He should have known at once that it meant trouble. Dr. John was a small-time hustler who, after dropping out of Bristol University’s Medical School, supplemented his dole by buying grass and hash at street-price in St. Paul’s, Bristol’s pocket ghetto, and selling it for a premium to students. They’d first met because Dr. John rented a rotten little flat above the club where Martin had been working. Dr. John had introduced Martin to the dubious delights of the Coronation Tap, and after Martin had set up his hole-in-the-wall secondhand record shop, Dr. John would stop by once or twice a week to sell LPs he’d found in junkshops or jumble sales, or had taken from students in exchange for twists of seeds and stems. He’d tell Martin to put on some reggae and turn it up, and do what he called the monkey dance. He’d flip through the stock boxes, pulling out albums and saying with mock-amazement, “Can you believe this shit? Can you believe anyone would actually pay money for it?” He’d look over the shoulders of browsing customers and tell them, “I wouldn’t buy that, man. It’ll make your ears bleed. It’ll lower your IQ,” or he’d read out the lyrics of prog rock songs in a plummy voice borrowed from Peter Sellers until Martin lost patience and told him to piss off. Then he’d shuffle towards the door, apologising loudly for upsetting the nice middle-class students, pausing before he stepped out, asking Martin if he’d see him at the Coronation Tap later on.
When he wasn’t hustling dope or secondhand records, Dr. John spent most of his time in the Tap, sinking liver-crippling amounts of psychedelically strong scrumpy cider, bullshitting, and generally taking the piss. Like many people who aren’t comfortable in their own skins, he was restless, took great delight in being obnoxious, and preferred other people’s voices to his own. He would recite entire Monty Python sketches at the drop of a hat, or try to hold conversations in Captain Beefheart lyrics (“The past sure is tense, Martin! A big-eyed bean from Venus told me that. Know what I mean?”). His favourite film was Get Carter, and he could play Jack Carter for a whole evening. “A pint of scrumpy,” he’d say to the landlord, “in a thin glass.” Or he’d walk up to the biggest biker in the pub and tell him, “You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me, it’s a full-time job. So behave yourself.” Amazingly, he was never beaten up, although a burly student in a rugby shirt once threw a full pint of beer in his face after being told that his eyes were like piss-holes in snow.
Dr. John’s scrumpy-fuelled exploits were legendary. The time he’d been arrested for walking down the middle of Whiteladies Road with a traffic cone on his head. The time he’d tried to demonstrate how stuntmen could fall flat on their faces, and had broken one of his front teeth on the pavement. The time he’d climbed into a tree and gone to sleep, waking up a couple of hours later and falling ten feet onto the roof of a car, leaving a dent the exact shape of his body and walking away without a bruise. The time he’d slipped on ice, fallen over, and smashed the bottle of whiskey in his pocket: a shard of glass had penetrated his thigh and damaged a nerve, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. His life was like a cartoon. He was Tom in Tom and Jerry, Wile E. Coyote in Roadrunner. He was one of those people who bang their way from one pratfall to the next in the kind of downhill spiral that seems funny as long as you don’t get too close.
Now he gimped up to Martin, a short, squat guy with a cloud of curly black hair and a wispy beard, wearing a filthy denim jacket, a Black Sabbath T-shirt, and patchwork flares, saying loudly, “Didn’t you used to be in this band?”
“For about five minutes in April.”
Dr. John sneered at the stage. “You’re well out of it, man. Is that a gong I see, right there behind the drummer? It is, isn’t it? Fucking poseurs.”
“If they dumped Simon and found someone who could actually sing and play lead guitar, they might have the kernel of a good sound. Put the bass and drums front and centre, like a reggae set-up.”
“Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Dr. John said. He pulled a clear glass bottle half-filled with a cloudy brown liquid from one pocket of his denim jacket, unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow, belched, and offered it to Martin.
Martin took a cautious sip and immediately spat it out. “Jesus. What is it?”
“Woke up on the floor of this strange flat this morning, man. I must have been invited to a party. I mixed myself a cocktail with what was left.” Dr. John snatched back the bottle, took another pull, and smacked his lips. “You have to admit it has a certain vigour.”
“It tastes like cough medicine. There’s beer backstage, if you want some.”
“Backstage? Were you playing, man? I’m sorry to have missed it.”
“I’m on next. Playing with the headliners.”
“Free beer, man, now I know you’re a star.”
“I’m only a stand-in, but I get all the perks.”
On stage, Simon Cowley, his face screwed up inside a fall of blond hair, was hunched over his guitar and picking his way through an extended solo. When Martin had joined Clouds of Memory, he’d tried to get them interested in the raw new stuff coming out of New York and London—Television and the Ramones, Dr. Feelgood and the 101ers—but Simon had sneered and said it was nothing but three-chord pub rock with no trace of musical artistry whatsoever. ‘Artistry’ was one of Simon’s favourite words. He was the kind of guy who spent Saturday afternoons in guitar shops, pissing off the assistants by playing note-by-note copies of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton solos. He liked to drop quotes from Nietzsche and Hesse into casual conversation. He was a big fan of Eric Von Daniken. He subscribed to the muso’s music paper, Melody Maker, and despised the achingly hip streetwise attitudes of the New Musical Express, which Martin read from cover to cover every week. The tension between them had simmered for a couple of weeks, until, while they were packing up after that gig in Yate, Simon had picked an argument with Martin and sacked him on the spot.
Dr. John took another swig of his cocktail and said, “Sabbath, man, they’re the only ones who can do this kind of thing properly. Did I tell you about the gig at Colston Hall this spring?”
“Only about a hundred times.”
“It wasn’t loud enough, but that was the only thing wrong with it. A thousand kids belting out ‘Paranoid’ at the top of their lungs, it was a religious experience. But this, this is like...” He looked up at the sky for inspiration, failed to find it, and took another drink.
“It’s prog rock crap,” Martin said, “but Dancing Jesus likes it.”
The barechested guy stood in the middle of the thin crowd, arms flung wide, face tilted to the blue sky, quivering all over.
Dr. John’s lifted his upper lip in a sneering smile that showed off his broken tooth. “Where his head’s at, man, he’d groove on anything. I sold him my last three tabs of acid and he dropped them all. Anyone’s in UFO heaven, it’s him.”
“Made much money here?”
“I’m here for the vibe, man.”
“Right.”
“Truly. I’m down to seeds and stems until Tuesday or Wednesday, when this a guy I know is going to deliver some primo hash. Moroccan gold, man, the real no-camel-shit-whatsoever deal. This guy, his brother’s a sailor, gets the stuff straight from the souk. I’ll put you down for an eighth, seeing as you’re a good pal and a professional musician and everything.” Dr. John looked around and sidled closer and said, “Plus, you can help me out a little right now.”
Martin was instantly wary. He said, “I’m on after this lot finishes.”
“I’ve seen these fuckers play before, man. They’re getting into the drum solo, and then there’s the bass solo, that plonker’s endless guitar wankery... You’ve got plenty of time. And it’s a really simple favour.”