We hit a low point around mid-afternoon on the second day. I had stepped out of 
the rehearsal room and was standing 
by the coffee dispenser in the studio canteen eating a bag of nachos when a man wearing a gleaming white shirt walked 
in. He smiled. I smiled. “I’m looking for Spencer Davis,” he said.

Weren’t we all. Spencer, our band counsellor, had gone Awol. Four hours earlier he said he was just popping to the doctor’s to get something for his sinuses. How long could that take? He had deserted us, his band, and we had no idea what we were doing. Ro Sweat, the bassist, was looking fed up. Mike Silverman, the younger of our two drummers, was in the car park smoking. Mike was already wearing a nicotine patch. Well, that plainly wasn’t working. He was stressed about being here – feared his drumming was inhibited by the starry company – and doubly anxious 
now, as he’d just heard a story about someone having a stroke after smoking while they 
were wearing a patch. Soon enough, I 
feared, Spencer would not be the only one 
 in need of medical attention.

Spencer’s not here, I said, but his band is in that studio, right there. I’ll take you across in a minute, I said casually. My name’s Jeff, said the man in the white shirt, Jeff Foskett. Oh, I said, brain engaging, you’re the guy who works with Brian Wilson? That’s right, said Jeff, smiling.

Brian Wilson, as perhaps not everyone knows, was the founder of the Beach Boys, a 1960s band in California who sang beautiful, timeless songs about girls and beaches and being young. Many people think their 1966 album, Pet Sounds, is the greatest pop music ever recorded. Wilson wrote most of it and is widely regarded as the one true, living genius of contemporary music. He was in his mid-twenties when he wrote those songs. He will be 65 in June. Sadly, he was already sick back then and has been sick more or less ever since. His psychological problems are variously attributed to drug abuse and childhood trauma. But in 2004 he went back on the road to perform a new version of his unfinished album from 40 years earlier, Smile. He played at the Festival Hall in London. Jeff Foskett had been on stage beside him as his musical director.

I told Jeff I missed the shows but had seen the documentary. You wouldn’t have recognised me, said Jeff, I was bigger then. What do you mean? Well, I weighed 400lb, said Jeff. But I had gastric-bypass surgery straight after. My stomach shrank to the size of a pea and I’ve lost 130lb in the last 21/2 years. It was slightly disconcerting, being told this by someone you’ve just met, but of course we were in California, where normal rules of discourse do not apply. Still, little did I know that, thanks to Jeff, I was about to be reinvented.

Before you settle down to the story of how I became a rock’n’roll hero, there’s something I ought to tell you, which is, until that weekend, 
I had never played an instrument or sung a note. Sure, I’d sing in the car, when the CD player was up loud and nobody else could hear. I’m not saying it sounded pretty, but it passed the time in traffic. I don’t ever recall singing in a shower or doing a turn at karaoke. I was kind of shy that way. Or reserved. The old me.

When I was told I was going to Rock ’n Roll Fantasy Camp, my first thought was there 
would be easy pickings, standing in the corner, observing what was going on. I would fly to Hollywood, sleep in a decent hotel, eat a breakfast I hadn’t cooked, leave my wet towels on the bathroom floor and have them picked 
up by someone I didn’t know. Maybe I would visit the hotel gym; hopefully, I would do a 
bit of shopping at some point, when the job was in the bag, take advantage of the ludicrously favourable exchange rate. Was I thinking out loud? I was rumbled. The editor called. We think you should take part, he said. But I have no 
voice. I can’t play a note. I have no talent! (I was desperate, I should say here, and don’t honestly believe I am talentless.) Never mind, he said, 
take a harmonica or something.

A shadow had passed over my camp. Now I would be the joke, instead of others – an object of derision in my own story. How much fun would that be? My heart was so heavy at Heathrow, I’m surprised the plane got airborne.

My first impression, on arrival, was that I had been parachuted into a new Californian cult. At the welcoming lunch for returnees, the camp founder, David Fishof, called a succession of campers and old rock stars to the microphone. One by one, like rolling waves, they drowned us in a gushing sea of praise and sentiment. Here was Bob Fischer, a retired furniture-store owner from Las Vegas, a ponytailed guitarist in his mid-fifties who cried on a plane reading about Camp in a magazine, and phoned Fishof at midnight, begging to attend. Bob’s beautiful wife, Suriva, beamed and nodded as he spoke. She was here on the “spouse package”, accompanying but not participating. “It was the greatest experience of my life,” Bob told us of his first camp, “hanging out with guys I grew up listening to.”

Fishof plucked Artimus Pyle from among 
the professional musicians scattered around 
the room. Artimus wore a big cowboy hat all the time. He had long hair, a drooping moustache and beard and was the living embodiment of a rock’n’roll survivor. I’m 58, he told us, and I still love drumming. Artimus was best known as the drummer with Lynyrd Skynyrd. He crawled away from a plane crash in 1977 in which half of his band had been killed. He had promptly been shot trying to seek help, but that’s another story. Artimus told us he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. “I was unknown when I got my chance,” he said. “We’re all unknown until, er, we get known.” You tell it, Artimus! There was whistling and cheering.

I sat next to Alan Jenkins, a commercial real-estate agent from Huntsville, Alabama. He was about to turn 47. This was Alan’s third camp. Why? He shrugged. “It’s better than therapy.” Alan told me he was a drummer too. What was this, drum camp? I asked if his wife didn’t get fed up at home, with him hammering on the drums all the time. Alan said he was lucky: he had a 22-acre estate and kept his drum kit in a barn some distance from the house. I later heard he had a second home on a Caribbean island and had flown to camp in his private jet.

He was, I would guess, a multimillionaire, but you would never have known from his quiet, modest manner. He had come to camp to have fun. So too, I imagine, had the handful of other multimillionaires who were there.

There were 85 campers in all and most had paid just under $10,000 to attend, plus hotel bills and “spouse package” if required. Many had received their tickets as gifts. Others had scraped the money together. The millionaires, of course, were not troubled by the cost.

Ed Oates from northern California had been in a band for 40 years and become rich as the co-founder of the software systems company Oracle. Ed had paid for his entire band to come to camp, plus one more friend, Scott Goldberg. I saw Scott that first day, looking sorry for himself, in blue shorts, white ankle socks and a “United We Rock” T-shirt. Scott told me he once had a promising future as a guitarist but life had dealt him a series of setbacks, specifically the succession of operations he needed following a serious car crash in the mid-1990s. He had been invited to play in the Jerry Garcia band – in fact, he had been invited to become Jerry Garcia, replacing him in his own band, after Garcia’s death – but Scott had been forced to turn the tour down, as he was too ill to travel. Scott seemed forlorn, often on the brink of tears. He needed Fantasy Camp to cheer him up. Today, he told me, his hiatal hernia was giving him stomach trouble. Pre-audition nerves, maybe? Scott conceded this was possible.

That afternoon, after lunch, everyone assembled at the bigger of the two sound studios nearby where we would be sequestered for the next five days. SIR studios at 6465 Sunset Boulevard was a well-known music-industry facility and had been used by Aerosmith, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and many other bands. Now a bunch of rank amateurs took to the main stage in groups to audition, before being divided into 13 bands. Each band would be assigned a “counsellor” – one of the professionals Fishof had hired for the occasion. The bands would go to a studio and spend the rest of camp learning three songs: one by the band Kiss, one by the Beach Boys, and one more of their own choosing.

Paul Stanley, the lead singer from Kiss, would visit the bands to sing with them; Brian Wilson would come and listen to their Beach Boys renditions. Other guests would pass through and play or listen: Mickey Hart, a drummer from the Grateful Dead; Bret Michaels, the lead singer of Poison; and Scott Ian from Anthrax. The guitarist Steve Vai would give a masterclass and Dickey Betts from the Allman Brothers would jam with anyone who cared to join him.

On the last night there would be a “battle 
of the bands” on stage at the House of Blues, further along Sunset. This would be David Fishof’s seventh camp and he had learnt to pack in the days, leaving no lulls or longueurs, no room for downtime. “You’ll get tired,” he told us. “Don’t worry. You can sleep when you’re dead.” Fishof was a cabaret turn all on his own, a clever, funny Jewish man out of the Catskills, New York. I asked how he persuaded all the musicians to take part. “I got pictures of them all f***ing women,” he said straight back. “No, no, I’m joking. It was hard at first, but then Roger Daltrey agreed to do it and that helped. Roger really put me up a notch.”

Daltrey had been at three camps. One returning camper told me Daltrey’s voice sounded shaky at times and he could be precious about how well campers’ bands performed 
songs by his band, the Who, but by and large he had been a trouper. Some of the old musicians, 
I suspected, could do with the money. One, I heard, had been rescued from bankruptcy by a financial adviser he had met at an earlier camp. Others, like Daltrey, could not be that hard up, could they? So what was their motive?

Fishof thinks they enjoy basking in the adulation of their admirers among the campers – for them there is all the fun of performing and being loved for it without any of the old stresses of being in a real band. Fishof’s biggest mistake so far had been Peter Tork of the Monkees. “My worst counsellor!” Fishof said. A camper told me Tork had been moody but keen on the women.

The campers were nervous, you could 
tell, silently rehearsing the chord changes on their electric guitars as they awaited their 
turn to audition; many of the drummers 
drilling their sticks on their laps. “It’s a bit like standing there naked,” said Bob Fischer, 
“going up there to express yourself.”

Here was Jan O’Brien from Tucson, who had never sung in public before but had come to camp billing herself as a lead singer. She hoped it would be her “ultimate karaoke”. Four years ago, Jan’s son joined the air force and was in training to go to the Middle East. He had gone out with friends one night and they had been drag-racing in two cars on the way home. Jan’s son had been a passenger in the car that left the road and hit a tree. He died instantly. Jan had one surviving 
son in his mid-twenties. She had promised her dead son, really promised herself, to live out 
her life to the fullest and not be held back by 
fear. Though right now, waiting to sing, that seemed more admirable than realistic to her.

The biggest camper, bigger even than the old 400lb Jeff Foskett, was Dave Burkes, who called himself Super Dave. He was here with his wife, Brenda, who had given him the gift of camp for his 50th birthday last November: “Super Dave, you’re gonna be a rock star,” the card had said.

Dave’s band counsellor, Spike Edney, called his band the Super Dave Clark Five. Edney was a sharp-witted keyboard player who had toured with Queen and spent long nights sitting up in hotel rooms trying to beat Freddie Mercury at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. He was scheduled to play lead counsellor at Fishof’s forthcoming London Rock ’n Roll Fantasy Camp, which would feature Ronnie Wood of the Stones, among others, and take over Abbey Road studios.

One by one, the amateurs took their turn. As Spencer Davis took the stage I saw David Fishof go up and speak to him. Fishof peered out into the audience. David! David from London! Get up here! I got up on stage and was handed a tambourine. I had never held one before and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Spencer Davis led the audition with his old hit Gimme Some Lovin’. The Spencer Davis Group had been among the leading British bands of the 1960s. Spencer was still playing now, in his mid-sixties. He knew how to. Unlike me.

I tapped the tambourine against my thigh. Kelly Keagy, another of the counsellors – another drummer, from the band Night Ranger – bounced over, all natural-performer-like, and stood in front of me, exaggeratedly hitting a cowbell with a stick, showing me how to mark time. He ushered me to the microphone so I could join in the chorus. I whispered, gimme, gimme some lovin’, hoping nobody could hear. Closer, shouted Keagy, get close to the mike! I was glad when my audition was over. Fishof seemed amused. I think I’ll put you in Spencer’s band, he said. You’re both British. That’ll work.

My band. I like writing that. I’ll write it again. 
My band had seven members, plus Spencer. Six musicians and me. Ro Sweat, the bassist, was in her early forties and lived in LA. She was an administrator for a police DUI (driving under the influence) unit. Ro and her husband, Sammy, had both been at previous camps, but right now Sammy was concentrating on his martial arts. Ro told me later she was depressed when she found her band had been assigned a complete non-starter (me), as she’d had one before and it had really dragged them down. I was glad she hadn’t told me this sooner.

Randy Squires and Dan Williams, lead guitarist and keyboards, were two old friends from Vancouver, both 52. Randy was a lottery winner, retired, and had time to spare. Dan was a local president of minor-league baseball. They had been writing and playing music together since the 1970s but had last played in public 28 years ago. Randy and Dan had brought with them several songs, including one, Texarcan, a country ballad, which we decided to play and perform.

Alex Lopez Negrete was our second lead guitarist, a bespectacled businessman in his mid-forties from Houston, specialising in the Hispanic market, with his own family origins in Mexico. He recently visited London with his family and stayed for a week at the Ritz, so business must have been good to him.

Mike Silverman was our youngest member, his 31st birthday falling on day three of camp. Mike had been brought to camp by his uncle, our other drummer, Larry Nagel, who was 56. Larry employed Mike back in Tucson in his hospitality service company, which he rashly described as a toilet-roll supplier. Larry had musical history, having once played with Billy Preston and been in bands in the 1960s, until all his friends got drafted. Larry once auditioned for a country singer and came away saying the lead singer was horrible. “She couldn’t f***ing sing.” That was Linda Ronstadt.

Larry would be our lead singer too, with his gravelly inflections. Mike pounded those drums. On the second day in the studio he put the pedal through the bass drum. I realised, a slow dawning, that Mike, especially, but actually all the members of my band were overawed and thrilled at mixing with the musicians. The words “unbelievable” and “awesome” became common currency. Mike would phone his girlfriend, Melissa, back in Tucson every time something happened. “You’ll never guess… It was unbelievable… awesome…”

These calls had added drama, as Mike had already told us that Melissa was among 40-odd guests that he and Larry had flying in from Tucson to see us on the last night at the House of Blues. Mike planned to propose to Melissa right there on stage, and had already bought the ring.

Everyone took photos and Larry must have recorded hours of video. Mike and Larry sat and listened, awestruck, as Spencer told them tales of his early life – being invited round to Paul McCartney’s house in St John’s Wood in London to hear the Sgt Pepper album for the first time. Paul opening the door with a fat spliff in his hand, warning Spencer to step over the fresh dog poo left by his old english sheepdog, Martha. The dog had been the subject of one of McCartney’s saccharine ballads, Martha My Dear, which sounded so much like a love song that McCartney had to point out that his relationship with the dog was platonic.

Spencer had known them all, the dead ones, Lennon, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, as well as those who had survived like him. Though he had taken LSD by accident a couple of times, Spencer’s drug consumption had been modest. No doubt that helped. He now lived on an island off the California coast, Catalina. He gave us all a copy of his latest CD: So Far.

Spencer was feeling peaky and I could tell he was struggling to perform as he started putting us through our paces, trying to create a coherent band. He decided to go to the doctor and left us struggling to find the right songs to play.

Bret Michaels, the lead singer from Poison, came in, and I stood with Larry’s video camera while the band accompanied him on Poison’s best-known song, Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Michaels left to tour the other studios. One of the counsellors was Jane Wiedlin, who had been with the all-women band the Go Go’s. She brought scented candles into her studio every day and named her Fantasy Camp band the Desperate Houseplants. Soon after Michaels called in to see her, somebody smelt burning. Everyone was puzzled. What was that smell? Suddenly a camper shouted at Michaels: 
“Dude! You’re f***in’ on fire!” Michaels’s trouser bottoms had caught alight on one of Wiedlin’s candles. They threw glasses of water over him to douse the smoke and the flames.

When Jeff Foskett came into our studio, he took over and started to show us how to play California Girls. He gave everyone a tip in turn and suddenly we started to sound just a little bit like the Beach Boys. I was trying to play the tambourine. Jeff took it and tapped out two different rhythms, one for the verses and one for the chorus. He told me the tambourine was important in this song. The taps seemed depressingly complicated. As the band played 
 I leant over and whispered in Jeff’s ear: “I’ll never learn that, not in 1,000 bloody years.” He showed me, patiently. Like this, he said, one, two, buckle my shoe. Well, with that, I was away. One, two, buckle my shoe. I could do that.

Jeff looked on, smiling. I got it. I got it! For the first time in my life I had found a beat and kept to it. Larry gave me a little harmony to sing behind the final chorus of “I wish they all could be California… I wish they all could be California… girls…” I sang: “Girls, girls, girls, it’s girls, girls girls.” It sounded sweet, I could tell.

I was in a band and had something to do. It was fun and exciting. I hit the tambourine against my thigh with enthusiasm. Jeff leant over with one more piece of advice: don’t hit it against your thigh, you look like an amateur; hit it against your palm, you’ll look like a professional.

The tambourine also worked well with our chosen Kiss song, Strutter, on which I sang along with the chorus: “Everybody says she’s looking good, and the lady knows it’s understood, strutter.” The next day, Paul Stanley came in to play with us. Stanley was in his mid-fifties and looked very effeminate with his long hair and his posturing. Stanley seemed distant, unlike most of the other musicians, but he sang like hell. Afterwards, Larry asked if he had any tips. Yeah, said Stanley, get a lead singer like me.

We got in the shuttle to go back to SIR studios. Artimus Pyle was on the bus. Anyone mind if I light a joint? No. I heard that Artimus had been having mini-parties in his room at the hotel, which was strictly no-smoking. Artimus smoked a lot. Someone renamed him Partimus. He smoked in his studio too, perhaps to soothe his nerves, as his band were in an almost constant state of conflict. The bassist has insulted Alan’s drumming, not just once but repeatedly. Alan finally told him to back off. Alan said he and a couple of the others in his band had just come to have fun. This was his third camp and maybe it was a camp too far. The clique around the singer were taking it all much too seriously for the liking of Alan and his friends.

Scott with the hiatal hernia was in this band too. A low point was reached on the penultimate night when Artimus rounded on Scott, cursing him for some minor misdemeanour. Artimus then left the studios, abandoning his band just as they were about to record a song. Scott cried. It was the third time he had cried with his band.

We are waiting for Brian Wilson. He is coming to hear us play our California Girls. I am nervous. Jeff walks in: say hello, he says, to the great Brian Wilson. Wilson is tall, wearing a dark striped shirt, baggy cords and loafers. His hair is swept back in a quiff. His eyes look blank and anxious. His face is grey and cadaverous and he moves arthritically. He is carrying a can of Diet Coke.

I gesture towards the spare microphones in the middle of our stage. It would be fantastic, I say, if you were willing to come and sing with us. Yeah, come on, Brian, says Jeff, they’re doing Cal Girls, let’s join them. Jeff leads Brian to the microphone. Brian leans forward and quickly says, okay, one, two, three, four… Dan on keyboard is caught unawares but steps straight in and begins to play, Randy right behind him. We are off and Brian Wilson is singing with us. I am hitting the tambourine with perfect timing.

Wilson may seem like a basket case but his singing is heavenly. And that’s right where we all are, me and my band. In rock’n’roll heaven with Wilson. It’s a swift little song and finishes all too soon. Brian says, that was swell. Then says, as if he has been pre-programmed, autographs, anyone? He does not sing with any of the other bands, which makes our moment all the more precious.

I try talking to him but he is somewhere else – Pluto, perhaps – and I soon give up. Only Jeff seems connected to him, ushering him here and there, carefully, politely, telling him what to do.

Later, they give a private concert for us campers, Jeff and Brian with Wilson’s regular band, rendering all the old favourites. People in the audience are crying with happiness. Jeff 
calls the campers on stage to sing along. I see Wilson eyeing up Jan O’Brien from Tucson, who is right beside him.

She was still skittish about it the next day, as she described how he came into her studio and looked her up and down and went over to her afterwards, when she had finished singing, and said: “You have nice legs.” She had seen him again in the car park and he continued flirting, telling her she had sung a nice song, gazing at her chest as he spoke. He was old, but Jan was still flattered.

Maybe that was Brian Wilson’s rock’n’roll fantasy. I guess we all have them.

The last night is the battle of the bands and we go on stage, as the penultimate act, to perform our two songs. Paul Stanley reappears to sing our Kiss song with us, then the old Allman Brothers guitarist, Dickey Betts, comes out to play on our own song, Texarcan.

Maybe he is sober, but he doesn’t seem sober. He had not seemed sober at the studios the night before, either. He squeezes his frets and squeals his guitar all over our song and does little to enhance it. Afterwards he throws up.

Mike calls Melissa on stage and proposes to her. We all cheer. There are more tears.

I smashed my tambourine above my head on stage, putting everything I had into my performance, which I believe was awesome. I suffered afterwards with bruising on the flat of my hand and discover, since it does not show up on Google, that I may have diagnosed a new rock’n’roll condition: tambouriner’s palms.

Would these hands ever write again? Did I want them to?

Before I left Hollywood I e-mailed friends 
in London. I was giving up journalism, I told them, and was coming home to form a rock’n’roll band and go on the road. Join me, I said. Just think of the groupies. A friend replied straight away. I’m forwarding this to your wife, he said.

I was rumbled. Again.

Rock ’n Roll Fantasy Camp is coming to London next month. Visit www.rockandrollfantasycamp.com

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