Greetings from Bury Park Page 9

  Amolak lived in a large terraced house near my very first school. His mother, a large woman with a friendly face and bad back, would come in to say hello and bring us tea and biscuits. I always made sure to say hello to his father who would be sleeping on the sofa in the adjoining room. Amolak’s father was a huge man with a white turban and a flowing white beard that he kept in a hairnet. I had always assumed that Sikh men had very long hair under their turbans but one afternoon I found this to be not always the case. I came to say hello to his father only to find him sprawled on the sofa with his turban on the coffee table and his head revealed to be almost entirely bald save for a few strands knotted with a small handkerchief.

  Amolak and I would spend the evening in the living room where there was an old record player. On the wall hung a portrait of Guru Nanak. In one corner of the room was a display cabinet in which there was a brass wheelbarrow, a gondola made of gold-coloured plastic and a selection of plates and glasses. Like the special plates and glasses in my home they were never used. For three or four hours we would talk – ostensibly about Bruce Springsteen but actually about our lives. I had had friends before but there was no one with whom I could speak with such honesty as I could with Amolak; with white friends I always had to explain things – why I didn’t drink, why I didn’t have girlfriends, why I wasn’t allowed out at night – but with Amolak no explanations were necessary. He understood. We were sixteen-year-old boys so we did not speak about our feelings; we talked about song lyrics instead.

  ‘The thing about Bruce,’ Amolak said, ‘is that it’s like he knows everything you’ve ever felt, everything you’ve ever wanted and he can describe it better than you. That’s what I love about him so much; there isn’t a situation you will ever go through that Bruce will not have a song for. I’m serious, you hate school: ‘‘No Surrender’’; you hate where you live: ‘‘Thunder Road’’; you hate your dad: ‘‘Independence Day’’; you hate your girlfriend: ‘‘Brilliant Disguise’’; you hate your life: ‘‘Badlands’’. He’s there for you no matter what you’re going through.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, peeling the skin off my mug of tea, ‘is how come no one else at college likes Springsteen. I mean, if you listen to the words you would think everyone would be really into it but let’s be honest, everyone thinks we’re nutters.’

  ‘Hey, you thought I was a nutter, remember!’ retorted my friend. ‘You know the story. I was watching Top of the Pops and saw the video for ‘‘Dancing in the Dark’’. Must have been the summer of 1984, I reckon. I was doing my English homework in front of the telly and this song comes on. I remember looking up and thinking, this is good, I wonder who this guy is. The next day I bought Born in the USA and you know the rest. My mates thought I was a fucking clown! ‘‘Hey, Roops, you think you were ‘Born in the USA’? Got some news for you, mate. You were born in Dunstable Hospital, right here in Luton!’’ I didn’t listen to their chat and do you know why? It was because I felt sorry for them. I forgave them because they knew not what the hell they were saying. Bit of Jesus of Nazareth for you there. See, the thing is, mate, I had all this extra wisdom, this special knowledge and those muppets were still listening to bloody bhangra! And I tried to educate them. I’d bring in Nebraska and The River, say to them, ‘‘Listen up, you fools, you might learn something,’’ but they didn’t want to know. So in the end I thought fuck you all. You try, but if they don’t want to know something that might change their lives, what can you do, hey?’

  When I listened to Amolak preaching the gospel of Bruce while Springsteen played on the record player, it was hard not to believe that the two of us were more enlightened than the rest of our college. Thunder Road and Born to Run gave me new dreams to aspire to; a world that could yet be mine.

  Amolak’s mother would offer us another mug of tea or urge me to eat the egg biscuits that remained on the table. ‘So he’s brainwashed you too?’ she would joke. ‘I can’t talk to my son for two minutes without him talking about this Bruce.’ His parents, like mine, did not appreciate that this was about more than music. ‘To my mum, I might as well be listening to Engelbert Humperdinck,’ claimed Amolak. ‘She doesn’t understand the whole Bruce thing at all. Dad just thinks all white singers are taking drugs. When I tell him I’m listening to Bruce he just says ‘‘druggie’’. I used to try and argue with him and say no, Bruce is very anti-drugs and he is a really great role model but have you seen my dad? Six foot five and built like a brick shithouse. No point arguing.’

  I had thought that by telling my father how successful Bruce Springsteen was it would validate my enthusiasm for him but he had responded by saying that if I enjoyed music so much why didn’t I try to make money out of it myself rather than making someone else richer. ‘You can’t really expect them to understand, can you?’ I said. ‘I mean, if people our age think we’re weird, what’s the chance that our parents are gonna get it?’

  ‘The thing about our parents’ generation,’ Amolak responded, ‘is that they didn’t have the time to have hobbies. Take my old man. He came over from India, got treated like a fucking leper and ended up working on a building site. Before he knew it he was working like a donkey carrying bricks up a ladder and breaking his back so that the rest of us had dahl with our chapattis. I mean, it’s not like he had time to start stamp collecting or bird watching, is it? So they look at you and me and can’t understand the idea of doing something just because we fucking like it.’

  In my new friend I had found someone else who loved America and hated Luton with the same passion as I did. On his bedroom wall Amolak had hung a confederacy flag and he would come to college wearing a stars and stripes bandanna around his neck. Were it not for his turban, he would most likely have strutted around Bury Park in a ten-gallon stetson. Meanwhile I was reading On the Road and Studs Terkel. The best part about my friendship with Amolak was the knowledge that I had made a friend for life. We could not choose our families, we might not even be able to choose our spouses but at least we had the freedom to choose our friends.

  When I first became introduced to Bruce Springsteen, I sleepwalked through my classes in economics and mathematics and spent my evenings in my bedroom wearing my headphones whilst listening to Bruce albums as I mouthed the words from the photocopied lyric sheets. When the student council gave me my own lunchtime show on the college radio station I used it as an opportunity to evangelise for Bruce; for one show I played the entire third side of the live box set. When Amolak and I were not listening to Springsteen, we were trying to emulate his look. I restricted myself to wearing black waistcoats similar to the one he had worn on the video for ‘Tougher than the Rest’ and a large buckled belt like on the cover of Tunnel of Love. Amolak, as well as the waistcoat and belt, had cultivated long sideburns, and wore a variety of chains and a silver dog tag engraved with ‘Born to Run’ and a pair of black cowboy boots. (When, during the early nineties, Springsteen began favouring a goatee with ponytail Amolak followed suit; a decision he claimed later explained his complete absence of success with women during this time.)

  In many ways Amolak was different from me. I was Muslim and he was a Sikh. He was brash and cocky and never happier than when boasting about how drunk he got the night before, while I never drank. He watched Dallas and I loved Cheers; he thought that listening to anyone other than The Boss was treachery whereas thanks to Springsteen, I had discovered Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp. Amolak walked around our college like he was a king, wise-cracking with the boys and flirting with the girls, while I was tongue-tied and shy.

  I envied how much at ease he seemed around girls but I also knew that it was only around me that he was truly himself; the rest was a performance. When it was just the two of us he would confide how frustrated he was by his turban. ‘Fact is there’s no way I’m getting any pussy with this on my head,’ he would tell me. He would point out how blistered the tops of his ears were from being bandaged. ‘Girls ain’t going to see past this, are they?’ he wou
ld complain. ‘What girl is gonna want to kiss me with me looking like this? Plus I get mash-up headaches cos of the weight on me head.’

  It had not occurred to me that wearing a turban would cause headaches but it made sense now that he mentioned it.

  ‘So why don’t you get your hair cut?’ I asked him.

  ‘You’ve seen my dad, right? He would kick the living shit out of me. And then throw me out on the street. He’s a bloody priest at the temple, no fucking way I can do it while I’m living at home.’

  It was only when he referred to his appearance that Amolak’s supernatural confidence disappeared; the turban, beard and moustache were a constant reminder of the chasm between how he saw himself and how others saw him. It also made his love of Bruce Springsteen’s music seem hollow; Springsteen’s songs were about being true to yourself and being the best you could be and yet it was only fear that was forcing my friend to retain his turban.

  When I saw Amolak clean-shaven and without his turban, at first I did not even recognise him. He had not discussed it with me, and he hadn’t warned me. I walked towards him to shake his hand but he ignored it and gave me a bear hug instead, smiling broadly like a lifer handed a surprise parole. ‘I fucking did it, mate,’ he said.

  ‘You look really cool,’ I replied honestly. ‘I thought you said you couldn’t do it because of your dad? What happened?’

  ‘Truth is I’ve been thinking about it for a few months but I didn’t want to say anything to you in case I bottled it.’

  ‘But you kept saying that you couldn’t let your dad down.’

  ‘I know, mate, I know, but something just changed, you know, something just clicked inside. I thought, what is the fucking point of banging on about Bruce if I can’t live what he’s singing about? You get me? It’s like his whole message is about being true to yourself and being the best you can be and . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘How’s your dad taking it?’

  ’Not good,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t talk to me when I got back from the barber, Mum didn’t make me dinner . . . they probably think I’m going to be bringing a white girl home next.’

  ‘You’re not that lucky,’ I joked.

  ‘Yeah, they’ll get used to it. It’s only hair for fuck’s sake.’

  But it wasn’t only about hair, it was about freedom and it was about a question we constantly asked ourselves when we were teenagers: whether it was possible to say you were a Springsteen fan if you couldn’t live your life by the values of his music.

  In the spring of 1988 rumours began emerging that Bruce Springsteen might tour later that summer. The speculation, contained in articles that I cut out from NME, Sounds and Melody Maker, was both exhilarating and terrifying. To see Springsteen in concert would be unimaginably thrilling but the prospect of persuading my father to allow me to attend was deeply depressing. For Amolak, who had been a fan since the age of fourteen, it was unthinkable that he would not be going to see him in concert. ‘I don’t give a fuck what Dad says, I’m going,’ he told me bluntly.

  ‘Yeah, but what if your dad says you can’t go?’ I asked.

  ‘There is no way, mate. No way.’

  I could tell that he was secretly terrified that he would not be allowed to attend. ‘I reckon if we both tell our parents that the other one is going they won’t mind so much,’ I suggested. ‘I think my dad would feel better if he knew that I was going with you, he might go for it then.’

  This was probably nonsense as I guessed that my father would most likely say that Amolak was leading me down the wrong path, that I needed to ditch him and start remembering what college was really for.

  ‘You think? It’s worth a shot, I guess.’ He was looking rather forlorn.

  ‘I mean, the papers are saying Wembley Stadium in June, I could ask them if I could go as my birthday present, lay on the guilt trip about how I never get any birthday presents and all that. That could work.’

  Whilst we waited for the rumours to harden into facts I began buying bootleg tapes from mail order suppliers I found advertised in the back of music magazines. Each cassette was listed on badly typed catalogues that would arrive in the mail from addresses in Manchester and North Wales and cost around five pounds each. Reading the catalogues was like studying a map of exotic foreign lands, each title promising so much: Born to Run outtakes, The River home demos, live concerts from 1975 onwards. It seemed extraordinary to me that I could, when I had the money, listen to songs by Bruce that weren’t on any album, hear concerts I hadn’t attended. The legendary Bottom Line concerts in New York from 1975, the epic Winterland show from 1978, the three nights at Wembley Stadium from 1985 were all concerts I had salivated over and now they were arriving through my letterbox in small packages wrapped up in plain brown paper. Receiving the tapes was about more than just hearing new Bruce music; each time I got a new package in the mail it felt like I was part of a secret community defined not by geography, race or religion, but by passion. I had no idea who the people sending me those bootleg tapes were but I believed that they, like me, were citizens of an imagined community of like-minded people.

  I knew I had to attend the Springsteen concert. It wasn’t just about seeing Bruce: I knew that if I was able to go, my life would change for ever. For weeks I plotted how to raise the concert with my parents. I had told my mother about how Amolak was going and how much I wanted to go but her approval was worthless unless I could persuade my father. To increase the chances of my father agreeing I adopted a strategy of trying to please him in other aspects of my life. I began buying cartons of weight-gain powder and drinking them with warm milk each night in an effort to bulk up. Three times a week I went weight training at a local gym. I knew that would please my father who continued to complain at how painfully skinny I was. When I was not lifting weights I would volunteer to wash and vacuum the car, do the dishes, massage his feet.

  ‘What has happened to your son?’ my father said to my mother one day when I had been particularly ingratiating. ‘He must want something.’

  ‘It’s that Bruce,’ my mother explained.

  ‘He’s coming to play a concert in London,’ I added, ‘at Wembley Stadium in June. He doesn’t play very often. Amolak’s parents say he can go . . .’

  ‘Who goes to these concerts?’ my father asked.

  ‘Just people who like Bruce,’ I explained, ‘intelligent people . . . He writes about politics so lots of people who are there will be interested in that.’

  ‘Politics? What does he write about politics?’ asked my father, suddenly more interested.

  ’Well, he’s written songs about being unemployed and the economic recession and people who work in factories being laid off work . . . His songs aren’t about normal boring subjects, it’s about the real world, it’s like watching Panorama.’

  I do not know if my father was persuaded by my arguments or whether he simply took pity on me, but he agreed that I could go to the concert. He even offered to buy me a ticket.

  The Tunnel of Love tour started in the United States at the end of February 1988. I kept up to date with the latest news by calling an information line organised by a British Springsteen fan club called Badlands. Anyone who rang the number could find out the latest Springsteen news, including what songs he had played on each show. I would call the phone line every evening, making a note of set changes. The closer we got to the concert date, the more excited Amolak and I became: Amolak had been a fan for three years but it was going to be the first time he had seen him live. ‘Thing is, when the show starts I’m going to be somewhere else in my head,’ he told me. ‘I’m going to be tapped. We might as well not be standing next to each other, in my head it’s just going to be me and the man. No one else. So don’t be trying to chat to me.’

  My friend never let me forget that he had been a fan longer than I had. I could not turn back time but I still believed I was the bigger fan. I had read every biography I could find about Springsteen, I had bought unreleased live concer
t tapes and when the tour started I wrote to a venue in Detroit enclosing a twenty-dollar bill and requesting an American tour shirt so that I could wear it around the Arndale Centre months before the tour reached Britain.

  It was not yet eight o’clock on a summer Saturday morning in the last week of June. Amolak and I sat opposite each other in the near-empty carriage, plastic bags containing food from our mums on the seats next to us. My mum had prepared chapattis which she had filled with vegetable curry and rolled up and wrapped in silver foil. Along with the chapattis were a couple of vegetable samosas that had been made the previous night.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s weird?’ I said to Amolak. ‘That Bruce is staying in London and that’s where we are going.’ It wasn’t really a question, more a statement filled with a sense of awe.

  ‘I know, I wonder what hotel they are staying at? If we knew, we could call and see if we get through!’

  ‘Yeah, I bet Bruce answers his own phone!’

  ‘It would be fucking cool though, wouldn’t it, to meet him?’

  ‘I reckon we will, you know,’ I replied.

  When we arrived at Wembley, the grounds of the stadium were practically deserted. As we tried to find where the entrance point was we walked past burger vans and merchandise stalls. Nothing was open. We seemed to be the first people there. ‘You don’t think we’re too early, do you?’ I asked Amolak. ‘There isn’t anyone else here.’

  ‘Yeah, there is,’ he responded.

  We had reached the edge of the stadium. In front of us was a steep flight of steps and at the very end of the steps were the turnstiles which allowed entry into the stadium itself. Sitting and standing around the turnstile entrance was a small crowd of around twenty or thirty men. Amolak and I walked along the circumference of the stadium looking up at those who were already there. From their vantage point the men looked down at us. They seemed to be in their twenties and thirties. Some were dressed in shorts. A few were wearing Born in the USA T-shirts. Proper adults. Proper fans. What must they have thought when they saw us? Two teenage Asian boys overdressed for the hot sun, carrying plastic bags stuffed with food, stumbling around looking lost and overwhelmed.