A short story about the singer/songwriter Steve Wales and his loyal fans, with accompanying soundtrack. At the start of each chapter, click on the hyperlinks to hear the corresponding song
One – Woah Yeah
‘Steeeeeve! Steeeeeve!! Is everything okay?’
Lorrie turned to her friend Sandy, who was as ever alongside her front and centre at the barrier.
‘Do you think Steve’s okay?’
‘He’s missing some notes. Something’s a little off tonight,’ Sandy said, half watching the stage, half looking at her phone screen to zoom in on her idol.
‘He was fine in Manchester, wasn’t he?’
‘I suppose so. Nothing out of the ordinary.’
If anyone knew what was less ordinary about Steve Wales, it was his most loyal fans. Everyone knew that his stage name was also his real name, and that his life had two stages: Before Oasis and After Oasis. He had spoken in countless interviews about hearing Live Forever over the summer of 1994, the moment of impact like a meteorite full of power chords: every night, Steve determined, he would be a rock’n’roll star.
He joined the snaking queue to get his hands on the Morning Glory album, taking it home and shutting his eyes from Hello to Champagne Supernova, then leaving it on repeat for days. Steve was among the thousands of kids who manipulated their fingers into F major and A minor chords, in his case on a cheap £15 instrument which had assumed mythical status among fans like Lorrie and Sandy.
The music magazines built up the guitar rock scene into a club you wanted to be a member of, centred around a few pubs in Camden, North London and featuring kids who had something to say: Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Luke Haines, Justine Frischmann. They were arty types with art-school backgrounds, which took Steve to art school too. He would commute from Wimbledon twice a week to hear the latest songs, do some moshpit networking and sample the styles of Young London, all the while writing his own copyrights and playing them to friends as they worked on their pieces in the studio.
What began as derivative fourth-grade Britpop soon moulded itself into the Steve Wales style: yearning, climaxing, addictive melodies with layers of electric guitar. The more gigs he went to, the more musical mange tout went into the mix. Soon he was more interested in sound as a medium to explore than the contemporary conceptual guff where the artistic merits of spots or unmade beds could provoke argument. In any case, the art world was top-down, but rock’n’roll was bottom-up.
Steve took it upon himself to schlep his guitar case and his pop songs to open mic nights around the fringes of London, where payment was sometimes a pint of bitter. More often than not he ran into another dreamer who had mastered Wonderwall and was moving on to Bittersweet Symphony and Yellow.
He would hang out with young women who found Jeff Buckley a fin de siècle Byron, whatever that meant, and guys who were exploring the weirder catalogues of progressive music: Led Zeppelin, Captain Beefheart, Rush, Can, early Genesis. Steve never lost sight of the melody, but would add quirky development sections inspired by those acts who dropped or added beats to their work, a kink in their armour.
And Steve read every music magazine he could, even as some of them expired through lack of sales. He wanted to be one of those musicians written about in Q, Mojo, even the Guardian’s Friday supplement. He bumped into some of the journalists and innocently offered them a demo tape of three of his best songs, which eventually found its way to a famous A&R man who liked the cut of Steve’s jib and, significantly, saw commercial potential in his songs, especially Woah Yeah.
The song, which Steve wrote in about seven minutes as a joke, became his calling card. Steve Lamacq played it on 6 Music and alerted his audience to an artist who, he said after playing it, ‘had hooks coming out of every orifice’. This line was repeated in the music press, and soon Steve Wales became The Man with the Hooks In His Eyes.
Thereupon came a rise to the stratosphere: club gigs across the UK, support slots for medium-sized acts, airplay on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show, a music video filmed around the back of Camden Lock, a promotional campaign where Steve had hand tattoos so that one fist said WOAH and the other YEAH. Impressively, he cracked the UK Top 40, which convinced one of the major labels to swoop down and nab him, seeing commercial potential in his songs, especially Woah Yeah.
In his short live shows that lasted no more than 25 minutes, Steve played that song twice nightly, the second time a cappella to enable his audience to take ownership of it. After every show, he mingled with early adopters and politely refused their offers to buy him a drink; sensibly, Steve had sworn off all alcohol and pharmaceutical on the advice of his manager, an industry veteran who had seen everyone do everything before anyone else did it. ‘Dear boy,’ he was told on a daily basis, ‘the music is the true drug, so why ask for anything more?’
Ironically, Oasis were petering out, doomed to play copycat copyrights of the older songs people really wanted to hear. Steve went to see them in 2003 and was more taken by the aggression of the audience than the pedestrian performers onstage. The Gallaghers were millionaires now, so where was the motivation now? Wonderwall was a revenue stream, not a love song; Don’t Look Back In Anger a string of syllables based on Imagine by John Lennon. Oasis were, Steve realised, their own tribute act.
Two – Headstart (Heart Follows)
Steve Wales had his ten songs ready. The studio time came out of his advance and he would have to sell however many thousands of copies to recoup it. He didn’t think of the balance sheet as he laid down tracks for his self-titled debut album, with a mix engineer manipulating the faders and his band – guitarist Jesse, bassist Rob and drummer Col – knocking out the parts like The Beatles did back when they recorded their debut album in a day.
You get your whole life to work on your first album, and Steve strained every sinew to make it the best he could. Reviewers were pleased that the Man with the Hooks In His Eyes had made good on his early promise, and three singles bounced around radio playlists and record racks at a time when physical product had not yet morphed into the mp3 download.
According to his label’s marketing team, Steve’s acolytes were mainly in the 18-25 demographic with some disposable income. They had been too young to experience the first fruits of Oasis but they acknowledged his debt to the melodic power of the guitar-rock acts of the 1990s that Steve was, let’s say, offering a homage to. It didn’t hurt that he was handsome, which attracted a smattering of women in their late twenties looking for a target for their hormones.
Two such ladies stood in a line outside a Central London venue, united in their affection for Steve Wales. Lorrie was in an abusive relationship with the man she loved. Sandy was fresh out of university and making her way in the big city as a consultant.
‘Lovely t-shirt!’ Lorrie told Sandy, who had made her own imprinted with WOAH on the front and YEAH on the back in black marker pen. From such small beginnings did a grand friendship blossom. Soon they had matching tattoos, Lorrie going for WOAH, Sandy for YEAH, and would meet up before every Steve Wales show they could feasibly attend.
The man provided a haven for them as they were buffeted hither and yon on the waves of the world. The pair shared long train journeys across the UK as they followed Steve on tour, responding to the performer’s energy and returning it to him in spades. Stellar memories included Saturday night in Newcastle, an all-nighter to Bath and back, and three gigs in three days across Manchester, Liverpool and Cardiff.
They were part of a network of fanatics who kept in touch via MSN Messenger, constantly updating their statuses to different lyrics from Steve’s debut album. Lorrie and Sandy both took photos using disposable cameras, adding the best ones to scrapbooks alongside ticket stubs and wristbands. Some day soon they wanted Steve’s signature and photo, but being a semi-professional fan of his was good enough for them at the moment.
With the support of her fellow Dragons, as fans of Steve Wales were inevitably known, Lorrie gained the confidence to walk out on her husband and file for divorce. Sandy grew tired of consultancy, with all its metrics and targets and Key Performance Indicators. She took the leap into self-employment making merchandise for rock acts, and unofficial merch for Steve in the mould of the t-shirt Lorrie had complimented her on.
Three – Out Out
Steve Wales specialised in the meet-cute, a song where two people collide, much as how Lorrie and Sandy did while waiting to see him on that cold November evening. Headstart (Heart Follows) was chosen as a single thanks to how, as Steve himself described while promoting the song in interviews, it seemed major and minor at the same time.
‘You’ve got the B minor chord to start off each phrase,’ he told Q Magazine, ‘and then the big fat D major chorus. Even then, though, you’ve got the C major chord in the middle which is very unusual for a pop song. The point of the song is to “chase the why”, which is why I called the second album Chase The Why.’
Lorrie, Sandy and the other Dragons chased not just the why but the Wales, booking time off work and using the cheap credit common for the era to attend every date of the tour that launched the album. The highlight was on release day itself at HMV on Oxford Street; wonder of wonders, fans would be able to meet Steve Actual Wales, pose for a photo and have their album signed.
Sandy made a CHASE THE WHY t-shirt for her and the so-called ‘top eight’. This was the era of MySpace where friendship was as much a competition as the charts were, although Steve was quite happy to let younger artists like Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen have their cavalcade of virtual fans. He appealed to an older crowd, who were into classic rock and wanted to own their music and claim a piece of the artist.
After a Live Lounge session for Radio 1, the star nipped down Oxford Street to meet and greet his audience. His manager was there too, advising him to look into people’s eyes and thank them for their loyal support. Steve, as always, did as he was told.
Lorrie and Sandy had come early to queue, and they tuned in to hear the session while sheltering under umbrellas. They cheered when Steve rushed into the shop and whooped as they were finally allowed in to meet their music-maker.
‘What’s your name?’ Steve asked Lorrie, who was quite calm in the moment, all told. Afterwards she burst into tears and draped her arms over Sandy, who had been left completely dumb as she posed for a picture with the matinee idol singer.
‘He smelled so alluring!!’ Lorrie sighed. ‘He had that real rockstar scent.’
‘Eau de rock’n’roll!’ Sandy agreed, showing off the signature on her t-shirt too. The pair rushed home to put the album on and heard another magnificent set of melodic rock songs which, although looking back to the past, absolutely addressed the moment in which it was released. The Dragons agreed that Out Out was the pick of the bunch, with its confident swagger and singalong chorus.
It would become the opening track on the setlist for the Chase The Why tour. By the final show, both of their scrapbooks included a host of angularly stuck-in photos of Lorrie and Sandy standing under a marquee emblazoned with the name STEVE WALES. Their guy was no longer a support act but the main star. He’d even been on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and had not disgraced himself in spite of the host’s attempts to get him to say something nasty and cruel.
That wasn’t their Steve, though, with his lopsided smile and straight-edged way of living. He gave a fine account of himself in the Guardian’s Film & Music supplement, where he underlined the importance of analogue music at a time of digital filesharing.
‘My fans want something, and someone, to hold,’ he said. ‘One day we will be able to have an infinite iPod with millions of tracks, but there is a reason why artists bring out a collection of songs on a unified theme in the form of a long-playing record. We wrap them in a colourful sleeve, put the lyrics in there too, and put our hearts on a shelf for £10.99 a time.
‘The album will never go away, just as the three-minute single will never fade out. It traps lightning on disc, human emotions played via laser.’
All the same, iPods didn’t judder in the way CD Walkmen did, so the average fan would rip the files from a CD to iTunes, then mix Steve’s newer and older tracks to create their own compilation, in the tradition of a mixtape but one which you didn’t need a pencil to fix when it unspooled.
Sometimes Dragons would add in tracks which blended well with Steve’s catalogue, or which he had mentioned in interviews. These playlists in turn would be transferred to a new CD and sent around to other fans either by post or at gigs, who would then rip them to their iPods and so on and so on.
Youtube, meanwhile, was a gleam in the music industry’s eye; everything was about the 79p download and even the polyphonic ringtone. Steve’s response to the digital era became legendary: ‘How many ringtones are you going to sing in ten years’ time?’
As a joke his walk-on music for about five shows of the tour was the Crazy Frog ringtone, which his audience sportingly jeered each night. The odd video was posted on Youtube, to be sure, but mostly it was fan forums and MSN chats which brought Dragons together.
Four – Record Stores and Radio Stations
As the tour ended and the album cycle spun round to its conclusion, so did Lorrie, Sandy and the Dragons begin to wait patiently, as fans always do, for the next cycle to begin. It would bring new music, new live shows, new tours and radio sessions. Steve Lamacq kept up his staunch support for Mr Wales, while a host of blogs started to write about him as the keeper of the rock’n’roll flame.
The old guard was retiring: Oasis broke up onstage after someone threw a plum; Blur drifted apart to focus on cheese and politics and opera; Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker moved to Paris, while Justine from Elastica became a visual artist in New York and disappeared entirely from view.
In their place were a host of whippersnappers who fought for a fan’s attention with manufactured pop bands, young UK garage crews and retro soul singers. Some of those young bands were even manufactured themselves, with each spot of hairgel targeted to interest fans in their cookie-cutter emotionally driven rock music.
The redbrick record store, naturally, went into decline because the consumer was at their computer clicking a button to listen to this new breed. Video capacity meant artists could pop their videos online and make their music available the second it came out; there was no lead-in time, no radio promo period where DJs would announce the date where fans, rather than taping the song off the radio, could go out and buy it for themselves.
All was awry in the music industry, but Steve Wales kept plodding on.
The title track of his third album, Record Stores and Radio Stations, was a self-consciously nostalgic song which chimed with enough listeners to send it into the charts. Perhaps they wanted to return to ‘the glory days’ when Art Attack was on TV and DJs spoke ‘nonsense’ over the intro. Richard Branson sent him a letter because the song namechecked Virgin Megastore.
What’s more, Radio 2 playlisted it, giving Steve an older audience more used to Katie Melua and Eva Cassidy as well as the chance for Steve Wright in the Afternoon to, ironically, talk nonsense over the intro. The airplay pleased Steve’s label, who knew that you never lose the fans you gain when you are young, but you never pick up many young fans when you get older. The audience does not regenerate, and sometimes you are in fashion one minute and out of style the next.
‘I went shopping for a walking stick the other day,’ Steve jokingly told The Times in an interview for the album, which led to some Dragons bringing their own to shows. ‘It’s great finding a new audience and as an artist it’s important to grow the pool of listeners. I’ll never be young again, and nor will a lot of the crowd.
‘Maybe a generation from now, someone will write iPod Wheels and MySpace Friends!’
Then, of course, came the social network 2.0: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Lorrie and Sandy were still just about young enough that they could be cool and trendy, and used their microblogs to post photos and celebrate gig anniversaries. It turned out, thanks to Steve’s overseas shows, that he had a handful of fans across the world outside of his main market: Brazilian fans went wild after he played Rock in Rio, and German rock chicks found an affinity with his songs.
Given that it was always difficult for British acts, including Oasis and Blur, to break America, Steve’s label was very impressed that a couple of college radio stations had picked up Out Out. Along with reports of his interviews, this helped mark out Steve as an irreverent hipster favourite, like Morrissey without the charm bypass. Thus did the Dragons enjoy chatting online to Steve’s American fans, who were living in a time of hope and change thanks to their youth-friendly president.
One day, Sandy was tinkering on her PC designing new merch for another upstart band full of hairgel and harmonies who were looking to make it big in the music industry. She noticed that Facebook had started a Groups feature. In her lunch hour, having checked with Lorrie that she would be her fellow group administrator, she set up Steve Wales’ Dragons.
Within a week, the group had a few hundred members all swapping memories of favourite gigs and meeting the Man with the Hooks In His Eyes. There was the odd troll popping up to declare that Chris Martin or Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol wrote better songs, and one or two conspiracy theorists found a safe place for their ramblings, but otherwise the group chuntered on as they all waited for album number four.
And kept waiting.
Steve was spending more and more time trying to break America, trotting around record stores and radio stations and building a bigger following brick by brick, fan by fan. He was helped by endorsements from stations beginning with a K in California and W in New York.
It is lost in the mists of history which of the members of the Steve Wales’ Dragons Facebook group first wrote what would become its catchphrase. He was definitely in Cleveland, home of the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, when he played a small gig for radio station contest winners who were promised some station merch if they turned up to see this hot British guy with the self-deprecating wit.
‘How’s Steve tonight?’ was the innocent question from someone, to which seemingly every member of the group, whether they were at the gig or not, piled in with an answer: ‘Sensational!’ ‘Pleasant!’ ‘Meh?!’ ‘Fantastically fantastic!’ One poster wrote a 900-word gig review where there were as many exclamation marks as words, which led to a brief ban on the punctuation mark enforced with plenty of good humour by Lorrie and Sandy.
Then, over one of the two May Bank Holiday weekends, Steve Wales wrote on the Facebook group dedicated to him the following:
‘Dragons assemble! I’m about to give you the exclusive first play of my new song, which is also the name of the new album, out in October. It’s called Indestructible, and it is inspired by your durable support for me and my career.
‘The chorus took me years to write, as I am sure you can understand. No matter where you are, Australasia or Antarctica, Surrey or Soweto, I think you will be able to sing along.
‘I’ll be popping in to see Steve Lamacq on Thursday with it, but I’ll post it here tomorrow. Stay indestructible!
‘Your friendly neighbourhood songwriter, Steve Wales xx.’
As you might imagine, after checking the bona fides and confirming it was Steve Actual Wales, the group erupted in joy. Steve sent Lorrie and Sandy a message to thank them for giving his fans a virtual substitute for a meeting place in the absence of one of his own shows.
And what a great title for a song! Would it sound like his early album, or would it be ruined by too much production to appeal to the American market? The reaction was generally a thumbs-up, although some fans were put off by the repetition of the title, including the bridge which simply went: ‘You’re indestructible! We’re indestructible!’
When Steve Lamacq debuted the track, the Dragons listened in from around the world and sent in questions that they hoped the DJ would ask him. Lorrie, or ‘Superfan Lorrie’ as she termed herself, has hers read out: ‘What have you learned from your break from live performance?’
‘Good question,’ Steve Wales began. ‘I realised that an artist’s fans are like surrogate family members: they show up to special occasions, and you have to keep sending them round robin letters at Christmas or they’ll forget about you.
‘It’s no use playing the same ten or fifteen songs every time you go out on the road, trapped in a time loop and unable to push on.’
‘Does that mean the new album is going in a different direction?’ asked the experienced Lamacq, who had seen entire genres of music rise, fall and rise again in his two decades on the air.
‘Not this one,’ Wales said cryptically. ‘This one is a bit of a compromise between me and the label. But I’m a free man after this one as I’ve owed them all the albums from the contract I signed all those moons ago.’
‘Is this a “come-and-get-me plea”?’ said Lamacq.
‘Let me out!’ Wales joked, although a lot of fans heard some truth behind the bluster. Thus, instead of happy excitement about Indestructible the album, there was muttering in the group. Where next for Steve Wales?
Five – Indestructible
When Indestructible did come out, the critics were not kind. ‘A mishmash…not up to his usual standards,’ read the Guardian’s generous three-star review, while The Times went with ‘The spark of youth is fading’. A lot of Dragons were appalled at this: they did not hear anything audibly wrong with the album, although to be sure a couple of tracks did sound a bit too targeted towards fans of Katy Perry or Maroon 5, but that was what was hot and fresh and trendy, and how Steve could remain trendy and hot and fresh.
Popular music, after all, is like a pair of denim jeans: they are fresh when you first wear them, then fade over time until one day the fade is what makes them cool and trendy. The Beatles went out of fashion once, and so did ABBA. It took Live Aid for Queen to kick themselves back into public consciousness, and even Johnny Cash played the cabaret circuit before his late-period renaissance.
The music industry is, as Steve grew frond of saying, ‘daft!’ What was popular was based on whims and fortunes that were entirely outside the artist’s control. Thanks to his time in the States, Steve had begun listening to what was still called Country & Western, in particular the Red Dirt scene of Texas that gave birth to outlaws like Steve Earle.
There were moments on Indestructible which pointed towards a future making country music rather than rock’n’roll, which was matched by what Steve told Q in his regular chat to plug a new album where, as per usual, he tried to mention the album itself as little as possible.
‘Rock’n’roll is nearly 60, you know,’ he told his interviewer. ‘At that age, you’re making your will, seeing the grandchildren, going on cruises, downsizing. The Rolling Stones go out and play songs they wrote in their twenties, to people in their forties, who were told by people in their sixties that they were good in the eighties!
‘Country music, on the other hand, is timeless. It existed before recorded music, works without amplification and sounds like the cry of the heart, whether in joy or pain, delight or despair.
‘I’d love to make a country album but my fans might not want to hear it. They’d rather ditties about “yeah yeah yeah”, you know.’
This led to more gnashing of teeth and mashing of keyboards across the world. Lorrie herself spoke up in an unprecedented post: ‘We will listen to whatever you have to offer the world, Steve, and you have our blessing to follow your muse. We are, to quote you, indestructible!!’
A few fans dissented with the brilliance of country music. One wrote: ‘Who wants to hear songs about dogs and trucks from the guy who wanted to go Out Out? Is he going to cover Shania Twain next??’
There followed a series of exchanges where group members fell out. American fans of Steve Wales spoke up for the infinite variety of country music, recommending dozens of artists and their songs, quoting lyrics and embedding videos from Youtube. The more ignorant members wanted Steve to keep making British rock’n’roll and not look to the USA like everyone else had done.
‘But,’ wrote Sandy, ‘U2 recorded The Joshua Tree in the USA and they became the biggest band on earth.’
‘Yeah and look what it did to Bono’s ego!’ wrote another Dragon, which started off a whole different conversation about arrogant rock stars, bringing in the Gallaghers and David Lee Roth. Sad to report, Steve was also called arrogant by some fans who had abandoned their brains.
By this time, streaming services had started attracting music fans and proven Steve right: a music fanatic now had thousands of tracks in one place, so why did they need to keep their CD and vinyl collections which took up space in their flats?
This was not what the Dragons thought, however, who still played Steve’s music on their hi-fi systems in between listening to Radio 2 and 6 Music. The latter station had been given a stay of execution after the BBC announced plans to shutter it. Steve himself had been quoted in the Guardian as saying, ‘The spirit of John Peel will be stabbed in the heart if they close 6 Music, which is a home for the alternative to the likes of me.’
Fans of Steve Wales were in a quandary. They were supporting a man who took three years to put out his fourth album and who was making noises about the excellence of country music. His fans, wretchedly, could not see him perform live because Steve did not tour the album at all, in part as a response to the reaction of the Dragons, but mostly because he had moved to California and gone West, young man.
Thus came a barrage of fans asking the same thing, ad nauseam, across several months: how’s Steve tonight?
Six – Opposites Don’t Always Attract
And then, out of nowhere, came a bombshell.
Steve’s manager had brought in as a client a leading DJ who made what Americans called Electronic Dance Music. Just as the punk revolution took 15 years to filter through the USA from the success of The Ramones to the MTV-backed juggernaut of Nirvana, so did club and rave culture transfer from the discotheques of Europe to the deserts of California. Daft Punk put a lot of work in but by gum did they get lucky.
Simon’s song Opposites Don’t Always Attract, an old tune from his second album, was remixed by the DJ and became a surprise smash around the world. Interestingly, it did have the kind of swinging beat that would attach itself to a country song, but it was suitable for all occasions: weddings, hoedowns, bar mitzvahs.
Now the world at large knew of Steve Wales, which made for even more interesting conversations in the Dragons Facebook group.
‘Has anyone noticed how since Steve put out the remix to Opposites Don’t Always Attract,’ someone wrote, ‘the spelling and grammar in this group has really gone downhill? I’m thinking of leaving.’ The post was very popular, and precipitated a rise in comments from older members critical of Steve’s younger audience who were ‘still in shorts at school’ when he released his debut album.
Inevitably there was a magazine interview where Steve explained why he had allowed his song to be remixed. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I’m not precious about my songs. Bob Dylan plays his old ones in completely different versions, and he let Victoria’s Secret use them in an advert too. Wilco had no problem giving theirs away to help sell people VWs!
‘We’re all selling something here. There’s no point accusing a rock’n’roll musician in selling out. After Green Day were barred from the punk clubs after they signed to a major label, I don’t think they ever thought about it when they were playing American Idiot in stadiums.
‘And yesterday’s punk cellar moshpits are today’s warehouse parties. If a curious clubber wants to listen to my back catalogue, they are welcome to do so, but I am happy that the song is helping them dance away their cares.’
Lorrie and Sandy, who were still administrators of the Facebook group, were once again stuck. They had no time for dance music themselves, which lacked the emotion of a song being played by an amplified musician in a field or arena. But they were pleased that the man they had watched play a warmly received 25-minute support slot a decade ago was now in the big leagues, shifting units and even appearing in Rolling Stone magazine.
Steve had, as mentioned, upped sticks for California, where he was able to hang out with actors and tech entrepreneurs who were building the platforms and designing the hardware that brought his music into the pockets of people from Shanghai to San Francisco.
More CD stores were shutting and, worse, we seemed to be running out of songs: one poster in the group kept a running tally of songs which included elements of old ones, or which twisted old songs into new danceable shapes. Someone wondered if, for his next trick, Steve would venture into the Great American Songbook.
‘EDM remixes of Cole Porter?’ suggested someone whose comment won hundreds of likes.
When Steve posted news of his forthcoming appearance as a guest vocalist at the DJ’s arena show, plenty of posters just asked if he was doing it for the money.
A less brave performer would have ignored this, but Steve sent Lorrie a long note that he asked to be posted on the group wall in full. The key sentence was this: ‘I have no interest arguing the toss with people who don’t give one. True support means standing by your man, and I feel a lot of my fans, at least going by members of this group, have no intention of doing so.’
You would have expected many Dragons to take a second to think about their actions and words, to pull back or go gently. Alas, there is something in the mental make-up of a true acolyte of a musician that makes them even more entrenched in their views. It’s like a child who has trapped a limb somewhere and, instead of keeping still, squirms and squirms and makes it far, far worse and more painful.
‘Why doesn’t he care what we think?’ was the gist of several replies, which created rival factions within the fanbase. Rather than leaving the group, of course, the atmosphere was polluted and things soon degenerated into insults and namecalling. This prompted Lorrie and Sandy to issue a joint statement saying that, regrettably, they would have to eject members who disobeyed the new rules on good conduct in the group.
‘This is supposed to be about celebrating Steve, not castigating him,’ they wrote. ‘There are plenty of places on the Internet where you can argue about the merits of electronic music or the European Union. Please do all you can to bring people together, not drive them apart.’
Seven – Red Dirt Tears
And so Steve Wales watched his audience widen but his superfans grow discontented and somewhat disenchanted. But there was a life raft for the Dragons to clamber upon.
Bruce Springsteen has become a superlative rock star of his age, achieving most of his success with a group of hired hands known as the E Street Band. Whenever Bruce is off the road and has no use for Little Steven or Mighty Max, they are making their own music and hitting the highway themselves. Thus do guitar players like Nils Lofgren or Steve Hackett, formerly of Genesis, make a decent living, releasing new music and playing arena shows to what Nigel Tufnell from Spinal Tap would call a ‘more selective’ audience.
Steve Wales’s version of Stevie van Zandt was Jesse Cartwright, who had credits on several songs which regularly ended up in his setlist. Red Dirt Tears was a fan favourite, ironically a country-tinged heartbreak song with a magnificent chorus that always led to a mass singalong with hands swaying hither and yon. It had even caught the ear of Bob Harris, who gave the song several plays on his overnight programme on Radio 2.
Jesse knew his place in the band: he stood at the side playing the riffs and solos while Steve took the spotlight and the applause. As with van Zandt, Jesse would sometimes wander over to the vocalist and add some harmonies, more for the photo op than to show off his voice. He had not been blessed with a rocker’s pipes, which whenever he was asked he would declare as a ‘sideman’s set of vocal cords’.
With Steve disappointing many of his fans by preferring the beach to the studio, dozens of Dragons were delighted when Jesse announced a small tour of UK venues, which were sometimes as tiny as the back room of a village pub. It did not deter people wanting to hear Red Dirt Tears and other songs, mixed in with tracks from Jesse’s new four-track EP, released on his own label.
As was customary, Lorrie and Sandy put on their gladrags and went to Jesse’s London show, which was undersold but overwhelmingly anticipated by those who had tickets. The crowd sat through half a dozen so-so compositions about love and stuff, before Jesse looked up and said: ‘I know we’ve got some of my friend Steve’s fans in the room…but if you will allow me to play some more of my material, I hope I can reward you with a surprise near the end of the set.’
A showbusiness tease from a seasoned pro, but one that took some of the air out of the room. Should Jesse not give the audience what they wanted, rather than selfishly promote his own material? At least Lorrie and Sandy didn’t think so, but it did make five or six people huffily and performatively grab their handbags and head to the bar, loudly pushing past the pair.
Jesse had to stop one song because a lady was heckling him and being shushed for doing so. It all rather ruined the occasion, and when Red Dirt Tears came at the end of the main set, it was anticlimactic. Sandy headed to catch her train but Lorrie wanted to speak to the man after his performance, waiting in the bar with one or two other Dragons.
‘Heya sweetheart,’ Jesse greeted her warmly. ‘I knew I should have told you at the start of the show that it was a Jesse Cartwright show for a reason.’
‘The problem with some of the fans,’ Lorrie sighed, ‘is that they feel entitled, like they have a say in things they ought not to. They’re not customers buying vegetables, are they?’
Jesse laughed and answered Lorrie’s sigh with one of his own. ‘That’s the trouble with selling music for a living: you’re selling the art and the artist.’ He moved his chair six inches closer and accepted the pint Lorrie had bought him, knowing that he had something to say on behalf of his friend.
‘Steve spent years telling me he felt trapped by his own fame, by his own fans. He knew that that was part of the game you had to play, but he had to answer to so many different people: his manager pushed him this way, his label wanted radio hits, his live agent had a five-year plan to scale up venues by size of fanbase. It was less of an art and more of a business, and we were his underlings.
‘He found it amazing that fans would put his face on a t-shirt and wear him around their house. He’s just a songwriter, not a brain surgeon. He entertained people and expected nothing in return, even though he knew he was being monetised and marketed to help deliver a return to the shareholder investment. Rock’n’rollonomics, eh?’
The pair clinked glasses and took long sips, before Jesse resumed his monologue.
‘Having fans discussing him in your group, even criticising his musical direction, drove him to despair. In a way, that’s why he let Opposites get remixed, a sort of stuff-you to those who wanted to trap him in the 2005 version of Steve Wales.
‘Whenever we sat down to write a song, we’d joke that we should do the exact opposite of what people think we should write. ‘But we realised that would be bad for business, and annoy the shareholders, especially if we were to crack America.
‘Look at Coldplay, who were a pretty solid indie band. They knew that mass appeal was about hitting the lowest common denominator. Viva La Vida has all those woahs and it means Chris Martin can afford to live in California. Steve sees him around and about in LA. Mumford & Sons are exactly the same, mark my words, plus they don’t ever mention how their banjo player has millions in inherited wealth.’
‘So why does Steve not want that sort of fame?’ Lorrie asked.
‘Same reason that everyone who quits this business refuses it: they lose part of themselves.’
The two of them talked about Jesse’s new EP and his hopes for it, even though the empty spots in the venue proved how tough it was for an act without major-label money to break through. It might be true that anyone could potentially find an audience in the mid-2010s, but you still needed to be able to play proficiently, write brilliantly and find a manager who could get you into the right rooms. Plus, the whole luck thing that made the industry ‘daft’, to coin a phrase.
Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift were by now the market leaders, with songs across multiple formats and in multiple genres. When Swift had conquered country, she did the same in pop. Jesse told Lorrie that the pair, Sheeran and Swift, compared spreadsheets and ran the numbers as they looked upon their realms and plotted their next moves.
‘Rock’n’rollonomics, eh?’ they said with another clink of another pair of pint glasses.
Jesse did, however, predict a lawsuit from Marvin Gaye because Thinking Out Loud was a little too close to Let’s Get It On for his liking. Then again, he said, if everyone sued each other for using the same chords and moods, there wouldn’t be any new music at all.
Eight – Four Simple Chords
Then, in the year 2020, there was no music whatsoever. Release schedules, like the rest of the world, were in a state of flux, and the summer festival season was cancelled. As expected, Steve Wales was not set to do anything anyway, cossetted away in California.
He was, however, intrigued by the proliferation of acts getting their tripods out, sticking a camera on it and recording sets direct to their fans. Having initially refused to join in, in the middle of June Steve accepted Jesse Cartwright’s invitation to make a cameo appearance on one of his.
The Dragons Facebook group had understandably shed members over recent years in tandem with the absence of new music, but those who were left set reminders for Jesse’s show. Would Steve Actual Wales actually show up, and if he did would he say anything to his loyal fans?
A few dozen tuned in for Jesse’s original compositions and then, 30 minutes into the set, the host invited Steve Wales to join the call.
‘Jesse!’ Steve shouted from his California home. ‘How the devil are you?’
‘Plugging away, as ever, waiting for you to show up!’ The banter was still strong between them.
‘Hello everyone watching. I’ve got a nice surprise for you, since this is such a special occasion. If I may?’
‘Oh you may,’ Jesse said to a shower of digital hearts from viewers, whose numbers had doubled in a matter of minutes.
Steve then picked up his acoustic guitar and, for the first time in a decade, played not just music but a new song. His sister had recently given birth to his nephew and, suitably inspired, Steve had decided to write something to teach him about what he did, or used to do, for a living.
Four Simple Chords (‘and a lot of love’) sounded like an instant classic to many viewers, as Steve explained the magic of music in a smart and melodic manner. There was sustained applause from Jesse who admitted he didn’t even know his friend was about to do that.
‘Well, until this morning that would have been two of us,’ Steve said. ‘I wrote it especially for you, amigo, to thank you for keeping me entertained during the pandemic. Maybe we can work something out and tour again after this nightmare is over. What do you say, Dragons?!’
After the performance finished, Sandy phoned Lorrie and they could not believe what they had seen. They felt like they had done when they first heard Woah Yeah performed in the room for them all those years ago, before bickering over country music had disrupted the community of Steve Wales fanatics which they had spearheaded.
Could it really be true that their beloved songwriter would break his duck and get back to live performance? Or was he leading them on and giving them something to hope for at a time of hopelessness?
In any case, the pair had new passions: Sandy had her twins to look after, while Lorrie was one of the many Parkrunners who helped out every Saturday and socialised with fellow runners during the week. The meetings replicated the thrill of going to see live music, where endorphins rushed around the park instead of the venue.
The decade of digital consumption of culture, thanks to Netflix and BBC iPlayer alongside Youtube and Spotify, had pushed live music down the list of people’s priorities, especially with the unreliability of the train network and the lack of great new music. This may, they knew, have had something to do with the pair’s advanced years; Lorrie found a survey that showed that the appetite for musical discovery stopped at the age of 31, so if you didn’t have a penchant for opera or heavy metal by that age, you never would.
Still, amid virtual quizzes for Parkrunners (Lorrie) and attempts to inculcate the importance of vegetables to twins (Sandy), they would ensure they blocked out an evening to rekindle their ardour for him, should Steve make good on his suggestion to tour. Perhaps there would be an official release of Four Simple Chords, although Steve had been without a label ever since Opposites Don’t Always Attract had given his catalogue a boost.
Nostalgia, of course, had become big business. Before things fell away, even boybands from 2000 like A1, Five, Damage and 911 were ready to head out as part a package tour targeted at grown-up fans who wanted to remember a time before taxes and toddlers. Fewer new acts were coming to market, although those that did – Dua Lipa, Sam Fender, Lewis Capaldi – seemed omnipresent if a little samey to the pair’s advanced ears. Everything Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift released dominated cultural conversation.
Meanwhile rock’n’roll would soon celebrate its 70th birthday. But where were the bands? Did kids not want to make a racket, and address the issues of frustration and despair at a time when they found it tough to get jobs and homes? Perhaps the selfie was the new pop single, and everyone could express themselves via their smartphone. That way, they didn’t need to understand melody, chords, rhyme or even the ability to play an instrument.
Lorrie often wondered to herself if Steve could have been a star in the current musical era. If he had he appeared in the third decade of the 21st century rather than the first, would she have gone to see him play? Probably not, given that she was happily remarried and part of the Parkrun cult, as she jokingly but seriously called it. Might Steve just have been the lucky recipient of her desire to escape her first marriage?
And what of Sandy, seeking something to do in a new city and with some disposable income to spend on live music, which had not been something she had ever previously thought to do. Were the Dragons not the equally lucky result of being there for her in the right place at the right time?
Watching Steve’s rise might thus be a side effect of the camaraderie of supporting an artist. He could have been anyone, but he was hers; indeed, he was all of theirs.
Nine – Old
‘Hello Dragons. Steve here.
‘I can officially announce to you, for the first time anywhere, that I will be coming to the UK at long, long last. Now that the pandemic is behind us, and to mark 20 years in this awful but often awesome (awfsome!?!) business, I will be performing in London and Manchester in November.
‘I will be supported by Jesse Cartwright, my right-hand man who stands to my left. Jesse has got an EP out too so please come early to support him.
‘Also, one more thing: I’ve got a new song out tomorrow, landing on streaming services. It’s called Old because that’s what I am now!
‘See you in November!’
Where to start with this news? Every Dragon had been clinging on to hope to see the day that Steve Wales would be back in an arena near them. Now it had come, and it was greeted by scepticism and the return of the catchphrase, now reborn as a hashtag:
‘#howsstevetonight Those royalty cheques must be running low.’
‘#howsstevetonight Desperate not to be forgotten.’
‘#howsstevetonight Jealous of Jesse Cartwright stealing his thunder.’
‘#howsstevetonight Bored, so here’s a new song.’
Lorrie took the initiative and, still remembering her meeting with Jesse before the pandemic, she posted a long essay on how she never thought Steve would be back onstage.
‘You never know what someone is going through. I think we needed to give Steve time to find his songwriting mojo.
‘And do you know something? We should be grateful he even shared a note with us at all! Nobody has to buy or listen to anyone’s music, just as nobody is required to read anything you or I write in this group.
‘We are all here because we responded to Steve, whether his earliest albums or the dance remix that gave his career a boost. Just because he hasn’t written anything new in over ten years, that doesn’t mean we should not be kind and supportive.
‘He has no need to get out and perform, but something has convinced him to. If he shows up, then as fans we have a duty to show up too. So get out your old t-shirts, or even design a new one, and get your tickets to see him!’
Rolling back the years, Old was given its first play on Radio 2 and 6 Music, with Steve joining Mr Lamacq live on air to explain himself.
‘Well, fellow Steve,’ Mr Wales began, ‘it’s a mix of things, really: I think we need more songs from old codgers about the passage of time. I was fed up with seeing Dua Lipa remind everyone about youth and vitality, so this song is a counterbalance to the status quo.
‘I also started to think about the next phase in my life. Unless you’re the good old Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac or Paul McCartney, there’s no real demand for older rock stars. Well, unless you’re on 6 Music,’ he hurriedly added.
‘No offence taken,’ offered Lamacq. ‘And it must be harder because California chases youth and renews itself all the time. Do you miss anything about the United Kingdom?’
‘What, the Kingdom of Brexit?!’ Steve said, before remembering he was on the BBC and political discussion had to be balanced. ‘Well, of course there’s Her Majesty, who might well find a sympathetic ear in the new song.
‘I miss the fans, actually, especially the ones who got on board 20 years ago. They’re getting old as well, and there’s a Facebook group I know about where the most loyal ones still post photos and share stories of gigs from my glory days.’
‘The great thing about music,’ Lamacq said, ‘is its ability to remind you of the person you used to be, or indeed still are.’
‘You’re so wise, Steve.’
‘No, you’re so wise, Steve. Anyway, it’s early in LA. Haven’t you got pilates to do while sipping matcha tea, then therapy in the afternoon?’
‘I didn’t realise you had access to my diary, you scoundrel!’
‘Honest, guv! Anyway, Steve Wales will be at Gorilla in Manchester and Bush Hall in West London in November. Tickets are flying, I’d imagine, so hurry hurry.
‘In the meantime, this is – and I can’t quite believe I’m saying this – the first play on 6 Music of the new single by Steve Wales. It’s called Old.’
Ten – All The Same People
Before the London show, Lorrie popped into Sandy’s with her scrapbook. Her twins, who were now four, had heard their mum talk longingly about a man who was ‘even more handsome and talented than your father’.
‘So why didn’t you marry him and kiss him lots?’ asked one of the twins.
‘Because he was mysterious and never let me get close to him,’ Sandy replied.
‘She was speechless when they met,’ Lorrie said. ‘She didn’t even get one word out!’
‘Oh mummy, you’re so silly!’ said the other twin.
‘Not so silly that she didn’t become friends with Auntie Lorrie!’ she boasted, before being distracted by a page of the scrapbook. ‘Oh no! What on earth was I doing with my hair?!’
‘I think I had a similar haircut, San. Oh boy, I remember that show. The train broke down on the way back and we were stranded in Rugby!!’
And so the reminiscences continued, with every ticket stub prompting new memories of t-shirt designs and pre-gig meals. With her husband and twins ready for a night of Disney movies, Sandy put on a brand new design, where the number 20 was formed by a collage of Steve’s rockstar poses, and the pair set off for the show.
Once there, they queued up with old friends who had been in a similar queue two decades ago. Suddenly a figure in a dark leather jacket came out through the stage door and greeted them all.
‘People of Brexitland!’ Steve Wales joked to cheers, before he spent time chatting to all the Dragons in the line, curious to know where they had come from and if they had come far. A couple were over from Germany, and Steve exchanged one or two words in German which made them giggle delightedly.
‘He’s like the Queen!’ Lorrie said after Steve had gone back to his dressing room. ‘But with even more power over my heart!!’
It didn’t take long for Jesse to shuffle on after the doors opened. ‘I know most of you came to see me when the last EP came out,’ he said, ‘so tonight I’ll do things a bit differently. Would you please welcome the incomparable expatriate, the Man with the Hooks In His Eyes: Steve Wales!!’
Having indeed expected a repeat performance from Jesse, but politely obeying Steve’s request that they showed up early, the Dragons cheered passionately as they saw singer and guitarist reunited onstage for the first time in over ten years.
‘Hello, Jesse.’
‘Hello, Steve. What do you want to hear?’
‘Let’s do Red Dirt Tears, but do it your way. You see,’ and here he turned to the crowd, ‘Jesse felt it wasn’t country enough even in the recorded version. The suits didn’t think anyone wanted to hear a pure country song, but I am not beholden to the suits anymore.’
With people still filtering into the venue and cheering when they saw Steve onstage unexpectedly, it created a completely original atmosphere. Jesse slid a bottleneck across his strings while Steve sang in an affected American twang that brought the song to life, as if he were a cowboy crying into his beer glass.
Lorrie could definitely identify some Dragons who had been critical of Steve wanting to perform country music, and tutted at how they had abandoned their positions just because they were looking at the man himself, glowing in the spotlight. Jesse’s words about the music and the musician played on her mind.
‘Thank you, buddy,’ Steve said when the song finished, and moved to leave the stage. The audience actually, as one, booed.
‘I think the crowd want you to stay put, man,’ Jesse observed, and so Steve sat down and turned his chair towards his guitarist.
‘It’s your show now, Jess. Entertain us. Now!!’
For the next half-hour, Jesse ran through songs from his new and old EPs, with a better reaction than the previous time he did so. People were better behaved, with one or two folk voluntarily policing newcomers who, at the sight of Steve Actual Wales onstage, shut up and listened.
‘Alright, I’ve got one more before I hand over to the main course,’ Jesse said. ‘I have to say, it has been heartening to hear you all listening to songs which I wrote for myself, to get me through not being part of the Steve Wales circus.
‘We artists are now beholden to the tech companies who take most of our streaming money, and we recognise how the cost of everything has gone up in what Steve would call Brexitland.
‘It really means the world when you buy a CD, or an LP, or a t-shirt. Talking of which, Sandy, thanks for everything you do. Give it up for Sandy, right there at the front, and go grab one of the tees she designed for the tour!’
Lorrie whooped almost as hard as she had done for Steve, which caused her friend to glow crimson.
‘Sometimes I feel like a medieval minstrel, completely at the beck and call of the paymaster. But no minstrel ever wrote Opposites Don’t Always Attract and had the PRS cheques I have had.’
This was a signal for Steve, who co-wrote the song with Jesse, to turn his chair around and help orchestrate a singalong. The venue was packed to capacity now, which meant that latecomers who had missed Red Dirt Tears could now warm up their voices. Everyone in the room knew the song, both the words and the vocalised ‘doo-doos’.
After the final chord, Jesse Cartwright stood up, bowed from the waist and directed people to the merch desk where he would chat with any Dragon who wanted to buy the EP. He sold out his entire stock that evening.
There is never a more exciting moment in a live performance than when the intermission music fades down along with the lights. It’s like a football match the microsecond before it kicks off, where you know there will be passes, tackles and shots but never sure if they will be in the correct order. The thrill of a football match matches that of a gig: unlike a CD recording or highlights reel, it will not happen again in the same way, in the same room or on the same pitch, with the same quirks and crowd noises.
It might not even go according to plan, if an instrument fails or the star player twists his knee. The thrill is as much in what goes right and what goes wrong, and that you, along with hundreds of others, were there to witness it.
Chariots of Fire started up, as it always did, and Steve Wales’s Dragons sang the melody, as they always did. Jesse came out first, along with drummer Rob and bassist Col, who matched the groove of the entrance music and encouraged the fans to clap along. If anything, it was a kind of football chant without the football.
Finally, with the clapping at terminal velocity, Steve Actual Wales walked out, an acoustic guitar strapped across his body. If the cheers during Jesse’s set had been loud, these were gargantuan; the same man who had emerged fully formed in the early 2000s had now grown older but in a certain light had not aged a minute. This might have been caused by living on the Pacific coastline.
Twenty years ago, A&R men spotted his commercial potential and encouraged him to sign with their label so the world could hear the Man with the Hooks In His Eyes.
‘Good evening, London. My name is Steve and have I got tunes for you!!’
For the next 90 minutes, Steve took requests, deviating from his half-planned setlist. Throughout the show he and Jesse shared a mic stand and exchanged raised eyebrows. Why had they waited to do this for so long when they were clearly so good at it!
Muscle memory helped Steve get through the set, although he did have a stand with a book of lyrics upon it in case he could not recall songs he had not played since touring his second album. After another set of cheers half-subsided, Steve sent away his band and took a sip of water.
And so we return to where we came in, with Lorrie shouting: ‘Steeeeeve! Steeeeeve!! Is everything okay?’
Steve set down his water bottle and took a breath.
‘Did you see that new Amazon advert? Do you know what’s soundtracking it? She’s Electric, by Oasis. Even Noel Gallagher had sold out! They all do in the end. We all do.
‘We do so because rock’n’roll has no principles. Of course, you start off as revolutionaries: storm the barricades! Kick out the jams!! You won’t fool the children of the revolution!!!
‘It’s all a sham. Change is always an easy answer, but then when you’ve got it you want to shore it up, keep it for yourself, pull up the drawbridge of the castle you sleep in.’
Mutters of consternation went around the room, alongside the odd whoop that was purely because Steve was going off on one of his tangents before the acoustic section of the show could get going.
‘Bob Dylan sold his catalogue for the sort of money that will mean his grandchildren won’t have to work again. What was blowin’ in the wind? Dollar bills.
‘Johnny Rotten doing butter ads and living in a jungle on TV? Filthy lucre, he called it, but it’s not so filthy when you need a three-piece suit and care for your spouse.
‘I watched that Liam Gallagher documentary again on the plane over here. He’s got four kids and a reputation as one of the last great rock’n’roll stars, which he didn’t have back when he was singing Shakermaker.
‘Where’s his motivation now? Wonderwall’s a revenue stream, not a love song; Don’t Look Back In Anger is a string of syllables based on Imagine by John Lennon. Their own tribute act, both of them.
‘The best thing for Noel would be to reach out to Liam, call a truce, go on the reunion tour, make the fans happy, lead a karaoke of Wonderwall and then retire off the proceeds. Although,’ Steve mused, ‘strangely they are making the best music of their lives at the moment.’
‘What about you?’ cried Sandy involuntarily.
‘I’m getting to me. I was just giving some context,’ Steve smiled. ‘I’ve had it with rock’n’roll and rock’n’roll has had it with me.
‘When I was young, wondering how to fill an empty Sunday, I used it as my sanctuary. Rock’n’roll wouldn’t have come into being without people wanting to escape their little boxes, their predetermined lives in factories or the cotton fields. It’s about getting somewhere else, anywhere else, and raising a crowd to help you.
‘I thought I could change people’s minds, put fire underneath their souls and make them go WOAH WOAH YEAH!’
As the room erupted in an a cappella chorus of that song, Lorrie and Sandy looked down at their tattoos, still unerasable after many years. The crowd cheered themselves after they had finished their own singalong, conducted by Steve just like he used to do.
‘It certainly got me away from this country, didn’t it? California makes you think. The weather doesn’t change so you look for other things to complain about. You meditate, shop for whole foods and, in my line of work, think of something to write about.
‘But there’s a reason Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and The Rolling Stones haven’t put out a good song in decades. There’s no need. They’re not young anymore, they don’t kick against the system. They ARE the system, in as much as they help the music industry make money by being totemic artists.
‘And none of them agreed to a dance remix of one of their hits! I’m sorry to those of you who thought country music or dance music wasn’t the kind of music you wanted to hear from me. It is truly impossible to please everybody all the time; life is just about making as few enemies as you can while staying friends with yourself.’
Applause greeted this profundity, which would be quoted on the Facebook group and turned into a t-shirt later on.
Steve used the applause break to take a swig of water. Jesse, Col and Rob had come to the side of the stage and were visible from certain audience viewpoints. It was the most interesting they had ever seen their bandleader be.
‘And I am here among friends, aren’t I? You’re all chasing the same feeling you felt when you first heard me play live. I’m sorry I’m not as, shall we say, debonair as I used to be.’
Entertainers know how to play the crowd, and Steve played them brilliantly here. Cries of ‘no!’ echoed around the room, with even the band joining in.
‘California hides a multitude of sins,’ Steve continued. ‘I walk across the sand most days, wondering if I’m doing the best I can in this short time on earth.’
‘You are!!!’ shouted Lorrie and a hundred others.
‘But I’ve not performed for years! I lost the appetite for it. I got into a rhythm that felt like a pepper grind: the hanging around between arriving at the venue and soundcheck, then soundcheck to gig, then gig to alarm call; talking to Q magazine and the great Steve Lamacq’ – pause for applause – ‘even getting played on Radio 2 to really boost my standing in the lucrative 35-54 demographic.
‘So tonight, for the last time, here’s a song about how time passes and we should all be grateful for everything we have.’
As Steve counted out the opening chords to Record Stores and Radio Stations, there was befuddlement. ‘For the last time’? Even Jesse was perplexed. Had Steve Wales called time on his career, here and now, right when the time was right for an anniversary greatest hits set?
His words stunned the audience, who would be listening reverentially if they were not in shock. Some members remembered to sing along to the chorus, as they had paid to do so, but it took until the end of the song for the message to sink in: Simon Wales would never perform live again. He’d done a Ziggy Stardust.
‘Say it ain’t so, Steve!’ cried a member of the front row to nods from Lorrie and Sandy.
‘Thank you very much,’ he replied with a curled lip in the style of Elvis. This made him laugh. ‘At least my manager wasn’t as bad as Elvis’. I’ll save that story for the memoir.’
In truth, Steve’s apathy towards live performance and new material was what prompted his manager to think of the dance mix of Opposites. Steve was eventually convinced to give over the song after it was pointed out to him that even Elvis had a massive hit when A Little Less Conversation was remixed. Remuneration without agitation appealed to Steve.
There followed the rest of the acoustic portion of the show, where he played a medley of choruses of album cuts alongside Headstart in full, at the conclusion of which Steve looked over and saw his bandmates cheering too.
‘Alright, let’s amp it up. JCR, come on out!’
The audience realised that this would be the final time the quartet would be entertaining them, so near shook the venue with their shouts as Jesse and Rob plugged in and Col selected the correct combination of brushes and sticks.
‘Anyone feel old?’ Steve asked, cueing up the song of that name. ‘Well this one’s for everybody!’
The very best songs address an emotional and universal truth, often in an idiosyncratic way previously unexplored in pop music. Bohemian Rhapsody takes six minutes to arrive at a pessimistic conclusion: all the Scaramouches in the world cannot change the fact that ‘nothing really matters’.
Paul Anka turned a French chanson into a boast that Frank Sinatra ‘took the blows’ but did it his way. George Michael’s guilty feet had no rhythm, Aretha said a little prayer while running for the bus, and Adele assured herself that there was ‘someone like you’ waiting for her.
Steve Wales would not have a song that would, as he always said, be sung by the humanoids of the 23rd century. If he did, it would be Old, a criticism of material things that updated the adage that you can’t take your riches with you or stop time from hurtling by.
It might be the only pop song, outside of verbose protest songs, with ‘means of production’ as part of the lyric, and not many of them had their singer complain that ‘you make a noise when you stand up’. Ozymandias, the King of Kings, also popped up, which perhaps explained why Old didn’t make a splash on the Top 40 when it was released, although paid downloads from Bandcamp were pretty strong.
On the line ‘Rage against that dying light’, Steve stopped singing.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to my final show. Don’t worry, I’ll still be around and chatting to you on the Dragons Facebook group...’
It seemed that everyone in the room, even the sound engineer, was part of the group, which would soon be handed on by Lorrie and Sandy to younger fans who had the time to run it.
‘But it’s time to put this chapter to bed. You’ve been absolutely wonderful but…I’ve got old!’
With that he and the band finished the song and the set. As was convention, however, the audience wanted one more tune. Lorrie and Sandy both found the little energy left in their larynxes to shout their request, even though Steve had played every hit and notable album track, as well as the standalone song which he thought would be his durable contribution to popular song.
As was convention, Steve ambled back onstage, with a mock pained expression on his face. ‘They love me, ma!’ he shouted into the mic, and the crowd shouted back. ‘Alright, alright, I’ll leave you with something really special.’
He turned to a particular page of his songbook and looked at the audience somewhat villainously.
‘As a thank you to every one of yous,’ he said, ‘I would like to give you this gift. For many years, I did not treat you as a performer should treat his audience, with constant product and revealing interviews where I manage to unsuccessfully plug that product while castigating the very industry helping me produce it.’
This would be Steve Wales’ last ever pre-song ramble.
‘You may come from different parts of the country, with different cockamamie schemes, but ultimately, I’ve concluded that we are all the same people.’
And with that, Steve launched into All The Same People, a simple pop song which barely paused for breath and in one place rhymed ‘ones we love/ potted shrubs’. Sombrely, the coda to the song included the line ‘there’ll always be a next time’, to which Steve shrugged and said, ‘Well, for some of us.’
Now there were tears amid the cheers. Steve called his band out and the four took the curtain call. And that is where this chapter of the life story of Steve Wales – songwriter, antagonist, raconteur, performer, expat, bloke – ends.
The official soundtrack, with all ten songs, is available in one place here.