Iron Man Read Online Free Page B

don’t know what would have happened. Once I heard that music, I was determined to do something about it instead of sitting there moping.
    I still had bandages on my fingers and so I tried playing with just my index finger and my little finger. It was very frustrating, because once you’ve played well it’s hard to go backwards. Probably the easiest thing would have been to flip the guitar upside down and learn to play right-handed instead of left-handed. I wish I had in hindsight, but I thought, well, I’ve been playing for a few years already, it’s going to take me another few
years to learn it that way. That seemed like a very long time, so I was determined to keep playing left-handed. I persevered with two bandaged-up fingers, even though the doctors said: ‘The best thing for you to do is to pack up, really. Get another job, do something else.’
    But I thought, bloody hell, there has got to be something I can do.
    After thinking things through for a while, I wondered whether I could make a cap to fit over my fingers. I got a Fairy Liquid bottle, melted it down, shaped it into a ball and waited until it cooled down. I then made a hole in it with a soldering iron until it sort of fitted over the finger. I shaped it a bit more with a knife and then I got some sandpaper and sat there for hours sandpapering it down to make it into a kind of thimble. I put it on one of my fingers and tried to play the guitar with it, but it didn’t feel right. Because it was plastic it kept slipping off the string and I could barely touch it, it was so painful. So I tried to think of something I could put over it. I tried a piece of cloth, but of course it tore. I used different pieces of leather, which also didn’t work. Then I found this old jacket of mine and cut a piece of leather off it. It was old leather, so it was a bit tougher. I cut it into a shape so that it would fit over the thimble and glued it on, left it to dry and then I tried it and I thought, bloody hell, I can actually touch the string with this now! I sanded down the leather a bit too, but then I had to rub it on to a hard surface to make it shiny so it wouldn’t grip too much. It had to be just right so you could move it up and down the string.
    Even with the thimbles on it hurt. If you look at my middle index finger, you will see a little bump on the end of it. Just underneath it is the bone. I have to be careful because sometimes if the thimbles come off and if I push hard on a string, the skin on the tips of my fingers just splits right open. The first ones I made fell off all the time. And it is trouble then; one of the roadies crawling about the stage, going: ‘Where the hell has that gone?’

    So when I go on stage I put surgical tape around my fingers, dab a little bit of Superglue on that and then I push the things on. And at the end of the day I have to pull them off again.
    I’ve only lost the thimbles a couple of times. I virtually live with the bloody things when I’m on tour. I keep them with me all the time. I’ve always got a spare set and my guitar tech has one as well.
    Going through customs with these things is another story. I have the thimbles in a box and they search your bag and go: ‘Ah well, what’s this? Drugs?’
    And then, shock, it’s fingers. I’ve had to explain it to customs on several occasions. And they go: ‘Whoah.’
    Putting my fake fingers away in disgust.
    Nowadays the people at the hospital make the thimble for my ring finger. They actually make me a prosthetic limb, a complete arm, and all I use is two of its fingertips that I cut off it. I asked: ‘Why don’t you just do me a finger?’
    â€˜No, it’s easier for us to give you a whole arm.’
    So you can imagine what the dustman thinks when he finds an arm in the bin. The thimbles I cut off it look like real fingers; there’s no leather on the ring finger one, I can play