knob-twiddling: they force themselves into sinking one or two more lager shandies than they're used to when they're out on the lash, desperately searching for a fight or a fling that might fling them trilby-first into the gossip columns or – better still – the hall of fame of rock'n'roll recklessness.
I must own up to being a victim of this daft behaviour myself now and then, emerging from my one-bedroom cave in Middlesbrough for a bevvy with square eyes, after staring at sheets of paper for days on end. While I enjoy guzzling pills and pilsner with the best of them, I also enjoy drinking cups of tea and not talking for three days on the bounce. It's part of the fun of being a self-made recluse/obsessive-compulsive novelist.
Being from the north and being interested in rock'nroll can be a lethal combination. When I had my first novel accepted to be published, I was aware there was going to be a certain amount of time spent onstage or in the spotlight, and under no circumstances should anyone stand on a stage stone-cold sober. To limber myself for a performance (a reading, Q&A, or sitting in a lonely bookshop scribbling my own name), I provide myself with the following rider: at least five hours drinking time beforehand; an outlandish, psychedelic headdress (at the moment it's a multicoloured tower block); a Greggs pasty or two, for nourishment; and, ideally, a bit of friendly company.
Most readings I've been to in the past are hushed, plush affairs, with nervy intellectuals numbing your bum – and sometimes they don't even have a bar. On the whole, trying to invoke the spirits of a legless literary past (say, Kerouac, Burroughs, Baudelaire) makes my performances a hell of a lot more entertaining for myself (and hopefully for the audience), although sometimes they're just hell. Sometimes I get myself in a right pickle.
The other weekend, at the wondrous Crossing Border festival in the Netherlands (a festival that marries music and literature, like a raucous, art-rock piss-up in a library), there was quite a bit of put-on rock posturing on display. Me and Kevin Cummins (the All-Seeing Eye of Manchester and beyond) got in a bit of a scuffle with this band of namby-pamby Bambis called the Antlers, after inadvertently bamboozling some of their booze backstage. Two of them pounced on dear old Kevin, then proceeded to fanny out after a swift right hook from Cummins and some pincer-like neck grabbing and squawking from stickman Milward.
I'm the greatest passive-aggressive fighter in the business, employing Bruce Lee's art of "fighting without fighting" with lots of shirt-tugging and idle hand gestures and name-calling. While the Antlers laughably threatened to "smash some bottles and shit", instead they went off to find the festival organisers and tell on us. Surely the more rock'n'roll option was to crack open their untouched bottle of vodka, and try to have a buzz with one of the world's greatest rock photographers, not to mention one of the Boro's skinniest novelists.
"It was all just handbags," proclaimed Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember, grinning away, Cannabis Cup-winning joint stuck betwixt his fingers.
It seems as good a time as any to namedrop Sonic, since I was in Holland with the tantalising task of interviewing the Spacemen 3/Spectrum shaman on stage. That's why we were backstage – not to pilfer alcohol under the cover of fluorescent dressing-room striplights – but to wait for Pete and his girlfriend to turn up, in a room that happened to have THE ANTLERS and JULI ZEH & SLUT emblazoned on the outside.
It's strange meeting your heroes, let alone limbering yourself up to interview them onstage two nights on the go. In a way, I felt nervous speaking to Pete between the events, for fear of running out of things to gabble about in front of the audience. Due to my self-made reclusive nature, I do have a habit of being a mumbling paranoiac at times. While drink is the perfect tool to drag someone out of their shell, it does have a habit of turning my skull into a bottomless black hole, and transforming my tongue into a slippery, incoherent mess. A lot like an actual oyster.
It was difficult interviewing Sonic – not so much because he was stoned, and I was starstruck – but because booze, by its very nature, helps you forget things. In general, I don't mind speaking in public but, after converting all your continental munten tokens into booze, your mind can turn from an uninhibited wonderland to an uninhabitable wilderness.
It's not very rock'n'roll, not being able to talk. Then again, it's not very rock and roll, beating your chest and acting silly. Drink can be a safety net for the socially awkward, or it can be a transcendent trampoline to the troposphere. Ultimately, it's the amnesiac properties of ethanol that make put-on rock posturing pointless – after all, what's the use in trying to impress your mates with desperate recklessness when no one's going to remember it in the morning? If I really had balls, I'd start going onstage stone-cold sober, but then I'd probably be even more timid and tongue-tied and, worst of all, I'd remember all about it in the morning.
Rock'n'roll play acting: it's enough to make you want to smash some bottles and shit.
