I'm looking at Jonny through my Praktica 9-40x21 standard-issue long-range binoculars. Nestled in a tree twenty feet from the floor, I watch a man nestled in an armchair, never more than twenty feet from the fridge.
As I sit, and he sits, and I sit, and he sits, and I sit, and he gets up and checks the washing machine, and I sit some more, and he picks his nose and flicks it across the room, I wonder where my life has gone so wrong that I am reduced to this. I think back to the time when I was young, the girls, the booze, the feeling that your life could take you anywhere. And then it hits me. I've seen this punk before.
Early 1990s. Some dive in the East End. I'm drafted in to play bass with some below-average pseudo-clever rock outfit called the Sultans of Ping. Something about the bassist they'd had lined up - the next big thing in bass playing apparently - being ran over by a clown in a Reliant. That guy never did get his shot.
But I digress. I remember a band on the undercard that night. 'Steerpike' they called themselves I think, after some shoddy Lord of the Rings rip-off. I remember the lead singer was ok, the drummer not too bad (maybe lacking in practice), but the lead guitarist had a miserable time of it. I peer at Jonny through the binoculars and try and think of him as he was then...dyed green hair...no belly...retro Filas and Adidas tracksuit...and yes, it's him alright.
Him of the snapped string.
Him of the missed intro.
Him of the farcical attempt at a guitar solo, which I seem to remember sounded a lot like the opening sequence of 'Minder'.
Maybe that experience - being booed-off with no more than a minute of the opening song played - maybe that was what turned him against society. Maybe he saw then that he would never experience fame, or success, or even the simple adulation of pubescant schoolgirls, and maybe right then was when he decided to side with the looneys, the fanatics, the classical-music lovers.
It all makes sense now.
Steerpike.
