Peter’s sister Amy-Jo Doherty was the only person at Brunel I really felt a connection with during my short time studying there. From my vantage point in Whitchurch I’d imagined that, when going to London to university, I’d take rooms, and there’d be a succession of characters who’d process through my digs wearing bottle-green tweeds and carrying armfuls of leather-bound books tied with packing string – I think in my head I was going to Oxford circa 1930 in an Evelyn Waugh novel. What I actually found were people with golf clubs and Best of 1994 dance CDs. Amy-Jo was the one person I met there who seemed engaged with the sort of things I was looking for. We became best friends and she’d often tell me fantastic stories about Peter, an aspiring poet who was a year younger than her and still lived in the sticks. When he finally came up to visit, she asked me to look after him while she went to an evening class. He wasn’t really as I expected: very tall and wearing a kind of plastic jacket, looking quite ‘street’ – but then he’s always courageous with his outfits. The family resemblance was more than incredible. I’d heard a lot of good things about him, and he was interested in me because his big sister used to come home and talk about the new world of university, and particularly about this friend she’d met.
Straight away we began to talk about music. He was a massive Morrissey and Smiths fan, and his sister had asked me to write down the tablature to ‘This Charming Man’, but I didn’t know anything about The Smiths, and I’d transcribed ‘Charmless Man’ by Blur, instead. He didn’t play guitar very well, so I showed him a few things, and he played me his one song, ‘The Long Song’, which lived up to its name. I had some songs with terrible lyrics, and we started doing musical things together; we bonded over music very quickly. That first night, too, we had an argument over the meaning of a word. I can’t even remember what the word was now, but, finally, it felt as if I was getting the intellectual stimulation I’d been searching for and had been expecting from university. For me, it was a joyful moment.
We began to meet up every time he came to town. He lived and breathed London – he’d go to charity shops and buy massive shoes and corduroy trousers, kitsch tea sets and Chris Barber vinyls, and he had a certificate to show he’d climbed the Monument – and just loved to draw it all in, for all the right reasons. I found that very charming. I was learning things from him, too, although I wouldn’t have readily admitted it. I was performing the role of the older, experienced guy, and I’d try to play it like he was the little’un nipping at my feet. But in reality Peter knew a lot about the world I wanted to know. He’d read and read, and searched for authors to inspire him, and, by helping this passion come alive in me, helped me become more the person I wanted to be. He only made the trip to London every once in a while, so things progressed slowly. We’d said from the very beginning that we wanted to start a band, and kept on repeating it but to little effect. Amy would get him on the phone when we were out at night, drunk, and he’d say, ‘What about this band, then?’ That was all it was for a while – good intentions and drunken promises. It must have been a couple of years after we first met that we finally sat down properly, at my house. We wrote a song that became ‘The Good Old Days’ that first night, along with quite a few others, and I remember us sitting there, staring at each other in silence as the clock ticked towards dawn, searching for the right words. We were trying to find a line for the middle eight, and he’d tell you differently but I’m absolutely sure it was me who came up with it. Finally, we had: ‘A list of things we said we’d do tomorrow.’ We’ve argued since about whose line it was, but that seemed to be a moment when everything slotted into place, and it was quite a forerunner of things to come.
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London, its streets and neighbourhoods, litter my lyrics, and I can always find some part of it to suit my mood. I first felt plugged in to the city at a place called the Foundry on Old Street. They’re knocking it down now to build a grand hotel or something, to cash in on the area’s cool – Shoreditch surgically removing its own heart – but Peter used to run a night there called Arcadia, a performance poetry thing, which he used to revel in. I’d come along and play the piano very badly, but it was art so the quality of the performance didn’t really matter. We’d get free Guinness and we’d host a raffle to make money. I think the most auspicious prize we gave away was half a gram of speed and a Charles Manson record, but it always made us a couple of bob for a few beers and a fine breakfast.
London really began for me, though, in Camden and Soho. I have such a strong image of Camden from those days, entrancing but horrific, edgy and dark and hilarious, at least partly thanks to some of the characters who made up the Camden contingent. Irish Paul was in a band called The Samaritans and was the kind of legend that my Camden was made of. He was part of our schooling, older than us, as was Essex Tom and another guy called Max. They were the big boys, the older brothers, and when they spoke you pricked up your ears and listened. I was always a bit cautious around them, though, as they’d drink, fuck and fight whoever or whatever they could find. We’d be walking down the street and Max would have this really demonic look in his eye, then pause, apologize, and leg it up Parkway to knock seven bells out of a couple of students who were being lairy and drunk. Then he’d come back again and resume the conversation as if nothing had happened. Essex Tom I remember from his run-in with John Hassall’s girlfriend, a girl called Jenny who’d had a boob job and therefore instantly became known as Jenny with the Big Knackers on Holloway Road. It wasn’t always poetry and lofty ideals with The Libertines. Anyway, one day we were all sat around in a pub and Tom took John’s camera from the table and went to the toilets to film his dick – a dick, moreover, with a notorious kink in it. John took the camera home without realizing and, later, Jenny with the Big Knackers on Holloway Road stumbled across it and recognized Tom from the footage. I think her relationship with John was doomed from thereon in.
Irish Paul, on the other hand, had a Dickensian air about him, and I remember when he invited all of his mates to a celebratory dinner one night at the Mango Room in Camden just after it had opened. ‘My ship’s come in,’ he told the assembled company. ‘You’ve stuck with me through the lean times, each sorted me out when I’ve needed it, so now it’s your turn. I’m going to treat you all to a night out. Tuck in, fill your boots.’
I felt touched, a real part of his gang, the inner circle, and we had a great evening. Then, at the end of an incredible meal, just as the bill was presented, Irish Paul got up: ‘I hope you’ve got your running shoes on, you boys,’ he said, then he ran straight out of the restaurant and away down the street into the night. There was a significant pause and then all hell broke loose as we all bolted for the door. It was like the rush to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon.
There was another Paul, Rock Paul, an American, who’d been a fixture at the Good Mixer through all the different crowds and bands who came and went. He just sat up at the bar, watched them come and watched them go, and drank. One night, we were all in there, about to embark on a session, and Rock Paul walked in looking utterly stricken. ‘I’ve had some really bad news,’ he said, and it fell very quiet, the only noise the clicking of balls on the pool table behind us. ‘I’m terminally ill with cancer.’ We were shattered. All I could think about was an empty stool, another face fading from the scene, and the Mixer, Camden, London, everywhere being the poorer for it. It got very sad, and slow, and we started to exchange stories, buy drinks for the fellow, reminisce about the good times we’d had and the good times we’d dedicate to his memory when he’d gone. At the end of the night, we were all mellow and drunk, giving hugs and saying goodbyes, and Rock Paul, on his way out, admitted he’d made the whole thing up. That he just wanted us to buy drinks for him. We were horrified and dumbfounded, but slightly in awe that he’d play the cancer card just to get free drinks. Passing him in the doorway, Welsh Paul gave him a level look that suggested he’d best not try that again, but I think that even he admired the gall of it. Cancer in exchange for a few drinks: how do you meter that out?
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