But what about Brentstock, I hear you ask.
Well, what about Brentstock indeed.
11
If music be the food of love, then I don’t know what a cigar is.
‘I’m thinking of giving something back.’
So said the Doveston.
We sat outside the Flying Swan. It was a warm late spring evening and I still felt utterly miserable. Mind you, with summer on the way, I was beginning to feel a bit more loving.
The sun was just going down behind the gasometer, its final rays glinting upon our pints of Large, and glittering in our eyes of baby-blue.
‘Giving something back?’ I said.
‘Giving something back.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve taken, but I’ll have it back if you’re giving it.’
‘Not to you,’ the Doveston said. ‘To the borough, as a whole.’
‘I quite like the borough,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you should call it a hole.’
The Doveston lightly cuffed me in the ear. ‘Whole,’ he said, ‘with a W.’
I picked myself up from the ground. ‘I fear you have lost me on this one,’ I said.
‘I’ve had a good year so far.’ The Doveston finished his pint and gazed into its empty bottom. ‘My harvest is in early. Soon the tobacco will be ready for packing and soon after that, cigars and cigarettes and snuff, bearing the distinctive Doveston logo, will be rolling off the production lines. Also, I am worshipped as a God, which is no small thing in itself And I’ve had a bit of luck in one or two other directions.’ He took his yo-yo from his pocket and buffed it on his sleeve.
‘So you’re thinking of giving something back?’
‘To the borough, yes.
‘And what did you have in mind? Not something revolutionary, like paying your workers a living wage?’
‘Beware the fist that falleth on your ear. My workers have gone their way, to toil in the Grad fields of Chiswick. I was thinking that I’d like to organize some kind of celebration.’
‘A party?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well not in my house, mate!’
‘Something bigger than that.’
‘Well, you can’t hire the scout hut again. They know it was you who blew off the roof.’
‘Aaah-choo!’ said the Doveston. ‘By the way, did you ever buy yourself another dog?’
‘No, I didn’t and I’ll thank you not to mention it again.’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘But you didn’t mean it.’
‘Meaning it is not the point. It’s saying it that matters.’
I finished up my pint. ‘You can buy me another of these,’ I said. ‘And I’ve said that, so it matters.’
‘Do I look like I’m made of money?’
‘Actually you do. And if you really are intending to give something back to the borough, you might as well start right away.’
The Doveston got us in two more pints. ‘Listen,’ he said, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘Tell me what you hear.’
I listened. ‘Is it God already praising you for your generosity?’
‘No. It’s the jukebox.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘The jukebox that has only three records on it, these three being privately produced pressings made by the landlord’s son and his band.’
‘Precisely.’
I sipped at my beer.
‘Aren’t you going to make some fatuous remark?’
I shook my head, spilling beer down my front.
‘That will do for me,’ said the Doveston. ‘What would you say if I told you that I was going to put on a rock festival?’
‘Firstly I would ask you who was going to play at it. Then, once you’d told me, and if I was keen to see whoever it was, I would ask you how much the tickets were. And then, once you’d told me that, I would fall back in horror and say something like, “You must be frigging joking, mate!” That’s what I’d say.’
‘I was thinking of organizing a free festival.’
‘You must be frigging joking, mate!’
‘I’m serious. We could hold it on the plantation. We could get a thousand people on there easily — two thousand, at a push.’
‘Tramping all over your crops?’
‘The crops are up. The land is lying fallow. This would be a golden opportunity to earn a little extra from it.’
‘I thought I heard you say it was going to be a free festival.’
‘It would be free to get in. But people have to eat, don’t they? And buy their cigarettes and beer. We would set up stalls to cater to their every need.’
‘Exactly who is this we you keep talking about?’
‘Well, naturally you will want to get involved. After all, you are my biographer and amanuensis, are you not?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I keep a careful record of everything you get up to.’
‘Then there is nothing more to be said. I’ll leave all the booking of the bands with you. Get somebody big, the Beatles, or the Rolling Stones, or someone.
I looked at the Doveston. And the Doveston looked at me.
‘Shall I see if I can get the landlord’s son?’ I asked.
Actually things went a great deal better regarding the booking of bands than I might reasonably have expected. As the summer came on, bands who would normally have charged a royal ransom for their services began to come over all lovey-dovey and start playing gigs for free.
We now had a telephone in our house and one morning in July, I replaced the receiver after taking a long—distance call from foreign parts.
‘Captain Beefheart’s coming,’ I told my mum.
‘Captain who?’ she replied.
‘Beefheart,’ said my father. ‘Otherwise known as Don Van Vliet, an avant-garde musician with a four-octave vocal range, whose seminal album Trout Mask Replica is still hailed today as being one of the most original pieces of work ever produced in the rock canon.
I took my dad quietly aside. ‘Just one or two small details,’ I said. ‘Firstly Trout Mask is a double album. And secondly it doesn’t come out until 1969. I think these things probably matter.’
My father nodded thoughtfully. ‘Captain who?’ he said.
Actually the good captain was unable to make it, but the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Big Brother and the Holding Company were still up for the gig.
‘Mark well my words, my friend,’ said the Doveston, when I told him, ‘Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin will both be dead from drugs in a few years from now.’
I shook my head. ‘You might have been right about the Mexican quarter,’ I said, ‘but that is quite absurd.’
I must confess that I was rather miffed when, a month before the festival, both Jimi and Janis had to pull out for unspecified reasons. I would no doubt have sunk into a state of utter misery, had I not been feeling so full of love.
‘About your boy and his band,’ I said to the landlord of the Flying Swan.
With just three weeks to go, the Doveston called a special meeting of the festival committee at his flat. I had been to the Doveston’s flat many times before. In fact I had helped him move in, being given responsibility for many of the heavier pieces of furniture. It was a pretty fab flat and I offer a description of it now to set the scene for what was to become one of those ‘moments in history’.
The Doveston’s flat occupied the entire top floor of Hawtrey House, one of the six new flat-blocks that had been built on the site of the old ethnic quarters. Each of these flat-blocks had been named after some titan of the British silver screen. There was Hawtrey, James, Windsor, Williams, Sims and McMurdo. McMurdo was a bit of a mystery and I couldn’t think of any famous actor of that name. The only McMurdo I knew was Councillor McMurdo, head of the town-planning committee.