Lockdown Day 29: Monday 20th April, 2020

Mack’s Pheasant Plucker – best biker bar in northwest Chicagoland, if not the state. An oasis of beer and bikes and grinding rock’n’roll in a concrete wilderness of cross streets and commercial cack, sitting pretty off the Interstate at some bland, nameless twelve-lane crossroads, next to the best bike shop in the western suburbs. Frosty! Ice beer, kicking tunes and radical rockers on the wild side of gasoline alley.

I could already hear the pounding music over the grunt of my overblown V-twin as I killed the engine and coasted to the rear of the parking lot. I kicked the side stand out and propped the Harley in the dirt. Sounded like the Who. Sal must be working. He’d stick the ‘orrible ‘oo on all night long if he had the chance and I sure as hell wouldn’t stop him. They’d lit up my teenage wasteland when I was a kid, catching them in the Glasgow Apollo a few times and one June day in paradise with Angel at a mental gig at Parkhead stadium where they had Alex Harvey and Little Feat supporting. Even though the polis confiscated everyone’s carry-out the crowd kicked off and there was a mental stramash with bodies flying everywhere. That day was like a contest to see who could be most wasted on stage – Lowell George, the sensational Alex, or any one of the manic mods. ‘Hope I die before I get old’. Be careful what you wish for. Angel left us that summer, Keith Moon was dead within 2 years, Lowell George three, and I only saw the Sensational Alex Harvey Band once more in Glasgow before Alex died a few years later.   

  It wrankled with some of the old-timers, they thought it was so un-American. No sonofabitch Brits had a right to make such serious rock’n’roll. Beg forgiveness sinners from the ghost of the King and the angels of rock and roll. Well boys, why don’t you f-f-f-fuck off? Talking about my generation. Yanks took it for granted the Rolling Stones were the dark princes of rock’n’roll but I’d always preferred the Who to Mick and the boys so I loved it when Sal was on. If given free reign, he’d run through the entire Who back catalogue then start on the bootlegs and rare demos he kept locked in Mack’s office, and because I’d seen the band so many times I could always rely on complementary beers to lubricate our deep, sonorous  discussions.

  Even without Sal, the music was great at Mack’s. Always LOUD!  The crowd were bikers, truckers, waitresses, 1%ers, heavy plant operators, highway maintenance crews, bikers, petrolheads, more bikers and lap-dancers. All long accustomed to zoning out white noise and white trash all day, every day, all looking to mainline a sweet melodic fix to kick-start some dream mega-decibel night.

The sound system was shatter-glass sheer class and the entire sidewall next to the office was racked and stacked with CDs and tapes. Classics all. Where else could you hear a mix like you got here? It was heaven for the aging rock and roll suicide. Guitar nirvana. In-a-gadda-da-vida. For You. Roadhouse Blues. The Last Days of May. Won’t Get Fooled Again. Cat Scratch Fever. Still in Love with You. I’ve Seen All Good People. Crosstown Traffic. The Pusher. Dark Night. What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been. Heavy rock history 101 for the darksaint scholars of the road, those beer-swilling, fear-killing, drunk-cheerleader-drilling unrepentant Augustines. From Iron Butterfly through Manfred Mann’s Earth Band to the Rolling Stones, The Doors – God rest Jim Morrison, Blue Oyster Cult, the Who – God rest Keith Moon, The Beatles – God rest John Lennon, Thin Lizzy – God rest Phil Lynot, Yes, Jimi Hendrix – God rest him, Steppenwolf, Stevie Ray Vaughan – God rest him, Buddy Guy to BB King, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet of Blues and Heavy Metal thunder, clichéd Hard Rock Heaven for the limbo souls of the undead. A feast from the days when Rock was God’s Glory and pop stayed hidden in the darkest corners of twelve-year-old girls’ bedrooms. Not even FM 103.5 the Blaze had a playlist like the Pheasant Plucker and it was the best radio station under the Midwest sun. Nights at Mack’s were like being on acid at the Glastonbury festival without the body odour and minging toilets.

  Well, maybe with the BO.

  God, I loved Chicago. What a town. Downtown, the heart of the beast, wild, wonderful and wacky, never a dull moment. Cubs games on a balmy summer’s evening, shivering blue in deep Soldier field snow rooting for the Bears, whooping for the Blackhawks and Bulls at the Centre; hitting a few fastballs in the batting cages at Slugger’s, checking out the ‘its great being a guy’ sights at the cheerleader Beach Volleyball on Oak Street beach beneath the scorching sun, cycling along Lakeshore Drive crowded among the runners and inline skaters, dodging angelic blondes, silky blacks and brunettes, sunkissed Hispanics, spicy Asians, those sex-on-legs Midwest babes of every shape and colour; gigs at Cubby Bears and the Avalon, scorching blues at Kingston Mines, B.L.U.E.S. and Rosa’s; Hi-Tops with its ‘look at me, aint I cute’ college girls, the Baja beach club with its bikini babes and Dirty Dick’s with its sullied souls; late, late, late nights becoming early mornings at Fifi Flanagans or the Lakeside Lodge, watching the sun dawn a new day over the lake  with a cold beer in my hand and a warm smile on my face; rich deep pan Pizza from Pizzeria Uno, Everything bagels from Jacob’s Brother’s, mega calzone at Ranalli’s, old-school romantic dining for that special pull-the stops-out fondue night at Geja’s; Heineman’s Old Style in an ice-frosted summer glass, foaming Bud in a plastic cup at the game, Rolling Rock in Mother’s and Butch’s, dress-to-impress cocktails in the Signature room ninety floors above Lake Michigan and the Mag Mile, hot cider on a snowy winter’s morning and whisky with anything and everything. Everything you could want in a town.

  Chicago. Atmosphere ideal. Location perfect. The night view from the Signature Room high in the Hancock said it all, cold beer, wicked city and wild roads to everywhere, four states unveiled. Neon lines straightening out to Indiana, stygian lake darkness across to scantily lit Michigan and the promise of Wisconsin way, way up in the black northern distance. A city neatly centred in the land of the free for some serious biking miles. Clear skies, open roads and no borders. Stealth cruising out into the deep Midwest through the pumping valves of the heartland; popping out to Starved Rock for a quick blast and a walk in the woods, walking gently in the wilderness with a straight-thru screaming eagle exhaust; shifting two hundred miles on to the Mississippi Palisades just for a beer; roaring allk the way around Lake Michigan for the weekend just because you can; shooting down to Memphis for a wild weekend of beer, bikes and blues, or Nashville for bourbon-swilling, hard-rocking, bar-trashing country music; carrying on to Louisiana to chill to some of that easy-loving N’awlins southern comfort; or heading out on a big one, across I94 and up Thunder Road into the wheat-blown prairies or down Route 66 to the Pacific then up Highway 1 until you run out of Canadian blacktop beyond the snow-plains. I’ve seen the sugar frosting on the Big Rock Candy Mountain in the foothills of the Utah wonderland while dodging the County Mounties and played cops and robbers, police and perps, feds and felons across the whole freaking free world, a new name for each town, a different legend for every country. Well who the fuck are you, as Daltrey would cry. Whoever I want to be is my constant refrain, I won’t get fooled again. The sound of my soul is the roar of the road someone too close once told me. But she was upset because I was leaving, so fuck it. Chicago is my kind of town.

  Eat your heart out Jack Kerouac. What would you have made of good modern highways and the thud of a big V-twin, I wonder? Would Neal Cassady have been a biker? Fucking A. Without a doubt. But maybe a Triumph rather than a Harley-Davidson, cool, classic and compact. From Chicago, you were always spoiled for road trip choice. Just keep riding till the roads run out.  

  Even out here, way out in the ‘burbs, Chicago was a great town and Mack’s place was the icing on the cake. It didn’t look like much, a ramshackle old wooden joint sitting on a corner of a brace of six lane highways, tired blue sign betraying its age. If you didn’t know it was there you’d shoot right past. As intended. Citizens were never disrespected but Norm wasn’t greeted cordially at this door. You either knew the joint or you didn’t. Sometimes it knew you long before you knew it. Non-descript, single storey, sloping roof, in need of a coat or ten of paint, a large front bar with a deceptively big back room and small diner at the side, there was nothing to recommend it to the unfamiliar passer-by. Not that there were ever many of those. A few Mexicans waiting at the bus stop after a shift at the Tacqeria maybe, some illegals chasing elusive under-the-counter work.

The area was an industrial wilderness, desolation alley on the edge of Midwest civilisation. Out past the car showrooms with their vast lots and freedom promises; past Cub Stores and Dominic’s and Osco with their daily discounts; past the ‘Never Pay Full Price Again’  promises of TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Filene’s Basement; past the mini-malls and repetitive restaurants – Venture, Chi Chi’s, Target, Benihana; getting paler, shading to grey, past the transient strip malls of House of Wonky Wicker and rundown Karate and Tae Kwon Do dojos,, sun-bleached fading Taquerias, Burger and hot dog joints; past it all. Then, once you had outstripped all retail reason you hit the commercial desert of industrial lost innocence. Thousands of cars streamed by daily on the frantic highways, heading for Chicago or up to Wisconsin or back to the Illinois heartlands, but only those who worked in these plants, yards or warehouses would ever stop round here. It was not a place for the faint-hearted. This was the warts and all American heartland, here the industrial engine that powered the beast flavoured the feast tartly. Mack’s had been here in one shape or another since the days of Prohibition although it had only been ‘Mack’s’ for a handful of years. It had been a biker haunt as far back as anyone could remember with its own legends and tall tales well told by the nineties.