So I have been writing. Not that crappy kind of writing that pays the bills, but the good kind of writing that allows me to tell tall stories. Oh yes, indeedy. “Dead Rock Star” is thundering along and I am getting carried along with it now. A nice momentum has built up and I have the entire story; beginning, middle and end in my head. I’m about 12,000 words up at the moment and four chapters in.
It’s not been easy, especially the nature of the story. It’s about death and about not being here anymore. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking about that. The ghosts in my book aren’t the type of ghosts who have shape, substance and scare people. They are just echoes of the people they used to have been and can’t actually DO anything. They just observe and they get bored and they long for their old lives back. I am almost finished writing the first funeral scene in the book and it reminds me of the two funerals I have attended: my grandmother and grandfather, who were to all extents my parents. Of course, it gets depressing and trying to write a eulogy for a dead man who doesn’t exist is a challenge. And writing a reaction of a man who is dead watching is own funeral is also an interesting position to be in.
It makes me think about my own demise. If I were to die right now, right over this keyboard, all gurgling and dribbling with an aneurysm, or if i were to fall down the stairs because Alex the Wonderdog has left his doggy chew on the top stairs and I fell on it, then my funeral would be a pretty depressing experience. Not because I am dead. No, no, no…I don’t think my demise would affect the world one jot. It doesn’t – it keeps on turning, etc. I just know that the only people there would be my wife and my mother…and possibly Alex the Wonderdog. I don’t have any family beyond that and no acquaintances to speak of, so that would be it. Mind you, at least the buffet would be cheap. 😉
So I’ve been thinking dark and depressing things, but don’t worry, I am feeling pretty cheery because I have this book to work on. It only gets depressing at the end when you realise that no-one will want to publish it. Anyway, for my regular reader, here’s a little taster of “Dead Rock Star”. It’s not quite polished yet, so bits of it will change, but it’s to give you a flavour of what’s going on…

The sudden sound of the audience cheering and clapping broke Vince from a trance as he stood at the side of the stage. The support band “Hugo Where?” had finished their set and Vince had been watching the band go through their paces. They were young and full of energy. He wasn’t too interested in their style of music, but as they were a local band, the audience seemed to appreciate them. The band filed off stage and Vince congratulated them on the show. They grinned and returned a spirited “Fuck yeah!” as an acknowledgment, before disappearing into the darkness of the backstage area. There was a fifteen minutes interval while the stage was set up for his band and he watched as the support band’s gear was moved to the back of the stage and his band’s stuff moved forward. The road crew moved with speed and plugged in microphones, tested keyboards and made final adjustments to the drum kit. Vince called over to his guitar tech and asked him to fetch his guitar. A few minutes later the instrument was handed to him and Vince adjusted the strap and slung it over his shoulder. He picked the strings and cocked his head to listen to see if it was in tune. It was fine. Vince then spent the next ten minutes pacing around the backstage area, plucking at his guitar and stretching his vocal chords with a few singing exercises, only to be approached by the stage manager who informed him that he would be on stage in five minutes.
The time passed quickly and Vince could hear the play-on music start up. It was the theme to the TV show “Thunderbirds” and Vince thought that this was a dramatic piece to get the audience excited and it segued well with the opening piece they were going to play “Fragments of a Life”, a popular Outrider track that was suitably up-tempo and well received by the music fans. Vince heard his cue and ran out onto the stage and was immediately dazzled by the stage lights. A blanket of pin-hole flashes sparkled from the audience as fans took pictures and looked like a carpet of tiny twinkling stars.
As the Thunderbirds tune reached its climax, the drums kicked in and the twin guitars of Vince and Richard Ester cut through the crowd. After the instrumental beginning, Vince stepped up to the microphone, let his guitar swing loosely by his side and began to sing:
You’ve only got one life
You’ve got to do what you can
Don’t let it pass you by
Don’t let it run away
Fragments of a life you’ve had
All times – both good and bad
Memories of time gone past
Builds the sum of all we are
Move it on
Move it up
Fight the day
Don’t give it up
Fragments of a life you’ve had
Are made of you so don’t be sad
Time is passing like grains of sand
Trickling through the palm of your hand
So don’t let it get away
Live everyday like your last
Fight for your future
Respect your past
The song thundered to its finish and the audience applauded loudly. Vince was suddenly distracted and looked over to the side of the stage. He felt someone looking at him, but when he scanned the darkness there was no one there, not even a member of the stage crew. This feeling continued between songs and the thought flashed in his mind that Smudger was standing there, willing him on. He thought about making an announcement to the audience but remember his conversation with Silbermann and Smudger’s widow, at home in England, blissfully unaware that her husband was dead.
The band thundered through six more songs and Vince though that the concert was going as well as could be expected. The open-air auditorium was half-full and despite the fact that Vince could only see the faces of the first couple of rows of the audience, he sensed that they were here for one reason and one reason only: that song that had been used that film, that song that had gone to number one for three weeks, that song that had been on that soundtrack album, of which it was unlikely he was going to see any of the royalties. He stepped up to the microphone and began to speak.
“Hello Chicago!” he bellowed, “Are you enjoying the show?”
People clapped and cheered but it was a lacklustre response, it seemed that they were doing out of duty rather than they wanted to acknowledge the singer. He tried again.
“I said, ‘Are you enjoying the show?’” he tried again and this time the ripple of sound coming from beneath his feet increased slightly.
“This next one, you all know,” he began, the crowd fell silent and a certain tension filled the arena, “It was a song I wrote about fifteen years now. It was on an album that no-one bought and the record company didn’t like. But you know what? I liked it and now I know you all like it too. It’s taken from the album ‘Pearl Before the Swine’ – but you can’t buy that album anymore – and it is called…Don’t Say a Word.”
He dragged out the delivery of the title in order to increase the tension. When he said ‘Don’t Say a Word’ the auditorium erupted in a cacophony of applause and cheering. This is what they had been waiting for. Vince turned to his band as if to say ‘oh well, we’d better do it’ and the drummer began the count in. After the opening chords, Vince stepped up to the microphone, closed his eyes and began to sing:
I am just a guy
Who finds it hard to try
To settle down
To find my ground
But now I’ve met you
I know what I’ve got to do
And you can help me find
A way to be a better man
So take my hand
Forget everything I’ve said
It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard
Look into my eyes
And don’t say a word.
With that, there was the sound from above. It was the noise of metal against metal, of increased pressure and then a sudden crack of a snap of release. Vince heard this and stopped singing to look upwards. The intense multicoloured stage lights beating down on him obscured his vision and he suddenly sensed something was wrong. There was one final almighty thunderclap of a noise and suddenly the lighting gantry above him went into freefall and landed in a tangle of metal and sparking electrical cable on top of the musician.
The band stopped playing. They stared at the mass of mangled metal and flesh that had once been Vince Pearl and looked at each other. Suddenly, someone shouted to kill the lights and the stage went black, leaving the audience gasping at the untimely death that had been played out before them to the soundtrack of electric guitar, bass and drums. Tonight, there would be no encore.

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