Marcus was a key perpetrator as I’ve made a passing reference to above. If he could have only kept his mouth shut for once, then a considerably more pleasant and convivial night might have been enjoyed by all. But he had to be the smart arse. I'm pretty certain that if he hadn't said what he said when he said it, that we’d all almost certainly have been tucked up in our beds by no later than 3am, with a steady and undisturbed eight or nine hours of zeds or more in front of us to look forward to. But the night went down a completely different path because of him, and there was nothing that anyone could have done or said to stop it once it all kicked off.
He sauntered casually into the gents and noticed one of the Mods from the end of the bar, a ginger haired, goofy looking geezer, just standing there having a slash at the trough. OK so here’s the problem. Most of us would have just got on with things right? You know, had our piss and left? Not said a word? Not Marcus. Ohhh no. He had to have his fun.
“So,” he said as he strolled in, whistling a little tune to himself as he sidled up to the punter in question. Standing next to him at the urinary he continued. “It’s yourself,” he said, nodding across at him eye to eye as he readied himself slowly for urination. He was standing way too close to him also, so much so in fact that their shoulders were practically touching. A total invasion of the poor bastard’s privacy so, and enough to piss anybody off in a similar situation. He undid his fly then and pointed the baldy fella at the porcelain, shaking it about a bit at first and pulling at it then aggressively for a second or two more. Just to liven it up as it were and get everything moving down below. After which he offered a handshake to the Mod which was of course, suitably ignored.
.
“So it’s ‘The Who’ then is it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswQl-hcvU0 ” he continued, undeterred “That’s WHO you like is it, ha ha? So what would you say to me then young modster, is so good about The fucking Who? And tell me also by the way, why, just as a matter of interest don’t you know, you wankers… sorry, excuse me, my manners, dearie me. You GUYS.....feel it necessary to wear coats that from a distance make you look not unlike snot coloured sting rays in drainpipes? http://www.atomretro.com/product_info.cfm?product_id=11960”
Marcus was of course referring to the oversized overcoats the Mods used to wear, the ‘parkas’ to which I alluded briefly before. His description of them, although undeniably unflattering, was to be fair not a million miles away from the truth. Parkas definitely had a kind of ‘open parachute’ look to them and on a windy day you wouldn’t have been that surprised to see a flock of Mods levitating over your head, making vain attempts to reach terra firma before the blustery conditions forced them any further upwards. As modes of travel go in fact (and on to a slightly less frivolous note) mods more often than not went about on these Vespa or Lambretta type scootery thingamajigs. And seem of the opinion also, from what I could make out at the time anyway, that the World would be a far better place if everywhere looked and felt like the seaside town of Brighton sometime in and around the year of 1966. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Quadrophenia+a+way
The ginger Mod didn't engage with Marcus anyway, and disappeared out of the toilets as fast as his legs could take him. Before ‘the total fucking mental case in the jacks’ as he’d describe Marcus to his buddies moments later, lost it completely. Marcus shrugged drunkenly to nobody in particular, as if to say, ‘I tried lads, but what more can I do?’ After which he tidied himself up, splashed a little water on his fingers and made his way back out into the bar. Just as he was passing by the Mods he became acutely aware of an uncomfortable wetness enveloping him quickly from the general ear area downwards. Before he had time to know what was going on so, or even protect himself from the mayhem that was to follow, a total melee had broken out around him, with arms and legs flailing about all over the place and bottles and glasses somersaulting through the air. His instinctive reaction was to duck, which he did, but this was as bad an option as he could have gone for under the circumstances. He realised soon afterwards that every knee, ankle and foot in his general immediacy was raining down on him incessantly from above, with a considerable proportion of the feet in question being of the winklepicker and therefore pointed variety. He thought he might die down there as it goes, until a knight in shining armour came wading through the throng and lifted him out by the oxters. Putting him to one side, Stretch pushed himself back in again then and began to take the Mods on one by one.
OK so if there’s one thing you can say about Stretch it’s that he’ll never, ever, start a fight. Ever. But by Jaysus, if it needs finishing, he’s your only man! The Mods were persistent enough though and kept coming back for more. A sea of skinny ties and black and white suits heaving back and forth over and over again. To which Stretch amusingly referred to afterwards as a kind of two tone hokey cokey on speed. His energy dwindled eventually, and he was more than a little on the ropes as they persevered. All looked lost until a lone voice of apparent reason cut through the ensuing madness. Like a hot knife through butter. The following words shouted shrilly through the chaotic pandemonium with purpose.
“Leds, leds, come on now, for feck sake haw, don’t be such a pack a feckin’ langers now, haw!?”
It was Rory Gallagher.
Marcus, who’d made his way back to where I was standing, nudged me on the elbow and spoke.
“Fuck me Freakers” he said, “Is that Rory Gallagher?”
“It certainly is Marcus,” I responded, with my own features as incredulous and disbelieving as the rest on display in the general purlieu. Well, most of them anyway.
‘What the fuck is Rory Gallagher doing here?’ we were all thinking.
Except Stretch. The thick fuck.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked Rory, after which the vast majority of the patrons in the pub put aside their tribal enmity for the moment, and erupted into a sustained and communal barrage of laughter.
“Who the fuck are you? Jesus Fuckin H!” we sniggered as one. Only the greatest axe man to ever come out of this God forsaken island, period. Even the Mods knew who Rory Gallagher was.
“That’s fucking Rory Gallagher, Stretch!” I said to him helpfully. “Only the greatest axe man to ever come out of this God forsaken island, period!”
Stretch remained nonplussed with the suspicious and disbelieving side of him taking over. (In other words I think he thought that I was taking the piss).
“Are you sure about that Johnny?” he answered. “Because from where I’m standing this geezer looks like a bit of a fucking lumberjack to be honest!”
Sacrilege. Bloody hell. We shushed him down as much as we could in case the legend overheard. Rory was definitely wearing a check shirt though in fairness, so he did have a look of someone who might very easily have just returned from the woods after chopping up a few old logs for the fire. Axe man indeed, ha ha!
Following on from that then, things went from fairly bad to very much worse.
“So he’s not a bog warrior?” Stretch continued unabated, “because I could have sworn that was a fucking Cork accent I heard there Johnny! So is he a muck savage or fucking what?”
I must confess that this one had me kind of stumped also, as I’d always thought of Rory as being from Donegal. Marcus though, oracle of pretty much fucking everything, confirmed to me that the great man was definitely from the, er, ‘real’ capital.
“Do you have a feckin’ problem with Cork boy haw?” said Rory, sizing up to Stretch and throwing a few shapes. He'd unfortunately overheard Stretch's previous less than complimentary exchange with yours truly, regarding the relative merits good or bad of his Munster homestead.
I don’t know if you ever met Rory yourself but he always seemed like a mild mannered enough chap to me. I’d seen him being interviewed once or twice on the telly before, and he was a cordial enough soul usually in his overall dealings with people. The Rory presented to us now however, was an entirely different Rory to the one we all knew and loved from his public persona. A Rory who looked like he’d have absolutely no problem at all kneeing you in the bollocks, if ever a situation arose that required it. Stretch didn’t scare easily though (being 6 foot 4 this was a luxury he could easily afford) so wasn’t too concerned about Rory’s confrontational manner.
“No problem at all Rory, no problem at all with Cork people,” he said calmly, meeting the hostile Munster man’s stare squarely in the eye. And not crumbling one bit under the pressure.
“Except of course for the fact,” he continued, “that they can all go and suck my Jackeen cock!”
The crowd was aghast now with most reeling in shock. Had Stretch really said to Rory what we all thought Stretch had just said to Rory? Rory was clearly flabbergasted also, but steadied himself all the same. Preparing for action I suppose. He was not a violent man per se but there was only so much a proud Cork man could take. I don’t think Stretch was expecting it to be honest but he certainly knew about it when his head was bouncing off the floor two seconds later. If he hadn’t been so busy laughing and joking with the guys nearest to him, he might have noticed the haymaker speedily making its way upwards towards his general lower jaw area. Over confidence probably, which as you know can very often bring down the biggest of them. Think Napoleon and Hitler and winters in Russia and you won’t be too far off the mark. Stretch lazily assumed so I think that Rory, being a man of music, might not pack too much of a punch. On that score however, he was very seriously mistaken.
Much might have happened after that. Stretch might have risen, dusted himself off, shook Rory’s hand and offered to buy him a pint. By way of an apology for his suggestive and insulting remarks regarding the rebel county and its’ inhabitants apparent predilection for the administering of fellatio to individuals from the REAL capital. Or he might have tried to retaliate perhaps, with the two of them duking it for the duration, for everyone present’s entertainment and pleasure. Rory himself even might have calmed things down, by offering to buy a pint for everyone in the audience, and afterwards then perhaps, performing a medley of blues or skiffle standards for the general populace until the wee small hours of the morning.
Nothing like that came to pass however. What did happen nobody could have predicted it in a million years. Not if you gave them a million chances to win a million dollars to come up with the correct answer. Rumpelstiltsken. It was absurd and surreal and when I think back on it now I can scarcely believe that it actually happened. From the back of the bar and near enough to where the dance area was situated, a faintly recognisable tune had broken out. Before long others along the way were joining in, with the chorus eventually making its way up to the front of the pub where we were situated ourselves. We realised soon enough what the song was and even Rory, who was still seriously pissed off as a result of Stretch’s insulting rhetoric, couldn’t help but leave all that behind when he realised what the crowd had started to sing. He dropped his guard immediately and shook his head. And then smiled before giving one of those ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ kind of looks to everyone in his general midst. After which he threw his shoulders back and heartily joined in the song with the rest of the congregation. The whole episode came to represent one of the most joyous and fun-filled few minutes we’d ever experience, and for the briefest of moments in this otherwise innocuous looking basement dump of a bar in Dublin city centre, the world to everyone there anyway, seemed to be in wondrous and peaceful harmony.
The words of the song were as follows:
“I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK, I sleep all night and I work all day,
He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK, he sleeps all night and he works all day,
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, I go to the Lava treeeee, On Wednesday I go shopping and
have buttered scones for tea.
He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch, he goes to the lava treeeee On Wednesday he goes
shopping and has buttered scones for tea.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZa26_esLBE
And so on and so forth.
Rory, being the excellent sport that he was, threw himself into the tune ardently towards the end, so much so in fact that he very appropriately took up the singular part of the lumberjack and encouraged everybody else there to take up the relevant chorus line responses as and when required. By the end of it all he was so devoted to the number and keen to ensure that our communal delivery was 100% on the money, that he actually climbed up on to the bar and started to conduct the swaying throng beneath him with a straw.
But then it ended rather abruptly and we all came back down to earth with a bang. Rory quite literally as it happens, having slipped on a slice of lemon on the bar and inadvertently somersaulting onto the waiting floor below. It was a pretty bad fall also, and he seemed to have sprained an ankle; so his curmudgeonly demeanour made a re-appearance soon enough and he was not in the least bit pleased. One of the Mods at the end of the bar, the ginger one again I think, said something smart-arsed about him then within earshot, and Rory went totally ballistic all over again. He’d never liked those fucking Mods anyway (his words, not mine) so began to weigh into them with serious gusto. There was only one side we were ever going to be on ourselves here of course, and it was the work of a mere moment for us to align ourselves accordingly, and get stuck in on the great man’s behalf. Before we knew it so there was bedlam afoot once again, with the barmen (who as I’ve said before were usually more than happy to let things take their natural course) finally having enough of this horseshit and calling up the boys in blue for assistance. The coppers arrived soon enough so, and before any of us knew anything about it, we were in the process of being processed at the cop shop in Harcourt Street. In fairness to Rory though he didn’t pull any of that ‘do you know who I am?’ bollocks at the time, and was more than happy to spend the night in the drunk tank with the rest of us. As far as he was concerned (and to his eternal credit as well) he was every bit as at fault as the next man. So you know yourself, and as he said himself at the time also, “If you do the crime leds, you do the time, haw?!”
Fuzzy headed and embarrassed so, we reconvened on the steps of the station the following morning, with Rory looking particularly sheepish and rueful about the entire fiasco.
“I’m fierce sorry lads,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I’ve really no idea what came over me like.”
“Ahh you’re grand Rory,” I said consolingly, “sure it could happen to a bishop!”
If it was a drunken, psychotic fucking mental case of a bishop, I mused further.
“Well I don’t know about you lads,” said Marcus indignantly to nobody in particular, “but I’ve never experienced such wanton brute force and ignorance as I did in that shithole last night!”
Rory flinched.
“Are you taking the fucking piss boy?” he said to Marcus, his hackles on the rise once again to accompany the increasing cadence of his sing-song Corkonian lilt.
Marcus was perplexed. ‘What the hell is this lunatic on?’ I’m sure he was thinking. I could understand Rory though. I could see where he was coming from. The problem here was that unless you were an actual ‘big time’ fan of Rory’s music, which Marcus, although he liked him, wasn’t, there was just no way in hell you could have ever known that Rory had a song called ‘Brute, Force and Ignorance’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqdSl2jFjlE. Which was why Rory was under the impression that Marcus was taking the mickey, by utilising those exact words to describe our current situation.
“Ahh no, Rory, Ahh no,” I said, attempting to diffuse the situation before it all kicked off again. “Marcus doesn’t know you have a song of that name, seriously, give him a break dude! He only knows a few of your numbers, maybe four or five at best. ‘Shadow Play’ I think http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3S4XckG5LQ. Possibly ‘Loneshark Blues’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0bSCCstGv0? You have to believe me here Rory, I’m not messin’, it’s the truth!”
“Well OK then,” said Rory, gruffly shaking it off and calming himself down a tad. “Just so long as it is just that and he’s not taking the fucking piss like?!” For some unearthly reason also, Rory had decided to set the last five words of this previous salvo to the opening bars of Bizet’s Carmen overture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQI5LtRtrb0. In other words, as words, their delivery was not in any way what one might ever consider to be monotone.
“Seriously Rory, he doesn’t know it, trust me,” I said, breathing freely once again.
“But he should know it of course,” I continued, attempting to placate the legend even further. A bad move. “Your stuff is the fucking business Rory. Marcus, Jesus Christ, I mean he has absolutely no fucking taste at all!”
A pregnant silence.
“Are you taking the complete fucking piss AGAIN like?” shrieked Rory at me, in absolute consternation now and fit to be tied even more than before. In terms of vocal delivery on this occasion also by the way, we had apparently moved on to Rimsky Korsokov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_p6-cAMr_g.
Not that that was especially relevant in the current circumstances however as by now we were booting it like fuck and were already halfway down Harcourt Street and past the Iveagh Gardens. With an enraged and fist-shaking Cork guitarist on our tail. I really must learn to keep my big mouth shut. ‘Taste’ indeed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fz6Qzzba0E Fucking hell.
Thankfully enough though Rory’s ankle was still fucked from the night before, so we made good our escape easily enough. Noticing his incapacitation, we turned around one last time and collectively flipped the bird noisily at the infuriated and lame (thankfully) Munster man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCgkrxIltwE
Before turning on our heels again and heading off back in the general direction of Grafton Street.
Chapter 7 - Mrs Quinn’s Jewellery Box
Marcus was not impressed. And if you consider the fact that both Bob Dylan AND Carlos Santana performed at the Slane concert in 1984, you can readily imagine why the spectacle before him now was giving him such an almighty pain in the bollocks. And even more so because of the fact that in 1984 certain restrictions (i.e., the fact that he was just seventeen years old and had strict parents) had prohibited him from attending that totally auspicious and awe inspiring event. He was expected instead now, to tolerate this painful and bilious drivel. The day had started badly but had improved. And had then become really, really bad, and then back to reasonably acceptable. And now? Pretty grim. This mind-fuckingly ghastly damp squib. A complete and unadulterated let-down. From the steep incline of the hill which was situated no more than a hundred paces from the foot of the castle, he cast his eye over a sea of forty thousand or so youthful faces beneath him. And saw abject misery in every one. In addition to this (and as if the current situation wasn’t already dismal enough) some knobhead had pissed what must have been close to the entire contents of his bladder into a two litre plastic 7up bottle, and was in the process now of twirling both it and himself around maniacally, dancing and shrieking like a demented dervish and spraying the aforementioned receptacle’s offending discharge over anyone and everyone in his general immediacy. Under normal circumstances of course this might have seemed intolerably repulsive. As it was now however, and taking into account what the concert-going audience was being expected to endure at this precise juncture, the actions of this drunken idiot were in some strange way unusually pertinent and apt. Almost I would say, as if providence herself had decreed that the deadly assault on the senses from the stage might just as well have a physical manifestation also. Before we get in to the main details of this incomparably woeful performance however, and everything indeed that came to pass after, let’s start as we always do. At the beginning.
Marcus lived on Swan’s Nest Road which was this run down and squalid, council house type area in the north Dublin suburb of Kilbarrack. As a neighbourhood it was nowhere near as dodgy as people made it out to be though, but the Quinn’s, aka Marcus’s parents, were quite unnecessarily house-proud all the same. As if to compensate I suppose for the apparently inferior nature of their home's location. It was all they could afford at the time of purchase you see, and even though he'd tried harder than anyone to move his career along and make enough money to relocate his family to a more exalted location, it just never seemed to quite happen for Mr Quinn. And boy did Mrs Quinn let him know about it! Mrs Quinn, aka Delia to her buddies at the golf club in Howth, was a diminutive middle aged woman, whose physical stature perfectly suited the small minded bigotry that resided in her soul. As far she was concerned her immediate neighbours were mortals of a lesser stature, and she would do anything she needed to do to shut them out, both on a physical and symbolic level. The Quinn house looked and felt as though it belonged elsew