Jeff Beck played lead guitar with Pat Lyons and the Second Thoughts on Thursdays. I don’t know what ever happened to Pat Lyons. Obviously he never paid enough dues. Because he never became Jeff Beck. I heard that he became a butcher, as did Reg Presley from the Troggs, before he gained a temporary reprieve when some nineties band took one of his songs to the top of the charts again and he got some royalties in. Spent it researching crop circles, I understand.
But Jeff Beck did become Jeff Beck and he played some blinding guitar that Thursday night at the Blue Triangle Club.
Somewhere, amongst my personal effects, exists my Blue Triangle Club member’s card. It’s blue and it’s got my name on and it’s triangular in shape. My membership number was 666, which meant a lot to me at the time.
“Got any pills?” asked the bouncer, barring our way into the club. “I’ll have to search you.” The bouncers were so very big in those days. And they were bouncers then, not door supervisors. Harry was huge.
“Turn it in, Harry,” I said. “We don’t have any pills.”
“Would you like to buy some, then?” asked Harry.
“Now you’re talking,” said Dave. “Got any purple hearts?”
“Shilling each,” said Harry.
“I’ll take a quid’s worth,” said Dave.
I sighed a little for my bestest friend. “You’re on probation,” I said. “You’ll be in trouble if you’re caught popping purple hearts.”
“Are you going to grass me up?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then, a quid’s worth for my friend too.”
“Nice,” I said, trying to look like I meant it.
In truth I’d never taken any drugs. When people offered them to me, I accepted gratefully and pretended to pop them into my mouth. But really I pocketed them, took them home, sorted them out, packaged them up and generously handed them around when the time was right. So my friends thought I was pretty “right on”. But in truth I was afraid of drugs.
I’ve never cared for being out of control – which is to say, not being in control of myself. I like what thinking I do to be of my own volition. I like to be the master of my own self. I took the quid’s worth of purple hearts and appeared to toss them down my throat.
Dave made short work of his.
We paid our entrance fees, had our hands stamped with ultraviolet paint for our pass-outs and entered the Blue Triangle.
The joint was not exactly a-jumping. A few embarrassed-looking girls in droopy dresses half-heartedly slopped about the dance floor, circumnavigating their handbags. A few young blokes in full mod rigout lounged at the bar, too young to get served, too cool to admit that they couldn’t.
Dave made for the bar, ordered drinks, was turned away and returned without them.
“In prison,” he said, “we drank piss and got right out of our faces.”
“What?” said I. “You drank your own piss?”
“Certainly not,” said Dave. “Do I look like a pervert?”
I shook my head, for in truth Dave didn’t.
“We drank the piss of Goldstein the shaman.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Goldstein the shaman grew Peyote cactus in his cell. If you eat Peyote buttons the drug comes out in your piss stronger than when it went in. It’s something to do with the acids in the human digestive system.”
“That can’t be true,” I said.
“It is,” said Dave.[9] “I wonder if it works with lager.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“No,” said Dave. “You’re probably right. So, shall we chat up some girls? What do you think?”
I cast an eye over the womenfolk. There was a particularly pretty blonde girl chatting with a big fat friend.
“There’s a couple over there,” I said. “But I don’t like the look of your one much.”
“They all look the same in the dark,” said Dave, wise as ever for his years. “I think these purple hearts are kicking in. How do my pupils look?”
I stared into his eyes. “Well,” I said, “that’s interesting.”
“Have they dilated?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But it would appear that both of your pupils are now located in your right eye.”
“No?” Dave covered his left eye with his hand. “Damn me,” he said, “you’re right.”
“This might affect your chances of chatting up that big fat girl.”
“No probs,” said Dave, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a pair of sunglasses. “I was going to put these on anyway. They make me look like Roy Orbison.”
“Who’s Roy Orbison?”
“He’s the lead singer with a band in Acton. Jeff Beck plays bass for them on Tuesdays.” Dave put on his sunglasses. “How do I look?” he asked.
“A bit of a nelly. Those are women’s sunglasses. Does Roy Orbison wear women’s sunglasses?”
“I don’t know,” said Dave. “I’ve never seen him.”
Drinkless, feckless, young, dumb and full of commercial enterprise, Dave and I set out to pull.
Dave, the uncrowned king of the chat-up line, marched straight over to the fat girl and introduced himself. “Black’s the name,” said Dave. “Count Otto Black, swordsman and adventurer, and you, I believe, I have seen in the movies.”
“Me?” said the fat girl. “Me in the movies?”
“Come on,” said Dave. “Don’t be shy. I’ve seen you in a film, haven’t I?”
“No,” said the fat girl. “You haven’t.”
“Oh,” said Dave. “I could have sworn you were Robert Mitchum.”[10]
The fat girl tittered foolishly, which meant that Dave was “in there”. The blonde girl, however, maintained a stony silence.
“Don’t mind him,” I said to her. “He’s stoned out of his face. We both are. We’re wild ones. Live fast, die young, that’s us.”
“Then don’t let me keep you,” said the blonde girl. “Feel free to die whenever you want.”
“My name’s Gary,” I said. “What’s yours?”
“Mine’s a gin and tonic”
“Are you a Red Indian, then?”
“What?” said the blonde girl.
“Well, when they christen Red Indian babies, they baptize them in the river, hold them up and then name them after the first thing the mother sees. Like Standing Bear, or Sitting Bull, or Passing Cloud, or Two Dogs Sexing.”
“What are you blathering about?”
“You said your name was A Gin and Tonic. Perhaps your mum didn’t live near a river, so you were christened in a cocktail bar. That would explain it.”
“Fugg off!” said the blonde girl, upon whom the subtle nuances of my sophisticated humour were obviously lost.
“I suppose sex would be out of the question, then?” I said.
“Fugg off or I’ll call the bouncer.”
“Harry’s a friend of mine,” I said.
“Harry’s my brother,” said the blonde girl.
“Look,” I said, because I was rarely put off. Knowing, as most teenage boys have always known, that nine times out of ten persistence will eventually wear down a teenage girl. “I think we’ve got off on the wrong foot here.”
“Take both your feet and walk.”
Having a secret weapon in my bird-pulling arsenal, I chose now to employ it. “I love your perfume,” I said.
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s Fragrant Night, by Fabergé, isn’t it?”
“It might be.”
“And your lipstick. I love that too. That’s Rose Carmethine, by Yardley.”
“It might be.”
“And your frock is a Mary Quant. And your shoes …”
“You know an awful lot about women’s fashion.”
I leaned close to the blonde girl’s left ear and whispered the words: “I’m a homosexual.” Then stepped back to let them take effect.
The blonde girl stared me full in the eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I, err … do you really like my frock?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “The colour really flatters your complexion. You have beautiful skin, if I might say so. Flawless.”
10
Later in life Dave revised this line to: 'I could have sworn you were Jabba the Hut.' But I always preferred the original.