Love and Death and an American Guitar by enrique che pelligro

I remember everything!
I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday
I was barely seventeen, and I once killed a boy with a Fender guitar
I don't remember if it was a telecaster or a stratocaster
But I do remember that it had a heart of chrome and a voice like a horny angel
I don't remember if it was a telecaster or a stratocaster
But I do remember that it wasn't at all easy
It required the perfect combination of the right power chords
And the precise angle from which to strike
The guitar bled for about a week afterward
And the blood was ooh, dark and rich, like wild berries
The blood of the guitar was Chuck Berry red
The guitar bled for about a week afterward, but it rung out beautifully
And I was able to play notes that I had never even heard before
So I took my guitar, and I smashed it against the wall
I smashed it against the floor
I smashed it against the body of a varsity cheerleader
Smashed it against the hood of a car
Smashed it against a 1981 Harley Davidson
The Harley howled in pain, the guitar howled in heat
And I ran up the stairs to my parents' bedroom
Mummy and daddy were sleeping in the moonlight
Slowly I opened the door, creeping in the shadows
Right upto the foot of their bed
I raised the guitar high above my head
And just as I was about to bring the guitar crashing down
upon the centre of the bed, my father woke up, screaming "Stop!"
"Wait a minute! Stop it boy! What do ya think you're doin'?
That's no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!"
And I said: "God dammit daddy!
You know I love you, but you got a hell of a lot to learn about rock an' roll" 

 JIM STEINMAN

...Castle Bastardos was a dark place, long before we set foot in it, it just oozed out of the walls and through the floorboards, anybody who spent any time there felt it and either left quickly, eager to get out, or stayed there to wallow, it was that kind of energy, comforting in its darkness. We moved there under a storm cloud and the weather just got worse.

The whole thing had been arranged by Sydney, of course. We all (the band St*rfucker and partners) went to meet a man claiming to be a Ray Vonn (although not the same man who claimed to be Ray Vonn that we met much later, demanding money with menaces), flanked by a couple of burly, surly minders in an abandoned, closed down pub, one Sunday at high noon. We  all agreed, on a handshake, to take on, sight unseen, a 5 bedroom house on Alverthorpe Road, three floors and a basement of what seemed like a dream but which turned out to be a nightmare of epic proportions.

By the time we moved in of course, there was now only 3 members left in the band anyway, Sydney was on remand awaiting his trial for a series of spectacular cat burglaries in the area, and our drummer had seemingly retired from music to work on the railroad after one too many st*rfucked evenings. After the obligatory brief tussle over rooms, we all claimed our favourites and started to settle in, disgorging the precious few possessions we had around the place. I'd chosen the front attic space as my own, with a double elevation looking out over New Scarborough as the area liked to call itself. Upon close examination, one of my windows, high up in the corner had a little drawing etched into the grease, climbing upon a chair for a closer look, i could see it was a crude but legible sketch of baphomet, with a pentagram and an upside down cross. I could have seen this as a warning, and I could have cleaned it off, but did neither, leaving it there to see if anyone else noticed...

The girlfriends all bailed next, one by one pulling back from the brink, pale excuses and apologies, but all very vague. Mine had been looking forward to a place of our own, back together again after years apart we were gonna make a go of it but as soon as she saw the place she started to back off, talking of time and space needed to get her head together, she retreated and after that only communicated by letter, although i did see her visiting next door, our neighbour was an old friend apparently, anyway she was gone and i never did speak to her again.

My bassist, Rosie Vasquez moved into the other attic room, her partner had moved in with friends in town but still visited, though she stayed out of the way of the madness downstairs and sneaked in and out under cover of darkness. Lloydus Maximus, our knob twiddling resident motorhead meanwhile took the large room on the first floor and proceeded to wreck everything in it and around it until it resembled the bombsite he was used to living in, his previous flat had reached such a dishevelled state that when a mutual friend saw it for the first time he thought it had been burgled.

Regardless of the general decay and atrophy, we all pulled together on the main project of making the cellar into a soundproof studio; false walls backed with loft insulation; a ton of egg cartons on the roof; carpets all around the drum booth; and an insulated board for the window. We tried all kinds of other devices for keeping the sound down, but still the drums echoed up through the house and the amps could be heard in the garden, but we were still proud of what we'd achieved, and proceeded to use the space on an almost 24/7 basis, working on our difficult second album, interspersed with EPIC parties (i believe some of them are still going on now) and monster decks and drum jams, at least one of which brought the police around mid-flight, but they just took one look at the state of us and retreated with a demand to keep the noise levels down, yeah right officer, as we turned it up higher, luckily they didnt see the fuel piled up on the mirror, or the casualties in the chill room, or maybe they did and didn't fancy either the paperwork or the hassle, but we started to think that possibly we could pull this off.

Before long though, our neighbour expressed an interest in all this noise and fun that seemed to be happening through the walls, he wasn't complaining of course, and it wasn't him who had rung the police (though he was our only next door neighbour, at the other side of the house the Beck trickled past with it's resident ducks, maybe it was them?), he was just angling for an invitation, one which i had no intention of giving him due to his assumed association with my ex partner. One quiet Sunday evening though, Rosie did invite him in, taking him downstairs to the basement to show him where it all happened. By thetime i walked in on them, Rosie was already suffering under the onslaught of our neighbours list of grievances, not about us, but about everything else, his love life (or lack of it), bills, weather, the usual, not a happy chappie to say the least, he was a general moaner it seemed, and, as music soothes the savage beast, we set about playing a little soothing music as he continued to vent. Jamming on guitar and bass, we lifted his spirits momentarily, but the demons in his head held sway and he'd return to his previous demeanour so we'd step up our efforts with the right combinations of major sevenths and added ninth chords, all three of us now locked in to a power struggle over our neighbours mood. Power chords and diminished runs came unbidden as we danced with the devil, our neighbour frothing at the mouth and up on his feet as he dangled from the strings we were pulling with the strings we were playing, jerking this way and that as he reacted instantaneously to the notes we were injecting, becoming more animated the longer we went on. Putting the genie back in the bottle by this point was a very hard battle, lilting arpeggios mutating into minor runs, myxolydians melting into alien modes, until eventually he sagged back on the settee, seemingly overcome and satiated, and i put down my axe, leaving for my bed with the words "finish him off" to Rosie. The demons were still out to play though (one of them had told Rosie, back when she was a young girl via an ill advised ouija board session, that she would kill a man and get away with it, a fact that Rosie carried through life like a trump card), and as i slept fitfully in my bed, Rosie continued to dance with the devil as our neighbour went through a re-run of the evenings trials, before being sent home in the wee small hours.

We didn't find out until the day after next that our neighbour had hung himself in the night, the police had been in and out of his house the day after but hadn't called here for questioning. There was no note left or clues given, but we here at Castle Bastardos knew the truth, that music is mightier than the sword or the pen, cutting deep but leaving no scars, and of course, when it hits, you feel no pain, for the former things have passed away...