Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography (28 page)

This certainly wouldn’t have been apparent in my first few appearances in the paper – dreadfully constipated and bolshie hunks of drivel reporting on some punk-related films and books. Whatever style I thought I was affecting was suffocated under a desperate slathering of clumsy street slang and a misplaced urgency that suggested everything under discussion was of the utmost significance. The main reason for this posturing was that I figured I had been hired as a punk so had better write like one, or at least someone whose first allegiance was to the exhausted form. The trouble was that my heart was no longer in any of that and the music I was being asked to write about bore no relation to the music I was actually playing and hearing all the time. Worse, the sounds I was keenest on weren’t the sort of noises the
NME
went in for. I now liked bright pop and disco. Even as I penned yet another article about Sham 69 and their battle for ‘the kids’, the record I was most crazy about was the nutty gay stomp ‘Macho Man’ by a still unknown lunatic dance troupe called Village People. In the pubs of Bermondsey – the real ‘streets’ so romanced by the rock press – nobody was playing the somewhat grim and earnest student-pleasing guff that the paper championed almost without question. Black music at the
NME
was reggae or dues-paid older generation soul. Anything current and commercial – Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang, Michael Jackson – was viewed with terrific suspicion. The masses in the pubs and clubs all over the world had no such agendas and, as ever, the popular chart-busting black acts of the day knew the quickest way to the dance floor. In fact, my addiction to the new twelve-inch disco format had led me to get nights working as DJ in some of the rougher South London boozers – places like the Lilliput Hall, The Fort and the Southwark Park Tavern. I wasn’t all that good, certainly never spoke, but knew how to keep the hits a-coming and would get the most terrific thrill whenever somebody approached the decks to ask me ‘what that last record was’. Wonderful carefree noises like ‘Ring My Bell’ by Anita Ward, ‘Instant Replay’ by Dan Hartman, ‘In the Bush’ by Frantique and ‘Everybody Dance’ (Yowzah!) by Chic all had some of their first London airings amid the threatening crush of these proletarian bear-pits.

Actually I had had one very short and humiliating taste of being a DJ prior to these few years of Bermondsey gigs. Dear Lord I had clean forgotten it – expunged the thing – until recalling the hot song titles above brought back the shame of this humbling shambles.

A few weeks before I left the record shop, one of our regulars, Tom Browne – an actual Radio One jock and voice of the chart rundown each week – asked me if I’d ever thought of having a crack at the nightclubs – very specifically the clubs of Scandinavia. I told him that I had absolutely no experience of DJing and could never figure out how those crafty wizards kept the beats simmering along like that. Tom replied that it was a piece of cake and, besides, the clubs that he supplied in Norway and similar were VERY grateful for any fairly good-looking half-competent English talent because having that up on the marquee attracted girls who in turn brought aboard the hordes of desperate blokes. Would I like to have a bash at it? After all, as he put it, ‘You’ve got plenty of chat, right?’

Well, you’ll recall that I had absolutely nothing else in the diary so I convinced myself – and I think even told my family – that I would need my own suitcase soon because I was going off to be a big star among the Vikings. Tom had explained that I would need to audition for the lascivious post but not to worry about that because he always had the casting vote and I might as well go and get my passport now. I would also, he suggested, need to buy a large knife for carving all those new notches into my Scandinavian hotel bedposts. I thanked Tom for the opportunity and was genuinely touched he had taken the trouble to do this for me, us not being exactly buddies or anything. Exactly why he was going out of his way for me would soon become embarrassingly clear.

About ten days after Tom’s job offer I found myself entering a nightclub at around ten in the morning along with about thirty other DJs – real DJs who had boxes of records with them – all hopeful to land one of the ten vacancies advertised. I had – like somebody who is NOT a DJ, or more accurately, like an idiot – brought
one
record with me: ‘Love Hangover’ by Diana Ross. Then again, I was a shoo-in for the sex-fest; this was all for show.

Everybody sat about the empty, darkened disco with its air full of stale booze and jaded thrills until called up to present five minutes of their typical music and patter. Oh fuck. The music I had anticipated, but
patter
? You mean, actually come up with the gruesome ‘sexy’ entreaties these people routinely spout between disc changes and right up until the vocal starts? I couldn’t do – and had no intention of attempting – such a withering public exhibition. To be fair, if it had to be done and done publicly, the first five chaps were very good at it.

‘Hey, babes, let’s keep this happening vibe a-going all night long, okay? How ya all doing?! Gettin’ crazy? I said, are you getting CRAYZEE?? You betcha! And don’t you know we are gonna find spaces in your funk trunk even yo’ momma don’t know you have – you dig me? How ’bout you all get to the sweat right now with some Fatback funk at the BUSSSS STOOOOOPP!’

Yes, that was the stuff to send the Aryan fjord hordes wild all right. Well done, mate. But would I be able to do that? Not a fucking chance. After a few more of these sleazy but doubtless effective master classes I heard my name called and moved toward the podium – there was no booth – as if trapped in a fevered hallucination. I took the twelve-inch copy of Diana Ross’ very latest smash from its sleeve and, after what seemed like a silent eternity trying to fit the hole in the middle over the turntable’s spindle, dropped the needle on to the groove. I couldn’t have made a worse choice of song. In case you can’t recall it, ‘Love Hangover’ is a song that comes in two parts; the first a sort of slow, loping sequence that increases in intensity until the upbeat orgasmic release of the piece’s denouement that trundles around happily for about four minutes. I had no problem with that last four minutes. It was the preceding three that I hadn’t budgeted for. On the twelve-inch version, things sort of musically loaf about for a goodish time before Diana makes her first appearance, and as the record began playing through the ear-splitting club speaker system I realized I would be expected to fill until she arrived. I let the first ten seconds play without comment and could feel the eyes of every single one of those professionals burning through me like lasers. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ they quite rightly seemed to demand. ‘Has anybody ever come across this Herbert on the circuit before?’ would have been a fair follow-up. Looking down at the spinning Motown label before me, I pulled the adjustable metal mic a fraction toward me and started my provocative Swede-seducing routine. Except I didn’t. The words seemed to peep out from the back of my throat and then immediately flee down into the safety of Mother Larynx. All I came out with was a noise like someone who had been shot and was surprisingly disappointed in the sensation. I apologized and asked to start again. As my shaking hand took the head of the record player back to the start I could hear a voice in my head literally screaming, ‘What are you going to say? What
are
you going to say?’

At the same point in the intro I shaped up to deliver some kind of heavy suggestive appealing to my imagined mass of bopping Norwegians and, in a voice something like a chicken being given the bumps I went,

‘Wo-ho. Yeah. Yeah. I feel great. Honestly. Gotta love Diana Ross and her new one.’

And then down came the shutters once more. I stood there for ages, concentrating on the record going round and around, making gurgling noises, my hands gripping either side of this raised public pillory like grim death, hoping that when I looked up again the whole place would be magically alive with thirty professional DJs frugging in uncontrollable ecstasy to what I had just created. In fact, on looking up all I saw was Tom Browne right in front of me, holding up a clipboard and running his finger across his throat in the international gesture for ‘cut’. I lifted the needle from the disc with a loud comedy scratch. ‘Okay, thank you,’ he said in a clipped manner. I was shaking so much I could barely get the record back in its sleeve and, when I did, I held it upside down so it fell out again and rolled away in shame.

Calling Tom over, I began babbling at him in a low voice: ‘Tom, I couldn’t do this in a million years. That was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do – they must think I’m a right cunt. I am. That’s exactly what I am. I think I’m gonna faint. I just wanna run under a lorry now.’

He made some calming noises but seemed a bit shocked at my collapse. How could he justify that fiasco to his colleagues? ‘Listen, if you really don’t think you can do this . . .’ he started, and I gripped his arm in gratitude.

As Tom walked bemused back to his business partners I sank into a chair, needing to sit down for a few moments. I was joined by one of the proper DJs.

‘Have you never done this before?’ he asked with a smirk.

‘No, never,’ I croaked, still seized by shame and panic. ‘Was it obvious?’

‘A bit,’ he said. ‘Some of the blokes said you were only here because of who you are, like.’

I looked at him stunned. Who
I
am?

‘Yeah. Tom reckons you’re David Essex’s brother.’

Oh, good God! Talk about things coming back to bite you on the arse. So
that
was why I was here. But who was still floating this moribund old legend about? I hadn’t used that line for ages. Well, about eight months, anyway. Apparently, somebody had told poor old Tom some time back that I was indeed fucking DEB, and he had figured the billing would be pretty hot poop to serve up to the star-starved frozen Scandies. Sadly, I had now revealed that, even with this association, I would stink up all the discos like a month-old barrel of herrings.

It says much about the power of music, not to mention my own broad back, that the scalding, dreadful memory of that morning did not sour me toward the entire dance genre forever and now, with my toehold at the
NME
, I was ready to visit the nightclub floor once more – this time from safely behind my manual typewriter. I still had some way to go though before I made a name for myself or even developed any kind of recognizable style. The first actual interview the paper sent me to do was with a young singer who currently worked at the
Exchange & Mart
offices in Croydon. She was called Kirsty MacColl and Stiff Records were about to release her first 45 – ‘They Don’t Know’. Well, from our first handshake she completely bowled me over. I thought she was super hot, super talented and we got on terrifically well during her allotted lunch hour away from the
E&M
. When we parted I like to think she had something of a twinkle in her eye and a ‘come hither’ undertone to her goodbyes. In fact, I can plainly recall our final exchange:

Me: I would love to buy you another lunchtime sandwich sometime.

She: Well, if you’re ever in Croydon, I’d love for you to buy me that sandwich.

I mean, what? There’s plenty there, eh? If that’s not giving a chap the glad-eye then I’d like to know what is. Anyway, I skipped back to the
NME
and got on with the reception duties all the while hoping that nobody would notice the series of visible pink hearts that now bulged from my eyes like Pepé Le Pew the amorous cartoon skunk. About four days later Phil McNeill,
NME
’s assistant editor and a proper journalist, came out to me and asked how my ‘piece’ was going. I had dreaded this enquiry. You see, once the initial intoxication with Kirsty had passed I realized I hadn’t made one note in the seventy-five minutes we had spent together. Worse still, I couldn’t recall asking a single question. I seemed to have spent all my time with her trying to be charming and making her laugh. I knew absolutely nothing about her, beyond the fact I owed her a sandwich. Taking the Stiff Records press release that came with her record I cobbled together about 800 words – all of them positive – and handed them to Phil for him to give them a prominent spot in that week’s edition. I stood there while he read the splash. When he looked up he said, ‘Did you actually meet her? This is fucking awful. It reads like a press release.’ He had me there. Of course the
NME
was famous for its hard-bitten, joke-filled cynical world view in which the writer was usually the subject and hero of any article. What I had delivered was, frankly, colourless pap.

‘Why’s there nothing in here about her father?’ pressed Phil, dumbfounded. Her father? While I did recall the press release mentioning the names of both her parents I’d thought that was of no significance and had dropped such dull niceties from my rewrite. Phil explained that that her father was Ewan MacColl, just about the most famous folk singer these islands have ever produced. I had never heard of him – a fact that now causes me to blush deeply. Kirsty’s mother was the dancer Jean Newlove. This was a heady background and rather at odds with my patronizing angle about the little girl from
Exchange & Mart
hoping to get a glimpse of the big city. During our chat – or rather my monologue – I could now remember her saying everyone usually wanted to talk about her parents, but I’d sailed by that remark as if it were a distant lighthouse.

Fortunately my useless effort cannot be said to have hampered the wonderful career of Kirsty MacColl, and my ‘interview’ with her remains the only piece I have ever had spiked – though there are a few others I wish had been. Take, for example, the very next assignment I was given. This was a rendezvous with yet another up-and-coming female singer, this time called Kate Bush. She hadn’t done very much publicity and so the EMI press office was absolutely thrilled when the mighty
NME
said they were keen to give this rising kid some exposure. They probably didn’t let on that they were sending their receptionist to write the piece.