became my gospel, an instruction manual. I was no longer alone. It remained by my side for the next ten years. I worshipped it.
Paul phoned again.
‘I’ve got some even better news than before.’
‘Even better?’
‘I think I’ve found a singer with a microphone.’
‘Shit!’
‘I know. And a drummer.’
‘Shit! With real drums?’
‘A real drumkit plus cymbals and sticks.’
‘Shit!’
Another weekend session down in the Bavister conservatory beckoned, this time as a five piece. Cool as ice.
Ever since Grandpa had died when I was six, Granny had lived alone in the ground floor of a 1930s whitewashed house in Bexhill-on-Sea, a fusty resort in East Sussex where people go to retire, then die. We made this horizontal trip of a hundred miles once a year, and it was usually full of incident because the dog was always car-sick and my father insisted we stop at public houses along the way to ‘let Toby stretch his legs’. My father would then tend a jug while we emptied the newspapers caked in dog sick, and poor dazed Toby relieved himself against a wooden table in the disapproving beer garden.
In Bexhill, when we weren’t shivering on blankets on the pebbled beach, my sister and I cannoned destructively around the flat while Granny cooked dinner. Once, as I was passing the grandfather clock in the hall at velocity, I looked up to find my mother and father blocking the way.
‘What?’ I complained.
‘AC/DC are playing at the Donington Festival of Rock in a few weeks’ time,’ said my father.
‘Sorry?’
‘Yes, they are,’ said my mother, touching my shoulder. I was 14 so this was just about OK. ‘You probably want to go.’
‘Yes, I do!’ I said. I’d never even heard of it. How exciting! Even though I was into other bands now, the idea of actually seeing AC/DC in the flesh was the most exciting thing I’d ever heard! Angus! Brian! Phil Rudd on the drums.
‘I’m sorry but you can’t,’ said my father.
‘You’re too young,’ said my mother.
‘Maybe next time,’ said my father.
‘I see,’ I said.
‘It’s for the best.’
‘But …’ The bastards! So why did they even bring it up?
I festered over this for months, and did some research into exactly what the hell they’d been talking about.
DONINGTON, MONSTERS OF ROCK
My friend Owen and I often have this kind of conversation:
‘1984 – third on the bill?’
‘Ozzy.’
‘Much too low.’
‘No, it was just a good year.’
‘Who headlined ’85?’
‘ZZ Top. A travesty.’
‘A shocking choice. Why did they do that?’
‘Don’t forget Marillion, on right before them.’
‘You could’ve gone home after Bon Jovi!’
‘Before!’
‘1989?’
‘Yeah, nice try. There wasn’t one that year.’
‘Gary Moore.’
‘Gary Moore?’
‘Gary Moore, ’84.’
‘Runners up in ’84 then?’
‘Van Halen.’
‘What about the tragic year? The Guns n’ Roses year?’
‘Easy, ’88.’
Had enough? Too bad.
‘Whitesnake?’
‘They played more than once.’
‘Name one.’
‘’83?’
‘Lucky.’
‘Like fuck lucky – I knew that.’
‘Ratt?’
‘Fuck off with your Ratt.’
‘Answer the question. Ratt.’
‘’87.’
‘’85 again.’
‘I don’t give a shit.’
‘Yeah right you don’t.’
‘Anvil?’
‘They never did.’
‘Wrong. Answer the question: Anvil?’
‘’80?’
‘Actually ’82.’
Pretty impressive, huh?
Donington Park is a race track in north Leicestershire used mostly for motorbikes, and the setting for Europe’s biggest outdoor rock concerts for well over ten years. The first one was in 1980 and the last in 1996. It had limped along for a few years after Metal had officially been pronounced dead, and then finally went down without dignity after the 1997 festival was cancelled because no bands were deemed ‘good enough’ to play. All the flesh had finally been picked off our previously noble beast. When the surviving Metallic stragglers (previously hordes) read about the ’97 cancellation, they slowly folded their Kerrang!s, lowered their heads and closed heavy eyes. Donington was dead, which meant they might as well be dead, too.
When it started in 1980, Donington was considered an unnecessary addition to the festival landscape, as the old version of the Reading Festival was still going strong. This annual Berkshire knees-up had begun in the 1960s as a predominantly jazz and blues event, but as the years caught up with the pedal steel, tambourines and hairlines, so rock barged its way on to the invariably rain-lashed stage. So much so that by its heyday in the 70s, the Reading Festival was rock’s defining calendar event, pulling in up to 50,000 bikers and freaks. It never quite rid itself of its traditional roots, though. There was a whiff of hearty pullovers, thick glasses and cat-gut acoustic guitar strings, which added a folky tang to the centre partings and Black Sabbath patches. Roy Harper was there every year, and everybody had a moustache. The Quo would inevitably finish up the weekend’s proceedings, boogieing down into the Thames night, toasted by a thousand raised plastic pints of Ruddles.
‘See you next year then, Rory.’
‘Aye, see you next year, Geoff. Mind how you go.’
Punk broke up this hops party soon enough, but it was the wrong kind of music to be playing to the sprawling fields. Punk was never going to work in such a wide-open space – it belonged inside pogoing, sweat-streamed walls, not on giant stages with cows in the adjoining field. So the slack was taken up by the emerging British Metal bands: your UFOs, Uriah Heeps, Saxons, and perhaps a spot of the Purpses too. However, punk had dragged behind it a new breed of band – the post-punk and the new-wave – and these bands had begun to infiltrate the Reading stage in a way that punk hadn’t been able to. This came to a head in the early 80s, when the indie/alternative