‘I’m grand!’I lied.‘Thanks for the drink.’
And then, suddenly, it was time.
The venue looked a lot bigger and more full once I was up on the stage with my guitar slung around my neck.Tadhg gave me a reassuring nod.
‘Come on, Lol,’ he said.‘Let’s show ’em how it’s done.’
As soon as he walked up to the microphone stand, the entire room quietened down and heads started turning towards us.He’d had stage presence even when he was a teenage busker, and I don’t know what he’d been doing in that band down in Cork for the previous three years, but now his onstage charisma was off the scale.It was like he’d turned a light on inside himself as soon as he got up there.
‘I’m Tadhg Hennessy,’ he said in that honey-and-gravel voice.‘That’s Joanna Smyth, that’s Brian O’Hara,thatis Laura McDermott and we are, above all else’ – he threw me a sidelong grin and I couldn’t help grinning back – ‘The Band Laura’s In.’
Then Brian counted us in, and for fifteen minutes nothing else mattered.
This was the thing about our band: we only ever played four gigs, but every time we got on stage people who’d never seen us before were surprised by how good we were.They expected a shambolic student band and they got something else.Part of it was down to Tadhg and his undoubted star power, but I’m not being deluded when I say that it wasn’t just that.Joanna was a brilliantly fierce bass player.Brian had become a genuinely good drummer.I won’t indulge in false modesty and pretend I wasn’t a good guitarist, because I wasverygood.And there were the songs, the ones Tadhg and I wrote.We started the set with ‘Anyone But You’, a garage-rock song with a ridiculously catchy, poppy chorus, and before we’d reached that chorus the previously empty space in front of the stage had entirely filled up.People were drifting across from the bar.By the time we finished the song the crowd was pressed right up to the edge of the stage.When I slammed down the final chord there was a tiny split second of silence and then the entire room went wild.
They stayed wild for the rest of our short set.The second song, ‘Midnight Feast’, was received with even more enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm was infectious – it made us play harder, play better.Years later I stumbled across a blog post looking back at what they called Tadhg Hennessy’s first Dublin gig in 2002.They didn’t mention the name of the band he was playing in, but it was that gig all right.They said everyone in that room knew they were looking at a star, that the two bands who playedafterwards might as well have stayed at home.They wrote about the gig like it was Tadhg’s solo show with some backing musicians, but that’s not how it felt on stage that night.Playing with Tadhg never felt like that.When the four of us played together it felt like we were a team, we were a band, we were agang.Joanna’s bass and Brian’s tight drumming kept us all in perfect sync, and Tadhg and I communicated without words, my lead and his rhythm guitar combining into one glorious noise.
And then, just as he said, ‘Thank you, you’ve been amazing.This is our last song.It’s called ‘Tourniquet’,’ Jess and her friend moved to the front of the crowd.She was gazing up at Tadhg in just the way I’d have liked to gaze up at Tadhg if I were in the audience: cool, amused, impressed but not adoring.I remembered how nicely she had praised my dress.She said it was cute.Itwasa cute dress.Not sexy like the maxi dress, the one I should have worn.
And I thought,Cute?I’ll give you fucking cute.
I launched into the ferociously choppy, poppy riff that opened the song, then Tadhg started singing and I threw myself into the music like I was going into battle.I turned and caught Tadhg’s eye and for a moment it was just the two of us, playing together, facing each other, looking at each other as if we were the only two people on earth.We played the last notes, Brian gave a cymbal a final, thunderous smash, and the audience applauded and roared so loudly I felt dizzy.The four of us stared back at the crowd, a little shellshocked.
We’d done it.We’d played our first proper gig.And every second of it had beenmagnificent.
Then, as we were walking off the stage, still in a daze, Jess ran up and gave Tadhg a huge hug.
‘Tim!’she cried.‘Oh my God, you were so good!That was incredible.’She turned to me and beamed.‘You were amazing, Laura.Tim never said you could play like that!’
Hours later, when I was in bed trying and failing to get to sleep, this was one of the sentences that kept replaying in my head.He’d never told her I was good in the band.Of course he hadn’t.Why would he ever talk to her about me?
Then Katie was flinging her arms around me and Sarah was congratulating me and the two of them were dragging me off to the bar.
‘Jesus,’ Katie whispered in my ear, ‘when you were playing that last song I thought he was going to start shifting you right there on stage, seriously.’
That sentence went round in my head later that night too.
The next two hours were a bit of a blur.People kept coming up to me and saying how amazing we’d been, how cool I’d been.People were buying me drinks, more drinks than I could consume.It was dizzying.Ruairí invited us all back to a party in his house.There was a febrile end-of-term mood in the air, as if anything might happen and any of us could do anything.I don’t remember a single second of Shatner’s and Sourpuss’s sets.I just knew that I mostly lost sight of Tadhg, apart fromglimpses across the crowded venue of him talking to various friends and classmates.Including Jess.
Then, when I was on my way back from the loo after Sourpuss left the stage, he was suddenly in front of me.
‘There you are!’he said, smiling down at me.‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Hey!’I said, beaming back at him.‘That was deadly, wasn’t it?Playing up there?’
‘That,’ he said, ‘was fucking brilliant.’
‘We need to do it again.’
‘We will,’ he said.
‘Ruairí’s having a thing later back in his house,’ I said.‘He’s got a free gaff.What do you think?’
Tadhg hesitated and then said, ‘Well actually, Jess asked me back to her flat in Fitzwilliam Square for a drink.’
‘Oh, right!’I said.‘Okay.Cool.’
Back to her flat.
