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A Guide to Fifteen Minutes
Not a tale of Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground but twice as scuzzy.
It all started with the Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day book. I turned over its hallowed pages and saw my stairway to heaven. The days of playing triangle were over. This was my way (fuck off, Sinatra)to the stars -a rock star. Of course, Bert had lied. The book was more accurately Play in a Few Thousand Aeons, and, that is, after a number of successful finger-tip transplants. Enter Black Sabbath. I gazed at my bruised and lacerated fingers. A legend needed to pay his dues.
When I knew I’d mastered it all, I celebrated it with another rendition of that popular heavy metal classic, Bobby Shaftoe. I played it till my fingers bled, smoothly moving from the first chord to the next, C to G and then back again. Yes! Finally I was up there with the gods of rock. There was no going back and certainly no looking down from my lofty heights. I laughed. Then I took-up my Fender Stratocaster once again and crashed into more unholy guitar shredding, screaming those well known, death metal vocals ‘silver buckles on his knees.’ SSShhhiiittt! It was blinding, it was cosmic.
I met Jay and Mick down at the old scout hut. Nobody said much. We let the music do the talking.
