Star Blog

Down to London today to record a show with Tom Russell for Rock Radio. In Scotland, Tom is what Tommy Vance was here in England - the voice of rock on the radio, Radio Clyde in his case, the Scottish Radio 1. Tom's been there, done that, wiped his arse on the T-shirt. A bit like your old mate, but in radio terms. I was intrigued to learn he'd decamped in recent times to the newly begun Rock Radio network. For those outside the UK, the station plays 24-hour rock but currently only has FM licenses for Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow and, I think, maybe Dublin. You can find them on other platforms too, notably the internet. So don't be shy give them a try. They're good. Bloody good, actually. Still an all too rare phenomenon on the airwaves even here in the red eye of the 21st century.

Anyway, Rock Radio are covering the Classic Rock awards show this year so Tom has been putting together a special pre-show on the event, which takes place Monday night, for broadcast this Sunday at 4.00pm UK time. My job was to crack wise, be informative and interesting, help him make a good show. Think I managed it too. But then Tom makes it very easy for you. Like Tommy or, say, Nicky Horne, he's been doing it so long he makes the hard stuff easy - even easier if you're just the sidekick. I'll put up a link in time for the show.

Meanwhile, still waiting for copies of the Zep book to arrive. My one and only copy is already starting to look dog-eared, and I don't mean just the deliberately 'distressed' cover design. I mean by the brown rings made by the endless cups of tea I keep putting on it as it sits on the bedside table, intending to crack it open and have a read every night (would quite like to know what in god's name I was actually doing all that time) but always falling asleep first. If only I could stay asleep for longer than about two hours, though. I thought the insomnia was something to do with the book - it started about the time I started working on it seriously. But it has not gone away, even now the thing's finished and out there at last. Maybe I should just bury the damn thing in the garden like a bone. Anything for some kip. Except the dog would probably dig it up and bring it back to me like a recurring dream. A recurring dream I am unable to have cos I can never sleep for long enough.

Long, strange, exhilerating, perplexing, cold, wet, stirring, tiring day, and now night. Working again, see, on all fronts. It's half-term week so the kids are all home from school, which means there's no escaping the pleasure and the pain. Meaning, I spend the first part of the day being wrapped in that and the second and third parts locked in my office, trying to ignore the screams (from without and within).

Been so busy I forgot to go and pick up my new glasses today, which I only remembered just now as I get ready for bed. Love to tell you more about what's keeping me so preoccupied but the nature of the beast means I'm not allowed to yet. Suffice to say though, it means I have been on the phone even more than on the email (you know you're working when that happens). Partly to do with the Zep book - everyone wants one, I only have one, no one believes me but there you go. Partly to do with Classic Rock - it's their annual awards show on Monday. Partly to do with some radio stuff I've got coming up. Partly to do with Metal Hammer who I am about to do my first 'stuff' for. Partly to do with The Times, who I'm also doing another little thing for. Partly to do with the other two book projects I've busied myself with since finishing Zep in the summer - the Quo Ear Book and upcoming charity auction next week and a.n. other item still vaguely under wraps. Partly to do with sitting here picking my nose, scratching my balls wondering what the fuck it's all about, as you do.

Tomorrow, though, I'm off to London again, oh yippee. Hope I don't forget to go to the dentist's first though. I'm smartening up my image. First the new glasses, now the new teeth. Whatever next? A weave and a nice fake tan? Or maybe one of those penis enlargements I keep getting emailed about? Do women get those emails too? More to ponder...

Surprised to be told the Zeppelin book is suddenly in the shops. I didn't think it was coming out for another week or so but apparently it's snuck out without with me knowing. Haven't even been sent my author copies yet, though one did just arrive in the post today. It looks big, which would be about right as it's easily the longest book I've ever written, as those of you who suffered with me through the writing of it will already know.

Was just sitting here trying to take it in - the sudden surprise of seeing something you've thought about and worked at for so very long actually in corporeal form - when a friend called to tell me The Telegraph had reviewed it. I'm guessing it must have been over the weekend cos it wasn't in today's paper. But it is online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/, click onto 'culture' and then 'books'. To all intents and purposes it's a great review. "Mick Wall, the veteran rock journalist, lays it all bare in a book that can only be described as definitive." It sez here...

Of course, the writer, another 'veteran' named David Cheal, wasn't going to let me completely off the hook and complains about the italicised 'flashback' sections, as my publishers, rather infuriatingly, predicted the reviews would. But he does it in such a way - parodying the style in one paragraph - that it made me laugh out loud and, I think, actually makes the book sound even more interesting.

Anyway, you can never take these things too much to heart. It's a great review, and I'm delighted, but as someone who has been a reviewer himself for over 30 years, I can tell you that Salvador Dali had the right idea when he insisted on never reading his own press cuttings, merely weighing them. If there were enough of them, Salvador as happy, whatever they said.

Ultimately, it's what you think that really counts and what I think right now, sitting here holding the damn thing in my hands at last, is that it's the best thing I've ever done. It's not perfect, there are things in it I'd love to be able to re-do. But that's all fairly standard stuff. Is it better than Hammer Of The Gods? Yeah, it is, actually. But then HOTG was a fairy story. A rollicking good one, but still a fairy story. Not in the least concerned with boring old cobblers like truth. This is more grown-up. Meaning, less resolved, less fixated on the stuff that seemed so 'outrageous' back in 1985 when Hammer came out. Less pleased with itself and trying far harder to actually try and answer some of the hard questions about what the fuck was really going on over the hills and far away where that mythical beast Led Zeppelin lived, back in the golden god daze of the 70s.

Which reminds me, I never did get around, I think, to mentioning when I was writing it, what it was actually called: When Giants Walked The Earth. Which is kind of how I look back on those times now. A time of real rock giants, not false gods like Oasis or whoever your current favourite bad boys are but your actual great beasts like Zep, the Stones, The Who... If there is a heaven and I eventually qualify, when I die I will be instantly transported to the back of a limo, on my way to the Hollywood hills in 1970, where Joni will be waiting for me with a bottle of wine and a big old acoustic guitar, all long blonde hair and no knickers - and a copy of the latest Rolling Stone, with Dylan on the cover and a story on Darth Nixon by Hunter S. Or something...

To be continued...

A weird end to the week. Good but... weird. The Times ran the GN'R story almost exactly as I had written it. A huge surprise as I was so convinced it was tosh by the time I sent it, late, the night before, the editorial gun pointing at my head. By the time it was printed on their pages, though, it looked fine. 31 years and I'm still surprised sometimes by the magic of the printed word. A good thing, maybe, though you'd think I'd have learned a thing or two by now.

Meanwhile, local radio stations around the country picked up on it and started calling me to fill slots on their afternoon shows. "Sure," I said, "why not?" and found myself 'bantering' live on-air with all sorts of chirpy chappies for most of the day - again, not bad as the UK paperback of the Axl book has just been reprinted for Xmas. I also got a call from the MD of a production company asking if he could "put your name" to a documentary idea he's got for Radio 2. "Well, sure," I said, "why not?"

Then the US publishers of the Axl book emailed and asked if I could rejig - again - the 'new' epilogue of their own somewhat different and much more up to date version of the paperback which they are rushing out too. "Sure," I said, "when?" Pause. "Um, Monday?" Why not?

What's most heart-warming, of course, is how delighted I know Axl would be to learn that his own wholly unexpected burst of activity has also given me plenty of work to do. The only sad part, as my mate Jon Hotten pointed out over the phone, is that by actually releasing Chinese Democracy Axl will have ensured that this genuinely legendary album will now cease to be legendary at all and simply become "just another CD." A reading of the situation strongly backed up, I'd say, by the appearance this week of the first decidedly underwhelming single, the title track. Sounding, incidentally, identical to the bootleg version I've had for nearly three years which itself, it's said, probably dates back to the 2002 vitange version of the album.

Still, once the album is finally out of there, that will leave the way clear for the official reunion of the original band - or as many members of it as they would need to carry it off, i.e. Slash, Izzy, Duff and Axl. Never happen? Don't bet against it. In fact, do yourself a favour and make a large bet it will while the odds are still ridiculously long. When? Well, let's see. Give it two long dodgy years of cancellations, late-shows, no-shows, angry employee firings and band member leavings - that is, a normal GN'R world tour - then add another year of wound-licking and history-rewriting.... Suddenly it's 2012 and - hey presto! - the 25th anniversary of the release of Appetite For Destruction. Or the 20th anniversary of the release of the two Use Your Illusion albums. Whichever you fancy. Or both. Why the fuck not? Let's throw the whole caboodle out there, fight fans!

In the meantime, of course, Slash and co. could always do a Led Zep and simply get another singer in and go out playing original GN'R stuff and similar. No, wait, they already did that in Velvet Revolver. Looks like it will have to be with Axl this time then. Hooray. Can't wait. No, seriously...

Sitting here listening to myself on the radio - the Planet Rock special I recorded last week on the new AC/DC album. Actually a very good album, maybe their best since you know when. Actually a very good show, too, even though I say so myself, and trust me I never do when it's not. Bit wordy, but that always happens when something is scripted as opposed to the usual seat-of-the-pants presentation style of a 'normal' show. But still good. I actually sound like I know what I'm on about, which I suppose I must do by now when it comes to this gear. Met Bon once or twice too but that's another sad story for another happy time...

A strangely apt end, actually, to a day when I have become suddenly busy again. Weirdly so, in fact. Not that it was my intention, obviously. I was standing in Tesco's, in fact, when a very pleasant-sounding woman from The Times rang me and asked if I could write something about the whole Chinese Democracy saga - the single actually being made available this week and all that.

"Sure," I said, "when would you need it?"

"By 5.00pm," she said pleasantly. It was now 2.00pm. Oh... right.

This always happens whenever one of the posh papers asks me for something. I want to see it as a chance to dazzle them with my journalistic brilliance and convince them they must use me again and again like the old dowager I am. But, being so tongue-tied and useless, I always fuck up and over-write and try too hard and suddenly the sodding deadline has passed and they're on the phone wondering what the fuck's wrong with me, they don't want James Joyce, they want 800 words, bashed out double-quick and let the sub editors worry about it, tiger.

Which is exactly what happened this time, too, of course. Well, I couldn't actually remember what the 'saga' was and had to re-read the last three chapters of my Axl book to try and find out. By the time I'd done that I had exactly ten minutes to write the sodding story. Literally. Which is what I did, then sent it over, knowing they would 'like' it in the sense that it was raw copy and that was good enough when your subs are as top-rate as they are on The Times. Whether I recognise 'my' story by the time it's printed tomorrow is another enchilada entirely...

Meanwhile, back at the sticky keyboard, got another very nice email from my new best mate at Metal Hammer, Alexander Milas. I have a good feeling about this, the kid definitely knows his rock onions. Hope I live up to the hype. Then, as I was pondering that, got an email from the US publishers of the Axl book asking if I want to add to the update I've already written for the about-to-be-published paperback version of the book, the album now looking like it's actually going to be released etc?

Well, yeah, I suppose so. I also got sent a link allowing me to hear the 'new' single, Chinese Democracy. Apart from the improved sound quality, as you'd expect, what surprised me mildly was that it sounds more or less identical to the bootleg version I've had on CD for the past couple of years, the version of which may itself be maybe five years old, or even older. That's right, in case you hadn't guessed yet, the reason the album has taken 15 years to come out has had very little to do with 'musical' reasons. God bless the mad red-haired rule-hater. I also got sent a link taking me to a track called If The World which, as my mate Scott Rowley at Classic Rock said, "sounds like something Beyonce could have done, only not as good." Spot on.

I was just doing the hand-jive to that when wife burst through the door with urgent news of the kids' new school photos, hot copies of which she took possession of today. Between that and the latest news of her mad father panicking about her old mum's latest health crisis, I fair forgot all about the rock for a while. Or rather I did after the kids all joined in with a chorus of what might be construed as boos by a less discerning ear but sounded to me rather more like screams, yells, shouts, laughter, tears, pain, joy, hate, love, and at least 23 different types of hell, or what passes for it often when you are yourself aged 10 and over.

Good to be back at work then...

It's the little times that are often the best, sometimes stretched decades - worlds - apart. Sitting there at dawn in the Hollywood hills, over 20 years ago, with Marillion, stoned on Wowie Maui - weed-upon-weed - listening to the climax of Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon with Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood, all of us utterly beyond speech, but communicating on our own pre-internet superhighway, thoughts tangling us together like rope. Suddenly, a woman - naked! Standing there laughing! Then running off into the pool. I have no idea who she was. Someone's friend from the night before, no doubt. But nobody moved, just smiled knowingly, then went back to Us And Them and how we were all "just ordinary men..."

Cut to now, lying there at another dawn, a cold English autumn silently starting to surround us, me and my boy, two years old, nearly three, his head on my pillow, talking to me about something important-sounding, me smelling his hair, drinking it in, trying not to attract too much of his attention, his big feet dug into my enormous stomach, his mother stretched out, snoring next to us, not naked but unclothed, unhidden, in a way no one has ever dared to be with me.

No need to ask which room I would gladly die in. Nor which I find myself gloriously lucky to be alive in. Followed by the sound of the dog being sick on the stairs. Fucking dog, I should never have fed her that chicken...

Of course, not every story is as rock'n'roll as you might like it to be. Moving out of the city to the tiny house in the countryside in 1995 was about as un-rock'n'roll as I could make it. Deliberately so. Alone at last after too many years, I craved escape from everyone and everything. Now I had it. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of my unfurnished new home, an upturned box for my table, eating using a penknife, drinking from my one and only cup, just the dogs for company, I would stare at the phone with loathing whenever it had the audacity to ring. The answer-machine could never kick-in quick enough, and I would sit there lah-lah-lahing while whoever it was left their tedious unwanted message.

Four or five months of that of course and I realised I was perhaps somewhat mad. Perhaps more than somewhat. That left to my own devices I was going quite quickly to hell. It was still preferable, though, I thought, to being amongst those I had left behind. America? I never cared if I saw it again. The rock business? Please. I might look like a cunt, didn't mean I was one or wanted to carry on being one. Love? Maybe. But only on my terms from now on, that was the deal, even if I knew it was a shaky one.

So... up early every morning, walking the dogs along the Ridgeway, up by the gallops, just me and the two big German Shepherds and the few other lonely lunatics up here at that time of a grey dawn that you might have to avoid. All except the one old guy, long white beard, glasses, bobble hat, three dogs of his own, all different, all well-behaved, him striding up and down the hills like a goat, me huffing and puffing along behind sometimes. What he made of me, I don't know. I don't think he cared. Whether he shared the walk with me or not was not an issue. For him. For me, it was good to be with someone totally not of my kind, or what I had allowed to become my kind over the years. Someone who neither knew my name nor asked for it. We talked of dogs and he told me about the countryside we walked together, the history, how it had been when he was younger.

There was nothing redemptive about it, he offered no wisdom or particular insight. Just the company of the walk now and again whenever we happened to run into each other in the cold morning. Then I would be driving home again in the car, the muddy dogs in the back, him waving as we passed, on our way back to the lonely little house with no furniture and no friends.

All these years later, he is dead and so is his wife, who took over the walks after he passed. But the house they lived in is still there on that solitary road to the Ridgeway, and I always think of them, of him, whenever I drive past, which I have begun doing again lately, walking the new pup, though no longer alone, wife and/or kids with me now. Father Christmas, I used to call him, cos of the beard and etc. Remembering him, what I'm really thinking back to of course is the time when I really was alone. It was horrible in so many ways and yet I knew I couldn't go back. Not to London or any of it. Time would pass slowly enough - years and universes - and eventually of course I somehow came through and managed to rejoin the world at least part-time. The unpaid bills eventually ensured it. And the unmade love.

As ever, there is no moral. No ultimate truth to be had from any of it. I wouldn't even recommend it. Not for long, anyway. Driving through the town, alone, sometimes, it was all too obvious how the madman on the roof with the rifle came to be there. And the suicide. All too easily attainable, left to one's own devices. Except then there would have been no-one to feed the dogs. And I wasn't quite heartless enough for that. Yet.

So, a story from the Old Days to keep you glowing as you stagger amongst the embers of our non-starter summer. It was 1989, or thereabouts. LA, obviously. Le Mondrian Hotel, not my favourite, that would be the Sunset Marquis, but a v.good substitute. If you know the Whitesnake video for 'Still Of The Night' you'll know what I'm talking about. Or if you watch Entourage (Season 4). The suite would come with this big cupboard on the wall of the lounge full of goodies, white chocolate, kitkats, crackers, champagne, water, cokes, all sorts of incomprehensible shit that only made sense about 2.00a.m. shitfaced and still groping for a good time.

She was a Playboy model, Miss September 1988 to be precise. How we met, how it went, too long a tale for here but we had known each other a while. Never Done It, though. Despite the fact that she once grabbed me and gave me a long, lingering kiss as she pressed her 23-year-old breasts up against me. That had been in London in a previous incarnation and I had been living with someone and so had stupidly - stupid, stupid! - not followed up on it. Now this was LA, a whole other deal, and though I was still technically 'taken', I no longer cared.

Anyways... late, late o'clock, after the gig, after the Rainbow, after the coke and the booze and the fags and the guys all hanging out together talking shiiiiiiiiittttttttttt, we were finally alone. I looked at her. She knew. "What about it?" I said. "OK," she said. "But only if you shave first." A not unreasonable request in those days when a shave was a once-a-week thing for me and my beard was Brillo-sharp.

I was in the bathroom swiping the razor around my gob so fast I came out bleeding from the neck in three places. She was already in bed, waiting for... whatever it was she needed to think about to keep her there. I knew it wasn't me. Not this time, anyway. Knew I had already blown it back in London when I wimped out but that she was an LA gal and no biggie, the guy wants to fuck, s'okay...

I jumped into bed. Literally. I was so hot to trot I was a walking, talking, slobbering dick, no legs or arms at all. We went at it. Started to anyway. But I was in a hurry, it was late in all sorts of ways and I was still young and so fucking stupid it was amazing I hadn't already been run over in the road. (Actually, I had, but not enough to quite get the message yet.)

Suddenly, she said, "What about ****?"

"What about her?" I said.

"But she's your girlfriend," she said.

"So what?" I said.

"Don't you love her?"

"So what?" I said.

Mistake. What I should have done was take time out and say, in a caring, sharing voice. "No, I don't. It's been over between us for a long time. It's you I love."

Should have, should have, should have. Didn't. Young. Fucking stupid. Run over in the road.

Her body tensed. It was over and I knew it immediately. I also knew that another kind of guy wouldn't have cared and would have got straight back to work. Unfortunately, I have always found it all but impossible to be that other kind of guy, no matter how hard I tried. My curse, lived with it all my pitiful.

I rolled off and lay there panting, sweating, lost, fucked and not fucked, horribly aware how close I was not to death but to something far worse. Limbo. She turned her back to me and went straight to sleep. Well, that 'sleep' young women are able to turn on and off like a light in such circumstances, while I lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking, "Here I am in Hollywood, rocking till my balls fall off, lying next to the queen of the scene, and none of it is working. Now or ever. Fuck. It."

Loved LA though. Always and for ever. Would still be there now if it wasn't for whatever it was. Or wasn't. I'm still trying to figure it out. That is, when I'm not doing this. Or something else more interesting. Which I nearly always am. Lucky, lucky, lucky me...

Still heavily into the Not Working routine, though this doesn't seem to free up the days overmuch. Having spent the first nine months of this year, and the last couple of 2007, up to my neck in book shit, living away, putting everything else on hold, like an elastic band snapping back into place, now that I've actually got five minutes it hits me smack in the kisser every morning and the list of Things To Do is a long one. In there amongst the time-delay family stuff, the garage that needs (badly needs) emptying of crap, the garden that's falling apart, front and back, the house that's teetering on the verge of collapse through lack of TLC and the two cars that need servicing, MOT-ing and all the rest, there is the question of my own health, mental and otherwise. Unable to apply a screwdriver to the mental equipment, I try with the physical stuff and hope the brain follows the body.

So, lately that has meant my annual visit to the doc's for blood tests, looking at the pressure (spot on), checking the sugar level (steady), cholesterol level (same), fingering the kidneys (ooh, right on the margins but "not too bad for a man your age" according to the doctor, cheers) and many other fucking things, including weighing, arse-inspecting and general hocus-pocus. The good news, due to my recently developed treadmill habit (not so much running as staggering with style) I have lost five kilos - 11 pounds - in the past three months. Me, ecstatic, wife very jealous. Just another 25 or 30 pounds to go and I'll be nearly human again...

I was just pondering all this when I got an email that shattered the whole illusion of so-called progress. A message from beyond the grave from an old mate telling me that another old friend, Joe O'Neil, had fallen down dead last Friday night of a heart attack. I had to read the message two or three times before the truth sunk in. Even then it didn't quite hit home, had to work through the rest of the day and the inevitable series of flashbacks for that to happen. It's happening still and... well, it doesn't seem quite right. I've had other friends drop dead on me of course, but often you can either see it or coming or have known they've been ill anyway. For some reason this comes as a jolt. Like when Tommy Vance died, something I still can't quite get my head around. One minute they're there, the next they're not. And you look around for them inside your head and can't find them. And, well, it just doesn't compute.

Of course, back in the day Joe was a smoker, a joker and a midnight toker like the rest of us born to rock in the 70s. I dare say he was still pushing the envelope in one way or another. But to just drop down dead like that? The man was 54. Maybe that sounds old to you. Not to me. Especially not when the Joe I knew will always be 25 in my mind, a big fucker of a fellow, a womaniser and scrutiniser and a bad egg occasionally too, weren't we all once upon a not so jolly time? Now no longer. And that will be the same for all of us one day. Soon.

Looking for a moral, as usual only the cliches apply: enjoy it while you can; love the one you're with; live each day like it was your last. Etc. None of which suffice of course because none of those things are attainable, really. Joe and I hadn't been friends for years. Two paths you can go by and each of us on the wrong one for the other. Still. 54, walking out of AIR studios last Friday night having done his gig doing whatever it was he was now doing - PR for the classical fraternity, I'm told - and suddenly, wallop, goodnight Vienna. Poor fucking Joe. Poor fucking all of us. It's just not right. And never will be, no matter how hard you run or how much weight you lose.

Up and down like a toilet seat these past few days. Friday was a pip. Good day, bad night. In our continuing mission to spend some quality time together wife and I went to a favourite old haunt called Challows. Cluster of big old barns on the edge of town, next to a rubbish dump. Sell you anything and everything, but only one of each. Run by one, maybe two families, gotta know you a while before they speak. They know us. Half our house is furnished with Challows goods, brand new and second (and third) hand, but it's been a while. The sun was out and it was good mooching around. I bought 16 LPs (yes, LPs, not albums or CDs) for 50p each, on the premise that my Xmas present from wife this year is gonna be an old-fashioned, 60s-style record player, you know, a dusty box with a squeaky lid, two round silver knobs, one for loud, one for 'tone', whatever the hell that was. The records looked and smelled like the collection of a dead man (or woman), classical, jazz, easy listening, show tunes, you name it. No rock. Thanks.

Also bought some gifts for friends, ornaments, knicknacks, you know, sweet as. Smiled as we drove back, the world smiling with us. Or at least not shouting. Come evening, though, the mood had darkened at home. Too long a story to tell here, but it woke me up in the middle of the night and left me hanging right through dawn. Old friends, good friends, we thought we had lost 'em, and didn't know how. Awful. Teary. Knife-in-gut. Seriously.

Then Saturday, driving on out again somewhere, still freaked, the sun back up, the whole picture changed. We were wrong, or at least partly, enough to take most of the pain away anyway. So maybe there is a god hiding out there in the bushes somewhere? Maybe...

Then Sunday, out again, feeding the animals with the kids at Millets farm, buying organic this and that and wandering around in a daze, kids constantly at you like sharks, playful and true just never enough mum and dad flesh to go around. That night made and ate a big roast dinner, followed by chocolate cake and ice-cream, though none for daddy as he's not allowed, fuck my fucking past.

Then today. Shirking again. Well, balls. I'm in work rehab and need the break after the year I've had. With kids at school and youngest at pre-school for a couple of hours wife and I held hands and walked around Wallingford, just like days of yore, dimly remembered through the dense fog. Grey out there today but not cold, eating sandwiches in the village square in the shadow of the church, drinking apple juice and squinting at the sky. So simple and easy and yet it felt like it took us years to get there, to that place, figuratively, metaphori... blahblah.

And now... this. Not cos I want to but cos I have to, to keep the damn thing going. Doesn't even matter why anymore, does it? Though I did think of one thing today. Maybe I should try out some stories here. Short and otherwise. Real and otherwise. So-called. From the old days and otherwise.

Maybe...

So what do you do when your email is still down and it seems like the end of the world? Well, you walk the dog on the Ridgeway, blinking in the late morning sun, come back and make phone calls - so very last century - then sit there munching salad leaves and grilled chicken. Before going back to bed. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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So anyway, after nearly a week of limping along with half a computer, the email server on my ISP has now blown up and I have not been able to send or receive emails since Tuesday. Which means I couldn't send the two Planet Rock stories I sat up all night last night trying to finish. I couldn't even email someone to help me, someone that knows about computers, that is, as I don't know many of those and the ones I do only ever respond quickly to emails. The word 'Kafka' keeps popping into my head. That and 'bollocks'.

Spent a lot of the day on the phone instead, talking to my accountant and my bank manager about the Global Financial Crisis, wondering if my millions are still safe. Disturbingly, neither could actually bring themselves to say anything too definite, which must be hellishly weird for the lucky ones who do actually have millions kicking around, though one always assumes they have their own secret hidey-hole in the Caiman Islands or Geneva or wherever where it is all stashed away in neat piles, unburdoned by things like credit crunches and Gordon Brown facial twitches. Later, to celebrate, I cut two of my ramped-up credit cards into little pieces and scattered them to the four winds. Felt good. Still owe the bastards money, of course, but at least I won't be giving them anymore. Or them me.

I also spoke to my agent Robert, always a pleasure, who told me he was off to Colorado for a few days swanning around with some genuine millionaires. He was still banging on about Quo In Space, too. How the other half live, eh? Bet he's got good email access too and has never even listened to Planet Rock. Which reminds me, the last message I got before the Global Email Crisis kicked in was from a nice-sounding woman at BBC local radio in Birmingham, asking me on for an interview one afternoon soon to bang on about my books. I did reply but I doubt she got it. Maybe tomorrow...

Apparently, Mercury has gone retrograde, which means all forms of communication are essentially in trouble, or are not likely to be working at optimum power. That is to say, expect loads of misunderstandings, arguments, irritations and even big old fights. Or in my case, more than usual. According to the astrologists, anyway. What I have found is that this is essentially true but that there are always exceptions. The good and glowing pearls amongst the bad and smelly horse manure. And then comes today...

Can I be buggered to go through it all again here? No, I cannot. Mainly, it is the continuing computer mind-boggle that is wearing what's left of me down. That and the Blackberry also playing up. And the 'eccentric' publisher who is getting on my tits. And the fact that the dentist nearly polaxed me yesterday and is making me go back in two weeks for more torture. The endless phone and email messages which I keep meaning to respond to only to find it is the end of the day again and too late. The fact that I still haven't finished these AC/DC stories for Planet Rock which should have been done by last Friday but that the various mind-fingering, time-gobbling, arse-poking bollocks of life at the present second after second has played havoc with. That and the fact that wife can't seem to stay out of my office with her own various and many concerns. And that both eldest daughter and I are going to the doctor's tomorrow because we have things - yes, things, OK? - on our necks, me a weird crumbly rash that hurts like hell when you look at it, her a spot that seems to have ambitions to become a lump.

Then there's the other stuff I can't go into. So... a fairly normal rainy day then. And an evening much the same to look forward to. Basically, it's get AC/DC done tonight or someone must die, and I don't mean me. Yet. Please. Cheers.

Now here's something you have never read on this blog before and may never read again - went to a gig last Saturday night and it was REALLY GOOD. Yes, strange but true. I am of course referring to the Status Quo show at the Oxford New Theatre and I don't care who knows it. Fair enough, it didn't hurt that beforehand I had been sitting in the Chinese across the road with wife and friends, quaffing red and plucking at chopsticks dripping with seafood. Nor did it hinder the cause to be handed an Access All Areas pass at the door as we arrived, nor to be led to the dressing rooms before the show where the band was polite enough to make nice with my little gang. But I have enjoyed such splendours before and still found myself staring at my watch willing it to go faster halfway through whatever show I happened to be marooned at.

This time, though, it was different. Having seen the Mighty Quo far too many times over the past 30-odd years, surprises there have been few. This night though... well, let me put it like this: 'Mean Girl', 'Pictures Of Matchstick Men', 'In My Chair', 'Ice In The Sun'. Those that Know The Quo will need no further explanation. For those that don't, well, this was something different. A band revisiting their past in splendid style. Frankly, I never thought I'd see them do 'Mean Girl', a song I first knew and loved as a single when I was 15. As for 'Pictures...' etc, I was still in short trousers - and not the long 'ironic' ones worn by middleaged saddos these days - when they last played the shit out of that one.

Beyond that, there was just the band putting on the best performance I've ever seen them give. Francis, in particular, was riveting. For someone who has given a fairly passable imitation of a man going through the motions - albeit v.professionally - over the years, this was something else. Perhaps it was getting a visit from me before the show, perhaps it was just something they didn't eat, who knows, but I have never seen the Quo do their thing so well, so determinedly, or, yes, so excitingly. The blonde with the nice tits throwing herself around in the seat behind me didn't hurt either.

Today, though, is a different day and I am off now for an appointment with the dentist, after which my gob will be so numb I will not be able to speak for the rest of the day. If only I could bring wife with me for an injection too...

Off to see the Mighty Quo tonight. As you may have gathered by now I don't 'do' gigs very often. Unless it's the Tweenies or Highschool Musical on ice on whatever the hell the ankle-biters are currently into you can't usually pay me to go to a gig. Seen too many of 'em, see, over the past 35 years. Far too fucking many, in fact. But I always make an exception for the Mighty Quo because a) they are always good, b) they are mates and therefore make it very easy for me ticket-and-pass-wise, and c) they come to Oxford which is about as peasy as it gets in terms of driving to and from.

Tonight is a little different too as wife is coming and we are taking our friends Kevin and Yvonne, who, unlike wife, actually read the book I wrote about the band a few years ago and are indeed Mighty Quo fans. The plan, Captain, is to drop off the squids at Auntie Penny's (not really their aunt but more of a relative than anybody bearing the Wall name has ever or will ever be), pick up K and Y then hurtle Oxfordwards to the Chinese opposite the New Theatre. Eat as much as we can in the short time allotted, possibly grab a glass or two of red (twist my arm) then amble across the road where I have arranged a little meet and greet.

After that it should be plain sailing. That is, the gig starts and I can drift off into glassy-eyed rock'n'roll heaven. Well, not exactly, as that would entail a large couch backstage and an even larger bottle of red but that would be unfair to our guests (and wife). So I'll be sweating along with the 'faithful' to 'Down Down', 'Whatever You Want' and the rest. Oh yes, we know how to have a good time out here in the sticks...

I won't bore you with my computer problems. Suffice to say, they are not over yet and I have already lost the best part of two days to this problem so... blah. They (computers) will be the end of us all one day and I don't mean a long time from now. In fact, I don't even know why I'm sitting here bothering to come up with something else to talk about as all else has fallen into the long shadow cast by this malaise these past two days. Well, not quite all else. It just seems that way. Even typing this is painful as the controls don't work properly and I can't delete without much fancy footwork, can't space things properly and... Jesus, I said I wouldn't do this...

The curse of the robots has struck again and my usual computer is now O.F. (officially fucked). Therefore, if there are no more blog posts for a while you will know why. Either that or it is I who is O.F. Either way, we will all know soon enough. (This message written while scribbling out of my arse... feels like.)

Very enjoyable lunch with Chris Ingham. Laughed long and hard at the expense of several mutual acquaintences, some old friends and even a few former enemies. Chris treated us to some very expensive red wine too. My kind of lunch. After three hours he was ready to keep rocking but I couldn't keep up. Age has rendered me a lightweight and I knew I'd never make the train home in one mentally-fit piece if I let him order another bottle. This being the Age of the Blackberry the only thing that spoiled it were some annoying emails - some for him, some for me, fuck them all. Hoorah!

Amongst the electronic dross, some highlights too. Alexander, the editor of Metal Hammer, has been in touch, enquiring as to my availability for a bit of Old School-style reporting. Seems the Hammer is hitting harder than ever (circulation up and away) and there is a role for an Elder of the Tribe to come and add some spice to the mighty swing. I am flattered anyone his age even knows my name. OK, I'm being unduly modest, still, it's nice to know someone from the 21st Century wants me other than those liars and thieves at the tax office.

Tomorrow, it's back to trying to finish the AC/DC stuff for Planet Rock. It was going well yesterday and after the fun of today it will doubtless go even better tomorrow. That's the joy of getting out of the house now and again, it brings the blood back to a nice room temperature and pushes thoughts of the inevitable early grave further away. A bit further away anyway...