Page 107 of The Interview
“Blue vinyl!” Harry calls out. “In a butterfly-shaped sleeve.”
“Kid’s a fucking genius,” Len says to Cam.
“Why d’you think I’ve got him running marketing for the clubs?” Cam replies, pride so very obvious in his tone and his smile.
God, I love my family.
“You guys blow me away,” Daniel says. “Can we use that? That little thirty-second, unscheduled brainstorm, which will likely earn your charity millions?”
“Go for it,” me, Len, and Marley say together.
“Thank you. Right, let’s move on. You and Sean are back on track, the album’s finished, but the band decide no world tour…”
“They didn’t need one,” Len interjects. “They could’ve recorded their shopping list and sold millions of copies. We were all in our thirties, had been on the road or in a studio for what felt like fifteen years and just wanted to be home with our families. Instead, we chose a few select venues around the world—stadiums, mostly—for maximum capacity, and spread the dates out over months, not weeks.”
“We have some images and footage from those tour dates,” Daniel says, and the screen lights up.
The band are on stage in front of a huge crowd.
“Berlin,” Marley says loudly, pointing at the screen. “Watch Maca. Watch what he does.”
The camera is currently on Marls, standing on an amp, belting out the guitar riff to “Ordinary”, one of the band’s biggest singles from that last album. He’s shirtless, wearing black jeans, black boots, and his short, dark hair is wet with sweat.
“Far out, Rock Star,” Ashley says, fanning her face. “You’re so fucking gorgeous, you make me wanna cry. In fact, I can feel the tears running down the inside of my legs already.”
“See what I mean about the oversharing?” George calls out. “You’re basically my mother. I really don’t need to be hearing that.”
“Love you, baby,” Marley says to Ash, ignoring George.
When the camera switches to Sean, he’s walking along the edge of the stage, his leather trousers low on his hips, T-shirt tucked into his studded belt, and guitar over his back. His arms are raised over his head as he claps, encouraging the crowd to do the same. His hair is long, pushed back from his face and wet with sweat, which is literally dripping from every inch of his skin. His eyes are covered with black wraparound sunglasses. He epitomises what a rock god should look like.
Taking his guitar off, he hands it to a roadie before diving into the crowd. I always hated it when he did that. It terrified methat there might be some psycho out there who might want to hurt him.
“Watch, watch, watch!” Marley jumps up, clapping and pointing at the screen.
Instead of surfing the crowd, Sean stands. Hands reach up from everywhere, and he carefully makes his way to the middle of the mosh pit by walking above the crowd, stepping from one upturned palm to another. The entire audience, along with Marley, belts out the lyrics to the remainder of the song.
“I got an absolute bollocking from the venue’s security when he did that,” Lennon says. “Milo wasn’t too happy, either.”
“Milo’s never happy,” Marley quips.
“Aww, don’t. Mi’s lovely,” Jimmie starts.
There’s more footage of the band on and off stage. Len and Marley give a running commentary on where and when the shots were taken, along with little stories about things that happened at the time.
I take in the images, seeing the boys so happy, looking forward to spending some time at home, all of them oblivious to how precious these memories would become.
And then an image of me pops up, rising from my seat at Decadenza, water spraying from my glass into Sean’s face.
I let out a long sigh.
“Of course, you’d have these. Do you remember the bullshit stories they came up with after this?” I say to Len, leaning around Jimmie to see him.
“Which one? You were pregnant with Cam’s baby? That Sean was gay? Again, you’ll have to be more specific. There were a lot,” my brother replies.
“Who…? How are you getting hold of security footage from inside venues?” Cam asks.
“We haven’t got any of this from the venues. This is all stuff that’s out there. Our researchers just had to do a bit of digging.Maybe money was exchanged,” Daniel replies. “I know there was a lot of speculation, but do you want to talk us through what happened that day?”
