Craven Cottage Newsround

John Strohm, former Blake Babies guitarist, is doing his band memoirs online. To someone like me this is gold dust:

Juliana had corresponded a bit with Rollins, or perhaps she’d sent him letters without response. She’d been fairly obsessively listening to his entertaining spoken word tapes for weeks in the van. Before the tour she’d written to him and invited him to the show, and to her stunned amazement he’d actually shown up. When we played, Rollins stood stock still in front of the stage with his massive arms folded across his chest. Juliana was so nervous she could barely sing. Moments after we finished Rollins loaded our gear out and kindly invited us to stay at his Venice bungalow. Freda and I followed the van in the Ryder truck, giddy with excitement. Juliana hadn’t even told us that she’d invited him – his presence was a total surprise.

Rollins’ place was surprisingly tidy and grown-up: except for a room filled with thousands and thousands of CDs and albums, the place looked like it could belong to a Spartan yuppie. Freda and I crashed on a pull-out futon while Juliana and Rollins retreated to his bedroom. I have no idea what occurred behind closed doors, nor did I particularly want to know. The next morning Rollins came out wearing only a tiny pair of athletic shorts – tattoos and muscles on full display. Freda and Juliana ogled him shamelessly as he made fun of my canvas sneakers and pressured me to come lift weights in his garage. I politely declined. He asked me to make a pot of coffee and, assuming Rollins drank a strong brew, I heavy-handed it to the tune of approximately double-strength. I handed him a cup and he took a sip and immediately spat it in the sink. “You call this COFFEE??” he bellowed. “Pour that shit out and I’ll show you how to brew a MAN’S pot of coffee!!!” His brew was about three times as strong as mine, and it kept me in a manic state of agitation for the entire visit.

Which probably means nothing to anyone, but I found it very interesting.   On the one hand the series has been full of really great insights into a band I loved.  On the other Strohm’s suggesting that frail ol’ Juliana Hatfield, the most famous virgin (possibly) in music (in the mid 90s anyway), was at some point in bed with the giant Henry Rollins.  Or maybe he’s not suggesting that at all.  But his writing raises the possibility, and now I’m wondering about it.

It’s funny isn’t it? These days everything’s about celebrity, and I find it completely repellent. But when I find idle nothingness from someone I’m interested in, well, I’m lapping it up.

I suppose in the same way that it’s easy to laugh when Ashley Cole writes a book about his career at the age of 23, it’s interesting to read one of the Brian Clough books available to us. It’s all about choosing your subject or interest wisely.

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. Perhaps this is about looking beyond the obvious; why Claude Makalele is more interesting to watch than Didier Drogba, why Craven Cottage is great and why Wembley was better before they knocked it down.  And isn’t it funny how the Premier League, the league Richard Scudamore wants to sell to the world, will feature such fixtures as: Wigan v Hull; Middlesbrough v Stoke; Bolton v Fulham? Hmmm.  That’s a face only a mother could love. People won’t pay for that.

I still don’t know where this is going. Perhaps we need some news.