Janie Jones spurning his advances on the Year 3 school trip had started it all.

“Ewwwww!!” Her button nose wrinkled at his outstretched 7-year-old hand. She collapsed in giggles with Maisie Watkins.

Janie’s scorn accompanied him home that afternoon. Sat watching TV with him. Then, as if ordained by fate, he switched channels and experienced the epiphany that would make Janie Jones take notice.

Ray Toro was shredding solos on ‘I’m Not OK’ and his future was decided. He should have been at Davey’s for tea, but Davey fell off the swings and landed in A&E. So fate stepped in, showed him how to become a playground legend.

That and nicking stuff.

If you always had the latest stickers, or this week’s comic or, later, the fags and the booze, other kids would always want to be your mates. And if you hadn’t paid for your stock, you might make enough to upgrade your guitar.

So he practiced and he robbed. Innate talent flourished under YouTube tutelage from Bowie, Hendrix, Cobain et al. Lesser talent at robbing furnished the title of the band’s first single, “Blues Behind Bars”.

Free again after 4 months, he found the locks changed on his childhood home.

Nevertheless, his father’s face was tattooed on his shoulder, with the legend “Got Your Back” – ironic wish fulfillment. “Hate That I Still Love You” was still a live favourite with fans.

But, he reflected, staring at a sea of faces, if he’d not got kicked out and ended up in the squat, he wouldn’t have found his soon-to-be band mates, or half the source material for their first album, “The Ghosts That Light Our Paths”. The other half had been germinating in his head since Year 3.

Without those same bandmates he’d still be dead.

5 years on from the squat, bassist Dahlia would restart his heart in a Hamburg hotel room after he’d been technically dead for 83 seconds. That was during his brief exhilarating flirtation with heroin. He’d ended both relationships soon afterwards – with heroine and with Dahlia.

He’d had more than his share of other relationships. Far more. Occupational hazard. But never opening up. Never letting anyone in enough to get Janie Jonesed again.

The four people standing behind him had got as close as anyone. They’d revived him, bailed him out, got him high, got him clean, piled into bar fights beside him, snuck him into and out of hotels, stood by him when no-one else would. They were closer than family. But even they only knew Lizard, not Pete.

And what of Janie? Who had she become? Was she even still alive? Or at home feeding twins and a bank manager? Maybe she was in this crowd?

It was time.

“Alright Glasto you motherfuckers?!”

120,000 voices roared back.

“We’re Reckless, but you already fuckin’ know that!”

He slammed into the opening riff, the crowd lost their minds and the ghosts filed off to watch silently from backstage for 90 minutes, Janie Jones at their head.