Post by mugsy on Jun 5, 2006 15:37:30 GMT 1
The last time I saw Jimbo McAllister was in 1976 – the day they sectioned him into Cranburgh Hall Psychiatric Hospital. Then he’d a mat of felted hair reaching to the crack of his arse and finger nails long enough to give himself a full frontal lobotomy if he picked his nose. He stood six feet one – or would have if he’d been capable of standing – and weighed less than seven stones, poor bastard. That’s half what he’d been when the band split up and before barricading himself into his grandmother’s garden shed.
He might still be there today (surviving on a diet of rice pudding, fruit and banana milkshakes shoved in through the kitty flap by his senile old granny) if the neighbours hadn’t reported the old lady to the R.S.P.C.A. Yeah, they really thought she’d a dog locked up in there. The stench was bad enough but it was the howling that finally cracked them. Jimbo always could howl the hide of any hound when the mood took him.
He howled that day, all right. Howled, growled, snarled and threw himself around so much that the R.S.P.C.A. Inspector called for back-up, the back-up called the fire brigade and they weren’t prepared to break the door down until there were police sharp-shooters surrounding the place. Of course, all that lot attracted the inevitable news-hounds – cubs mostly. It was one of those who dubbed Jimbo the ‘Wolf-man of Suburbia’. That soon metamorphosed into the ‘Were-wolf of Suburbia’.
Hell, Jimbo was no were-wolf. Weird, perhaps, and even before acid finally tipped him right over the edge. But then Jimbo was a genius. A man reputed to have been born with a guitar in his hands. He was carried out of that shed with it in them, too. Clutching it against him and defying all attempts to wrench it away so that they could restrain him properly.
‘For God’s sake let me talk to him!’ I screamed, forcing my way through the gawpers, but unsure whether he’d recognise me. It had taken me almost two years to track him down. Two years of believing that if only the two of us could get back together we could rebuild the band; make a comeback.
So much for dreams, eh? But he did recognise me and at that moment the fight went out of him and he spoke the only coherent words anyone heard from him that day. ‘Jonah,’ he said, thrusting his Fender into my arms, ‘look after Lady for me.’
He might still be there today (surviving on a diet of rice pudding, fruit and banana milkshakes shoved in through the kitty flap by his senile old granny) if the neighbours hadn’t reported the old lady to the R.S.P.C.A. Yeah, they really thought she’d a dog locked up in there. The stench was bad enough but it was the howling that finally cracked them. Jimbo always could howl the hide of any hound when the mood took him.
He howled that day, all right. Howled, growled, snarled and threw himself around so much that the R.S.P.C.A. Inspector called for back-up, the back-up called the fire brigade and they weren’t prepared to break the door down until there were police sharp-shooters surrounding the place. Of course, all that lot attracted the inevitable news-hounds – cubs mostly. It was one of those who dubbed Jimbo the ‘Wolf-man of Suburbia’. That soon metamorphosed into the ‘Were-wolf of Suburbia’.
Hell, Jimbo was no were-wolf. Weird, perhaps, and even before acid finally tipped him right over the edge. But then Jimbo was a genius. A man reputed to have been born with a guitar in his hands. He was carried out of that shed with it in them, too. Clutching it against him and defying all attempts to wrench it away so that they could restrain him properly.
‘For God’s sake let me talk to him!’ I screamed, forcing my way through the gawpers, but unsure whether he’d recognise me. It had taken me almost two years to track him down. Two years of believing that if only the two of us could get back together we could rebuild the band; make a comeback.
So much for dreams, eh? But he did recognise me and at that moment the fight went out of him and he spoke the only coherent words anyone heard from him that day. ‘Jonah,’ he said, thrusting his Fender into my arms, ‘look after Lady for me.’