There was an old pub that we used to go in when ah wor nobbut a lad, The Kings Arms on Horsforth Town Street, a typical Victorian pub that had never changed in 100 years, an old mans pub, a pub where on a saturday night they employed a blind man to play the piano, entertainment for the use of, and drunk people would get up and sing at the piano.
Without exception they could not sing, but when drunk no-one noticed, but one thing that we did notice during those times was that when drunk people sing they end every line with the word “….aaaaagh”…
As in,
“Good night Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight-aaaaagh”
“Goodnight Irene goodnight Irene-aaaaagh”
“I’l see you in my dreee-eams-aaaagh”
And the audience all join in, complete with “…aaaagh” at the end of each line.
The old blind man didn’t get paid for playing the piano every Saturday night, instead the customers bought him a beer whenever his glass emptied – I’ve seen him drink twenty pints most Saturday night and still be playing the piano for beer at chucking out time, and the thing is a blind man walks home in a perfectly straight line because he has no blurred vision or hallucinations to contend with.
As callow and mischievous youths our favourite trick was to go and stand at the piano with him, get talking to him, commend him on his piano playing skills, gain his confidence…
…then move his beer off the piano top.
People always placed his beer in exactly the same place so that he always knew where it was and during the tunes he’d reach out automatically to the same spot every time for his glass, he could reach for the beer, drink a swig down and put the glass back without a break in the tune – unless we’d moved his glass.
If we’d moved his glass he’d stop playing and start feeling all the way along the piano top for it, people would notice he’d stop and strain to see what the problem was, they’d shout out to him enquiring why he’d stopped playing and he’d declare in a loud voice that some bas’tad had nicked his beer – we’d be in the pub over the road by this time though.
Creased me up every time it did, how childish.
But the best pub pianist without equal was the portly pub pianist who played the pub piano in the Brahms & Listz, here was a pub pianist who could actually play the piano and was seriously wasted playing in a city centre empty office block basement with benches in it which is basically what the Brahms & Listz was.
Seriously wasted in other ways too for like most pub pianists he garnered a regular supply of beer from drunken customers who agreed that he was by far the best piano player they had ever heard, so much so that they all thought he deserved another pint to go with the dozen or so that always lined the top of his musical instrument of choice – and he drank them all before closing time too.
And so it was that one evening a few of us ventured down to the Brahms after college one night to find a blackboard outside of the pub with the proclamation that a Guinness Book of World Records world record attempt was underway therein – the excellent pub pianist was attempting to play the pub piano for twenty four hours without stopping.
That is to say that under the scrutiny of a man from the Guinness Book of World Records he was allowed a five minute break for toilet refreshment, once every hour, on the hour, you could set your watch by the piano players toilet breaks, the man from the Guinness Book of World Records certainly did.
We entered the pub.
It was a horrible sight, the sight of a pub that has been allowed, on this one special occasion, to leave its doors open for twenty four hours in the name of a charitable world record attempt, the sight of a myriad of drunks who had all been boozing solidly for at least twenty of those hours by now, laying sprawled on the floor or slumped over benches, the unmistakable smell of mens toilets hung in the low ceiling room for some had not bothered the effort of walking to the actual toilet, some had not known that they actually wanted to go to the toilet until it was too late to do anything about it – here in this room was the best argument for not allowing twenty four hour licensing laws in the UK, for your average British pub dweller cannot cope with such a thing – twenty four hour opening hours does not necessarily mean that you have to drink right through all of those hours, but they had tried to do that in the Brahms & Listz.
Worse still was the normally excellent pub piano player, now into the twentieth hour of his marathon piano playing attempt he was wide -eyed with exhaustion, playing the same refrain over and over again, no doubt in hours one and two he had gone right through his repertory of music, songs from the shows, Streisand sings Disney, that sort of thing, but as dawn broke he had probably come to realise that no-one was listening anyway and he took to simply playing the old stalwart “Good Night Irene” over and over again, until now, twenty hours later he was simply playing the bit that went “Goodnight” over and over again, a two note melody that made a mockery of the attending man from the Guinness Book of World Records who fortunately was asleep on a bench nearby.
And as we were served with a beer and alarm clock went off somewhere int he room, the piano playing stopped and the portly piano player dashed for the toilet, when I say dashed I mean sprinted and when I say sprinted I mean that he moved at the speed of light, I have never seen a twenty stone man move so fast before or since, so fast did he move that we did not see him dash for the toilet, we simply observed his empty piano stool spinning on the floor and across the room the toilet door slamming shut, we simply assumed that it was him who had made the dash and hope that he made it to the cubicle in time.
We left after one pint, it was a pitiful sight, more than a young lad straight out of college could stand.
I read in the evening Post the following night that the most excellent pub piano player did not achieve his ambition of playing the pub piano for twenty four hours thus earning himself a place in the Guinness Book of World records for after twenty three hours non-stop playing he started to hallucinate and he was carried, still on his stool, to the Leeds General Infirmary for sedation and perhaps a consultation with a good psychiatrist – I also heard that he never played the pub piano again.
