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Then I could place the face, from all the album covers. The long, slightly
twisted beak, the deepset eyes, the narrow receding chin, petulant lips, protuberant
teeth. The whole slightly spoiled Modigliani effect, framed by flowing
black locks. On Alimony Slim and the Blues Bandits Live at Klooks Kleek ‘64
he was mere Roderick ‘Raving Rick’ Simmons, a slick impersonator of
Clapton’s B B King persona. A year later he’s sharp-suited Simon Roderick,
lead guitarist with the Original Sins, whose single Sleazy Louise charted at
number forty-nine for three whole weeks. By ‘66 he’d written most of the
material on that incredibly rare album Orgone Pirates by The Vinyl Conspiracy,
where he’s credited as S. R. Wolf. Then, in ‘67 he becomes The Guitar
Hero of Hrothgar’s Feast, and their historic free concert on Wimbledon
Common, where Pauline, with her tanned arms and breasts—no—
“You’re Wolfbane,” I shouted. “You wrote ‘Druid Whore’ and ‘Masters of
the Henge’ and ‘Slag Dragons’ and ‘Dreams of Liquid Bronze’ and ‘Leyline to
My Heart’! Which faction of the pigsuckers busted you?”
He kept an immense stadium-size distance, eyes averted in a sidelong
glance at the frosted glass swing doors to the corridor. He was listening to the
distant rattle of the canteen as if it was scattered cheering. Then he grabbed a
daffodil from the vase on the end table and held it as his microphone.
“What’s the matter with you people? You just don’t know how to enjoy
yourselves. I’m the high-flying metal love machine, I drop smoke bombs of
love, flames of fucking peace everywhere, all right? I am so sexually talented,
they had to lock up their daughters before they locked me up. But I’m not
going to make you jealous. When we storm the girls’ dormitory, I’m gonna
take you all with me. Because that’s what freedom’s all about, isn’t it? Warriors
of the love feast, yeah?”
His voice roared like a projectile over my head. His hot metal vibrations
must have penetrated the plaster, the bricks, the crumbling Oakhill turrets,
out into the sleepy hills and valleys towards the rainswept grey sea.
I’m a fool not to have been quicker in recognising this important aperture
in the surface of events. There could be a mighty confluence of energies. A
great rising upon the planes . . .
Inevitably, Beddowes emerged. He demanded to know the name of this
noisy miscreant. Whose class was he in, why wasn’t he in a lesson?—the usual
Beddowes robotics. Then Eamon was praying for an exorcist, an exorcist,
while Wolfbane was goading Beddowes with a recital of all his stage names,
refusing to explain what all those cardboard boxes were doing out there.
And then the bogey boys came and broke it all up, stomping on the occupational
therapy guitar as they did so. And they marched Wolfbane off for a session
with Jago.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 