Autobiography (36 page)

In the third week of paradise found, my new car is stolen in the dead of night from my garage. Although both the car and the garage are fully alarmed, the sophisticates of robbery take moonlight possession with masterful silence. The insurance company is annoyed with me, but they pay in full as the car is found burned out on Figueroa. I buy a new car that is then dented by heavy kicks as it sits outside the house.
Yippee.
I am being watched, and every single day brings the oddest dilemma. The daily tedium of keeping house and garden acceptable becomes an enjoyment, and the pain of life slows down. Each evening raccoons cautiously totter down the hill at the back of the house and perch themselves on the water-fountain, where they lean in and wash their hands with human motion. If they spy me lurking by a window they will stand erect on their hind legs and stretch to their tallest position, as if to show me what a fearsome brute I might be dealing with. Grey squirrels begin their usual getting-to-know-you courtship, and it doesn’t take very long for their tap-tap-tap on several windows to rush me into serving up today’s menu.

However, the running feet bounding across the roof throughout the night I am certain belong to something other than squirrels. Since this house is built on sand, I am then told of desert rats that leap from tree to tree like monkeys, and my neighbors assure me that keeping the rats at bay is a non-stop occupation – a detail oddly left out of the realtor’s brochure.

The weather is a continuously inspired moment, making everyone stretch, whereas the blackboard sky of London makes everyone shrivel and walk with a hump. In England, days bleed into each other without distinction, yet in Los Angeles every single day seems like what it is – a new day. My disciplined life is greatly aided by my close neighbor Charles Moniz, who is on 24-hour call to solve a floodtide of incomprehensible household problems. Uncomplaining, Charles will arrive with drill or ladder day or night with a duty of friendship that is first and last. Charles sells vintage autographs and stocks of famous Hollywood costumes in a shop called
Baby Jane
on Santa Monica Boulevard. His house on De Longpre was once owned by Charlie Chaplin but now shelters Charles and his two dogs, who are introduced to me as Jane and Blanche. Jigsaw, jigsaw, jigsaw. In the 1962 film
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
the sister known as Blanche is confined to a wheelchair, and, abstractly, Charles’ dog named Blanche has lost the use of her back legs and drags them behind her as she moves – as if mimicking the screen character of Charles’ most fondled film. Charles is a good friend, and we take several car journeys across the Mexican border.

England calls with an offer of a role on
EastEnders
, as the son (so far unmentioned) of the character Dot Cotton. I would arrive unexpectedly in Albert Square and cause births, deaths and factory fires every time I opened my mouth – numb to shame throughout. Funnier still, an offer slides in for a role in
Emmerdale
,
and the most fascinating aspect of both offers is that somebody somewhere had thought it a good idea.

Since I dare not be myself, I would surely be even worse as an actor.

In July 1998 the
Guardian
ran a double-page damning assessment of my ‘decline’, and in the center of both pages their sole photograph is of singer Edwyn Collins, whom, such is the accuracy and expertise of the
Guardian
, they evidently assume is me.
Uncut
magazine also run an extensive
nine
-page account of my ‘decline’, while a
Mojo
headline asks:
what went wrong
?
and the lid is slammed shut on my casket. The frenzy of attacks in the press becomes a fascinating study, with not a single line of defense to attribute balance.
It is done.
A plot is marked out and the hearse is hired.

The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.

A. E. Housman

Suddenly my life jumps, and the past is not me. The prevalent complaint of boredom subsides as whatever is sought is found. My forties flip and flash with Tina Dehghani, who becomes a lifetime constant. Iranian by birth, Tina’s family were forced to Los Angeles when she was two years old, and had lived in Woodland Hills ever since. Her father had been a key figure in the overthrown Iranian government, and if a move to the US had not been made the family would all have been executed. Tina is a host of brown-eyed good intentions and patience and endurance, and it is only in the ninth year of knowing her that she lets slip her first and last complaint. Although tough and unperturbed, Tina’s nature is to place others first and herself last at all times, and her spirit is never infected by gossip or betrayal. We take our place together almost without noticing, and all is said with such small gestures. We are a steely duo at our favorite restaurants and watering holes, and time never drags. The life I had always led is not the same as the life I now lead, and with Tina, all sorts of strangeness become less so. I have still, to this very day, never known her to be late, or to refuse, or to decline, or to grumble, or to umm or err. Tina is my first experience of uncluttered commitment, attached – quite inexplicably – to a woman of great independence and logic. Having been raised on scraps, this is daunting for me.

Tina’s parents had married and then divorced, then re-married and then divorced, and then married for the third time and divorced for the third time. Sweetzer is giving me a matter-of-fact life, so softened that Tina and I discuss the unthinkable act of producing a mewling miniature monster. Had I ever previously known such a thought? Lounging with incomprehensible joy in my own bed I am now a symbol of rest instead of panic, as the swooning view of West Hollywood rooftops from my bedroom window ushers the sun in every morning without fail. The questioning and the discontent are left to brood elsewhere – with someone else. My mind is open and happy, inscrutably grown-up and running my own life. I wonder if I could ever take it as it is and just enjoy it? Well,
no.
I awake at 7:00
AM
on September 11th 2001, aware that the downstairs answer-machine seems to be clogging itself with bleeps and blips and dying voices. Someone, I assume, is dead. I bolt down the stairs and my mother’s voice is the latest booming message:
‘Turn on your television – your country is being bombed!’

My country?
With a feeling of utter impotence I spend the entire day watching the television news reports of the Twin Towers horror, wondering whether any meaning could be left in the world. As the second plane glides into the tower I suddenly have no words to voice the hurt inside me. I do not know why what is happening is taking place, and my mind slows down, lagging behind the TV reports. The heavy-heartedness I feel for the people strapped into their seats – whose deaths I have just witnessed – joins that final roll of Concorde as the most appalling sight imaginable. This poor and pathetic human race.
Human?
Well, no, not even human. The scene is untranslatable.

Los Angeles becomes a ghost town for a full two weeks, as a deathly silence keeps everyone in their homes, so stunned and sickened are they, and nervous of further blasts. Everyone is frightened to breathe. The feeble newshounds quite naturally alert everyone to an anticipated immediate attack on Los Angeles, and urge investments in food stocks and rubber clothing lest giant ants mutate from small pods secretly buried in Bel Air gardens. Instantly, anyone with a Middle Eastern face is certain to eat you whole, and all of America overthinks itself into a stupor. Exactly how authorities are so certain of a second wave of attacks is peculiar since they claimed no knowledge of the first wave of attacks. How can they know now, if they didn’t know then?

As life begins to formulate some fashion of normality, the events of 9/11 are nonetheless used forevermore as a reason for policing authorities to treat the public abysmally, and nowhere is this more apparent than the gratuitous rudeness of airport and airline staff. From this moment onwards I shall never again use a domestic American airline.

The horror also, of course, gives President George W. Bush something to do, and with no understanding of why people of foreign lands might dislike American policies, Bush does the manly thing by ordering more death and destruction, with American error being forever unthinkable. Claiming that his war is ‘against terror’, he can only fight such terror by exerting more terror, and, in doing so, Bush himself becomes the world’s most famous active terrorist, as he bizarrely bombs the innocent people of Iraq out of existence in the name of freedom and democracy. We are asked to accept that the bombs being dropped on the harmless people of Baghdad – so grinningly approved by the British Prime Minister – are not, in themselves terrorizing, as babies burn and America’s problems are solved, rah, rah, rah.

The contracts to rebuild Baghdad are distributed amongst the fatted friends of George W. Bush – back yonder in the land of the free. This joint action to desecrate Iraq undertaken by both Bush and Tony Blair suddenly turned all of us into terrorist suspects – making air-travel security checks a migraine of harrowing proportions, while the resulting bombings in London that claimed more innocent lives were the answer to the ever-grinning Tony Blair’s meddling in Iraq, thus rendering him guilty of war crimes that his honorable judicial friends would make sure would never land him in the cooler.

If not for Tony Blair’s self-interests, the people who were blown to pieces on London’s transport system that July morning would more than likely still be amongst the living. Although Bush and Blair collectively made the world a more dangerous place, neither of them, then or now, lead unprotected lives and neither is susceptible to the dangers that they have carelessly created for ordinary British and American citizens. In dippy downtown Beverly Hills – where trout-pout women push their be-ribboned poodles along in garnet-studded baby-carriages – graffiti appears yards from the sacred church of Needless Markup, as the empowered scrawl of
BUSHIT
remains for months and months for three-laned traffic to nod to. On such streets of famous gaga dizziness, it is remarkable that the fuddled fuzz had allowed such glaring graffiti to remain for so long. At a Beverly Hills theater I catch the latest show by comedian Joan Rivers, who comments on the
US
bombing of Baghdad,
‘But
...
come on,’
she says,
‘who cares about a city that doesn’t have Gucci?’

I gulp as the audience roars.

I drive to Northridge to see a show by the incredible Al Martino. Time has not taken its toll, and his voice shatters glass and topples pillars. I sneak side-stage after the show and ask him to sign one of his
CDs
for me, and he does so, but as he bangs his signature onto the disc his eyes are fixed on a young female standing a few yards away. I thank him, and he offers me no eye contact or warmth, and he turns away saying nothing.

Channel 4 television burst into my life at Sweetzer, wanting to make a 90-minute film for television. Contractually, they give me total control to say and do whatever I wish, explaining:
‘
It’s time the tale were told – your way, and nobody else’s.’
It all seems too good to be true.
And indeed it is.
Once they have their footage securely under wraps, they are gone, gone, gone – to edit, chop, revise and delete in such a manner as to now give a ‘balanced’ view of Morrissey, bringing in anonymous sources who impart unflattering views. Yet again I am thrust into a legal battle to have the film removed of its blood-stained bitchery.
Battered and bruised, I succeed, and the film emerges as an extremely modest success. Could life ever be sane again?

Kirsty MacColl had entered my life in 1985. She had arrived at
RAK
Studios in north London to sing backing vocals on
Bigmouth strikes again
. She walked towards me carrying a bulging Londis bag.

‘Today’s laundry?’
are my first words to her.

She laughs and opens the bag to reveal a cluster clutter of canned beer.
‘If I’m gonna sing with Morrissey I want us both to have a good time,’
she says, and chuckles that warm deep-in-the-chest giggle of hers. A friendship for life is born. There is no war between men and women as far as Kirsty is concerned – she who mused her youth in Acton pubs, almost unmanageable in her goodness, yet nobody’s pushover. Lower Addison Gardens in Kensington is currently her cave, from which the Rolling Stones smoke her out to sing on their new album, and from which Bono smokes her out to organize the track-listing of a U2 album.
Cursed
is how she signs all letters and postcards, but
loved
is how she is. Her father, Ewan MacColl, had, of course, written
The first time ever I saw y
our face
,
and had also recorded the somewhat lesser-known
Morrissey and the Russian sailor.
When the Smiths record Lynn Ripley’s
Golden l
ights
Kirsty sings on that, also, and here and there come
Ask
,
Interesting drug
and
I’d love to
.
‘I’d never refuse you ANYTHING,’
she vows, and I chug along in the Saab to her new Ealing pile, where she has asked me to listen to her new song, which is called
You know it’s you
.

With the soft suburban life around us, and with Kirsty hunched over a cognac, and me in endless fidget, the 1990s are being sewn up.
You know it’s you
is zealously magnificent, although Kirsty is neither artificial nor inflated enough to ever lower herself into the fat vat of stardom. In 2000, Kirsty telephones me in Los Angeles to ask about Mexico, because she knows that every drab Thursday I excitedly flit over the border. Kirsty wants to know if Cancun would be worth the trek, and I urge her to go. Before she rings off she reminds me about
You know it’s you
and how she’d love me to record it. Her voice trails away as Cancun calls, and it is there, a few weeks later, that she will be killed. On the first day of her holiday, Kirsty takes her two boys Louie and Jamie for a dash into the sea, when an out-of-control speedboat rages towards the boys. Kirsty throws her body into its path in order to shield her kids, and she is smashed to pieces as the boys look on. They had been splashing about in a spot that is forbidden to boats of any kind, yet all investigations into Kirsty’s death are blocked, and whisper upon whisper reveals that the boat had been operated by an indestructible Mexican businessman, and inherently decent bureaucracy strikes again. Watching and waiting for a development on the story, we all have no reason ever again to have faith, as the hands behind the wheel are suddenly said to have belonged to a meager milksop Mexican minion, and a pitifully small fine is imposed for the life of one of Britain’s greatest songwriters. Government officials in Britain fail Kirsty. Investigations into her death prove to be a long and thwarted battle for Kirsty’s mother, Jean, and life is a pigsty.