Dream On (2 page)

Dave yawned. "But you've got a shit boring job
anyway," he said. "Everyone has. And Janice hates Jeremy Kyle." He didn't
like Ritchie lumping Janice in with the rest of the evil species that was womankind,
and thus to be avoided if men were to roam free, striding unencumbered across
vast plains, like latter day Vikings. Ah yes, Vikings. Dave grinned to himself. His New Idea. Now was not the time, though; he'd wait until Shane was there,
too.

"My job's not boring," said Ritchie, hackles on the
rise. "Bricklaying is an art form."

"Yeah, I know." Sometimes Dave wondered why Ritchie
was his mate at all. Ah. Yes. Something to do with the fact that he was a
great bass guitarist - and he'd given him somewhere to live when Janice chucked
him out. Dave had hated the thought of living alone and he couldn't, he just
couldn't have gone back to his Mum's, especially not with her new man friend
hanging around - Jingo Joe, he and Shane called him. Quotes from The Daily
Express about the immigration problem provided on a daily basis. 

Ritchie was a decent sort of bloke, really.  Just a
bit one dimensional - which might be a problem when it came to the unveiling of
Thor, he could see that, now.

"You've got plenty of work coming up, haven't you?"
Ritchie said. "Lots of bills to pay in the next few weeks, mate."

"No worries," said Dave, "Phil's got us a new build out at
Fenstanton. Should be at least three months' work, then we've got some
plastering jobs and another new build in the spring."

"Nice one," Ritchie said, and nodded. "Bit of outdoor work
while the weather's still good, then indoors for the winter."

"That's right." Dave grinned. "It'll keep me in good
stead with Janice, too."

"Ah, you see, that proves my point," Ritchie
said.  "When the money comes in from this current job, the first thing I'm
going to do is collect the Stingray that's had my name on it for two months! She's a little beauty!" He put down his glass and did a quick 'air guitar',
bowed as if to an audience, and laughed.

Dave thought about the black Gibson Les Paul Custom
after which he'd been lusting for years, and, despite himself, couldn't help
feeling just a little envious of Ritchie.

Dave Bentley was born to be a rock star. Since his
elder brother made him listen to Saxon's 'Wheels of Steel' when he was eight
years old, the road ahead had stretched out bright and clear.

In 1991, when he was sixteen, he'd seen an interview
with Joe Perry of Aerosmith who'd said something along the lines of  "That's
what I do. It's my job. I play arena rock."

Dave Bentley's ambition in life was cemented at
that precise moment. When someone asked him what he did for a living, he wanted
to say not "I'm a builder's labourer" but "I play arena rock."

His first guitar arrived on his seventeenth
birthday - bugger the driving lessons his mum had wanted him to have. A second
hand Tokai Telecaster. Natural wood finish with a red scratch plate. As he learned
to play it, though, he discovered that he didn't just want to sit there
cracking out the intro to 'Smoke on the Water', like some of his mates. He
wanted to sing his own stuff. He had a pretty good voice, he reckoned - a bit
like Kurt Cobain, he thought - and he could write, too. He was thrilled to
find that he could think up new riffs, and lyrics. They just popped into his
head, and it excited the hell out of him.  When he wrote his first song, 'Voice
in the Dark', he thought his chest was going to explode. He had it! He could
write great rock songs! This was just the beginning! Okay, the song sounded
quite a lot like Nirvana's 'Smells like Teen Spirit', but that was good, wasn't
it?

He'd experienced the same exploding chest sensation
this week, when he thought up his New Idea.

He was back on track now, having meandered from his
chosen path for several years; somewhere along the line, life had got in the
way of his rock 'n' roll dreams.

Life, Janice, and Harley.

When he first met Janice Brown he thought she would
be just the latest in a long line of casual, forgettable ships that sailed his
way in the night, from time to time. Of the two girls, she was the plain one -
Shane always got first pick, with his pretty-boy face, long Robert Plant curls,
and the sort of bare-faced cheek that girls seemed to love.  Dave thought of
himself as more of an acquired taste; Bryan Adams, perhaps, or maybe Kurt
Cobain on a good day, although he would never bleach his hair, of course. Didn't
really go with the leathers and bike image.

He and Janice met in The Romany, where all the
rockers and bikers and punks and Goths hung out, in the town centre of the
medium sized fenland town of Fennington St Mary, where he'd lived all his life.
Most of the ships he passed come nightfall were to be found docked in The
Romany.

Janice was a bit different, though. For only the
second time in his life, and at the age of twenty-five, Dave fell in love. Totally
unexpected. She wasn't even his type; normally he went for creative, sought
after, confident blondes (like Alison Swan - where was she now?). If Shane hadn't
had a transient hard-on for Janice's friend, they might never have met.

By the end of the evening he and Shane both agreed
that Dave had got the better end of the deal. The friend, Carolyn, had turned
out to be that tedious combination of thick and opinionated, presuming her
looks could carry her through, whereas Janice was not particularly noticeable,
but quick witted, funny; the more Dave talked to her the more he became
attracted to her twinkly green eyes, the freckles on her upturned nose, the
Colgate ring of confidence that showed every time she smiled. She had lovely
hair, too; chestnut brown, thick and shiny, which he hadn't noticed at first
because he only looked at girls with long hair (rock stars' girlfriends always
had long hair, didn't they?), but by the end of their first proper date the
next night he'd fallen in love with the way her glossy fringe and neat
chin-length bob framed her cute little face. A week later she told him she was
in love with him, too, and from then on they were a couple: Dave Bentley and
Janice Brown.

Life was a blast for the first eighteen months -
rock gigs, pub nights, days out on the bike.  Dave still lived with his mum,
but Janice shared a flat with the thick friend, Carolyn, so he spent most of
his time there. Then Janice got pregnant.

They were shocked, scared and delighted, all at the
same time. Having a baby wouldn't affect their lifestyle at all, oh no - they
wouldn't let it. Dave Junior would go everywhere with them. He'd be a rock
'n' roll baby, in a mini Motorhead t-shirt!

"Okay, but we're not calling him Lemmy!" Janice
said.

"How about Hendrix, then?"

Janice laughed. "What if he wants to be an accountant?"

"Hey, no kid of mine is doing a square job like
that!" Dave said, "what about Dylan, after the great Bob?"

"No, sounds like we're Welsh."

"Angus, after Mr AC/DC himself?"

"No! Too Scottish."

"Slash? Axl?"

"Don't be daft."

Eventually they both agreed on Harley - another of Dave's
brainwaves.

Well, it was better than Nigel, the preference expressed by
his mother.

Harley Bentley-Brown was born on January the
twenty-ninth, 2003.

Contrary to what his parents had expected, and as
was right and proper, his birth changed everything.

They were allotted a house on Greyfriars Council
Estate, and Dave's life was no longer his own.

Before his bike and his musical aspirations, he had
to think about rent, utility bills, council tax, food, nappies - the Suzuki
Bandit had to go, to be replaced by a Ford Escort estate; useful for work, and
for carting around all the stuff that babies needed, he discovered, every time
they travelled a few yards down the road. Janice had a difficult birth, and
hated that she couldn't shift what everyone told her was her 'baby weight'. Secretly,
Dave liked her being a bit bigger, because much of the weight had gone on her
tits and arse. They were a happy family, and Dave loved them both, his girl
and his baby, but reality had kicked in, the rules had changed, and things like
finding a toddler sized Motorhead t-shirt for Harley didn't seem so important,
now.

And then came Critical Mass.

Harley was nine months old and summer was over. Dave found himself 'settling down', and he wasn't sure he liked it. No, that
wasn't right - he liked it quite a lot, and it was this that he didn't like. He hadn't written a song since before Harley was born, hadn't sung in a band for
two years, and the odd thing was that he didn't really mind at all, most of the
time - though sometimes panic overwhelmed him.

Sometimes, he'd look at his guitar and think, I'm
twenty-eight and I've done nothing. Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain - they'd all
become rock legends and died before they got to his age. He knew it was still
within him, the creativity, the desire, but he'd allowed his calling to
stagnate. He would be thirty in two years' time. People had wives and kids
and still became rock stars, didn't they? He couldn't just keep going to work,
meeting Shane and the lads down the pub, coming home to snuggle up to Janice and
Harley. It was okay for now; no, it was more than okay - it was great  - but he
couldn't do only that for the rest of his life, could he?

He couldn't just be a normal husband and dad,
eventually getting his hair cut and swapping his leather for some sort of
casual jacket from Janice's Littlewoods catalogue. Taking his lost youth to
the pub, standing at the bar and telling the younger men that he used to play guitar
and ride a motorbike, too. 

The invitation to join Critical Mass came on one of
these days. Shane had got talking to this guy called Kieran who was looking
for another guitarist/vocalist for his new band.

"He doesn't want me 'cause I haven't got the right
image, but I gave him some of our tapes and he likes your voice, man!" Shane
said. "Here's his number - give the dude a call!"

So Dave Bentley became the front man for Critical
Mass, a band so heavy in its metal that it bordered on thrash, not something Dave
had embraced before.  But he was out there, playing in pubs and student bars
again; it wasn't quite the 'arena rock' of which he dreamed, but at least his
face was back on the local music scene. Dave loved walking into the pub and
setting up, then standing at the bar; he was sure he could see people nudging
each other and saying, "he's in the band."

Janice wasn't so keen. Band practice and gigs took
him away from home too much. She hardly ever came to the gigs; she was a mother
now; she didn't want to bounce around in some mosh pit with a load of eighteen
year olds, she said.  Besides, that would mean forking out for babysitters,
taxis and drinks as well, she said, and money was tight enough as it was. 
Dave mentioned one day, idly, that his Tokai Telecaster was now worth more than
his parents had paid for it; people had started to realise what good bits of
kit they were. Janice had actually suggested that he might think about selling
it. Selling it, indeed! Had she no soul?

Dave's stint with Critical Mass lasted eighteen
months. The beginning of the end came when they were voted last in a 'Battle of
the Bands' contest in Peterborough; a week later they were booed off stage at a
local outdoor festival in the middle of one of Dave's own songs.

"Tell him to piss off home and listen to his
Whitesnake CDs," he heard the bald headed, heavily tattooed drummer saying to Kieran. "We need someone who can write proper music, not this LA rock shit."

Dave picked up his guitar and went home.

Dave didn't like to think too much about the period
that followed his expulsion from Critical Mass.

That Friday afternoon, then, he left the pub after just
two pints, just as he sensed Ritchie warming up to another anti-women rant. He
wanted to walk home, slowly, take a bath and think about his New Idea, before
presenting it to Ritchie and Shane.

Thor!

A few evenings before, Dave had arrived back at
Ritchie's after a session in the pub, and fallen into a beery sleep on the
sofa. He'd woken up at about two in the morning, and, instead of going to bed,
started watching a documentary on some obscure channel about the Viking
invasion of the east coast of England. The programme included dramatic re-enactments;
Dave lounged on the couch, still a bit drunk and wondering whether to make a
cup of tea or have another can of Stella, thinking how cool it must have been
to be a Viking, leaping off the sides of the long ships, charging up the
shores. Of course, he wouldn't have gone in for the rape bit (and he didn't
really want to burn people's houses down), but the rest of it must have been
pretty exciting at the time - and that was when the bolt of lightning hit.

He and Shane looked like Vikings. They were both
tall, fair and athletically built; they probably had Viking ancestry,
especially as they both came from East Anglia. That was who they were. Vikings.
Shouldn't their music reflect that?

As he watched, the first few lines of their first
song started coming together in his head. Dave felt he was having some sort of
spiritual awakening;
the music and words were flowing through his mind
as if someone or something was putting them there, just like when he first
discovered he was a songwriter. He started to visualise the band. Thor! Ritchie
had only been talking the other day about this bloke called Boz who he'd met at
a jam session - Chris Boswell, he thought his name was. He was a professional
drummer, did session work and everything.  Boz was currently in some middle of
the road outfit playing at the larger caravan sites along the east coast, and
was fed up with doing commercial crap, he'd said -  he was looking for a worthy
band to whom he could offer his percussion skills.