Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [78]
RS – In the studio, on the edge of perfecting a song, or just watching him sit and strum, you know he’d be happy if he was the last man on earth, just Billy and his guitar.
MM – So it’s purely the desire to play music that gets him out of bed each morning? Nothing to do with the love of the fans? The screaming girls? Packed out stadiums chanting his name?
RS – You know originally, back when we started playing the bigger gigs, I reckon fame and adulation was something he wanted, craved for even. But you’ve got to remember this was a kid who’d been dossing on the floor of a fucking storeroom, too embarrassed to tell his mates he’d been kicked out of home and sharing his bit of floorboard with boxes of crap records. It was a month before he told me where he was really sleeping, in that poxy cupboard, waiting for his boss to rumble him and get kicked out into the cold all over again. I mean, I thought I was rock star before I was famous, but I still went home after a gig to my mam brewing a cuppa, the old man asking how I played, helping me fix a bit of kit, while Billy K, poor bastard, was in that storeroom waiting to exist.
MM – And that he did, sorry, does. Was this a dangerous relationship to begin, to rely on fickle fans as an emotional base?
RS – He had us, too, the band, the Feeney brothers and me. But it was never enough, no one was. He came from nothing, curling up between boxes of broken records and singing himself to sleep each night, to a life of groupies who would suck off greasy roadies on the promise of a backstage pass, just to be close to him. I’d like to say he was a gentleman, that he only slept with women he thought he’d marry and live happily ever after with. He needed sex as much as he needed music, but emotionally as much as a physical thing. Disappearing with a girl for days, just talking things out. He loved, and needed women. Maybe he got his girl and eloped?
MM – What about the sightings, rumours of him in a Sao Paulo plastic surgeon’s, flying to France in a microlight?
RS – Who knows? When our helpful tabloids offer rewards of thousands for his whereabouts, then every man and his fucking dog is going to see him at the supermarket. A sighting might be genuine, but it could also be hoaxers trying to cash in. Until I sit down and share a drink with him, I don’t know what to believe.
MM – Now, I’d like to apologise in advance this time, for a question you probably don’t want to be asked.
RS – Whether he’s dead or alive?
MM – You know him best. No foul play has been uncovered by the police, so we must assume that his disappearance, whether running for the hills or taking his own life, was of his own volition.
RS – We know he’s capable of doing a runner, vanishing in a puff of smoke. Fuck, he shit us up enough times. The missed shows were bad enough, but they’d turn into missing days. On tour, at home, suddenly he was gone. It was like someone had hit the delete button on him. The worst was after the Red Square riot. Ricky Wise, usually the head above water when everyone else is drowning, was gasping for air. Saying that, we all were.
MM – He went missing during the riot?
RS – He jumped the barrier and went undercover in the crowd, watching his own fucking gig. Wise shut down the story, no papers or reporters. The cops wanted blood. They blamed us for making a mess of their nice square, not to mention a few Moscow riot police. Wise thought they already had Billy in a cell, beaten and naked on a concrete floor. But, as usual, well, until last month, he was out there living it up.
MM – Where had he been?
RS – Holed up in some mafia drinking den. Anonymous and drunk, having the time of his life.
MM – So you think he could have run, slipped his Billy K skin for a new identity?
RS – Who fucking knows? Really. The thrill with drugs for Billy was jumping out of who he was. Maybe the biggest hit of all was escaping for real?
MM – What about the police, have they been forthcoming