Star Blog

YouTube - Julie Fowlis with Jenna Reid & Donal Lunny - Biodh An Deoch Seo 'N Làimh Mo Rùin

You want to know what I'm into? Take a peek...

Then come back later and let me tell you about the Hairy Bikers, who I met last night at the annual Orion authors' party...

A nice surprise this week, in between all the non-blog writing and hand-wringing over the Metallica book and other things... My new book, Appetite For Destruction, came out. I knew it was coming, of course, but had forgotten until my editor, Ian, called to wish me Happy Publication Day. Which was nice of him. Almost as nice, in fact, as the bottle of champagne that the publisher's Orion sent over the next day. That's Orion for you. Class. I'm going to ask Julie if she'll put a pic of the cover up on this site when she's not busy beating Picasso at his own game, and I'll add a few details for those that are interested. That said, I don't want to spoil it by saying too much. Just that if you're a fan of the classic 80s era of rock and metal, this one is very much for you. Not that it's about music, as such. It's about the stories, the best of the bunch told at the time, and those only told for the first time now. And it's dedicated to Ross Halfin and Peter Makowski, absolutely without whom...

This blog is going into a little temporary late winter hibernation, due to a pressing need to suspend all aspects of life while I try and get some serious book work done. As David Bowie once memorably sang, sor-did de-tails fol-low-ing...

Immensely, suddenly, tired. Had a clue to this yesterday when I feel into a swoon on the train into London. But that felt like a good tired; a well-earned tired. Then last night, at home, slept on one side without moving the entire night for the first time in... years. Literally. But again, it felt good. If a little... weird.

Then today... a not-good tired, been creeping up all day. Replete with weird aches, odd pains, and malfunctioning brain. Not alarming but somewhat out of the blue. A need-a-rest tired. Except there's no time for rest. There was a cure for such situations in the old days. Not anymore though. Or if there is I haven't been introduced to it, besides actual, you know, uh, resting.

And now a tired-sounding blog to go with it. Not good either...

Spent the night at the cottage. Good move. Was up drinking tea and thinking great thoughts by 6.00am. Well, thinking anyway, which is great enough at that time of the day. By 7.00am I was at the laptop. Early morning or late night are good times to write, the brain simply can't manage more than one thing at a time by then so no distractions, or need for background music or much pacing around, just head down, tip-tapping until the old bod tells you what to do next, like eat or shit or stare at the inside of your skull.

Today it meant stopping in time to drive home, jump on the running machine, then get the train to London to record the Classic Rock radio show. Something seems to be working though as it was all one-take stuff, or virtually all, and I was back at the cottage again by 4.30pm working on the book. Got a shock when I read over some of what I'd been doing a few days ago. I remember it as disjointed, more notes than anything else, some fuller bits here and there but mainly I remember leaving a mess, like when the builders have gone for the weekend. Instead I found pages of... um... how to put it... quite good stuff. No other way to describe it, just there it is and there I was thinking: when the fuck did I do that? Obviously some sort of trance state.

Let's hope I have another one tomorrow...

I've gone all 'in rock'. So has everyone else, I swear. The last thing I remember squinting at on the goggle-box last night was Brian Johnson of AC/DC on a repeat of Top Gear, thinking how young he looked for his age (63 later this year) and how fast he drove - second fastest star in an overpriced car, ever. Then first thing this morning I found myself lost on YouTube watching Metallica through the ages and finding myself unable to drag my ears away from their original low-end demos, dirty white boys. Now, as I type, I've got the Joe Perry Project blasting away - an MP3 that Sian Llewellyn, my old mucker from Classic Rock sent me.

It gets like this sometimes. I remember who I really am, put down the jazz and classical for a moment and revert to type, like a werewolf confronted by a full moon, or a vampire unexpectedly exposed to fresh blood. The old fangs pop out, the bushy tail appears. I don't go looking for it anymore, it finds me. I should be getting another reminder tomorrow, too, when the first hot-off-the-press copy of Appetite For Destruction arrives in the post. All my yesterdays, all wrapped up like an ounce of charlie, as we of a certain unrespectable age used to call it, back when such things were considered chic.

Doing phone interviews for the book has made me almost nostalgiac for those days. Nadia from Style magazine in Australia emailed me to say she has been 'boasting' to her friends about our interview. Naughty girl, raised on the sand and glue of Guns N' Roses albums and too many old copies of Kerrang, by the sounds of it. Strange to think I'm now considered the mad old uncle of such things. And there I was thinking I'd done my deal with the devil and would never grow old. Or was it 'up'... ?

Mentally, I'm living on about six or seven different planets right now. Nothing new there, some might say, but I'm really feeling it. Take yesterday, Sunday morning 10.a.m., I'm on the phone to a radio station in America who are taping a 60-minute interview with me about the Zep book, which has just come out there. This is good because it's not just a rock show but a serious book programme. V.enjoyable if somewhat of a stretch to get the old noggeroon moving in the right direction at that time on a Sunday morning. Followed immediately by... me interviewing someone in the UK over the phone for my next book, on Metallica. Again, well worth it, but still... it's not even midday and I'm getting deep into the rise and fall of thrash (from a Brit-versus-US perspective, not forgetting the recent revival, if it really exists, and the full circle nature of the band's recent 'back-to-the-80s' album etc etc etc).

The rest of the day was of course devoted to entirely different pursuits and involved children and dogs (much more complicated). Today though, we're back to... let's see, starting the day with trying to sort out the security software on the household computers which needs upgrading (if only they made it as easy and user-friendly as the to-pay parts of the transaction). Then running like a bastard on the machine while hearing from wife about the letter she's just received from the hospital - finally - confirming a date for the 'procedure' she needs to have (back related, nosy), before running even harder back to the cottage to resume work on you know what. Having to stop now, though, because someone is phoning soon from New Zealand to talk about my actual next book, the one due out next month called Appetite For Destruction, a collection of 'classic' me-stuff from the golden age of air travel and limos. I will be taking this call back home while babysitting (it's wife's yoga night) and trying to cook that steak that's been waiting for me in the fridge. Then as soon as that's all done running back to the cottage again to... erm... you know... hello? Mars calling?

Always time for music, though. Been making the most of Spotify while I'm at the cottage, so when I'm not immersing myself anew in the vicissitudes of Metallica through the ages, I'm allowing what's left of my bad brains to be boggled by stuff I would not be listening to no-way otherwise. Today that has included more Lou Reed, who I'm going through a bit of phase with it seems currently. Coney Island Baby (the extra-lengthy tracks you really don't need to hear digitised extra version, natch). Wow, so nostalgiac. I first bought it as a 17-year-old lying on my bed at my folks' house, smoking ciggies and dreaming of the life of luxuriant hedonism I knew would one day be mine if I could just find the right locked door to totter through. Now it just takes me back to a simpler, sadder but inescapably younger time. The critics hated the album, of course, and over 30 years later it is obvious just how wrong they were, though equally clear just why they wrote the things they did. Dudes like me and Lou, we're just so misunderstood...

Knowing what kind of long day I was in for at the cottage I arranged for wife and boy to pick me up this morning so we could take a walk with the dogs while the girls were at Saturday morning stage school. One of the things I really love about living in the countryside is the walks. Of course, you have to have at least one dog to do them on a daily basis, what other reason would any sane person have for tramping through mud, snow, rain, wind, and all the other unforeseen pains in the frozen arse that come your way at all sorts of strange early and late hours - except the pressing need to walk the dogs? Or, in our case, dogs plural. Dun arf do ya good though when the rest of yoru day is spent squatting in front of the mirror of an only occasionally hot laptop.

Other than some eating and a bit of telly watching while I'm doing it, the rest of today and tonight has been spent with my good friends James and Lars and Kirk and... actually, none of the others today, just the main players. Some of this has been fairly mechanical sort of stuff, chronology, getting your facts right. But a heartening amount has also been more than that, evocation, surmise, insight, gamble, careful stitchwork... in other words, the real business of writing. The thing we writers love and hate the most. Love it when it's done, fear it when it's (supposed to be) happening.

All this against a background of Radio 3, whch is especially good on a Saturday afternoon - Lucy Duran's World Music show at 3pm, followed by Jazz Library at 4pm, Jazz Record Requests at 5pm, then the pelasure of the BBC iPlayer on the net for the rest of the night, replaying Late Junction and hearing for the first and nearly always last time many - many - extraordinary tracks whsoe names I will never recall again but whose surface of the moon atmospheres and earthy undulations help me on my way as I sit here like a fiend tip-tapping away.

Meanwhile, in distant accompaniment, the endless sound of car engines revving, car doors slamming, car things doing car things that has gone on all afternoon and now well into evening as Nigel and friends do whatever it is men do when they have a Saturday to waste on tootling around with their cars. I'm a sissy like that. I prefer the quiet, red wine, too much food and the sound not of cars of but of, say, JS Bach and his violin Sonata No.2 in a-minor. Or possibly Metallica's Orion. Cliff Burton, a serious student of both old-fashioned manly pursuits AND JS Bach, would have been happy either way, I'm sure.

An extraordinary thing. I was driving back to the cottage tonight listening to Radio 4's usual evening arts programme, forget the title, only listened to it a few million times, and... There was this wonderful piece I came in on: Mark Lawson interviewing this artist. I wasn't sure what kind of artist - paint, installation, who knows these days? - but immediately I could not stop listening to what he had to say. It was so sweet, so interesting, so involving without the slightest scrap of the usual artspeak bullshit. I totally - instantly, dizzyingly - got what he was talking about yet what he was talking about was so wonderfully understated, yet so deep, so clearly full of blood and pain and lost laughter and exquisite thought, you wanted to spend more time in that world because that's where sorrow and regret and courage and age and "dark glamour" - his words - all met in a hugely attractive confluence, or somesuch. Anyway, the bastard got me, made me realise how far behind my own radio interviews are in terms of actually saying something without either having to brag about it or be dull, maybe not to you but to yourself.

As I pulled into my parking spot at the cottage, the interview was drawing to a close. I sat in the car as the rain tumbled down listening, just didn't want it to end. Then - gasp - Lawson mentioned the artist's name - Dexter Dalwood - and gave a plug to his latest show - Tate St. Ives, I think he said. And I didn't know whether to... don't know the word, Dexter would though.

Many life and death times ago, Dexter and I were friends. About 30 of them in Earth time, several hundred in real time. He had been a teenage musician, a bass player, in The Cortinas, and I had been a teenage punk writer on Sounds. And we had both been so spectacularly unsuccessful, yet briefly name-worthy, that we very, very quickly found ourselves earning £40 a week cash at Step Forward Records, a grim shithole just off the Portobello Road. There were few laughs to be found in that self-regarding palace of NME-approved puke but Dexter knew where they all were hiding. Along with a great many other things I would not embarrass either of us by getting into here.

Skip some years and several episodic adventures, togethr and apart, later, and we are both a couple of years older and well moved on, or sideways, more like. And... well, there is so much more I couldn't possibly tell it, or even a little bit of it here. And yet we only knew each other for a few things. Except to say I remember the weekend he became interested in painting again, and being puzzled and impressed and yet somewhat forlorn because it was a language far beyond my ken. I had no idea of course it would result in Dexter finding himself at last. Had no idea really that he was looking...

To hear him 30 years on, so... famous and successful is not what I'm talking about. So... wonderfully beautiful, so interesting and light of touch, so funny in a serenely almost... [insert wondrous word] way... shit, let's leave it there. I'm just glad one of us made it over the finish line. Nice one, Dex. Kisses.

Up at 4.00a.m. thinking about Metallica. Going to bed now at just after 10.30p.m. - thinking about Metallica. In between... quite a good daythinking about Metallica actually. Too long to talk about right now though. Except to quickly mention Nadia, the charming Australian journalist who interviewed me over the phone tonight about the new book of my journalism that's coming out next month, Appetite For Destruction. I really like Australians. You can hear the sun in their voices. The warmth in their words. What a treat. I see myself one day sitting on a beach out there somewhere, complaining about the humidity, an old straw hat keeping my bald head from exploding, surrounded by attractive young journalists humouring me by pretending to hang on my every other word. God, I feel old. God, I am old. God, I must go to bed now.

Escaped the vanilla prison long enough this morning to catch a surprisingly on-time (given the new snowfall) train to London to record this week's Classic Rock show. Which reminds me - it's moved from Sunday afternoons to Wednesday evenings and a new Peel-like time slot. Which means the show is on tonight at 10pm - till 1.00a.m. via the jolly old www.rockradio.co.uk network. Plus various FM bands up north and in Scotland.

That all seems a long time ago though now, writing as I am from somewhere in 1981, just as Lars Ulrich takes a plane from LA to the West Midlands to catch the mighty Diamond Head in all their early NWOBHM finery, god bless 'em. Actually, the Head may have been percieved as leading lights of that scene, but to me they always sounded more like a next-generation Zeppelin than possible rivals to Iron Maiden or Saxon. Whatever, from there it was only a few short steps, lots of garage rehearsals and a fair bit of rich young Ulrich-style blagging to Mettallica. Yes two 'T's, originally. By mistake. Ah, young and hungry days, full of spunk and acne and cheap beer-filled dreams...

Meanwhile, been listening to Lou Reed's Sally Can't Dance album after stumbling across a wonderful / sickening clip on YouTube of him from that (literally) golden-haired era playing in Paris. I say 'playing'... There was little really playful about Lou or any of his rotten-to-the-core 'new' songs in those days. Weird then how all the years that have slunk by since mean that suddenly this awful schtick tickles me so. There's a message there. If anyone has the bottle can they send it to me please so I can put it back in where it belongs. Ithangyew...

One of those days I had all the time when doing the Zep book but promised myself faithfully hope to die I most certainly would not have with the Metallica book. That is, setting off to write a chapter and finding yourself six or seven eye-straining hours later having wandered down a side road of last-minute checking that turns into research that, yes, has taught you something you really ought to know if you want your book to be The One, but which leave you at the end feeling like you haven't done anything - nothing you can count in terms of numbers of pages anyway. It's self-illusory of course, work has most definitely been done, if only it were walls you were painting, you would see. Except it's not and you can't, not right now with your face pressed too close to the radioactive screen.

Also, that great fish-eyed demon they call 'money' has started craning over my shoulder as I try and write, cackling not so softly in my ear. The Wall purse looks sadder and thinner than a church mouse's chuff on a cold day in Cheese Town now the tax man and his evil VAT twin have done their every-January thing again and I am starting to get The Fear. That we won't be able to pay the mortgage next month if I don't creep like a vampire quietly out the door at some lonely point soon and go hunting for some magazine work or whatever comes my red sticky-fingered way. At this point in the saga of the Zep book I simply held my muddy paws out to the bank and they merely shrugged and handed over the readies. But that was then, before the great crash. Now... I don't know. A lottery ticket perhaps? Oh gawd...

Been polishing my halo, the one around my gut. It began at 5.30 this morning when I wandered down the stairs like a zombie to make tea and get ready for my 6.00a.m. phone interview with WGN Radio in Chicago. Early for me, late for Nick the DJ, somehow we managed to make an hour's worth of radio together based on my Zep book. There were even a couple of phone-in callers. I kept expecting some Zep nut to come on with the fire-and-brimstone and denounce me for blowing the whistle on Knebworth or whatever but it never happened. There's a podcast of it if you're interested. I'd give ya the link but you'll need to Google the WGN site yourself as for some reason this blog-writing box won't let me cut and past today. Another of Jimmy's curses probably.

After that I took the dogs out for a dawn-rising walk over yonder snowy hills. Jesus, was that a mistake. After the big white snow, the dark black rain, and mud and slush all being blown by a gale force wind straight into my sorry kisser. Dogs loved it of course and it felt strange and actually quite good if just a little spooky to be staggering around as the black sky turned grey and stayed that way.

Continued the virtuous theme when I got home by looking after two-out-of-three sprogs while wife took eldest to her clarinet lesson. Then, if this isn't making you too sick yet, I jumped on the running machine and put in my best time since Before Headgate two months ago when the year went out for me, literally, with an almighty bloody wallop. Weighed myself afterwards while the steam was still rising from my head and... not a single pound lighter than this time last week. Fuck it. I feel better, that's the main thing.

The rest of the day I have spent at the cottage banging away like an old shed door, bish bash boshing cos the polish can come later, Mabel, I need to chop me some firewood I mean I just gotta. Now it's gone seven in the evening and my baloon is well and truly popped. Was gonna crash here tonight, burn some midnight oil, but I really have had it at this point. Gonna crawl home instead and put myself in the loving care of wifey, see if she can tear herself away from Casualty on TV long enough to do something right for me. Or maybe I'll just go to bed. Not to sleep - obviously, like I'm young enough to still manage that - but to lie there feeling this was one day at least I didn't just blithely shoot in the head. Not without blindfolding it first anyway.

A proper book day, spent at the cottage where I slept last night. Meaning: early start, late finish, brains boiling over by the end but the soul welling up again at the prospect of getting something really solid done. Particularly with what I was doing today. The aim of course is to make every bit of every book as well written and 'vivid' as possible, but inevitably there are parts of the story which require an even more evocative approach. These are the money-shots in any book, the bits where the author shows - or tries to - that not only do they have a good grasp on the yarn at hand but that they know how to tell it fit to rattle the bedsprings.

That's not to say I'm ready to make any claims, just that I buikt myself a new base camp on the climb today and the view, while it lasts (until tomorrow when it the hard part starts again), will certainly do for now. If I wasn't trying to get the old bod back into something approximating what passes at my survivalist age for 'shape', I'd have a glass of something red to celebrate. As it is, I'll settle for apple juice and a flop out in front of the TV, followed by an equally virtuous early night tossing and turning and pretending to find sleep. Not looking forward to that part. Even less though than usual as I've got to be ready by 6.00a.m. to do a phone interview with a Chicago radio station about the Zep book, which of course means I will only fall well and truly zed-worthy at about 5.30a.m. just before the alarm goes off. What treats I do enjoy sometimes...

Having both forced myself to mount the running machine again today - can barely walk now but feeling good, know worrimean? - and managed to get my frozen arse back to the cottage for some serious Metalliwork, I was feeling pretty, pretty, pretty good. Then I caught the TV news and found myself staring at the pictures from Haiti. "There is no god," said wife. "How can anyone say there is?"

Quite so. But that's a discussion for another time. Right now... 50,000 dead, hundreds of thousands injured, homeless, trapped, fucked forever... no god, no words, either. Music might say something about it but that won't help right now. Prayers, money, send what you can, I guess. And hug your babies, whatever species. And be glad it's only snow outside your door and not... that. There may or may not be a god but there is certainly devil's work afoot.

Finally got back on the running machine today - eight weeks almost to the day since I last managed it. Well, it's been some eight weeks. Obviously, I couldn't manage the scintillating marathon-level pace of before but, fuck, I did manage about 30 minutes of puffing and blowing while trying not to fall off. Good for me, I say. Besides, what with fresh snowfall (dread words) there's still no way back to the cottage and if my arse spends any longer glued to the chair in front of the laptop it's going to fall off. Or something.

I'm so stuck into the book right now I woke up at three this morning with a great new heading for chapter one, plus a few sentences for another part of it my brain has obviously been thinking about while what's left of the rest of me lies there in the freezing dark pretending to sleep. This used to happen all the time with the Zep book too. I end up lying there emailing myself on the Berry so that I won't forget the ideas in the morning. Right now, I have about 11 emails with Important Book messages waiting for me to paste the contents of somewhere into the draft copies of the chapters.

I say 'chapters' that makes it sound like things are moving right along. They are not. But at least I know where I'm going. Most of the time. I think. Ask me again tomorrow...

Still trying to get back to the cottage but oh lord you obviously have another purpose for me cos it takes so damn long...

Yesterday began with me braving the snowdrifts to get eldest daughter to the foot doctor to sort out the new rash of varookas she's got sprouting on both feet. Wife couldn't do it cos she was out on her own arctic expedition trying to get the other two to school, which because of road works and diversions now means traversing one of the slipperiest, windy white roads for 50 miles.

In my day the schools wouldn't allow any child with a varooka anywhere near other humanoid sprogs. These days they viurtally encourage them to fester and spread, throwing them willy-nilly into swimming pools, whatever the state of play, making them run around PE class in barefeet. Anyway, fortunately Doctor Paul is the foot master and he tended to daughter's needs without any tears. (He also pruned my own claws while I was at it, always a sweet moment in my ever shortenening days...)

After that I had to ride like the wind Bullseye to get back in time to catch a train to London where they have never even heard of this thing the rest of us call snow. Like going to another planet! Really, if it wasn't for the fact that Paddington station was the emptiest I've ever seen it - and I've never seen it remotely empty before in my life - you'd have no clue that the rest of the country is up to its privates in cold white stuff.

Walked like a normal to the studio where because I couldn't get there last week we recorded two Classic Rock radio shows back to back. That is, 40 links back-to-back, plus a full-of-fun promo. What's left of my brains were literally dribbling out of my ears by the end. (They certainly weren't anywhere near my mouth by then, that's for sure.)

Today was... another day. The best part was walking the dogs with wife this morning over yonder white hills. Almost up to our knees in snow, I felt like taking a picture on my phone and emailing it to all the disbelievers in London, then decided I couldn't be bothered. We've been told there's more heavy snowfall due tonight so we stopped at Tescos on the way home to top up on supplies. The rest of the day found me sitting here, the first few hours trying to get everything straight for my imminent departure back to the cottage (code for paying bills, and sending begging emails for money), where I fully expected to be snowed-in for days. Well, good, cos then I can really concentrate on the book.

It was about 2pm before I realised I wasn't going anywhere. Still unready to leave - too much going on, too much still to sort before I could clear the launchpad ready for blast off - I decided my best shot was to hang on till the morning and try and throw some left hooks into the book from... right here.

Still trying now, except the kids are having their bath, the dogs of doom are barking not so low, and my antennae tell me there just might be a consoling glass of something red and naughty awaiting me nextdoor. If I'm lucky. And despite the big white awaiting me outside and all this black inside, I do feel that at the moment...

A so-called day off. In which I interviewed somebody for the Metallica book. And wrote this week's CR show, which we are supposed to be recording tomorrow back to back with last week's show which we still haven't done yet because no one can get to the studio because of the snow. Whatever else went on today is now lost to me. The snow has started falling inside my head. All is ice and arse pain. Or nearly all. The kids came through, but even there my bedtime story consisted of the strange ghostly tale of Frosty the Snowman and the night he appeared in the children's bedroom - carrying a bowl of ice-cream. I hope it didn't give them nightmares. I like to keep those for myself...

The snow and ice has both messed up my week and brought a strange new clarity to the passing days and nights. I can't go anywhere, not even the cottage, so I just sit here and work on the Tallica book. I did try going to a meeting in Twickenham yesterday - something that has been arranged and rearranged so much it's been going on for months - and it took me half an hour to dig the car out of the snow and get it off the drive. Then, after stuffing it with coats, blankets, sandwiches, water, flasks of coffee and etc, I got about 25 miles down the motorway when the windscreen got so clogged with the salt they've been trying to clear the road with I couldn't see to drive. The water-jets on the hood had iced-over so I didn't have anything to clear it. In the end I simply had to turn round and come home, stopping every few miles to stick one blue hand out and try and rub a viser in the screen. Nice.

Mostly, though, I have been sitting here going through the mountains of research I've compiled, not just the endless interviews I've done and am still struggling to get transcribed, but the zillions of cuttings, fan books, DVDs, CDs, bootlegs, vinyl and internet junk I've accumulated along the way. This is a hugely important part of the process, without it I don't actually know what sort of book I'm supposed to be writing. It goes back to what I've said before about spending more time thinking than actual writing. It really lies at the very heart of the thing. Without it, there is no book. Which makes it by far the most interesting and enjoyable part of the process.

However, it's also the most time-consuming and tiring. You end each long day (and night) round-shouldered and slumped over, the book all the better for it, the no longer young and impervious body and already creaking to catch up brain far less so. I've really got to get back on the runner next week. Not that I'm completely over the various bugs, bad heads and whatnots that have kept me from it, I'm just far less unwell than I have been for weeks. I need that runner to give me the energy I need to really start converting all this research and thinking into hard black words on even harder white screen pages. And I need it now. Or will do... tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I've got another phone interview to do for the book tonight, and another one tomorrow night. (And another the night after that actually. Jesus...)

Well, I'd love to tell you how it all went down but hey life is just too damn short. Some high/low lights: waking up on Boxing Day with bruises down both arms (ask my wife); staring goggle-eyed at our new widescreen TV, tickled pink at how green the greens were and all that; having my hair stand on end even though I have no hair left as both daughters screamed when they opened their Xmas prezzies; walking with my boy along the icy bank by the old railroad tracks, lov ing every hard soft minute; walking out on a supposed lunch with people too bent inside to actually offer us lunch (our fault obviously); trying and failing, trying and failing and trying and failing again just this week to get to the cottage long enough to get any damn work done so having to do it all at home to a backdrop of the usual screams and cries and laughter and door slamming dog pissing wife mentalling out hysteria thank you lord; discovering that the entire town reads this stupid blog and that there is no peace from that anywhere anytime ever; watching old vids of the kids when they really were teeny-weeny then making more as they played in the snow yesterday and today; calling the plumber, welcoming back the boiler man, doing radio interviews with America, Ireland, Scotland and, um, Manchester, all in the past 48 hours and not all for the Zep book but like what do I think about songs that go backwards or what do I think about Christopher Lee making a symphonic heavey metal album (really); scratching my arse and blowing holes in the ozone as emails arrive, like the one from my once best friend in the world not seen for 14 years, or the one from the Channel Four producer who has just read Paranoid after having it gather dust on his shelf for 11 years and telling me it's better than Cider With Roadies (no shit...), or the one from the Hollywood mogul's office enquiring about something that sounded exciting for almost two seconds until I realised what he was actually talking about, or the one from the lady Carlotta talking about life in all the dark places it really goes on but none of us ever fully acknolwdged, or the endless crap from the VAT the tax the bank the credit card the gas electricity holy shit where does it end nowhere never ever fucker...

Meanwhile, and don't ask how it happened, but somehow after another long day on Planet Metallica I find myself sitting here playing - wait for it - RECORDS. Started with an old Metallica EP I dug out for research purposes but which jumped all the way through (1987 was clearly a very drunk year at the Wall Chaperal) then switched to Let It Bleed by the Stones which god bless it didn't jump once (they knew how to make those fuckers once up a fuck ago), and onto playing right now Gram Parsons and Grievous Angel which also, miraculously, isn't jumping at all, despite the grizzly and grunts of the zillion scratches, all uncheaply earned you better believe it cowboy.

All I need is some good red vino to go with it. Pardon me while I skate through the indoor snow to get me it yum yum...

x

cough cough cough somebody please kill me cough cough cough cough...

Back on planet Metallica today, sitting here at the cottage, still coughing, still dropping, pecking away though on the black stuff. Thinking. One thing I really like about writing books like this is how much thinking goes into them. You might assume that would be the case for everything someone like me writes. Not so. Magazine articles are like eating ice-cream. Pile 'em high, make 'em look and taste good, and wait for them to be gobbled up quick quick quick style. Books are something else. Like feeding the five thousand three good squares a day for a year or so. Which is why every book I have ever written (the good ones anyway) has been such a journey. Usually I start out feeling I already know something about the subject, and usually I do. Once the serious work begins on the book though you soon realise you know nothing, really. That the truth really is still out there waiting to be discovered and that whatever you had or thought you had to start with was only ever one small square of the rubik cube. In fact, I'd say I spend more time sitting here thinking about these books than I do actually writing them. You can't put the pieces of the jigsaw together until you find out where all the pieces lie. Not that you ever come out with ALL of the pieces, of course, just enough hopefully to finish the picture you finally feel you want to paint, after all that thinking has finally joined up somehow in what's left of your mind. After you've finished fretting, farting, feeding and fornicating with it. After you've had all you can stands you can stands no more. Which reminds me, what are you doing for New Year's eve then? No, wait, don't tell me...

Two questions I always dread:

a) Are you all ready for Xmas? (Said with that horrible sickly smile.)

and...

b) Did you have a nice Xmas? (Said with the horrific glee of the truly evil.)

The answers, almost always, as follows, even if they're not exactly what I say, always.

a) Are you taking the piss?

and...

b) You are taking the piss.

Not that I hate Xmas, exactly. Rather, I just think it doesn't like me all that much. If it did why am I always left feeling lessened by it somehow? Physically, mentally, emotionally, but mainly physically. Over-eating, over-drinking, yes, of course, but all the other stuff too. The ghastly obligations, to smile, to be welcoming, to be nicer than you really are. The rotten telly except for those times when there are too many other people or children around to enjoy it. The sheer... weight of the damn thing. The crushedness of it all.

I like the end of year thing, though. That I don't mind giving in too. This time of the year is like one big seventh day to me. Fuck. It. All. And I do, oh yes. Before it can get the chance to fuck me first. Like it does the rest of the time.

It is also six weeks nearly since I was on the running machine, which also has something to with it. Six weeks nearly since headgate, followed by the Mother of all Flus, followed by X-this, X-that. Still, at least I managed to get back to the cottage today, working on Metallica, feeling right on top of it for the first four hours, then falling behind in the metaphorcial snow for the last two, tracks all swept away by the whitey X-stuff inside my head. I go now, to return to my Scott of the Antartic blizzard. I might be some time...

Some snow scenes from Xmas past...

Me and Ross, 19 and 20, running drunk through the snow outside Hammersmith Odeon one white-black night in... early 79, was it? Late 78? We had just been to see UFO, who somehow I was now working as a PR for and he was somehow now the main photographer for. Laughing, drunk, falling over in the snow, again and again, laughing like there had never been such fun in the world. "Fuck all that punk shit," said Ross. "You should concentrate on the heavy bands. They're more of a laugh and you'll make more money." I thought he was just drunk and he was but it was still good advice that I would eventually show just enough sense to follow.

Cut to six years later, Denmark, falling over again laughing in the snow, a couple of weeks before Xmas, me and Lars and the others skidding around outside Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen where they had just played me some of the new tracks they were working on for what would be their next album, already titled Master Of Puppets. Most of the tracks didn't have vocals yet but what the fuck, you could just tell this was the one. Then later drinking Elephant beer till we were nearly sick, unable to eat, then running around in the snow trying to get a taxi back to the hotel, them trying to stop you. White zombies, arms outstretched, beer-sick mouths open...

Add another 10 years exactly and suddenly there I am in the small country town I now call home but which back then felt like the surface of Mars, snow everywhere, feet deep, the old red Fiat completely whited-out, unstartable, fucked. Like me. Walking around wondering if it was always like this at Xmas in these parts, wondering what in hell I had gone and done now, if I'd make it or not, not so secretly doubting I ever could, fingers and toes like ice, carrot for a nose, birds shitting on my shoulders.

Right up till today, snow here again, so too laughter, so too the bird shit and the not so secret doubts, but no longer alone, quite, thank the old white gods and their devil-black friends. Still buried in it, but no longer frozen with fear. Quite.

First clear day for weeks. Nearly five weeks, in fact, including Headgate. Nose still running of course, throat still tickling and coughing and etc. But the worst definitely over with now. Actually fought my way through the snow and the hubris back to the cottage where I - gasp - got some work done on the Metallica book. Good work too. Solid. Enough to give me confidence and inspire me for the really serious push which begins as of now.

First though, there's Xmas to get through, same as for everybody. All gone mental out there of course, world gone wrong, fighting in the aisles of Tesco for breathing space, like the Big One just dropped and the food is disappearing from the shelves for ever. Hate that shit. Would so lurve to be able to get away from it all - somewhere hot. Saw a pic of Simon Cowell in the paper riding a water bike thingy somewhere in the Bahamas, looking his usual closeted gay self, like everything's going his way, stupid, never mind the RATM song and all of that, his big comforting hairy gay arm round little Geordie Joe's quivering shoulders. Anyway, point being, I liked Simon's Big Idea - getting the fuck away and leaving cold Xmas to the little people. The mental ones in Tesco and running round attacking each other in the street. The dreaded families closing in on each other in ways they're not allowed to other times of the year.

Like I say, feeling much better now, thanks.

"Come on," she said, "you must have some nice Christmas memories."

He took a sip from his drink and looked at her, thinking.

"Oh, come on!" she said. "It's all a big act! You love it as much as anyone!"

She was wrong there but he wasn't sure whether to admit it or not. Was there something wrong with him after all? Apart from the obvious?

"What about when you were a kid?" she said. "Getting lots of presents. You must have liked it then..."

Instantly he was taken back to several childhood Christmases at once. All left him feeling cold and lonely. Disappointed and lost. What good were presents when...

"What about with me? Are you saying you've never enjoyed Christmas even when you've been with me?"

That was easy. He had never enjoyed Christmas with her. He had never enjoyed anything with her that allowed her free reign to drink and smoke and carry on as much as she liked, inviting over every fucking dipstick within a five-mile radius. Dancing like a mental case, skirt over her head.

"Oh my god! Look at your face! You fucking bastard!" she screamed. "Well, I enjoy Christmas! I'm not some fucking weirdo just sitting there in the chair not talking. Some stick in the mud. God, you're such a fucking wanker sometimes!"

Just then the phone rang. She ran to answer it.

"Merry Christmas darling!" she yelled into it. "Hahahahaha!"

From the way she was he knew it had to be Leslie on the other end. If there was one thing he hated more than Christmas it was Leslie. The best friend and an even bigger drunken smoking brainless slut than she was.

He wondered what the hell he was still doing there. It didn't take much working out. Nowhere else to go, that was all. No one else who would have him. Nothing left of anything anywhere. Except to sit there and somehow endure, waiting for that thing that might be better or at least a bit less awful to come along. Maybe. One day.

"No, he's here!" she screamed down the phone. "What? Yep. Miserable as shit! Hahahahaha! When are you coming over, darling? What? No, come now! Get a cab! Yeah! It'll be great!"

Ho ho ho...

Of all the let's face it almost uniformly boring blogs in the world, few entries surely can be more tedious than the one where the bloke complains he has nothing new to say except that he's still down with the flu. Therefore, you will forgive me if I retreat to my endless snotty hankies until such time as etc and etc.

One of those long cold days that gets taken up doing God knows what. Did get a better night though last night, still coughing, still choking on my own effluence or however you spell it, but not quite as badly as before. Instead, had a movie-length dream in which my agent Robert told me he'd fixed me up with a DJing gig on board a new starship - Star Trek-style - that was going on a voyage across the galaxy that would keep me away from home for a year or so but which would pay me £1 million. Wish fullfilment? Who knows. It did go on and on though, even surving a piss-break in what turned out to be the intermission.

Had the car in for its annual MOT this morning - passed with flying colours - while I was also getting my engine checked under the hood by Vanessa the Magic Acupuncturist. She thinks I won't get a scar on my head. I'm still not so sure. Already have one on the inside of my head that you can't see, of course. Or not at first, anyway. Then this afternoon back at the cottage fighting the hopefully good fight, doing my best to put in some hours before being dragged out this evening to see eldest daughter performing carol songs with the school choir. Enormous joy awaiting.

In the middle of all this it actually started snowing this afternoon, I noticed, as I gazed balefully out at the trees while waiting for the coffee to cool. I wonder what Santa will bring us this year? Apart from the quarterly VAT bill due at the end of December, I mean? On which subject one can't help wondering: do those bastards actually celebrate Xmas at all, do you think? Or do they just sit around drinking the blood of poor saps like me who can never keep up with the endless nameless bills they persist in firing off like a carpet of bombs exploding over your unscarred or not it makes no difference head? May their stocking all be empty and the pies rancid with... effluence or whatever it's fucking called.

Back to the cottage today. Still coughing up my guts, filling paper hankies with white gooey stuff. Had the worse night yet, in fact, unable to sleep for coughing, choking, spitting, dying, or what felt like it. But my hands and feet appear to be working OK so back to work it was this morning. God knows what Nigel the cottage owner thinks I'm doing. I rent the place then spend hardly any time here, one damn thing after another keeping me away these past three weeks or so, since Head Gate.

Making up for it now though. Got a lot done today actually, in that tippy-tappy boring way that writers have, see them sitting there looks like absolutely nothing's going on, and often it isn't, but not today. Today the so-called writer actually got some so-called writing done. Medal, please...

Damn this flu, cold, cough, throat itch, head fuzz whatever the hell it is. Truly had enough. Spent two weeks getting over my head bang (yes, funny how you can laugh about these things after a while) then just as systems appeared to be returning to what passes these days for normal, this... flu / cold/ fucking thing rears up. Cue: another lost week of wafting around like a ghost, half in, mainly out, no clue how to get back on track at all. Was my boy's birthday yesterday, had planned to have friends and family over today to celebrate. Now those plans have had to be changed. I can't even lie down and sleep because every time I do the throat tickle kicks in along with the cough and wheezy chest and watering eyes and enormous pain in the arse and... fuck it, might as well get back up then. Is there a doctor in the house? One who knows anything about anything, I mean? The worse part is it really does mean that Xmas has got me again. I was so hoping to beat that rap this year, be a stronger man, do a righter thing, keep on keeping on, mama. Now I just feel like another useless fat sick boy, eyeing the whiskey bottle wondering what if even though I already know what if, yet powerless to stop it, more or less. Definitely less, in fact.