Even a ring of iron is worn away by constant use

The hangover: puffy eyes, an oily and swollen face, sores on the tongue. Thirsty, but sickened by water. A poor sense of smell making you unaware of how much you reek of beer, cigarettes and urine. Sleep started with complete blackout but ended too early in a broken nightmare like a skipping record.To have a drink would ease the pain, but that’s the first step towards repeating the crime. Vigorous exercise can do wonders but can weaken you and leave you prone to disease, fever, twisted ankles. Eating fruits then heavy, greasy food helps but does not clear the conscience. The bowels are unpredictable; liquid horror, or constipation. Stinging anus. Shame and degradation.

Music will help to calm and distract from the acid pain and embarrassment. Debussy, La Mer. Or some soft bluegrass ballads. But the hair of the musical dog won’t work. The techno track which caused you to do the twitch in front of the African girls will sound damned offensive today. Wailing saxophone solos will be dated and corny. Rock’n’roll is loud and stupid.

The alcoholic: someone who often chooses to have a drink in this situation. Once that pattern is set, the hangover isn’t as bad, or almost non-existent after the third day. But the body will become starved of proper sleep, the emotions will become jagged, and bruises will appear.

Some alcoholics can function for years like this, with only short periods of sobriety. Other alcoholics will binge and make enemies and lose all control each time they pass the third drink. They are the Jekyll and Hyde drinkers, always apologising and moving in and out of people’s graces. Sexy and charming to those that don’t know them, but often suicidal in private.

“All aboard… the night train!” There is a train from Moscow to St. Petersburg for the touring musician to lose his mind on. Arrive at the platform in the dark Russian evening, steam gushing all around you and walk the 20 coaches to your cabin. The porters, conductors and ticket takers all wear round green Soviet-era hats giving your trip a military feel. The ancient heavy train has no restaurant or bar on board, but if you are with a good interpreter, a knock on your cabin door brings some rough sandwiches and sausage. If your promoter is skilled and quick with dollars, you will be amazed: a knock on the door brings a bottle of vodka and six glasses, not plastic cups! Bring your pocket music stealing machine and some speakers. Dance and be merry. There will be no sleep and vodka everywhere you turn for as many days or years as you like.

Our good hosts and promoters Dmitry and his partner Angela (a wild Ruski if ever there was one) know the country’s history well. Many Russians know it well, as each decade is marked with waiting, suffering and work. They value the truth about their history as a reaction to so many lies being told to them for so long.

Dmitry put us in a cheap extraordinary hotel outside St. Petersburg, directly opposite the old palace of Catherine the Great. In this weird hotel, buildings from different decades of communism are linked by dusty corridors, and staircases make the drunken morning trip to our rooms take no less than 15-minutes. There are a dozen staircases up and down, paintings and statues of grim military and civil servants. Stalin himself left a brighter patch of wallpaper where his picture had been removed from every room. The meetings, bribery and murder which went on in that hotel are better forgotten.

Out for a walk. It’s best to carry a large flask of vodka and a sausage with you at all times. Don’t try bringing a portable turntable and all your old swing records. They won’t let you into the palace with those.

The immense gardens and walkways leading to Catherine’s abandoned and lonely bathhouse were just frosted over and the grass crunched and we walked silently smoking and drinking in the sunlight. Dmitry had spent his childhood here. His blue eyes matched the colour of the empress’s palace. My blues producer (Captain Future from the Future Shape of Sound, who had brought me there as part of a small tour called “Brit Wave”) carried an old Soviet flask and plenty of smokes. We learned history from Dmitry.

By now you will feel sadness. It’s everywhere there. In the Russian eyes and blowing in off the ocean. You’ve got to keep a good sense of humour and a big sausage to beat it off.

Backstage at the gig in St. Petersburg was a young Russian rock drummer with no neck and catchers’ mitt hands who was no taller than 5ft 5” but who weighed 250 pounds. Solid gristle. He would free-pour vodka from above his head into his mouth and it would wash down his throat without him swallowing. His liver must have been the size of a ham to filter more than a big bottle of booze like that each day. One of those bottles would kill me instantly. But he will live a couple more years.

In my cranky opinion, children should be taught about alcoholics and people with depression and personality disorders at school so they can cope with what’s at home. AA. In the UK it’s claimed that 1 in 13 people are addicted to drink. The BBC puts it at only 1 in 20. By my calculations it’s 4.6m who admit it, and 5m who don’t, making it about 1 in 7.

Instead of these sums, eight-year-old children are taught more complex (and accurate) mathematics about groceries. Mother shrieks and threatens to kill herself and hides the gin behind the cereal boxes. No one intervenes until bruises show up on junior.

I had just been paid a fist-full of American dollars behind the club by a stranger with a tinted-windowed Mercedes. Some of us were put into a shiny Land Rover thing and swung onto a freeway. We were instantly pulled over and we had to give the police $100 to avoid a whole night in jail filling out forms. For no offence whatever. This happens all the time to those who drive flash tit Land Rovers in Moscow. Tee hee.

Avoid that. Just walk out on the road, stick up your hand, and someone will pull over. Settle a small price and most drivers will gladly turn into a taxi if they have the time. Sensible, really. A nice conversation in a Lada, also with tinted windows, and AC/DC through a small speaker.

Nowadays in Moscow, the rich kids are very rich and they go clubbing and you can dance and be merry there in the latest fashion. It’s as chic as you like. But if you like to drink outdoors, and experience something different, go for the day to the park where the Russian Exhibition buildings are. There you can have a pony ride or fall off the go-carts. Most of the park has been paved over and everywhere are huge imposing statues of Stalin and countless other bastards. Sputnik is there and, bizarrely, an empty passenger plane you can climb on at great personal risk. A huge, ornate but dilapidated fountain in the middle of the park is circled by people of all ages drinking and throwing their tins and bottles on the ground. Hundreds of people drinking beer all afternoon. Not a bar or waiter in sight.

All over the park are abandoned government buildings that once boasted the achievements of the Soviet Union. Teenagers play drunken ball-hockey on rollerblades. BBQs and terrible music pollute the air. It is sublime. Unendurable unless you are drunk. And I was drunk again after several days and nights of it.

By the fifth night, I felt the gentle hand of wisdom on my shoulder telling me not to try climbing out of the second story window. I turned to see an old man with sad eyes who just shook his head. One of my feet was out on the ledge. My plan to use the awning as a first floor and a drainpipe instead of stairs would have ended in broken legs. He disappeared like a ghost. I finally found the stairs and peed in the alley. My producer looked down on me from the hotel window and threw me down a pillow and blanket to use on a bench. I couldn’t drink again for two months. I will never drink through four hangovers again and rarely through even one.

The music industry and booze industry are inseparable. The worst face of it is a mud covered violent lad in a field in England swaying to the Libertines under a giant Carling banner. More distasteful than a Moscow park at night.

Alcohol sponsorship is the largest funder of the musical arts in the UK and US. That has to change for the sake of the music and the poor rock’n’roll children whose fathers are down at the pub remembering the time their face was in NME.

The young masses are hardly ever passionate about music unless they can swill cheap beer and throw their plastic cup in the air. Indeed, they are told to do so. Clean, sit-down venues are for old folks or the French.

Russia is obviously headed for disaster. The main sponsor is a vodka company, and the Yankee dollar is currency. To your health! Chanel and Starbucks have blossomed in Moscow and the poverty and corruption is as bad as ever. Every hangover is harder than the last.

Our friend Dmitry made it out and makes lovely music and children in London. I haven’t seen him out for a drink in quite a while. I still drink from my producer’s Soviet flask sometimes, after work in his studio. We hesitate to visit Russia again.

The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

The Stool Pigeon issue 13, October 2007

Comment & Analysis

Even a ring of iron is worn away by constant use

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