The Thrill of It All

by Joseph O'Connor

  Eric hit the phones, begged Trez to come back. Childcare, nannies, round-the-clock help, he’d shell for whatever she wanted. We were going to hit big. There’d need to be a tour. Come work for a month, you’ll make a hundred thousand dollars, enough to buy a house, he’d advance her the cash. Think of your baby. Come today.

  We were aged twenty-two. It was less than three years since Fran and I had left Poly. The last entries in my diary cover scraps of the tour. Ludicrously overwritten in some places, too sketchy in others. Three might be worth your attention.

  On train. Awake. Yellowed lights dim, a few passengers talking quietly, but most of them asleep, open paperbacks on chests. Fran across the aisle from me, Seán in the Pullman behind. Looking out at distant city that must be Chicago, evanescence of amber light misting into the darkness. Rain on the window, droplets drawn sideways by the speed. One of those watertanks they have over here, alien craft on stilts.

  An hour ago, Trez eased in beside me. Could feel heat from her, also tiredness. Seven hours to Boston. Someone’s screwed up the flights so we’re taking the train.

  ‘Night owl,’ she goes. ‘What you listening to?’

  ‘A book on tape.’

  ‘Rock and roll, baby. Is it good?’

  ‘Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘You far in?’

  ‘About a hundred miles.’

  ‘Do you think I’ve feet like a hobbit?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fran saw me changing my socks earlier. He says my feet are ugly. Like a hobbit’s.’

  ‘You can show me if you like.’

  She shines a weary smile.

  ‘Do you ever think we’re mad, Rob?’

  ‘Every day of the week.’

  ‘Seriously, though. I do. It’s a ridiculous life. You think we’ll look back when we’re white-haired old gannets and wish we’d gotten jobs in an office?’

  ‘Gannets don’t have hair.’

  ‘Answer my question, rudeboy.’

  ‘There aren’t any jobs in offices. There’s a recession going on. Anyway, I can’t see Fran in an office, can you? Maybe the one where they give prisoners back their stuff before releasing them.’

  ‘Comedian,’ she goes. ‘Can I sleep with you? As it were?’

  ‘Sure thing, Bilbo,’ I said.

  Leans her head against my shoulder. Chicago going past. Looking out at the moon, yellow in the rain. Don’t want to wake her. Goodnight.

  Hello, bastard diary. Don’t look at me like that. Spare me your white-faced, unfillable grin. Emptiness don’t impress me.

  In horrible mood. I know what you’re thinking. ‘New town every day, room service, howling fans – it sounds like a wang-dang-doodle.’ Let me tell you what it’s like. You ignorant book. Look at you. Blank. Saying nothing.

  Need to be up before dawn for the flight. So you drink your way through, fall asleep on the bus, awaken on the plane in yesterday’s clothes, not entirely sure how you got there. In a time zone of your own, you limp to the limo. Through streets you don’t know. Head glinting with pain. In through the truck-dock behind the hotel. Down a corridor of half-finished trays awaiting collection, tonight’s room is the same as last night’s. Strange loneliness, hunger, anger, melancholy. Dull coals of lust. Stomach problems. Try to get an hour’s sleep. Flicker. Weird fantasies and playbacks. Mind-burps. Mental indigestion. That novel you were reading? Left it on the plane. The matchbook on which you scribbled that cool girl’s number? Who knows. In the Hilton, St Louis. You’d go out for a walk but you don’t know the streets. Read the Gideon bible but the print is too small. Lost key-cards. Clanking lift-shafts. Weird noises next door. You’re Job in a suite. Quit complaining.

  Room service trolley like a hospital gurney. Fish tastes like toilet roll. Water reeks of chlorine. Strange humming sound. Don’t know where it’s from. Heating duct? Pipes? Somehow you sense it’s raining outside. Go to the window. It’s not. Twenty storeys up. See a river seven blocks away. In the dream – when you jump – you can fly from that ledge. It’s why you stay awake. You don’t want that dream.

  Four hours before sound-check. You fear it. Despise it. Everyone talking in road-code. ‘Bobby gone for tea’ means Fran’s shooting up in the toilets. Bobby gone for coffee: cocaine. Run out of Rizlas, tear the pages from the bible. You wouldn’t get drunk? Wouldn’t do drugs? You’d abandon self-pity. Love that halo. Not even joking, right? Falling apart. Wish I was at home. Dread the gig.

  Los Angeles. Four thousand punters. Had dinner with Fran after show. Stoned out of his face. Made a carefully built scene at the restaurant. Everyone looking when he stumbled in. Sunglasses and cane. Waiter comes over, nice kid.

  W: I’m Lance, I’ll be your server tonight. Can I start you gentlemen off with some cocktails?

  F: You’re a handsome brute, Lance, sit down and have a drink?

  W: . . . I wouldn’t be allowed, sir.

  F: What a shame.

  Waiter a bit thrown. Didn’t know what to say. Told him I’d like the lamb.

  W: That’s actually my favourite. Great choice, sir.

  F: You box, Lance?

  W: I’m . . . sorry, sir?

  F: I’m guessing you work out?

  W: Not really. I swim. And I press a little bench.

  F: Lucky old bench.

  W: Sorry, sir?

  F: You’ve plans for later tonight?

  W: Yes, I’m seeing my girlfriend.

  F: Call me later and we’ll party. Bring her along if she’d like? The three of us together. I’m at the Chateau Marmont. Don’t worry about old Robbie, he tucks up early.

  W: I have plans, sir. Excuse me a moment.

  Waiter goes away. Fran skulls gin. ‘Christ, I’d suck his balls like Turkish Delight, wouldn’t you? And I’m betting the girlfriend’s a model.’ Told him he was being an asshole, embarrassing the kid like that. Said he didn’t mean it, was just ‘being friendly’. Manager comes over. Is something unsatisfactory? Server is new, been assigned to another table. Didn’t know who we were. No offence. Lance didn’t understand ‘the European sense of humour’. Such a pleasure to have us. Huge fans of our music. Dinner tonight will be on the house, of course. Would we care to do the signature kobe beef? Chef would be delighted. All of us delighted. COW would be delighted. So’s his mum. Special cut from the Tajima strain of wagyu cattle, raised in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Fifty dollars an ounce. No charge tonight. Very special dish. We’ll enjoy.

  Food starts coming. Fran silent and sullen. Eyes with the coke-red stare. Says ‘You need to watch your drinking. You’re slaughtered too often. That shit’s gonna kill you. It’s a drug.’

  ‘You’re lecturing me on drugs?’

  ‘Yeah, I am. You’re fucked up. Only a mate would tell you.’

  Starts talking about Vietnam. Wants to go there next year. Says I don’t realise what it’s like, no mother or father, he’s an orphan nobody cared about, no one at all, and I’m trying to listen if only to shut him up, but I realise I don’t give a fuck. Sick of it all being MY fault or Eric’s or Trez’s. He barely spoke to Seán at the theatre tonight, been seeing ‘a psychic’ back in NYC. ‘Recovered memories’ of ‘a brother’. Told him Christ’s sake, Fran, who the fuck forgets that? You want to go to Vietnam, so go. Says how could he. ‘You think you’d last a week, this so-called group? Think anyone gives a shit without ME in this band?’ Then apologies and vodka. ‘I’m sick. Didn’t mean it. Get me some ice, Rob? I’m burning.’

  Four staggers to the restroom in less than forty minutes, to ensure everyone sees him, then complaints of their staring. Lights up at the table, though we’re sitting in non-smoking. Manager brings him an ashtray. Special grand cru vintage. Sommelier’s recommendation. Only two bottles left in stock.

  Fran says, ‘Bring them both. My companion’s an alcoholic.’

  Leaves three hundred dollar tip. Collapses in the foyer. Syringe falls out of his pocket.

  Through the window, I see the paparazzi. Cameras at the
ready.

  And I realise he’s called them himself.

  Fifteen

  FRAN STARTED GETTING help but it didn’t last long. He told us he thought the psychiatrist ‘bossy’ and self-important, ‘too old and he talks too much’. Others of that profession were seen and dismissed, but Eric found a counsellor whom Fran agreed to see, an Indian woman who practiced on the Upper East Side, and their sessions seemed to calm him a little. She told him he’d have to get clean. He resolved to try. He began to go swimming in the mornings in the pool at the Y, sometimes with me or Trez, often alone. By now there was a palpable tension between Fran and Seán, and, if I’m honest, it never truly disappeared.

  It’s a strange thing to be in a group that’s only remaining together because of its success. But that was the hand we’d been dealt. I guess it’s like a couple deciding to stick it out for the sake of the children. But the children aren’t earning people a lot of money, of course. That isn’t the point of children.

  Our single ‘Why Can’t You Forgive Me?’ was released in early March ’86. Trez returned from England again, with her mum and the baby. Eric hired a fleet of round-the-clock nannies – ‘handmaidens’, he termed them, in his sardonic style, which Trez was beginning to resent. By the time she and Eric began to quarrel about it, the single was at 4 in the US charts. A week later, it went to 2.

  As the album got bigger, the unit sales became mind-boggling. In a two-hour window on Saturday 22nd March 1986, it sold 56,000 copies in the United States alone. One of the weirdest things about suddenly having money, more than you ever imagined, is that everyone gives you stuff for free. Guitars, designer clothes, jewellery, food, booze, their thoughts, and, of course, drugs. A SoHo gallery sent me a signed limited-edition print by my idol Patti Smith. Books. Furniture. Flowers. Records. When poor, we knew we couldn’t go out on a Saturday night in New York without thirty bucks each, the utter minimum. I swear, when the album hit big in America, I didn’t carry cash for a year.

  We went on the road again. Personally I found it healing. I swore off the tequila, which meant I could hear the songs. Through the milder haze of red wine and a couple of beers, they sounded stranger and better than I remembered. To play music you wrote in your bedroom and hear thousands sing it back to you is a fierce and startling pleasure that every musician should have at least once. The hotels were five-star. Stretch-limos at the airports. The suite they gave me in Boston was larger than the house in which I’d been raised, so big that I couldn’t sleep and had to ask Seán if I could kip on the couch in his room

  I didn’t have the coolness of one or two of my colleagues, who were able to look at a line snaking five city blocks for us and not be wowed by the sight. Punters roared for the songs. They sang along with the choruses. They bought T-shirts I’d never been shown, emblazoned with images of our faces. They bought the record in tens of thousands. Fran climbing the stage scaffolding. Mosh-diving. Spraying beer. A crowd of fifteen thousand bouncing as one, hands raised high towards the sweeping beam of the spotlight, and THE SHIPS in scarlet neon.

  Fran, always a diva, started making demands. Catwalks to be built into the audience, special lights, bigger amps, dressing rooms re-carpeted, ‘crushed-velvet white curtains’, and for the tickets to feature artwork by Keith Haring or Basquiat. It was around this time that his onstage behaviour began to disturb me. He’d always seen himself as belonging to rock’s more theatrical lineage. You got used to him going on in ‘corpse paint’ and wielding a chainsaw, gimmicks I found tiresome in a singer of his gifts, but suddenly things got darker. He’d want to perform ‘a suicide’. Trez absolutely forbade it. Roadies are of a hardy brotherhood, not easy to shock, but the images Fran wanted our effects-guys to project across the backdrop resulted in a walk-out strike. Photos of Vietnamese children, napalm burns, amputations, intercut with extreme pornography. We forced him to back down, but he resented us for doing this. We were halfway through our show in Boulder, Colorado when he started tearing at his face, raking it with his fingernails, as though he wanted to do serious damage. He was smoking heroin to help him sleep, and we turned a blind eye – without sleep he could be impossible to deal with. To wake himself, or perform, a couple of bumps of coke were needed. It became his thing to go on wearing a balaclava or a Mexican luchador’s mask, or to do long sequences of the gig with his back to the audience. In Dallas, he scrobbed so hard at his face that he appeared to tear the skin, rivulets of blood raising screams of joy from the billies. Backstage, he told us it was just an old wrestler’s trick. Before showtime you slice your earlobe with a razor blade and cover the cut with sellotape, ripping away the tape so ‘the burgundy flows’. We put it to him that the audience didn’t want tricks or burgundy. What we meant was that we didn’t want them ourselves. He talked of getting a gun.

  It’s been written that at the Summit, Houston, Texas, I walked out of the gig. Not true. I never walked on. Three minutes to showtime, I took off my guitar, slapped Fran across the mouth just as hard as I could and threatened that if ever he spoke to Trez so insultingly again I’d put him back in fucking Casualty. Had a direct flight been available from Houston to London that night, I’ve no doubt the band would have ended. As it was, Seán found me, drunk in the airport, waiting to fly to any city on the North American continent that wouldn’t contain Francis Mulvey. We sat there till dawn. They’d done the show without me, which was a poisonous little epiphany of its own. We’d have been sued if they’d cancelled. But their playing that show meant nothing was ever the same. To realise that your worst fear is grounded in reality, that actually you’re not needed, the show happens anyway – not only does it hurt but it thieves your last card. I apologised to Seán, said it wouldn’t happen again. But he knew that it would. And it did. In Oakland, then Atlanta, again in Detroit. I told them I couldn’t stand Fran’s behaviour on the stage, his apparent contempt for the audience, which stoked them even higher, and this was true enough but it wasn’t the whole truth. I walked because I wanted him to ask me to stay. And some nights I walked, just because.

  Persuaded by Eric, we all moved back in together. We weren’t to worry about money; choose anywhere. Trez found the place on elm-lined Bedford Street in the West Village, beside the townhouse in which Edna St Vincent Millay penned those increasingly meaningful lines about burning both ends of the candle. The realtor explained that Trotsky and Auden had frequented a bar in the neighbourhood, ‘though not at the same time. That’s a sitcom, right?’ Like half the population of Manhattan’s downtown at any moment since about 1980, he was writing scripts and ‘hoping to direct’. The rent was astronomical. It was paid by the record company. Everything was ‘a deductible’, apparently.

  The room Fran commandeered was up in the attic, the most studiedly bohemian garret I have seen. You expected to find a soprano stoically dying of consumption beneath the oak rafters, on the assiduously distressed chaise longue. We didn’t get invited. He spent days there, alone. By then, we left him to it.

  Trez and the dote were in an apartment of their own, down in the basement, a place I never liked, dark and low-ceilinged, like a cabin on a coffin-ship, but she beautified it by spending great fortunes on wildflowers and throws. There was a room for her mum, who detested New York and returned to Luton after two months. Two nannies moved into the room; Irish students, as I recall. You’d hear them singing and sweetly laughing as they moved through their realm, clucking at the little one in quack-quack merriment as the ecstasies of bath-time approached. A youngish professor at Columbia would visit Trez from time to time, paying court, as I supposed, or simply offering adult company. From my window he seemed handsome, always impeccably dressed, bearing flowers, a bottle of wine, little gewgaws for the baby, chocolates for the hot-and-cold running nannies. Reluctant to meet him, I finally asked if I could. But by then he’d been dismissed, back to Columbia or the suburbs, where he lived with a wife who got depressed on Sunday nights, a lady he’d not only neglected but neglected to mention. ‘She’s an orthod
ontist,’ Trez told me. ‘He’ll be needing one.’

  There was a tiny garden out back, through battered French windows, leading to a courtyard where you could sulk in the evenings if the weather was too hot and you felt like considering the strange twists of Fate over a sweat-stained glass or a joint. As for her brother and your scribe, we took the ground-floor bedrooms, since we were drinking like bastards in those days and didn’t want to deal with stairs, especially not the spiral version that ascended all the way up the house like a corkscrew in a dipso’s nightmare.

  The best thing about the place was that we made a rehearsal studio right there on the premises, in a sitting room we didn’t need because we didn’t do much sitting any more, at least not the four of us together. Eric sent guitars, a keyboard, a drum kit, a nifty little 16-track recording machine, which Seán, thank God, figured out. Some of my favourite Ships numbers were demo’d in that room, often late at night, when we had to play quietly on account of the neighbours’ dogs. Fran would slink down from his eyrie or in from his roamings, blow harmonica, strum a chord, or just sit there. Sometimes he’d make a pot of tea and listen to us a while. Another night he’d float an idea, very quietly, like it mattered, and he’d stand to the mic with his eyes closed hard, and the words seemed to come out of the air. Trez might have a sheaf of lyrics or the smoke-ring of a melody, even just a cluster of chords. I don’t think I ever heard her play better than in that room of forgivenesses. Because the walls were so flimsy, I started learning mandolin and uke, instruments you get more out of with gentleness. We’d play all night long, exchanging hardly a word, shuffle out to the Italian café on Bleecker when it opened at six, then drift home and try to sleep a couple of flickered hours and open that morning’s mail. Invitations and fan letters, and, pretty often, cheques. The sedan would arrive to take us to the airport. Unbelievable days. But they happened.