Star Blog

This blog is now going into hibernation for a few days. Oddly, while it sleeps the new-look, much-improved www.mickwall.com website should finally go 'live'. Enjoy having a gander at that till I get back. Till then...

Did a thing for ITV yesterday, who are doing a documentary about a certain showbiz couple once very close to my heart. More to be revealed anon. Meantime, thought the piece went well. The 'team' certainly seemed to like it. They want to come back in a few weeks and film me doing more. It's funny how when I started out in this game I was constantly looking for new stories to tell about new artists. 30-odd years on it's the same stories told in various new ways. You add to them, depending on the format and context, or cut to size, but it's all essentially the same. "Tell us about the Bad Old Days, Mick, you were there!" Yup. Just had no idea I was apparently living through such a golden age.

Meanwhile, hanging the big Do Not Disturb sign up outside the house now. We're going away for a short family holiday soon and between now and then I have a zillion things to do. There's the Classic Rock radio show in London tomorrow, which we're doing a bit earlier than normal, which should help. Except I have to get home fast after that to get stuck into some hefty sleeve notes for a new Status Quo DVD thingy I can't yack about yet. I've also got to send a ton of stuff off to my book publishers Orion, for another little project I'm not supposed to mutter about yet, due to come out early next year. That's besides doing what I'm actually supposed to be doing, which is deep-throat research for my next Big Book project, which... yes, you guessed it. Ssshhh, you know who, as those of us of a certain vintage still say with a stale snigger.

So... Bugger Off signs now hanging from every spare inch of space about the place. Leave A Poor Cunt To Get On With His Crap notes posted on every door. Call Back Later - Much Fucking Later messages on phone voice mails. And all so me and my wife and kids can try and get a couple of weeks away from it all - everything and everyone, yes, even you, reading this - just once before the shit starts being smeared all over the place for another year. Is it me or was that the chill air of Xmas I felt swooshing up my jacksy the other morning as I staggered through icy rain to the car?

Probably just me...

It was the 7th round, only about halfway through the fight, and already I felt it slipping away from me. It didn't seem right. The kid was good - younger than me, Scottish, a good pro - but still only a kid, surely, and I was The Man. Yet here he was, landing them on me, not especially good ones, but good enough to get through my guard. And here I was, going backwards, wondering why. I was getting some shots in too but they just seemed to bounce off this kid. Or at least that's the way he made them seem. It was like he was saying he knew me, knew my style, even though he was too young to have seen me fight in the flesh back in my prime, and that he had the key, maybe had always had it. It was bullshit but sometimes bullshit is what works, especially when you're the young one and the other guy is old. Older.

What should I do? Go for the knock-out blow and risk it all? Naw. I'd done that too many times in the past and ended up the loser against kids much stupider than this one, and this one wasn't bad just doing what kids do, having a go, a damn good go. What then? Use some stretgy. Yup, that was it. Except... except... I'd had enough of that shit. Lost the energy for it, the heart. Not the balls. I would always have those, maybe too much of those. I just didn't have the desire anymore. Not really. I'd been fighting just for the money for years. Now even that wasn't enough. Not really. It paid the bills and god knew I needed to still do that. But I no longer had the extra you needed to win fights like this one. Standing there in the ring looking at the kid, seeing him do good though not that good, I realised I was now so far out of the game there really was no way back. Not without giving up something more and I didn't have that much more to give. It was gone, the good stuff, long gone.

No, it was time to move on out. Find a new game. One for old cunts like me. One where I could still be the one on the way up. What though? The answer came just as the kid socked one right into my belly: not much, daddy. Not much at all. I sucked it in, hating every breath, and pulled back my right, ready to take aim again, feeling the blood trickling back down my throat...

So God finally returned my calls, harrassing me on the mobile before I'd even got it together this morning.

"What, I don't hear from you for ages then suddenly you're on the phone at seven in the morning?"

"Better early than never," he said. Always with the feeble jokes.

"You know what day it is today?" he said.

"Monday?"

"Yes, but not just any Monday. 40 years ago today this was the big one for your lot."

"What you mean?"

"The moon, dummy. Today was the day Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time. You know, the giant leap and all that."

"Bullshit," I said. "We never went to the moon. It was all a cover-up, you know that."

"Was it? Are you sure?"

I looked at the phone. I couldn't believe I was having this conversation so early in the morning. I wasn't even sure it was really him.

"How's Michael getting on?" I said, changing tack.

"I wouldn't know," said God. "He didn't come up here. You'll have to ask the other fella. I hear you're in touch with him yourself fairly regularly."

"Listen," I said, "I gotta go. I can hear the kids screaming downstairs."

"Yeah, all right. But before you do, what was it you wanted anyway?"

"What you mean?"

"You know, the constant emails and texts, the endless phone messages. Urgent, you said."

"Oh, that... can't remember. Something and nothing, I suppose. Probably seemed like a big deal at the time."

"You're not ill, are you? Money troubles maybe?"

"You should know, shouldn't you?"

"Come on. I can't remember everything. Besides, I've had troubles of my own lately."

"Yeah, like what?"

"The usual. Don't you read the newspapers, watch TV?"

"Just the sports. And the comedies, sometimes. The good ones. That's about all I can handle."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should. Ther's a big one coming your way. Your lot are gonna hear all about it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Oh well. Gotta go."

"Yeah, see you round, kid."

"Yeah. See ya."

And he was gone. Which was a drag cos right then I remembered what I'd been phoning him about. Should I call him back, I wondered? I didn't want to seem desperate...

Didn't sleep at all last night. Awful, like a junkie in a movie prison cell tossing and turning as he comes off the stuff. Except in my case the stuff isn't drugs, it's... something else. Work? Family? Thoughts of Life? Fears of Death? Don't know. Nothing that makes sense, that's for sure. Yesterday had been good, no warning at all. A family day, spent outdoors doing non-crazy shit like taking the girls to Saturday morning stage school, walking the dog through sunny trees then coming home and mowing the back lawn, the bits the dog hasn't destroyed with her digging and chewing and peeing. Then after lunch we all went out shopping. Food and clothes and whatnots. Space gun for the boy, pretty things for the girls, a sausage and a coffee for the old man.

Then an early night followed by... dark sleepless hell. Gave up by about 2.00am and came down the stairs. Ate a bowl of wheat-free nut flakes and organic soya milk, washed down with mineral water and still nothing. No sign, just a string of fat zeroes. Gave that up and crawled back to my prison bed, aching in my aches, choking on reality. By the time I staggered down again in the 'morning' I felt like that song Delia that Dylan sang on World Gone Wrong, the one that goes "All the friends I ever had are gone..."

Since then I've been sat here trying to finish this Adam Ant thing, which of course I've now finally managed to do. Not on any of those earlier days when I was feeling fit and well, but today as I've been sitting here sweating and trying to shake off the feeling of encroaching mortality. I hope he likes what I've done. I'm going to try and sleep tonight then read through the thing tomorrow morning before sending it to him. That's the plan anyway. I wonder what will really happen.

A friendly spirit came to me in the night, at least it said it was friendly. Showed me many things, most of which I'd either seen before or had seen before and forgotten. And one or two things I never knew existed. Of the stuff familiar to my sleeping head it showed me the ones whose birthdays I'd missed, whose bottled messages I'd never replied to, except with silence and all that says to the damned and lonely. The ones who came begging and got too much nothing in return. Then it showed me the ones I'd gone begging to, how little they cared for the memory, how it hardly ever came up except as a minor irritant in the corners of their screens. He showed me the smiling faces of the nice people, going about their busy-ness without me, feathering nests I'd built for them before flying away as fast as I could. How they'd taken my big eggs because that's what happens to cuckoos. Hatchlings they'd brought up as their own. How it was absurd to expect a look in now I'd been gone so long. How it wasn't really what I wanted anyway. How it was time to move the fuck on, cry baby. Then my friendly spirit took me down to a new place, deep and dark below. Deep and dark and waiting, not that far to fall at all. I reached out for a drink of water and got only sand. It would have to do and it did. And when I woke up I woke up tired but with an erection. No, not of the soul. The hard-to-piss kind. And realised how heaven and hell were not just words but real places, people and things. How long I'd been a citizen of both and welcome lifelong club member of neither. How important it was now that I'd been shown these things to get up and get out. Get away, me and my friendly spirit, taking the family with me for as far as they could afford to go, listening as of course they always are to their own spirits, friendly and otherwise. Old and young. Then and now. But never quite right, for long.

Once the fumes had finally subsided this morning it was back to work. Got my final album review done for the month - the new Cheap Trick and, yes, it's very good. Better than you think. Then got to work on this week's CR radio show. What that will be like I won't know till we come to record it tomorrow but, yes, I think it will be worth the trouble. Then, in an effort to become a gold star pupil, I knocked off a little 400-word piece on Steve Vai. All quotes, no sweat. Just clocking up the hours. After that, I thought I'd go for the world record and try and finish this damned Adam Ant sleeve notes thing. No chance. I was too hungry, too tired, too pleased with what I'd already done today. Not that I went away happy before turning off the laptop. In the course of discussing other stuff with CR editor-in-chief Scott Rowley today, it dawned on me that I hadn't had much luck with doing features for the mag lately. That, in fact, I had had only one major piece published in it so far this year. One. Not that I'm blaming anybody, it's just a weird thing to realise. Maybe it's time to finally finish that novel. Or work on that rock opera I've been talking about all these years. Or just go on holiday and forget the whole damn thing.

I was just sitting here wondering where to begin when wife burst through the door and with her usual understated grace bellowed: "CHRIST! IT SMELLS LIKE A SHITHOUSE IN HERE! HAVE YOU BEEN FARTING?"

Ah, well, yes, I have, actually. All day, as a matter of fact. I don't know if it's the acupuncture working its strange magic on my intestines, but something has definitely been afoot in that department today. I haven't been able to stop, in fact. Not big rip-roarers, the kind that bring a smile to the face of the one doing the rip-roaring and cries of anguish from all else within earshot. But what at school we used to call SBDs - Silent But Deadlies. It's most disconcerting. One moment, you're a perfectly nice man going about his boring business - beating the children, screaming at neighbours, threatening co-workers via email - the next you have turned into the bringer of certain doom, via the medium of fatally poisonous gas. And it can strike at any time. Leaning over to pick up the coffee-cup, putting on a CD, even Bach's Concerto in G on Spotify was ruined for me just now by the kind of green emission that could power a Lexus for a week.

The worst of it is wife and I were planning to have an Indian for dinner tonight. If you hear something about an explosion in the heart of England on the 10 o'clock news tonight, you'll know we ignored all the available evidence and went ahead anyway. Wait, she's back... "OH MY GOD! FUCKING HELL! HOW CAN YOU WORK IN THAT ENVIRONMENT? ARE YOU SUIRE VANESSA DIDN'T STICK A DEAD RAT UP YOUR ARSE. IT'S MAKING ME SICK. YOU ABSOLUTELY REEK..."

Strange, long day. Wife took youngest daughter for a hospital appointment, checking up on how effective the kidney operation she had last December has been. Stuck a needle right through a vein in her hand and made her cry, wankers. But she still came out smiling, bless her baby strength and fortitude. Meanwhile, I was home taking care of the other two, getting them ready for school. Easy enough until the hell of trying to find eldest girl's lost diablo began and refused to end.

Anyways, having disappointed daughter (again) and offloaded son, finally got back to my desk and sat here kicking around this Adam Ant thing, praying for inspiration to strike and being ignored. Ended up getting sidetracked by endless emails. The last resort of the hourly loser. Ultimately, the problem is I'm tired. All creep and no sleep makes Johnny a pain to have around, especially for his wife who ends up losing it with him big time.

One oasis in the emotional desert: had another appointment with Vanessa the acupuncturist. Boy, did she stick them in today. Also gave me another dose of the hot stuff - moxo sticks. Came out feeling better. Still tired but handling it all better. That is, until I get home and find wife still on her own trip, unable to abandon ship and hop aboard my float. This gets me down. But then a lot of things were getting me down today. Gave up trying to figure it out in the end and sat here reviewing a pile of junk for Classic Rock instead. One crap album after another. Followed by one crap book and one not so bad at all, if you happen to be a devoted Metallica fan.

Now I'm off to see if the moxo sticks will help me sleep. Ah, moxo...

Was supposed to be getting tons of catch-up work done while wife took kids to the school summer fete this afternoon. Instead, I found myself snailing away at the laptop while the Classic Rock show blared away in the background. The one, um, I write and present. Not because I'm my own biggest fan - not quite. I just lacked the imagination to think of anything else to do. I'm working on some sleeve notes for a new Adam and the Ants compilation. Not a subject I write about regularly, and therefore something I should be having more fun with. The trouble is, I've dug up something similar but much bigger I did for Adam back in the mid-90s and - hold the phone - it's really good. I mean - really - very - good - indeed. It's also hugely long - like a mini-book - while the thing I'm doing now is relatively small. This has had the odd effect of making me feel completely impotent. That is, polaxed by the thought of a) trying to better the previous one, b) knowing that's impossible anyway and c) wondering how to make the new one really - very - good - too, but in miniature, by comparison. (There's also a 'd' which is the dreadful sneaking suspician that the piece from 96 is better because I just was better then anyway...) All this while vaguely noting myself burbling on the radio in the background, talking about about Led Zeppelin wrote Black Dog. Funny game, life. Especially when the dog's eaten the dice.

In the end, gave up and went to have a run of the treadmill. God, was that hard. It was only a week ago I felt like Bambi cavorting over hill and brook while setting a new personal best, time-wise. (Time-wise as in how long I can actually keep stumbling along at a speed fractionally faster than walking quite fast.) This past week, though, has seen the increasingly old body rebelling. Pain in the legs, back, arse, head. I mean, yes, all those things are normal these days but this was even more so. Today was the final confirmation. Whatever's been going on, I'm somewhat on the fucked side. Still, I did manage to finish before collapsing in the shower.

Came down feeling only slightly refreshed and cooked Sunday dinner. At least I know my way round the beginning, middle and end of that one. Rather tasty it was too. Chicken, roasted, with herbs and garlic and lemon and tons of veg. And gravy. And tats. Etc. The only thing missing a glass of red wine. Not because I don't have any in, I just feel too tired to open an entire bottle knowing I only want a glass. In fact, I feel too tired to piss. Signs of too long a life? Too close a death? Too bloody Sunday? All and more? Or perhaps less. And less each day...

Woke up heavy of limb and head. Might have something to do with the fact that wife, after weeks of sleeping on a matteress on the floor cos of her bad back, has now moved back onto the bed. This is good. But also... weird. My dreams have taken a turn. Not for the worse, just more wakeful. Like visiting the Licing Theatre then waking up feeling ready for bed again. Or something. It might be that heavy-duty dose of whatever it was Vanessa zapped me with during the acupuncture session this week. Been feeling heavy ever since. Like a slow train. Let's not start that again though...

Anyway, been working. Working, working, working. All good. (Hate that expression.) Because if I don't work my inner train gets towed off somewhere bleak and nasty. But still... could use a wee break. Not for urination, though that too, but just to get away from this bloody desk. Well, it is Friday night, isn't it? I'm allowed to give somewhat less of a fuck, aren't I? No? Oh, sod it...

To London and the Classic Rock radio show. Got the train again this week as I'm so busy with other stuff I don't have time to do the six-hour round-trip that driving and getting the tube usually entails. Except of course the train is slower than Pink Floyd and eventually breaks down just outside London, meaning we have to be towed in. Towed. The train. Fuck me. Still, only 40 minutes late, which is 30 less late than last week. This must be considered progress, I suppose. Though not sure Scott Rowley, who had to wait for me for ages at the studio, would consider it such though.

Jeez, a blog about trains breaking down. You must be living the dream reading this. The show, for what it's worth, went well, I thought. Though not as well as last week, which means it will probably sound a million times better by the time it's broadcast on Sunday. Afterwards, I treated myself to sushi at that weird sit-at-the-bar place at Paddington Station. Going without wheat and dairy makes sandwiches a near impossible ask outside the home, certainly from fast-food counters. Here I got all the rice and and fish and veg (and hot green cha) my body-temple needs. I also got smiled at a lot by the hot Polish babe dishing out the bills. Expensive, though, but what the fuck. I'm rock, me, I can do what I want, mutha. Yeah...

After that met an old mate, Nick, for a drink in Covent Garden. Nick is going through it at the moment, work hard to find, life closing in. It was the same for me at his age (37). Life has a way of fucking with men in their mid-to-late 30s that has nothing to do with mid-life crisis and everything to do with what Iggy Pop once told me he called "the Christ age." He called it that, he said, cos Christ died at 33 and he felt all men did the same around that age. That is, life had a habit of crushing them in interesting and multi-various ways that they either recovered from eventually, coming out stronger but more fucked than ever, or not, as the sad case may be. I'm paraphrasing, natuirally, but you get the gist, right?

Nick will be like me, I'm sure. That is, he will come out stronger and more fucked than ever. But not forever. Not quite anyway.

Whatever Vanessa did to me yesterday it was still working today. Last night I could hardly get off the couch. My whole being was... heavy. And soft. Like falling into endless pillows. So much so I felt almost like I had a hangover this morning. Not a hangover in the bad sense, but just a sense of being shrouded in something tangible. Something positive but which makes your limbs a little heavy. Like rest. Enforced rest. The good stuff.

Been doing wonders for my piles too, the acupuncture That and the wheat-free, dairy-free diet I suppose. The emotional pressure definitely recedes too. Troublesome emails lack their usual fret-worthy impact. Fear of the future grows smaller, like turning down the volume on the TV horror show. The only thing that doesn't shrink is the amount of stuff I've got to do before we head off on our holidays in a few weeks time.

Wife and I have taken Vanessa's advice and decided to try and make the holiday as event-free and information-light as possible. In the past we've had visitors down to the cottage, for instance. Or stayed in touch wiuth events back home via phone. Not this year. No way. This year we do not want to know. We're going somewhere new and we are going to turn our phones off and leave them turned off. Then sit in the garden and watch the children run around like the gorgeous little mad-people they are. In short, we are going to do our best to completely forget everyone else and everything else. After all, it will all be there waiting to drive us nuts when we get back.

More catch-up. More belated follow-through. Less time than ever. But just a tad more grace under pressure. Or was till I got to about 2pm then felt the cracks start to appear. Did I say/write/send the right thing? Did I respond/not respond/up it/down it/fuck it/not forget it/etc the right way, the wrong way, anyway? Who really knoooooooooows?

Thankfully, I was also scheduled to see Vanessa the acupuncturist again this afternoon. Amazing woman, full on trip, yet light to the touch. Not her. It. Wife says it's the same when she sees her. Most of the time you're just talking. Like going to see a therapist, which of course its exactly what she is, but with all the benefits of 6000 years on TCM behind her.

Today, as well as sticking in the needles, she did this thing on the lower part of my back, down near the base of the spine, this thing with what felt like hot candles or some form of heavy burning incense. Don't know what it was. Really should have asked her. But she has you so busy talking about other stuff, you find yourself wandering off into time and space. I swear she could be banging in nails and you'd hardly notice. Anyway, whatever this hot stuff was she was doing, it really worked. Knocked the night right out of me...

No blog for a few days, things just too crazy from the heat here at the Old School Corale. I blame Thursday. That was the day I went to London to record this week's Classic Rock radio show then found myself having dinner with Russell Finch, producer of outrageously strange programmes for BBC Radio 4. We met a couple of months ago when I took part in one of his things, about the strange case of the blonde boy that appeared naked on the cover of Houses Of The Holy. I'll let you know when it's going to be broadcast. I think Russ thought I might have a couple of ideas for programmes of my own to pitch to him but I didn't. I was just interested to get to know him better. I like talented people, especially the ones working on the so-called creative margins.

We met in the pub we all used to go to in the days when Kerrang magazine was in Covent Garden (circa 1984) and I suppose inevitably I ended up regaling him with a few war stories from those times, which led almost as inevitably to me telling him about the Steel Panther video for Death To All But Metal. (I assume you've seen it, if not there's a link below.) Wound up eating in Joe Allen's, round the corner. By the time I found myself sitting on the train home trying to keep both eyes open, I'd had a grappa or two to go with the small beer or two I'd also allowed myself under the special circumctances. Result: I was very 'tired' the next day. Which is probably why I can't remember much about it now, except that I had it 'off'. Officially. That is, wife and I wandered around in the sun holding hands and doing... stuff. Important 'day off' stuff. Like buying coffee for my new coffee machine (groovy birthday present from way-cool wife).

Saturday I was strictly all business again, catching up on all the work I'm still trying to find my way back to after wife's illness. She's still not fully well but, man, is she a long way from the dark end of the tunnel we were stranded in for about six weeks there. With the good weather, the kids spent most of the day splashing about in the paddling pool. But even they had to come and help when daddy decided he had to go to Oxford to visit a 'special book shop' to find something for his research. (Well, I didn't want to be alone, more than I am anyway.)

I don't know what happened later that night. I was there in person but the enormously old brain was somewhere else. Over a small hill and way too fucking far away... again.

That Steel Panther video, dudes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlbKprH61AE

Took a long time to get to work today. It's that time of the year when the kids have a million different end of school year activities going on, all of which seem to require mum and dad to indulge in them too. Yesterday evening there was the annual sports day. A nice gig for our kids as they go to one of those picture-postcard village schools where the races take place in green and pleasant fields under zillion-year-old trees, and they serve the adults warm beer and wine and cancerously toasted burgers and hot dogs. Our girls both won their egg-and-spoon races, and one won another - the running with a tray with objects on it race, whatever it's called.

This morning there was more. Eldest girl playing cello in assembly, along with a couple dozen like-minded uniformed souls and teachers - and us. Was good, too. Way better than we had hoped. I actually heard a couple of tunes being sawed away at. Got out just in time to wave youngest girl off as she left for the annual teddy bear's picnic they take her age-group on. Then it was straight to the acupuncturist with wife. Her turn today. By the time that was finished and we had picked the boy up from his morning pre-school it was lunchtime, which I skipped in order to - slap on back please - run on the treadmill. Well, jog. And sweat. Like a pig. Two pigs actually. Felt good afterwards though, like a train narrowly averting a crash at a level-crossing.

After that I ate soup and (wheat-free) bread and (dairy-free) spread and finally got to work. Making plans for my next book. Tell you about it another time, but I'm neck-deep in research right now, usually my favourite part, but this time round it's taking longer than normal and it's been making me antsy. Had to break off after a couple of hours to put this week's Classic Rock radio show together. Did it to a backdrop of happy and occasionally not-so happy screams from the garden where bikini-clad wife, wet-suit-clad kids and dog-suit-clad dog were jumping in and out of the paddling pool, annoying the neighbours.

The show took me longer to get together than of late as I made more of an effort this week. Since Download, when we did it all live, I've been so busy I've left a lot of the graft to my producer Russ. But there is so much going on out there right now, new release-wise, tours, festivals, news and so on, I felt beholden to put my shoulder back into it this week. The result is a damn good show. Or might be if I can stop my brain melting in the studio long enough tomorrow to live up to it.

Tomorrow, by the way, I've just been told, will be the hottest so far this heat-waving week. Oh lucky, lucky me. And us.