Star Blog

Good night last night. Went to see eldest daughter take part in a concert in which she gave her first public performance playing clarinet. Considering it was at the same venue I'm off to tomorrow night to see Fairport Convention it was pretty impressive. The kid's got it going on. She always has had. One of those, you know, shooting stars from birth. Where she came from, who knows.

Very strange day today though. Got up, did the usual kids-out-the-door-without-killing-anyone thing, then allowed wife to pursuade me to 'run' across yonder green hills. Which, miraculously, I did. Second time this week. Third week running, something like that. Very pious of me, obviously. Came home sweating and feeling like Jesus. Had a shower and weighed myself and found I was one pound heavier than the week before, so that's working then, cheers. Had brekkie then...

... fell asleep. In a chair. Til lunchtime, when my boy came home from pre-school. At which point he sat with me eating his sandwiches and yoghurts and what have you while mum ran out and did some shopping and I... fell asleep. Again. Woke up drooling over boy's head.

It was just gone 1.00pm when I finally managed to heave myself out of the chair and... upstairs to bed. Where I slept till nearly 4pm. Somehow - no god knows how - I managed to drag my aching body out of the sack and fall down the stairs where I made a tea and went back to sitting in a chair. Around 5pm, I was feeling strong enough to put my pinny on and make some dinner for the kids, followed by some for me and wife. And that's basically been my day.

One last thing: because of some blogger nonsense this may be my last blog entry for a few weeks til the sainted Julie can sort out the various technical difficulties. If this is the case, don't despair. I will be back. Possibly even tomorrow if Julie works her magic. If not, in the meantime, I recommend lots of TV, plenty of eating and turning all the mirrors to the wall...

She was your typical rock'n'roll hoor and being a star back then she liked to see me as her backstage pass into those places she saw herself being into. Sort of tiny mind you don't mind so much long as you're getting youse kicks, you know? Well, I knew but I didn't want to know, being lonely no place else to go at the time and just enjoying the clean clothes for once and the food and drink all nice laid out like that every night, peering at it all comfy through my smokerings. Trouble was it didn't couldn't wouldn't last. Like nothin ever dis. But you know at that age you still hold out hope or at least wish hard for just a little longer like. Well I gave it all there was to give but finally her taking got too much. We were standing backstage at the Donington festival. This was 88, the year the two kids died, but we didn't know that yet, we still thought ourselves v.cool. We were standing there when Dave Mustaine of Megadeth came sidling by, stoned and smug and very handsome too with his long red hair and big lanky man thing going on. I knew the woman liked his stuff, played the albums back to back, knew the words, full caboodle. I didn't see her as so stuipid though she would start to giggle and guff and show herself up the minute he drived by like. Anyway, knowing Dave and Dave knowing me he stopped, briefly briefly, and said hi. Then he looked at her and touched her hair and said, "Nice." Then he was gone. No biggie. Chicks everywhere that day and most every day for a fancy lowdown no-good rock star dude like the mighty Mustaine, especially in his stoned immaculate god-of-thrash parlour days, you dig. But this bitch goes bitch crazy. Gives it the big eyes and the silly smiles and the googy-woogy-wagga. "He touched my hair! He touched my hair!" she squeedled and squaddled. Sick-making, like. Typical rock'n'roll hoor, like. Cept I never really realised it till right then. Looked at her with new old eyes after that. Look at her then look away quick, like. Just like I'm looking away quick at her now all these long times later. And the moral of this story? Dunno. Sitting here trying to think a-one. Just that it still sticks in your craw sometimes, things you knew but never really knew until... well, like everything, I spose.

Had a visit from a legendary American radio producer today named Denny Somach, interviewing me about the Zeppelin book for a special syndicated Zep-only programme in the US. This was the first time anyone has ever been allowed into my lair to actually interview me but it was the only way it was gonna happen as trips to London, where Denny was making a flying visit, have to be kept to a minimum at the moment as I am SUPPOSED to be writing the Metallica book. Denny was also SUPPOSED to be here for an hour, max. He stayed for two. An hour after that another US radio guy rang to interview me about the Zep book for his show. It was SUPPOSED to last 30 minutes, max. An hour later he had "just a couple more questions."

Don't get me wrong. I would be moaning more if no one cared about the books I write. Indeed, I would be on the dole. Plus both Denny and Steve were so damn nice about the whole thing I can hardly begrudge them the time. But right now I am so conscious of the clock ticking anything and everything not labelled either 'Metallica' or 'book' is getting to me. Quite badly.

So I have spent what's left of the rest of the day sitting here working on the book, and fretting and despairing and wondering how in hell I'm gonna finish in time. Much of this is par for the course. Of course. Some of it is genuine fear. I think it's time for the underground bunker. If only I still had time to build one...

Was at my desk by 7.00a.m. writing this week's Classic Rock radio show. Two shows, actually, recorded back to back in London today, in order to give me a week off next week so I can try and get some chapters done on Metallica. The publishers want me to send a batch so they can get cracking on them while I try and finish the rest. All good... ish. Your mojo starts to get a bit frosted round the serrated and bloody edges though when you find yourself still at your desk 14 hours later, pepped up on coffee and fast approaching that meaningless state where you're too wired to sleep but too fucked in the head to actually write anything more meaningful than this sideways twaddle.

A good time then to be asked by your wife to come into the kitchen and dye her hair (er, alright) and try and decide what to do about the bloke from the American radio station who wants to come to your dive on Friday and interview you about the Zeppelin book. Keen as I am to do this - along with the other US radio interview already arranged for Friday afternoon - and understanding as I most assuredly am of the need for my accountant to visit me early one evening next week to advise on how I might just stay the right side of bankruptcy before I finish the Metallica book, I am starting to wonder if my health is going to hold up, mental and otherwise. Good job I'm off to see the sainted Vanessa tomorrow evening then. I need those digging needles and those smelly Moxo candles and I need those bastards now. Please.

Naively encouraged by the success of yesterday's exertions, I went running on the clumps again this morning. Needless to say, the outcome was different. I enjoyed it almost as much at the time. That is to say, moments of clean-air gulping goodness grasped between the painful panting and heavy leg-aching, followed by the feeling of self-goodness for having put oneself through such enriching self-flaggelation. But by 5.00pm today I was as flat as a witch's tit, all the air hissed from my tyres leaving behind only one parched and grumpy very old-feeling and looking old git. Not even a Chinese takeaway and the wondrous joy of seeing Jose Mourinho's Inter slamming glittery Barca on the telly could bring me back to life. Nor writing this either. Time for bed then, see if that works for a change.

I went running across the clumps this morning. Only my third go at running outdoors. My first time was exactly a week ago, same route as today, only today I went further and enjoyed it more. The second time was down and up a long hard country road also last week which nearly killed me and didn't even have the knock-on effect of making me feel good later. Just pain in both legs and nothing else. Anyway, today was so good I'm gonna go again tomorrow. If I can still walk when I wake up in the morning. As for the rest, book, book, book, book, book, book, boring book...

Someone emailed in asking never mind what books am I writing, what good books I have actually read lately? And the answer is... um. I don't recall the last good book I read actually. There have been a fair few I re-read, that sit in perpetual attendence by the side of the bed and toilet that get dippe dinto fairly frequently. But... new? I tend to read more about books than actual books themselves these days. In fact, it's become quite a thing for me. Once was the case the Culture section of the Sunday Times was enough to satisfy my weekly needs, topped up by magazine reviews and the occasional glance at the Telegraph and Guardian books' coverage. Now I never leave home or settle myself bare-arsed onto the loo without a copy of the Times Literary Supplement. In fact, I've probably read more of those than anything else this past 12 months with the exception of Metallica books and/or cuttings and even there the TLS wins by some considerable margin.

Same thing with music. Until fairly recently I was still buying tracks and CDs on Amazon. Since Spotify however that's all gone to hell too. And if I can't find what I'm looking for on Spotify I just choose something else because, baby, there is always something else good to hear that you've either never heard before or not for a donkey's age anyway. Between that and Radio 3 on the BBC iPlayer, I can't remember the last time I needed a CD outside of planning the weekly radio show or driving my car.

So there you have it. If they can just find a way for you to consume food online I may never have to leave my office or bedroom, or loo, ever again. Like a permanent volcanic dustcloud settling over my roof, I shall just sit here writing my masterpieces, which no other bugger will read either, just the reviews, hopefully splendid. Sort of thing. Sunny today, though, wasn't it, I couldn't help noticing. Through the window...

To London today for a jolly, slightly late lunch with Robert my agent and Malcolm my book publisher. Always enjoy seeing these two gentlemen, love the book gossip, enjoy the class. They even restrained themselves from putting me too much on the spot about the Metallica book. Strictly speaking it should have been delivered... tomorrow, I think, was the original plan. Instead, I'm running a little late, as they say. Came home with renewed intent though, started hammering right back into it. Well, transcribing interviews anyway. Need to work my way through a few more before continuing with our continuing story. Robert told me about Acai Berries, how they are the new natural way to, um, focus your mind. Or "the healthy new deadline drug," as Malcolm put it. I think he said Acai Berries. Robert offered to take me back to his office and let me have a hit from his own private stash but I had a train to catch. Think I'm gonna do a bit of Googling tonight though. Then run out and buy some first thing in the morning. Anything to help me get this book done, okay fellas?

One of the producers at Rock Radio, who broadcast the Classic Rock radio show which I present each week, asked me today (because he was told to) if I could send them some pictures of me with rock stars that they could put up on their website. I told him, no, I couldn't. That is, if I had them I could but apart from one or two I really don't have any. I never wanted to be that guy to those guys. You know, like some autograph hunter. Ooh, can you sign my albums, and can I have my picture taken with you? Maybe if it had been William S. Burroughs or Charles Bukowski, but even then I doubt it. Never wanted to be part of the crowd, never saw myself as one of the Little People. Certainly never saw rock stars as being anything special. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy their company, or snuffle their gear and grab my share of what was on offer back there in those rooms where only drooling rock stars go, those places where no one is allowed to take pictures anyway. I was just never after a souvenir. None that you would keep in a scrapbook anyway, something to show your bored grandchildren.

It was quite a lot of years ago now. I was living in hell with a woman that didn't love me anymore, maybe had never done, it was very hard to tell and truthfully I'd never been that bothered before, as long as I was all right Jack. Until now, when all suddenly became clear. The money had gone, the prospects, and with them had gone me, at least as far as she was concerned. Now she was making me pay and pay. So there you go.

Anyway, one morning something happened, a small thing but it felt bigger and bigger the more I thought about it. I was so rocked I didn't know what to do other than write it down. No biggie, just simple words. Like a list almost, just to give me something to look at, help me digest, get my head around it. I wasn't old enough yet to know there was no should or shouldn't, I still thought things could be fair or unfair.

It only took a few minutes and near the end I realised with only passing interest that it looked kind of like a poem. Then I finished it and shut down the computer. It was only later, looking at it again, to remind myself it had really happened, this small big thing, that I realised it was kind of a poem and that maybe there could be more. So I started. Not trying to write poems, so much, as simply put things down that were already inside me, to get them out there and see what they looked like. It meant they couldn't be 'well-written' or thought out. I simply had to close my eyes, try and wait for the right and wrong words to come then do my best not to get in the way of just letting them fall onto the page. Some very ugly things came out along with some other kinds of things. Surprising things. There was nothing good or bad about it, it was just like listening to someone's story, right and wrong words all there together like knives and forks laid out in the drawer.

Some time later, trying to get someone to notice my 'proper' writing, short stories and whatnots, these other things came up. Sort of like a last resort. No one liked my proper stuff, not even me. Well, it was crap. Trying too hard crap. Writerly crap. Look at me bollocks. Nothing right or wrong, just crap. So I showed someone a couple of these 'sort of poems' instead and - blimey - they liked them. Enough to put into a little arts magazine, in fact. When it came out there were three of them slapped across a double-page spread with the byline: Poems by Mick Wall. Later, at some falling-down dive in Ladbroke Grove, late one typically drunken night, the editor of the arts mag, one of those daddy-is-a-rich-man-but-I'm-a-good-cunt-me types who really did seem to be quite nice actually, turned up out of the blue and when he was introduced to me embarrassed the whole room by announcing. "I think you are the most exciting new poet in London!"

That sealed it. As London's most exciting new poet I set about my task with renewed vigour, as the less exciting poets would say. Thought I could do no wrong. No right or wrong. (My secret formula.) The poems flowed out of me. Some were pretty damn good, actually. I could see that now. Eventually I was invited to submit some more to the arts mag editor. I confidently sent some over. One I was particularly pleased with was called Chasing Squirrels and was about me and my big German Shepherd, out walking one steamy morning, me watching as he, yup, chased squirrels. Later I heard back that the arts guy didn't much like Chasing Squirrels. Thought I had "gone off a bit." Oh.

I carried on writing poems though. Wrong and right, on and on, for about a year in the end. Then one day I stopped. Not deliberately, or with anymore thought than I had started. I simply left it and somehow never returned. I think the Great Depression of the mid-90s had hit by then and I was too busy with other things, too tired out and fucked as I staggered over the finish line each day, to have time to think about anything other than how to keep breathing. That was about 16 years ago now. I vaguely remember a couple of half-hearted attempts but it was like trying to suck granny's withered tit. Nothing but rubber in my mouth. London's most exciting new poet had apparently died young, a virgin.

So let's talk music for a change, shall we? Well, lately I have been listening to Terry Reid's album The River. First released in 1973, and bought by me from the oracle that was the older studenty-looking guy that worked in Cloud 7, my local groove emporium back then when they still had such things. Needless to say I was such a moonage daydream in 1973 I couldn't make up my mind whether I really liked it. Or even understood it. All these years later, though, digging it via Spotify... actually, I don't feel much different. Love the vibe, dig the voice, bubble to the groove, but half of it is so warble-wibble it's just a lot of hot stuff about cold nothing. Ah, the early 70s, eh, what fun we had searching for meaning, man...

By way of doing something different, I have been listening to a fair bit of Rihanna this week too. As a contrast to early Metallica it takes some beating. This stuff has definitely got more going for it than just that though. I mean, that gal can sing and swing it. You can really hear the Jamaican part of her too, hot, which I'd never really got before from the radio and videos. I also like it that while my kids are deep into Lady Ga Ga I have discovered my own little disco diva. Well, hardly discovered. But old dads everywhere will know what I think I mean. Probably.

Meanwhile, back scraping at the insides of my head, it's been a hell of a week. You wouldn't think being a so-called writer was so physically demanding but I am aching from head to toe. That's age too, of course, but mainly it's exhaustion. I try and read in bed at night and pass out before I've gone halfway down the page. Meanwhile the stack of books and mags and papers and what have you by the bed continues to grow like a second bedside table. I've even started putting my glasses and water on it at night. But wait, I can telling I'm boring you. You and me both. Back to my sweet Rihanna then. She never tires of anything, that pretty girl. You can tell.

Long day. Too long. Day into night. My first interview was at 7.00a.m. with an Australian radio station that wanted to record segments with me about the Appetite For Destruction book that they could run different stories from every morning for a week on their breakfast show. Very flattering, and a good bloke doing the interviewing named Josh, the sun shining on us both as we rattled through it. But an hour later I was still on the phone and I hadn't anticipated that at all, the old brain sizzling to a crisp before it had even properly woken up.

My last interview was at 9.00p.m. with Jerry Cantrell from Alice In Chains, this time the sun only shining on him as he sat on his back porch somewhere on the Pacific west coast of America, me huddled in my office, fighting off the dark. Between times, I had lunch in London with Judas Priest's manager Jayne and Metal Hammer editor Alexander, and somehow found myself doing more phone interviews, this time with various concert promoters from around the world. Don't even ask.

Somewhere down the line one of my daughters painted her bike gold and my four-year-old son went out on a date with his girlfriend to Cotswold Wild Life Park, and wife cut the back lawn, walked the dogs and did so many other things she retired to bed early with a bad back. I wanted to follow her but was too dogfuck tired to get out of the chair. I'm going to make one final attempt for the summit of the stairs now...

A virtuous day - or what passes for one around here anyway. Went swimming first thing, thinking as I was early I'd have the slow lanes almost to myself. Er, no. Got there to discover there was a 'special class' booked for life-savers or somesuch. Lots of clothed bods splashing about making a lot of noise anyway. Instead, I was forced to take my chances in the mucking about bit, where you can just bob around if you want, as a couple of old biddies did, or simply stroll like a stork as one very tall old fella did - water-stork? - half in and half out of my FUCKING WAY!

Kept my cool though and just weaved in and out of them, back and forth until I'd done my 28 lengths, bizarrely feeling stronger as I neared the end, only to nearly collapse from the weight of my own sodden limbs when I did finally emerge like a salmon thrown onto the river bank, my mouth a perfect collapsible O, feeling like yesterday's birthday cake, candles all a-splutter.

Got home and ate a plate of bacon and baked beans. Please don't someone email in and tell me how that's the worst thing you can possibly eat after swimming I really don't give a toss, it suited me fine today is all, staring at Sky Sports while enjoying that fleeting feeling of romance only a dad delighted to find the house unexpectedly void of wife and kids for once can feel.

The rest of the day found me tethered to the laptop, transcribing interviews for the Tallica book. Reached that stage again where I need to clear the decks of interviews before I can continue. All must-do and hugely useful in reminding you of stuff while also giving you insights as well as ideas about where you need to go next, never knowing as you do until you start what steps to take next.

All good, as they say, but now my back's aching, my arse hurts and not just from the perpetual piles, and I have that ticklish feeling at the back of my throat that only something red and room temperature can fix. We'll be eating late again - it's half-term from school and we're on kids' time - but I don't care anymore. I go with the flow, weaving like a fish through the biddies and storks while trying not to swallow too much of everyone else's water. I am no longer fighting it, just hanging on to the ship wreckage, which as those that know will tell you I've got rather good at over the years and tears. I'm not even worrying my arse to pieces about money.

(That last bit's a terrible lie obviously to make me feel better until I can get my quivering hands on that glass of red...)

Have a taste of the real thing for a change. It will do you good.

YouTube: Miles Davis

Oh yeah...

Went to see Vanessa the acupuncturist yesterday morning. That chilled my bones out, good and proper. She gave me the Moxo treatment, left me stinking like a hoody in a skunkhouse. I do love that smell though. I just wish it didn't smell so much like naughty stuff, people might look at me with some understanding, even respect, instead of holding their noses, real and metaphorical, as I stagger on my hindlegs past them. Course, it might not be just the smell of Moxo that makes them do that, but still, I'll take any edge I can get.

Meanwhile, back at the grindstone, been listening to a lot of thrash metal, old and nouveau, from Machine Head to Venom, via Slayer, Exodus, and of course the Metallikings. The neighbours must wonder where the fuck my head's at, this middleaged fart with no hair blasting out At War With Satan at 2pm on an Easter weekend. That's when I'm not yelling at the kids and letting the dogs take me for a drag in the rain. Well, I wonder about them too.

Shame about today, though, a lovely sunny Easter Sunday, and me stuck here writing about the black gold the band finally struck once they finally ditched all the thrash baggage and simply went for the commercial jugular. It took balls for those boys to do that, make no mistake. What it has taken for me to still be here all these time-lines later blathering about it into a laptop I daren't think about for even a minute, though I know my wife has her views, bless her much younger, stronger, truer heart. But then she likes Peter Andre, so what the fucking fuck, right?

Wonderfully well ressurected new Dr Who, I thought, by the way...

It was 1976 - one of those magic numbers - and I was living in a haunted room on the second floor of a big house called Welcome. The heatwave was on, so hot you could just reach out in the garden for a few leaves, crush them in your hand and roll 'em. The plants grew six-feet high that summer. I was one of the lucky ones, out of work and on the dole, which meant I spent more time in the garden than most. I was also the youngest - 17 to everyone else's 25. All college grads, except for me. All been travelling, done India, Greece, France, all that. Except for me. All into the three Kings, Freddie, BB and Albert. Except for me. I was into Bowie and Dylan, still busy digging Kerouac and struggling with Zen.

Her name was Tracey and she was one of those like you only got in the mid-70s, like an elf with a gun in both tiny hands, a princess bee floating from flower to flower, sweet shiny sting on full gobsmacking display. One of those bad enough to make you give up your steady (who was old gold). You know, total. Mornings I'd flick on the Stones. Sticky Fingers. Then groove around waiting to see what happened. Sort of days before you knew how bad it could get, still just sensing it, guessing at it. Never seeing it coming, just knowing it had to go sooner or later, whirling like a spider down the plughole.

My little honeydripper didn't like to sleep in the haunted room without the lights on and the arm back on the record player, the same album going again and again. Lou Reed, Transformer. I'd never really rated it but now I was really starting to get it, hearing it over and over, like a penance. In the room next to mine was Buddha. That's what we called him cos that's what he was. I'd regulary check in with him for the wisdom and he'd never fail to give it, the bastard. Then there was Geoff and Celia in the room opposite, listening to reggae all day every day. You wondered how it worked, him fat and white and terminal, her smiley brown and Greek and full of cooking love.

Then downstairs Big Pete, rampaging about the place at 2.00am screaming: "WHO TOOK MY LAST SAUSAGE! WHO TOOK MY LAST FUCKING SAUSAGE, YOU CUNTS! WHO TOOK IT! WHO TOOK IT! WHO TOOK IT!" Well, I was hungry all the time back then.

Since having to give up using the running machine at home due to my chronic shin splints, lately I have been driving to yonder Health Club and using their huge swimming pool in my ongoing and endlessly uphill struggle to try and maintain a semblance at least of some form of what might very generously be described as, um, fitness.

It's nice, they have two fast lanes for the Olympians, a couple of 'medium' lanes for those that can, you know, swim. And then there are four lanes for the likes of me, known locally as the slow lanes. You go clockwise, round and round, until you feel you have done sufficient 'laps' to restore a modicum of self-esteem. In my case, the figure is currently 28. Not non-stop, obviously, and certainly slow. This I enjoy very much, though. Except for the fact that so far I have always - repeat: ALWAYS - been by far the slowest frog in the pond. Old women and small children seem able to lap me no problemo whatsoever. So what, I tell myself grimly. As a wise fit bloke once earnestly advised, only go at the speed you feel comfortable with. But Jesus Christ, surely one day someone even slower than me will come along and allow me to feel good about myself?

This morning as I bobbed up and down from one end of the pool to the other, I rather fancied I might start sporting a monacle on my travels, gliding along winking knowingly at all the yummy mummies with their sprogs in the 'family' area, while smoking a cigar. At least that way I could be straggling along with a certain amount of... well, old world charm, shall we say, if not exactly what the ladies' periodicals would doubtless term style.

Back home the rest of the day has been all about the Metallica book of fucking course, though I'm pleased to say that's something that's suddenly been going with a better turn of pace. Having shoe-horned in all the facts and quotes I need for the current chapter I'm working on today it was just a question of seeing how fast my stubby little fingers could type and what's left of the old noggeroon could figure out what to say and where to say it. Saying it well is something I am leaving for now, obviously, ready for that final 'polish' that only comes about five minutes before I'm due to send the chapters to my long-suffering but thankfully exquisitely gifted editor, Ian.

Net result: by god, if I sit here for another couple of hours I'll have the chapter done! Except that if I sit here for another couple of hours my arse will become permanently glued to the hot leathery seat it has been slithering around on all afternoon (and now evening). I need air and a change of scene. or at least a glass of red. I think that's allowed, surely?

Meanwhile, if you'll pardon the plagiarism, as my young friend Alexander Milas, estimable editor of the world's only and best true-metal mag, Metal Hammer said via email only just now: "May your holy observance of the resurrection bring you inner joy." Good lad, well put. He even looks a bit like Jesus...