PLAYING THE BASS BASS THE PLAYING WITH THREE LEFT HANDS WILL CARRUTHERS ‘ Will Carruthers’ Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands is at the least the funniest rock memoir since Andrew Matheson’s Sick on You. Carruthers is a wonderfully droll narrator and the book is effectively a series of well-wrought comic set pieces’ Uncut, 9/10 Cover Playing the Bass.indd 1 25-8-2016 13:16:35 Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands I can confi rm that should you ever fi nd yourself on stage play- ing the bass guitar with tree left hands, it is usually he one in the middle that is the real one. Th e other two are probably phantoms. Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands tells the story of one of the most infl uential, revered and ultimately demented British bands of the 1980s, Spacemen 3. In classic rock n roll style they split up on the brink of their major breakthrough. As the decade turned sour and acid house hit the news, Rug- by’s fi nest imploded spectacularly, with Jason Pierce (aka Jason Spaceman) and Pete Kember (aka Sonic Boom) going their se- parate ways. Here, Will Carruthers tells the whole sorry story and the segue into Spirtualized in one of the funniest and most memorable memoirs committed to the page. Specifi cs Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands was published in Septem- ber 2016 by Faber Social 308 pages Agency Michaël Roumen: T: + 31 6 42136212 E: [email protected] Oscar van Gelderen: T: + 31 6 46096823 E: [email protected] Will Carruthers Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands Lebowski Agency, 2016 © Will Carruthers, 2016 © Lebowski Agency, Amsterdam 2016 Cover design: Peter de Lange Photograph of the author: © Fransesca Sara Cauli Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout www.lebowskipublishers.nl www.overamstel.com Lebowski Publishers is an imprint of Overamstel Publishers bv All rights reserved. Th is book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Table of Contents Sample ‘Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands’ Sample ‘Fifty Tons of Blood’ Sample ‘Or Something …’ Biography Quotes 5 Playing the Bass with Th ree Left Hands On one occasion we were due to play at Leeds Warehouse, a rave club that on a good night at full capacity would have held around three hundred sweaty ravers. We were not expecting to play to an audience of three hundred. At the time I was quite partial to LSD, and sometimes I was even partial to taking it before a performance. On this particular night, I had eaten a small yellow microdot shortly after soundcheck. By recounting this tale to you, I am in no way recommending that you take LSD before a show … or even at all. I am simply telling you what happened, and due to my unusual research in this largely uncharted fi eld I can confi rm that should you ever fi nd yourself onstage playing the bass guitar with three left hands, it is usually the one in the middle that is the real one. Th e other two are probably phantoms. Also, should you encounter any fi reballs emanating from the lightshow during the concert, it is probably best to try to avoid them, even though they may not be real in the traditional sense of the word. Nobody wants to be hit by real or imaginary fi reballs while trying to negotiate a tricky descent through the octaves. Th e acid had just begun to warm itself through my 7 glittering receptors when I was approached by Jason. Th e club was pretty empty and everything was in place for the imminent performance. ‘Did you give Dave some acid?’ Jason asked me, with a searching look. ‘Why would I give Dave acid?’ I replied. Dave was our guitar tech. It would have been foolhardy to give him LSD before a show, especially as he didn’t usually take the stuff at all. He was from the Scottish Highlands and was built like a man who could pull a caber up by the roots and toss it a good distance without too much eff ort. He was also a thoroughly kind and good-hearted fellow, which was just as well, because if he had been a complete cunt there wasn’t much that fewer than three people could have done about it. ‘He’s acting very strangely,’ said Jason. ‘Come and have a look.’ At this point, the irony may not be lost on you that Jason was asking me, a person increasingly under the in- fl uence of LSD, to judge the behaviour of someone who was acting strangely, to see if they might have taken LSD. Funny old world, isn’t it? I never told the rest of the band when I was tripping on- stage because I didn’t want to worry them, and they never seemed any the wiser. Th ey knew I took it sometimes, they just never knew when, or maybe I just thought they didn’t. Anyhow, we walked across the largely empty club and looked out onto the dance fl oor. Usually at this point in the evening Dave would have been up onstage, carefully 8 attending to business and making sure that nobody inter- fered with our equipment. He would have been checking the intonation on the guitars, changing strings that weren’t broken, even polishing our beloved instruments in an ef- fort to help us look professional. We had played more than a few shows with Dave and the man had, so far, proved himself to be a miracle of effi ciency and unusual diligence. On this particular evening, Dave was not up onstage making sure everything was in order, protecting the sacred space of the stage. Dave was not even having a cup of coff ee and a sandwich. Dave was performing a weird and fairly intimidating war dance around three terrifi ed indie kids who had, perhaps unwisely, decided to sit in a twee campsite they had made in the middle of an otherwise unoccupied dance fl oor. Th ey were sitting cross-legged on a little rug they had brought with them, eating some homemade sandwiches. I felt the acid come into sharper focus. Th e lights bul- ged and a strange tendril of fear crept into my heart. ‘Th at is weird,’ I said. Obviously, I was not referring to the peo- ple eating sandwiches. ‘Shall we go and talk to him?’ said Jason. ‘Yes,’ I said, and then we both stood there for quite a bit longer as we wondered how to best approach Dave, who was grimacing and twirling in the depths of his strange and frightening Highland haka. He prowled around the three huddled audience members like a stripe-less tiger, sweating and glaring and occasionally cracking a huge and deranged smile at them, presumably to let them know 9 they were not in any imminent danger. It was pretty im- pressive. Jason and I made our way across the dance fl oor to- wards Dave, who turned and acknowledged our presence with a deep and frightening stare that contained no fl icker of recognition or familiarity. ‘All right, Dave?’ I ventured hopefully, gazing into the deep abyss of his peculiar eyes. ‘Everything OK, is it?’ ‘Aye!’ he said emphatically, as he returned to the dance, stamping, grunting, and shouting at things only he could see. ‘Do you think anyone else gave him any acid?’ Jason said. ‘Maybe he’s drunk?’ I said. ‘Th at’s not the only thing that’s weird. Come and have a look at this,’ Jason said. I followed him across the dance fl oor and we both clim- bed the stairs to the stage. Half of my third eye was still warily observing Dave on the dance fl oor. Jason looked down at the fl oor of the stage. He was not gazing at his shoes. ‘Look at that,’ he said. I looked at that. Th ere was a lot of that to look at. Normally, Dave would have put several neat crosses of gaff er tape on the stage, indicating the places that we were to stand so that the stage lights would hit us in a pleasing way. For some inexplicable reason Dave, in the grip of his fever, had been inspired to get a bit artistic. Instead of 10 his usual boring but useful crosses, he had gaff er-taped weird hieroglyphs and magical symbols of unknown and indecipherable origin and meaning across every blank space on the stage. Th ey looked alien … or Pictish … or demonic, or like the gaff er-taped scribblings of a particu- larly determined and demented child. It was hard for me to tell at this point because the adrenaline had kicked the acid in to such a degree that I felt the need to have a little sit down somewhere less weird and quite a bit further away from Dave and his gaff er-taped art from another dimension. ‘Hmm,’ we both said. ‘What the fuck is up with him?’ asked Jason. ‘I have no idea, man,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t given him anything, and I am pretty sure nobody else has. Maybe we should just wait and see if it wears off ? Whatever it is. He seems harmless enough.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Jason, looking down at the peculiar symbols on the stage.