How to Build a Girl
‘You’ve already used this line on me,’ I say.
‘And you’ve already used that line on your mother,’ he replies.
He has insisted that he will drive me to Birmingham.
‘You can get me on that guestie, like, can’t you?’ he says. ‘Pat Morrigan, plus one. Just like the old days. Good to check out the competition. See what the young salty lads are doing. It’ll keep me on my toes.’
His enthusiasm for modern alternative rock music, and his chivalric impulses towards me, would be even more admirable if he hadn’t made the offer after hearing that music journalists can claim ‘refreshments’ on expenses.
‘Well,’ he says, now, locking up the van, and rubbing his hands. ‘Time for those “refreshments”.’
His disabled badge has allowed him to park right outside the venue, in what I think might actually be a bus stop. This, and the bin-banging, has made us the subject of much curiosity to the queue of people outside Edwards Number 8. It’s an arrival that very much begs the question, ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Dadda limps confidently towards the doorman. This is, in essence, a blag, and he is always high, and in his element, during a blag. He once referred to his proposal to mum as ‘a blag’. ‘I blagged her on Brighton beach,’ he said, knocking back a Guinness. ‘Blagged your mum.’
‘We’re on the guest list,’ he says, in his ‘explaining things to a peasant’ voice. ‘Johanna Morrigan, plus one.’
The doorman looks at the guest list, doubtfully.
‘Er, no,’ I say, to my dad – and then to the bouncer. ‘It’s, erm, Dolly Wilde. Dolly Wilde plus one.’
‘Dolly Wilde?’ my dad says – looking at me properly for the first time in months. I am all in black, obviously – and also wearing my top hat, from a jumble sale, in honour of Slash from Guns N’ Roses. I look pretty amazing. Or, at least, I don’t look like I did last year.
‘Dolly Wilde?’
‘It’s my writing name,’ I say. ‘Dolly Wilde.’
‘Arrrrr,’ the old man says, appreciatively. ‘Arrrrrr. Writing name. Nice one.’
‘She was an infamous alcoholic lesbian,’ I add, cheerfully.
‘Bostin’!’ Dad says, as the doorman unclips the red rope, and lets us in.
I’ve never been to a gig before. My first ever gig – and I am being paid to be here. Everything is novel to me. It’s very early – no one’s really here yet – and the house-lights are still up. I can see we’re in what was once an Edwardian music hall, with a long, shabby bar right across the back. The walls have been painted a murky, ‘rock’ black, and everything – floor, walls, ceiling – is scuffed and chipped and reeks of cigarettes and toilet block.
This is where rock happens! This is where young people come! Rock music smells of toilet and cigarettes! I am learning! I am very excited. I feel like I am on a threshold of some kind.
‘I’m just going to get some of those aforementioned refreshments,’ Dadda says, heading towards the bar, and giving a ‘man-nod’ to the barman.
I go down the front, right by the stage. I want to make sure I have bagged a good view of both bands – Chapterhouse are supporting; they’re a pretty hot band right now – in order to make my review the best review D&ME has ever had.
I stand right in front of the central microphone – where lead singer Billy Corgan will be – and consolidate my position by getting out my notepad and pen, opening the notepad on the first page, and writing ‘SMASHING PUMPKINS – BIRMINGHAM EDWARDS NO. 8, BIRMINGHAM, 19th November 1992.’
I turn around, and see my dad is leaning back on the bar, drinking a Guinness, and talking to the man next to him. He sees me, and raises his Guinness, in salute.
‘Just refreshing,’ he mouths.
I nod.
The first band aren’t on for another hour and thirty-seven minutes, yet. I sigh. Maybe I am a little bit too early.
‘BIRMINGHAM EDWARDS NO. 8, BIRMINGHAM, WEST MIDLANDS, GREAT BRITAIN, EUROPE, THE EARTH, MILKY WAY, INFINITY,’ I amend, in my notepad, in my swirliest writing.
I am sixteen, and I am getting paid by the word.
10.11pm. Well. This is all turning out to be a bit confusing. I’ve managed to hold my position – in front of Billy Corgan’s mic-stand – but under duress. For, as I’m rapidly learning, there’s this really weird thing that Smashing Pumpkins fans do: a kind of intense, pushing, leaping dance, to the band’s songs.
At first, I thought it was just a tradition they had for the opening song – you know, like when ‘Oops Upside Your Head’ comes on, at a wedding, and everyone rows across the floor. I presumed everyone would stop mucking around after the first song, and settle down, and basically stop jumping on my head.
But Smashing Pumpkins are now three songs in, and it’s clear this leaping around is no mere one-song tradition. Instead, there is a constant thrashing up against each other, as if everyone’s trying to start a fire by rubbing themselves together – using Tad t-shirts as kindling.
Writing my important on-the-spot impressions of the gig – ‘Corgan looks v serious! D’Arcy has drink of water’ – is becoming increasingly difficult, as most of the time I’m having to hold my notepad in my mouth whilst using my hands to keep my top hat on my head. This audience is no respecter of someone wearing a bold chapeau.
As the opening chords of the fourth song start, there is a particularly energised shove from the back, and I lose both my hat and my notepad.
‘Jesus CHRIST!’ I shout. ‘This is DERANGED!’
I kneel to retrieve my hat, and then fight my way out of the crowd – to observe, from the side. These people are mental. To think! I’ve always been scared of raves, because I thought they’d be too loud and sweaty. This is, surely, loads worse.
I stand at the side. I’ve decided I will be an onlooker of youth culture tonight. Besides, can I really analyse what’s going on if I’m taking part in it? I’m a rock critic, not an animal. My place is to stand at the side, watching.
The gig goes on for what seems like forever. I’m very tired – it’s past 11pm and I’m usually in bed listening to the Beacon Radio phone-in by now. Every Friday they do one on the supernatural. It’s always very interesting. There’s a woman in Whitmore Reans who’s got a ghost in her hallway, and she always rings in to tell us what he’s doing.
‘Harry’ – that’s the ghost’s name: Harry – ‘had a right cob-on this week. Knocking all my telephone directories off the table.’
I don’t know any of the songs the Smashing Pumpkins have played – I’d stolen 20p to order Gish from the library, but it hadn’t arrived in time. A lad in Brewood has borrowed it before me, apparently. Bastard – but you can tell which ones the most famous ones are, because everyone goes particularly mad when they start. Some people crowd-surf, which I’d always presumed was just something that happened in America, and seems a bit weird to see in Birmingham – as if everyone here had started referring to petrol as ‘gasoline’, and were fretting over going to Junior Prom.
‘This is not your culture!’ I feel like telling them. ‘You should be dancing like how people dance to “Tiger Feet” by Mudd on Top of the Pops! Or doing The Lambeth Walk! That is the British way!’
During a boring – slow – bit in the set, I go to the back, and see how my dad’s doing. He’s found a drinking buddy, and is pretty wankered.
‘This is Pat,’ he says, introducing me to a man who is also drunk. ‘Because I’m Pat too! We’re two Pats! He’s a Protestant,’ he adds, in a stagey whisper, ‘but we’ve sorted it all out.’
He makes it sound like they’ve actually resolved the entire Northern Ireland conflict – and that, once they’ve made a phone call from a phone box, after the gig, there will be peace between our two nations once more.
‘Are you okay to drive?’ I ask him.
‘Never better,’ he says, trying to put his glass on the bar and missing slightly.
‘I’ve got to go backstage afterwards – say hello to the band,’ I say.
br />
I don’t know why I presume this. I think maybe this is like a party that the Smashing Pumpkins have thrown, and that it would be rude not to introduce myself, and thank them, before leaving.
I give Dadda my hat and my notepad, and go back down the front for the last two songs. Even though I don’t really like Smashing Pumpkins – I find them a bit dirge-y – I cannot pass up this opportunity to fully experience my first gig. Awkwardly, and grudgingly at first, I do as the others do. I stiffly bounce on the spot, carefully – as if warming up for PE.
‘Rock music needs very supportive bras,’ I note – holding onto my bosoms as I leap up and down, doggedly. This is something the music press had never mentioned. They have so little guidance for girls.
On a chorus, people behind me push against me, and so I push back – I am rubbing up against boys, which, I note with glee, is my most sexual experience so far.
‘I am roughly 7 per cent less virgin now!’ I think, as I feel a skinny boy’s ribs xylophone on my back.
In less than ten minutes, I get soaked to the skin in a heady cocktail of my sweat, and the sweat of others. Clouds of steam rise off the mosh-pit, and mingle with the dry-ice.
When I finally stagger away – the band’s last chord ringing out in infinite feedback – my hair is as wet as Hairwash Day, and I am partially, thrillingly deaf. This is like that one time I did a cross-country run, and got some adrenalin – but without someone shouting ‘FASTER, Morrigan!’ at me. I can see the appeal.
It’s surprisingly easy to blag my way backstage. Indeed, in future years, I never find it quite this easy again, no matter how many passes and laminates I have. I think it might be that the security at Birmingham Edwards Number 8 are utterly unused to small, fat, wet, over-adrenalised girls going up to them and saying, ‘I’m a journalist! I’m here to see the band!’ very loudly, because their hearing’s shot.
As a rule of thumb, you know a band’s security has failed quite spectacularly when a sixteen-year-old girl in a top hat – holding a shredded notepad that she finally found kicked-out by the speaker-stack, and her drunken father, and her drunken father’s friend, Pat – manage to get into the band’s dressing room.
The band are sitting around – slumped, sweaty, exhausted. The atmosphere in the room is tense – in later years, reading about their career, I find that around this time, guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy Wretzky are in the middle of a messy break-up, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin is starting to dabble in what turns into a considerable heroin addiction, and Billy Corgan is entering into a depressive phase – partly triggered by the fact that he’s currently so broke, he’s living in a garage.
‘Hiya!’ I say to this room.
I don’t really know how to talk to bands – I don’t really know how to talk to people – and for some reason, I presume that the key thing to do is be ‘a bit sorry’ for them. The Pumpkins are obviously exuding a fairly ‘down’ vibe, and I surmise that this is because they have come from America – land of big cars, Dynasty and Elvis – to Birmingham, and are sad about this. Obviously, I don’t know about Billy Corgan’s garage at the time. I presume all Americans have huge houses. I mean, even in Roseanne they have a massive house, with a porch – and Roseanne just works in a hairdressers, sweeping up hair.
I sit down next to D’Arcy, because she’s a girl, and do my sympathetic face.
‘Long day, huh?’ I say. ‘You probably really want a brew. Like, a cup of tea. That’s what we call tea here. “A brew.” Not, like, a brewski. Beer. Not that.’
D’Arcy looks up, confused.
‘You look knackered,’ I continue.
She looks even more disconsolate and confused.
‘But you rocked!’ I add, quickly. ‘You were AMAZING! OH MY GOD! I’ve never seen a gig like that before!’
This is quite true. I have never seen a gig like that before. I have never seen a gig before.
‘How’s the tour going?’ I ask. ‘Is it exciting?’
‘Oh, you know …’ she says. She has an American accent. It’s the first one I’ve ever interacted with. Previously, American accents have only ever come out of the television. ‘It’s kinda mind-blowing to come to Europe, and there be people who’ve heard of us.’
She says ‘Europe’, ‘Yuuuuurp’. It’s very exciting. Genuinely foreign. But she’s still staring down at the floor. There’s an awkward pause. The whole band are glassy-eyed – seemingly borderline traumatised by the gig they’ve just played. I don’t have a clue what to say next. A voice suddenly comes from the doorway.
‘Tell ya what – yorra a tight little unit!’
It’s my dad. He is speaking with great authority. Everyone turns to look at him. He’s leaning in the doorway, still holding his pint of Guinness.
‘A tight. Little. Unit,’ he reiterates. ‘Your drummer’s good, mate,’ he says, to Billy Corgan, hero of grunge. ‘Got a bit of a jazzer’s air to him. And your bird –’ he gestures to D’Arcy Wretsky, hero of grunge ‘– your bird, is fucking fit.’
Everyone stares at my dad.
‘Lads, lads!’ Pat – Dad’s friend – chirps up. ‘You were fine – fine – but do you not know any party songs? Or “Protestant Boys”? That’s a hell of a song. It always gets a room lively. “The Protestant Boys/Are Loyal and True/Stout-hearted in battle/And stout-handed too …”.’
I decide it’s time to away, to pastures new. We have probably met enough Smashing Pumpkins now.
When the review runs, it contains every single superlative word I can think of – partly as my way of making up to the band for having had to meet my father and Pat, and partly because, as soon as I get back into my dad’s van, and have him drive back to Wolvo, pissed, I just want to go back into that room and have that massive sound come up inside me again.
Now I know what happens at a gig, I will be ready for it, next time – I will come in just a t-shirt and shorts and boots, and fight my way to the front, like a quietly determined soldier, and then let the band take my head off. I want to walk into rooms like that every night, with a sense of something happening.
A gig, I realise now, is a place where people come together and give permission for anything to happen. Things can be said and shouted and sung; people get pissed; people get kissed – there is a communal agenda of joyous wilding. These are the boardroom meetings of young people, where we establish our vibe.
By way of contrast, everything else I am doing is just sitting, and waiting.
God, I want to go out again.
When the review runs – headline: ‘MOSHING PUMPKINS!’ – it is accompanied by a big picture of the band, and takes up half a page. ‘This is the night where it all begins for the Smashing Pumpkins in the UK,’ I have written.
Every cool kid in the Midlands has come to pay obeisance to the new Emperors of Mournful Grunge. Little matter that Billy Corgan’s singing-style is somewhat ‘yowling’ – that of a cat out in the rain, who has just realised the cat-flap is locked against him. From the first, crashing chords of ‘Siva’, every kid in the venue has the same look on their face: ‘I, too, have felt like a cat locked out in the rain, Billy Corgan! I live in Bilston! You have to wait 45 minutes for the 79 bus! Thank you for writing a song that finally expresses how that feels!
I look at the review with utter glee. I can take up half a page, now. I am worth exactly half a page. It is exciting to chart my growing abilities, as a writer – like the bit of wall in the kitchen where our growing heights are marked off, every six months, in a scratchy rainbow of different-coloured pens. ‘Lupin – Halloween 1991.’ ‘Kriss – Xmas 90.’ ‘DOLLY, first lead review, D&ME, 1992.’
Kenny tells me that when I hit fifty reviews, I will be ‘seasoned’ enough to do my first interview.
By January 1993, I have interviewed nineteen local bands. I file my copy promptly, with all spellings combed through, using a dictionary, and all my best words and phrases deployed like bonnets, tippets and jewels, to fascinate the eye, and inspire wonder. br />
In February, when my income often reaches a heady £100 a week, I go into the school at 11am, and sit outside the school secretary’s office, listening to Jane’s Addiction on my Walkman, subtly air-drumming, until she emerges.
‘I’m resigning,’ I say, cheerfully, to the secretary – pulling the headphones down to my neck so that we can both hear Perry Farrell screaming ‘SEX IS VIOLENT!’ tinnily, from my chest. ‘I won’t be able to continue my education any more, as I’m running away to join the circus. I’ve sold my soul to rock ’n’ roll.’
‘And have you informed your parents of this?’ the secretary asks me, calmly, as if she’s heard this all before.
‘Not yet,’ I say, breezily. ‘But they’ll be cool with it.’
I hand her my school tie.
‘Give this to Tim Watts in 10J,’ I say. ‘He needs it. He keeps chewing his. I think he’s still teething. His voice hasn’t broken yet. I think he might have a chromosomal abnormality. Also, just so you know, it was Andy Webster who set the fire-alarm off last year, Annette Kennedy lets people finger her for 20p on the playing fields, and Mrs Cooke has no control over RE lessons – Tim Hawley, the Evangelist with a hare-lip, stands on the desks and does a “snake dance” while she’s writing on the blackboard. He often drops his trousers and shows people his privates. I think he’s quite troubled. Also, quite lopsided. One ball is twice the size of the other. I have no idea if that’s normal – but I will soon, because I’m going to go and get my kicks now, while I’m still young.’
The school secretary seems unimpressed with this classic quote from Rizzo in Grease, and merely puts the tie in her pocket and says, ‘I’ll inform the head, and send a letter to your parents.’
I go out to break, and tell my friends I’m leaving school.
‘No way man, you’re so lucky,’ Emma Pagett says, eating Chipstix, eyes bulging. ‘You’re a legend.’
Across the playground, I can see Krissi looking at me, disapprovingly.