'Bill Drammond is a cultural magician, and

THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTED

2 November 1998

I've got the window seat. The plane is banking. Below I see the drab and dreary streets of Düsseldorf. It's a grey dawn over Deutschlands industrial heartland. We climb into the clouds, and the fatherland is gone. I'm feeling good in a self-satisfied, smug sort of way. In my hands is Das Handbuch (Der schnelle weg zum nr 1 hit). It's the German translation of The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way). It looks great. The German publishers have done a good job. Really cute, pocket size. I flick through, staring at all the German words that I can't read, and bathe in the warm glow. These are words I've writ­ten, and somebody thought they were so great they had to be translated into another language. You will see from the way I'm describing the situation that I am aware how facile my self-satisfaction is, but I can't stop it. I mean, we all deserve to feel good about ourselves some time. A little bit of harmless vanity never did anybody any harm. I was in Germany for less than twenty-four hours. The publishers paid for me to come over, wined and dined me, the hotel was fine and the people friendly and interested. My ego was well stroked.

I lift the book up and inhale a deep draught from its virgin pages. It smells strong, as new books fresh from the printers can do. The ink is hardly dry. 1 also have a copy of the original 1988 English edition. I read the opening paragraphs - they still ring as true to me now as the day we first wrote them, over ten years ago.

In the seat next to me is a man in his early forties. A mane of thick greying hair, skintight jeans, shirt buttons undone enough to reveal a manly chest. Mobile phone in a belt holster, heavy bunch of keys hanging next to the phone. The timeless image of the classic English roadie. There was a time when I would have despised him for being such a rock 'n' roll cliché. Now I feel a nostalgic warmth for this subspecies' continuing existence, not as a museum exhibit or an actor playing the part in Wayne's World II, but walking, talking, real and with no aspic in sight. He flirts with the air hostess. He flicks through his copy of the in-flight magazine. The breakfast trolley approaches.

'Hey Pete, do you want any breakfast?' If in fact he is a roadie, he's talking to who I presume is his charge. I glance over to see if I recognise whichever young gun may be sitting in the seat across the aisle. But there is nothing rock 'n' roll about his com­panion. He's an overweight, late-middle-aged man, bald on top with straggles of unkempt hair around the sides. His thick lower lip and rounded fleshy nose are the sort that a cartoonist from less PC times would have used to depict an aging East End Jew. His clothes, although clean and pressed, are in no way out of place for a man of his years and physical stature.

It's when this Pete turns his head to answer the 'roadie' that all smug little thoughts of Das Handbuch drain from my body, thirty years of life evaporate, and I'm in the presence of God. No, not Eric Clapton: this is the real thing, this is Peter Green. Forget Clapton, Jeff Beck and any of the hundreds of other white twelve-bar twiddlers and fumblers. This is the only British guitarist (and singer) that could ever lay any sort of claim to white men playing the blues without being a joke by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. There is no point in trying to lay out some rational argument. This is about being 15 in October '68 and hearing 'Albatross' for the first time late at night on Radio Luxembourg while lying in bed unable to get the idea of Linda Ballantyne's legs out of my head. This is about the fact that an underground blues band went all the way to Number One with the greatest instrumental single since 'Telstar', with­out having to 'sell out' any of their purist principles by doing some cheesy, good-time, radio-friendly tune. Hang on a minute: it was not only the greatest instrumental since 'Telstar', it was the most moving, distinct, evocative, strange ... in fact, the greatest UK Number One ever.

Like a good left-of-centre citizen, I detest the whole notion of people being impressed by fame, the cult of personality, A-list and B-list and C-list celebrities. I read the Guardian, for good­ness' sake. I'm as PC as a fucked-up modern man can be. But I can't stop myself. I could attempt irony and give it a bit of the 'I am not worthy, I am not worthy,' but that would be cheap and disrespectful. Peter Green declines his minder's offer of break­fast and falls asleep instead. His head slumps forward on to his chest. It's the sleep of an old and weary man. I pluck up courage and turn to my immediate neighbour.

'Excuse me, do you work with Mr Green?'

'Yeah, I'm his sound engineer.'

'Has he been performing a concert in Germany?'

'Yeah. We did a live TV show last night. How did you know who he was?'

'The eyes.' I didn't want to say that I had seen the occasional picture of him over the decades, pictures that documented the ravages as life took its toll.

'It was because of him that I bought my first guitar.'

'Yeah, you and thousands of others.'

My pride is a bit pricked by this. I want to tell him, 'But I went on and achieved international pop success.' But then in my head I can hear the stomping chorus of 'Doctorin' The Tardis', and I furtively push the copy of Das Handbuch under my jacket like it's a smutty magazine. I strangle my internal stomping soundtrack and replace it with the sweeping melancholia of

'Albatross'; the call and distant response of the two slide guitars, the one-note triple-time bass throb, the rising and falling muf­fled rolls on the ride cymbal. There was nothing else on the record, except mankind's longing for something beyond a tran­sit van ride home from another gig in the Midlands and another 3 a.m. fry-up at the Watford Gap services.

'Albatross' segues into the opening guitar runs of 'Man Of The World'. It was the follow up single, came out the same month I turned 16, and peaked at Number Two.

Shall I tell you about my life They say I'm a man of the world I've flown across every time I've seen lots of pretty girls

I guess I've got everything I need I wouldn't ask for more And there's no-one I'd rather be I just wish I'd never been born

Then there was something about a woman making him feel like a man should.

I could tell you about my life

And keep you amused I'm sure.

About all the times I've lied

And how I don't want to be sad any more

And how I wish I was in love

Now those were lyrics to which a boy just turned 16, and a virgin in every sense of the word, could relate. The closing Minor harmonic chord on the octave is my favourite recorded chord on any record ever. All the other British blues bands of the era were inventing heavy metal or falling apart. I liked to believe it was only Peter Green who felt the underlying pain of the black man's blues, and was able to transcend the patronis­ing shit of the whole white boy singing the black man's thing, to ditch mimicking the black man's holler and groan and twelve-bar framework and evolve it into something that was real for a young white bloke from London.

I attempt to eat my airline breakfast. The captain announces we are currently 32,000 feet above Rotterdam. Peter Green has woken up. He has a magazine on his lap and is giggling to him­self. I strain my neck to see what he is reading. Loaded. Peter Green is reading Loaded, the most despicable magazine cur­rently being published in Britain, and enjoying it. The intro guitar riff from 'Oh Well' comes banging into my head. A guitar riff that I spent the winter months of'69 into '70 trying to master when I should have been writing my essays for Medieval History 'A' Level. 'When I talk' to God, he said "I understand"/ He said "stick by me, I'll be your guiding hand".' Those were almost the only lyrics in an otherwise instrumental seven-minute workout. How on earth was he ever able to persuade the record company that this strange non-radio-friendly track should be the first for his band on a new label? It got to Number Two in the charts, the same week as 'Bad Moon Rising' by Creedence Clearwater Revival was Number One. That very un-pop rhyming couplet has stayed with me over the years, coming back time and time again when I least expect it, when I'm wait­ing for a bus or watching a film. The in-flight breakfast is obviously inedible; I look up to see what Peter Green is doing. He's folding out the pin-up poster of Emma B (a young, up-and-coming supermodel, not a Spice Girl) from the centre pages of Loaded. Her ample and handsome cleavage can be seen heav­ing out of her tight black cocktail dress. A perfect Loaded babe. They know what we want. Peter Green giggles to himself again.

I pluck up courage and ask the sound engineer (note, not a mere roadie) beside me, 'Would Mr Green consider signing his autograph for me?'

'Hey, Pete, this bloke wants you to sign an autograph for him.'

'Not if he's going to screw it up and throw it away.'

'No! I would never do that.' I hand him my notebook and pen.

'What do you want me to say?' Peter Green is speaking directly to me, me who never was able to learn how to play 'Man of the World' all the way through or even work out all the lyrics.

'For Bill - that's all.' I watch as his uncomfortable hand scrib­bles something on the inside cover of my black notebook. Then he passes it back to me. 'To Bill from Peter . . .' and I can't make out what he's written as his family name.

'What's that say?' I ask the sound engineer.

'Greenbaum. It's his proper name.'

There is no artistic flourish to his autograph. Nothing affected or practised. When I used occasionally to get asked for my autograph, I hated it. It was loathsome, embarrassing and shite. Jimmy and I would try to explain to whoever the auto­graph hunter was that the whole concept of the autograph was a despicable, elitism-promoting thing, then try to persuade the hunter that we would be happy to shake his or her hand, it being a more equitable thing to do. Although we usually man­aged to bully them into accepting our worthless handshake, they always seemed disappointed. One time on leaving the gates of TV Centre after recording a slot for Top of the Pops a fan approached, her autograph book open and ready. I was about to launch into my shaking hands bit, when she said, 'Are you anybody famous?'

The index finger on my right hand traces out the letters of Peter Greenbaum. The hand that wrote and played those howl­ing chords to 'Green Manalishi' touched this paper. 'Green Manalishi' was the fourth in the most perfect quartet of hit sin­gles ever recorded and released by one band. It was something that even The Beatles never achieved. Certainly none of those make-up-wearing jokers that the next decade was packed with managed to come close. (Me being too Old and Wise by then to dig anything as facile as glam rock.)

'Green Manalishi' came out in May 1970, the same month my headmaster caught me reading a copy of Oz in the school library and recommended I should leave and look for a job in the steelworks. My concerned mother paid for me to go to an expensive private careers advice company in London. I spent a whole day doing ludicrous tests and answering questions. They discovered I was good at making things and liked music. After taking my mother's money and studying my tests they recom­mended I should become a violin maker. 'And how do you do that?' I suppose I asked. 'By going to a furniture-making and design college.' I phoned the furniture-making and design col­lege in High Wycombe. They told me they would love to have me, but first I must do a two-year foundation course at art school. What I didn't tell anybody was that a record called 'Green Manalishi' had just come out, and all I really wanted to do was make a record that attempted in some way to be as strange, frightening and seductive as that.

I never did get to find out what a Green Manalishi was. It wasn't in the Oxford English Dictionary. A demon of sorts, I guessed. 'Green Manalishi' only got to Number Ten on the charts. It wasn't long after the record was released that I read in the Melody Maker that Peter Green had left the band, given all his money away and become a gravedigger. As far as I was concerned this was the coolest thing to do in the world. Far better than the pathetic mess that The Beatles had got them­selves into. A million light years better than his aforementioned peer group of British blues guitarists, who went on to produce the biggest catalogue of overblown shite ever to fill the racks of my local HMV and stadiums around the world. As any aging rock 'n' roll trainspotter could tell you, after quitting his band Peter Green sank into years of mental illness, near destitution and pop oblivion. At the same time, his backing group sought new recruits, moved to California and became the biggest-selling band of the '70s. In the twenty-eight years since Peter Green picked up the gravedigger's shovel, there has been the

odd occasion when he has been tracked down, put in a studio, a guitar shoved in his hand and the green light switched on. The output, I understand, has always been a distant echo of what he once achieved. Although I do possess a copy of the first of these records, The End of the Game, and it does have a strange, affectionate place hi my heart, there is no way I want to hear even a note of any of the others.

'Can I ask Mr Green a question?'

'Hey Pete. He wants to ask you a question.'

'I only ever get asked the same questions,' I hear him mumble. I desperately try to think of something that he will never have been asked before in his life, something profound. Something that will make him think I'm somebody worth answering, that I have an insight into his tortured soul. That I understand. Again, as you can tell by the way I'm letting this whole story shape up, I want you the reader to realise that I can stand outside myself and think, 'What an arsehole you are, Drummond.' I am that fawning fan, still wanting to elevate the focus of my fandom into a hero from some rock 'n' roll Mount Olympus. There have been times in the past when the roles have been completely reversed, when I'm pushing a super­market trolley or loading young children into the back of a Volvo and some unprepared individual whose day-to-day life has momentarily stumbled/collided into mine, asks:

'Excuse me, aren't you Bill Drummond?'

'Yeah.'

'I just want to say ...' or 'Do you mind if I ask ...', and what­ever it is they say or ask isn't what they meant and whatever I answer isn't what they want to hear. There is usually a look in their eyes that tells me that what I've been involved in in the past made an impression on their adolescent evolution, an evo­lution that they now may be embarrassed by, or at best feel a certain amount of nostalgia for. But they can't stop themselves, and now, even though I know all this, I can't stop myself either. I'm desperately trying to think of a question that Peter Green

has never been asked, yet one that won't in some way be mis­interpreted as a slight on his wounded reputation. But no great question arrives before I blurt out: 'I bet you've never been asked, how many spots does the leopard have on the cover of End of the Game? He doesn't say, 'What an interesting ques­tion! You are right, I have never been asked that before.' What he says is, 'The cover had nothing to do with me.' I feel one inch tall.

I pull out the copy of Das Handbuch and start to go through it page by page, comparing the original chapter headings with what they are in translation and wondering how my description of the genius that was Steve Wright comes over in Deutsch. Page fifty-eight, chapter heading, 'Groove'. It seems there is no German translation for this word. I turn over page sixty-three, expecting to see the translation for 'Chorus and Title' on page sixty-four. What I'm met with is ''Tonarten, noten und akkorde\ Even with my rudimentary understanding of German I know this is more likely to be a translation of the chapter heading 'Keys, Notes and Chords'. Something is amiss. I compare the German edition with the original English. Eleven pages of translation are missing. Eleven pages that in the most precise and cynical of fashions, deal with the writing of a Number One song, breaking each component into its integral parts; the aforementioned chorus and title, the verses (or bass riff factor), the intro, bridges, breakdown sections, outros and hanging bits. All explained, all debunked, all laid bare, for any reader with a bit of derring-do to have a go at and achieve success. Without these pages, the book is meaningless, even as a period piece ten years after its original sell-by date. Without them, any German critic willing to review it would undoubtedly perceive Das Handbuch as the unworkable ramblings of another foot­note in pop history, attempting to grab a bigger chunk of pop's infamous Rich Tapestry than he deserves.

Sitting here as the captain announces our imminent descent into Heathrow and the awaiting bad weather, I can feel the

hand of divine retribution taking its toll for my little vanities. The book's already out there in those German shops. It's too late to do anything about it, however much I might complain, stamp my feet and point my finger to wherever I may feel the blame lies. 'Serves me fucking right anyway,' is the only con­clusion worth coming to. As the plane taxis to the terminal zone, I notice that the 'Singing and Singers' chapter is also missing.

As my fellow passengers and I make our way to baggage reclaim, I notice the hunched and shuffling figure of Peter Green up ahead of me. I have a habit of looking for meaning in the random incidents that present themselves to us as we stum­ble through life, hoping to discover some poignant wisdom that will be of use in the remaining days. But not today. Today I feel nothing.