St Bedes Middle School Football Team 1980
Alright, it’s not going to take too long to spot me is it? Sice is there as well, as is my twin brother, Calum. I can remember all of these names although not necessarily the faces. Mr McCurry (top left) used to be our form teacher as well as managing the school team. He used to smoke all the way through the lessons, lining his butts up on the desk in front of him. I’m convinced my indolence on the football pitch drove him to an early grave. Imagine Berbatov without the talent, that was me - a ‘fanny dancer’. Out there on the right wing I was quick, lightning fast, but easily distracted. I wanted to be good, don’t get me wrong, I just wanted someone to be good for me while I went about more important things, like watching Top of the Pops or reading girls books about gymkhanas and boarding schools.
I didn’t play after 1982. Oh, I would kick a ball around with Sice - I once scored the greatest goal ever scored by anyone within the fading light of a summers evening on a lonesome field in North Carolina. Sice will back me up on this - and we sometimes played a match on tour but nothing serious. Before each game, while somebody was sorting out positions, I would wander out to the right wing, light a cigarette and hope that nobody would pass to me.
Then, somehow, in 1998 Sice and I ended up playing a weekly game run by NME journalists in Regents Park, where, 450 years earlier; Henry VIII had spent many a fine afternoon popping royal caps in deers asses. The day before, I had bought a copy of ‘Michael Owens Soccer School’ video, sneaking it back to my flat for some late night revision. I fast forwarded through the warm up exercises, ridiculous, and drunkenly taught myself the step over with a cushion. On our way to the park Sice and I had to stop off at Oxford Street to buy some footy boots as neither of us had owned a pair for sixteen years. I, of course, bought the most expensive boots in the store. They had lights, three gears and the longest, most brutal metal studs you can imagine. We got to the park, it was a sticky evening, the going was good to barren and my studs were made from plutonium.
I fast forwarded through Sice and the others warming up. Ridiculous. I leant in the shade and smoked a cigarette idly going through the step over technique in my head. Then, while the captain sorted out the positions, I hobbled out to the dusty right wing - moving like I was wearing twenty four high heeled shoes - and waited. I didn’t have to wait long, the ball came to me almost immediately, I pushed it past the defender and ran, pulled a calf muscle, fell over and was sick. As I lay there, pulling bits of puke out of my hair, I saw the scout from Liverpool FC shaking his head sadly and ripping up a contract that had my name on it, slowly walked back towards his car. It was all over..
But then last year ( I didn’t intend to write any of this, I just put the photo up so we could all have a laugh at my hair) while we were staying in London I was strong-armed by my friend Pete to join his weekly Tuesday Night Crouch End Dads Astroturf Game down on Holloway Road. What could I say? It was his house, he held the keys to the fridge. So at the age of 39 I joined in with everyone as they warmed up before wandering out to shiver on the right wing. The ball came to me early again, I collected it, pushed it past the defender and…nothing. I looked down at my legs, wondering why they weren’t pumping down the flank like a pair of Stephenson’s pistons but they stared at me mournfully and shrugged (can legs shrug?) ‘You’re old now la’, they seemed to say ‘now fall over and be sick, nobody will mind’. I didn’t of course, I played on and accepted the fact that my main strength, my burst of speed, had gone - never to return. I played the holding game, even pulled off a couple of stepovers but was generally happy not to be too involved. I turned up for a couple of months until I found an excuse not to. And so into that long dark void of retirement, my trophy cabinet bare and not a punditry job in sight. The end of the road.
So long the beautiful game.
‘Sorry if this is huge’ was the subject line in a mail I received from my friend Mark the other day. At first I thought he was referring to the size of the file he had sent along with the mail; maybe he was but listening to the track I realised that he knew, and not many people know me as he does, how much I would love this song, how it would be already a part of me even though I’d never heard it before. As the song wraps it’s arms around me, sinking itself into my core, never to leave, I am struck by, not only it’s beauty but by how powerful a friendship can be when used correctly. Mark and I have the pretty much the same relationship as the one that me and Sice have. It’s closer than friendship and we have been through times when we can barely talk to each other, when we wish that we’d never met but we’ll always be linked by what we’ve been through, linked by the forces that attracted us to each other in the first place and, like electrons and protons, it is our differences that bind as much as the things that we share. Sice and I hardly ever agreed about anything. When we were kids we argued like fuck but nobody could make me laugh like him and vice versa.
I met Mark one night in Planet X. He worked part time at Pink Moon records in Liverpool which, alongside Probe, was where I bought all my records during my teenage years. Over a bottle of Newcastle Brown (me) and a pint of, I’m guessing now, Strongbow (him), we shouted band names at each other for an hour in a frenzied state of mutual indie lust. He was tall with long blonde hair and had a beautiful girlfriend and lived on Falkner Square which was pretty much the same street as me as I lived on Huskisson Street which led off the square, up towards the colossal pile of Woolton Sandstone that is Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, always partially obscured by a miasmic shroud. Canning was a magical place to live in 1989; rent was cheap, the sun splattered, wide Georgian streets were almost always empty and I would walk for hours without seeing anyone else. Time didn’t exist, or rather all of time was right there, at that time and the drugs we took gave everything a jeweled sparkle, a glistening dew that almost made you forget that you had no money, no job, no future. Nowhere to go and nothing to do.
He came to see us play, we thought we sounded like the end of the world through a fuzz pedal, he thought we sounded like Biff Bang Pow. I thought him and his girlfriend were the most sophisticated people I had ever met. They had dinner parties and went to see rude french films down the 051. When I was employed I would have less money that when I was on the dole and I would knock on their door at all hours looking for money for the ferry over the River Mersey, to Birkenhead and the dreaded Land Registry. He became my muse, when I wrote songs I would write them with him in mind, my target audience. (’Best Lose the Fear’, ‘January’, ‘the Monk Jumps Over The Wall’, ‘Captain America’ have all been written for or about him.) We both wanted out of Liverpool, London was where we were headed, Creation Records, Rough Trade Records, The Town & Country Club, Dingwalls, The NME… he lent us our train fare the day we signed for Rough Trade, we were always skint.
I ended up in London first, I think Mark may have been working a fast food place in LA at the time. Even though London has been the only place in the UK I’ve ever wanted to live I’ve somehow managed to always mess it up and I’ve only lived there maybe four years in the last twenty. By the end of 1991 we were both there. I was living just off Highgate Road, on Dartmouth Park Road and I think he was in Notting Hill, working at the Record and Tape Exchange. He used to come on tour with us, never a popular decision within the band. Why should Martin bring a friend along? Well, I needed him, I didn’t want to do it without him. Then he was at Rough Trade and when they went down I helped him (not that he needed it) get a job at Creation records. The jigsaw was complete. You can go anywhere and do anything if you really want it, everything seemed easy back then - we love Creation let’s get on board there, we should have a hit record, let’s write one etc
Now he runs a respected record company which, more observant readers may have noticed, I’m not on. It’s not something we’ve ever talked about but I guess I don’t sell enough records and I’m too old and difficult and it’s not called the record business, the music industry for nothing. I don’t remember the last time I saw him, Green Man maybe? Reading back I realise that I haven’t even scraped the surface of what we’ve been through together, what we mean to each others lives.
I’ll leave it there, all I want is for you to listen to this song and while you do so, think about your friends. Sounds like I’m working for an ad agency doesn’t it? Forgive me, it’s early.
Sixto Rodriguez - Sugar Man
Rodriguez Website
Sixto Rodriguez - Sugar Man
I know I shouldn’t post other peoples stuff. If anyone is offended and/or feeling particularly litigious, let me know and I’ll take it down.
