"The night I became a rock star"

By Bob Fischer BBC Tees

I'd always liked the cut of John Power's jib - that La's album is a thing of great beauty and Cast made two great, powerful British rock albums.

I was delighted in January 2008, to finally meet him at the Georgian Theatre in Stockton.

There and then he asked me if I'd play bass in his band during the gig that very night.

'What?' I spluttered. 'But I don't play the bass. I've never picked one up in my life'

On stage the second time, I was full of confidence.

'Ah, you'll be fine,' he drawled. 'I'll talk you through it. It's only three songs'.

So he did. We sat for down for two hours in his dressing room and taught me the rudiments of bass guitar before letting me stand, like a rabbit in the headlights, at the side of the stage, with a Beatle-esque Hofner bass strung around my neck.

I'd always fancied learning to play, but never thought it would be the bassist from The La's that gave me my first lesson. I was rubbish, but he was kind enough not to mention it, and I consoled myself with the fact that I'd probably never see him again.

Two men in a caravan

Six months later, I discovered he was playing at Stockton Fringe Festival, and organised a phone interview for my radio show. John's a brilliant bloke - utterly charismatic and full of stories - and it's always a pleasure to speak to him, so the interview was as funny and poignant and surreal as ever.

'I'm assuming you've got a bassist sorted for the festival,' I joked, at the end. 'Actually, no…' he drawled, again. 'Come backstage at 2 o'clock on Sunday and I'll give you a refresher course…'

I'm still convinced that I played fine, and there WAS actually a bloke breaking wind through a tuba somewhere in the crowd. Bob Fischer

So I did. We sat for another two hours in a tiny caravan around the side of the Fringe Festival stage, eating pizza and swigging Guinness while he taught me the three songs over again.

If you'd like to listen to how it should be done, they're all on his most recent (brilliant) album 'Stormbreaker', and they're called 'Calling You Back', 'Tombstone', and 'Stormbreaker' itself.

But I felt confident this time, poised, ready to take my place amongst the ice-cool bass-playing rock gods of my youth. McCartney… Lynott… erm… the bloke from Slade with the bad hair…

Sign of the Devil

There were about 3,000 people in front of the stage as we stepped out. John introduced me especially. I made a devil's sign with my fingers to confirm my status as the new Overlord of Bass Cool.

I nodded sagely to the drummer and we kicked into 'Calling You Back'. For the next three songs I made some sort of vague, bass noise that didn't seem to detract too much from what the rest of the band was doing, although - afterwards - a friend of mine gently pointed out that my expert bass-playing had sounded occasionally 'like a bloke breaking wind through a tuba'.

I'm still convinced that I played fine, and there was actually a bloke breaking wind through a tuba somewhere in the crowd. Stranger things have happened at Stockton Riverside Fringe Festival.

Whatever, it was lovely to be a proper rock star for fifteen minutes. Andy Warhol would have been proud of me. As we came offstage, The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton was leaning against a lighting rig, smoking a cigarette.

'Well done lads,' he smiled. 'Sounded great, that'. He shook all our hands in turn, and didn't add 'apart from your stand-in bassist, he was lousy' to the end of his sentence, so I took that as a minor victory.

And later in the weekend, I got my picture taken with Jimmy Cricket. What's not to like?