Unsigned Bands, Actually OR How the Pet Shop Boys helped me get it all off my chest
When I started writing Death of an Unsigned Band, I was still in one. A competent four-piece based just outside London, their twin selling points, I reckoned, were the strong songs the guitarist churned out and a female lead vocalist which even the most cynical industry observers admitted was worth watching for a few minutes. Three years after I’d joined, however, we were still no closer to being signed than Pete Doherty was to being made an archbishop. At the time the reasons why seemed elusive and perplexing, but now they’re as obvious to me as those why our Pete isn’t cooking up a batch of incense in York Minster as we speak. It would be rather glib of me to say that my moment of clarity was also the moment the writing of Death started coming together; it would also be incorrect. It really all clicked when I picked up a totally different book, and that book was former Smash Hits journalist Chris Heath’s peerless account of the Pet Shop Boys’ 1989 tour of Britain and the Far East, Pet Shop Boys, Literally.
Whatever your opinion of the Pet Shop Boys, you’d be hard pushed to find a more fascinating book about pop music. Undeniably, a significant factor in this is Tennant and Lowe being pretty entertaining chaps themselves (Heath’s other bestseller, Feel: Robbie Williams, is similar in style but not quite as good), as is the unique undertaking being described (despite having already chalked up three worldwide smash-hit albums, this was the Pet Shop Boys’ very first tour, and damn near their first live gigs at all). But what really lifts Literally well beyond standard rock fare is Heath’s all-seeing eye and flawless, unflappably deadpan delivery. For the whole tour, Heath – well known and respected by the band but not, one suspects, a close personal friend – lurks in the shadows with his notebook, right next to where the action is taking place, contributing nothing but taking note of everything. Soundchecks and shows are recounted in minute detail: every jumbled lyric, fluffed dance move, cross word or technical hitch. Post-gig dinners are presented in such vivid detail you seriously might as well be sitting at the same table: what everyone eats and drinks, what bitchy comments are made, and where they go clubbing afterwards. All the comings and goings of the tour, every ego clash, every hysterical fan, all the sarcasm, irreverence and sheer disbelief with which the Pet Shop Boys react to their being at the centre of such a large operation. It’s riveting. And it’s hilarious. Heath expertly recounts every amusing episode he witnesses – Tennant getting turned away from a five-star Hong Kong hotel for wearing shorts, Lowe making a fan cry by refusing to wear a gift hat she’s made for him, the duo suffering mysteriously non-star treatment from their usually lavish Japanese promoter due to some unidentified slight – and he knows never, ever to try being funny himself, leaving all the humour to the performing cast, and judging, with immaculate timing, precisely when to finish a scene. It’s this last quality which keeps the book pounding along at a cracking pace.
Meanwhile, I was struggling with Death. I was sure of a couple of things: that I wanted it to be the ne plus ultra of making-it-in-a-band stories; that it should be set in 2001, i.e. just before the real boom of music on the internet; and that the protagonist of the novel should be as different as possible to the one in my first book. Clive from The Alternative Hero was, as one review said, a ‘genial burnout’; a rambling, often drunken but likeable klutz – so Russell from Death needed to be a teetotal, intense, over-efficient and rather difficult control freak. But as I embarked on the narrative in Russell’s voice, a problem presented itself. It was really dull. It was okay for a couple of paragraphs but Russell’s anal rantings proved pretty unbearable after one chapter, let alone an entire book. None of the other band members could carry it on their own: Karen, the feisty bass player, might have swung it but I chickened-out a little at the challenge of writing an entire novel in a female voice; Ash, the endlessly chilled-out drummer, was too endlessly chilled out; Jake, the hopeless lead singer and one of the main reasons the band were going nowhere, would have made it a very different book to the one I’d envisaged, besides (spoiler alert!) I was planning on booting him out halfway through. Then I tried a Poisonwood Bible-type approach, where each chapter was narrated by a different band member, but I couldn’t get very far without wondering who the characters were talking to, and why. After thinking about this for a few days, the solution hit me: what if they were talking to someone like Chris Heath? What if a fledgling music journalist followed them around with a notebook for a few weeks, and noted down everything he saw? Apart from the fact that most sane humans would rather saw their own thumbs off, it was a possibility. Of course, the world of an unmanaged and unsigned band in London is as far removed from the highly-funded, high profile activity-laden world of the touring Pet Shop Boys circa 1989 as it’s possible to get, but maybe that was the point. When has anyone ever given as much column space to the doings of a band handing out self-guillotined flyers, playing dodgy acoustic nights, sticking demos in Jiffy bags and arguing over who owes what for the rehearsal room, as opposed to drinking champagne backstage, flying to Hong Kong first class, receiving presents from hysterical fans and riding around in a luxury tour bus? And wouldn’t the earnest scrutiny with which the journalist blesses the band and their mundane undertakings amplify – hopefully – any comic potential?
So that’s how Death of an Unsigned Band proceeded. I’m not ashamed to admit that I went all-out for Heath’s style, to the point where the book could probably, were anyone familiar with the original, be described as a pastiche. Aping Heath, I was careful not to make my journalist too funny, or rather Alex the book’s editor was careful to weed out any inappropriately wacky asides. Aware, if you’ll forgive a hint of pretension, that I was documenting the very concept of being in an unsigned band at the start of the twenty-first century, I’ve been as honest as possible, and I’ve tried to leave no detail out. I don’t think anything has been made up; if it didn’t happen to one of my own bands, it certainly happened to someone I knew. And it’s been interesting how readers have perceived the novel. Some expected the book to show its funny side more than it does. I make no apology: the novel does have its depressing moments. Without wanting to sound too melodramatic, it’s a serious subject – it may be amusing occasionally, but being in an unsigned band can vacuum up your time, money and self-respect like few other pursuits – it deserves to be take seriously, at least for a while. Even tedium requires the occasional place in the book: there are times when being in band (of any sort, not just the unsigned variety) is only marginally more interesting than watching skin form on a serving of porridge – and that needed to be reflected, however perverse it may sound. As for the style, while I can’t expect many to automatically make the link between my book and Literally, it’s odd that a couple of observers didn’t twig that it’s supposed to be an enormous piece of music journalism. Using that approach definitely necessitated squeezing my writing through a certain funnel, and it wasn’t simple (unlike The Alternative Hero, the writing of which was as easy as chatting to someone in the pub, albeit for four whole months). It’s not always a romp to read, just as it wasn’t one to write. But I think I finally found a way of saying everything that I needed to say about close to fifteen years of my life, and I really hope people continue to enjoy it.
Tim Thornton is the author of Death of an Unsigned Band and The Alternative Hero - both available in Vintage paperback.