Star Blog

And then one day the blog just... stopped. Would it be back? No one knew...

Hotel-bound again today. Looking forward to it and not looking forward to it. Into it because I'm into the Zep book now and have got a little bit of a buzz going. That can and probably will evaporate the first time I hit another block in the road (which happens practically every page, if the book's any good) but at least I'm mustering a little confidence behind my efforts now. Until last week, it was all effort and not much else. Now at least, rightly or wrongly, I appear to have a bit of flow going. That is to say, I'm about a mile down a hundred-mile road that might lead somewhere and then again might not.

Not looking forward to it because with my mum-in-law so poorly and wife having to take up the slack it would be better if I could be here for her. But the bills still need paying, kids still need feeding, cars filling with petrol and cat's bowl over-brimming with mouse-meat or whatever it is they eat. So that's my end of the bargain. And anyway, the hotel is only 20-minutes drive from home if anything drastic occurs. I'm not going to the moon, even if that's what it feels like as I sit there trying to think of a better way to put things on the page than the usual boring method. 'Born in 1944...', 'Of course, the world in 1969 was a very different place...' Balls to all that. I want this one to be as engaging and unexpected as the subject matter it purports to expound upon. That means hoisting the usual clichés into a skip and (gulp) taking a risk. Easy to say, or even to write down here. Somewhat harder to put into practise crouched over the laptop in a hotel room with nothing but a pot of cold coffee to keep you company. But that's what I'm off to do, god help me...

Weird day. At one point this afternoon wife and I found ourselves sitting in the lounge quietly reading the newspapers. When I realised what we were doing I nearly had a heart-attack, I was so shocked. That's got to be the first time since our eldest child was born seven years ago that we have been able to do that. We only managed it this afternoon because said eldest child was out at a birthday party and the other two were napping in unison (another almost unheard of phenomenon). When we realised what was happening wife looked at me and I swear she was crying. Either that or it was the cat digging its claws into her ankles again. I think it was the cat.

It didn't last of course. We pushed our luck and decided to have a quick bite, on our own, in peace and quiet, at the table. Sure enough, just as we sat down to eat the boy awoke. "Quick, turn on the telly!" I hissed at wife, trying to head him off at the pass. But then the girl awoke too and it was all over. Madness returned. By the time I was ready to leave for London and the Planet Rock show the party was in full swing again, the girl treating us and the rest of the street to her entire repertoire of songs and dances from High School Musical 1 &2, the boy dancing along naked but for his socks, swinging the cat by its tail, wife reaching for the medicine cabinet to see if she could find any of my funny pills from my bad old days (she'll be lucky...)

The drive in was the usual Sunday-in-the-rain shitstorm but at least I got to sleep at the wheel for a while as the car now knows its way down the motorway on its own...

Have fallen out of the blogging loop but don't worry I'm always bound to swing back. It's just catching that ride in. Further delayed this week by the news when I got back from the hotel on Thursday that my mother-in-law is seriously ill. She has been for some time now but suddenly it's got worse and the whole family is feeling it. My father-in-law can't cope and so wife is the one having to shoulder the burden, which obviously has its own knock-on effect here at home. Feels like everything is stretched to breaking point but like some vast ocean liner you can't just alter course. Or rather you can - especially when you know you're heading for a bloody great big iceberg - but it takes a little time to steer the thing round. Meantime, watch out for the torpedoes.

What, I didn't mention the torpedoes? Come on, there are always torpedoes, coming out of nowhere suddenly, threatening to hit you where it hurts, often for no possible reason you can think of, except the general badness of men towards other men. You know the kind of thing. A sudden twat on the phone. An unwelcome whore at the door. Some snail on the email. A terrible rain of shit just as you've stepped out of the shower. No matter who you are or what you've got you can never quite escape those. I can't.

First day in Hotel Hell. Actually, not so hellish, more like an open prison. The room is just right, the people running the joint mainly Eastern European, mainly female, and all quite... nice. The room service menu is crap but there is a gym and a pool, and a river nearby for walking beside when I need some air. It's just the hours being left alone with the laptop with no screaming kids or hollering wife to interrupt you that starts to work on your nerves. This is what you came here for and this is what drives you mad in the end. No excuse to run and hide from the task ahead.

And so the next three days go. The mornings mainly given over to doing stuff that excites me as it hits the page. The afternoons descending into doubts and worries and fears over how to manage so much material - millions of words of pure research. The evenings collapsing into all-out despair as it becomes clear that the job is simply way too big and I was a fool all along for thinking I could do it. Followed by mornings of hope and excitement again.

I have no idea how to read the signs in all this, whether this is good progress or a tremendous waste of time. But words are going on the page and when there are enough of them I suppose I will know. Probably...

Drove like the wind to get home from London tonight as I'm up early tomorrow morning to get ready to leave for the hotel. It's not far away (Oxford) but it may as well be a million miles from home as I'll be observing a strict radio silence while I'm away, in a desperate effort to try and kick the Zep book seriously into gear. That means phone off, NOT checking email (not more than once a day, I swear) just sitting there at the laptop trying to make sense of nearly two years worth of research, god help me. At the moment, I'm looking at a 3-week stint, coming home only for weekends (when I'll be heading to London for the Planet Rock show). Wife is being far more heroic about all this than I am. But then she gets a break from me, doesn't she? I'm stuck with me whatever happens. Anyway, if you see a few blank spaces in this blog over the coming weeks you'll know why.

The longest drive in to London since the height of the summer, three hours door to door. Why? No idea. Except the crazies were all out in force tonight. Can London really be suffering from Xmas madness already? You know, that inexplicable moment in the year when the General Public seem to lose their fucking minds, running round the shops and pubs like fighting mad loons. Oh well, I thought, it is Saturday night...

Then arriving back at the Chinatown Car Park after the show, something I've never seen before - a queue for the ticket office stretching all the way down to Gerard Street. Jesus Christ! It took 20 minutes to actually pay for my ticket then another 45 minutes in the underground car park, choking on exhaust fumes as literally dozens and dozens of cars all queued for the solitary exit. Sitting there wondering what the fuck. The sort of thing that makes it all not worthwhile.

By the time I got home it was nearly 3.00a.m. No time or energy for wine or glance at the newspaper. Just bed and staring at the walls in the dark. Wonderful night...

For a change, a day where I seemed to get quite a lot done - on the Zep book and other things too. This was mainly due to the fact that wife spent most of the day out, taking boy bruiser with her. Even the girls managed to stay out of my way, going straight from school to their swimming class and then 'shopping' with mum. Did got bogged down though reading about Aleister Crowley and the occult - a much more complex subject than those wanky 'most evil man in the world' stories suggest. By the way, if anyone out there has any genuine insights into the Order Templi Orientis, other than what's already out there in books and so forth, I have a very open, if aging, mind. Don't forget, I come from the 60s and 70s too where drugs opened the doors of perception (amongst other things) and magick was always spelled with a 'k'. I also read my fair share of Crowley back in my misspent youth, cig dangling from my once-young gob, eyes closed in drugged concentration. Don't mean I'm an acolyte. Don't mean I'm not. I'm just after, like, the truth, or something with a passing resemblance to it, y'dig? Pointy hat wearers need not apply, however. Just other people with something left of their brains.

Meanwhile, back at the Axl book... was doing a phone interview about the book for Rocks magazine with the most famous rock writer in Germany, Matthias Penzel, when an email blew in with a copy of my first review of it in the US, where it's published in the New Year. A very good one too, god bless 'em. But then the US version is almost certainly superior to the UK one as the UK libel and privacy laws are so heavy now you can barely get away with describing Hitler as a bad guy.

Now I'm off to make dinner, feeling like I've actually earned it for once. I might even allow myself a very small glass of red, having abstained all week since the Classic Rock awards. For medicinal purposes only, though. Wouldn't want the old heart to give out on me now that I'm actually functioning semi-normally again. We'll see how long it lasts...

Got Zeppelin on the brain. Woke up at about four this morning with When The Levee Breaks going round and round in my head. Lay there for an hour trying to get back to sleep. Thought sex might help but wife wasn't for waking. Thought about a wank but I'm too old for that now. My mind starts to wander and before you know it, it's back to Led Zeppelin.

Finally gave up on the idea of going back to sleep and went downstairs and made tea and toast. Read last Sunday's Culture section of the Sunday Times. Good piece on the new Picasso biography, third instalment. Apparently, the writer is now 83 and having monthly injections in his eyes to keep his vision going. And I thought I was struggling with Zep. Then poked around looking for last Saturday's Guardian magazine. Jon Hotten told me they had Quo on the cover - Rick and Francis anyway - and that it was actually a good piece. Couldn't find it though, must have already 'recycled' it.

Eventually crawled back to bed just as the girls were starting their usual early morning High School Musical concert. Wife took pity on me though and let me sleep. Had another dream about Led Zeppelin, this time I was playing one of their tracks on my Planet Rock show, studio full of lighted candles, a crowd on on-lookers standing about, hippies smoking joints. Then noticed I was using a record player to play the music (as opposed to the computer which is now normal). Which is when that small part of my brain that still functions relatively well alerted me to the fact that I was having a dream. Woke up with Since I've Been Loving You going round and round in my head.

Jesus Christ. I haven't even gotten to the hotel yet and I'm already going round the fucking twist. Spent the whole day working on the book. Not proper writing - don't be daft - still just sifting through the millions of pieces. I know what I want to do, just can't seem to get round to doing it. That's what the hotel will be for. Hopefully.

Only a couple more days to go now and I'm off to my hotel to get seriously stuck into the Zep book. Frankly, I could use another three months just working on the research but the time keeps slipping away and the babies keep crying and the days and nights pile up like dead bodies and if I don't do this soon I will never get it done. Trouble is, I want this book to be perfect, or near as damn it and there just ain't no such thing. Not by me anyway. And certainly not with a houseful of little kids. I need the horror of solitude, the ache of silence, the scratching of the tick-tock as there is nothing to do but... work. Oh fucking hell! Truly, it is a fearful prospect but that's what I signed up for when they handed me the cheque and God knows we all need that cheque. So...

To London and the Classic Rock awards...

Bit of a weird one for me, this, as I was so involved in building the magazine from the ground up. Like a marriage that ends then suddenly you find yourself having to be 'friends' again for the sake of the rest of the family. Fortunately, this is one marriage where being friends again has not been a problem. I left because after six years of doing something I originally imagined I'd only do for two at the most, I'd really had enough. Also, I'd been on the verge of a new career as a fulltime author at the time I first got involved with the mag and I desperately wanted to get back to that before the small window of opportunity that had opened for me closed for good.

And of course it was a good job I did. As the book career has taken off and the magazine has gone from strength to strength under new editorship from people with all the energy and time I had patently run out of long before - as evidenced by the annual awards show that they now have.

I went with my agent Robert Kirby, a rock fan on the quiet (as well as the classics, he's very partial to System Of A Down). We began the evening at the Groucho club where a couple of vodka martinis put us in the mood to rock, as it were. When we got to the hotel where the awards were taking place the first person I saw was Ronnie Dio, who I've known since we worked together on the Heaven And Hell album all those years ago. Glancing up from my brimful glass of shampoo, I noticed many faces I knew I probably knew - or had known in a previous life - but could not for the life of me put names to. A lot of 'mates' and 'chaps'.

Then there were those faces I will always know the names of. Rick and Francis from Quo, Bruce from Maiden, Alice, Steven Tyler, and... um... oh yeah, over there, Jimmy Page. Lemmy was there too but flounced out apparently when no-one paid enough attention to him, which was silly. He should have waited for me and Robert to arrive. We'd have given him some attention. Probably.

Inside the actual hall, there were more faces I knew - Joe from Def Leppard, Fish, Trevor and Mark and the crew from Planet Rock, Bob Harris from Radio 2, Chris Squire from Yes, plus several people that apparently knew me. One bloke called over: "How's the kids, Mick?" Kids? What kids? "From your blog! I read it every day!" Bloody hell...

Then there was the girl with what looked like a silver bracelet around her thigh that I couldn't help but notice. As well as my Axl book, she also had an Aerosmith tattoo, she said, which she was very keen to show to Steven Tyler. "Are you on the telly or something?" asked another bloke. "Sometimes," I said. "Reading the news..."

It was also nice to see some real friends too. Ross and Dr Peter, neither of whom I spent much time talking to, though I suspect that may have been because I was drinking and they were not and you know how that goes. Sorry, boys. Also Scott, my successor at Classic Rock, who was very jolly. Afterwards, there was an aftershow party which someone tried dragging me to but by then it was gone midnight and like Cinderella I had to hurry home before I lost a shoe or something. No kidding. Anything after midnight is hard work for me these days. Let alone when I've already had just the one or two small ones, as they say...

All in all, a good night. I think Robert also managed to do half-a-dozen book deals so possibly a profitable one too. Unless of course I imagined that last part...

Finally finished the Springsteen story - which is still too long and, ironically, not quite as good in slightly shorter form, but that's the way it goes with magazines and deadlines. Didn't send it yet though because I want to read it back again tonight before firing it off. Amazing how these things can change seemingly of their own accord when you just leave them to idle for a while.

Instead, went out with wife and boy to Oxford, where I bought something called a 'lounge suit', along with a very fashionable-looking (the woman serving me said) tie and shirt. Got a bit of a do on this weekend so it was all essential planning. But what a palaver. Getting measured and poked and prodded, then sweating in a changing room.

Then we set off for Richer Sounds, to buy an All Regions DVD player. Richer Sounds is about the only place left in this country that sells such jewels, the big stores conniving with each other to flog off their much more limited and less fun UK-only DVD machines. Nice bloke in there too, named Tristram, which sounds like he should be a TV producer. Which I suppose he is, sort of, meaning he sells some very cool-looking plasmas and HD-ready thingys with all the stuff that goes with them. He even let the boy have a couple of free lollipops just to shut the little bleeder up. Which was very good of him. I'll be going back. Definitely.

Meanwhile, tonight, once the kids have been bound and gagged and hung upside down in their night cupboards, wife and I are settling down to - ta ra! - part two of season three of Entourage. Yes, the bastard arrived today from the US and yes the All Regions DVD will be playing it at top volume. Fuck the neighbours and fuck Guy Fawkes as well. Johnny Drama, Ari Gold, Vince baby, E, take me, I'm yours...

Spent all of yesterday in London recording some stuff for Planet Rock, which took much longer than it should of but that's the trouble with recording, you get a second go and when you're a perfectionist that means a third and fourth (and even a fifth) go too. I'm not saying I'm a perfectionist but I was there a bloody long time. Then after that had to go and see a man about a horse, as they say, which meant I didn't get home till long after the whole Halloween thing was over. Good thing and bad thing. The trick-or-treaters pressing the doorbell are tedious. But seeing my kids dressed as witches and pumpkins and spiders just to answer the door would have been something I dug. Maybe next year.

Then today was all about finishing the Springsteen story for the Germans. I'm baffled. The whole thing was so slow and tedious but the end result looks so good. Is that normal? You'd think I might know the answer to that after 30 years of this shit but I really don't. Maybe that's what keeps you hooked as a writer, the rules keep changing. Like, I used to get so immersed the whole thing would take days and nights and weird hours and much smoking and drinking, then I would have to sit and read the shit for-ever when it was published. And at the end of it, it was... okay. Usually. Now I bash it out, never read it back when it's published (are you insane, with three kids?) and the end result is soooo much better. Maybe I've stumbled on the secret of success. And then again maybe not and I'm just fucking bored with the whole dreary bullshit. Or maybe it's something else. A damned good auto-pilot maybe. Or an angel with nothing better to do watching my arse on their days off. (Who must be even more bored than I...)