Brighton is a fantastic place. The sea is so gorgeous you want to jump into
it and sink. When I was there last time there were about two thousand mods
driving up and down the promenade on scooters. My scooter's seen the last of
Brighton bloody promenade now, I know that. I felt really anonymous then, sort of
like I was in an army. But everyone was a mod. Wherever you looked there were
mods. Some of them were so well dressed it was sickening. Levi's had only come
into fashion about a month before and some people had jeans on that looked like
they'd been born wearing them. There was this bloke there that seemed to be the
ace face. He was dancing one night in the Aquarium ballroom and everyone was
copying him. He kept doing different dances, but everyone would copy it and the
whole place would be dancing a dance that he'd only just made up. That's power
for you, he was really heavy too, though. When the mods collected in Brighton,
the Rockers would turn up too. There were never as many of them, but this geezer
once took two of them at once and beat them. That didn't usually happen I can
tell you.
I was in a crowd of kids once chasing three Rockers down
Brighton Pier. As it seemed they were going to get caught anyway they stopped and
turned to meet their fate. All hundred of these kids I was with stopped dead. I
was the first to stop, but the rest ran, so I had to follow. There's nothing
uglier than a Rocker. This ace face geezer wouldn't have run. He smashed the
glass doors of this hotel too. He was terrific. He had a sawn-off shotgun under
his jacket and he'd be kicking at plate-glass and he still looked like he was
Fred Astaire reborn. Quite funny, I met him earlier today. He ended up working at
the same hotel. But he wasn't the manager.
I never ever felt like I
blasphemed. You know, in an old fashioned sense. But I was in a pretty
blasphemous mood when I left for Brighton. Brighton cheered me up. But then it
let me down. Me folks had let me down, Rock had let me down, women had let me
down, work wasn't worth the effort, school isn't even worth mentioning. But I
never ever thought I'd feel let down by being a mod. I pinched this boat, first
time I'd ever been on a boat at sea. I had another few leapers to keep from
coming down and I felt a bit bravado. So I headed for this Rock out off the
coast. It was sticking up very jagged, but very peaceful. I didn't know then what
I was up to, but I know now.
Schizophrenia! What a laugh. It must be
alright to be plain ordinary mad. About halfway over I took a swallow of this
Gibneys gin I'd bought. Booze never did help me much though. On the boat it did
me right in, specially on top of the pills and the come-down. Anyway, the sound
of the engine turned into this drone, then the drone turned into a sound like
pianos or something. Like heavenly choirs or orchestras tuning up. It was really
an incredible sound. Like the sort of noise you'd expect to hear in heaven, if
there is such a place. I pinched myself and I wasn't really drunk anymore. I was
floating. I felt really happy. I must have looked bloody stupid as it happens. I
was waving me Gibneys around in the air and singing in tune with the engine. The
sound got better and better. I was nearly delirious when I got to the Rock. I
switched off the engine and jumped onto it. When the engine stopped, so did the
music. And when that beautiful music stopped, I remembered the come-down I had, I
felt sick from the booze, the sea was splashing all over the place and there was
thunder in the distance. I remembered why I had come to this bastard Rock.
So that's why I'm here, the bleeding boat drifted off and I'm stuck here in
the pissing rain with my life flashing before me. Only it isn't flashing, it's
crawling. Slowly. Now it's just the bare bones of what I am.
A tough
guy, a helpless dancer.
A romantic, is it me for a moment?
A
bloody lunatic, I'll even carry your bags.
A beggar, a hypocrite, love
reign over me.
Schizophrenic? I'm Bleeding Quadrophenic.
(No one in
this story is meant to represent anyone either living or dead, particularly not
the Mum and Dad. Our Mums and Dads are all very nice and live in bungalows which
we bought for them in the Outer Hebrides.)