Necrophenia

Because Mr Je

And Mr Je

And so it was a brightly lit and lavishly décored Space-Travel-themed school hall that The Sumerian Kynges had now entered, through the door that led to the school kitchen. And it was a full and crowded hall. And there were a lot of teenage girls amongst this crowd. And I knew, just knew, in my rock ’n’ roll heart, that they were just dying to get a piece of The Sumerian Kynges.

Although, of course, they were not, as yet, aware of this.

And so the scene is as set as it can be.

And Mr Je

These steps are those that rise to the left-hand side of the stage (looking from the audience, that is). The very top step is quite small. Mr Je

To those who viewed him upon this night, Mr Je

There was a mic up on that stage. The school microphone. It was a Telefunken U Forty-Seven. Every school had one of those. A few years later, no school had one, because with the rise of the minicab, the Telefunken U Forty-Seven had a penchant for picking up the signals of the cab offices and broadcasting directions for cabbies, to the great merriment of assembled students.

I was just dying to sing into that mic. We’d had to rehearse micless, and there was to be no amplification other than that mic, which meant that I was going to have to hold it near Toby’s uke when he did his big solo.

Fearing as we all did that Mr Je

That one, I note, lasted. While the other one – ‘Cheese God’ – apparently did not.

Mr Je

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. The crowd went ‘boo’ and ‘hiss’. Not the kind of thing you could get away with on a school day. But this wasn’t a school day. This was the school dance.

‘Calm down. Calm down.’ Mr Je

Mr Je

‘These young gentlemen have rehearsed very hard,’ said Mr Je

I looked at Neil. And Neil looked at me. And Neil looked at Rob and Rob looked at Toby and Toby in turn looked at me.

‘I’ll get him for that,’ said Toby. ‘You just see if I don’t.’

7

The Rolling Stones weren’t that bad, I suppose.

Because, after all, it was their first ever gig.

The one that never gets a mention in biographies, authorised or otherwise. The one with the original line-up. With Wild Man Fosby on tea-chest bass and Mick Jagger’s sister on uke.

And Bill Wyman on uke. And Mick Jagger on uke and vocals.

My uke. And my microphone.

In case the reader is experiencing some degree of confusion here, allow me to explain, for it was my intention to create this confusion in the hope that it would in some way mirror the confusion that I and my fellow members of The Sumerian Kynges found ourselves in at the time.

We thought that Mr Je

And Mick and Keith and Brian and Mick’s sister pushed right past us on the left-hand stage steps (looking from the audience), snatching our ukes from our hands as they did so.

We were not pleased about this at all.

Toby was in a blue funk! [6]

‘I’ll kill one of them,’ he said. And he pointed to one of The Stones at random. Brian Jones, I believe it was. ‘I’ll kill him!’ said Toby.

Rob made calming gestures with his ukeless fingers. ‘It will all be all right,’ he told Toby. ‘They can be our warm-up act. Get the crowd going. Remember, they’re on before us. They are our support band.’

Toby thought about this. And so did Neil and so did I. I don’t know exactly what conclusions the others drew, but I was happy enough to have The Rolling Stones as my support act.

And so we stood and we waited. In the shadows beside the brightly lit stage. And we watched The Rolling Stones.

They were an R & B band then. In the days when R & B meant R & B. As opposed to whatever it is that R & B means nowadays. Which is not the same thing at all. So to speak. So The Rolling Stones did quite a lot of the blues.

They did ‘Love in Vain’, the Robert Johnson classic. And they did some Chuck Berry. They did ‘Joh

They didn’t do any George Formby at all. Which I personally felt was a shame. I thought they missed a golden opportunity there, what with such an abundance of ukes and everything. But I didn’t really care. We had plenty of George Formby numbers in our repertoire. In fact, we were almost exclusively a Formby-orientated rock ’n’ roll band.

‘I notice,’ noticed Neil, ‘and I notice that I did not notice this before, that Michael has quite long hair. It covers his ears and also his school-shirt collar.’

We nodded.

‘Your point is?’ Toby asked.

‘Long hair is for girlies, surely,’ said Rob. ‘Long hair, well shampooed, “because you’re worth it”, so to speak.’

‘I think I’ll try and grow mine,’ said Neil. ‘Just to see how it looks.’

‘You will look like Guy Fawkes,’ said Toby. ‘You are already the only schoolboy I know who sports a goatee beard. Do not add to your notoriety by styling your hair like that of an effeminate anti-parliamentarian. ’

‘I don’t wish to look like some Muff Mary Ellen. I’ll shave my head tomorrow,’ said Neil. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’

And he did.

And in so doing unconsciously invented a look that would later find favour with The Village People.

‘I do hate to say this,’ said Rob, ‘but The Rolling Stones are rather cool. Although it is a rubbish name for a band. They’re playing a lot of Robert Johnson – they should have some sort of Demonic name, but with a bit of a regal quality to it, like ours.’

‘Their Satanic Majesties,’ Toby suggested.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Rob.

And then suddenly The Rolling Stones had finished. We didn’t clap them, of course. How uncool would that have been? Neither did we cheer. Not that we could have cheered had we wanted to.

You see, we’d had to talk quite loudly while The Rolling Stones had been playing. Shout, really, in order to make ourselves heard. So we had rather sore throats. Which would not help my performance.

[6] Sequined all over. His mum had made it for him.