Over the Moon (23 page)

The Brazilians, though, were friendly and passionate. Rio was a city that seemed to live for music, whether in the samba bands that occupied every street corner or the rhythmic ease that made even people walking look as if they were dancing. I fell in love with Rio, a city that confirmed my view that South America is a very special corner of the world.

It is, though, a small world, as I learned when I had a couple of coincidental encounters during my first week there. One day in the street I bumped into Jim Capaldi, the drummer of the band Traffic and singer of the chart hit ‘Love Hurts’. Jim was living in Rio, where he had married a Brazilian girl. He had a
daughter
who spoke only Portuguese, and was learning the language so that he would be able to talk with her.

Jim and I arranged to go for a drink and the evening featured a very bizarre scene. We met in a hotel and took a lift that promptly broke down between the eleventh and twelfth floors. With some people in the crowded lift beginning to panic, two English rockers wrenched the doors open and pulled its grateful inhabitants to safety like action heroes.

I also visited the iconic statue of Christ that towers over Rio and bumped into Phil Lynott, the singer of Thin Lizzy whom I had met when he had also featured in Jeff Wayne’s
War of the Worlds
. Phil was in Brazil on his honeymoon so I took care not to become a gooseberry, but we became firm friends until his sorry death a few years later.

While I was staying in Yusuf’s flat, a few of his friends called on me and elaborated on the merits of Islam. I listened carefully as they gently attempted to convert me, and leafed through the copy of the Koran they gave me, but ultimately I figured I lack the fervour and belief to fully embrace any organised religion.

As I walked around Rio I had realised just how central Carnival was to the city. Even the poorest families prepared their costumes and sent their children to the samba schools all year round, and as the momentous event dawned the mood in the city hit fever pitch.

There was something diabolic about the fervid change in the atmosphere as Carnival devoured Rio. Thousands and thousands of garishly garbed men, women and children sambaed through the streets to inescapable, hypnotic rhythms in an explosion of
life,
power and passion. I had heard that every year people died at the height of Carnival frenzy, and now I could believe it.

As an outsider it seemed clear to me that Carnival, this uniquely cathartic and crazy celebration, served as a pressure valve and exorcised the feelings of societal exclusion and inequality that could otherwise cause the people to rise up against their leaders. Whether this was a good thing was a different question entirely, but it was certainly a brilliant, unforgettable experience. I felt as if I had landed in Hades.

Experiencing the riotous music of Brazil at Carnival had made me want to broaden my own musical palette and I returned to London eager for new ideas. My long-time bassist and friend Herbie Flowers introduced me to American producer Al Kooper and we began work on the record that was to become
Be-Bop the Future
.

Al and I began the album in London and finished it off in Los Angeles, working with ace US musicians such as the guitarists Steve Lukather and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter. The critics were quite taken by this change in musical direction, but unfortunately the record-buying public appeared not to share their enthusiasm.

My trip to LA, however, was to indirectly yield the inspiration for my next theatrical project. Derek had flown out to join me for the end of the
Be-Bop the Future
recording sessions, and on our way back we stopped off in my all-time favourite city, New York.

Derek and I went to see an off-Broadway production of
Childe Byron
by an American writer named Romulus Linney. Both of us were hugely impressed by it: Derek with his voluminous and insatiable knowledge of drama, and me just because
I
thought it was an incredibly powerful and visceral piece of theatre.

The play recounts the tale of the life and death of Lord Byron, England’s famously licentious mad, bad and dangerous to know libertine poet. It opens with his daughter Ada, whom he had never known, at death’s door. Sedated with laudanum, she hallucinates her father into being and demands that his ghostly presence confesses his errant ways.

Having begun as a two-hander between Byron and Ada,
Childe Byron
then allows a larger cast to act out the various excesses and indiscretions of Byron’s scarcely believable life as the poet and his daughter watch and react. It seemed to me so special that I immediately knew I wanted to stage it in London.

The American producers were happy for me to do this, and the Young Vic theatre and director Frank Dunlop came on board very quickly. I had not initially resolved to play Byron myself but as I threw myself into researching the life of the wild George Gordon Byron, the drinking, drugging Romantic poet who exiled himself to Greece to fight the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, the role simply became irresistible.

Frank Dunlop and I cast the talented actress Sarah Kestelman as Ada and before rehearsals began we decided to take a trip to the house where Byron had spent his formative years. Byron had had an equally debauched antecedent in his Uncle Jack, widely known as Mad Jack, who was the squire of an estate named Newstead Abbey near Nottingham.

Mad Jack had clearly fallen foul of the same strain of extraordinary psychosis that was later to possess Byron. His
party
pieces at Newstead Abbey had included ordering his servants to take to the lake in the grounds in rowing boats to reenact historical battles, and then firing cannons at them. This was when he was not lying naked while locusts crawled all over his body.

Clearly a man of trenchant beliefs, Mad Jack had also shot dead his best friend in a duel after an argument about the optimum formula for making dog food. It is perhaps no surprise that accounts held little interest for him: he died a destitute recluse, leaving his equally erratic nephew to inherit the title Lord Byron and the bankrupt Newstead Abbey.

This fantastic back-story had Frank, Sarah and I champing at the bit to experience Newstead Abbey for ourselves, so after a three-hour drive from London we were hugely disappointed to arrive to find the impressive mansion closed. We were desperate to examine the house and hunt for its ghosts, the Headless Monk and the White Lady, and I was determined our trip should not be in vain.

Frank gave me a leg-up and I began to shin up a drainpipe (well, it is certainly what Byron would have done) when my progress was rudely interrupted. The abbey’s caretaker, a gentleman named Sam Pierce, had materialised and was not impressed to find a random hooligan attempting to break into his property.

Frank, Sarah and I managed to placate Mr Pierce and once I had explained our mission, he kindly let us inside the house. We were enchanted by its stately, evocative interior, and I still am: even today, if I find myself in Nottingham, I will always pay it a visit. I tend not to go in via the drainpipe nowadays, mind.

Childe Byron
ran at the Old Vic for a month from 15 July 1981 and was very well received by critics and public alike. There was talk of transferring to the West End, but I was in two minds about extending what was a very dialogue-heavy and demanding role, so in the end it never happened.

One night in particular will live in my memory for ever. After we had met in LA years earlier I had kept in occasional touch with Richard Burton, and we spoke on the phone a month before the play opened. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked me, and when I replied that I was set to play the poet Byron, he said, ‘Get off! Where’s that?’ A short while later, he rang back and announced that he would like to come and see it.

The night that he attended I was very conscious that I was being watched by possibly the greatest actor Britain had ever produced and I could only hope it wasn’t inhibiting my performance too badly. The curtain call seemed particularly enthusiastic, and I gazed out into the auditorium to see Richard Burton leading the standing ovation. I am surprised Derek didn’t explode with joy.

Richard then came backstage to see me and lavished me with further compliments, even adopting a broad Cockney accent to tell me, ‘I didn’t know you could speak posh, you clever sod.’ How do you react to something like that? In truth, it was quite a relief: a big part of me had expected him to pat me on the head consolingly and say, ‘Never mind, son, better luck next time. I’m a
proper
actor. Just carry on with the singing, OK?’

FINDING MYSELF A
single man in the early eighties, it was more tempting than ever to gather up a band and hit the road. The work ethic nurtured by my East End roots and the experience of clocking on and off at Plessey’s all those years ago mean that I have always played very long British tours – lining up fifty dates where most bands will do fifteen. Yet as the eighties dawned, I decided to take things a little more international.

My 1982 album
Stage-Struck
saw me return to chart action after the damp squib of
Hot Love
and spawned a Top Twenty single in ‘Me and My Girl (Nightclubbing)’. Elton John’s manager John Reid liked the album and, with Derek and Mel’s blessing, took over my management temporarily to see if he could foster more interest in the country I had always neglected: America.

It was a short-lived liaison but John was a larger-than-life figure who left me with some very funny memories. One night I was over at his house when West Ham were playing Elton’s football team, Watford. John grandly announced that he would bet his Bentley Mulsanne against my Range Rover that Watford would win. Gambling is not one of my vices, so I declined the bet. At which point – wouldn’t you just know it? – West Ham won.

Derek and Mel were firmly back in the management saddle when Mel called to tell me he had booked me five nights in the Thai capital of Bangkok. Mel had been meeting in London with a decidedly shifty Asian tour promoter, who promised to pay half of our fee before we flew out and the other half after the last show.

This deal seemed reasonable, but appeared less so as our flights neared and we had still seen no money. Mel was perturbed but the band and I were keen to go, and phone reassurances from our Far Eastern friend were enough to persuade us to take a chance and head out to Bangkok.

Thailand was as much of a shock as South America had been, but in different ways. Bangkok was hot, bustling and engagingly exotic, and seemed to house the busiest and most preoccupied people in the world. There again, Jesus and Mario would have been impressed with the quality – and quantity – of their Thai sticks.

Herbie Flowers and I may possibly have indulged a little too enthusiastically in those lethal weapons the night that we spent what felt like hours whizzing up and down in a hotel lift, too stoned to get out and laughing uncontrollably at every puzzled fellow passenger who entered. The trip acquired an even more surreal edge when a box of dozens of pairs of awful synthetic underpants was delivered to my hotel door with no explanation. It later became clear from a TV advert that their manufacturers were my ‘tour sponsor’.

Neither the pants barons nor the tour promoter had come up with any money by the day of the first show but I decided to play it anyway as it was sold out and I didn’t want to let people
down.
The venue was a large cinema in the centre of Bangkok, the gig was a blast, and it moved me to see people who didn’t speak English mouthing every word of my lyrics.

The second night also went well, but as the halfway point of our supposed five-night run came with no sign of payment, it looked to Mel and me as if we had been had. I had decided to honour all the shows and attempt to resolve the money problems later, but we arrived at the cinema to find hundreds of very disappointed-looking people milling around. Something was clearly amiss.

By the venue entrance, a cardboard sign in two languages stated:

DAVID ESSEX SHOW CANCELLED – ELECTRICAL PROBLEM

We went inside and discovered that this ‘problem’ didn’t seem to have stopped the management showing a film, which was being avidly watched by two people. It transpired the Australian gig-sound company, who were less tolerant than us of not being paid, had removed all their gear. The band and I, guitars in hand, collapsed in fits of giggles.

Matters were rather more professional when we undertook a mini-tour of the United Arab Emirates. The facilities there were breathtaking and my main memory is of learning to ice-skate on a rink in the middle of the desert.

Australia has always been one of my favourite countries for live tours but I’ve had one or two run-ins with the local wildlife.
Playing
golf in Perth one morning, I was poised to tee off when a stray emu emerged from a bunker and attacked me, leading me to fend it off with a five-iron. Another time, as we drove a hire car across the outback, a kangaroo launched itself at our vehicle. Skippy was fine; we spent the night in a very broken car.

I also enjoyed a few early eighties on-the-road misadventures rather nearer to home. One British tour kicked off in Ireland, so we decided to rent a house near Limerick for pre-tour rehearsals. The mansion that we chose was massive, remote and extremely eccentrically furnished.

One night off, our driver Michael procured us six bottles of the local firewater, poteen, a white spirit made from potatoes. It tasted like I imagine Domestos would but was clearly powerful stuff and we were swigging freely as we adjourned to the games room that featured a snooker table with a few balls missing, a dartboard with five plastic darts and a three-stringed harp.

As the poteen kicked in, the evening degenerated into one of those surrealistic image montages that Roald Dahl would reject as overly fanciful. I vividly recall two band members eschewing cues to play snooker with their willies; my sax player, Alan Wakeman, waltzing up and down a small set of stairs to Bing Crosby Christmas songs; and, in the corner, somebody with a lampshade on his head. No one took the slightest notice of anyone else. Everybody was off in his own warped little world.