When it started, I was in the front room of a flat in Kentish Town, swathed in sweet, herbal smoke.
Suitably relaxed and enjoying Max Headroom on VHS, I was thinking about chocolate biscuits when the flat’s owner called me through to his office (more or less his bedroom with a large set of brass scales on a coffee table) and asked whether I still owned a bass guitar. I was happy to confirm that I was indeed the owner of an Ibanez Roadster Series 2 in beech with a black scratch plate (an afternoon of jazz cigarettes inspiring needless attention to detail). Ignoring my waffle, the bedroom bloke peered round his scales to deliver his next question: “Would you like to audition for Flesh For Lulu?”
Younger readers may imagine he was inviting me to try out for a leftfield pornographic magazine, but FFL were a rather popular and semi-successful goth band with a sizeable following in 80s London.
I pondered the question. Asked him to repeat it. Nodded. Replied that it sounded like a delightful idea and finished with a puzzled expression. My host may well have been a champion purveyor of exotic substances, but I didn’t recall him being a member of any band – gothic, semi-successful or otherwise.
It transpired he knew the band’s road crew and they were pestering him to find them a new bass player. If my clouded mind understood the proposition correctly, Flesh For Lulu were holding open auditions at rehearsal studios in Chalk Farm the next day and my agreement, followed by a swift phone call secured me a slot. From stoner to stardom in just 24 hours, this was tremendous, thought I – returning to the videos and king-size Rizlas.
As is often the case with very good news, there was a catch. Or, in this case, two catches. The principal drawback was this: I really wasn’t very good at playing the bass. I’d bought the instrument at college in order to start a band, but with the exception of learning the whole of the first Psychedelic Furs album and a few bits of Joy Division’s ‘Closer’, I’d never really bothered to make any progress.
Then there was the issue of the band itself. I wasn’t averse to the odd bit of goth. I had the crimpy black quiff and actively relished The Cult and Sisters of Mercy, but had failed to be particularly attracted to Flesh For Lulu.
Cushioned from real concern by the weed, I wandered down Camden High Street and bagged a couple of 12” singles by the band in the Record & Tape Exchange before heading south of the river and home.
Morning. The day of the audition. Also, by some cosmic coincidence, the day of Live Aid. A couple of guys who were dossing on my floor agreed the prospect of an hour with Flesh For Lulu followed by a Live Aid party would fill their day perfectly, so I grabbed my bass, shoved on my motorcycle boots and off we headed to Chalk Farm via the Elephant & Castle bus stop (I had the boots but no actual motorcycle).
The nagging thought that I couldn’t actually play and had had some difficulty twanging along to the two discs the night before, was evolving in my head. So, while changing buses in Trafalgar Square, I nipped into Budgens and invested in a large bottle of Thunderbird wine – the consumption of which made me feel considerably more confident. One of my pals went a bit further and dropped some acid he’d brought with him. And he wasn’t even auditioning.
By the time we alighted on the Chalk Farm Road we were bubbling along in the the manner of The Furry Freak Brothers (if they had been two gothic punks and one soul boy tripping his nuts off). More by luck than design, we found the rehearsal place almost immediately. Not really listening to our babbling, the reception guy pointed us to a room at the back of the building. We entered with trepidation, caution and nervy grins.
Flesh For Lulu weren’t exactly
The Clash (who had a bass player),
but they did have a record contract
and toured and were ... well ... a
proper band. I didn’t want to look
too much of a fool and was glad of
the reassuring Thunderbird glow.
The studio wasn’t big. But it was large enough to contain a hefty PA system and a sofa. What it quite obviously didn’t contain was the up-coming, quite popular goth rock troupe Flesh For Lulu. Or anyone else. We were entirely alone.
Accepting the possibility we’d arrived too early, the three of us sank into the bizarrely scented, collapsing couch and shared a Turkish roll-up.
An hour passed.
By now, I had plugged my instrument into the PA and was banging out the bassline to ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ with no little enthusiasm and plenty of repetition. One friend was now sleeping soundly and the other was gazing out of the window as purple dragons and giant wolves frolicked through the London sky.
Eventually tiring of my clumsy Cult plonking, I put the bass down, looked to my companions and announced with great profundity: “Fuck it. They’re not coming. Shall slope off and watch Live Aid?”
“Yep” said one.
“I’m think I’m flying” said the other.
And that’s what we did.
To this day, I have not the faintest idea what went wrong. We may have turned up at the wrong venue. Or the right venue on the wrong day. Or maybe the bloke with the brass scales was just making it all up. What I do know, is that I am not, never have been and probably never will be the bass player in Flesh For Lulu. And for that everyone should be grateful.
Magnus Shaw, October 2010
