Unrehearsed

Uniondale, New York. Nassau Coliseum.

When I was six, Frank tried to teach me guitar. I guess he’d never thought of the consequences of attempting to teach a reckless six year old, with an equally as reckless father. My Dad was twenty one at the time, and Frank was sixteen. Frank was more a friend of my uncle Mikey at the time, seeing as Mikey was seventeen.

Looking back on this memory made me laugh every time. Frank had taken his guitar round to our house to ‘jam’ with Mikey, only this was his acoustic. This acoustic was his freaking baby. It was his first guitar and he loved it more than he loved his own mother (Well, sure, that could be an exaggeration but I wouldn’t have put it past him).

The story went a little bit like this.

“Hey man,” Mikey greeted Frank as he walked into our house. I was trailing Mikey around, hand clinging to the leg of his jeans as he opened the door.

“Alright?” Frank grinned, his grin widened as he saw me, “Hello little one,” He ruffled my hair and I shied away, hiding behind Mikey’s leg.

He placed his guitar on the wall and the two of them disappeared into the kitchen, probably to grab themselves a drink. I toddled off back into the living room, where I was watching Toy Story. Or meant to be anyway.

With the film unable to hold my attention, I wandered into the next room which Grandma had allowed to be converted to a music room. She desperately wanted my Dad and uncle to pursue their dreams by any means necessary. Mikey and Frank were sitting in there, Mikey plugging his bass into the amp, and Frank with this acoustic perched on his leg.

“What’s up kiddo?” Mikey raised his eyebrows at me. I dismissed this and looked to Frank, his guitar grabbing my attention immediately.

He placed it down on the floor, laying it down, as I bounced over to get a better look at it.
“I’ll teach you to play it if you want,” he smiled at me.

Strings, on wood? Why?

I ran an open palm across the strings, frowning at the foreign sensation, and muffled noise it made. I looked up at Frank for reassurance. He laughed at my curiosity. I wanted to get closer to him, to then expect the small, plastic triangular thing in his hand, and to do this it would mean finding a way over the guitar. But hey, being six, who needs to find a way over it when you can just step on it?

“GERARD!” Mikey called, “YOUR DAUGHTER HAS JUST BROKEN MY FRIENDS GUITAR!”

Mikey told me that the look on Frank’s face when the neck of his guitar snapped was priceless.

“It was like someone had ripped one of his arms off, broken the other one then snapped his legs. Absolutely fucking hilarious,” he’d laugh, tears streaming down his face. It was only now, ten years later, that I began to wonder if that was why there was so much tension between Frank and me.

Sure, I’d been six, and sure, we had a massive personality clash now and had never really bothered to get to know each other but… It had been his first guitar. And I’d stepped on it, and snapped the neck, then ran off and cried, and hid in my Dad’s room. I’d never apologised, so I’d understand if there was bitterness on Frank’s half.

Eh, but who cared? Really? It was Frank. He was rich enough and ugly enough now, to be able to afford a new guitar with no worries.

It was Ray who’d been more successful in teaching me the wonders of that instrument. Granted, I was fourteen at the time and no longer fascinated by the fact that strings could be attached to wood to make a sound, and these triangular, plastic things named plectrums enhanced the sound.

However, it was insisted by the man himself that I get my own guitar before learning, as he didn’t trust me with his.

“You’ll probably smash it up if you get frustrated,” he’d justified it with; “I don’t like to even think about my guitar in pieces.”

So when it got to day number two of the tour, and I’d only just realised my guitar had been left behind, there was mass hysteria with Frank and Ray as they rushed to hide their guitars in any place that they thought I wouldn’t think to look.

Afterwards, both refused to talk to me for fear they’d let slip where they’d put their guitars.
Both me and my Uncle Mikey knew I wasn’t going to go looking for them, after Mikey had said he’d buy me one I could use for this tour. However, it was highly amusing watching Frank and Ray keeping a close eye on me, staring… Until it got creepy. When I began plotting my revenge for them being creepy.

I waited until after they’d played their show for the night, and had gone out to drink. I preferred to stay on the tour bus anyway with one of the tech girls, Marilyn, who was also a very good friend of mine. She was only nineteen, but I found I got along with her like she was an older sister.

“Frank more than Ray,” I’d told her, “Ray’s nice, Frank’s Frank… If you get what I mean.”
She smiled, and began to fiddle with her hair. “You could put something in Frank’s bed? We should start off soft-core. It’s early in the tour and if we start getting too hardcore now we’ll have nothing good left for the end.”

I agreed with this. The tour would get worse, no doubt about that. There would be plenty of tears, tantrums, arguments and opportunities for revenge even by the time we got to Europe, so it was agreed.

Peanut butter jelly bed for Frank.

“Man, New York is great,” I heard Frank drunkenly laugh as he stumbled into the tour bus, using Mikey for support, who was nearly equally as drunk. Dad, Ray and Bob followed immediately afterwards.

Marilyn and I looked up at them, unamused.

“What the hell kind of time do you call this?” Marilyn gestured to the clock that hung precariously on the wall.

“Looks kinda like… 2 AM…” Frank squinted at the clock.

“We’re way behind schedule, and you’re drunk. Go to bed!”

I knew Marilyn could see me smirking out of the corner of her eye. The boys all skulked off to their bunks, Dad tripping up and nearly falling on his face on the way.

It was only two minutes before we heard, “OH MY FUCKING GOD!” a loud thump and a scream of, “FAYE!” come from the bunk area.

“On that note,” Marilyn hugged me quickly, “I’ll be off.”

Oh… Consequences… I’d never thought of that.