Bit of a Blur by Alex James

wedge of cash. We split it between us. There was ninety quid each, a fortune. Jason drove through the night to Colchester, where we stayed, at Damon’s folks. Colchester’s not that far from Cambridge, which was the next gig.
    We went to bed insensible and woke up invincible. Cambridge was a town completely different in every detail from the one where we’d spent the previous day. It was very odd, perpetually being somewhere new, and with some money in my pocket. The following day we were on a university campus in Staffordshire, playing football with a band called the Family Cat. Jason was our star player. He’d had a trial for West Ham. We were bottom of the bill that night, but there was a bit of a rumpus going on about the picture of the girl on the hippo on the record sleeve. It was degrading to women in the opinion of some of the young ladies at the college, and they mounted a protest and tried to stop us from playing. It seemed ridiculous, but it was in the newspapers the next day. Quite why that was in the news over everything else that was happening in the world that day was hard to fathom. Maybe it was just a good picture.

Difficult Second Single Syndrome
    The really great thing about the band was that it was just that, a band: four people. Together, we were greater than the sum of our parts. Damon was dynamic, an initiator. The whole thing was driven by his energy, but he and Graham were childhood best friends and complemented each other perfectly, musically. Graham was simply the best guitar player of his generation. He was consumed by music; listening to it, playing it, whistling or tapping his fingers the whole time. He was biologically a guitar player in the same way that Damon was a born frontman. The bass guitar was my instrument. Unlike the others, I hadn’t had any formal training. I learned by listening and actually playing in bands. I was in a band from that moment I’d played my first lick in Jay Burt-Smale’s bedroom.
    I played in quite an unconventional way with no respect for the boundaries of the instrument. It was more like having someone playing a second lead guitar in the basement. The sparse mechanical precision of Dave’s drumming was well suited to two guitarists both going at it hammer and tongs. It was uncanny how, with very little discussion, whenever we were all in a room together with our instruments, it all usually just seemed to work.
    It didn’t always. The second recording session was a disaster. We needed to make another record. Steven Lovell wasn’t around, but we went back to the studio with Steve Power. Nothing went right. He even got Graham to try playing bass, which didn’t work. It was the worst session I’ve ever been on. We chose the wrong songs, and we made them worse than they were already. It all sounded crap. The guys from EMI came down and stroked their chins. Even with more experience a bad session always feels like the end of the world. There aren’t many really bad days, but they’re certain to happen, sometimes. At this embryonic stage it felt catastrophic, spending all that time and money making something that was lifeless and worthless. It was Christmas, so we all went home for a rest.
    It was nice going back to Bournemouth and being signed to EMI. I had a sense that I was changing, still growing and leaving Bournemouth behind. In the pub on Christmas Eve I ran into Jackie who I’d had a crush on at an early age that I thought I’d never recover from. She suddenly seemed like quite a small and ordinary person. She was still going out with the drummer with ten A grade ‘O’ levels. Now he was back from college, training to be an accountant. She was standing at the bar, when I went to get a drink. I said, ‘Oooooh, hello.’
    ‘What are you doing now?’ she asked, barely disguising her boredom. I said, ‘I’m an accountant.’ I talked about how happy I was doing accounts. It was really quite interesting when you got into it. I was up for