‘We’ll do exclusively all our own material,’ said Andy, divesting himself of his dog’s head. ‘Mr Ishmael has commissioned me to write all the new material.’

‘This is the first I’ve heard of this,’ I said.

Andy just shrugged. ‘If you have any problems with it, then I suggest you take them up with Mr Ishmael.’

That was a phrase that would come to be used quite a lot in the near future. And it never lost any of its power.

‘I’m fine with it,’ said Neil. And his teeth made the ‘grindings of discontent’.

‘And I suppose running is out of the question,’ said Toby. ‘So I suppose we’d better buckle down and do some rehearsing.’

‘Where?’ I enquired.

‘At my rehearsal studio,’ said Toby. ‘I acquired it quite cheaply during a big property deal I was doing. I can’t quite remember why I decided to buy it now. But it’s handy I did, isn’t it?’

And we all agreed.

It was very handy.

It was not a jolly reunion lunch. In fact, it set a precedent for all reunion get-togethers to come. They would, from now on, always be grim affairs. But at that first lunch, certain lines were drawn. And we knew where we stood. We agreed that we now feared and hated Mr Ishmael. But we also agreed that if we were going to be forced into putting The Sumerian Kynges on the road, then we would become a force to be reckoned with. We would do everything in our power to become the very future and spirit of rock ’n’ roll. A Supergroup.

And that when this came about, as we now determined it would, we would then enjoy the company of as many young women as our celebrity entitled us to.

So that was rock ’n’ roll and sex taken care of. Which only left the drugs. And there were a lot of those about in nineteen sixty-seven, I can tell you.

But not, perhaps, at this moment.

Because at this moment, and for quite a few moments to come, we were rather busy with rehearsals. Andy and I wondered whether we should employ a couple of private eyes to fill in for us whilst we rehearsed, because we wanted to keep the agency open.

And we were just on the point of hiring two when the Cease and Desist Order arrived from Brentford County Court.

It transpired that P. P. Penrose, the author of the Lazlo Woodbine novels, had finally caught word, as it were, that his fictional hero had opened a detective agency within a mile of that eminent author’s house. We were served with an order to Cease and Desist using the licensed name of Woodbine. Licences again!

And so we closed the agency and we had to let Lola go.

Which was a shame, because I had grown very fond of her and was on the point of asking her to marry me.

But this was nineteen sixty-seven. And if I was going to be in a Supergroup, I would, of course, have my pick of Supergroupies. So it was probably for the best that I simply forgot about Lola.

Which would, on the face of it, appear to be very simple and uncomplicated. But which was, in fact, anything but.

Toby’s rehearsal studio turned out to be a very large industrial complex on Old Brentford Docks. At one time, big business had flourished here, but by the sixties it was a wasteland.

By the eighties it became a very expensive estate of executive homes. And Toby made quite a killing selling up. But that, too, is for the future.

But for the present, which was our present then, there it was: a great big isolated building. Which did, at least, boast to significant security. Which was certainly needed, as it happens, because when the equipment arrived, it turned out that there was a great deal of it – all that other equipment that wasn’t ours, but had been hidden away in Count Otto Black’s mausoleum. And what a lot there was. Sufficient indeed to amplify any band that wanted to play a huge stadium, or a vast festival gig, or whatever.

Gigs of a nature that had not existed in the time when the gear was originally stolen. But now? When such gigs were all the rage?

Well, how handy was that, eh? It was almost as if it had somehow been planned. That this equipment had been stored away just waiting for its moment to come.

And its moment had come.

And its moment was now.

And so we began our rehearsals. Rehearsing what? Rehearsing Andy’s songs, of course. There were a dozen of them. Sufficient for a gig. Sufficient for an album. And although I, as were the other Sumerian Kynges, was prepared to hate Andy’s songs, it turned out that they really weren’t bad at all. You will, of course, know them all by now, most probably by heart, because each has become a Rock Anthem, covered by many bands, sung at many a karaoke night, considered modern classics.

I think my favourite (and probably yours also) would have to be ‘The Land of the Western God’.

And so I print the lyrics below, so that you can enjoy them once more.

The king sends me his linen to wash.

Whatever is right, is right whatever.

Life on life downstricken goes

To the Land of the Western God.

A wolf in his belly and a fire in the hearth,

Attacking the windmills as we go,

A word to the wise should be sufficient

In the Land of the Western God.

You never must shout till you’re out of the woods

For the lion doesn’t roar until he’s eaten

A brain of feathers and a heart of gold

In the Land of the Western God.

His face is his fortune, that’s understood,

Two faces hidden beneath one hood

As good as gold and as golden as good

In the Land of the Western God.

All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye -

They’d skin a flea for his hide and tallow.

An ounce of discretion’s worth a pound of wit

In the Land of the Western God.

There’s the Devil to pay,

Every dog has his day

And an old dog learns no tricks, they say.

And the dead men tell their tales today

In the Land of the Western God.

Here’s an eye for the past and one for the present.

The future is dark as a new-dug grave.

Will our children sing any songs tomorrow

In praise of the Western God?

So uplifting! Pure joy!

You don’t get quality lyrics like that any more. And the new Sumerian Kynges are, in my opinion, little more than a pale shadow of their original counterparts. But still right there at the top of the pops, you notice. So some of our class rubbed off on them, and class, as we know, never dates.

And so, without any further words needed, let us get it on, as they say. And for the first time ever, as no biographies of the band have ever been published (for I now knew how to employ a Cease and Desist Order), let me take you on a cosmic journey into the world of the twentieth century’s ultimate band. The raunchy rock ’n’ roll World that was The Sumerian Kynges.

Let’s Rock.