To Replicate The Whammy

“Did you see that?” asks Tim as we shamble down the street. The sky is army-blanket grey, the only warmth coming from the toasted sausage butties we’ve just bought from Bert’s on the corner of Holloway Road and Drayton Park.

“I didn’t see nuffin,” says Sice.

“I never saw no nuffin neither,” says me, not to be outdone.

Bob says nuffin.

“Bert dropped a sausage on the floor and stared at us while he picked it up and put it in one of the sarnies. It was like he was hypnotising us. He didn’t even wipe it on his pinny.”

We laugh. Nobody asks which toasted sausage sandwich Bert’s floor sausage ended up in. We don’t care.

“Sossies is all we got, see,” someone says, and we laugh again.

Protocol Studios is a couple of floors up in one of the tall warehouse buildings that huddle together around what must have once been a builders yard. This is our first time here. Rough Trade doubtless booked it because it was cheap, but it’s the poshest studio we’ve ever been in. Studio One, where we’re working, has a massive live room with a grand piano, vocal and drum booths, and a decent-sized monitor room with a big desk and a really comfy couch. My daily plan is to get up there and start napping as soon as possible. I have a quota to fill, and I am nothing if not dedicated to my craft.

The track sounds good. Tim and Bob created a beefy backbone which I completely ignored while layering sheets of guitar on top. As I feel separate from other people, my music is separate from other people’s music. This is obviously sub optimal when the other people’s music is coming from the other people in the band. I’m not saying I don’t like their music — I do, I love it. Me and Sice’s band, before Tim joined, was a floppy, buskery affair because neither of us could really play. Tim and Bob build strong foundations — muscle for our flimsy frames — but I can’t play with it. I can only play to it. I have no rhythm, no stabs, no chops, just racket.

All that’s left now are my backing vocals. I get the sense everyone’s been putting them off, but I don’t know why. This is the record that will showcase our harmony skills — at least, the ones I’ve imagined. My backing vocals are the thing that will push us to the next level. Who wouldn’t be excited by that? Bring them to me. Let them explain themselves.

The Finest Kiss was written on a single bed in a flat on Princes Road, Liverpool 8, a couple of days before we were due in the studio with producer Alan Moulder. I’ve written a few songs now, maybe twenty, but each one feels like the last. The creative act gives me a buzz but it’s the completion that kills me. We’re ready, sort of. It’s going to be great, maybe. All I have to do now is write the song. How hard can it be?

I wrote the first album on my bed back at the house on the hill — a desire free, emotional mute and still a virgin (I don’t think I had a wank until I was 21). I was yearning for freedom, whatever that meant (probably attention), wherever it would take me (undoubtedly the pub). And I was/am too useless to do anything about it. Useless. I hear that one a lot. Lazy, too. “Act soft and somebody will do it for you,” Mum said. Even now, at 23, with two years of catch-up wanking under my belt. I wrote about all that on the first album. I wrote about everything, front to back.

The problem was I didn’t use any of the right words. I was trying to write like Kaddish — but where Ginsberg uses imagery and symbolism from experience, I used them because they looked good next to each other. There’s meaning in there, but it’s limited. Me and Sice came up with the title Ichabod and I (a mash of Withnail and I and Ichabod Crane) in the Cosmos Club on Seel Street.

Ah, the Cosmos. Soft and trippy. Floating above Seel Street, more dream than bar. In that womblike space, you could experience the full effects of the psychedelic experience on nothing more than half a pack of fags and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale.

There has, however, never been anything more damaging to one’s self-esteem than catching your reflection in one of the Cosmos mirrors just as the lights came on at the end of the night. From Michael Clarke in 1966 to Wurzel Fucking Gummidge in an instant. Woe.

The Cosmos is gone now, of course. Everyone’s down the Krazyhouse, students mostly. Waiting for Smells Like Teen Spirit to come on so they can head to the dancefloor and maybe grab some tits. Not my scene, like. My scene is the dream.

I’m on the bed, strumming aimlessly, waiting for something to happen. Three of us live here — me, Sice, and Karl Sabino, whose band The Poppyfield we supported at our first Planet X gig, back when it was in Temple Street. Karl is boyish, bowl-headed, confident, and smells like sweets. I’ve never met anyone who smells so good. I needed to know what he was spraying on himself so I could borrow it and spray it on my self. I could have just asked, but that felt too scary. So, the other night, when we were heading down to the Planet, I pretended that I’d left something back at the flat. Not a great plan, since I don’t have anything, but nobody seemed to give a shit anyway.

I slipped into his room and there it was, calling to me from a shelf. Obsession by Calvin Klein. I sprayed it on my face, my coat and my denim crotch. I started to feel a bit faint from the fumes but I smelled fucking great.

I caught up with the others. We ambled up Huskisson Street toward the cathedral, halfway between the sky and the Mersey; a contented brotherhood. Time slowed for once, and I started thinking that maybe I should start trying to appreciate what I have and not dwell on what I..

“You smell nice,” says Karl.

“I smell amazing.”

““YOU SMELL NICE^”. Fucking benders.”

An angry old man, must be at least forty, steps into my Ready Brek glow and pushes his unfathomable anger into my face. There are a few of these men in Liverpool. Entire lives built around being angry at hats.

“Sack de ‘at, dickead” is still my favourite — shouted at me across Bold Street one small, pale morning and this guy looks like he might deliver something equally quotable.

“Get a fucking job,” he says. He looks me up and down “What the fuck have you come as?”

That one’s gold. He follows it with, “Sprayed on your mum’s perfume, didja?”

“No, I sprayed on your mum’s perfume after I fucked her,” I say, much later, to myself.

A student on a bike rides past in a hat and distracts him from his work.

“FUCKING BENDER!” he shouts after the cyclist while we slip back into the shadows.

I’m flailing away on my favourite chord shape—the one that sounds like MBV no matter what you play it on. It’s a C chord, played on the eighth fret but not barred. I play the E and B strings with my first finger, keep the G open, and use my ring and pinkie to hold down the D and A strings, with the thumb holding down the C root on the E string. When I’m playing, I slowly move my hand back and forth, to replicate the whammy—slipping into the B position and back up to the C

Back on the bed, a pattern starts to emerge. Sice drops in with a spliff. We smoke squidge with fags. I can make a joint, but only by laying it flat and folding it carefully. Too fiddly to roll. Now when we’re on tour, Scottie, our guitar tech, likes to shout “Fold us a joint, Martin!” while I’m onstage trying to look cool.

After a couple of hours, it’s done. The lyrics are half nothing. Gone are the scarecrows, carnivals and kaleidoscopes of the first album. I’m trying something new, something that sounds like something. I dunno. This one starts with me “missing” my girlfriend. I do miss her, sort of. More in the abstract. She lives elsewhere. I see her when I see her.

But the second half is something:

I could attempt to turn away

But I know I can't escape myself

Don’t expect any sense

You’ll find it’s just a waste of time

I’m deffo in there, somewhere.

Chord-wise, it’s got an Everything Flows vibe and I’ve somehow convinced myself enough time has passed since The Stone Roses album, which I don’t even like, for me to get away with using “Have You Seen Her” as a chorus. Shameless.

I try to be a good writer. I’ve got three pens and a jotter (in which I have jotted very little). When I was living round the corner in Huskisson Street, I had my grandad’s old ribbon typewriter sat on a table in an alcove next to the large, grand and unused fireplace but all I could get out of it was ink on my hands, table and clothes. My mind is like a busy street scene played at double speed. I can’t keep a straight thought in me head.

I thought all the acid I’d taken would lead to some profound insight, but that hasn’t happened. I’m getting bored of the 12-hour trips now. The tabs are probably cut with strychnine or something. Something that keeps you up all night, anxious, paranoid, exhausted. I like the peak — a couple of hours lying on the floor watching the ceiling spin while Abbey Road plays over and over.

I run through the song a few more times. I’m pretty sure all the bits are there. It’s easily the best thing I’ve written. Tomorrow we’ll work on it in Bob’s squat down the hill — again on Seel Street. I go into the hall, climb on Karl’s bike, and ride it into Sice’s room.

“I’m Jackie Charlton!” I yell. Don’t ask me why.

“You done?” he asks. “I want to go to bed.”

“Think so. Come and have a listen.”

I sit on the bed, pick up the guitar and start to play. But when it comes to the singing, I can’t do it. Physically. My mouth won’t open. I’m second guessing myself. What if it’s shit? What if he doesn’t like it?

He leaves and comes back. I’m still frozen.

I’ve been playing my songs for Sice for years. Why now? It’s not him — though we haven’t been getting on great and maybe moving in together might’ve been a mistake, but this is part of something wider. A pattern. I call it Eliot’s Shadow — the force that stops me saying and doing the things I want to say and do.

I’m in the vocal booth at Protocol and it’s coming up to my part. Everything is turned up full, and when it comes to my bit, I howl my truth into the maelstrom. The music ends and I take a moment to compose myself before I head back into the control room. Nobody has spoken to me on the talkback—I must have nailed it on the first go. Hurrah!

Tim and Alan are at the desk, pretending to patch leads. Sice and Bob are on the couch, pretending to read the music papers. Guy Fixen, our engineer, is pretending to tidy cups and ashtrays.

“Can we play it back?” I ask.

Alan rewinds the tape and presses play.

“On the big speakers, please.”

He switches them on and whacks the volume up. This is great.

The track sounds full, lush. The drums and bass pound. The guitars soar. Holy shit, we’re getting good at this. I close my eyes and let the sound wash over me. I almost forget about the vocal but when it comes in, two thoughts hit me at once.

First: the whole track has been recorded out of tune and time

Second: I sound like I’m being fucked with a stick

.