When I Died for the First Time

by Tim Booth

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Meet Seth Brakes. Musician. Reluctant romantic. Inherent troublemaker. Addict.

And three hundred and twenty days sober.

After a near-death experience, Seth is carving a new path for himself. Having reformed the band - the infamous Lucky Fuckers - things are looking up for Seth: gigs are falling back into the diary, he's in love and finally getting back to what he enjoys most: writing music.

That is until his past starts to creep up on him . . .

A dark comedy that is painfully honest, original and dynamically told, When I Died For the First Time is a raw account of a man tested his uppermost limits, hitting legendary highs and crashing to catastrophic lows. It's a tale of second chances, love lost and gained, and coming back to yourself: a story that stays with you long after you've turned the last page.

Release date: July 2, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 90000

Sample

By Tim Booth

I hate forewords. I always think, What’s this? Just get on with the book. Forewords and prologues. Both. Prologues usually look like some part of the story the author wasn’t able to weave into the narrative. Hate them. I suspect most of you won’t be reading this, but I feel some explanation is called for.

I became the mid-wife for this manuscript as Seth Brakes’s attorney had instructions to pass this directly on to me if anything happened to Seth. And unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you will know that something has happened to Seth Brakes. If I were in his shoes, I would have left this document in the hands of my manager, but he clearly doesn’t have a great a relationship with his. Indeed, Jon Brunt tried to take out an injunction against this book’s release, as The Lucky Fuckers manager wanted 25 per cent, but after some costly legal to-ing and fro-ing, he backed down.

Did Seth send it to me because a psychic told him to? He had said complimentary things about James in past interviews, which suggests he admired us, but still, I was greatly surprised to be used as his conduit. I’ve worked with his producer Rupert Stokes on my solo projects, so maybe Rupert had some nice things to say about me. Or perhaps Seth related to the fact that I am generally a sober singer, and sobriety is rare in our profession. To my knowledge I only met the guy two times. Once at a party (no, not that one! I don’t get invited to those kind of parties), and once at Eno’s house where he dropped in on one of Brian’s acapella nights. That night he was not in a great condition. He found it hard to sing gospel and folk songs he was unfamiliar with. I guess like most indie singers, singing was not his forte.

The note with the manuscript was concise:

Dear Tim, I’m sending you my writings of the last year and some demos for safekeeping. If anything happens to me I would like you to get these out to the public. Someone in your position hopefully has the clout. I trust you and trust is not something of great abundance in my life at present.

I tooled around with the songs as they needed fleshing out. I re-sung the vocals, not to get songwriting credit, as some trolls have suggested, but because they were unusable.

I read the manuscript and was hooked. Raw, meandering maybe, but a good read. Better than most of his lyrics. Is it a diary, confession, fiction . . . who knows? Little, Brown snapped it up. We did some editing, but here, more or less as the author intended, is Seth’s account of his last year with The Lucky Fuckers.

2011

When I died, for the first time I experienced peace. Real peace. The kind of peace you only read about or see on some Indian guru’s face in a framed photograph by the bed of a friend who’s become lost to a cult. The peace of the dead, I guess.

I was at Pitbull’s, moaning about his recent wraps of coke, they’d been cut more than usual. I was following him round his dingy flat from kitchen to bedroom, coked up, yap yapping on his shoulder about the relationship between consumer and producer and how, if he became a relative island of integrity in his profession, it would enhance his business, and that the customer is always right, or some such bullshit. He escaped my monologue to the bathroom. I crouched down, peering in through splintered holes in the locked plywood door.

‘Oww.’ My finger’s pricked by a splinter, a drop of blood oozes out, I suck it. The door’s been kicked in and fixed, kicked in and fixed so many times that I watch him squat on the bog, head in his hands, lid down, just avoiding me and my whining.

‘I know you’re not shitting,’ I say through the hole.

And I guess, I guess he felt, Fuck it, time to shut this fucker up.

He thunders out of the bathroom, grabs me by the throat, lifts me off the floor, pins me up against the hallway wall with one hand and shakes a wrap, of what I presumed was coke, between the finger and thumb of his free hand, growling at me in his Tom Waits gravelly don’t-fuck-with-me-motherfucker dealer voice.

‘Fucking try this then if the coke don’t do it for you, you ponce.’

His piggy eyes drill into me, his breath would make roses wilt, and I’m wondering if you can catch AIDS from spittle. He’s left the bathroom light on, cord swinging. On the bathroom wall a beard of mould hangs down from the groaning extractor fan, a whole ecosystem of dark grey and browns that matches the one rising up the plastic shower curtain. I marvel at the speed and strength of him.

Fuck, there’s nothing I can do to get down from here, and this, this must be what putting your head in the mouth of a tiger feels like. The wrap of white powder is balled up in the cling film, sperm shaped. He holds the twisted tail and shakes it.

I shiver with that magic feeling when you know – you just know – something special is about to come your way. From the living room, a duck quacks.

I laugh.

‘What you fucking laughing at?’ He tightens his chokehold and leans his granite chest into me, rag-dolling me deeper into the wall, fusing the quantum particles of wall and chest with those of your not so humble narrator, Seth Brakes, lead singer of The Lucky Fuckers.

‘Your ringtone . . . duck,’ I gasp.

‘It’s for my kid,’ he snarls.

‘It’s . . . a bit inconsistent . . . with your brand.’

‘Ugh?’ he says.

‘I’d suggest . . . a dog barking. You know . . . Pitbull?’

A steely look clouds over him then breaks. His face lights up like a child and he laughs, laughs through his nose, snorts, like a warthog. The laughter turns off like a tap. He puts me down.

‘So. You want it or not, then?’ He turns and swaggers off into the kitchen.

I’m a sucker for a hard sell. When you’re famous, freebies are a perk of the trade. Be it Nikes or crack cocaine, I never say no to a freebie.

If anthropologists want to know how Neanderthals walked, they should watch Pitbull. His gibbon arms swing so wide they catch last night’s tin-foil curry containers, piled up on the sideboard, scattering them and their contents of chicken tikka masala across the lumpy linoleum floor. The lurid orange sauce joins mouldy chunks of debris from kebab houses, Burger Kings, fish and chip shops.

‘The melting pot of racial integration. I guess dealers don’t trust cleaners.’

‘What?’ he growls, as he rummages in a kitchen drawer.

‘Nothing.’

There’s no way dealers let clients try the merch in house, but fame gives me kudos and bragging rights for Pitbull, so he lets me hang out in his shitty council flat, where we see each other as ‘friends’ rather than dealer and client.

He finds his crack pipe. Coke’s my weapon of choice but hey, I’m in the middle of a three-day bender, no sleep, smoked heroin yesterday, I’m game for whatever. Need to forget. Forget we just buried Alex.

He’s unwinding the wrap and easing it into this glass pipe. The stained bulb at the end has dark brown spirals radiating up from the bottom. He points to my favourite armchair. A 1950s stuffed square piece, as big as a throne, worn dark green with age.

I sit and the troll squats in front of me, pipe and lighter in hand. He’s gone all serious like.

That fella from Breaking Bad stares at me from the lurid sleeve inked on Pitbull’s brawny arm. Walter White – that’s his name – winks at me. His face is framed against a turquoise background, a honeycomb of chemical compounds. My foot has the tremors. My breathing’s shallow. I clear my throat. I hold the pipe to my lips; it smells of stale breath. His. I take the pipe from my mouth.

‘It’s crack?’ I ask.

He smiles. ‘Not quite. A mongrel.’ His eyes dare me.

Oh fuck, Pitbull likes to play chemist. Likes to try out unruly combinations. A childlike voice inside of me is pleading – Don’t do this – but I haven’t listened to this kid in years, not going to start now and I never back down from a dare.

Sometimes it’s exhausting being Seth Brakes.

Pitbull clicks the lighter and holds the flame above the compound.

I put the pipe back in my mouth, lean forward and suck.

There’s a sound, like rushing waves clawing through a pebble beach. Smells acrid, chemical, plastic, ugly – wrong.

BOOM.

Within seconds, the rush envelops me. There’s a ringing in my ears and I slump back into the chair in a full body spasm. A tsunami of power blasts through me, devouring every thought, feeling, memory, pain. All that is Seth Brakes is scrambling for cover.

Old footage of a nuclear blast when palm trees and buildings disintegrate into nothing. It’s that within every cell, never ending, simultaneous.

It blasts me out of my body.

I’m instantaneously above, looking down at me in the chair, at Pitbull, kneeling before me like a supplicant.

I watch the two men in the scene beneath me. I’ve never seen me from above before. Pitbull pulls back, frowning, studying me, the me down there.

I’m up here, I shout, but the sound goes nowhere. He’s fixed on the waxworks. I’m an astronaut floating in zero gravity. I’m the guy in Mary Poppins who can’t stop laughing on the ceiling. I’m just bobbing here like debris from a shipwreck.

This is fucking rad.

Pitbull’s shitty room throbs with magic. Everything’s lit up from within. There’s a hazy glowing light coming from inside everything, everything’s illuminated, radiant, alive.

I’m on the ceiling next to the light fixture. The light fixture’s an upside-down Japanese pink crêpe parasol cupping three bulbs. In its wooden spokes, there’s a plastic green toy marine, a machine gun held at its hip. I had the same one as a kid. But this one’s alive. Pulsing light, glowing. Not the character but the plastic.

Plastic! Even plastic’s alive.

By the marine there’s a rainbow eraser on its side. Its colours swirl, mutate. If I focus on one colour, it fractals into colours I’ve never seen before; impossible colours, colours with no name.

Pitbull reaches forward and gently slaps my face.

I – the I on the ceiling – laugh.

‘Come on, you fucker.’ He slaps me harder. ‘Fuck.’

His frown lines match Walter’s on his sleeve.

He’s up on his feet, it’s like stop motion, there’s gaps between movements. His Doc Martens skid on curry. He tries to pull open a drawer. It only opens a crack. He squeezes two fingers in and prises out pencils, pipes, Scotch tape, batteries, condoms, chucks them behind him.

He grabs the sides of the draw and with a roar he wrenches it off its sliders, throwing sheaths of papers into the air. They cascade down in slo-mo like white birds. He slams the splintered draw on to the counter; the sound reverberates through the room.

He reaches in and plucks out a sealed plastic bag. Pitbull runs, bag in hand, to the me in the chair. Ripping open the bag he pulls out a capped syringe. He pulls off the stopper, lifts up my sleeve, jabs the needle in and pushes down the plunger.

Huh, thought this would be a Pulp Fiction stabbing through the sternum jobby.

We wait for something to happen. Nothing does.

He shakes the husk of Seth Brakes. He stares at me. Waiting.

He lifts an eyelid, then lets it go. Holding clenched fists up to his forehead, the knucklehead roars, ‘Fuck.’

And I realise that . . . I’m dead.

And I realise that . . . I’m OK with that.

More than OK.

It’s a fucking relief.

Nothing’s triggering me, nothing’s weighing me down. Nothing. The absence of all my baggage, my history, my bullshit; it’s gone.

I’m free. Free of the weight of everything that made me who I am.

I’m detached. It’s someone else down there.

No heat, no fear, no responsibility.

No shame, that’s the biggest one.

I didn’t realise the density of shame. Its absence is massive.

That’s why I’m so light.

I’m free of Mum and Dad and even Lizzie. Even Alex.

As I bring them to mind nothing rises in me.

Nothing.

I feel good about them. I even feel good about Mum.

I turn my attention to the band.

Nothing there either. No expectations, no connection, no guilt. I’m free. Free of everybody who’s invested in me. Everybody who wants a piece.

Who wants peace?

I do.

I want peace. This is peace and it feels . . . so simple. Like it was there all the time, waiting for me.

Pitbull scrambles for another syringe from the bag on the floor. Injects it in my arm. Pounds on my chest.

It’s OK, man, I’m good.

‘Come on, you fucker,’ he shouts.

He pulls back and studies my face with the hunger of a lover. He drags me by my ankles on to the floor, reaching a tender paw to catch my head from thumping the rug.

He climbs on top of me, pinches my nose between finger and thumb and kisses a lengthy breath through my open lips. He inflates me then rhythmically pushes down on my chest, counts.

‘One, two, three, four.’

Like he’s starting a slow Ramones song.

He’s done this before, he’s good. His gentleness moves me. Like Kong with the blonde. I watch as he kisses breath back into me then pumps the air back out with two hands on my chest.

‘One, two, three, four.’

I lose interest as something weirder is happening to astronaut me on the ceiling.

My back arches, arms rise up. Like when members of a black gospel choir lose it, filled with the Holy Spirit. My hands go through the ceiling like it’s not there. Clean through. Two hands hold mine on the other side. Can’t see them but feel them, gently, with the sensitivity of an elephant’s trunk. They’re familiar. They fit. My hands feel small, tiny. The contact makes me cry.

‘One, two, three, four,’ grunts Pitbull below.

He’s fucking relentless!

I’m between worlds. The hands above me.

Joey Ramone below.

I laugh and feel a sharp tug in the pit of my stomach. It’s followed by a violent suck in my gut. I try to hold on to my father’s hands but they’re slipping.

No. Please.

Another lurch and they’re gone.

My hands pulled back down and the ceiling above solidifies.

‘Come on,’ I hear from below as Bull breathes fresh life into me.

‘One, two, three, four.’

No! Stop!

I reach out to the hanging light flex to grab hold. My hands pass through the cord but the parasol lightshade swings and strobes the room in its pink glow.

‘What?’ Pitbull looks up and pulls a sour face.

We both watch, hypnotised. The pull in my gut subsides.

I swat out at the swinging shade to give it more momentum. He ignores it and turns back to my body.

Philistine. I’m sure I’d be more interested in psychic phenomena.

I want to feel the hands again. I want to feel my dad’s hands. I’m crying hard now. Raining tears. A tear lands on Pitbull’s shaved head. He looks up again, like he’s looking for rain, but it doesn’t stall him. He doesn’t stop.

Kissing then pumping, kissing and pumping.

No, no!

‘One, two, three, four.’ And I’m being sucked down again,

away from the ceiling,

away from the light, swinging like a pendulum,

down the plughole, back into the corpse on the floor, like a genie back into the bottle,

and just as unwelcome.

I enter with a jolt, through the crown of my skull, sit up with a gasp and crack heads with Bull as he reaches in for a last kiss.

I’m crying. He’s laughing. Laughing with relief.

I’m crying with grief.

‘You Lucky Fucker.’ His hands to his face, holding a bloody nose.

‘You Lucky, Lucky Fucker.’

I’m panting and crying. Panting and crying. All my gravity, my density’s returned, instantaneously. Every cell is Seth Brakes again. I can feel the stories, the memories in my muscles, in my bones, the anger in my jaw, the grey fug of my heart.

A spasm ripples up my spine. I retch. A cup of milky liquid lands on my crotch.

In my head, over and over again, I hear the Devil’s mantra: Again, let’s do it again. Let’s do it again.

Five hundred and twenty days later, September 2012.

‘Happy birthday to you . . .’ sings Kareem. ‘Happy birthday to you.’

‘Oh fuck.’ Lee jumps up and joins in, me too. It’s Pavlovian. I don’t know who it’s for.

‘Happy birthday dear . . . Daaaan. Happy birthday to you.’

Our keyboard player Dan has been ambushed by Kareem holding this Hulk-green cake with piano-key icing and three candlesticks. Dan blushes at the attention.

He’s thirty!

No one in this band is in their twenties any more. Stanley’s forty!

‘Make a wish,’ says Lee.

Dan removes his John Lennon glasses and closes his eyes. On cue, a shaft of sunlight frames his willowy figure against the window. With his lambswool hair he reminds me of a pre-Raphaelite painting of an angel.

‘Cream made the cake,’ whispers Lee to me.

Cream, Cream, Cream cake. I’m bound to forget. Used to be Kareem. Now he’s ‘between genders’. I look for a mnemonic – Cream’s between. Cream’s name-change and transformation is taking some getting used to. Until a year ago he was a bearded, devout Muslim praying five times a day. Now, he’s wearing blue eyeshadow, leather pants and a mohair polo neck. Looks cool and cute and years younger than Kareem did. Who is this man? Woman? Person.

Kareem has left the band a dozen times. His Islam didn’t gel with my behaviour. Lee always talked him back. They’d been mates since primary school, share an Iranian-English heritage and have a bond I’ve been known to envy. Kareem plays great sexy dirty basslines that seem much more suited to this Cream than the Muslim one.

He brings me a piece of cake on a plastic plate.

‘The icing was a bitch.’ She smiles.

The band are back together again!

Fuck, it’s really happening.

Two weeks ago, we had our first tentative rehearsal. To see if we still had it, to see if they’d forgiven me and for them to see if I could hack it. They tested me out. Stanley, my former drug buddy, gave a little speech ‘on behalf of the group’. He wanted to know how long I’d been clean. Told me I’d have to stay sober for them to give it another go. He fucking isn’t! Cunt. Came to visit me once in rehab, in his cape and aviator sunglasses, brought coke with him!

I could see the band’s embarrassment at his oratory but also the truth; they’ll need some convincing and more apologies. Fair enough, really; I need convincing.

Think positive Seth.

Lee sits back down next to me and continues to work up a sketch on his iPad. His focus is total, deeply charismatic and simultaneously geeky. His crooked nose protrudes through his black hair curtain. His nose was broken in a fight. He never bothered to fix it even though he’d be massively handsome if he did. He looks a bit like George Clooney. George Clooney with Iranian-English heritage and a broken nose. Amazing guitarist, proper artist, love him.

Lee’s my best mate, came to see me weekly in rehab, daily when I was high risk. Came so often Dr Paul mistook him for a patient. Lee’s why I’m here. Here in this band meeting and here on this planet, if I’m honest. Even with my money issues, I wouldn’t be trying this again if it wasn’t for him. We are a great fucking band, but Lee’s special. He’s Keith Richards to my Mick Jagger, Marr to my Morrissey.

‘Stop fucking staring at me, cunt,’ he says, without altering his focus.

It’s 9.30 a.m. but looks like dusk, grey skies, no sun, wind and rain. England doing England. This is our first band meeting since I crashed. The rehearsals didn’t worry me so much, I knew the music would still be on tap, but now we get to find out what the record company and manager think of our ‘restart’.

We’re sitting in a glass box, a Universe Record company meeting room, fifth floor, overlooking the muddy green River Thames. On three sides of our box the smoky grey glass is opaque. Shadows pass in the corridors. It’s unsettling, private yet not private.

‘Take a seat, gentlemen.’

Jon Brunt makes an entrance, followed by his latest P.A., Monica something or other. A man’s man with a rich voice to match. His black suit and matching polar neck doesn’t hide his ballooning weight – he looks like Brando from Apocalypse Now. As our manager, he straddled our world of the (piss)artist with the demands of business, navigating us through two albums, hit singles and – the holy grail for English bands – growing interest from America. We rang him a week ago, after the rehearsals went well, to see if he’s up for another round.

‘Good to see you, good to see you.’ He works the room greeting us individually.

‘How’s Moira and the triplets, Olly? You look like you haven’t slept for a year.’

He comes to me last. ‘Come here.’ He takes me into an embrace, ‘prodigal son returns, huh.’ He pulls back holding my shoulders and says quietly, ‘Remember, I was in rehab in the eighties. I know where you’ve been and I know how hard this is.’ I clear my throat.

Bastard, he’s good.

‘Take a seat everyone.’

We settle down. He waits for our attention. ‘May as well jump right in. Good news. We still have a record contract with Universe Records. They’ve picked up the option.’

‘Yes!’ Olly stands and shakes a fist in the air. He’s echoed by fist pumps from the band.

‘Which means they need an album. Recorded before December.’

Further cheers from the band.

Holy shit.

‘Jon, that’s impossible, that’s under three months.’ I try to keep the panic out my voice.

‘Tax write-off, Seth. They need it for their accounts before the end of the tax year. You told me you had the songs written. We can do it.’

My armpits have flooded with sweat.

He leans in. ‘I’ve got to tell you the truth, gentlemen. The record company had just about written you off. Hip hop’s it. Pop’s it. indie music . . . ? Nah. You’ve been on a major for five years. That’s a lifetime in this industry. They’ve moved on to the next young thing.’ He scrutinises our wan faces to see if we’re taking him seriously. ‘So yeah, you’re on probation. You’ve got your fan base, but the most we can expect is dwindling returns. Unless – you – get – an – it. A real “it” this time, one that crosses over. Crosses the Atlantic.’

‘We always need an “it”, Jon. You always say that.’ I try to diffuse the situation with a laugh, but no one’s buying it.

He takes a sip of coffee, winces, adds some sugar, stirs, looks mournfully at a slice of cake. ‘Right now, Radio 1 won’t play you. Gone, our main outlet in this country. Their demographic is teens to twenty-nine-year-olds.’

I’m past it at thirty-two.

‘Your music’s too edgy for Radio 2. And after Seth’s meltdown . . . That doesn’t leave you much, gentlemen. Radio 6, Absolute and Virgin. They still care about music more than age, but you need a breakout song, a viral video, something different—’

Hang on, I know this routine. The bad news, a depressing build-up and then the punchline.

‘You need a collaboration.’

Stay cool.

‘Collaborations are big right now. Everybody’s guesting. That’s how you do it.’

Laughter from the office next door breaks the silence.

Brunt slides a paw across his clean-shaven skull.

‘How is the writing coming along, Seth? Do you have anything we can take to Faith?’

‘You what now?! Who?’ My voice is high pitched.

‘Didn’t the guys tell you? Faith’s up for a collaboration.’ I look at the band, no one meets my eyes.

‘Who the fuck is Faith?’

‘Your genius manager has set you up for a collaboration that should get you back on Radio 1. Should get you on fucking Letterman – a once in a lifetime worldwide “it”.’ He reaches out and scoops a f. . .