'Charisma Is A Gift But Technique Is The Key To Survival'

In the fifth extract from Good Guys Lost the action moves back to Liverpool. Billy is out of jail just in time for a family funeral and decides to aim for a career in music

Read part four of Good Guys Lost here

Where the music takes me

The next time the boy saw Billy was in early 1975, nearly a decade after those captivating words on the stairs. All the hope of those days had been stripped away. Billy walked into the church looking thin, pale and shabby. The circumstances of their reunion could hardly have been worse.

He had been out of prison for some months. Initially he had been charged with attempted murder but was eventually convicted of grievous bodily harm. The slow task of rebuilding his life had just begun. He no longer had a wife and was denied access to his children. He had barely known them but it did not lessen the pain of being exiled from their lives.

Here, I have to stop talking about the boy in the third person. Billy’s story is so entwined with mine that I have to accept that I am a character in this pathetic tale. Yet it still does not feel like me. There are many years to go before I recognise myself.

Billy was released just in time to see my father die. The men were never close – the age gap was just too big – but he looked up to Duke and Duke adored his brother. In October my father had a stubborn cough, by February he was buried. Cancer was common in men of his age but the sudden, savage nature of his death stunned everyone in the extended family.

Except me. Joey Moran might have been a big-shot in clubland but he was a bit-part player in his child’s life. He was gone for long periods of time and those absences were never explained. It was clear he wasn’t away at sea. Sometimes he was not even in jail.

For the first seven years of my existence I lived with my aunts. He would show up occasionally, carrying a crate of fruit or some other perishable goods that had come into his possession. Twice in that period my mother disappeared and re-emerged with another child. It was unsettling. By the time we set up home as a family I didn’t want the sort of everyday male influence he provided.

We moved into a council house on one of the new estates near Stanley Road. He did not feel like a parent. To me he seemed a rather annoying and brutish lodger who was a disruptive influence on the household. I didn’t like it. I spent as much time as possible with my mother’s sisters back in Burly.

You could see the grief that his death inspired but his eldest son looked on at the anguish with a cold, juvenile insensitivity. He had barely been around during my first ten years of existence. His attempt to reconnect with family life met with distain from me, his death with indifference.

He was admitted to hospital in early December. Twelve days before Christmas my mother went on her daily visit. About an hour before her usual time of return, friends and family members started descending upon our new-build terrace. Something was wrong, that much was clear. Duke arrived looking ashen. When I asked what was wrong, he said: “Your mum’s had a fall. Why don’t you go and stay in Burly? You don’t want to hang around with all these oldies.” He gave me a pound note. I was delighted.

It is a sign of my dislocation that I did not speculate about what might be happening, even when she came in and sat quaking in an armchair. I just said my goodbyes and headed out. How could a teenager be so stupid? Like I said, the gap between that kid and me is so wide as to be incomprehensible.

I found out he was dying five days before he passed away. Since Christmas, the entire family had spent most of our time at my aunts’ flat. They had a phone in the hall by the door. The bedroom was three yards away and on Sunday night I was squeezed into a single bed with my younger brother, in that half-world that precedes sleep. My mother was talking on the phone.

At first the words drifted over me. Then they made some sort of sense: “… the drugs will shorten his time,” she was saying, “but he won’t be in pain.” There was silence while someone spoke at the other end of the line. “Soon,” she said. “Not long. Weeks. Probably days.”

My mother sounded very composed. The tone was matter-of-fact. The conversation continued but the boy – sorry, me – was no longer listening.

I waited for a good while after she hung up. Then I went into the tiny living room.

My aunties were proud of their flat. When the block was renovated and the coal hearths replaced with gas fires, they paid a local handyman to put in a wall-long fireplace constructed with coloured bricks, topped by varnished wood panels that went to the ceiling. It was incongruous in a tenement block but they thought it was the height of chic.

The trio of women were sitting across the three-piece suite when I entered. My mother was in the armchair closest to the fire, smoking an Embassy cigarette. One aunt was in the chair under the window sucking on a Woodbine. The other was on the couch, knitting. I sat on the sofa, at the end nearest to my mother. “What are you doing up, slyboots?” the auntie with the Woodbine said.

“I heard the phone,” I said, and turned to my mother. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, simply. She looked at me, groping for words. There were none.

After 30 seconds of silence I got up and went back to bed. That was that. Well, not quite.

On the Wednesday, I got home from school and grabbed my ball to go out to play. My mother stopped me at the door. “Come the hospital tonight,” she said.

“No,” I replied.

“He’s been asking for you.” She started to cry.

“No.”

“But he’s been asking for you…”

I was already gone. Usually, I’d go into the block and fire shots at the outer wall of the old school playground – it was a community centre now – and the siren call of plastic hitting brick would bring the kids flooding along the landings and down the stairs. Instead, I went into Portland Gardens and chipped the Wembley Trophy at the sign over the arch that said ‘no ball games’ until some of the lads came and joined me.

Two days later he was dead. The phone call came at 7am. At least I got the day off school.

Billy had turned up at the house to pay his respects but I was out playing during his visit. So it was a shock to see how beaten down he looked at the church.

Duke was devastated. I felt for him. He carried the coffin. His suit was as sharp as ever but he momentarily lost his swagger. He was crushed. Billy was a pall bearer, too, and was bereft.

Joey Moran, my father, was 43. I learnt a big lesson when he died. He was a hard man, admired by many and feared by more. After the funeral we went back to the Bryom Arms, at the top of Great Crosshall Street. Everyone knew it as the Pieshop. It had been a favourite of the deceased but it was an ugly, modern pub. It fitted its purpose on this bleak winter’s day. There, as I nursed the one half-pint glass of lager I was allowed, progressively drunken men came forward to tell me what a wonderful person my parent had been. They all attested to his toughness and his steadfastness as a friend. As the drink kicked in, the stories became more extravagant. He had taken on six men and knocked them all out; he had chased a Commonwealth champion boxer down the street; he had a punch people dreaded. Late on a man came to me and shook my hand. “Your dad was my hero,” he said. “First man I ever saw firing a gun in Liverpool. Popping it off down Lime Street.” He laughed. “The Krays and their boys were on the first train back to London.”

And what was his legacy? At his death he left a young widow, five children and £96 in the bank. In the pocket of his trousers was a single 50p piece, the one produced for Britain’s entry into the Common Market with nine hands linking on the tails side of the coin. That is all his life added up to. Some hero.

My mother kept the keepsake coin on the mantelpiece in a jug. Within a year I spent it on a ‘Docker.’ This was a portion of chips stuffed into half a Vienna loaf, the favoured dinner of me and my mates at school. The rest went on sweets. She cried when she realised what I’d done but my little bastard heart was hard.

That day of the funeral, though, I kept my hostility under wraps, projecting a blank defensiveness that the congregation took to be despondency. I was most concerned at not showing any weakness to the two rows of classmates who sat in the pews at the front of the right aisle of the church. They stared across at me, willing me to crack. I didn’t. The Brothers must have issued stern warnings to them because no one interrupted the requiem with a booming fart, which was a favourite trick whenever we went to church. Every service I had attended with the school had been disrupted by the bellowing, echoing sound of breaking wind. Standing there, determined to show no fragility, I longed for the squeak of a squeezed-out fart. They were respectful, though, if a bit fidgety. I tried to remain absolutely still, because any movement could be misconstrued as frailty.

I was already thinking about the positives that would come from the situation. The death of a parent meant you were eligible for free school dinners. That was a bonus. In the popular imagination free meals made you an outcast in the playground and led to recipients being bullied. Not in our school. Other kids envied you. I’ll bet there were a couple of them looking across that church at me thinking, “jammy bastard.”

At Ford cemetery, in the bone-hard icy winter, the sound of weeping made no impact as I stood there in my school uniform. I shivered but only with the cold. Billy came up behind me and draped his thin, cheap overcoat on my shoulders. He moved beside me, reached his arm around my shoulder and gently pulled me towards him. I was touched. If someone had taken a picture of this episode, it would have been less heartbreaking than the one of us at his wedding. “It feels as if it will never get better,” he whispered in my ear, “but it will. Keep strong and things will improve. I promise.” In spite of myself, something in me believed him.

* * *

If you don’t want to wait for the next extracts, the paperback is available here

A return to sea was out of the question. Not because of Billy’s criminal record but due to the opportunism of his brother Jimmy. The first thing Billy did on returning home from his final trip was to register with the pool for another ship. While he was on remand, a letter came to his mother’s house offering another berth. Jimmy calculated, rightly, that no one on the next voyage would have met his brother. He accepted the job and turned up as if he was his incarcerated sibling. No one noticed. For the next few years Jimmy sailed across the world, explaining to those who asked that he’d rather be known by his middle name than the title on his paybook. The family seafaring tradition was kept alive.

Lilly had gone to Marie’s house and collected Billy’s meagre belongings after his arrest. From that point on she never saw her grandchildren again in the flesh. They moved out of the area with no forwarding address. Every birthday and Christmas Billy’s mother sent money and presents care of some relatives. The children were given the gifts but never told their source. Despite the lack of interaction, no birthday or festive season went forgotten by the estranged grandmother.

Lilly retrieved her son’s guitar. It had been maltreated and needed refurbishment but it gave Billy consolation. He began to play. By day he worked on building sites, hod-carrying where he could. By night he strummed away, desperate to reach the level of expertise of his pre-marriage days.

The mood in Liverpool had turned. The conveyer belt to pop fame had seized up. Fewer young men were forming bands in the mid-1970s but there were enough relics of the previous decade casting around for playing partners to give Billy a chance to perform live again. He began to duet with a local country and western singer in the little club next to the church on Eldon Street for £2.50 a night. Within weeks he was the senior member of the duo. His partner, peeved, engineered a split by connecting Billy with a showband he knew from Kirkby. Their act was part cabaret, part comedy, part rock’n’roll. They needed a rhythm guitarist and the newcomer doubled the money he had been earning for playing country music.

Soon Billy was the front man for his new group. There were pre-existing tensions in the showband. The lead singer departed with a broken nose after a fractious night in New Brighton, where the drummer took umbrage at his bandmate’s sarcastic commentary on his stickwork. Billy took over the vocals. He had to tell jokes between songs and perform ribald cover versions of popular hits. The novelty wore off quickly. It left him unsatisfied but he was able to scrape a living from performing as long as his income was supplemented by the dole. At least he could leave the building sites behind.

The band was never going to last but Billy was at least learning his trade. His voice could quieten a crowd on occasion but he was now developing a comedian’s craft: how to still a heckler and the value of wrongfooting an audience by switching between pathos and humour. He learnt how and when to deal with female admirers – not when their boyfriends or husbands were around – and how to handle the mayhem when he misjudged the situation.

For a year he hauled around the north west in transit vans, loading and unloading amps before attempting to charm or bulldoze audiences in working-men’s clubs that had arrived predisposed to barracking the entertainers. He learnt that charisma is a gift but technique is the key to survival.

The band dressed in dinner suits, frilly shirts and dicky bows and their cabaret act brought them plenty of bookings. The attention from women made Billy feel like he was 16 again. He began to enjoy the sort of sexual liberation associated with the Sixties. It had been delayed by almost a decade. Things could hardly be better in that area of his life but he knew this situation could not continue indefinitely.

The group even had a brief glimpse of the power of television. Before Billy joined they had been in line for a performance on the TV talent show New Faces. It was a Saturday-night staple and the acts were judged by a four-person panel of industry insiders. Their chance came along about three months after he joined. It was not an episode Billy would remember with affection. The harshest of the panellists, Mickey Most, slaughtered the act. Showbands were dead, he said, and this one smelt like it had been dug up. He was right.

It confirmed what Billy knew. He was bored. Every day he was experimenting with his own tunes and trying to write lyrics. He began to dread wearing the velvet suit and started to hate the gags and magic tricks that were part of the show. It felt like he was back in the flat in Burly, playing the ‘old songs’ for the family. Belatedly, he decided to become an artist. It was time to trust his own voice and own words.

• Next: It’s 1976, punk is bubbling under, Scal is born and Billy goes to London, tentatively climbing the music ladder