School’s Out Forever

“I can smell burning.”

My three bandmates sniffed the air around the assembly hall stage. “Maybe it’s the charred remains of the school dinners,” said Wayne the lead singer.

We laughed, me less so. There was a faint plastic and electrical tang in my nose.

“Eau de burnt gristle,” said Gary, the drummer. He laughed at his own joke. “Get it? Odour? Eau de?”

I'm not sure why Gary was in the band, he was a four-year-old in the body of a teenager. I guess he was the only person we knew with a drum kit.

Roadie Reg was oblivious to the smell or Gary’s so-called jokes and he had almost finished setting up. The speakers were humming, the amps lit and the guitars plugged in. Gary had smuggled in cans of cheap beer in our guitar cases and we sipped them behind the heavy stage curtains.

Gary, oblivious to our unspoken thoughts about his opinions, pointed out the similarities of our first gig to John Lennon’s first gig.

“Apart from Lennon’s being in Liverpool, in a park and at a church fête,” I pointed out, more conscious of the faintly acrid smell around us.

“Nevertheless,” Gary countered. “They are minor artistic differences.”

We nodded, wearily. It was the same country, that much was true and it wasn't worth encouraging him into more ridiculous statements.

“Does Reg know what he’s doing?” I asked, breaking into our shared dreams of imminent stardom. “Fred used to set things up.”

Fred had a car, this being his single qualification for our manager. It was a Mini which meant we had to sit with the speakers and amps on our laps and guitar necks poking through the open windows. We made the most of the discomfort on journeys by singing Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head repeatedly for reasons that were never clear.

Fred had become disenchanted with our approach to band practice.

“Boys,” he would say.

This annoyed us since he wasn't a lot older than us. We never said anything: he had a car.

“You can mess about and get drunk once you’ve made it,” he would say. “Until then, you need to rehearse.”

Fred was under the misconception that being older and our manager meant we had to listen to him. He didn’t understand that rock stars had to act like rock stars. It was true we hadn’t progressed to the star bit yet, but you had to start off as you meant to carry on. Fred said we hadn’t even got to the rock bit.

We put up with his lack of knowledge on these matters, his car focused our minds. We thought he’d learn, but he didn’t. The day before the gig, as we practised hard on rock-star poses, Fred announced he’d had enough. He left and took his car with him.

My dad took us and our gear to the school dance instead, in his work van. He didn’t stay to watch as he was supposed to be at work.

From behind the stage curtains, I heard the doors to the assembly hall swing open above a disconcerting buzz from our speakers. The sound of scores of kids talking excitedly rose like a swarm of flies as they streamed in. Gary farted, long and loud. We dispersed to the corners of the stage, holding out noses while he sniggered.

Roadie Reg made final checks. This comprised of touching various cables and pulling a serious face. He nodded at us for some reason and retreated backstage. He knelt, arm on his knee, poised to deal with any emergency by running on stage stooping over like real roadies do. He’d practised the stooping run while we’d tried out guitar poses, so we were all more than ready.

We strapped on our guitars and Gary sat behind the drums. He started a rhyme, “I impart a fart from my part, my smelly fart is smart art.”

I’m sure we could have found someone else with a drum kit if we’d have looked harder. Reg settled down directly behind Gary. That would not have been my preferred location.

“Everybody be quiet.” The jaded voice of the deputy head, Mr Penn, echoed around the hall from the other side of the stage curtains. “Hutchins, stop poking Jones. Stephen Mills, get down off that table.” His sigh was audible above the drone of our audience’s conversations.

The smell of burning plastic was becoming stronger in proportion to the increase in the speaker buzz. I stepped back from the microphone and held my nose at Wayne and Richard, the lead guitarist.

“It’s one of Gary’s farts,” Wayne said. Gary grinned, raising a drum stick in the air to claim it. I wasn’t so sure.

“Tonight we have a band called, called,” said Mr Penn. A few moments passed. “A band made up of former students. Please welcome, welcome.” A murmur rumbled beyond the curtain. “The band of former students.”

A small first-year kid appeared from the side of the stage and ran to the centre. He took a curtain in one hand and dashed back to the side. Richard stood alone in the limelight plus half of me behind the other curtain.

“It’s them load of idiots,” someone shouted, obviously from the bottom English class.

“Get off, you was always useless,” called his companion from the same class.

The small student ran back across the stage and pulled the other curtain after him, jumped down and disappeared into the crowd.

A sea of eyes looked up at us and we stared back. After a few seconds of this, I decided to start a bass riff and launched into the opening line, “Let’s Spend The Night Together.” We thought this was an inventive and creative choice.

To be honest, to say I played a bass riff was not entirely accurate. Banging repeatedly on one note vaguely in time was possibly a better description.

Our audience stood and watched. It would have been a stretch to say they danced and waved lighters in the air, but they didn’t boo or throw anything either. Mr Penn stood at the back, arms folded, face set on miserable. I suspect he may have been the restraining factor in retrospect.

We finished the song to a light ripple of applause from my younger sister, her best mate and Wayne’s girlfriend.

I stepped away from the mike and Wayne moved up. “Our next song is one we wrote ourselves,” he said. “It’s called, One Night Stand.”

We had written it in flushed anticipation of the sexy groupies who would soon be following us.

Richard’s choppy opening guitar lick was good. We forgot to join in for a moment as we were surprised. Suddenly, Wayne sang the first line. “I ran to the door like a fart in a thunderstorm.” The author of that line was hardly a mystery. I was becoming concerned about Gary’s fixation on this topic.

My attention was drawn to a thin line of dark smoke rising from the amplifier. Wayne sang, “She was tall with big boobs and I was feeling rather warm.” Gary was hardly Springsteen, but we liked the sentiment. And it rhymed with the first line.

I heard a sharp fizzing sound. A blast rang out and a flame shot across the stage. Our guitars went dead. A black mushroom cloud rose from our amp, past the spotlights and expanded against the ceiling. Smoke wafted across the stage, a little like dry ice if it hadn’t been black and pungent.

Mr Penn flew to the stage — like a fart in a thunderstorm? He waved at the DJ. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree bounced out instantly from bassy speakers. Mr Penn shut the stage curtains across us with a flounce.

We stood in silence, unsure of what to do. Gary slipped away from the drums, a wide grin pasted across his face. He fished for something behind his stool. He sidled towards us carrying four cans of beer.

“When all is severe, have no fear, drink beer,” he said. Sometimes his philosophic sayings had a ring to them. Mostly not.

We giggled and slugged at the warm liquid.

“Stop that now.”

Mr Penn stood there, body shaking, face like a volcano on the brink.

“Get out of here you silly boys.”

We shrugged, pushed the guitars over our shoulders and tucked the beer can under our arms. We sloped towards the back of the stage. Gary stopped, looked back at Mr Penn and grinned. He lifted one leg.

“No,” I said. “Don’t.”

He did.

Based on real events from my time in a teenage rock band. And on having a friendship with a four-year-old in a teenager's body.