Roddy Doyle: The Commitments

— Are they foxy ladies, Jimmy? Joey The Lips asked.

They all stared at him.

— Fuckin’ sure they are, said Jimmy.

— Who are they? said Outspan.

— Remember Tracie Quirk?

— She’s fuckin’ married!

— Not her, said Jimmy. — Her sister.

— Wha’ one? Derek asked.

— Imelda.

— Wha’ one’s she? Hang on ——Oh Jaysis, HER! Fuckin’ great.

— Which one is it? said Outspan.

— You know her, said Derek. — Yeh fuckin’ do. Small, with lovely tits. Yeh know. Black hair, long. Over her eyes.

— Her!

— She’s fuckin’ gorgeous, said Derek. — Wha’ age is she?

— Eighteen.

— She lives beside you, James.

— So I believe, said James.

— Is she anny good at the oul’ singin’?

— I haven’t a clue, said Jimmy.

— Who’re the others? Deco asked.

— Two of her mates.

— That’s very good management, Brother, said Joey The Lips. — Will they be dressed in black?

— Yeah ——I–I think so.

— Good good.

* * *

The time flew in.

Those Commitments still learning their instruments improved. The ones ready were patient. There was no group rehearsing. Jimmy wouldn’t allow it. They all had to be ready first.

Derek’s fingers were raw. He liked to wallop the strings. That was the way, Jimmy said. Derek found out that you could get away with concentrating on one string. You made up for the lack of variety by thumping the string more often and by taking your hand off the neck and putting it back a lot to make it look like you were involved in complicated work. He carried his bass low, Stranglers style, nearly down at his knees. He didn’t have to bend his arms.

Outspan improved too. There’d be no guitar solos, Jimmy said, and that suited Outspan. Jimmy gave him Motown compilations to listen to. Chord changes were scarce. It was just a matter of making yourself loose enough to follow the rhythm.

Outspan was very embarrassed up in his bedroom trying to strum along to the Motown time. But once he stopped looking at himself in the mirror he loosened up. He chugged along with the records, especially The Supremes. Under the energy it was simple.

Then he started using the mirror again. He was thrilled. His plectrum hand danced. Sometimes it was a blur. The hand looked great. The arm hardly budged. The wrist was in charge. He held his guitar high against his chest.

He saved money when he could. He wasn’t working but on Saturday mornings he went from door to door in Barrytown selling the frozen chickens that his cousin always managed to rob from H. Williams on Friday nights. That gave him at least a tenner a week to put away. As well as that, he gave the man next door, Mr Hurley, a hand with his video business. This involved keeping about two hundred tapes under his bed and driving around the estate with Mr Hurley for a few hours a couple of times a week, handing out the tapes while Mr Hurley took in the money. Then, out of the blue, his ma gave him most of the month’s mickey money. He cried.

He had £145 now. That got him a third-hand electric guitar (the make long forgotten) and a bad amp and cabinet. After that they couldn’t get him away from the mirror.

Deco’s mother worried about him. He’d be eating his breakfast and then he’d yell something like Good God Y’Awl or Take It To The Bridge Now. Deco was on a strict soul diet: James Brown, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. James for the growls, Otis for the moans, Smokey for the whines and Marvin for the whole lot put together, Jimmy said.

Deco sang, shouted, growled, moaned, whined along to the tapes Jimmy had given him. He bollixed his throat every night. It felt like it was being cut from the inside by the time he got to the end of Tracks of My Tears. He liked I Heard It through the Grapevine because the women singing I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE NOT MUCH LONGER WOULD YOU BE MY BABY gave him a short chance to wet the stinging in his throat. Copying Marvin Gaye meant making his throat sore and then rubbing it in.

He kept going though. He was getting better. It was getting easier. He could feel his throat stretching. It was staying wet longer. He was getting air from further down. He put on Otis Redding and sang My Girl with him when he needed a rest. He finished every session with James Brown. Then he’d lie on the bed till the snot stopped running. He couldn’t close his eyes because he’d spin. Deco was taking this thing very seriously.

All his rehearsing was done standing up in front of the wardrobe mirror. He was to look at himself singing, Jimmy said. He was to pretend he had a microphone. At first he jumped around but it was too knackering and it frightened his mother. Jimmy showed him a short video of James Brown doing Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag. He couldn’t copy James’ one-footed shuffle on the bedroom carpet so he practised on the lino in the kitchen when everyone had gone to bed.

He saw the way James Brown dropped to his knees. He didn’t hitch his trousers and kneel. He dropped. Deco tried it. He growled SOMETIMES I FEEL SO GOOD I WANNA JUMP BACK AND KISS MYSELF, aimed his knees at the floor and followed them there.

He didn’t get up again for a while. He thought he’d knee-capped himself. Jimmy told him that James Brown’s trousers were often soaked in blood when he came off-stage. Deco was fucked if his would be.

There was nothing you could teach James Clifford about playing the piano. Jimmy had him listening to Little Richard. He got James to thump the keys with his elbows, fists, heels. James was a third-year medical student so he was able to tell Jimmy the exact, right word for whatever part of his body he was hitting the piano with. He was even able to explain the damage he was doing to himself. He drew the line at the forehead. Jimmy couldn’t persuade him to give the piano the odd smack with his forehead. There was too much at stake there. Besides, he wore glasses.

Joey The Lips helped Dean Fay.

— My man, that reed there is a nice lady’s nipple.

For days Dean blushed when he wet the reed and let his lips close on it.

— Make it a particular lady, someone real.

Dean chose a young one from across the road. She was in the same class as his brother, third year, and she was always coming over to borrow his books or scab his homework. It didn’t work though. Dean couldn’t go through with it. She was too real. So the saxophone reed became one of Madonna’s nipples and Dean’s playing began to get somewhere.

Joey The Lips was a terrific teacher, very patient. He had to be. Even Joey The Lips’ mother, who was completely deaf, could sense Dean’s playing from the other side of the house.

After three weeks he could go three notes without stopping and he could hold the short notes. Long ones went all over the place. Joey The Lips played alongside him, like a driving instructor. He only shouted once and that was really a cry of fright and pain caused by Dean backing into him while Joey The Lips still had his trumpet in his mouth.

Billy Mooney blammed away at his drums. His father was dead and his brothers were much younger than him so there was no one in the house to tell him to shut the fuck up.

Jimmy told him not to bother too much with cymbals and to use the butts of the sticks as well as the tips. What he was after was a steady, uncomplicated beat — a thumping backbeat, Jimmy called it. That suited Billy. He’d have been happy with a bin lid and a hammer. And that was what he used when he played along to Dancing in the Streets. Not a bin lid exactly; a tin tray, with a racehorse on it. The horse was worn off after two days.

The three backing vocalists, The Commitmentettes, listened to The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, The Ronettes, The Crystals and the The Shangri-las. The Commitmentettes were Imelda Quirk and her friends Natalie Murphy and Bernie McLoughlin.