The events that take place in this tale are based on a true story that took place sometime in the future, not far from now.

Sitting alone in The Maple pub, in a world of his own, was the charismatic figure of Walt Waxman. As usual he was early, the others weren't due for maybe another hour or so, and this gave the young man an ideal chance to collect his thoughts and compose himself. They had all been waiting for this day to come for years and Walt was keen to hit the ground running. Nothing could be left to chance. As he sat there, nursing his pint, his thoughts went right back to the beginning, his school days. In particular, that opening day when they all met for the first time.

He remembered how, after his mother had dropped him off, he had wandered aimlessly around the playground, a lost and frightened child, looking for acceptance from somewhere, anywhere. All the other kids seemed to know everyone else already, either that or they more adept at striking immediate friendships than he was. As he continued to walk around, rudderless, he noticed the groups that had formed in the playground. The hard kids, the weird kids, the clever kids, the sports kids, the pretty girls and the handsome boys. Everyone seemed to have found their niche already and were happily settling in. Walt was on his own, weighing up his options, and decided to sit on a wall on the far side of the playground and continue to watch.

Sitting on that wall he decided to comfort himself in his usual way. Unzipping his bag, he pulled out a small tape player and pressed play. Not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to himself he kept the volume to a safe, respectable level and just sat there, his legs dangling off the end of the wall. Before long, four other children, all coming from different corners of the playground joined him. Now they had found their niche too and the five of them sat there, listening – Walt, Kirsten, Lee, Charlie and Rick, lost in music.
From that day on they were inseparable at school, usually found huddled together in the playground or at the back of the class, listening to records they had taped for each other at home. Kirsten lived the nearest to the school, and each day they would rush to her house, before her parents got home, and play their records on her parents stereo. This was their favourite part of the day, they would turn it up loud, really loud and have the time of their lives. It was during one of these days, the five of them in Kirsten's living room, that Walt turned to them and suggested that one day they should form a band. They would, he claimed, be the best band in the world. It was the sort of comment made by millions of kids in bedrooms and garages around the world. Walt was serious, though, he meant it, he always did.

They did paper rounds, Saturday jobs, fake sponsored walks, anything they could do gain more money, and they bought their instruments. Furthermore, on subsequent Christmases and Birthdays they ensured their parents topped up the collection. Walt and Lee had opted to become guitarists, Lee lead and Walt rhythm. Charlie became the keyboard player, Kirsten played bass and Rick played drums. After years of tirelessly learning their trade they decided, during a lunch break at college, that they were ready.

As he now sat there in the pub, reflecting on these memories, he realised what a long way they had come together. Here and now, they were going to thrash out everything, decide on the way forward, before they even played a gig, before they even recorded a song. Walt, who had paid the matter some thought, was keen to have a defined set of principles agreed on first, a strategy for his mission. He didn't want to just muddle along and see how things went, he knew they needed a plan. As he sat there in the Maple, his second pint now in front of him, he realised the problem. He hadn't even agreed the principles with himself yet. He knew what he wanted, kind of, but it was extreme and he really wasn't sure if he could convince the others to go for it. To begin with, he needed to convince himself.

After finishing his second pint, continuing to debate the ideas in his head, he noticed three men at the bar in the otherwise empty pub. They were about two or three metres away, sitting in a line, with their backs to him. The drink must be getting to him, he thought. He was sure he hadn't seen them enter the small pub and now here they were, sitting ominously at the bar in front of him. They appeared to have a mystical quality about them, no defined edges but instead a glow that covered them all. Walt had never seen anything like this before, in all the time he had been drinking there. He tried to get a look at their faces, but with no joy. All he could see was their bodies and the backs of their heads. They weren't even talking to each other, the three of them just sitting there in a line, in silence. Walt sat there, staring at them, puzzled. What really struck him was what an unlikely trio they were.

Walt continued to peruse them. On the left of the three, as far as he could make out, was a tall, heavyset white man wearing a beach shirt and shorts. He had thick, really thick, dark hair and Walt could tell from his legs and the backs of his arms that he had a perfect sun-kissed tan. His colleague on far right, however, was a much smaller black man with a toned, athletic body. The thing that Walt really noticed about him, though, was his dreadlocks. They were like huge tarantula's legs, which sprouted out of his head and covered his whole back. It was some sight. In between the two of them, however, was a scruffy little white man who looked like an urchin, wearing a dishevelled T-shirt and a pair of old battered jeans. He was thin and wiry, and had long unkempt blond hair, down to his shoulders. From what Walt could see of his skin, he was pale to the point of ill health. The silence between the three of them, though, only served to enhance their heavenly aura. Walt looked at his watch; the rest of the band was not due here for approximately another hour, so he continued to watch the three men in front of him.

A few more minutes passed and then, all of a sudden, the three of them stood up from their barstools, as one, and slowly turned round to face Walt. He sat there, frozen, and looked with a mixture of horror and amazement at the three faces in front of him. One of them had childlike features, one had piercing blue eyes and the other one, the black man, had the largest smile he had ever seen. They walked towards him and stood, imposingly, over his table.

"Are you Walt Waxman?" the urchin asked in a hollow voice. The other two looked on, awaiting his answer.

"Yeah, that's me", replied Walt, eyes wide open, his voice quivering as he spoke.

"Good, we need to talk to you", the three men said in unison and, with that, they sat down at his table.

The conversation that followed between the four of them seemed to last forever. In reality, however, it was only minutes. His three guests, all coming from different perspectives, with different accents, bombarded him with their message as he sat there and took it all in. Essentially, though, they were all saying the same thing and he understood it perfectly. After the conversation had finished they just upped and left, disappeared, leaving Walt speechless. It was a conversation that he would never forget for the rest of his life. He continued to sit there and wait for his friends. His mind now settled, he had no more doubts about the band and sat there imagining his future. Lost in a state of wonderment, he hardly noticed the rest of the band come into the pub one by one.

"How you doing Walt?" asked Kirsten, lowering her svelte figure to sit beside him.

"Fine, never been better", he said, distracted from his dreams for a moment.

Leaving him to contemplate, the other four started to plan the group's future as Walt watched on in silence. It was the usual stuff, just what he had expected. They all chipped in with their grand plans for success and greatness. All of them thinking, in their own way, that they had the key, the secret ingredient that would set them apart. Walt just sat there, keeping things to himself for now, while the rest talked on. Predictably, they began to get somewhat ahead of themselves. Possible musical genres and ideas were discussed, leading to endless comparisons with other bands of the day. They argued over who they liked and they didn't. They decided which television shows they would appear on and what ones they would shun. What venues they would play and which ones they would turn down. They planned their name, image, album covers, the lot. For Walt, as he sat there in silence, he knew this was just a harmless pre-amble to the big event.

Finally, though, after letting them exhaust all their ideas, he took command and spoke. The previous conversation that had taken place with the three men was fresh in his mind as he began. It was the turn of the other four to now sit in silence, captivated by the young man, as he spelt out there future. Walt, charged with an enthusiasm and passion the rest had never seen before, had them in the palm of his hand. It was infectious and they were hanging on his every word. The other members continued to listen, there was nothing for them to add, as Walt gradually filled them up with his vision for the band's future. He described it as the "Clubhouse Mentality" and extreme it certainly was.

In order to really achieve their full potential, they were to shut themselves off from the rest of the world forever. Walt told them of an old deserted cottage he had discovered once in the country, some way from here, obscured from the outside world. There they would set themselves up with their equipment and concentrate on their music, living off the land as they did so. There, there would be no distractions, no influences, just them and their instruments. Walt argued that all the best music was created in this way, and any other method would only serve to compromise what they were trying to achieve. He cited many examples of bands that had done their best work in obscurity, unknown to the world. They had been so good, he argued, because the music was written with no audience in mind. In each case, Walt claimed the fatal mistake of these bands had been to release their material and become successful. After that they were never the same again, affected by their newfound success, they had lost the edge and purity that had once made them great.

He continued to lay out his plan. Their band wouldn't have a name, they didn't need one. Furthermore, they wouldn't from this day on listen to anyone else's music and no one would listen to theirs. Shut away, they would become prolific, no sabbaticals and no time off. Never doing gigs, they would never meet their audience or their expectations. Naturally, they would record their songs but they would never release them. Only if they committed themselves to this, Walt told them, would they become truly great. Everything else, he continued to tell them, had been done before and at some point failed. This, he argued, was the only way left. They would be like no other band in the world.

Walt had put his ideas across like a preacher, like a man possessed, and the rest of the band sat there transfixed. There was never a question that they all wouldn't agree as, one by one, the penny dropped in all their minds. They knew he was right, he was onto something, and this is what they had to do. Sitting there, they looked back on their own ideas with a sense of naivety and embarrassment. This was to be there last night in public and tomorrow they were going to say goodbye for the last time. What was difficult was that Walt had insisted the whole idea be kept a secret. No one was to know where they were going, what they were going to be doing. They couldn't run the risk of being discovered. The band sat there thinking about the things they would miss and the people that they loved. Nevertheless they knew it had to be done. Walt had shown them the way. The other matter that was kept a secret was, of course, Walt's conversation with the three men. The three men had insisted on this and not a word was mentioned to the rest of the band.

The next morning, Walt picked up everyone with their equipment. One by one, they were loaded into his gleaming white van and once they were all in he began the drive. Out of the town and into the country, through winding roads and gravel paths, he kept on going. The rest of them, crammed tightly in the back, struggled to look out of the windows to try and get an idea of where they were going. They didn't recognise anything around them, though, and were content to let him show the way. He was certainly right; this was the middle of nowhere, well off the beaten track. As the van drove though a large field, Walt headed for an old wood. Once there, they stopped on the outskirts of the wood and got out of the van, unloading their equipment as they did so. The rest of the journey, through the woods, was made by foot and, after some time, they approached a clearing and there it was, just as Walt had described it, the old deserted cottage. No one will ever find us here, they all thought at once. It was ideal and they all started to get to work, making several trips back and forth through the woods with all their equipment. Finally, they got everything in.

Once inside, they immediately began setting everything up in the large dusty floor space upstairs. This was how it was going to be forever, so they paid careful attention to where each instrument was going to be located to ensure they got the best possible sound. After some chopping and changing, they finally decided on the set up. The drums were placed in the far corner and, just in front of them, at a right angle were the piano and keyboards. The three guitar amps then formed a semi circle joining up the drums and keyboards. Everyone would be facing each other when they played and the sound would meet in the middle, where a simple four track was placed to record from.

Once all the equipment was set up, Walt told them he had one more thing to do before they were ready. He took them all back to the van and they crawled into the back. Inside, right at the front, up against the backs of the seats, was a large closet that looked to be converted into some kind of vault with a bolt and padlock.

"What's that for?" asked Charlie.
"You'll see", replied Walt, "all in good time. Just give us a hand getting it back to the cottage".

Enlisting their help, they carried the vault through the woods and into the house. The van, not needed anymore, was simply left where they had parked it, on the other side of the tree. Once inside they locked the door behind them and carried the vault upstairs, where it was placed in an empty corner of the room, up against the wall. Now they were ready.

They sat down with their instruments and started to play, writing songs on the spot as they went on. Whenever they stopped they were struck by the silence and lack of interference from the surroundings they found themselves in. Whenever they played the room was awash with their noise. The years of dedication to their instruments had paid off and they soon settled into a groove. Not a day went by where they didn't play, the solitude and the bond between them channelling their sound into an unstoppable force.

To survive in the house, they learnt to live off the land surrounding the cottage. Sacrificing modern conveniences, they reverted to a different age. There was a stream that ran through the woods that provided them with fish. They made and baked their own bread in a small clay oven downstairs in the cottage and grew their own vegetables in the surrounding woods and fields. They wanted for nothing as they revelled in their new stripped down existence and, soon enough, they forgot their previous lives and the outside world, not missing a single thing about either of them.

Within six months they had finished work on their first album, complete with track listings, lyrics and artwork designed by Rick – a cartoon of the five of them, in position, playing their instruments in the upstairs room. They all sat round and listened to it playing on the tape recorder. It reminded them of their days back in Kirsten's living room when they were younger. This time, though, it was their album. The five of them looked at each other as they filled with pride at the sound coming out of the small speakers. Only now as they sat back and listened to all the tracks together did they realise how good it was, the best thing they'd ever heard. Once it was over, Walt held the tape in his hand and walked over to the vault. Unlocking the padlock and opening the two doors he revealed its vast emptiness.

"This is where we will archive everything we record", Walt told the group and, with that, he placed the tape in the bottom corner of the vault and locked the doors again. He refused to let anyone listen to it again, it was in the past now, and insisted they got to work on the follow up album.

"Gotta keep going", he told them.

And this is how it continued over the years; this became their life, the five of them held up in the cottage, recording album after album, the vault gradually filling up. After each one was recorded they afforded themselves the one listen and then locked it away forever. Not wanting their sound to become stale, they all learnt to become proficient with each other's instruments and started to play musical chairs with the line-up.

Each one of them would take a turn at singing, writing the songs and playing an instrument. Nothing stayed the same for long. Everything was given a chance, nothing vetoed. Their shortest song lasted 33 seconds, their longest one, 2 and a half-hours – both were brilliant. As they continued to learn and play, their music simply grew and grew. Separated from the world outside, not listening to anything else and no-one listening to them, they made up their own rules. Free to experiment, they pleased themselves. Before long they had forgotten what other music had sounded like, immersed as they were, in the cottage, in a sound of their own. For Walt, it was a vindication of everything he believed in – The Clubhouse Mentality, just how he had imagined it. He often found himself remembering the meeting with the three men in the pub all those years ago. Did that really happen, he thought to himself. He really wasn't sure anymore but continued to keep it to himself throughout the years, his only secret from his four friends.

With the vault almost full, the band approached and met old age. Their enthusiasm and love for their work remained undiminished, though, and with each album sounding fresher than the last, still they kept going. The years of intense companionship had made them tight, natural and it all came so easily. It was arguably now, in their twilight, that they were starting to produce their best work. A golden era, each album a little gem burning away in the vault. Old and frail, their muscles aching, they had never been happier.

The first to die was Charlie, taking his last breath as he crashed a symbol, to complete their latest masterpiece. The band stood there, in silence, their hearts sinking as they realised what had happen. They were beginning to break up. It took all four of them to carry him off his drums and down the stairs. There he was buried, lovingly by the rest of the band, in the lush ground outside the cottage. Two planks of wood nailed together made the cross, the inscription, carved in stone, simply read "Charlie". Gone but not forgotten, the band played on, dedicating their next album to him within the sleevenotes before it was locked away.

Over the next few years, others would die too – Kirsten, Rick and Lee, leaving just Walt alive on his own. The great band, after all these years, had virtually gone and Walt had watched it unfold before his eyes. Each one was buried in the same area as Charlie, outside the cottage door, the inscriptions on the crosses just bearing their Christian name. It was Walt's idea to position the graves in the same way as the classic line up - Rick in the corner, Charlie next to him and the other three graves forming a semi circle. The three graves were for Kirsten and Lee, already buried, and an open one with a cross next to it that they simply said "Walt".

Walt Waxman then left his open grave and returned to the cottage where he kept on recording, on his own, a solo artist. Singing at the top of his voice, playing whatever instrument he felt like, he soldiered on. There was space for one more album and, after Walt had finished it off, he walked over to the vault. Opening the doors, the old man looked with great pride at the work and what they had achieved throughout the years. Carefully, he placed the last tape in the one remaining slot and locked the doors for the last time. He then walked over to the piano, sat down and died. Slumped over his keys, a triumphant man.

Some years after Walt's death a young man was found to be wandering the woods nearby. Through the trees, he saw the cottage; it was the first time anyone else had seen it for years. He began to approach it. As he got nearer, he could make out the five crosses sticking out from the ground just in front of the door. He quickened his step, intrigued by the image in front of him. At the makeshift cemetery, he stood there, puzzled, as he looked at the graves in front of him – "Charlie", "Rick", "Lee", "Kirsten" and the open one "Walt". He walked up to the house and started to knock, furiously, at the door. There was no response. After a while he gave up and smashed open a ground floor window, carefully easing himself into the cottage. As he walked around downstairs, though, nothing gave him a clue as to what was going on. It was empty, no sign of life.

After rummaging around for a short while, the young man ventured upstairs. As he reached the top, he was stopped in his tracks by the image that confronted him. At first he could only make out all the equipment that was set up in the room. As his eyes travelled around, he could see the guitars, the amps and the drums. He continued to think to himself, what is going on here? Seems to be some sort of a studio. His intrigue for the situation he found himself in soon turned to horror, though, as his eyes finally settled on the piano. Sitting in front of it, as he had been for a few years, was the decomposed corpse of Walt Waxman. Face to face with the image, the young man fled the scene. Past the graves outside and through the woods, never stopping until he was far, far away.

Within a few hours, the cottage was covered with police, investigating the scene that the young man had alerted them to. They simply didn't believe him when the first call came through, he sounded deranged and the story was just too weird. They even tried to tell him there was no cottage in the woods, at least not that they knew of. He persisted though, unable to free himself from what he had seen and now here they were, in the cottage, seeing it with their own eyes. After taking some photographs and dusting the place for prints they decided to carry Walt Waxman downstairs and into his open grave where they buried him, alongside the rest of his band. They then continued to search the cottage for an explanation. After a while it came. One of the policemen, noticed the vault in the corner of the room, they'd all seen it but hadn't paid any attention to it. He called the rest of them over.

"What do you reckon this is?" he asked.

"God knows, lets open it", said the man in charge.

The men forced it open and all stood there, in silence, looking at the hundreds of tapes crammed into the vault. They pulled a few of them out and started to inspect them. Reading the sleevenotes they realised exactly what had been going on, how they all been recorded by the five people buried outside, the earliest ones being recorded some fifty years ago. They all agreed this was unlike anything they had ever witnessed before.

As word spread of the discovery, something of a media circus descended upon the cottage in the woods. After all, it was some story – five people cooped up there for half a century recording music until they died. Once the facts had been digested, the one thing that everyone wanted to do now was to listen to the music that had been created in these strange circumstances. Gradually, one by one, D.J's started to play selected tracks on their radio shows. The response was phenomenal. No one had ever heard music like it before and they became hungry for the sound. In order to satisfy the public demand, the albums were packaged and released. They sold millions, each one earning rave reviews in the process. Bands of the day hung up their instruments and simply gave up, realising they couldn't compete with their sound. They could be seen walking around the cottage and the graves, now converted into a museum dedicated to the band, in sheer admiration at what those five people had put themselves through. Walt, Charlie, Kirsten, Rick and Lee became household names in the process, legends. They had done it. Without ever being around to see it, for that was Walt's way, they had become the best band in the world.

In heaven, God sat there with Walt and the rest of the band, looking on at what took place beneath them. Down through the clouds they looked and through the windows of the Maple pub in Maple Drive. There, at the bar, sat three very old men, just like they had all those years ago, in a world of their own. Some things had changed though. On the left was the heavyset man, this time without his fake sun tan and beach wear. Next to him, were the urchin and the black man, not wearing the wigs they wore all those years ago. The urchin didn't really have messy blond hair and the black man certainly didn't have dreadlocks. The tall heavyset man was reading a newspaper.

"Remember that Waxman fella, y'know, the one we used to go to college with who was starting a band?" he asked the other two.

"How could we forget?", answered the urchin, "God we were jealous of him weren't we? He had everything, you didn't get a look in when he was around, everyone just loved him."

"We showed him, though, didn't we", chuckled the black man defiantly. "What a great idea that was."

The black man and the urchin then reflected on the day, some fifty years ago, when they decided to "show him". The tall heavyset man continued to read his paper in silence.

"Just exactly how much acid did you spike his drink with that day?" the black man asked the urchin.

"God knows" he replied." It was a lot though. If you're trying to convince someone that you're three angels, you can't take any chances. How else was he going to believe that we were the ghosts of Brian Wilson, Kurt Cobain and Bob Marley, sent down from heaven just to talk to him. He needed a shit load of acid and we needed a shit load of make up."

"Yeah, he sure fell for it, though, didn't he?" laughed the black man. " All that nonsense about the Clubhouse Mentality really did the trick, never heard from him again."

Meanwhile, the heavyset man, who had been busy reading his paper whilst the other two were talking, now opened up the pages for the other two to see.

"Get a load of this", he said.

As the three old men sat there reading the story of the band and how they had changed the world they spoke, in unison, for the first time since they had sat down with Walt all those years ago.

"Fuck me", they said.

Back in heaven, God smiled knowingly and congratulated Walt and his band on a job well done.

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