‘But isn’t it strange that after so many years of being together you went your separate ways? Didn’t the other three keep in touch, either?’

‘I don’t think so.’ He stared into the far distance. ‘The last few years we played together, it was like we kept the group going with CPR. Jesus, Varg. We started when we were boys, fifteen or sixteen years old. We’d known one another since we were small. 64Later we developed into very different people. It was a wonder that we stuck it as long as we did.’

‘You make it sound like a marriage that goes to pieces when the children have grown up.’

‘Perhaps that’s how it was. Life is like that. We’re born and we grow up. We meet people and they bring about changes. Then all the farewells start. You finish school – some kids disappear. You’re abandoned or others abandon you.’

‘I know the feeling.’

‘You learn new skills, meet new people. Get a job, get several jobs … and meet even more people. And lose some on the way. Even those who’ve been with you for most of your life are sometimes gone one day.’

‘You’re not just referring to the lads in the band?’

‘No, Varg. I’m thinking of … well.’

I was on the point of saying something, but he interrupted me: ‘I remember when we started out for real – that was the heyday of the dances outside Bergen, at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties. Big cars had started appearing on the roads, people could afford to go out on Saturday evenings, buy beer and petrol and half-bottles of spirits.’

I nodded.

‘And the places we played. Bergheim, Fjellheim or whatever they were called. Youth clubs, sports halls, school gyms – they all merge into one for me. We went back to the same places again and again. The stench of detergent and sweat. The pathetic dressing rooms. The noise outside before the crowd was allowed in. Bottles clinking, car horns hooting, hysterical laughter. Then, when the dance started, all the wallflowers, then the first couples venturing onto the dance floor. The teenie-boppers who always hung around the stage as if they were stuck to it with the pink 65bubble gum they always had in their gobs. If you went to the toilet there was always someone puking, always someone spewing up their guts and spreading a carpet of beer, spirits and bile all over the place. Towards the end of the night you could bet your bottom dollar that there would be fights, especially if there was a shortage of girls. And there often was. We always had quite a few of them with us.’

‘The band?’

He nodded. ‘In the end it all merges into one and you can’t distinguish a thing. All the gigs, the youth clubs, the girls. And usually we were wasted. And we didn’t do it in the most romantic places, either. On a sleeping bag in a dark corner of the gym. In the basement of a youth club. Against a toilet wall. On the floor of the van, if we had one. I tell you, Varg, I can remember some of the places we did it in better than the girls we did it with.’