Bruise — by Johnleahy66
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Prologue
I open the fridge and lift the carton of orange juice from the door. I pour some into a glass, tapping my foot to the powerful, chugging carnage coming from the living room. Thunder’s first song is being brought into the unwitting world. He’s appropriately titled it Armageddon. It’s not bad. My head nodding to the beat, I go to the window.
The surf is up and I watch as a rider zig-zags up and down along the face of a huge wave. My name is Kieran Kennedy and I’m from Kerry, in Ireland. Except this isn’t Castlegregory or Ballyheigue I’m looking out at. It’s Huntington Beach, California. And the devastating rock music that I’m listening to is being produced by my two brothers Karl and John and our friend Thunder.
Want to know what part of Kerry we’re from?
Well, we all hail from a spot called Lycracrompane: a desolate, windswept place outside Castleisland where the earth is exploding with turf and rushes. So you might be wondering how four boggers from one of the bleakest areas in the whole of Ireland ended up enjoying the mildness of the Californian winter in a rather tasty gaff in Los Angeles.
The strange journey began about eight months ago.
Chapter One
“Karl…you’re not hitting it, ok?”
He stared at me.
“I certainly AM.”
“You’re almost screeching, lad.”
“Yeah well it’s better than you and your shite falsetto.”
“Fuck you. My falsetto is NOT shite.”
“It is.”
“Will ye two shut the fuck up?” John went. “I’LL take the high line.”
I looked at him.
“Who the fuck asked for YOUR opinion, Howard Keel?”
He gaped at me.
“Take that back.”
I just looked at him.
“I said…..TAKE IT BACK.”
“Ah lads” Thunder went from behind his kit, a tone of concern in his voice.
I shrugged.
“No.”
“Fine” John went.
His arm moved in a blur.
BAM!
Pain exploded in my jaw and I staggered backward. I caught my foot on a divot in the carpet beneath me and lost my balance. As I tumbled to the ground my flailing left arm caught one of Thunder’s cymbal stands and down it came with me.
KSSSSHHHH!!!!!
“Oh good man yourself!” I heard Karl go, unsure if it was directed at me or John.
“Ah fuck off screechy.”
Struggling to my feet I watched as Karl charged at John.
“Lads for FUCK’S sake!” Thunder shouted.
Karl collided with John and they grappled furiously with each other.
“Fuckin BOLLOX!”
“Prick!”
“CUNT!”
“You ok Kieran?” I barely heard Thunder ask beside me.
I didn’t bother replying.
I charged.
The band’s first rehearsal ended with the four of us in Tralee A & E.
Thunder had gotten his nose badly broken when he’d tried to break up the fracas. I’m not sure, but I think it was me that had delivered that particular blow. He’d ended up hiding behind his drumkit for the remainder of the riot. My hand goes to a spot on the crown of my head as I recall John opening up my skull using the rim of Thunder’s snare drum.
I gently massage the area with my fingertip. Yep. Still bald as an egg. Hair simply refuses to grow there. John had hit me so hard that the drumrim had been slightly dented. He’d offered to buy Thunder a new snare but Thunder had declined, as he’d been delighted with the “new flavour” in the drum’s sound.
The whole dispute had arisen from our vocal arrangement of the chorus in Knockin’ on Heavens Door and as we’d left the hospital a few hours later we’d begun arguing over the musical technicalities again, much to our mother’s angry disbelief. So all in all that first day hadn’t been very productive. But one good thing had come out of it.
We had a name.
Karl had come up with it while a beautiful trainee doctor had been stitching up my head.
Bruise.
Cool.
So let me tell you a little bit about the make-up of Bruise.
I was on keyboard and rhythm guitar, my older brother Karl was on lead, my younger brother John was on bass with our biker friend Mickey “Thunder” Hanrahan completing the picture on drums. We all sang except for Thunder who stayed away from microphones as the poor guy had a terrible stutter and found talking difficult, let alone singing.
We formed the band in June and practiced for two hours every day in our stuffy garden shed, seven days a week for the whole of that month and July, so that we’d be ready to explode onto the scene on the August weekend. I’d never taken anything so seriously in my life up to that point. The four of us exemplified discipline during those two months. Karl and I took it easy on the drink on Saturday nights so that we could be focused and alert for Sunday rehearsal. Thunder, who was much older than us, abandoned his beloved bike rallies such was the belief and commitment in the outfit. Thunder had lots of contacts in the gig scene and he managed to get us a booking for the Friday night of the August weekend in The Dune Hotel in Ballybunion, in The Platinum Bar in Cork on the Saturday night, and some total kip called The Shiny Fish in Limerick city on the Sunday night.
Now that I think of it, to say that we exploded onto the scene would be an understatement. Obliterated our way onto it would be a better way of putting it. We were supposed to be playing in the bar of the Dune Hotel, but we ended up being ushered into the nightclub to cover for some other band who couldn’t make it. When we saw the size of the nightclub we couldn’t keep the smiles off our faces.
“YYEEEESSSSSS!!!!!” Karl went, thrusting a fist in the air.
“UG!!! UG!!! UG!!!!” Thunder exclaimed, and proceeded to slap his bald head vigorously as was his habit in a moment of uncontrollable delight.
The place was gigantic. Our hands were practically shaking with the excitement as we set up our gear on stage. Finally we were ready for the sound check. I remember the sound of the almost-turned-up-to-the-last speakers hissing as they waited to blast out our carnage. Karl turned around to us, his fingers poised over his Gibson Les Paul guitar.
“Well fellow Bruisers, shall we try the old favourite?”
“Why not?” John laughed.
Since the melee at the first rehearsal, Knockin on Heaven’s Door had become known as “the old favourite.”
“Ok gentlemen, let’s have you” Karl went, and turned around to his microphone. He started into the opening chords and Thunder led John and I in with a fill that was almost apocalyptic in the excellent acoustics of the empty club. Then I leaned toward the mike and began to sing:
Mama take this badge from me…
Those few minutes were so hair-raising it was like I’d never lived until then. After the sound check we went for some grub downtown, counting the minutes to the night ahead. Of course the old legendary Kennedy good looks got us plenty female attention on that hot August evening and we must have told over a hundred girls about the gig. That night, about half an hour before the show we were stuck in a roasting keg storeroom changing into some fresh clothes for the stage. Suddenly Thunder cupped his ear in his hand.
“Ye he-he-he-hear that l-lads?” he stammered.
“Hear what?” John went.
“The p-p-p-po-posse” Thunder informed him, and he ran to the little storeroom window.
“I don’t hear fuck all” Karl went.
“Neither do I” I said, horsing on my Levis.
Thunder struggled to open the ancient looking window but couldn’t so he just drove his fist through the glass.
“Feck’s sake Thunder!” John went, but Thunder wasn’t listening. He was listening to the low drone of bike engines in the distance that was growing rapidly louder with each passing second. The noise grew and grew until it sounded like the building was completely surrounded by one giant engine.
“Jesus Christ lad” I went. “How many are in this posse?”
“Not sh-sh-sh-sure. M-m-m-aybe round one-f-f-fifty. M-m-must go out and w-w-welcome them.”
Thunder turned from the window, his craggy, weather-beaten face beaming with delight like a gleeful schoolboy who had just been given his summer holidays, and bolted out of the room.
“Fucking hell” Karl went, throwing on his tattered t-shirt (floor-rag possibly being a more accurate description of the aforementioned garment, such was its wretched state). “One-hundred and fifty bikers. Could be some night.”
“Hmmm” John went. “Lots of women in leather pants. Fuckin’ mighty.”
The DJ was still playing his garbage while we made our way up on stage. The nightclub was jointed. Half of the place was like it was covered in a shiny black soup, there were so many bikers there. Suddenly the music began to fade and the DJ began to babble:
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT’S THEIR FIRST NIGHT PERFORMING LIVE, THEY’RE LOUD, THEY’RE PROUD, THEY…”
“Where the fuck is Thunder?” Karl shouted to no-one in particular as he gazed out into the crowd. No sooner had he the words spoken than the man himself leaped up out of the crowd onto the stage and threw himself behind the drums. Karl gave him a dirty look and turned around to face the crowd again. Thunder winked and smiled at John and I. I laughed. It was hard to be pissed off with the guy.
“…….LET’S HEAR IT FOR…… BRUUUUIIISE!!!!!”
A huge cheer went up from the crowd while Thunder lashed out a fill on the snare to lead us into The Rolling Stones’ You Got me Rockin’.
It was fucking Heaven.
Karl’s guitar and mine, roaring over the booming bedrock of John’s bass and Thunder’s toms. Straight away we had the place jumping. It was an incredible gig. The months of hard work paid off. Everything was perfect to a tee: the stops, the starts, the vocal arrangements; the whole thing was as tight as a nun’s crack. The set went down a bomb: a core of sheer power and destruction interspersed with lighter moments, going from Bryan Adams, Metallica, Status Quo and Guns n Roses to The Doors, Neil Young and even the Traveling Wilberrys. We had the crowd in the palm of our hand for the entire two hours. We finished with an electrifying ten minute AC/DC medley that I sang, and which nearly killed me.
After the gig, while the rest of the lads basked in their own glory and mingled with our newly-recruited army of fans, I ended up in the keg storeroom coughing, spluttering, and wheezing after my vocal impression of the AC/DC lead singer, that little fat fucker with the cap who’s name I can never think of. While I was lying spread-eagled uncomfortably on the kegs the door suddenly burst open and Thunder came crashing in, his arms cradling a multitude of beer bottles, and two tall biker beauties behind him.
“He’s a-a-a-all y-y-y-yours ladies” was all he said to the smirking girls. He left a load of beer bottles for us and then he was gone out the door again. I watched, hypnotised, as the two leatherclad vixens strutted sexily toward me, hips swinging, the heels of their platforms scraping the dusty cement floor as they drew closer. Then nature took its immensely enjoyable course.
When I’d finished with my groupies I went into the nightclub again with a conqueror’s swagger in my step to help the guys taking down the gear. On arrival in the now empty club an interesting sight greeted me. Karl, John, and Thunder were swigging down the grog and talking to a group of bikers while a few monstrously built bikers were taking down the gear and bringing it out to our cars for us. Karl saw me and beckoned me to join them but scarcely had I one foot put in front of the other than I was knocked to the ground by something of great force.
“OH MY GOD! WE’RE SOOOOOO SORRRREEEEEE! OH MY GOD!!!!” a distressed female voice babbled.
“OHHH GOD YEAHHHHH!!! SOOOOO SOOORRREEE!!!” another female voice went.
“I MEAN, WE’RE LIKE SOOOOOO AWKWARD!”
“YEAH, I MEAN IT’S LIKE, YOU KNOW, OH….MY….GOD!”
I looked up and saw two seriously sexy Dublin four-esque girls looking down at me, their hands in front of their mouths, clearly mortified at what they’d just done. Each of them held a pen and paper in her hand. I could hear laughing. I looked over at the lads and saw that they and the bikers were practically breaking their arses. The fuckers.
I looked back at the girls.
“That’s ok” I went, and jumped to my feet.
“Can we have your autograph?” one of them asked, a sheepish look in her drink-glazed eyes.
“Well, you can” I went, dusting off the front of my jeans. “But not here.”
“Oh?” the other bird went, a knowing look in her eyes. “So where WILL you give it to us?”
“In my office.”
“And where’s that?”
“Follow me, ladies” I said, and the three of us headed off to the storeroom to a chorus of cheers and whistles from the lads. I surprised myself with my levels of stamina that night. Four women. Mighty by any man’s standards, I like to think. As I headed back to the nightclub after servicing the D4 babes, (I never found out if they actually WERE D4 stock. There wasn’t much conversation in there) John passed me by, a huge smile plastered on his face, and with a biker chick on each arm.
The same ones that I’d already been with.
He obviously didn’t know that I’d already done the business there because if he had, there would have been NO way he’d have ended up with them. John was not a hand-me-down type of guy. As a child he had even cried in protest at having to wear clothes that Karl and I had grown out of.
So of course I didn’t tell him.
Then.
I told him the day after.
I swear to God, Karl and myself nearly pissed ourselves laughing as John’s eyes widened and his mouth opened in disbelief at the abominable revelation.
“I hope you avoided the cheese on the way in” I managed to splutter in between convulsions.
John bolted from the room.
“FUCK!!! FUCK!!!! fuckin’ FUCK!!!! JESUS!!!! Oh…..chhhRIST!!!!” the expletives rang from the hallway.
“MIND YOUR LANGUAGE YOU PUP!” our mother shrieked from the kitchen.
While Karl and I were still in hysterics I heard the shower going on. The stream of swearing and foul language continued from the bathroom.
“oh SHIT!!!! oh JESUS!!!!! FUCKING HELL…..”
The profanities went on and on with only brief moments of respite for a good ten minutes I’d say. Each time he’d stop Karl and myself would manage to cease laughing and catch our breath, only to collapse again when he’d launch into another outburst.
Well, our entertainment came at a price. He must have stayed three-quarters of an hour in the shower with the result that Karl and I had to shower at Thunder’s gaff before heading off for the gig. It wasn’t pleasant. The water wasn’t transparent and it smelled funny.
That night’s gig in The Platinum Bar in Cork was another cracker. We were on such a high on stage that we tried two of my original songs, Thorns, and In Denial near the end of the set. They went down a bomb. Loads of punters came up afterward, cash in hand, asking did we have them on CD.
The gig in The Shiny Fish in Limerick on Sunday got off to a dodgy start, what with a brief iron bar episode that ensued after our second song. The bouncers quickly put an end to it as their iron bars were bigger than those of the combatants. Loads of bikers turned up, making for an interesting mix of tracksuits and leather in the place, and once again we didn’t have to do a stroke of work after the gig. As our biker roadies horsed the gear out to the cars, we were sitting down slugging the bevies at the side of the stage when John suddenly went:
“Lads! Lads! Tough tickets ahoy!”
He nodded in the direction of a few immensely dangerous looking, moustache-sporting skangers in Celtic shirts that were strutting Liam Gallagher style toward the stage. The four of us stood up, expecting some sort of confrontation seeing as we’d been asked at least three times during the gig for The Wolfe Tones’ Celtic Symphony, and Karl, his infinitesimal reserves of patience finally running dry after the third time, had ended up losing the plot and shouting “WE DON’T DO ANY FUCKING REBEL!” into the mike.
As the skobies approached the stage I could see Karl fingering his signet ring, making sure the business end was to the front. It turned out that our presumptions were misplaced. The skangers merely wanted to help take the gear out with the bikers. And we let them. John was a bit apprehensive about the decision, but Thunder put him at ease by telling the bikers to flatten the trackies if they tried to do a legger with anything.
Just before we headed for the hills I gave a gander to the jax to drain the dragon. There were two half-naked skanger birds squawking outside the female toilets and they went all quiet when they saw me heading for the men’s. One of them wasn’t bad at all. I was quite interested in the fact that her knickers were visible through her skimpy dress.
Of course she was staring at me.
“You were in the band, weren’t ya?” she asked me.
“I was.”
“I don’t usually listen to rock stuff meself. I’m more of - ”
“- a rebel fan?”
“Yeah. But ye were good though.”
“Thanks.”
“D’ya have any rubbers on ya?”
“No.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Well, will ya fuckin’ BUY some?”
“And why should I do that now?”
She looked disbelievingly at her friend who was laughing (and quite mingin, I hasten to add) and shook her head. Then she turned back to me again.
“Cos I want to fuckin’ RIDE ya, that’s why!”
I gave her one more once-over and decided.
“Fair enough” I went.
“There’s a machine behind ya” she informed me.
“Right” I went, and turned around. While I pondered my protection selection I heard her muttering to her friend and the two of them burst out laughing. Then I heard high heels approaching. I lobbed in some money and just as the merchandise popped out in the tray what felt like iron pincers grabbed the cheeks of my ars from behind with such force that I emitted a muted and rather feminine little scream. My assailant laughed.
“Ok so ya fine thing” she hissed from between clenched teeth, her breath rank with the horribly sweet stench of alcopops. “Let’s give it loads.”
She grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the men’s where we went at it hammer and tongs in the cleanest cubicle we could find. And by fuck did we give it loads. I have to say that in those few minutes in that manky cubicle, with GOD REST YOU BOBBY SANDS, BRITS OUT!, and FUCK THE HUNS! screaming down at me from the walls, and with bits of blood and shit-stained bog roll scattered on the piss-drenched floor, I experienced the most ferocious sex of my life. (And that’s saying something, considering that I’m well over the fifty mark by now.)
It was hard, high-impact, and to be frank, quite brutal. I wasn’t able to have an erection for about a fortnight afterwards without experiencing body-doubling, almost tear-inducing pain, but it was worth it. What was her name? Ah yes. Corina. Filthy bitch, but a legendess all the same.
Chapter Two
A few weeks later we pooled our resources to see if we could afford to get some stuff recorded, as the demand for my originals was growing with each gig. So there we were in the garden shed on a grey Sunday afternoon, the four of us sitting in silence around a dusty old coffee table with the final figures staring up at us from a notepad. We didn’t have enough to get a quality recording done.
Karl was turning a biro slowly in his hands and didn’t look happy. I definitely wasn’t. The reason sat across from us, hunchbacked and uncomfortable looking: John. He wasn’t contributing even close to the amount that the rest of us were pitching in. Karl looked at him, his eyes narrow.
“Are you SURE that’s all you can afford?” he asked.
John’s tightness with money had been incredible since the day he had put the first rust-coated penny he had found in the back garden into his plastic piggy bank.
“Look, I TOLD you, I’m going to college in October, and I’m going to need every copper I can get my hands on, ok?” John replied, his face reddening. Even now I still think the fucker was lighting up with guilt and not with anger. He had had enough for college alright. He’d just been too miserable to pay his way.
“COLLege” Karl went, a hint of scorn in his voice. It wasn’t the first time the issue had come up. I was supposed to be heading back there for my second year in UCC but I was fifty-fifty about returning as I felt the band might be going places. John had just been offered the course of his dreams, Financial Studies in Dublin, and he was adamant that he was taking it up in October.
“Yeah Karl, something someone like you would never – “
“John” Karl interrupted. “This is our fucking chance to actually GET somewhere with our music. And deep down you know that.”
John stared at the ground, biting his lip, his face as red as a berry. Karl, Thunder, and I looked at him, waiting for an answer. At one stage his mouth opened slightly and I thought he was about to give in. Then it closed again. Karl threw the biro onto the notepad on the coffee table and got up.
“I’m going for a shower” he declared and left the shed, giving the door such a bang behind him that John flinched visibly. The rest of us sat there, listening to Karl’s footsteps recede as he headed for the house.
“FUCK’S sake!!!” he suddenly shouted, and then came the sound of him kicking the empty water barrel near the back door of the house. The door squeaked as he opened it and I could hear the mother shouting at him to “stop his traveller talk”.
“Yeah yeah” he replied and the door slammed violently.
Then there was silence.
“Anybody fancy a cup of tea?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood as we had a gig to do later on that night and I didn’t want the shitty atmosphere pervading.
“L-l-l-le-legend, Kieran” Thunder went.
John was still staring at the ground.
“What about you?” I asked him.
He looked up, seeming a bit surprised that I was talking to him.
“Yeah, ok” he replied.
We went into the kitchen and I horsed on the kettle. While I stood at the sink waiting for it to boil I looked over at the kitchen table where Thunder was talking and laughing away with John as if nothing had happened. That was Thunder. Heart of gold, forgive and forget. I remember looking intently at John as he laughed at something Thunder had said and I will never forget the sudden flood of hatred that rushed through me. I looked down at my hands and my knuckles were white, I was grasping the sink so tightly.
The MEAN… FUCKING… CUNT…
“A-a-are you g-going cleaning th-th-the s-s-sink or a-are you going to m-make us that t-t-t-tae?”
I blinked and looked over at Thunder.
“What?”
He nodded at the sink. I looked down and saw that in my right hand I was holding a tub of extra strong drain cleaner that the mother used to keep on the windowsill. And my hand wasn’t far away from one of the steaming mugs.
Jesus Christ lad! You were going to pour it into John’s tea, you fucking psycho!
The lads didn’t seem to think I was about to do so. They were breaking their holes laughing. My hand shaking and my mouth dry, I put away the drain cleaner.
“Get lost in your latest song?” John asked when the hysterics died down.
“Yeah, something like that” I replied, pouring the milk into the tea.
A few hours later we were setting up the gear in a huge pub in Ennis called McDonnell’s. Karl and John were talking but Karl simply wasn’t his usual passionate self at all. It was like he was just going through the motions. While John and Thunder were out at the cars unloading the speakers I took him aside.
“Look, we’ll ask Mom for the money” I said.
He looked at me, his face a mixture of irritation and impatience.
“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? There’s no fucking WAY she’d give it to us-“
“I KNOW that. But she might give it to John.”
He looked out at the empty bar, thinking. He was right in saying that our mother wouldn’t loan a copper to him or I. The thing was, Karl and I were too consumed by music for her liking. She was constantly complaining that we were going the way of our father who had disappeared off the face of the earth ten years earlier.
Dad had lived and breathed music. His passion for the art was such that he’d been an impractical man. To worsen the situation he had had a very short fuse and a violent temper that had resulted in his alienating pub owners and the local musical community, despite the fact that he had been head and shoulders above its members in the talent department. And his repertoire had been seen as “too specialist” for the local scene. So he had ended up doing sporadic solo gigs and moving from one shitty day job to the next to try and support the family. Inevitably the mother had become the main provider in the house, a burden that she had bitterly resented having to bear.
She had cried her eyes out when I’d told her that I was going studying the art in UCC. And even worse, Karl had told her that he had had no interest in ever even GOING to college to do anything and that all he had wanted was to be a full-time musician. Like Dad.
And the band! She had hardly smiled since we had started gigging.
But John? John was her white-haired boy. She didn’t like that he also loved music, but the fact that he was in her words, “sensible and pragmatic with money” and hoped to become an investment banker after the completion of his financial course in college had been enough to secure her favour. He had even gone so far as to tell her that it was his ambition to buy her a mansion after he had conquered the business world.
The kissars.
So the man that had let us down was now our only hope. And I could see from the look in Karl’s eyes as he gazed out at the silent land of upturned chairs on tables that he didn’t like it one bit. Suddenly there was a crashing sound as Thunder and John bulldozed their way through the emergency exit doors carrying our huge bass bins. Karl turned away and started un-looping a lead.
“We’ll talk about it again after the gig” he muttered.
It turned out that we wouldn’t have to talk about it after the gig at all.
A few hours later, Karl, John and I were on stage ready to rock. Thunder was missing again. The place was absolutely fucking jammers. Our fan base was snowballing. People we’d met at previous gigs were now following us around on our travels. I recognised some faces in the crowd from places as far away as Skibereen and Waterford. Our biker contingent, which had turned up in numbers every night since the gig in Ballybunion, was out in force again. And just like that night in Ballybunion, just as Karl shouted:
“Where the fuck is – “
Thunder leaped up onto the stage like some sort of bounding safari animal, waving a brown envelope in his right hand.
“H-h-h-happy fucking Christmas l-lads!” he shouted, maniacally waving the envelope at each one of us in turn. “Our p-pr-prayers a-a-a-are answered!”
“What the fuck are you on about?” Karl quizzed, his face a mask of annoyance and scepticism.
“Th-th-th-th-there’s f-f-five hundred sponds in h-here l-l-lad!!!” Thunder spat excitedly. “F-f-f-f-for the r-r-r-record!!!”
Karl, John and I looked at each other, dumbstruck.
“C-c-c-c-courtesy of the-the-the-the-the-the-“ Thunder continued.
“The bikers?” John finished.
“No!!!” Thunder exploded, the knowledge of the donor still clearly holding surprise for him. “The s-s-s-s-s-“
“The suits from Cork?” I guessed. We had a few bank yuppies from the rebel who came to some of our gigs. They always wore suits, the tossers. They usually ended up getting brutally sloshed and insisted upon spitting stock market recommendations into our ears at the end of each show. I had nearly died laughing one night watching Karl scrunching up his face and blinking while one of the yuppies had brayed some shite into his ear. Karl had obviously been getting a major spittle bath.