Mick Maroon entered the hotel room, followed by his assistant, Alastair. He wore a cowboy hat, leather jacket over a pink shirt, which was open to reveal a t-shirt that had the neck ripped to show off his chest hair. The t-shirt was emblazoned with the cover to his band Dark Francis’ latest album, Whatever You Don’t Want. He wore white jeans and docker boots, painted red with blue stripes. He was making a new fashion statement, he didn’t know what the statement was yet, but he was certain he’d have a good explanation by the time anyone got around to asking him for one.
Alastair wore a simple blue suit, a bland contrast to his boss’ over the top presentation.
Mick was fifty three years old, lead guitarist and songwriter for Dark Francis, a multi-millionaire, beloved of men of a similar age and he was bored out of his mind on this latest press tour.
“Al?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Get me a bottle of water. Add a splash of the Russian good stuff.”
“And by splash you mean?”
“The usual. Tip all of the water out and fill it back up with vodka. You know, just how I like it. Good lad.”
Alastair separated to go fetch the drink as the twenty-something brunette wearing white silk blouse and black pencil skirt came over to say hello.
“Mick, great to finally meet you.” Freddie Cornstock said.
“And it is lovely to see you.” Mick leered, leaning hard into his reputation as a lech.
Freddie giggled, falsely. He hadn’t expected anything more than that.
“So, we’re all set up over here. The crew are just doing the final checks and we should be ready to start in about five minutes. Is that ok with you?”
Mick glanced at the two chairs set up to face each other and the three cameras pointing at them, their operators making final adjustments. “What if I say no? Say how dare you and demand to be compensated for my wasted time?”
Freddie gulped “Well, I’m sure something could be done.”
Mick waved her off with a smile “I’m only joking, kid. Take your time. I’m just going to have a tab first anyway.”
“Oh,” she seemed embarrassed “you can’t in here. It’s a no smoking room.”
Mick grinned “I’m Mick Fucking Maroon. I’m known for this shit. Besides, it’s not like I’ll set off the smoke detector.” He looked over his shoulder “Will I, Al?”
Alastair shook his head “I’ve already deactivated them. Someone remind me to put them back together when we’re done.” Then he handed Mick his water bottle.
“Good lad.” Mick told him, before pulling out a packet of cigarettes. He offered one to Freddie, who declined. “Suit yourself.” He told her, lighting one and then went in search of something to use as an ashtray.
Faintly, he heard a guitar play, he recognised the tune.
“Nice, which one of you lot is a fan of the old stuff then?”
Everyone in the room looked at him.
“Who’s playing In the Gardens? Got it on your phone, have you?”
No-one admitted to it, but the music stopped.
“I always did like that one. It’s the one that really broke us, you know?” He air-guitared his way through the opening notes.
“That’s good to know, Mick, maybe we could keep your stories for the interview? Don’t want you to tell us a good one and then not want to say it again on camera.” Freddie flashed him the smile that had helped her win the hearts of the early morning TV watching public.
“Fair enough, Freddie, I shall keep it schtum until we are rolling.” He whirled around, making his lit cigarette dance. He hated this. All he wanted to do was go home, get himself an Irish coffee and watch whatever easy going murder mystery the BBC were showing in the afternoons. Shakespeare and Hathaway at the moment, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to be here, playing up the aging Rock God, but it was expected of him now. He was the band, especially since Terry had quit. New line up apart from him, first new album in four years, the label wanted him out here, getting publicity. So he would dance this tune, maybe just this one last time. After this, maybe just enjoy the tour and then retire. The new lads were nice enough, but they weren’t his mates. Hadn’t grown up on the same streets as him, Terry, Richie, Frank and Gordon had. Didn’t have that history to fall back on when they were bored.
“Mick?” Freddie called “We’re ready for you.”
Mick nodded, stubbed his fag out in a plant pot and plucked his shades from a pocket and snapped them on. He was in full costume now. He was Mick Maroon. Lusted after by millions, adored by more. He wasn’t Michael Carter from Edwards Road, wasn’t that skinny seventeen year old screaming instead of singing at their first gig. He was a Rock God, important to capitalise those words otherwise it felt like you were too timid to go for it. He was a Legend.
“I’m ready.” He sauntered over, adding extra swagger to his walk, trying to not feel like an old fool.
The opening riff to In the Gardens started again. Someone must have it as a ringtone. That brought a smile to his lips as he plonked himself down, gracelessly in his chair.
“Shall we begin?”
“Sure, Freddie, just as soon as whoever’s phone is ringing answers it or turns it off.”
Freddie looked at her crew, they all checked their phones, but none of them seemed to be ringing. She quickly checked hers, but it was also off. Confused, Mick pulled his out. Surely it couldn’t be his. Having one of his own songs as a ringtone was cringeworthy enough, but to be caught having it in front of a TV crew was not good. Not that he had changed his ringtone to that, it would have had to be a prank.
But no, his phone wasn’t ringing.
Just as Terry’s vocals were about to start, the song stopped. Silence in the room.
Mick slipped his phone away after turning it off. He looked at everyone else in the room from behind his shades, looking for whoever kept playing the song. No-one looked even slightly guilty. Confused, yes. Guilty, no.
“Maybe it was someone next door. That’d give them a shock wouldn’t it? Keep playing our first hit and then finding out I’m next door. Shall we send Al to have a gander? Go on, Al.” He was talking too quickly. He took a sip of his “water”. “Actually, Al, stay where you are. Let them find out later, when I’m gone. We’ve got an interview to do.”
Freddie smiled at him, not her on screen smile, but one that definitely looked forced.
“Cheer up, Fred. I’m a Rock God, I do things, it happens. Let’s crack on.” Mick settled himself into a comfortable slump.
Freddie nodded at the crew, he saw the producer give them the silent count down. On “go” Freddie unleashed that brilliant, white, joyous smile.
“Good morning, everyone. I’m here with Mick Maroon of Dark Francis. Mick, good morning.”
Mick went for a half smile that showed his right canine teeth, the snarl smile he’d spent years working on “Morning, Freddie. Good to be here.”
They started with the basic stuff, how was he, feeling healthy, looking forward to the release, the easy stuff.
Then she asked about Terry finally quitting the band. He knew it was coming, but it still gave him a small stab in the heart. How to play it? Terry wasn’t talking about it, was it really his place to let the world into how his old mate was really doing?
He’d go with the inane, business speak. Fairer to Terry that way.
“Terry wanted to go in a different direction with his music. Now, I liked the ideas he wanted to go with, but its not really Dark Francis music. We can experiment a bit, our fans don’t want the same thing every time, but where he wanted to go, I didn’t really want to follow. So he made the decision to leave the band, he’s going to take time to get it together and then, I hope, he’ll release it.”
“Would you appear on his album if he asked you.”
“Oh yeah. In a heartbeat. He’s the oldest friend I’ve got left. If he wants me to come in and play on any of his tracks, I’d be there for him.” He knew it wouldn’t happen, knew Terry would never put anything out. But that was Terry’s story to share.
“I’m sure the fans will be happy to hear there’s no animosity between you. The stories that have leaked out haven’t been too kind to either of you.”
Mick sighed “Yeah, well, second hand and third hand gossip doesn’t exactly tell the truth now, does it. Some of you lot have gone after the pair of us in various ways. So let me put the record straight here. He didn’t leave because we had a blazing row, I didn’t beat him up and put him in hospital. He’s not suing me for criminal damages. We are talking through lawyers as regards the publishing rights to some of our earlier songs, because we were young and didn’t get everything filed properly. But that’s not why he left. We are friends, we will stay friends. I’m sad I won’t see as much of him as I used to, but that happens to old friends all over the world for a variety of reasons. It doesn’t make us enemies, it just means we’ve developed a bit of distance. I hope we’ll close it some day.”
Freddie nodded and looked down a her notebook. Ha! He’d stumped her, she’d wanted all the juicy goss, but he wasn’t here for that. He wasn’t about to throw his mate under the bus just for a few headlines.
“Well then, tell us about the new members of Dark Francis.”
Mick chuckled “They aren’t exactly new, now are they? I’ve been gigging with the lads and in the studio with them or the last eighteen months.”
“Still, there are a lot of fans who will most likely only encounter them for the first time when they hear the album.”
Yeah, I suppose that’s true. So, we’ve got Damo on lead vocals. He’s got a hell of a range, some fans might miss the bass of Terry, but when Damo hits the high notes, I think they’ll see a new dimension to what we can accomplish. Bruce on drums, well, he was in some sessions for the last album when Gordon was sick and fans might have seen him a few times on the last tour, especially the last shows we did. Chico is, honestly, an amazing find for the bass. No offence to Will and Jeff, the guys we first had in to replace Ritchie after he died, but Chico is the best bassist we’ve had since Ritchie. Honestly, they’re good lads. Damo being twenty years younger than me does mean I sometimes get out of breath just watching him on stage, they lad has energy for days.”
Freddie laughed.
The opening chords of In the Gardens started again. Mick looked around, frowning, where was it coming from? For a second he thought he saw something reflected in the mirror to his right, but when he looked to see what was there, he saw nothing and the music stopped.
“Everything ok, Mick?”
Scrambling to cover, he couldn’t have seen that, couldn’t have, Mick replied “Yeah. Thought I saw a fly. Just caught my eye and distracted me.”
Freddie glanced about “I don’t see one. But don’t worry, we’ll edit that out.”
“Cheers, Fred.” Mick took a deep swig from his water bottle.
Freddie gave him a nod to indicate she was going to start again, he nodded back.
“Tell us about the new album. What can we expect from it?”
“Well, the first single, Hatred of Fate, comes out tomorrow. It’s loud and fast and I think gives you a good idea of where we’re going on this album. I’ve dug into philosophy with the lyrics for about half the songs, the rest are my comment on the state of the world today. And, as always, there’s another song in the saga of Dark Francis and his journey to the heart of the universe. That’s the album closer and it runs about thirteen minutes, so its one of the shorter songs in the saga, but its a good one.”
“So, what’s Hatred of Fate about?”
“It’s the story of a kid who’s given a path for his entire life, this school, that college, this job, that partner and he says “Fuck it.”” Mick stopped “Sorry, let my mouth get away with me there. Do you want to bleep that or ask me again?”
Freddie smiled and looked to her producer, an older woman with short hair in a casual suit. The producer rolled her finger in the time honoured gesture of continue. “We’ll just bleep it.”
“OK, cool. So yeah, this kid decides to take his life in his own hands. Stops doing what he’s told and searches for his own answers. Damo really lets go with the cry to action with this one. Some great notes, really hitting the emotion of what I was writing about.”
“How is it writing for a new vocalist? Did it take long for you to find the way to get the best out of him?”
‘Yeah, it was hard. After matching my words to Terry for so long, finding the best way for Damo took a good few months, personally I think that as we go on I’ll get better at tailoring the songs to him.”
In the Gardens started playing again, that riff he knew so well.
“Seriously, can someone go next door and ask them to stop playing In the Gardens? It was cute for a minute but its starting to get distracting.”
Freddie looked concerned “Let’s take a break while we get someone to do that.” She stood up and went to speak to the producer.
Mick swigged from his bottle as the music continued. He’d always loved the riff to In the Gardens, but even he could get sick of hearing it over and over again without the rest of the song. Again it stopped just before terry started t sing, but this Tim it started again. Someone was skipping back to the start of the track.
“Al, can you sort it out? How is it not driving you nuts too?”
Alastair leaned in “I don’t hear any music, Chief. No-one else does.”
The riff started again, louder now.
“How can you not hear that?” Mick had to shout to make sure he was being heard. he saw everyone looking at him.
Al was speaking but he couldn’t hear him over his song.
“Speak up. Can’t hear you over the twat playing the opening so loud.”
Now Al looked worried too.
The music stopped.
“At last.” He said.
“Chief, are you ok?” Al placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Apart from the dick next door playing the music too loud, I’m absolutely grand.”
Al stepped back and Mick shrieked as he saw the face in the mirror. The one he thought he’d seen before. The one that absolutely couldn’t be there.
“Frank?”
He turned to look at where Frank should be to be reflected in the mirror. There was no-one there.
Freddie sat back down, looking concerned “Mick, is everything ok?”
“No!” He yelled at her “I cam here to do a simple interview, not to have jokes played on me. Who’s behind this? McIntyre? Whoever has taken over from Beadle? The music might have been funny, but putting Frank in the mirror? You can go fuck yourselves.” He stood up to leave.
“Mick, please. No-one is playing a prank on you. Who’s Frank?”
“Frank Drummond. The other guitarist in Dark Francis, back when we were Angry Trouble. My friend, Frank Fucking Drummond.”
“I’m sorry, Mick, I don’t know who that is. He was in Dark Francis? We’ve never heard of him.” She looked to the crew ran her and none of them knew what he was talking about. He heard In the Gardens being played, softly, on an acoustic guitar. Just as it had been when he first heard it.
“Of course you’ve never heard of him. Silly bastard died of a heroin overdose just before we signed a contract. He’s why we renamed ourselves Dark Francis, it was our tribute to our mate.”
“That’s terrible.”
Mick snorted and the music got louder “Fucking waste is what it was. He was a great guitarist, better than I was at the time. And he was a better songwriter than I’ll ever be. But no-one knows his name because he took too much smack and choked to death on his own vomit in his Mum’s lounge. Stupid bastard.”
He shouldn’t be saying this, he should never have mentioned Frank, especially not on camera. Terry was going to cream him in court over this.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you can erase that last bit? I shouldn’t have said any of it.”
Freddie smiled, there was no warmth in this one, it was the smile of a predator that smelt blood “Sorry, Mick. So, tell me more about Frank.”
“I’d rather not. He was a friend, I miss him and I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“But you say he was a better songwriter than you. Did you change your musical style after his death when you became Dark Francis?”
Shitshitshitshithshit. She was too good to be stuck doing fluff interviews in the morning.
“Not as such, we were always a hard rock band.” Idiot, should have said yes, made it sound like Frank was entirely in the past.
“So, would you say your early stuff was still influenced by Frank?”
Influenced? Not as such, more like completely fucking stolen.
“I don’t know how much we were inspired by him, personally. We were taking our influences from other bands we liked, trying to forge our own identity, you know?” He was flailing, he could feel it. He should stand up and go, he wasn’t smart enough to dig himself out of this hole. But if he left, he just knew Terry would use the footage against him. Dig in or give up, those were his choices. He took a swig from his water bottle, enjoying the vodka for a second before the crashing guitar solo from Hurt Me So Bad assaulted his ears.
In the mirror he saw Frank, fingers flying over the neck of his guitar, glaring at him.
“OK, Frank, OK. I’ll fucking tell them. Just cut it out.” Mick screamed, desperate to be heard over his dead friend’s talented fingers.
Frank was gone, the music stopped.
Everyone was staring at him . He gulped down the rest of the vodka, belched and stared Freddie in the eyes “Fuck it. Let’s just get this done.”
“It was Frank’s idea to start a band in the first place. He’d been playing guitar for a few years before he heard Terry singing at school. The two of them were the first members of Angry Trouble. They called themselves that because, well you can probably guess. Gordon joined next, because he was a friend of Terry’s. Richie and I joined at the same time. We were neighbours and we both knew Terry and Frank from school.
Right from the start, I think we all knew that Frank was a bit special. He had this way of putting together really catchy hooks. We could build the rest of our sound around his solos and riffs. And his lyrics, man, if he’d have been born in the eighteenth century, he’d have made a good living as a poet. His grasp of language was beyond what you would expect of a sixteen year old from a council estate in the early eighties. Bad home life meant he spent a lot of time in the library when he was young. The lad read everything. He was a quiet kid at school, not too bothered by sport. But once we started practicing, it was like he truly came alive. I can’t explain him better than that. Everything outside of the band, writing, rehearsing and finally getting gigs, that was all a waste of time to him. He hated being in the world when he wasn’t doing something to make music.
Seriously, I thought of him as a friend, but I don’t know that he felt the same way about us. We were the tools he needed to make his music happen. To get the recognition he craved. To earn the money to get away from his Dad and take his Mum with him.
Would he have changed, started to enjoy the world around him once we made it? I don’t know. He was damaged by his Dad. I don’t know if the world would have been kind enough to him to let him heal.
We were decent at the start and we really felt like we’d earned the right to swagger about how good we were after a year and a bit. We were playing pubs regularly. Only in London though, none of us could afford a car to take gigs outside of town. We relied on Terry’s Dad to take us to our gigs with our kit.
We just didn’t do well enough, fast enough, for Frank. Too much of our lives was doing things other than music. He needed to do it full time, he needed to block the world out.
That’s where the drugs came in.
Now, we were all young, swaggering like we were going to be the next big thing. We wanted to be like The Who, Ozzy, Crue. So we drank, we took what we could get hold of. But the rest of us stayed away from smack. Frank didn’t.
Such a shame, we were so close and he didn’t know it.
We’d been seen. Discussions were being had on whether we were worth it. But Frank was slipping deeper every minute he wasn’t on stage or in Terry’s parent’s garage, rehearsing.
I’d been trying to get some of my songs on the set list, but Frank’s were just better. We all knew it.
What made it even worse is that Frank was slowly pushing me out altogether. He’d write songs that had no place for me and my guitar. I had to fight and rage to be included. I don’t even think it was personal, you know? He wasn’t doing it because he didn’t like me or think I wasn’t good enough. It was just about the music, making it the best it could be. He started to argue that when stuff was recorded, if it needed two guitars, he could just do them both. It was only because we weren’t in a position to do that that I kept my place.
That made me angry, really angry with him. He was going to Pete Best me, not that I knew who that was at the time.
And that’s the reason I let him die.
Yeah, get your shocked faces on. I let my friend die because I wanted to be a rock star and I knew Angry Trouble was going to make it. I would have done anything to make sure I was a part of the band.
So, when I went round to his early for rehearsal and found him on the floor of the lounge, vomit everywhere, barely breathing, I saw my chance. I left him there, went up to his room, took his notebooks of songs and left him to die. I walked away and came back an hour later after stashing his songs at my house.
Terry found him and called an ambulance right away, like a good friend would. But he got there too late.
It took us a few weeks to decide to continue, we did another couple of gigs as Angry Trouble before we changed our name to Dark Francis in tribute. You’ve gathered his real name was Francis, yeah?
We kept playing his songs. I was getting better at his parts, but they never sounded quite as good as we remembered.
Then Mitchell from the label saw us, signed us and we were on our way to record our album.
That’s when I really did him dirty.
I convinced the others that our versions of his songs weren’t as good without him. That I had some songs we could try. And I brought the fifteen ones from his books that I liked the best.
The rest is history. I got the credit and the money. Our first album was a smash and we never looked back.
Frank actually wrote every song on our first six albums, that’s how many songs he had in those books. I’d pretend to go away and think of songs but all I did was copy out his lyrics and arrangements in my own handwriting before presenting them. I wasn’t stupid enough to completely give up on my own songs, I knew we’d run out of his someday. But all of mine ended up as b-sides because they were never as good.
After I ran out of his stuff, that’s when I started the Saga of Dark Francis. That’s why Francis is always searching for something to make him whole.
Gordon and Richie just thought I’d finally been inspired by his death. But Terry, he always thought something was up.
That’s why we’re in court, he was trying to get me to admit to my plagiarism. To get the money for Frank’s Mum.”
Freddie looked stunned. Mick didn’t blame her. This was more than she could have ever hoped to get out of this interview. Al wasn’t looking at him, Mick didn’t blame him either, he was Frank’s nephew after all.
Looking in the mirror, he saw Frank again, still holding his guitar.
“Is that enough, mate? I’m done. Everything’s going to go away now.”
Frank shook his head.
“What else do you want from me?” Mick screamed at the ghost, making everyone in the room jump.
Frank held up his guitar nd started playing. The notes getting louder and louder. They filled everything. Frank made the guitar scream, doing his Jimi Hendrix and the speakers feedback bit.
It was so loud, so incredibly loud.
It was pain and noise and everything.
Mick clamped his hands over his ears, tucked his head between his knees, screamed, anything to block out the sound, but it didn’t even muffle it.
Louder and louder. The wail of the guitar was everything. It was the world and the world was pain. White hot, blazing cold, a dagger in his mind.
He needed to make it stop. It had to stop or he’d go mad. Anything to make it stop.
Still it got louder.
How could it get louder? It was already the loudest thing in the history of noise.
Louder still.
Mick could feel himself screaming, but he couldn’t hear himself.
He looked up, saw Freddie in front of him, panic on her face.
Mick grabbed the pencil from her hand and the pen off of her notebook.
So much noise. And still it got louder.
Screaming and crying and hurting and screaming and lost and hated, Mick jammed the pen into his left ear and the pencil into his right.
Pain exploded and he passed out.
Mick woke up on a hospital bed.
Silence. Absolute, beautiful silence.
He looked around, he could see people, machinery, life. Why were they silent?
Realisation hit.
They weren’t silent, he was deaf. Those last moments of pain came back to him, that desperate act.
Frank had his revenge, his life was over too. How can you be a Rock God if you can’t even hear?
Mick closed his eyes and wept.
When he opened them again, Frank was standing at the end of the bed. He still looked angry.
“What else?” Mick said, whispered. “What else is left to do to me? I’m done, ruined. What else do you want?”
Frank held up his guitar and plucked a string.
Mick heard it and started screaming.
© Robert Spalding 2020
Ghost Stories by Robert Spalding 