2

Ozzy Zig Needs Gig

Knock-knock.

I poked my head through the curtains in the living room and saw a big-nosed bloke with long hair and a moustache standing outside on the doorstep. He looked like a cross between Guy Fawkes and Jesus of Nazareth. And was that a pair of…? Fuck me, it was. He was wearing velvet trousers.

‘JOHN! Get the door!’

My mum could wake up half of Aston cemetery at the volume she shouted. Ever since I’d got out of the nick, she’d been breaking my balls. Every two seconds, it was ‘John, do this. John, do that.’ But I didn’t want to answer the door too fast. I needed a moment to sort my head out, get my nerves under control. This bloke looked like he was serious.

This could be important.

Knock-knock.

‘JOHN OSBOURNE! GET THE BLOODY—!

‘I’m getting it!’ I stomped down the hallway, twisted the latch on the front door, and yanked it open. ‘Are you… “Ozzy Zig”?’ said Guy Fawkes, in a thick Brummie accent.

‘Who wants to know?’ I said, folding my arms.

‘Terry Butler,’ he said. ‘I saw your ad.’

That was exactly what I’d hoped he was going to say. Truth was, I’d been waiting a long time for this moment. I’d dreamed about it. I’d fantasised about it. I’d had conversations with myself on the shitter about it. One day, I thought, people might write newspaper articles about my ad in the window of Ringway Music, saying it was the turning point in the life of John Michael Osbourne, ex-car horn tuner. ‘Tell me, Mr Osbourne,’ I’d be asked by Robin Day on the BBC, ‘when you were growing up in Aston, did you ever think that a simple advert in a music shop window would lead to you becoming the fifth member of the Beatles, and your sister Iris getting married to Paul McCartney?’ And I’d answer, ‘Never in a million years, Robin, never in a million years.’

It was a fucking awesome ad. ‘OZZY ZIG NEEDS GIG’, it said in felt-tip capital letters. Underneath I’d written, ‘Experienced front man, owns own PA system’, and then I’d put the address (14 Lodge Road) where I could be reached between six and nine on week nights. As long as I wasn’t down the pub, trying to scrounge a drink off someone. Or at the Silver Blades ice rink. Or somewhere else.

We didn’t have a telephone in those days.

Don’t ask me where the ‘Zig’ in ‘Ozzy Zig’ came from. It just popped into my head one day. After I got out of the nick, I was always dreaming up new ways to promote myself as a singer. The odds of making it might have been a million to one – even that was optimistic – but I was up for anything that could save me from the fate of Harry and his gold watch. Besides, bands like the Move, Traffic and the Moody Blues were proving that you didn’t have to be from Liverpool to be successful. People were talking about ‘Brumbeat’ being the next ‘Merseybeat’. Whatever the fuck that meant.

I ain’t gonna pretend I can remember every word of the conversation I had with the strange, velvet-trousered bloke on my doorstep that night, but it I’m pretty sure it went something like:

‘So you got a gig for me then, Terence?’

‘The lads call me Geezer.’

‘Geezer?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You taking the piss?’

‘No.’

‘As in “That smelly old geezer just shit his pants”?’

‘That’s a very funny joke for a man who goes around calling himself “Ozzy Zig”. And what’s up with that bum fluff on yer head, man? It looks like you had an accident with a lawn-mower. You can’t go on stage looking like that.’

In fact, I’d shaved my head during one of my mod phases, but by then I was a rocker again, so I was trying to grow it back. I was pretty self-conscious about it, to be honest with you, so I didn’t appreciate Geezer pointing it out. I almost came back at him with a joke about his massive nose, but in the end I thought the better of it and just said, ‘So have you got a gig for me or not?’

‘You heard of Rare Breed?’

‘Course I have. You’re the ones with the strobe light and the hippy bloke with the bongos or whatever, right?’

‘That’s us. Only we just lost our singer.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘The ad said you’ve got your own PA system,’ said Geezer, getting straight to the point.

‘That’s right.’

‘You sang in any bands before?’

‘Course I fucking have.’

‘Well, the job’s yours then.’

   *

And that was how I first met Geezer.

Or at least that’s how I remember it going down. I was an ornery little bastard in those days. You learn to be like that when you’re looking for a break. I was also getting very restless: a lot of the things that had never bothered me that much before had really started to piss me off. Like still living with my folks at 14 Lodge Road. Like still not having any dough. Like still not being in a band.

The hippy-dippy shit that was all over the radio after I got out of Winson Green was also winding me up, big time. All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’. Flowers in your hair? Do me a fucking favour.

They even started playing some of that shit in the pubs around Aston. You’d be sitting there with your pint and your fags and your pickled egg, in this yellow-walled shithole of a boozer, staggering to the pisser and back every five minutes, with everyone knackered, broke and dying from asbestos poisoning or whatever toxic shit they were breathing in every day. Then, all of a sudden, you’d hear all this hippy crap about ‘gentle people’ going to love-ins at Haight–Ashbury, whatever the fuck Haight–Ashbury was.

Who gave a dog’s arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway? The only flowers anyone saw in Aston were the ones they threw in the hole after you when you croaked it at the age of fifty-three ’cos you’d worked yourself to death.

I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.

Really hated them.

They were playing one when a fight broke out in the pub one time. I remember this bloke getting me in a headlock and trying to punch my teeth out, and all I can hear on the jukebox is this kumbaya bullshit being tapped out on a fucking glocken-spiel while some knob-end with a voice like his marbles are in a vice warbles on about ‘strange vibrations’. Meanwhile, the bloke who’s trying to kill me drags me out into the street, and he’s jabbing me in the face, and I can feel my eye swelling up and blood spurting out of my nose, and I’m trying to reach around so I punch the fucker back, anything just to get him off me, and there’s a circle of blokes around us shouting, ‘FINISH IT, FINISH IT.’ Then, CRRRAAAAAASSSSSHHHHHH!

When I open my eyes I’m lying half-conscious in a pile of broken glass, big lumps of flesh torn out of my arms and legs, my jeans and jumper in shreds, people screaming, blood everywhere. Somehow, during the fight we’d both lost our balance and fallen backwards through a plate-glass shop window. The pain was unbelievable. Then I saw this severed head lying beside me and I almost crapped my pants. Luckily it was from one of the shop mannequins, not a real head. Then I heard sirens. Then everything went black.

I spent most of the night in hospital being stitched up. The glass ripped off so much skin that I lost half a tattoo, and the doctors told me the scars on my head would be there for life. That wouldn’t be a problem though, as long as I didn’t become a baldie. On the bus back home the next day I remember humming the tune to ‘San Francisco’ and thinking, I should write my own fucking anti-hippy song. I even came up with a title: ‘Aston (Be Sure to Wear Some Glass in Your Face)’.

The funny thing is, I was never much of a fighter. Better a live coward than a dead hero, that was my motto. But for some reason I just kept getting caught up in all these scuffles during those early days. I must have looked like I was up for it, I suppose. My last big fight was in another pub, out near Digbeth. I’ve no idea how it started, but I remember glasses and ashtrays and chairs flying all over the place. I was pissed-up, so when this guy fell backwards into me, I gave him a good old shove in the other direction. But the bloke picked himself up, went bright red in the face, and said to me, ‘You didn’t want to do that, sunshine.’

‘Do what?’ I said, all innocent.

‘Don’t play that fucking game with me.’

‘How about this game then?’ I said, and tried to chin the cunt. Now that would have been a reasonable thing to do, had it not been for a couple of things: first, I fell over when I took the swing; and second, the bloke was an off-duty copper. Next thing I knew I was lying face-down with a mouthful of pub carpet and all I could hear was this voice above me going, ‘You just assaulted a police officer, you little prick. You’re nicked.’

As soon as I heard that, I jumped up and legged it. But the copper ran after me and pulled some rugby move that sent me crashing down on to the pavement. A week later I was in court with a fat lip and two black eyes. Luckily, the fine was only a couple of quid, which I could just about afford. But it made me think: Did I really want to go back to prison?

My boxing days were over after that.

When my old man found out I was trying to join a band, he offered to help me buy a PA system. To this day, I’ve no idea why: he could hardly afford to put food on the table, never mind take out a £250 loan on an amplifier and two speakers. But in those days you couldn’t call yourself a singer without your own PA. You might as well have tried to get a gig as a drummer without a kit. Even my old man knew that. So he took me down to George Clay’s music shop by the Rum Runner nightclub in Birmingham and we picked out this fifty-watt Vox system. I hope my father knew how grateful I was for him doing that. I mean, he didn’t even like the music I spent my whole time listening to.

He’d say to me, ‘Let me tell you something about the Beatles, son. They won’t last five minutes. They ain’t got no tunes. You can’t sing that bleedin’ racket down the pub.’

It killed me that he thought the Beatles had ‘no tunes’. ‘Taxman’? ‘When I’m Sixty-four’? You’d have to be deaf not to appreciate those melodies.

I just couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. Still, I wasn’t going to argue – not after he’d forked out £250.

Sure enough, as soon as people found out I had my own PA, I was Mr Fucking Popular. The first band that invited me to join was called Music Machine, and it was led by a bloke named Mickey Breeze.

‘Ambitious’ wasn’t a word you would have used to describe us. Our big dream was to play in a pub so we could earn some beer money. The trouble was, to play in a pub you needed to be able to play. And we never got around to learning how to do that, because we were always in the pub, talking about how one day we could play in a pub and earn some beer money. Music Machine never played a single gig, as far as I can remember.

Then, after a few months of going nowhere, we finally got something done: we changed our name. From then on, Music Machine was The Approach. Didn’t make any difference, though. All we’d ever do is have these endless tune-ups, then I’d sing in this high-pitched voice as the others tried to remember the chords to some hokey cover version. I used to joke that you could tell I’d worked in a slaughterhouse, ’cos I did such a good job at slaughtering songs like ‘(Sitting on the) Dock of the Bay’. Mind you, at least I was able to keep a tune and reach the high notes without windows breaking and the local tomcats trying to mate with me, which was a start. And what I lacked in technique, I made up for in enthusiasm. I knew from my classroom stunts at Birchfield Road that I could entertain people, but to do that I needed gigs. But The Approach could barely get a rehearsal together, never mind a show.

So that’s why I put up the ad in Ringway Music. The shop was in the Bull Ring, a concrete mega-mall they’d just finished building in the middle of Birmingham. It was a fucking eyesore from day one, that place. The only way you could get to it was through these subway tunnels that stank of piss and had muggers and dealers and bums hanging around all the time.

But no one cared: the Bull Ring was a new place to meet your mates, so people went there.

And Ringway Music – which basically sold the same kind of stuff as George Clay’s – was the best thing about it. All the cool-looking kids would hang around outside, smoking fags, eating chips, arguing about the records they were listening to at the time. All I needed was to get in with that crowd, I thought, and I’d be fucking set. So I wrote the ad and, sure enough, a few weeks later, Geezer came knocking.

Now, he’s not your average bloke, Geezer. For a start, he never uses foul language. He always has his nose in a book about Chinese poetry or ancient Greek warfare or some other heavy-duty shit. Doesn’t eat meat, either. The only time I ever saw him touch the stuff was when we were stranded in Belgium one time and almost dying of hunger, and someone gave him a hot dog. He was in hospital the next day. Meat just doesn’t agree with him – he’s not one for a good old bacon sarnie. When I first met him he was also smoking a lot of dope. You’d be out with him at a club, say, and he’d start talking about wormholes in the vibration of consciousness, or some other fucking loony shit. But he also had a very dry sense of humour. I’d always be clowning around with him, just trying to get him to lose his cool and crack up laughing, which would set me off, then we’d be fucking sniggering away for hours.

Geezer played rhythm guitar in Rare Breed, and he wasn’t bad at all. But more important than that, he looked the part, with his Jesus hair and his Guy Fawkes moustache. He could afford all the very latest stitches too, could Geezer. He’d been to grammar school, so he had a real job as a trainee accountant at one of the factories. They paid him fuck-all, but he was still probably earning more dough than me, even though he was a year younger. And he must have blown almost all of it on clothes. Style-wise, nothing was too out-there for Geezer. He’d turn up to rehearsals in lime green bell bottoms and silver platform boots. I’d just look at him and say, ‘Why the fuck would you ever want to wear that?’

I wasn’t exactly a conservative dresser myself, mind you. I’d walk around in an old pyjama top for a shirt with a hot-water tap on a piece of string for a necklace. I tell you, it wasn’t easy trying to look like a rock star with no fucking dough. You had to use your imagination. And I never wore shoes – not even in winter. People would ask me where I got my ‘fashion inspiration’ from and I’d tell them: ‘By being a dirty broke bastard and never taking a bath.’

Most people reckoned I’d walked straight out of the funny farm. But they’d look at Geezer and think: I bet he’s in a band. He had it all. He’s such a clever guy, he probably could have had his own company with his name above the door: Geezer & Geezer Ltd. But the most impressive thing he could do was write lyrics: really fucking intense lyrics about wars and super-heroes and black magic and a load of other mind-blowing stuff. The first time he showed me them I just said, ‘Geezer, we’ve gotta start writing our own songs so we can use these words. They’re amazing.’

We became pretty tight, me and Geezer. I’ll always remember when we were walking around the Bull Ring in the spring or early summer of 1968, and all of a sudden this bloke with long, frizzy blond hair and the tightest trousers you’ve ever seen pops out of nowhere and slaps Geezer on the back.

‘Geezer fucking Butler!’

Geezer turned around and said, ‘Rob! How are you, man?’

‘Oh, y’know… could be worse.’

‘Rob, this is Ozzy Zig,’ said Geezer. ‘Ozzy, this is Robert Plant – he used to sing with the Band of Joy.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said, recognising the face. ‘I went to one of your shows. Fucking awesome voice, man.’

‘Thanks,’ said Plant, flashing me this big, charming smile.

‘So, what you been up to?’ asked Geezer.

‘Well, since you mention it, I’ve been offered a job.’

‘Nice. What’s the gig?’

‘The Yardbirds.’

‘Whoah! Congratulations, man. That’s huge. But didn’t they split up?’

‘Yeah, but Jimmy – y’know the guitarist, Jimmy Page – he’s still around. So is the bass player. And they’ve got contractual obligations in Scandinavia, so they want to put something together.’

‘That’s great,’ said Geezer.

‘Well, I’m not sure I’m gonna to be taking the gig, to be honest,’ said Plant, shrugging. ‘I’ve got some pretty good stuff going on here, y’know? Matter of fact, I’ve just put a new band together.’

‘Oh, er… cool,’ said Geezer. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Hobbstweedle,’ said Plant.

Later, when Plant was gone, I asked Geezer if the bloke was out of his fucking mind. ‘Is he seriously going to pass up a gig with Jimmy Page for that Hobbsbollocks thing?’ I asked.

Geezer shrugged. ‘I think he’s just worried it won’t work out,’ he said. ‘But he’ll do it, as long as they change the name. They can’t go around calling themselves the “New Yardbirds” for long.’

‘It’s better than fucking Hobbstweedle.’

‘Good point.’

Bumping into someone like Robert Plant wasn’t unusual when you were with the Geezer. He seemed to know everyone. He was part of the cool crowd, so he went to the right parties, took the right drugs, hung out with the right movers and shakers. It was a real eye-opener, and I loved being part of it. Still, there was a big problem hanging over us: our band, Rare Breed, was shit. We made Hobbstweedle look like The fucking Who. When I joined they were set on being ‘experimental’: they had all these trippy stage props and a strobe light, like they were trying to be the next Pink Floyd. Now, there was nothing wrong with trying to be the next Pink Floyd – later on, I would enjoy dropping a few tabs of mind detergent while listening to ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ – but we couldn’t pull it off. Pink Floyd was music for rich college kids, and we were the exact fucking opposite of that. So Rare Breed wasn’t going anywhere, and me and Geezer both knew it. Rehearsals were just one long argument about when the bongo solo should come in. Worst of all, there was this bloke in the band who called himself Brick, and he fancied himself as a bit of a San Francisco hippy type.

‘Brick’s a dick,’ I kept telling Geezer.

‘Aw, he’s all right.’

‘No, Brick’s a dick.’

‘Give it a rest, Ozzy.’

‘He’s a dick, that Brick.’

And so on.

I got on fine with the other members of the band. But with Brick on the scene and me getting increasingly pissed off, Rare Breed was never going to last. Even Geezer started to lose his patience after a while.

The only gig I can remember playing in those very early days – and I think it was with Rare Breed, but it could have been under a different name, with different band members, ’cos line-ups changed so often back then – was the Birmingham Fire Station’s Christmas party. The audience consisted of two firemen, a bucket and a ladder. We made enough dough for half a shandy (beer mixed with lemonade), split six ways.

But that gig made an impression on me, because it was the first time I ever experienced stage fright.

And fucking hell, man, did I get a bad case of the brown trousers.

To say that I suffer from pre-show nerves is like saying that when you get hit by an atom bomb it hurts a bit. I was absolutely fucking petrified when I got up on that stage. Sweaty. Mouth drier than a Mormon wedding. Numb legs. Racing heart. Trembling hands. The fucking works, man. I literally almost pissed myself. I’d never felt anything like it in my life. I remember downing a pint beforehand to try to calm myself down, but it didn’t work. I would have had twenty pints if I’d had enough dough. In the end I croaked my way through a couple of numbers until we blew out one of the speakers of the PA. Then we fucked off home. I didn’t tell my old man about the speaker. I just swapped it with the one in his radiogram.

I’d buy him a new one when I got a job, I told myself. And it seemed like I would have to get a job, because, judging by the fire station gig, there was no way I was ever going to make it in the music business.

A couple of days later, I decided to pack in singing for good.

I remember saying to Geezer down the pub, ‘I’ve had enough, man, this ain’t going nowhere.’

Geezer just frowned and twiddled his thumbs. Then, in a dejected voice, he said: ‘They’ve offered me a promotion at work. I’m going to be number three in the accounting department.’

‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Suppose.’

We finished our drinks, shook hands, and went our separate ways. ‘See you around, Geezer,’ I said.

‘Take it easy, Ozzy Zig.’

Knock-knock.

I poked my head through the curtains in the living room and saw a dodgy-looking bloke with long hair and a moustache standing outside on the doorstep. What the fuck was this, déjà vu? But no, despite the hair and the tash, the bloke didn’t look anything like Geezer. He looked… homeless. And there was another bloke standing next to him. He also had long hair and a king-sized ferret on his upper lip. But he was taller, and he looked a bit like… Nah, it couldn’t be. Not him. Parked behind them on the street was an old blue Commer van with a big rusty hole above the wheel arch and faded lettering on the side that said ‘Mythology’.

‘JOHN! Get the door!’

‘I’m getting it!’

It had been a few months since I’d left Rare Breed. I was twenty now, and had given up all hope of being a singer or ever getting out of Aston. PA system or no PA system, it wasn’t going to happen. I’d convinced myself that there was no point in even trying, because I was just going to fail, like I had at school, at work, and at everything else I’d ever tried. ‘You ain’t no good as a singer,’ I told myself. ‘You can’t even play an instrument, so what hope d’you have?’ It was Self-Pity City at 14 Lodge Road. I’d already talked to my mum about trying to get my old job back at the Lucas plant. She was seeing what she could do. And I’d told the owner of Ringway Music to take down my ‘OZZY ZIG NEEDS GIG’ sign. Stupid fucking name, anyway – Geezer was right about that. All in all, there was no reason whatsoever why two long-haired blokes should be standing on my doorstep at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night. Could they be mates of Geezer? Did they have something to do with Rare Breed? It didn’t make any sense.

Knock-knock.

Knock-knock.

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

I twisted the latch and pulled. An awkward pause. Then the shorter and scruffier bloke asked, ‘Are you… Ozzy Zig?’

Before I could answer, the bigger guy leaned forwards and squinted at me. Now I knew for certain who he was. And he knew me, too. I froze. He groaned. ‘Aw, fucking hell,’ he said. ‘It’s you.’

I couldn’t believe it. The bloke on my doorstep was Tony Iommi: the good-looking kid from the year above me at Birchfield Road, who’d brought his electric guitar to school one Christmas, driving the teachers crazy with the noise. I hadn’t seen him for about five years, but I’d heard about him. He’d become a bit of an Aston legend since leaving school. All the kids knew who he was. If you wanted to be in a band with anyone, it was Tony. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to feel the same way about me.

‘C’mon, Bill,’ he said to the homeless-looking bloke. ‘This is a waste of time. Let’s go.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Bill. ‘Who is this guy?’

‘I’ll tell you one thing: his name ain’t “Ozzy Zig”. And he ain’t no singer, either. He’s Ozzy Osbourne and he’s an idiot. C’mon, let’s get out of here.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ I interrupted. ‘How did you get this address? How d’you know about Ozzy Zig?’

‘“Ozzy Zig Needs Gig,”’ said Bill, with a shrug.

‘I told ’em to take that fucking sign down months ago.’

‘Well, you should go and tell them again, ’cos it was up there today.’

‘At Ringway Music?’

‘In the window.’

I tried not to look too pleased.

‘Tony,’ said Bill, ‘can’t we give this guy a break? He seems all right.’

‘Give him a break?’ Tony had already lost patience. ‘He was the school clown! I’m not being in a band with that fucking moron.’

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just stood there staring at my feet.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Tony,’ hissed Bill. ‘That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

But Tony just huffed and started to walk back towards the van.

Bill shook his head and shrugged at me, as if to say, ‘Sorry, mate. Nothing more I can do.’

That seemed to be that. But then something caught my eye. It was Tony’s right hand. There was something wrong with it.

‘Fucking hell, Tony,’ I said. ‘What happened to your fingers, man?’

It turned out I wasn’t the only one who’d had a rough time with jobs after being turfed out of school at the age of fifteen. While I was poisoning myself with the degreasing machine and going deaf testing car horns, Tony was working as an apprentice sheet-metal worker. Later, he told me his education mainly involved learning how to use an electric welder.

Now, they’re lethal fucking things, electric welders. The biggest risk is being exposed to ultraviolet radiation, which can literally melt the skin off your body before you even know it, or burn holes in your eyeballs. You can also get killed by electric shocks, or end up poisoned by exposure to the toxic rust-proofing shit they put on the panels. Anyway, Tony was doing this welding job during the day and playing in a band called the Rocking Chevrolets on the club circuit at night, waiting for his big break. He was always talented, but hammering out all those numbers by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Eddie Cochran every night made him shit fucking hot. Eventually an agent spotted him and offered him a professional gig over in Germany, so Tony decided to quit his job in the factory. He thought he’d made it.

Then it all went wrong.

On Tony’s last day in the workshop, the bloke who was supposed to press and cut the metal before it was welded didn’t show up. So Tony had to do it. I still don’t know exactly what happened – if Tony didn’t know how to use the machine properly, or if it was broken, or whatever – but this fucking massive metal press ended up ripping off the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. Tony is left handed, so they were his fretboard fingers. It makes me shiver just to think about it, even now. You can’t imagine what a bad scene it must have been, with all the blood and the howling and the scrambling around on the floor trying to find the tips of his fingers, and then Tony being told by the doctors in the emergency room that he’d never be able to play again. He saw dozens of specialists over the next few months, and they all told him the same thing: ‘Son, your days in a rock ’n’ roll band are finished, end of fucking story, find something else to do.’ He must have thought it was all over. It would have been like me getting shot in the throat.

Tony suffered from terrible depression for a long time after the accident. I don’t know how he even got out of bed in the morning. Then, one day, his old shop foreman brought him a record by Django Reinhardt, the Belgian Gypsy jazz guitarist who played all his solos using just two fingers on his fretting hand because he’d burned the others in a fire.

And Tony thought, Well, if old Django can do it, so can I.

At first he tried playing right-handed, but that didn’t work. So he went back to left-handed, trying to play the fretboard with just two fingers, but he didn’t like that, either. Finally he figured out what to do. He made a couple of thimbles for his injured fingers out of a melted-down Fairy Liquid bottle, sanded them down until they were roughly the same size as his old fingertips, and then glued these little leather pads on the ends to improve his grip on the strings. He loosened the strings a bit too, so he wouldn’t have to put so much pressure on them.

Then he just learned to play the guitar again from scratch, even though he had no feeling in two fingers. To this day, I’ve no idea how he does it. Everywhere he goes, he carries around a bag full of homemade thimbles and leather patches, and he always keeps a soldering iron on hand to make adjustments. Every time I see him play, it hits me how much he had to over-come. I have so much awe and respect for Tony Iommi because of that. Also, in a strange way, I suppose the accident helped him, because when he learned to play again he developed a unique style that no one has ever been able to copy. And fucking hell, man, they’ve tried.

After the accident Tony played in a band called the Rest. But his heart wasn’t in it. He thought all the hype about ‘Brumbeat’ was bollocks and he wanted out, so when he was offered an audition with a band called Mythology up in Carlisle, you couldn’t see him for dust. He even convinced the Rest’s singer to go up there with him. Once the guys in Mythology had heard the two of them in action, they couldn’t sign them up fast enough. Then, a couple of months later, Mythology’s drummer quit. So Tony called up his old mate Bill Ward from Aston, who was only too happy to take the job.

I never went to a Mythology gig, but I’m told they brought the house down wherever they went: they had this dirty, swampy, heavy blues sound, and they’d cover songs by bands like Buffalo Springfield, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers – whose new guitarist at the time was Eric Clapton, who’d just quit the Yardbirds, giving Jimmy Page his big break. It was a classic era for rock ’n’ roll, and it was all going gangbusters for Mythology. The band quickly built a massive following in Cumberland, playing sold-out shows all over the place, supporting acts like Gary Walker, of the Walker Brothers. But then they started to run into trouble with the law. That’s what happened in those days if you had long hair and moustaches and tight leather trousers. From what I heard, the first time they got done was for using the label from a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale in place of a tax disc on their tour van. The next time was a lot more heavy-duty, though, and it finished them off. Their dope dealer – a student from Leeds, I think – got busted. Then the cops drew up a list of the guy’s clients, got a search warrant, and raided Mythology’s flat at Compton House in Carlisle. It was bad news, man.

All four members of the band were done for possession of marijuana. That might not sound like such a big deal now, but in those days it was fucking horrendous. Not so much because of the punishment – they all pleaded guilty and were fined just fifteen quid each – but because of the stigma. No one would book a band that had been done for drugs, ’cos they thought you were a bad crowd. And no one wanted any trouble with the law, not when they had licences that could be revoked. By the summer of 1968, Mythology’s gigs had dried up to the point where they were all flat broke. They could barely even afford food. Tony and Bill had two choices: give up full-time music and get proper jobs in Carlisle like their bandmates were planning to do; or fuck off back to Aston, where they could live at their folks’ places while they tried to save their careers. They chose Aston, which is how they ended up on my doorstep.

I’ve no idea what I said to Tony outside my house that night to make him change his mind and give me a chance. The fact that I had a PA system probably helped. And maybe he realised that it had been five years since school, and that we’d both grown up a lot since then. Well, perhaps I hadn’t grown up too much, but at least I knew I never wanted to go back to prison or work in a factory again. I think Tony felt the same way after his drugs bust and his accident at the metalworks. And although his folks made a decent living – they owned a little corner shop on Park Lane – he’d left Birchfield Road with a no-hope future just like mine.

Without music, we were both fucked.

Bill also helped to calm Tony down. He’s the nicest bloke you’ll ever meet, Bill. A phenomenal drummer – as I would soon find out – but also a solid, down-to-earth guy. You could tell that by the way he dressed: he was the anti-Geezer when it came to fashion. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was living in a cardboard box on the hard shoulder of the M6. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never changed, either. Years later, I went on Concorde for the first time with Bill. He was late, and I was sitting on board thinking, Where the fuck is he? Eventually he strolled into the cabin wearing an old man’s over-coat and carrying two Tesco bags full of cans of cider. I looked him up and down and said, ‘Bill, you do know that they provide drinks on Concorde, don’t you? You don’t have to bring your own Tesco cider?’ He replied, ‘Oh, I don’t want to put them to any trouble.’

That’s Bill Ward for you.

After Tony had warmed up a bit, we spent the rest of the night sitting in the back of the van, smoking fags, telling stories about prison and Carlisle and drugs busts and severed fingers and Mr Jones from school and how to slaughter cows with a bolt gun and what blues records we’d been listening to lately. Then we started to plot our next move.

‘Before we do anything else, we’re going to need a name and a bass player,’ said Tony.

‘I don’t know any bass players,’ I said. ‘But I know a bloke called Geezer who plays rhythm guitar.’

Tony and Bill looked at me. Then at each other. ‘Geezer Butler?’ they said in unison.

‘Yeah.’

‘That bloke’s crazy,’ said Bill. ‘Last time I saw him he was off his nut in Midnight City.’

‘That’s because Geezer’s already a rock star in his own head,’ I said. ‘Which is a good thing. And he doesn’t eat meat, so it’ll save us money on the road. And he’s a qualified accountant.’

‘Ozzy’s right.’ Tony nodded. ‘Geezer’s a good bloke.’

‘I’ll go round his house tomorrow and ask him if he wants to do the honours,’ I said. ‘He’ll need some time to learn to play the bass, but how hard can it be, eh? There’s only four fucking strings.’

‘And what about a name?’ said Tony.

The three of us looked at each other.

‘We should all take a couple of days to think about it,’ I said. ‘I dunno about you two, but I’ve got a special place where I go to get ideas for important stuff like this. It’s never failed me yet.’

Forty-eight hours later I blurted out: ‘I’ve got it!’

‘Must have been that dodgy bird you poked the other night,’ said Geezer. ‘Has your whelk turned green yet?’

Tony and Bill snickered into their plates of egg and chips. We were sitting in a greasy spoon caff in Aston. So far, everyone was getting along famously.

‘Very funny, Geezer,’ I said, waving an eggy fork at him. ‘I mean the name for our band.’

The snickering died down.

‘Go on then,’ said Tony.

‘Well, I was on the shitter last night, and…’

‘That’s your special place?’ spluttered Bill, blobs of mushed-up egg and HP sauce flying out of his mouth.

‘Where the fuck did you think it was, Bill?’ I said. ‘The hanging gardens of fucking Babylon? So, I’m on the shitter, and I’ve got this right old cliffhanger of a Richard the Third coming down the pipe—’

Geezer groaned.

‘—and I’m looking straight ahead at this shelf in front of me. My mum’s put a tin of talcum powder on there, right? She loves that stuff. When you go to the bog after she’s taken a bath it looks like Santa’s fucking grotto in there. Anyway, it’s that cheap brand of talc, the one with the black and white polka dots on the side…’

‘Polka Tulk,’ said Tony.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Polka Tulk!’ I looked around the table, grinning. ‘Fucking brilliant, eh?’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Bill, his mouth still full. ‘What’s your mum’s smelly old armpits got to do with our band?’

‘The Polka Tulk Blues Band,’ I said. ‘That’s our name!’

The table went so quiet you could almost hear the steam rising from the four mugs of tea in front of us.

‘Anyone got a better idea?’ said Tony.

Silence.

‘It’s settled then,’ he said. ‘We’re the Polka Tulk Blues Band – in honour of Ozzy’s mum’s smelly old armpits.’

‘Oi!’ I said. ‘Enough of that! I won’t have a fucking word said against my mum’s smelly old armpits.’

Bill roared with laughter, and more blobs of egg and sauce flew out of his mouth.

‘You two are just animals,’ said Geezer.

The name wasn’t the only decision we had to make. Also put to the vote was whether we needed more band members. In the end we agreed that the kind of songs we’d be playing – dirty, heavy, Deep South blues – tended to work better with a lot of instruments, so ideally we could use a saxophonist and a bottleneck guitarist to give us a fuller sound. Tony knew a sax player called Alan Clark, and a mate of mine from school, Jimmy Phillips, could play bottleneck.

To be honest with you, we also wanted to copy the line-up of Fleetwood Mac, whose second album – Mr Wonderful – had just come out and blown us all away. Tony was especially taken with Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist, Peter Green. Like Clapton before him, Green had played for a while with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, but he was now a fully qualified rock god in his own right. That seemed to be how guitarists made the big time: they joined an established act, then they left to front their own projects. Fortunately for us, Tony had been taken off the market by his injury just when he was about to be snapped up by a big-name act.

Their loss was our gain.

That weekend, we met up for our first rehearsal at a community centre in Six Ways, one of the older and shittier parts of Ashton. There was only one problem: we could barely hear the PA above the noise of the A34 underpass outside. Making the din even worse were the cars and trucks circling the massive concrete roundabout they’d just built on top of the fucking thing. They were pouring so much concrete in Aston in those days that we might as well have bought some fur hats and started calling each other comrade. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the place was grey enough as it was without adding more fucking grey everywhere.

To cheer things up a bit, I went out one night with an aerosol can – I’d had a few beers – and did some ‘decorating’. One of the things I graffitied on a wall by the roundabout was ‘Iron Void’. Fuck knows what was going on in my head.

The rehearsals went all right, considering I’d never sung with a proper band before. Basically, the lads would just jam, and then Tony would give me a nod when he thought I should sing. For lyrics, I just came out with whatever bollocks was in my head at the time.

It wasn’t easy for Geezer, either. He didn’t have enough dough at the time to buy a bass, so he did the best he could with his Telecaster – you can’t put bass strings on a normal guitar, ’cos it would snap the neck. I think Tony was worried about Geezer at first, but it turned out that he was a fucking awesome bass player – a total natural. And he looked more like a rock star than anyone else in the band.

Our first gig was up in Carlisle, thanks to Tony’s old Mythology contacts. That meant driving two hundred miles up the M6 in Tony’s rusty old shitbox of a van, with the motorway stopping and starting all the time, ’cos they hadn’t finished tar-macking it. The van’s suspension had died along with the dinosaurs, so whenever we went round a corner everyone had to lean in the opposite direction to stop the wheel arch from scraping on the tire. We soon learned that it’s almost impossible to lean in the opposite direction of a turn, so this horrible smell of burning rubber kept wafting into the cabin, sparks were flying all over the place, and you could hear this violent grinding noise as the wheel gradually etched a big fucking hole in the bodywork. ‘It’s a good job you know how to use a welder,’ I said to Tony. Another problem was the windscreen wipers: they didn’t work. Well, they did for a bit, but it was raining so hard that by the time we’d reached Stafford the motor had conked out. So Tony had to pull over to the hard shoulder in the pissing rain while me and Bill fed a piece of string out of the window, tied it to the wiper, then strung it back through the other window. That way we could wipe the windscreen manually, with me tugging on one end of the string, then Bill tugging on the other. All the way to fucking Carlisle.

But the eight-hour drive was worth it.

When we finally arrived in Carlisle, I just couldn’t stop staring at the flyer for our first official gig. It said:

C.E.S. PROMOTIONS Proudly Present…

’68 Dancing for Teens and Twenties

County Hall Ballroom, Carlisle

Saturday August 24th, 7.30 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. –

The New, Exciting Group from Birmingham, POLKA

TULK BLUES BAND (With ex-member of

MYTHOLOGY)

plus

CREEQUE

Non-stop dancing (Admission 5/-)

This is it, I said to myself.

It’s finally happening.

The gig itself was amazing, apart from almost crapping my pants with stage fright. It was afterwards that the trouble started. We were packing up our stuff – roadies were a luxury we couldn’t afford – and this giant of a bloke with bright red hair and some kind of pus-filled rash on his face came up to me. He was holding a pint glass and his troll of a chick was standing next to him. ‘Oi, you,’ he went. ‘D’you like my girlfriend?’

‘Say again?’ I said.

‘You ’eard me. D’you like my girlfriend? You were looking at her. Fancy giving her one, do you?’

‘You must have got me mixed up with someone else,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t looking at anything.’

‘You were looking at her. I saw ya. With my own two fucking eyes. Fancy having a go, do you?’

By now, the bloke was so close to me that I could smell the sweat on his T-shirt. He was enormous, and he had a head on him like a fucking anvil. He was even bigger than my old mate, the bully-basher from Birchfield Road. There was no way out. I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I’d either say, ‘No, honestly mate, I don’t like your girlfriend,’ and he’d reply, ‘You calling her ugly, are you, you Brummie cunt?’ then rip my head off. Or I’d go, ‘Funny you should say that, ’cos I was just thinking how much I’d love to give your girlfriend a good old seeing to,’ and he’d reply, ‘Yeah, I thought so, you Brummie cunt,’ then rip my head off.

I was fucked, either way.

Then I had an idea: maybe if I got someone else involved, it would take the pressure off.

‘Hey, Bill,’ I shouted over to the other side of stage. ‘Come over here a second, will yer?’

Bill strolled over, hands in pockets, whistling. ‘What’s up, Ozzy?’

‘D’you want to shag his girlfriend?’ I said, pointing at the troll in question.

‘What?’

‘His bird. D’you think she’s a bit of a slag, or would you give it a go?’

‘Ozzy, are you fucking insa—’

That was when the bloke went fucking stage-five apeshit. He roared, threw down his pint – beer and shards of glass went everywhere – then he lunged towards me, but I ducked out of the way. Uh-oh, I thought. This could get nasty. Then he tried to take a swing at Bill, who had a look on his face like he was tied to a railway track and the Flying Scotsman was coming down the line. At this point I was sure that one or both of us would be spending the next month in hospital, but I hadn’t counted on what Tony would do next. He saw what was going on, ran over to the giant redhead, gave him a shove, and told him to fuck off out of it. Now Tony was smaller than the red-head, a lot smaller, but he was an incredible fighter. The redhead didn’t know that, of course, so he went for Tony’s throat. They wrestled for a bit, the redhead got some jabs in, but then Tony just cracked him full-on in the face and kept pounding away – bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam! – until the bloke went down like the Titanic.

Crraaaassssshhhh!

I watched, mouth wide open, as Tony shook the pain out of his fist, wiped the blood off his face, then calmly carried on packing up his equipment. No one said a word.

Later, when we were in the van on the way to our next gig down the road in Workington, I thanked him for saving our arses. He just waved me away, told me not to mention it again.

Bill, on the other hand, didn’t speak to me for a week.

Can’t say I blame him.

*

When we got back to Aston, Tony said he wasn’t happy with Alan and Jimmy. Jimmy fucked around too much in rehearsals, he said, and there wasn’t any point in having a saxophone player if we didn’t have a full brass section. And no one wanted a full brass section – we’d need a double-decker tour bus, for starters, and we’d never make any dough after splitting the takings on the door with half a dozen trombonists and trumpeters.

So that was it: Alan and Jimmy were out, and the Polka Tulk Blues Band became a fourpiece. But Tony still wasn’t happy. ‘It’s the name,’ he said, during a rehearsal break. ‘It’s crap.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ I protested.

‘Every time I hear it, all I can picture is you, with your trousers round your ankles, taking a fucking dump.’

‘Well, you lot think of something then,’ I huffed.

‘Actually,’ announced Bill, ‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about this and I’ve got an idea.’

‘Go on,’ said Tony.

‘You’ve got to imagine it written on a big poster. Like a bill-board or something.’

‘I’m imagining it,’ said Tony.

Bill took a deep breath. Then he said, ‘Earth.’

Tony and Geezer looked at each other and shrugged. I ignored them and pretended to look worried.

‘Are you OK, Bill?’ I said, narrowing my eyes.

‘I’m fine. What do you mean?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m fucking sure.’

‘It’s just… I thought I heard you throw up just then.’

‘What?’

‘UUUUUURRRRRRRRFFFFFF!’

‘Fuck you, Ozzy.’

‘UUUUUURRRRRRRRFFFFFF!’

‘Just give it some fucking thought, will you? It’s simple, powerful, no bullshit, just five letters – E-A-R-T-H.’

‘Bill, honestly mate, I think you should go and see a doctor. I think you just threw up again. UUUURRRRR—’

‘Ozzy, cut it out,’ snapped Tony. ‘It’s better than Polka fucking Tulk.’

‘I agree,’ said Geezer.

That was that.

Officially, we didn’t have a band leader. Unofficially, we all knew it was Tony. He was the oldest, the tallest, the best fighter, the best-looking, the most experienced, and the most obviously talented. He’d really started to look the part, too. He’d gone out and bought this black suede cowboy jacket with tassels on the arms, which the chicks loved. We all knew that Tony belonged right up there with the likes of Clapton and Hendrix. Pound for pound, he could match any of them. He was our ticket to the big time.

Maybe that’s why I felt so intimidated by him, even after we became friends. Or maybe it was just because he’s such a private and reserved person. You never really know what’s going on inside Tony Iommi’s head. He’s the total opposite of me, in other words: no one’s ever in any doubt about what’s going on in the pile of old jelly inside my thick skull.

I didn’t feel intimidated by Geezer, even though he’d been to a proper school and actually knew stuff. As for Bill, he was the fall-guy. We’d always be playing pranks on him. He’d get drunk and pass out and we’d leave him on a park bench somewhere with a newspaper over him, and we’d think it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in the world. He was such a nice guy, he just seemed to be asking for it.

Me? I was still the clown. The madman. The loudmouth who’d do anything for a dare. The others would always get me to do the stuff they didn’t want to do – like asking for directions when we were on the road and trying to find the way to some new venue. One time we were in Bournemouth and there was a guy walking across the road with a roll of carpet under his arm. They’re all shouting, ‘Go on, Ozzy, ask ’im, ask ’im.’ So I wind down the window of the van and go, ‘Oi! Mister! Can you tell us the way to the M1?’ He turns around and says, ‘No. Fuck off, cunt.’ Another time we’re in London, and I shout out to this bloke, ‘Excuse me, chief, but d’you know the way to the Marquee?’ He says, ‘Chief? Chief? Do I look like a fucking Indian?’

Fucking priceless, man. We had such a laugh. And that was the thing with us: we always had a sense of humour. It’s what made us work together so well – at first, anyway. If you don’t have a sense of humour when you’re in a band, you end up like fucking Emerson, Lake and Palmer, making eight-disc LPs so you can all have your own three-hour fucking solos.

And who wants to listen to that bollocks?

If it hadn’t been for Tony’s parents, I’m not sure we’d have made it through the rest of 1968 without starving to death. We were so broke, we’d steal raw vegetables from allotment gardens in the middle of the night, just for something to eat. One time, me and Bill found ten pence, and it was like we’d won the fucking lottery. We couldn’t decide what to buy with it: four bags of chips, or ten fags and a box of matches.

We went for the fags in the end.

Tony’s mum and dad were our only safety net. They’d give us sandwiches from the shop, tins of beans, the odd pack of Player’s No. 6, even petrol money from the till. And it’s not like they were rich: they owned a corner shop in Aston, not Harrods of Knightsbridge. I loved Tony’s mum, Sylvie – she was a lovely lady. Tony’s old man was great, too. He was one of those guys who would buy old cars and do them up. That’s why we always had a van to get around in.

And we needed one, because we never turned down gigs – ever – not even when the pay was only a few quid for a two-hour set, split four ways, before costs. We needed everything we could get. Even Geezer had given up his day job by then, and Earth was the one shot we had at making sure we never had to go back to the factories. We had to make it work – there was no choice.

We were incredibly single-minded. The craziest thing we did – and this was Tony’s idea, I think – was to find out whenever a big-name band was coming into town, load up the van with all our stuff, and then just wait outside the venue on the off-chance they might not show up. The odds weren’t worth thinking about, but if it ever happened, we reckoned we’d get a chance to show off in front of a few thousand punters… even if they were pissed off and throwing bottles because we weren’t the band they’d blown a couple of days’ wages to see.

And y’know what? It worked.

Once.

The big-name band was Jethro Tull. I can’t remember where they were supposed to be playing – it might have been in Birmingham, or somewhere like Stafford – but they didn’t show up. And there we were, outside in the blue Commer van, ready to spring into action.

Tony went in to see the venue manager.

‘Has the band not showed up yet?’ he asked, ten minutes after they were supposed to go on.

‘Don’t fucking start, sunshine,’ came the pissed-off reply. Obviously the manager was having a bad night. ‘They’re not here, I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but they’re not here, and, yes, we’ve called their hotel. Five times. Come back tomorrow and we’ll give you a refund.’

‘I’m not looking for a refund,’ said Tony. ‘I just wanted to let you know that me and my band were driving by the venue – by chance, y’know? – and, well, if your main act hasn’t shown up, we can fill in.’

‘Fill in?’

‘Yeah.’

‘For Jethro Tull?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s the name of your band, son?’

‘Earth.’

‘Urf?’

‘Earth.’

‘Urph?’

‘As in the planet.’

‘Oh, right. Hmm. I think I might have actually heard of you lot. Crazy singer. Blues covers. Right?’

‘Yeah. And a few originals.’

‘Where’s your equipment?’

‘In the van. Outside.’

‘Are you a Boy Scout or something?’

‘Eh?’

‘You seem very well prepared.’

‘Oh, er… yeah.’

‘Well, you’re on in fifteen minutes. I’ll pay you ten quid. And watch out for those bottles, the mob’s upset.’

Once the deal was done, Tony ran out of the venue with this huge grin on his face, giving us the double thumbs up. ‘We’re on in fifteen minutes!’ he shouted. ‘Fifteen minutes!’

The jolt of adrenaline was indescribable. It was so intense, I almost forgot about my stage fright. And the gig was a fucking triumph. The crowd grumbled for the first few minutes, and I had to dodge a couple of lobbed missiles, but we ended up blowing them away.

One of the best things about it was that Ian Anderson – Tull’s lead singer, who was famous for playing the flute with this bug-eyed look on his face while standing on one leg, like a court jester – finally turned up when we were halfway through the set. The band’s bus had broken down on the M6, or something like that, and they’d had no way to contact the venue to warn them. I think Anderson had hitch-hiked there by himself to apologise. So there I was, screaming into the mic, and when I looked up I saw Anderson standing at the back of the hall, nodding his head, looking like he was really into the music. It was fucking fabulous.

We came off stage buzzing. The venue manager couldn’t have been happier. Even Anderson seemed grateful. And after that, all the bookers knew our name – even if they couldn’t say it.

Over the next few weeks everything started to take off for us. The gigs got bigger, our playing got tighter, and some local managers began sniffing around. One guy in particular took an interest in us: his name was Jim Simpson and he’d been the trumpet player in a fairly well-known Birmingham band called Locomotive. Jim had given up being a musician to set up a management company called Big Bear, which was John Peel’s nickname for him, ’cos he was this stocky, hairy, red-faced bloke, who ambled around Birmingham like a big, tame grizzly. He’d also opened a club on the floor above the Crown pub on Station Street, calling it Henry’s Blues House. It was one of our favourite hang-outs. One of the earliest shows I remember seeing there was a jam with Robert Plant and John Bonham, probably just before they went off to Scandinavia. It gave me fucking goosebumps, man.

Then, near the end of 1968, Jim invited us to play at the club with Ten Years After, who were a huge blues act at the time. Alvin Lee, the band’s guitarist and singer, would later became a good friend of ours. It was a great night – as much of a turning point for Earth as the Jethro Tull gig had been. A few days later, after a few beers, Jim told me and Bill that he was thinking about managing us. Big Bear was already looking after Locomotive and two other local bands, Bakerloo Blues Line, and Tea and Symphony. It was a huge moment. Having Jim on our side would mean a lot more work and a much more realistic chance of making a living out of music without having to rely on handouts from Tony’s parents. We could go to London and play the Marquee Club. We could tour Europe.

The sky was the fucking limit.

The next day, me and Bill couldn’t wait to tell Tony. We’d booked the rehearsal room at Six Ways, and the second Tony walked in I said, ‘You’ll never fucking guess what…’

But when I told him about the possible deal, he just said, ‘Oh’, then looked at the floor. He seemed upset and distracted.

‘Are you all right, Tony?’ I asked.

‘I’ve got some news,’ he said quietly.

My heart just about stopped beating. I turned white. I thought his mum or dad must have died. Something terrible, anyway, for him not to be excited about us getting a manager.

‘What is it?’

‘Ian Anderson got in touch with me,’ he said, still looking at the floor. ‘Tull’s guitarist just quit. He asked me to replace him – and I said yes. I’m sorry, lads. I can’t turn it down. We’re going to be playing with the Rolling Stones in Wembley on the tenth of December.’

Stunned silence.

It was all over. We’d been so close, and now we were a million light years away.

‘Tony,’ I said eventually, swallowing hard. ‘That’s fucking great, man. It’s what you’ve always wanted.’

‘Congratulations, Tony,’ said Geezer, putting down his guitar and walking over to slap him on the back.

‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘If anyone deserves it, you do. I hope they know how lucky they are.’

‘Thanks, lads,’ said Tony, sounding like he was trying not to choke up. ‘You’re going to do great, with or without me. You’ll see.’

I can say with my hand on my heart that we weren’t bull-shitting Tony when we said all that stuff. We’d been through a lot together over the last few months, and all three of us were genuinely pleased for him.

Even though it was the worst fucking news we’d ever heard in our lives.