Star Blog

What I call a blank cheque day. That is, the whole day is a blank because I spent it blanked out at the laptop, doing god knows what. (You only find out when you read it back later and sometimes not even then.) This despite feeling like shit physically and somewhat so mentally. The only consolation is that you know that at the very long end of it you are some steps closer to payday. Which in my case is still months off, if I'm lucky. But not as far off as it was this time yesterday.

I just have to hope that whatever it was I was doing wasn't completely unusable. You never really know, sometimes until much later. That is, after 30 years of doing this you never really know. For most of my career I always knew when it was bad, never really knew when it was good, and often even when I thought it was good it was actually really, really bad. But hang on in there long enough and - hey presto - now something I often think couldn't possibly be good as my brain was so badly disconnected as I was doing it turns out to be actually, you know, all right.

This is something to do with being a good writer, something to do with being a writer for 30 years, good or bad, and a lot to do with just having your brain badly disconnected no matter what you do. Like I say, what you call a blank cheque day. I've been having a lot of them these past few years.

Woke up yesterday hurting from head to toe. That's what a day loading up a skip then mowing the lawn will do to someone as dizzyingly near the peak of physical perfection as me. Should have been writing, instead spent the daylight hours eating, dozing on the couch and staring out the window at the wind and rain. At one point found myself staring at the Coronation Street Omnibus on the TV. And I don't even watch Coronation Street. I was just dazed. Eventually roused myself as the sun went down and managed to get quite a lot done. That is, after I'd wasted another couple of hours doing everything wrong first. Feel like a very old dog half-heartedly chasing its own curly useless tail. Bow wow...

Must be Spring in the air, dunno, but feeling a lot less dark inside my head. (Well, except for when I go to sleep, then the heavy duty dreams start again, woke up up screaming for help last night.) Keep trying to figure out why I'm feeling suddenly better in the daylight though but can't think of anything too specific.

Spoke to Ross on the phone the other night, which cheered me up. He was in the car on his way to see Velvet Revolver. He'd had lunch with Slash that day who'd told him some funny Axl stories. Also, Duff asked him for a copy of my Axl book, which Ross was taking him. Apparently, Gilby Clarke told Duff he'd read it and it was "one hundred percent accurate." Got a long day's work in yesterday too, 11 hours off and mostly on. Always a better feeling. Spoke to Robert my agent on the phone early yesterday morning, too, and I think that helped clear some of the debris. Just need to crack on, as they say. And now that I've got the bare bones of the next two chapters already there on-screen it's just a case of making that appointment with the laptop each day.

No laptop today, though. We ordered a skip which arrived yesterday, so have spent today helping wife throw out half the house. A good feeling, getting rid of all your shit, mentally and physically. Even in the rain. Now off to meet the girls from school. Life can be wonderfully simple sometimes. If you let it.

Super fast start to the day - meaning no shower, barely a bite or even a wipe of the arse, just straight out the door, as I had to go home to use the scanner and I didn't want to spend all day fucking around like I usually get suckered into doing when I go home. Thank god for scanners. When you're ploughing through literally hundred of magazines, newspapers, books, pamphlets, whatnot, sometimes it's just easier (quicker) to put the pages on screen and delete like hell than it is to sit there and painstakingly read every last word. In the old days I'd have yellow penned them and had an assistant type up the bits I (might) want. That would take weeks. The scanner means I get the job done in hours.

After that it was what we call a Full Monty Late Breakfast - i.e. anything that can be grilled or fried in a pan v.quickly - while listening to all the gossip from wife. I don't mind this but there does come a point where I have to ask her to take a breath. Or more accurately, I have to grab a big stick and start poking her with it as she just does not know when to stop - EVER. And has never discovered how to take a hint. So big stick it is. Needless to say, this means I leave her in an exceptionally good mood when I finally escape the house again.

My already staggeringly exhausting movie-length dreams reached a new pleateau of weirdness last night. Was woken by the disturbing noise of what sounded like a succession of a huge boxes containing (suddenly broken) glass being hurled through the door of the cottage. It went on and on and was so real that the only reason I describe the experience now as a dream is because when I finally sat bolt upright awake and eventually got the nerve up to go and check there was nothing there. I still couldn't quite believe it was just a dream, though. Went back to bed very shakily. What in fuck is going on (going wrong?) with my head?

A better day today, though. Finally finished the latest chapter of the Zep book. The one that's been driving me mad for nearly three weeks. Partly because I needed to do a lot of preparation, partly because I just hit some sort of wall with the writing, and partly because of my poorly arse. Whatever, the bastard is finally done. And as is often the way with these things, in the course of all the prepping and researching and fretting and dicking around staring out the window, I have pretty much all I need for the next two chapters down on computer now too. So - just a case of turning up at the laptop to write the bastards then. I suppose. Assuming no more heavy glass containing objects come (metaphorically or not) flying through the door.

The body clock has readjusted itself and I have gone back to being a night owl. After the initial few weeks at the cottage where I got used to putting in a night shift from about 11pm till 1am, something changed and I found myself getting up earlier each day and only being able to work till dinner time. Now for reasons best known to something other than me I'm back to burning the midnight lamp, going till 2 or 3 in the morning. I prefer this in many ways because the only thing that happens is you get work done. The combination of absolutely no phone calls, no emails, no unexpected knocks on the door or any other distractions, plus the fact that you're running on the last few dregs of your own energy, leaving you with precious little juice for anything else, mean you get right down to it.

Of course, it doesn't last. If you can do three hours like that you've done a lot. A lot. And then there's the mental hangover the next day, as you wake with your head full of ashes and dead flies. Still, at least I'm back getting pages done, which is the main thing at this point - the middle, roughly, of the marathon. It's funny, when I started out I was so excited and worried and over-concerned about how I was going to do this, what shape the narrative would take, what to keep, what not to keep, and the sheer daunting size of the task ahead, I was jumping around after every sentence, unable to sleep at night for thinking and dreaming and having nightmares about the sodding thing. Now I'm fighting off the drudgery. I'm tired.

It's my own fualt. If I'd started the damn thing when I was supposed to I could have afforded to take a break. But as usual it got left to the last possible minute, then left some more. Truth is, I was frightened of starting. There's a lot riding on this, the money of course, but also the fact that if I, of all people, can't write a really fucking good book about Led Zeppelin, then what can I do?

Anyway, it's Easter Sunday. I'm off to see the family and cook them a roast chicken. Hoping to suck up some of that powerful resurrection-shuffle vibe along the way before returning to the cottage and ploughing ahead with everything. That and a glass of good red wine should do it. Please God, or whoever's out there...

Spent the night at home, hoping to blow the deep blue book blues away. Made a roast dinner for everyone which tasted gooooooood. Then put the kids to bed without a bath - hey, we just don't care sometimes - and sat and watched Ashes to Ashes with wife. What rot. Keep watching every week but Jesus Christ is it rubbish compared to Life On Mars. This morning was all about the babbaloos. Had all three in bed with me at one point. Then one fell out and the little one said roll over...

Love being at home, love being with the kids. Hate it too, in that I know I should be somewhere else, working on the sodding book. Which is where I'm off to now. Feel sorry for wife being left on her own to cope with all this. But it's a long weekend, it's quiet. The perfect opportunity to get some work done, maybe finish off a chapter. If I can do that by the long end of Saturday night, even as a draft, I'll be able to come home Sunday and feel at least partially resurrected.

What a week. I think the old and shamelessly getting older brain is finally rebelling. Spent most of the past seven days sat in front of the computer for hours and hours only to walk away at the end of it not actually being able to see what I'm supposed to have got done. Consequently, I am left with the inescapable feeling that the answer is: not much.

Even the last two or three days, when I have positively forced myself to scrawl as many words down in whatever order (not important anymore) they happen to come, I still end up collapsing on the rotten old ruinously uncomfortable couch at the cottage wondering what in fuck I'm supposed to have achieved that day. Again, the answer seems to be: not much.

Starting to think this is turning into another medical condition. Only this time it's not just my arse, or my heart or my bollocks or whatever - it's my head. Feel like I'm walking around with the Pompidou Centre on my shoulders, the insides all on the outside and the outside looking like something the Elephant Man would be ashamed to look at in the mirror.

Meanwhile, the cottage is starting to feel more and more like a prison cell, or a cage at the zoo, nothing to see except the big baboon inside with the red arse hanging out pacing up and down, wondering where the sky went and just how much longer I am going to be able to stand this without taking my own shit and smearing it all over myself.

Wrote a pleading email to my long-suffering agent Robert, trying to explain the situation, more or less begging for guidance or just a few reassuring words. Maybe even a few stiff reminders as to why I'm doing this (the money, obviously). Then realised he's gone on holiday. Maybe that's what I need. A nice long holiday. Or just a short one. As long as it's nice. And gets me away from... this.

Been heads down too much nonsense fairly non-stop Zeppelin book work for the last few days and now I am officially knackered. Hence the tempting offfer to come home for dinner with the family this evening. Of course, the kids didn't give me a minute's peace but that was all right as I actually miss the little monsters when they're not around. As of about midnight last night, in fact, I appear to have entered that unwelcome zone where being away from home is starting to get to me. Lay in bed on my own (again) at the cottage thanking God I didn't have to live like that all the time. And to think it was only a couple of months ago I was trying to hide my glee at the prospect of a bit of me-me-me time. Bollocks, being alone is strictly for people with no other option. I did it for five years before I married and loved it, because a) I had no other option and b) after 10 years of serious hell in entirely the wrong relationship it was a kind of therapy. But you really wouldn't want to choose it as a longterm lifestyle option. Like being on the headshrinkers couch. EVERY DAY. Cheers and that but no ta...

Not one of the great days. Woke up at 3.00am with bad pain in the guts. I'd been told to expect this by the evil ones at the JR so I knew what was coming but it took a long time to get there. Finally unloaded about two hours later, the tears squeezing down my face. Staggered back to bed and tried to read myself back to sleep. When I finally turned out the light the time on my Blackberry said it was a little after six...

Then BANG! It was just after 9.00am and my guts were rumbling again. Christ on the cross! Is there no sodding end to this? Apparently not...

So all right, you don't need the blood-streaked details. Let's just say it was nearly midday before I was able to sit myself down at my desk. Just enough time to throw a couple of hours into the book - a squirt in the ocean - before running out the door to make a 3.00pm phone interview about the Axl book. I have to go home for these things because the landline in the cottage is so bad my wife can't even hear me on it and she's just 15 minutes down the road. What chance does a radio station in America have?

Got there on time and sat there waiting but the call never came. That's OK. Jon Hotten called instead and made me laugh with news of the new supergroup he'd heard about featuring ex-Quireboy Spike on vocals, CC De Ville on guitar, Steven Adler on drums, and ex-Wild Hearts bassist Chris McCormick. "Jesus," I gasped, "what are they called? The Fuck Ups?"

By 5.00pm I was in the lounge looking after the boy and youngest girl while mum and eldest girl were out at karate. I usually like this but today was hell. I was just too tired, in my head and up my arse. Poor kids. The best I could offer was the telly and the option of please keeping QUIET. PLEASE!

The boy just looked at me and laughed. Then ran at me and started pummelling me. Meanwhile, the girl was climbing over the back of a chair and trying to fall through the window. The clock was moving very slow...

Wife had her hair done a brilliant melange of colours today, reds, coppers, pinks, purples, browns, golds, all incredibly subtle so that you only get the full dazzle in natural sunlight. She also had it cut into a tres fashionable bob. She looks amazing. It meant I had to go and pick the kids up from school though but I can't complain, she's been putting the hair thing off for weeks to try and help me. Now it's my turn to help.

The only trouble is that although I vowed I would only stay home as long as it took I found myself on the computer checking 101 different Zep details on-line, stuff I can't do at the cottage as I only have the Blackberry to go on-line with there and it takes fucking forever. (Before you ask, yes I do have Wireless and no of course I don't know how to use it, now quit bugging me.)

So anyway, I'm still here, now doing this. Will the Zep book ever get written? Will I ever be young again? Will peace and love one day rule the world? The only way to save the situation, I've decided, is to ask the publishers to consider putting it out in two volumes. That way I can definitely guarantee delivery sometime this year on both of them. Would they go for that? Not a chance, as far as I can tell. Maybe if I hadn't already kept them waiting for over a year and I hadn't been born bad etc.

Right, gotta go. I've got a terrible destiny to keep rushing headlong towards...

Back to the cottage today for the first time since Saturday and THE PROCEDURE. Or as wife said, "Time to get your bum in gear." Hahahaha. Or: "Get your arse moving." Oh, my sides. Just as long as I don't have to kick some ass, I suppose.

Did a good phone interview yesterday about the Axl book with Gregg Godovitz on his Rock Talk show in Canada. So good they bumped me up from two segments to three. But then as everyone knows, I'm good at talking out of my arse. See, even I'm joining in now.

Right, enough of all that. I need to go and find my Zeppelin head. (Last seen up my... oh, for fuck's sake...)

When he wasn't beating his kids, drinking the town dry or sitting up all night playing what he cheerily called "Irish fecking music" with his few equally drunk friends, my dear old dad had a number of sayings and/or simple guidlines he used to get him safely through his days and mainly nights. One of which was about never going into hospitals, no matter how ill you are, because "Once they've got you in there, they never let you out again - except in a box."

Well, he may not have been right about much but he was certainly on to something there, I now discover. Having avoided hospitals for most of my life, bar the very occasional drunken trip to ER in my much younger days, I finally found myself being wheeled into one with an oxygen mask on my face about thee years ago. Heart trouble, maybe. Or some sort of chemical imbalance in my intestine... they weren't really sure. But drag me in they did one night after wife got over-concerned about a bit of vomiting from the old and rapidly getting older man.

Anyway, since then, it's been like an old car where as soon as one thing goes wrong it all starts to fucking fall apart. So first there was my heart, then, in short order, it was my eyes (cataracts forming), teeth (rotting gums), stomach (hiatus hernia), blood (too thick), skin (too thin), plus various ailments like the eczema that keeps appearing and disappearing like crop circles here there and everywhere, or the ache in my right testicle that still hasn't gone away despite the doctor squeezing them till I squealed like a bitch and forcing (yet more) antibiotics down my neck, or the strange spots and rashes that like to have fun with my face from time to time (usually in the week when I'm having lunch with someone important).

And now it's the turn of... my arse. Oh, yes, just when you thought you'd faced every possible medical humiliation (tubes down throat, cold hands on crotch etc) it's time for several different men and women to put their hands up my arse and search for the solution to my ever-growing piles. I won't detain you with the details, but the outcome was a visit to the JR in Oxford on Saturday morning for what the evil sadists there posing as doctors laughingly refer to as "a consultation." A contradiction in terms as the only thing I was eventually consulted on was my wife's mobile phone number so they could call and ask her to drive me home as I was in so much pain I wouldn't be able to manage it myself.

I had a procedure, you see. Not a consultation. Just a doctor and two nurses peering up my Jacksy while inserting what looked like a SATNAV system up there, extending its tentacles, then dragging it back down again. "Any pain so far?" asked the doc. "AAWWWWW!!!" I replied.

The rest of the day was a blur. Or should have been, if they had only given me the proper strength pain killers I demanded. But no, even there they insisted on dragging the torture out. Consequently, I have sat around on a firm but fair cushion for the past three days, unable to work, or do anything much. (Book ? What fucking book?)

Beware those of you not yet past the age of 40. This is what's in store for you. Forget all that shit about 50 being the new 40 and 40 being the new 30 and so on. Death and his mate Disease don't read those magazines. There is just young and fucking old. And if Death and/or his mate Disease don't get you when you're young they sure as shit will do when you're not. And once you're past 40, you're so not. Trust me.

On a different tack, I saw the new issue of Maureen Rice's magazine, Psychologies, on the racks the other day, with a big story on the cover about how to Heal Your Past. Please Maureen, if you're reading this, send me a copy, cos I really need to know. Or possibly how to Heal Your Arse. In my case, the two things are definitely related, I'm sure of it. Or as someone else once put it, "These are not wounds, but the scars of a life lived to the limit." To which I would add: "And a fat lot of good words do you when your arse is on fire. Again..."

Books, books, books, coming out of my arse...

That's what it feels like today anyway. Had to down tools on Zep to help the long-suffering publishers put together some blurb for the cover, which they're already working on even though I haven't finished writing the damn thing yet. Not their fault as I'm a tad late (about 15 months late, so far) but still a hair in the eye at a time like this. Ah, well.

Did that then got an email from my other publishers asking me to go over the lawyer's report about the updated chapter of the Axl book which I did for the paperback version due out later this year. Also very urgent, doncha know. Right. Usual irritating questions. Can it be proved he has red hair? Will anyone stand up in court and confirm that he acts a bit funny sometimes? How do we know Slash isn't in the band anymore? Oh for fuck's sake...

Meanwhile some magazine in Canada is calling this afternoon to interview me about the Axl book, which has just come out there. Seems the real folks (i.e. not lawyers, who are undead folks) can't get enough of this crazy stuff. OK. Now to get back to Zep. But wait...

Here comes another email from a third publisher asking about a possible future title after the Zep book is finished. After the Zep book is finished... there's a concept. It's weird, when you're in the middle of these things it never occurs to you there might one day be an 'after the book is finished'. It just doesn't seem possible. Decide to do the right thing and ignore it. 'After the Zep book is finished...' They're obviously taking the piss.

Been buried away in the cottage, my head lost in the 70s. Feel like the bloke from Life On Mars... "My name is Mick Wall, I went to sleep and woke up in LA in 1973, with a big fat bloke called Peter standing over me yelling obscenities at me. Am I mad, in a coma, or have I died and woken up on the road with Led Zeppelin? If I can just figure that out, I might be able to get home again..."

When I'm not doing that I'm lying in bed reading James Sallis. Salt River, third in the Turner stories, loving every bleak wonderful second. Except it's made me thirst for a big bottle of bourbon, which I will drink straight up, natch, maybe finish the bottle. Then go for a long drive round the lake and solve a murder on the way, while listening to the Carter Family on the old country radio station.

No wonder wife and children all looked at me funny today when I came home for my weekly mini-break. They think I'm cracking up on my own out there in the cottage. They just don't understand...