Save for the Stone Roses’ gig at Spike Island, to which I couldn’t go as I was twelve, the town in which I grew up was a musical desert. And when you’re fourteen and rank Napalm Death and Autopsy in your top five bands, it’s a desperate situation. The struggling ‘North Records’ had finally closed for good, so any meaningful purchase had to be made in nearby Liverpool.
In 1993 I was sixteen and had been making the trip for a couple of years, when Matt suggested that this time, instead of going home, we should go to the pub. ‘Extremes’ record shop on Mathew Street was next door to the unimaginatively named ‘Lennon’s Bar’. We reasoned that it was as good as any other place and went down the steps.
‘Extremes’ Now appears to be a pizza shop claiming some sort of tenuous link with the Beatles. Like everything fucking else in Liverpool.
Now I was by no means one of the cool kids at school, I got good grades and largely behaved myself, furthermore I looked like that sort of kid so it was with some trepidation that I entered the gloomy cellar bar. Part way in Matt had a moment of uncertainty and I found myself approaching the solitary staff member. I had no idea what to ask for but I knew it would be bad form to spend too long studying the pumps, ‘Two goldies, please’ I ventured.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Two goldies, please?’
‘Ohh, goldens? Er yeah, sure’
Three quid later and I was in possession of the first two drinks I’d ever bought in a pub. We sat down and Matt asked what we were drinking; buoyed by my recent success I explained that I knew all about what to order at a bar because I’d worked on and off as a glass collector in a social club and that he shouldn’t worry about it, loads of people drank goldies. One thing I had failed to factor in however was that the clientele in the social club were also well into their fifties and sixties, and so as we sat smoking Silk Cut cigarettes and playing the the Kinks and T-Rex on the jukebox, we probably cut slightly strange figures with our middle-aged drinks and ‘Carcass’ t-shirts.
Lennon’s Bar became a regular haunt on a Saturday afternoon. We would get drunk and then stagger off to the station to catch the train home, clutching enormous bags of crisps and second-hand Nirvana LPs. Eventually, we stopped bothering with the record shops and just went out drinking. We began to make friends in the bar.
At this point, if not actually saying out loud ‘Yeah. Fucking chinny reck-ON’, you are at least thinking it. Two kids, barely shaving, hanging out in a city centre bar with all their boho mates does sound a little far-fetched but given that we were still drinking lager mixed with bitter, and occasionally experimenting with the odd mild, you will appreciate that we were not the smoothest of operators. Our ‘friends’ were actually just nutters; one of them would only ever talk about church organs and another played a cardboard guitar in the street for pennies. We had been brought up to be polite however and so we ended up stuck with them and it was this innate politeness that saw me take up pipe smoking.
The bar was usually pretty empty during the day, (this was probably why two obviously under-age customers were allowed to stay) but now and again the sort of person who tries to sell you crap on the street would wander in and we were the obvious targets. An artist drew my picture for a fiver, Matt once ended up with a ‘learn sign language’ card, and a hippie sort, selling joss sticks and the like conned me into buying a small wooden pipe for a quid fifty. Organ Man wandered in that day and sat at our table. ‘Leave them alone’ came a voice from behind the bar, but Organ Man was not to be deterred ‘Have you been to St. Michaels? How is the organ there? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.’
‘I, er, I haven’t seen that one…I don’t think’
He spies the tiny wooden pipe on the table
‘Oh you smoke a pipe? I didn’t know’
‘No, er…this guy sold it to….’
‘Here, let me fill it’
Organ Man produced a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and proceeded to fill my pipe for me. Matt went for what I thought was a suspiciously early piss.
I managed to get the pipe lit without too much trouble and was sitting there holding it when Matt returned and Organ Man began to quiz him on St. Michael’s. As he prattled on, I chanced a go at my new found hobby and puffed at my pipe, the bowl glowed pleasingly and I produced a cloud of blue-grey smoke; I attempted to puff further whilst holding it to my mouth. This second attempt however was slightly less successful, and I accidentally blew down the pipe. A wad of burning tobacco about the size of a hazelnut shot out of the bowl and went about eighteen inches into the air, before coming down on the table between us all ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Organ Man before continuing with his interrogation of Matt. I began to feel slightly sick from the tobacco smoke and so hastily made my way to the gents. The toilets were quite obviously midway through being refurbished but with watering mouth and rising gorge I failed to notice and bowked into the steel trough attached to the wall. ‘Christ’ I thought, as I wiped my eyes and spat, ‘that pipe isn’t attached to anything’. And sure enough, as thin, foamy puke slowly swirled down the drain, it began to pour out of the other end of the as yet unconnected plumbing and spread all over the heavy vinyl flooring. The game was up, we were the only two in the bar that day and now there was sick all over the bogs. There was only one thing for it, run away.
We had to get a bus home that day as well, and I came within an ace of pissing in my jeans. I wasn’t very good at drinking.
TAAAALES APROPOOOS OF NOOOOOOOTHING! 