Too High Too Far Too Soon - Simon Mason

TOO HIGH TOO FAR TOO SOON –

SIMON MASON

There was a nagging familiarity with Simon Mason's memoir, Too High Too Far Too Soon, that was impossible to shake off. I kept looking at the section of photographs of the author included within its pages and thinking 'Do I know this man? Have I met him or seen him somewhere before?' Then finally on page 275 there it was: 'As well as sharing a house, they also rented a studio together in Easton and over the following years, whenever I was passing through, we'd all hang out, either at the workspace, The Plough pub or various free parties and festivals'.

Simon is talking about the neighbourhood where I used to live in Bristol and my then local pub, The Plough. The 'they' he refers to is Banksy and his flatmate who did indeed frequent from time to time the same pub. It's a small world.

The title of Simon Mason's book is taken from the Waterboys song, The Whole Of The Moon, and he describes the pivotal moment when whilst on LSD he watched them perform at Glastonbury Festival in 1986. I was there too and though I wasn't on acid, from what I remember they were indeed very good, The Whole Of The Moon being for everyone watching them the very high point of the set.

The book starts with him writing about Weston-super-Mare where he grew up and the drugs he started taking whilst living there. Weston-super-Mare, of course, is next to Bristol and was always well known to be a place where heroin could be scored quite easily. I was never into heroin though I knew a fair few people who were. I was never into crack cocaine either, unlike Simon who discovered it whilst living in Los Angeles having flown over to America for a 'holiday' at the age of eighteen.

As you might gather, Simon's book is all about drugs and rock'n'roll and his experiences of both whilst traversing their respective worlds, which as everyone knows is essentially one and the same world.

It's not the most difficult thing to write a book about your drug-taking experiences. If you've ever done drugs then you're going to have some anecdotes to tell. If – as Joe Strummer once sang – you've ever been a 'drug prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun' then you're going to probably have a lot more. Did I ever say about the time me and my friends once had a gun pulled on us by some Jamaican Yardie at some free party? Probably not because it's not of much interest to anyone else and the same goes for a lot of Simon's anecdotes.

Getting mugged at gun-point on Venice Beach as he informs us he was is all well and good but of little interest to others. On the other hand, taking Bez of the Happy Mondays up to the travellers field at Glastonbury Festival to score some opium is of interest, if only limited. This is what Simon informs us he does and it's his very first foray into supplying drugs to the stars and his first tentative steps into making it into a career.

1994 and Simon's back at Glastonbury Festival and this time he's got his own tent in the fenced-off camping area at the back of the pyramid stage where he's set himself up as the main on-site dealer, with members of Oasis being some of his best customers. The drawback being that in a bid to ingratiate himself with the band, Simon's giving his drugs to Oasis for free and though it leads to him introducing them to the audience at T in The Park before they make their entrance on stage – that's about it. Essentially, he's paying for the privilege of hanging out with them.

There's still profit to be had from selling to normal punters and journalists but the cost of glad ragging with what is soon to be one of the biggest bands in the world doesn't come cheap. The only payback apart from his five seconds of fame introducing them on stage being some good anecdotes derived from the whole experience.

When he first meets Oasis he chops out some lines of coke for them as a freebie and after finishing off, notices the rolled-up £20 note he's also supplied has vanished. For the first and only time one of them asks how much he's selling it for?

'Sixty a gram,' Simon tells him to which he's asked if he can do it for fifty? Simon agrees and is given his rolled-up £20 note back and told the rest will be sorted out later...

The band's van breaks down on the motorway whilst on the way to a festival and when the AA arrive they're told it will have to be towed away. The AA man tells them he's got space for four passengers to get them to their destination and the others will have to wait a few hours for the tow truck to arrive to ferry away the others. So the lead guitarist steps up and makes an executive decision:

'Right, obviously I'm going with the AA man now, cos I'm in fookin' charge and I've got press interviews in three hours' time. Simon, you're coming with me for obvious reasons'. Simon doesn't say which band members were left behind but it's pretty funny to think that the guitarist viewed Simon as being more important than them...

Later on at the festival, the same guitarist tells Simon 'You are my personal chemist this weekend and as such you need to remain within 20 feet of me for the duration, OK?'

'Of course, it'll be my pleasure,' Simon replies.

'It's your fookin' job, Simon!' the guitarist tells him. No mention is made, however, of payment...

As Oasis ascend to super-stardom, Simon's services are not deemed as being indispensable and he's ditched, or rather the band simply fail to make contact with him ever again. Life goes on, however, and Simon's next plan is to make a bid for fame and fortune himself by forming his own band. Unfortunately, all that happens is that he ends up being a fully-fledged junky strung out in heavens high hitting an all-time low.

As an insight into the depths a person can sink in pursuit of heroin, Simon's book is as good as the multitude of other books written on the same subject. From William Burroughs, to Christiane F, to Shaun Ryder's autobiography. Apart from a few of the anecdotes its saving grace is the self-depreciating, black sense of humour that runs through it. At times, the dialogue is even quite comical in a Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels kind of way. Which makes you wonder if during the writing of it Simon had one eye on the possibility of it being made into a film? It's all there but the problem is that it's all been done before with Trainspotting.

Nowadays Simon Mason is a recovering addict who sings and plays guitar in a band called Hightown Pirates. They're a relic from the past, of course, ploughing an epic, Rolling Stones/Eric Clapton groove but for all that are surprisingly good. They're never going to be massive and I suspect Simon knows this but that's okay because the bottom line is that Simon's very lucky to still be alive and that anything he does from now on whether it be making music, writing a book or just being a good father and helping other people is a bonus. A little gift to the world as a way of saying both 'sorry' and 'thank you'.

John Serpico