Broken Music: A Memoir (32 page)

“Hey!” he tells me, “you’re gonna be a big star someday.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” I say, but there is a small part of me that wants to believe him, no matter how unlikely it seems.

There is a half-hour break and Henry decamps to the bar at the back of the club while Stewart and I take the stage again, this time with Cherry’s band. Cherry really is dynamite and she goes down a bomb, the audience rabid for every bump and grind, lusty innuendo, and knowing wink. We may make a few first-night mistakes but we perform well enough for them to be forgotten in a warm sea of approval. It’s not a bad start. After a few congratulatory beers in the emptying club, we dismantle the equipment, load it back into the van, and are on the road by two A.M. I get home at seven in the morning, having dropped everyone else off at their digs. I have my wages for the evening in my pocket. Six pounds and fifty pence.

We will continue in this way, playing clubs up and down the country, for much the same kind of money, staying in flea-pit hotels when it’s too far to drive home, sustained by the lousy coffee and fast food in motorway service stations. Sometimes we go down well, and all the effort seems worthwhile, and sometimes we don’t.

One night after a particularly awful gig for both the Police and Cherry Vanilla, I find myself alone in the truck, listening to an old Last Exit tape. It is by no means brilliant but I get terribly nostalgic and I miss Gerry and the old boys and I wonder if I haven’t made a terrible mistake. My voice is shot, exhausted with overuse. I’m playing music I don’t really like with people I have very little in common with, and I find it hard to figure out exactly what it is I’m doing here.

Frances and I have been married for a year now, and it’s been very tough for her: the constant insecurity of our living situation, continually going up for auditions in plays, musicals, and TV, as well as looking after the baby. She would, of course, regain the momentum of her career playing major roles in seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre up to the present day, but those early years we spent together would be difficult and fraught with anxiety.

Still, even if it is only an article of faith that those who take risks with their lives are somehow protected, then that will have to be enough to sustain us until our luck changes. In fact, a few days later, Frances is offered a part in a BBC drama called
The Survivors
. It is a series based on the exploits of a group of survivors after a nuclear attack, and while this is not exactly the kind of work she has been waiting for, it is work nonetheless and we are both happy that it will put some money into our dwindling bank account.

Shortly after this my grandmother Agnes called to tell me that
my father is ill and keeps having blackouts. I ring him up but he says his mother, as usual, is just being overly dramatic and that there’s nothing to worry about.

“Are you sure, Dad?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

My father has never been sick in his life, but Agnes wouldn’t have called if something wasn’t truly the matter. I know that getting my father to a doctor if he doesn’t want to go would be nigh impossible. I resolve to see for myself as soon as I can.

By the beginning of May we have moved into our basement in Leinster Square. We have one bedroom, which we share with the baby, a kitchen, a bathroom, and an enormous living room, as yet uncarpeted, and a bare window through which we can see a small stairwell below a set of wrought-iron railings and the disembodied legs of passersby on the pavement above. Our first month’s rent will be paid, and most of the second payment is in the bank. I am extremely proud and determined that it will stay ours.

By the early summer Cherry will have lost her voice and fallen ill, and a projected European tour will have to be canceled. We will be reunited with her again later, but meanwhile, in another of Miles’s cost-cutting exercises, we find ourselves supporting Wayne County and the Electric Chairs on a low-budget three-week tour of Holland and Belgium.

Wayne County is a singer from a small town in the Bible Belt of the U.S.A. Self-exiled by his strangeness, he had transposed himself to the bohemian freedoms of Manhattan. At the time I made his acquaintance he was still of indeterminate sexuality, and though he would soon call himself Jane and become to all intents and purposes a woman, in 1977 Wayne hadn’t quite made the complete transition. He wears baggy clothes over his tiny frame, a floppy hat, and
full makeup. He is a shy, sensitive, complex individual and I like him very much, although with songs like “If You Don’t Wanna Fuck Me, Fuck Off” he clearly isn’t from quite the same romantic tradition as I am when it comes to songwriting, but he is a fascinating performer.

He and the guitarist are a discreet if incongruous item, Greg being well over six feet tall, an ex—Golden Gloves boxing champion, with the mental age of a child of seven. He is extremely lovable but, when Wayne is not looking, given to drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, whereupon he can become violent. Wayne will accept no such nonsense from him, though, and frequently assumes the role of the shrewish wife, henpecking him mercilessly until he sobers up and calms down, smiling vacantly like a scolded dog. The manager, Peter Crowley, whom I privately dub “Aleister” (Aleister Crowley, the celebrated twentieth-century satanist and occult philosopher, wrote
Diary of a Drug Fiend)
, looks like an aging Jet from an amateur production of
West Side Story
. He has a large head and a ludicrous greaser’s pompadour that hangs pendulously between his eyebrows like a limp penis. The exaggerated padding in the shoulders of his leather biker’s jacket creates the visual impression that his spindly legs have been cruelly foreshortened, like a bad photograph taken from an unflattering perspective. He can’t seem to speak without sneering, as if he’s suffering from some muscular disorder of the mouth, and the sound that emerges is little more than an incessant nasal whine. He gripes constantly about English weather, English food, English roads, English cars, English driving, even when we get to Holland. I begin to wonder if he isn’t suffering from Tourette’s syndrome, so violent are his outbursts.

At customs I catch sight of his U.S. passport over his shoulder and notice to my great surprise that Mr. Crowley, with his studded
jacket and a silver dagger hanging from his ear, is an Episcopalian bishop. I’m not sure whether he really is a bishop, but this group is so weird nothing would surprise me. The drummer, who wears thin summer clothes, is a silver-haired Hungarian refugee named Chris Dust. He is attempting to claim political asylum in England and is not supposed to leave the country while his claim is being processed. I ask him why he is now boarding a ferry bound for Ostend.

“I need the gig, man. Got to eat. Got to buy some clothes for the winter”—indicating his careworn Hawaiian shirt.

The bass player is a thoroughly nice English boy named Adrian, although he goes by the name of Val Halla. He has an enormous simian jaw and blue-black dyed hair that makes him look like a fugitive from a band of Muppets in a bad wig.

With Stewart, myself, and the Corsican pirate making up the motley number, it is something of a freak show driving up the ramp of the ferry in Dover. The boat leaves at ten past midnight in heavy seas and torrential rain. It is a reasonable crossing and I manage to catch an hour’s sleep. We reach Ostend at 4 A.M. It is dark and still raining. We have a carnet to export our equipment, but as we’ve failed to have it signed by a British customs officer, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and the Belgian customs man wants nothing to do with it. He tells us that we will have to wait here until 8 o’clock and take it up with his boss, then storms back into his warm office and slams the door. Henry is at the wheel, the rain has now stopped, and the gates of the customs yard are invitingly open. Beyond them lies the open road, and we estimate that we could be in Holland by eight o’clock. We look from the office door to the open gate and the road beyond, and with a last complicit glance at each other we just drive into the night. We almost run out of petrol before we reach the border, but by dawn we are in the Netherlands, and safe from Belgian officialdom.

Peter Crowley—or Aleister, as I now openly call him—offers to take over the driving duties. As we are all pretty exhausted by now, we agree, but this is a bad mistake. Not only is he thoroughly unpleasant, he is also one of the worst drivers I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel with. He insists on driving like a wiseguy—too fast and with only one of his ostentatiously ringed hands on the wheel. He likes to drive even the shortest distances with his foot to the floor and then brake suddenly behind stationary vehicles. I’ve tried reasoning with him to no avail, and I’m losing my patience. Poor Henry is a nervous wreck behind his wraparound shades.

At a set of traffic lights, a car on the inside is straddling the white line and is transgressing maybe an inch at the most into our lane. I watch as Aleister narrows his eyes, mouths the word
motherfucker
through gritted teeth, and guns the engine so that we hit the offending nearside wing at speed and with a loud bang.

“What the fuck?” I shout.

“The asshole was in our freakin’ lane,” he shouts back.

“No, he was not. You deliberately hit him.”

The asshole in question has gotten out of his car to inspect the damage. The poor man looks bewildered and a little intimidated, and then even more so when he sees the freak show in the van.

Aleister winds down the window as if to offer an explanation. “You’re a freakin’ asshole,” he shouts. And then we’re off on the green light, foot pressed hard to the floor in first gear.

“Crowley, you’re the one who’s the fuckin’ asshole,” I tell him, as he crashes the gear box into second, forgetting to use the clutch. “And you can’t fucking drive.”

He slams on the brakes, I suppose in an attempt to put me through the windscreen, but he only succeeds in dislodging Henry’s
amp, which flies to the front of the van like a guided missile. I’m close to tearing this guy’s head off.

“Saying I can’t drive,” he whines, “is like saying Keith Moon can’t play the drums.”

I am utterly dumbstruck. What kind of cruel karma is working here to have trapped me in this van with this lunatic? When I’ve recovered my composure I convince Aleister that he will no longer be driving the van unless he wants to return to the U.S. in a body bag.

    Our first gig is in Groningen, in what looks like a village hall. The PA system, which has been rented by the promoter, is being driven down from Amsterdam. It doesn’t arrive until seven-thirty, so there is no time for any sound check. We go on anyhow, and halfway through the first number, the sound, such as it is, starts to go off and on, off and on. Then comes the deafening howl of feedback, bass end rumble, and high-frequency squeals, which have the audience covering their ears. I’ve had a trying day and uncharacteristically throw a tantrum, threatening the hapless Dutch sound crew with dismemberment unless they sort out the sound. Stewart plays throughout my tirade even more frenetically than usual and the audience, made up of stoned hippies seated cross-legged on the floor (who believe this new punk rock is somehow associated with violence), think my behavior is all part of the act, which infuriates me even more. I launch myself from the admittedly low stage, trying to shake the audience awake at least, kicking them, knocking them, rolling onto their backs. They thankfully start to fight back and I retire to the comparative safety of the stage.

The sound out front seems to have sorted itself out, whereupon we have a genuine if slightly delayed rock-and-roll experience. We are now going down a storm, the entire audience on its feet, when
Stewart, who is playing like a man possessed, snaps the metal rod of his bass drum pedal in half, closely followed by the collapse of the rest of his kit. Hi-hats, tom-toms, and cymbals roll all over the stage. The set dwindles to a pathetic halt, and in a stunned and embarrassed silence we exit the stage. It is only when we close the door of the dressing room behind us that we hear the ovation. Cheering, whistling, stamping. I think they must be out of their minds. We were rubbish. And anyway, we can’t do an encore because the drums are in pieces. Our set has by now expanded to fifteen minutes from its original ten, and now it’s Wayne’s turn. Being as the audience have been prompted to react in the correct manner, Wayne too goes down a storm.

At the end of the night we each get a twenty-guilder note, then drive to a small hotel in the town’s red-light district. Sad, middle-aged women sit in the windows reading paperback romances or knitting baby clothes in the red glow of cheap lampshades. My room is tiny, and while it has a bird’s-eye view of the ladies across the street it has no hot water, no heat, and damp sheets. As I go to sleep in my clothes I wonder how Frances and the baby are.

The next few days will find us playing similar gigs in Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Nijmegen, Maasbree, and finally Amsterdam. My lasting image of the Wayne County tour is of the Paradiso Club, a converted church in the center of Amsterdam. The stage is located where the old altar must have been, below a luminous stained-glass window that soars heavenward into the darkness of the high gothic ceiling. There is a strobe light strafing the audience, which is sparse and disparate, and scattered around the floor of the building in various states of well-being. Some are asleep, smiling beatifically, others are huddled in corners under filthy sleeping bags. Some are dancing crazily like whirling dervishes, spinning out of control into their neighbors, who will push them away and send them reeling wildly
in another direction. One of them hits the floor with his head, lying still for a few seconds, and then he’s up again spinning and spinning. The sound from the stage is hellish. There is a surreal, nightmare quality about this scene, presided over by Wayne, screaming with demented fury “The Last Time,” by the Rolling Stones, while Greg, dangerously drunk, is holding his only guitar by the neck and raising it high above his head and smashing it repeatedly against the front of the stage.