The Lives of Brian: a Memoir by Brian Johnson

Author:Brian Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

13

Highway to . . . Nowhere

A month after the triumph of ‘All Because of You’ entering the Top 10, we found ourselves in Torquay, on the coast of Devon. It was Easter Monday, 23 April 1973. The date sticks in my mind because it was one of those days when the universe seemed to be trying to tell me something.

Now, Torquay is only about fifty miles across the English Channel from France, and we’d been told that it had a near-tropical climate with palm trees lining the streets. And being naive Geordies, we believed it, booking ourselves into a B&B right on the seafront, and making sure to pack our swimming trunks and suntan lotion.

It was the coldest night in Torquay’s history. The wind blowing in from the Channel was just as bad as the North Sea gales back home, and it wasn’t raining, it was sleeting. Earlier that morning, there’d even been a layer of frost on the ground.

Our accommodation was one room between four grown men with each of us on one of those little divan beds that you fall out of if you roll over in the night. The paint was peeling off the walls. The sheets were made from the kind of nylon that gives you electric shocks whenever you move. And, of course, there was no heat, unless you fed 5p pieces into the meter in the room – which we stopped doing when we realized 5p got you about five minutes of warmth. The heat just went straight out of the cracks around the window frames.

At least we had a place to sleep. In those days, the owners of B&Bs were notorious for giving away your room before you showed up, especially if you got in late.

Not that our landlady was in any way welcoming.

‘I lock the door at midnight on the dot, so if you’re not back by then, hard luck.’ As for breakfast, she added, there’d be a toaster and some bread made available at the crack of dawn for about twenty minutes.

‘And if we miss it?’ I asked.

‘You’ll do without.’

The show that night was at Torquay Town Hall. Everyone from The Rolling Stones to The Who had played there, and David Bowie was booked to do a show a few months after us.

The first thing we noticed when we pulled up was the bus parked outside. Not a normal bus, but a gigantic American model from the early 1950s, with stainless-steel side panels and a bullet-shaped back end. It was a Flxible Clipper, which I later found out had been built for an Australian tour operator, which explained why it was right-hand drive. I couldn’t believe that anyone had managed to get a vehicle of that size and shape into the country.

‘Whose is that?’

‘Must be the support band’s,’ shrugged Vic. Support bands were usually even more broke than we were. So how could they afford transport like that?

When we walked in, the support band in question were still on stage, with about fifteen minutes left to go – so we got some beers in, sat down at the bar, and had a listen.

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