Of Brandy Bottles and Garden Tools

He was the best bass player in town. The best bass player, but the nicest guy. And a stage personality that put the show-offs of 80s hair metal to shame.

After a series of disasters with his existing bassist, from having to play as a three-piece thanks to angry tantrums, bar chicks who were threatened, chairs thrown, Shannon was left without a bass player. Danger was good, but it was hard to tell how much of the bass he played and how much of it was just fiddling. Play a bit, fiddle with knobs. Play a bit, fiddle with knobs. As if a bass head lost its settings three seconds after the sound check. On the last recording, he'd not even turned up. The guitarist who wrote everything played the bass parts too! So, it wasn't an enormous loss. Just really a pain in the arse.

But Shannon knew Marty.

Marty had been playing in bands since forever. Would have been playing as long as Shannon himself if he were the same age. He wasn't; he was maybe six years younger. But he'd spent his entire life playing bass. He cut his chops on fantastic bands with international attention. His entire life was music. Well most of his life. The rest of it was alcohol. But he was a rock-star, right? That's the whole point, get pissed and rock. Shannon was a drummer originally, and he played bass too. He'd played with bands at a similar level, had toured internationally.

But he wasn't as good as Marty.

They joked about it together.

'You're the best bassist,' Shannon would say.

'Not as good as you my friend,' Marty would twinkle.

Both of them knew it was bullshit. Both of them knew Marty was the star.

So Danger was out after not turning up consecutively and Marty was the logical choice. The only choice. They'd always wanted to play in a band together, and this was their opportunity.

So Shannon asked him. Marty couldn't refuse. And it was magic.

Somehow the combination of Shannon and Marty on stage, combined with the intense technical drumming of Jason and the stellar fretwork of Peter, was creatively perfect. Their stage presence was incredible. Their music was tight.

And they never argued. Not once. They were a collection of the nicest people you could possibly meet. Even the so-called "band wives" found in each other lifelong friends who supported each other and the boys. Tours were fun holidays and not chores. Organising who did what was a piece of cake. Getting recordings done was a long, arduous exercise but never anything onerous.

It was ideal.

It was going to a forever thing. It was never going to end. Somehow the band was just always going to be around.

Until Marty's drinking became more important than his bass, anyway.

Marty's drinking had always been kind of fun. He would get absolutely plastered—they all did, didn't they? The only difference was that Marty would write himself off early and be asleep by midnight. Him and his wife would get hotel rooms in the city whenever they played, so he could go hard and crash early. On long drives to outer-metro venues he'd crawl his way into the back of the van and fall asleep, making everyone worry about where he'd gone until they realised that he'd just gone to sleep it off.

No wonder, everyone thought, that he could be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first thing in the morning. That time when nobody's had any sleep, when the show has gone on all night, and the last drinks were half-heartedly slurped through just prior to dawn leaving their owners blurry, slurry, and sludgy, Marty would be bouncy and ready to go again.

It started to become obvious when he would turn up to jam off his tits. He'd been drinking brandy since finishing work; would arrive in a state fit to have fun but not to jam or create.

It became not being able to drive himself to jam. Brendan would have to pick him up on the way, and Marty would just keep drinking.

It became long drives to outer-metro venues with the band having to take his brandy away so that he'd be in a state to play when they arrived. Otherwise he'd just end up playing with his bass unplugged. Or falling into the drum kit. Or lying on his back on the floor and "playing".

It became Marty not turning up at all.

It was fun until it wasn't.

Jams became fewer and fewer between.

Shannon, as much as he loved Marty, couldn't handle his lack of professionalism. He'd gotten sober himself a few years earlier and the more that Marty drank, the more it triggered him, made him wish Marty was sober.

They'd had conversations about being sober, for sure.

Random text messages from Marty late at night with questions about whether Shannon needed drugs or therapy to help him stop. Shannon would shrug, reply, 'no I just stopped... but my drinking wasn't like yours.' Beer isn't the same thing as spirits. Beer won't take over your soul like vodka does. It won't shut your body down when you stop, like a pure spirit will.

'It was hard,' Shannon would reply. 'But I just worked through it.'

Tough, to be sober among drinkers, in a lifestyle that is usually soaked with alcohol. Enlightening, to be the sober person to whom others turn for advice about how to stop.

But Marty didn't stop. He might have wanted to. He might have even tried a few times. He might have even have hoodwinked his wife into believing that he'd stopped drinking, that the orange juice he was drinking in many-litre proportions was just juice.

Then when the entire world stopped turning and everyone cowered in their houses for fear of a plague that possessed the media and not the streets, the bands stopped. There were no jams. There were no gigs. Everyone was isolated.

Marty's drinking increased, and nobody knew.

Shannon became a dad and was distracted anyway.

The other guys wanted to play. They talked about jamming. They even considered just playing and recording, and not appearing anywhere.

Even Shannon held onto hopes that they would be able to play again, that maybe Marty would get it together enough for them to jam properly, to have even one last show before they officially called it quits.

When there was finally some light coming through a distant doorway, Marty found his own light. He found it at the end of a garden hose suspended from his carport while his wife, best friend and mother were all frantically trying to get an ambulance to attend and help him.

Nobody turned up until he was gone.

Nobody could explain why.

Destiny, maybe.

Early the next morning, Shannon got a phone call from Marty's wife. She sounded weird, dazed, like she'd been crying but was dangerously calm.

'Hi mate, what's up?' he answered jovially.

'Uh, so, Marty's dead,' was all that she could say.

Weeks later, at the funeral that was jammed to the rafters, whose live-stream had hundreds of people watching from their own homes, Shannon stood up to give a eulogy. He stood and his legs felt weak. Tears cascaded down his face and his hands holding his speech shook like leaves in the wind. Walking up to the podium took forever, and he didn't think he was going to be able to make it. He had to do it on his own. And he was the only one who could do it.

When he reached the podium, he cleared his throat. He was openly weeping.

And then he looked up.

He realised that Marty was loved by so many. Their love reflected his own and it gave him enough strength to say goodbye.