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Please Be Aware The Following Piece Was Written Prior To Zal Cleminson's Retirement, And He Is Sadly No Longer A Member Of The Current Line-Up Of S.A.H.B - But We Thought The Following Words Of Zal Are Still Of Intrest To Sahb-Fans!!
ZALSPEAK
Years ago, when I got into a rock group, I called myself Zal. It had a certain, unusual sound to it. No one knew if you were from Manchester or Mars. Or better still, a Hungarian dissident whose family had joined a circus to escape the troubles. Nevertheless, it proved very popular.
I became Zal...
Then, later, when the fun died down Zal didn't think of himself as Zal. He found that all he could do to make enough money was drive a taxi - a mini-cab - twelve hours a day, through the streets of London. Poor Zal lost touch with famous Zal but it seems he never really went away, not completely, he lay dormant you might say. Yet time went by with no sign of him - boo-hoo!
THE YEARS rolled by and Z was still in Nightmare City. He had a new haircut. Beneath his bed the guitar laid un-plugged, un-played, under-wraps. He hadn't even looked at it for all those years. Then, right out of the blue-black seclusion he received a call from his pal Musso, he'd moved back to the City, holed up in a bunker in the basement of a derelict church somewhere on the other side of town. When Z went down there, Musso let him in to a room with a table in one corner and a couch with a sleeping bag in the other. Elsewhere it was filled with drums. Z propped his guitar case against the wall.
'Plug it in!' Musso said, nodding to an amp.
Around Z's neck it felt like the iron chain of some ancient relic, crying out to be unearthed. He took a moment and then pressed the body of the guitar to his left ear. A few quick tweaks and it was in tune...
Before long they were back in the sling, slugging it out, like a couple of prizefighters. When the dust settled they drank coffee and listened to the radio. Here they would reminisce about the past. Memories borne from what at times now seems like a ritual wilderness. *
Shortly after it was agreed we'd do a gig with our mate Alan Thompson playing bass, the God of all bass players, I have to add...
Zal had an idea to resurrect Tear Gas. Remember them...?
For all the noise of the rapturous punters, all you could hear was Bobo bawling through the monitors, a ritual of ONE...TWO...ONE...TWO... that slowly filtered through the entire place.
Suddenly, from out of the seismic darkness a grotesque, dissonant chord crashed against the faces of those who had forced themselves together in waves like debris washed up from a shipwreck - banked up like a wall of fugitives they piled against the head of the stage - if one stumbled they all stumbled.
Above the throttled roar two great creatures, it seemed, were about to do battle as the sheer volume split open the brain and a blinding flash of arse ripping light from the overhead shadows shattered the blackness...!
Those closest to the noise looked as if they'd been kneecapped, while some fell smothered in sweat, like ripe fruit to the stone ground.
They called themselves TEAR GAS...! *
Anyway Tear Gas were ok, Zal tended to hog the limelight of course - fuckin show off! What he figured was, if you're going to stand on this platform above the level of the floor, you better have a good enough reason. And don't forget, all those folks, they were paying hard-earned cash to see it.
By that I mean it seemed natural, you were asking for it, to get up there on stage and prance around - your knob casting its own improbable shadow...
And get this, with Tear Gas we called ourselves professional, only we were all on the dole - fuckin fiver a week! Professional my stellar arse...
Fuck sake! What an insight... Enough to make you paranoid!
Jesus, paranoid and enigmatic - fuckin Freudian festival...
Anyway, another funny thing is when you start out in a band you can be so close to the audience as to be in your own front room, the one with the cosy fire. And what happens? You end up being three hundred thousand quid in debt (apparently), your arse in a sling. It's called success ... aye right!
Born in Glasgow in a concrete box with metal windows, condensation and another child sharing the room with him - his big sister.
There's this fire, a fireplace downstairs, I must be about five years old. This fire, into which a distraught uncle had once accidentally thrown a whole weeks wages by mistake...
Again I see this fire, the focal point of a cosy room for adults, a posh room where they all gather religiously. Where one after another the family entertainers did a turn long into the night...
Those that drank a bit too much would bang on about the days when everything cost sixpence or a halfpenny. As if anything has actually changed. It never seems to dawn on them, the concept of relativity, never ever!
To Zal they were just old buggers, harmless and funny. His father, who had travelled to the Far East and come back full of illumination, was authoritative in everything he spoke of, insatiable exponent of world history and geography, the Greek Classics and English Literature. His mind was an illustration in memory, littered with romantic language and gripping tales set in jungle hideouts or maharajas temples. Zal became saturated as the world got smaller and smaller...
Evidently, something rubbed of on him. In fact his determination was such that leaving home to become a 'professional' musician seemed the most natural thing in the world...
It's what you get from having a loving and supportive family.
Anyway, that's my little introductory piece. Enjoy the new website and the rest of the SAHB experience.
X Zal
* excerpts from Hail Vibrania - in the beginning...