Bit of a Blur by Alex James Page B

Everyone in his new band, Levitation, had the mad-eye thing, especially the drummer. It was Neil’s night, really, Syndrome. Neil was the DJ at Syndrome on Thursdays and the number one indie fan in the whole of London. I’m sure A&R men took his opinions more seriously than their own. Neil just liked listening to music. He had no agenda whatsoever other than the fact that he particularly loved scruffy outsider guitar bands, and he hitched around the country seeing them. He came on our bus sometimes. We’d get really worried if he didn’t like something, or if he stopped stalking us. We thought it meant we’d lost our touch. Syndrome became the official headquarters of the London music underground. It didn’t get going till about midnight in there, so people who had to get up on Friday mornings weren’t likely to go. It wasn’t like it was anything worth seeing, if you weren’t in a band or an indie music journalist, although towards the end quite a lot of Japanese girls started to show up. We didn’t mind, because they wanted to buy us Pernod.
    At Syndrome it was fashionable to drink Pernod with everything and, as the drinks flowed, all the bands got to know each other. It was a scene. As soon as we’d finished recording ‘There’s No Other Way’, we took it straight to Neil’s night at Syndrome, like all the other bands did. Neil used to put the records on and dance madly to them, on the empty dance floor. He was really talented at picking good songs. Someone should have given him a record company to run, or a radio station, but all he really wanted to do was flap his arms around to new music all night. We stood at the bar waiting for the reaction of the test audience of die-hard, late-night indie kids. Lush were at the bar, so were Ride: they were eager to hear if our new record was as good as theirs. It was much more nerve-racking than Juke Box Jury . Chapterhouse, who were supposed to be better than all of us, that week, were listening carefully, and Moose, who Graham really liked, and Spitfire, and Slowdive and Suede and an unassuming American guy called Kurt and his girlfriend Courtney.
    The dance floor was full when the record started. It was still full at the end of the record. It didn’t really mean anything. It was two o’clock in the morning. It was when we were getting on the tour bus the next week and it unexpectedly came on the radio that we knew something different was happening.

4
    the beginnings of success

A Glimmer of Glamour
    ‘There’s No Other Way’ was a bona fide hit. It sold more and more copies each week and crept into the top ten. People knew all the words and sang along at the concerts, which were getting bigger and madder. More dates were booked. We started to appear on television. After shows I noticed that sometimes when I met people their hands were shaking.
    We were just beginning to taste something new and extraordinary: a cocktail of adulation and freedom. Balfe called us into his office for a meeting and said, ‘Watch out, guys, success can fuck you up more than failure.’ He was an expert bubble-burster. Andy Ross kept referring to our ‘career’. Career was a dirty word. It suggested work and conformity. I was an outlaw, a rebel. I didn’t want a career. I wanted to cause havoc. I was a hedonist. I wanted to get drunk and be irresponsible.
    I was quite resolute about that. I saw life merely as an opportunity to have as much fun as possible. All young people do, I think. Up until now excess had been limited by lack of funds, by having to get up in the morning and go to language laboratory and having to behave reasonably at college. Bands are quite exceptional in having absolutely no one to answer to. Once we’d made a good record, we could all do whatever we liked, whenever we liked, for as long as we liked. If I rationalised my decadence, I’d tell myself it was the duty of rock stars to indulge themselves beyond reasonable limits. If I couldn’t be reckless