“’Scuse me, while I kiss this guy”…

Years ago, I knew a chap from school called Gareth. Because we were both interested in music and wotnot we became good mates. Pasty faced, lower-middle class but with rebellion burbling underneath, I liked him because he seemed quite cool, albeit in a slightly eccentric way.

His problem was…he just seemed to take things that little step too far…

We used to swap records of our favourite groups and he would immerse himself in the personalities of whichever artists he was listening to. He wore a tight suit and cut his hair into a mop top after listening to the Beatles for the first time, and he wore a dress and lost 7 stone after listening to the Carpenters.

But nothing ‘struck a chord’ (pardon the pun*) with him more than when I first let him listen to the Jimi Hendrix album ‘Are You Experienced?’. His head nodded, his eyes glazed over and I could almost feel the metamorphosis begin deep inside his twisted psyche.

Consequently, it came as no surprise to me when he arrived at school the next day, with the long hair he had grown from his ‘Bon Jovi’ period styled into an intense afro, and atop it was situated a gargantuan wide brimmed hat complete with accompanying silver rings and suede-like scarf accents.

Where he got the Royal Hussars military jacket from at such short notice was a mystery but it set off his purple tie-dyed flares magnificently. Dripping with psychedelia, His pale white face was garnished with a pained, angst-ridden expression, partly for effect but mostly because he was just off the puberty scale to grow a proper, ‘Jimi style’ moustache, yet he quickly solved this problem by drawing one on using permanent marker pen.

To begin with, nobody gave a hovering fuck. But he didn’t stop there. Adopting an American accent, being outspoken on war issues and strutting round the schools with a whopping great spliff hanging from his lips, it wasn’t long before he was expelled from the sixth form and he decided he was going to sign on the dole so he could learn the guitar and fully emulate his hero.

By Holly Willoughby’s sainted dirtbox, he was fucking shite on a guitar. The problem was that he didn't actually play one for very long. It cost him a small fortune because every fortnight when he received his dole cheque he would leg it down to the local music shop, buy a clapped out old Stratocaster, play it for half an hour and then set it on fire, worshipping the flames as they lapped at the air before lighting up another massive doobie and lamenting the fact that his best album only made number two in the charts because it was released at the same time as Sergeant Pepper.

Soon afterwards he was disowned by his parents, and descended deeper into drugs, mimickery and pure cock-twatiness.

Gareth finally decided that he should end his life in the same way as his hero, and one night he downed shitloads of vodka, took a whopping great wadge of barbiturates and went to bed...before successfully choking on his own vomit in his sleep.

To me, the story is a tragedy. Sure, he might have been barking as a box of biscuits, and people still to this day call him the ‘Mad, doped-up Jimi impersonator’, but I’d much rather just fondly remember him…

...simply as one of life’s lovable ‘Ex-Hendrix’…


*when I said ‘pardon the pun’ I obviously meant for the whole post.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 31 Oct 2008, 12:52, 3 replies)

I never
know whether to kill you or steal your sperm and make little puns of my own.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 13:14, closed)

you could
always do both. Kill and steal (or more likely steal and kill)
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 15:26, closed)

Click for mentioning Holly Willoughby.
I would do naughty things with her.
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Fri 31 Oct 2008, 20:30, closed)