Nico (5 page)

‘Are we late?' Maybe Nico was joking. Behind the shades nobody knew. She wanted to go directly to the hotel. The promoter wanted to take her to a press meeting.

Nico had other plans. Other needs. ‘I need to freshen up.' She stomped off to the hotel in her motorbike boots, the straps of which she never bothered to buckle. With Nico, you always heard her spurs first.

The promoters quickly consulted each other. The girl ran after Nico.

The guys introduced themselves. ‘Benedetto.' ‘Pasquale … and that is Titz, as everyone call her.'

Echo MC'd for us.

‘Is there no one more?' Pasquale asked.

‘He's following on a bit later,' said Echo.

I whispered to Raincoat, ‘Don't you think we should wait?' He pretended not to hear.

‘We also need ter “freshen up”,' suggested Echo.

‘Nico … she's blonde, no?' asked Pasquale as we sat in Milan's thrombosis of traffic.

‘Nah,' said Echo, ‘yer thinkin' of the Beach Boys.'

‘In the photos, she's blonde,' insisted Pasquale.

‘What photos?' asked Echo.

‘In the Factory weeeth Andee Waaarhol and Velvette Onnergroun'.'

‘Now I'm with yer … yer thinkin' of
Nico
from the
Velvet
Underground. Bit of a mix-up … we've brought yer
Narco
from the
London
Underground.'

Raincoat tried to friendly things up in a weird Esperanto all his own. ‘Ah, La Bella Italia … Cappuccino …
La Dolce Vita
…' He racked his brain.

Benedetto picked up on the latter.
‘Eh, La Dolce Vita … Federico Fellini … Nico participo in quel film.'

‘Nico – yeh,' continued Raincoat, keeping up the cunnilingua. ‘Nico populario in Italia?'

‘Boh!' Benedetto shrugged.

‘
Pensavo che fosse bionda
,' said Pasquale to his pal, still preoccupied with Nico's hair colour.

‘
Anch'io
,' said Benedetto.

Back at the hotel, the boys ripped open the pick-up plate on Echo's guitar and carved out the smack.

I fled to my room and laid out my pyjamas.

Demetrius installed himself in the Bridal Suite. Nico was aghast: ‘Does he think someone will ma-a-ary him? The way he was on the plane … like a looonatic.'

I was scared. How many times had I been on stage? I counted, on one hand … two Barmitzvahs and a free-jazz jerk in Leeds. Nico was due to play a club in the north of Milan called Odyssea. Echo explained that the further out of town the venue, the uglier it is. I never went to clubs. Too loud. Too many people. A sea of piss in the gents. Echo and Toby reassured me that this was normal – people who played music rarely went to hear the stuff.

Then there were the songs. I still couldn't remember how they went and we only had to do seven. Toby said he'd nod to me every time I had to change chords. ‘That'll impress the music critic of the Milan Bugle,' said Echo.

The tour bus tumbril picked us up at the hotel. Pasquale was at the wheel. The show was seven hours away but already I felt the game was up.

‘Don't worry,' said Echo. ‘You don't count, they're only interested in Nico, they want ter touch Death in drag.'

Demetrius sat in the front passenger seat. He loved the big screen. He had to devour everything. He'd showered himself in bonhomie and the hotel's complimentary aftershave.

‘Jesus, you smell like a hooker's haaandbag!' shouted Nico, pinching her nose.

Pasquale jerked the bus to a stop.

‘I say, steady on there, driver!' shouted Raincoat, unloading the last squirt of a shot into his naked buttock.

Pasquale helped me carry my keyboard into the club:

‘Nico, ees a boy's name, no?'

‘Yes, I think she'd like to be one … the boots, the bad manners …'

Raincoat, carrying Nico's shoulder bag, interrupted. ‘Not fergettin' those teensy weensy temper tantrums … Like a geezer? No chance. No matter'ow'ard she tries, she'll never be able ter sing like Barry White or piss'er initials in the snow.' He rummaged in her bag for any stray crumbs of dope or money.

Pasquale introduced Raincoat to the sound and lighting crew. They showed him the mixing desk: twenty-four channels, each with different EQs, a stack of effects – reverb, delays, a hundred different ways of taking a sound and placing it anywhere.

Raincoat shook his head: ‘Nah, can't work with that lot, mate – pots 'n' pans, no good ter me. I've only ever used Trojan mixers … mucho regretto.'

The Italians were mortified. This equipment was the best in Milan. What was this Trojan stuff? ‘Trojan?' ‘Trojan?' They kept passing the word around like a hot pizza.

Demetrius loomed up. ‘Does there seem to be a problem, gentleman?'

‘'Ee say 'ee only work weeth Trojan equeepment,' complained the Italians in an Anvil Chorus.

‘Trojan?' queried Demetrius. ‘Do I know them? Are they by any chance related to Stag and Featherlite?'

‘Eh?' Raincoat blanked him. ‘No … yer know … Tro-jan. Built by Trond Jansson, Swedish … They're the tip-top of the tree, beautiful Scandinavian teak finish. This stuff's pots 'n' pans.'

A sudden rage shadowed Demetrius's face.

‘My dear Raincoat, although the minutiae of public address systems are a matter of deep indifference to me, I am however aware that they operate on universal principles … Must I therefore construe that you are, in fact, an impostor?'

Raincoat shuffled from one foot to another. ‘It's only pop,' he said.

Demetrius's eyes blackened over. Nero in a Lone Ranger mask.

‘Listen, mate.' Raincoat's voice was dry, and insinuating. He smiled, a lizard on a hot rock. ‘
Listen
, she's the singer an' she can't sing; they're' – he pointed at me – ‘the musicians an' they can't play; you're the road manager an' yer can't travel; I'm the sound engineer an' I can't fix me girlfriend's'i-fi … What's the bleedin' diff'rence?'

5.00 p.m.
: Echo was trying to assemble Nico's harmonium. Raincoat was twiddling randomly with the knobs on the mixing desk. Toby practised relentless paradiddles on a bar stool. Demetrius had gone to the bordello across the road to calm his nerves.

The dressing-room measured about thirteen foot by seven. A minimalist paradise. Wall-to-wall white tiles, buzzing strip-light, smoked glass and chrome coffee-table, black wire-mesh foldout chairs facing a wall-length mirror … cosy.

Nico sat there alone, her eyes closed, head resting back against the wall. A splash of blood laced across the white enamel sink, her signature.

Softly I closed the door and went to buy a postcard. Wish you were here.

8.00 p.m.
: ‘Sorry, can't eat.' My stomach was a twist of gristle. Demetrius took my plate and scooped the contents on to his own.

‘Waste is a symbol of decadence,' he said.

‘So is being faaat,' said Nico. ‘Eat. Eat. Eat. What else do you do with my money?'

‘I go a-whorin', ma'am, as befits the custom of an English gentleman.'

‘Toooorist!' said Nico.

10.00 p.m.
: There were fifteen, maybe more, in the dressing-room. Pasquale, Titz, some bespectacled dwarf with a dictaphone recording everything Nico said, a couple of Versaces and an Armani with cameras and clinging girlfriends, an acne-ridden psycho babbling nonsense in Nico's other ear, and three people nobody knew at all, sitting on our chairs.

The dwarf asked each of us in turn our musical pedigree. Nico's of course was the hippest, then Echo and Toby. Eventually he got to me.

‘An' wheech grups have you played een?'

‘I … well … er …'

‘Jim plays in a Palm Court Orchestra,' butted in Echo.

‘Napalm Court Orchestra? Eees Trash Metal?'

‘Pure scrapyard,' I answered. He seemed gratified.

10.30 p.m.
: Demetrius kicked them all out. Then Nico kicked him out. She didn't like the way he ogled her when she was taking a shot. ‘Like I was naaaked.'

We were running late but she had to have one last hit before we went on stage.

I chain-lit another cigarette.

‘Jim, look, yer makin'
me
nervous, an' I'm not in it,' said Raincoat. ‘Go on,'ave a dab, yer'll be all right.'

He opened a small white envelope and then from his waistcoat pocket he produced a miniature penknife. It was the prettiest thing, slightly curved, dagger-shaped. The body was ebony, with three diamonds set along the length. He pressed the middle diamond; a tiny blade flicked out, like a baby with a vicious tongue. He trimmed a corner off the pinkish brown powder and scooped it on to the blade. He held it under my nostril.

I heaved into the sink.

‘Shiiit, Raincoat. Such a waste.' Nico tutted self-righteously, like a kindergarten ma'am. ‘Don't you know he's a health freeek … probably a nymphomaniaaac too.' Moral superiority builds its pulpit in the strangest places.

10.45 p.m.
: Perhaps it was the white tiles and the mirrors.

‘I need a piss,' said Nico. Though it resembled one, there was no WC in the dressing-room and no other way out except through the audience.

Titz was thumping on the door. ‘Can you pleeese be on stage
now
?' The audience were slow-handclapping. Nico hoisted herself on to the sink. We all looked the other way.

Pisssssssssss
… You could hear it in the pure tiled acoustics. We started giggling. So did Nico.

Titz banged on the door again. ‘Tell that girl to shutthefuckup,' said Nico. ‘How can I do it when she's making me
nerv
ous?'

Echo opened the door, blocking Titz's view. Her head peered round to witness a Rhinemaiden perched on the sink with ancient grey cotton drawers flapping down around her motorbike boots. Another illusion shattered.

Titz led us on stage with a flashlight. Echo first, then Toby, then me. Nico was still hitching up her pants.

Echo plugged into his amplifier, slung on his guitar strap, searched in his pocket for a plectrum, then very carefully and very intently he began to play. Maybe it was good, but no one out front could hear anything. He looked over at me. One word registered across his features. Raincoat.

Nico strode on. The audience immediately surged forward. She stood straight, head back, eyes closed, hand resting on the mike-stand, waiting.

Silence. Nico looked round at us inquiringly. Echo shrugged. Over at the desk I could see Demetrius and the Italians gesticulating at Raincoat. The sea of faces was looking mean. They'd paid good money.

Nico pointed upwards, as if to suggest more volume. As she did so a brain-searing whine shot through the place like a hot needle between the ears.

Toby counted 3–4 with his sticks and we started to play, a whizz-bang cacophony. But the more hideous the uncontrollable squawks and screams of feedback became, the more the audience were getting off on it. My electric organ sounded like a buzz-saw. Toby kept ripping into his snare, Echo was laughing and shaking his head in disbelief. Nico was pacing up and down the stage with her fingers in her ears, kicking at the nearest heads in the audience.

Back at the mixing desk, I could see Raincoat smiling, a huge beam of self-congratulation across his face … After all, it was only Pop.

The seven songs were soon over. Nico had dispensed with our services for the time being.

‘What? You play no more?' asked Pasquale.

‘Don't know any more,' said Echo.

‘Wha'appen now?'

‘The funeral begins.'

Disappointing to be back in the dressing-room after only twenty-five minutes. For Echo, though, a relief. He hated any kind of public display of anything. Toby, being the youngest, still had plenty of adrenalin to work off. He rat-a-tat-tatted his drumsticks on the tiled walls.

‘Gizabreak, and abbreviate the Boys' Brigade, willyer?' said Echo, lighting the last of his No. 6. Toby stopped, mooched, and hunted for the beer crate. Plenty of Pepsi and Orangina and a weird Italian Tizer. (Demetrius liked to drink soda-pop. He'd drawn up the contract. Pop it would be. Twenty-four bottles. At every gig.)

‘Maybe there's some action up front,' said Toby. ‘Fancy takin' a look?'

We went sidestage and walked round the back of the audience. (Pop groups are the only practicable alternative for males who are too narcissistic to make the first move.) But instead of a host of Botticelli angels in miniskirts, Demetrius was waiting for us. Imperator. Surveying the scene of battle: ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when people knew of no world other than their own.' Dr Demetrius was in reflective mood. ‘They were better off for it. Life-connected to the seasons and the stars … Now their heads are full of rubbish, inane fifth-form poetry masquerading as art. They should be listening to Verdi and Puccini …' He pressed one nostril and Vicked the other. ‘Er, need I mention that you were crap?'

‘What d'yer expect, with a bookie's runner at the controls?' said Echo.

‘Why not do something constructive then and fix up a proper sound for Nico's solo spot?'

Raincoat was still filling the room with weird electric jungle noises. Echo brushed him aside, slid a few knobs up and down, pressed a few settings, the basic stuff. Enough to place her voice somewhere.

We stepped back from the pain threshold. The ringing feedback stopped. The stage was now in total darkness except for a single spot from above. The audience seemed physically to ease up. A different feeling took over. Less mean, more intimate. It was a backstreet Punkerama, but people were willing it into a cathedral. They'd come to be part of some rite. It wasn't directly to do with the music, or even Nico, they just wanted to be somewhere else. So they were prepared to take her seriously, and she, in turn, was trying her best to take them seriously. A temporary deal had been struck with futility. She was pushing open, with their help, however slightly, the heavy oak doors upon the Mystery.