Digging the Vein Read Online Free Page A

the charts. Every date on our UK tour was greeted with packed, adoring houses.
    I joined the band after accosting them drunkenly at one of their shows at the University Of London Union. I was in London playing keyboards for Mark Brel. Mark had enjoyed a long, successful solo career after hitting it big in the early 80’s and was the voice behind one of that era’s most enduring hits, an electro take on an obscure northern soul song. I had landed the gig via a blind audition, a stunning bit of good fortune for an unknown from a shitty northern town. During my stint as his sideman though, he withdrew almost entirely from live performance. This left me sitting in my rented room in a crumbling Edwardian house in Chelsea, collecting my weekly retainer to spend on alcohol and drugs. The Catsuits show I attended was typical of my performances in London at the time: I drank vodka for most of the night and after the show ended barged into the backstage area, talking to all the faces I recognized from the music scene as if we were on first name terms. “Your band is fucking brilliant,” I told the lead singer Laura, waving my arms drunkenly at the other bands and hangers-on lurking by the open bar, “Much better than the rest of these assholes. You lot have class . Hold on…”
    I drunkenly staggered over to the bar and while the bartender was busy serving someone a drink I leaned across and grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose. As I crossed the room to rejoin Laura I topped off several peoples glasses, like some kind of demented waiter. Finally I poured Laura another drink and took a healthy slug from the bottle.
    “ Now, back to The Catsuits,” I said. “You know what your problem is?”
    “ Go on,” she laughed. “I’m sure you’re gonna tell me anyway.”
    “ You need a keyboard player. But not some pussy keyboard player whose gonna sit there like a cunt and plink-plonk away the whole night. No…” I leaned in closer for effect. “You need me .”
    After that the night dissolved into an alcohol induced blackout, but when I woke up the next evening there was a message on my answer-phone from The Catsuits management asking if I would be available to play with them on a probationary basis. I accepted. Mark Brel’s live appearances remained so sporadic that I managed to hold down the two jobs with relative ease.
    As The Catsuits set off on our first US tour it seemed the world was at our feet. The more outrageous my behavior was the better things seemed to get. Even my parents, bless them, believed that I was a success. I think it was seeing me on the TV that did it. It was then at least that they stopped insisting that I get a real job.
    The US tour was brief but magically surreal. We had 5 days to ourselves in Los Angeles and members of the group tried to outdo themselves in terms of outrageous boozed up, drugged out misbehavior. The record label looked on and applauded, loving the controlled chaos of our youthful exuberance. I had just turned 19 years old while the eldest member of the band was 21. I won our little game of rock and roll mischief making. My adventure in LA started at a bar called Vida in Los Feliz with a young guy from our record label who was up for showing me a good time, progressed to a three day pool party in one of Howard Hughes’ old mansions in Brentwood, and by the time I crawled back to the hotel on the morning we were to fly to San Francisco, my epic crystal meth, coke, and lager rampage had taken me to Vegas where—in front of a small crowd of new friends who where almost as obliterated as I was—I married a girl named Christiane. As everyone told tales of sex and drugs during the brief flight, I sat and smiled. Then I dropped the bomb, flashing my gleaming wedding ring. Shock, disbelief, and then a begrudging respect made its way through my audience of band members, roadies, and record execs. Someone cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. I had set some kind of record, we figured.