PLAY IT FASTER
Part 2: “The Janitor's Apprentice”
If you have ever met Andy Clark (the original Janitors drummer),
you will know that he is a sparkling wit and raconteur, always
quick with a quip or a funny story. An old friend of his
who lived with him in London told me this about him. “Going out
on the pull with Andy was great. We were the dream team; “Andy’s
patter and my cock, we never failed…”. Hmmm….yes…I’m not really
sure how that worked but allegedly it did.
Andy had come along to that first rehearsal to tie up a few
loose ends and just generally tell the band how he was. He
kindly offered the services of his drum kit for the gigs I would
be covering as I have an electronic drum kit and it was widely
thought that this would not portray the correct image for the
band. They also openly mocked it, laughed at it and generally
said it was shit. Andrew (the singer?) tried to break it
twice. Once is an accident, twice has subconscious malice behind
it. So the electronic kit was out. Andy Clark left and
there I was with these strangers who wanted me to play horrible
music. I’m pretty sure everyone in the room was nervous, I know
I was and I’m fairly sure Andrew was because he goes a bit quiet
and chews his fingers when he’s nervous (top tip for anyone
playing poker with him there).
The first song we played together was “God save the Queen”. It
is at this point in the story that I must introduce you to Mark
the bass player. My first impression of Mark was that he was
very quiet and considered. I now know that he is very laid back
and has a wicked dry sense of humour. The reason I need to bring
him into the story at this point is because when we finished
“God save the Queen” and the atmosphere became a little less
thick, and the tension eased and some smiles even broke out and
there were murmurs of, “That was alright..” Mark chimed in with,
“Aye it was good but it needs to be a bit faster…”. This became
the pattern for just about every song of every practise we did,
“Can you do it a bit faster..?” “It needs to be faster…” “I
think that one should be a touch faster…” “Really good just too
slow…”. It very quickly became an “in joke” which was a good
thing. Bands need “in jokes”; it makes them feel together, like
a gang.
Musicians on the whole are geeks by any other name. Spotty,
often speccy, malodourus, lonely obsessives, who, if they
weren’t playing guitar alone in the dark, would probably be
serial killers. Well perhaps not serial killers, but they
certainly shouldn’t be exposed to so much fame, money, girls and
drugs; they’re geeks for Siouxsie’s sake. They can’t handle it.
If they hadn’t learned to play an instrument they would be
dissecting quadratic equations for a living and discussing the
shortness of Buffy’s skirt around the water cooler whilst
harbouring too many pens in the breast pocket of their short
sleeve shirt. Do you think Eddie Van Halen was popular at
school? God no! He was a freak, spending every waking hour alone
in his bedroom spanking the fender for all it was worth. I’m
sure he probably played his guitar as well. He was probably the
victim of hundreds of beatings and more verbal abuse than
Michael Barrymore would get if he were to open a kiddies
swimming gala. The same goes for any musician who is even
moderately good. It doesn’t happen overnight and countless hours
of developing social skills are lost. Eventually you have to
come blinking into the daylight and face up to the fact that you
are going to have to interact with other musicians (and at least
one drummer) in order to make music. You could become
Jean-Michel Jarre of course, but that’s even worse. So you join
a geek gang or as it’s more widely known, “A BAND”. The “gang”
must have a code and as geeks are not well known for pissing on
each other’s jeans or beating up old grannies the “in-joke”
becomes your badge of honour. Only you small select few know it
and it can be used as a sort of rock and roll Mason’s handshake
or an effective defensive weapon. Check out the interviews The
Beatles did when they first got to America. They were four
frightened young men and they used every “in-joke” they knew to
fend off the press. Look at Tommy Lee; he was his very own
“in-joke”. He was just an average young man (geek) who learned
his drumming talents with a jazz band (think Felling Fusiliers
rather than Benny Goodman) but who couldn’t handle fame to such
a degree that he became so drunk, depressed, doped up, paranoid,
psychotic, neurotic, blitzed and just plain scared that he took
the “in-joke” to it’s limit; he was the only one who knew it!
So one of our “in-jokes” became, “Faster, faster….”. I do recall
one occasion however when I went hell for leather through
“Staring at the Rude Boys” and when we finished Andrew, Mark and
Dave all sort of looked at their shoes and stroked their chins
and Mark said, “ Hmmm..it was a bit fast….”, which brings me to
Dave.
“Here I am as usual dreaming about Dave. Dave’s smashing, Dave’s
great. Ooooh he really is! When POW! Up pops my fairy Godmother
with her, “I’ll give you three wishes” routine. Wish number one
is easy; I wish I was with Dave…. “
Dave IS smashing and great. He is just a lovely chap and a
natural born musician. He is also very funny and his jokes are
usually just strange enough to make you have to think about them
for a second which means that when you do get them they are even
funnier. Dave is also a world champion at staring at plectrums
and has an “A” level in, “disappearing when heavy things are to
be lifted after a gig”.
So that is the cast of characters. Four ex-spotty-muso-geek-types,
who spent most of their formative years dreaming of living a
lifestyle wilder than Keith Moon and shagging Farrah Fawcett on
a regular basis. Of course back in reality they were just
worried that that seventh Bic in the breast pocket might be one
too many…. Or was that just me?
So anyway, before I went off on another rant we were at the
first band practise and after finishing “God Save The Queen” we
ploughed through some other songs that I had a vague
recollection of. It was difficult I have to admit. The longest I
had played with other musicians in almost fifteen years was a
couple of songs at a friend’s birthday party. That was as easy
as Jodie Marsh, but this was three hours of hard slog. I was
soon sweating buckets and gradually running out of breath. It
all sounded pretty much the same to me and I was often lost as
to what song we were playing and where we might be in that song
and whether we had a map to get back out of it. Most songs
started with me asking, “How does this one go again?” At which
point either Andrew would say, “You start it with Blahp! Blahp!”
(C.I.D) or, “It goes bap-a-dah bap-a-dah bap-a-dah blaaah!” (I’m
the one) or even better Dave would say, “I start this one”. Then
he would sort of shrug his shoulders a couple of times, stare at
his plec for a bit, strum quietly through the chords as though
for the first time then crank up his axe and launch into some
awesome guitar work. You’ve got to love Dave.
We only had two rehearsals before the first gig I was covering
so obviously they were very work like as I struggled to learn
the songs in time. But as my tenure with “The Janitors” turned
from weeks to months rehearsals became my favourite part of
being in the band. If you are a fan of the band then I would
imagine you have seen the band live and know how funny the
interaction with the crowd can be. Well the rehearsals for me
were even funnier because basically you have three hilarious
blokes who have known each other for a long time and who
constantly tear humorous verbal lumps out of each other and
generally have a witty comment to make about most things. There
were times when I could hardly play for laughing during
practises. This is all going to sound banal to anybody reading
it but great memories for me are just stupid things. Seeing
Andrew’s face explode into laughter after Mark or Dave has
cracked another great joke. Mark falling over after attempting a
Pete Townsend style jump off a step that can’t have been more
than eight inches high. Andrew doing his Max Wall impersonation.
Dave strumming “jazz” versions of punk classics or running
through the “Bullseye” theme tune. Mark wearing the biggest
happy grin I have ever seen during a run through of “The
Janitors” original “You and who’s Army?”. These are all memories
that make me laugh even as I’m typing them, but for some reason
they don’t translate well from the practise room to the
performance.
Andrew did try a couple of times to talk about things that we
had found gut bustingly funny at practise, like Joe Strummer
dialing 99999 during, ”London’s Burning” rather than just the
usual 999, and who he might have gotten through to. But they
just fell flat. This is because the audience isn’t a permanent
part of the gang. They have missed too many meetings, forgot to
wear their leather thong and don’t know the handshake. As a
result of this they don’t understand all the geeky “in-jokes”.
This is also a good thing, and says a lot about how intelligent
the audience are not to get involved with our infantile
gibberish. But we like it and as long as this old rock keeps
spinning, musicians (and drummers) are going to keep talking
rubbish about nothing to make each other laugh.
The audience are better off when Andrew becomes a temporary
member of THEIR gang and they can laugh with him at the
“in-jokes” they are all making up together on the spur of the
moment. And Andrew is second to none at making everybody feel a
welcome part of the gang.
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