16 April - The Manager, The Agent, The Drummer and so on

It would be easy to infer that we had a rock’n’ roll life if I tell you that at a recent gig, me and two girlfriends totted up the following: one had had the band’s manager, the publisher and the manager’s best friend plus she had a snog with the singer. One of us had had the drummer. One of us had had the agent and the art director and sort of it never happened with guitarist #2 (they’ve changed a few). All of the above happened during a stretch of time and not concurrently or simultaneously for that matter. Two of us now would love to do the guitarist #3 and the singer. One of us was sort of ‘flirted with’ by the bass player. It must have been a fun life we had and it’s a band we’ve seen many times/known for years.

But in the cab back R. says she’s so excited to be going to work tomorrow in the same clothes she’s wearing today. She’s staying the night and has not brought a change, though could borrow from one of us. This has not happened to her for a while and will make her colleagues think she’s got lucky. In reality when we get back, she’s showing me pictures of her two dogs on her phone and making cooing noises. She’s mid-thirties now and she makes frequent referenced to the fact that she’s old now.

At least we can laugh at shared stories. It’s when the witnesses to your life disperse that you start to question whether anything ever happened. C. writes me that her mother mentions something she did 29 years ago. C. and her best friend had ducked out of boarding school in the country for a rock n’ roll day in London as both were having a thing with someone in Thin Lizzy I think (they were precocious) and C.’s father had actually seen them but decided not to say anything and let them experiment with freedom. I was not around then but I know this story. But C’s best friend from those days is long gone and this story is considerably less funny told to me, than if she were laughing about it with her co-cospirator. She says something about writing it all down and I tell her not to bother. I occasionally dip into this blog and re-read some earlier entry and because I use initials rather than full names, I find that it takes me a while to work out who that initial stands for… and the anecdote has very little value past the event.

For example at a recent 60th birthday I ran into various people I used to work with 20 years ago (more or less) and because they’re all 2 to 10 years older than I am, I never much hung with them. But I did to an extent, but I remember no highlights, no special episodes. Back then there was also some issue of seniority so perhaps it wasn’t the done thing for a director of something to be a friend of mine outside of work. Now I see how time has levelled everyone. The following day I did go check them all out on their various websites, and whilst nothing major has changed in their work (unlike an ex colleague who was a General Manager last time I knew his position and is now a drugs counsellor! I have to wonder what their levels of satisfactions are and if they’re happy where they are especially if they compare themselves to other contemporaries they work with. It’s one thing having done very well out of being U2’s PR spokesperson for example and one thing being Larry Mullen I’d have thought. And if your husband is a great photographer but he’s never shot a U2’s cover despite the close association, has that ever upset you? But these are topics you cannot cover if you’re not a grade A mate.