Back Up

by Paul Colize

  ‘And?’

  ‘He began to drift off to sleep.’

  ‘He must have seen the TV news and panicked.’

  ‘I don’t think it was that, Dominique. Something happened. I’ve watched the poor guy for almost a year, trapped in that vegetative state, but suddenly it was as if he’d woken up. His eyes were full of expression. Fear, impatience, astonishment, I don’t know. He stared me in the eyes. It went on for ages. You’ll think what I’m about to say is stupid, but it upset me. It really upset me. He seemed to want to tell me something. I’ve been doing this job for seven years. I see tragedy, and pain, and death every day. I thought I was immune to it, but suffering in silence like that, it really hit me. As if he had a gnawing secret that he wanted to get out.’

  Dominique stood in silence.

  ‘I think that man has suffered a great tragedy in his life. I’ve tried to communicate with him but he seems frightened half to death. What do you think I can do?’

  ‘I know you like him, at least you seem to.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Dominique likes everyone! It’s in my nature. But yes, I have become attached to him. I’d like to help him. There’s something he wants to confess, to free his conscience. Maybe a secret to confide.’

  ‘That’s why I waited for you.’

  ‘You think he’s ready?’

  ‘That’s what I felt last night. I don’t how he’ll react today but I think he’s had enough of the silence. He wants to talk, and he’ll only talk to you.’

  49: IT WAS RAINING

  Mary sang on stage the very night we arrived in Berlin. The replacement bass player showed up, as promised by the German agent. An English guy aged about thirty, from Leeds. He had settled in Berlin in the late Fifties after meeting a German girl during his military service. His name was Freddie. He hit it off with the Frames straightaway.

  The club they were hired to play was the Graffiti, in Charlottenburg, near Richard-Wagner-Platz in the English sector.

  It was a flashily decorated place on two levels, with a restaurant on the ground floor, serving simple food at affordable prices – pizza, hamburgers and the traditional bratwurst mit ziebeln. Big, kitsch chandeliers hung from the ceiling and the walls were covered with film posters from the Thirties.

  At the back of the restaurant, a padded double door opened onto a staircase leading to the discotheque, on the floor above. The club was bigger than the restaurant. A fifteen-metre bar filled one wall.

  I spent most evenings there, propped against the counter or perched on a high stool chatting to Gunther, one of the barmen. I could describe the place down to the last detail. The stage faced the bar, a metre above floor level.

  The first customers would arrive late afternoon, but the majority appeared at around 8:00p.m. They were mostly military: English, Americans and French, generally in uniform. Crowds of German girls stood waiting, immaculately turned out, made up and wafting perfume. They chattered, laughed loudly and stared at me in disdain.

  It was a place for fun and good times, like a lot of clubs in Soho, but unlike London, the bright veneer masked the underlying distress. West Berlin was a megalopolis of multiple, contradictory facets. By day, it seemed quiet, at peace with itself, despite the omnipresent Wall that haunted Berliners and travellers alike. The traffic flowed freely. The city was spacious and airy, traversed by broad avenues and scattered with parks including the enormous Tiergarten, in the heart of it all.

  West Berlin was capitalist enclave in a Communist zone. The West made sure it was a showcase for democracy, freedom of thought and its own brand of pseudo-humanism.

  The older Berliners were sullen and melancholy, caught between shame at their Nazi past, the humiliation of occupation by foreign forces and the pain of separation from their loved ones. At the sight of me, with my unkempt appearance and bleached hair, they would simply look away – a reaction unlike either the indifference of Londoners, or the Parisians’ scornful stares.

  The city’s youth had become accustomed to the situation. They dressed and behaved like their counterparts everywhere else, but eschewed the eccentricity I had seen in London.

  After dark, things would hot up in certain districts. The liveliest of all were the streets off the smart, stuffy Kurfürstendamm, packed with bars, clubs and strip shows. Numerous English groups played there. They had fled London’s cultural boom and the new wave of psychedelia, in hopes of earning a decent living somewhere, having missed out on fame and glory back home.

  Mary’s room was on the top floor of an ochre-coloured building on Liesenstrasse, in Wedding, in the French sector, ten kilometres from the Graffiti. The other members of the group were housed in a small furnished apartment on a parallel street.

  Mary would spend part of each afternoon rehearsing and writing songs. She would leave at around 2:00p.m. and I would join her early in the evening. I took the bus or the U-Bahn to Charlottenburg. Sometimes I walked, but the distance was exhausting.

  We would get home at around one o’clock in the morning. Often, we took a taxi and shared the fare.

  From our window, we could see the Wall where it cut through St Hedwig’s Cemetery, on the other side of the street. During its construction, the East German authorities had moved the graves that became stranded in no-man’s land.

  At night, the strip of ground was brilliantly lit. When I was unable to sleep, I would watch the frontier guards moving back and forth like menacing ghosts.

  At regular intervals, we heard the clatter of the S-Bahn running along the back of the cemetery. Apart from that, the street was quiet, with few cars.

  I wasted my afternoons, moving from bistro to bistro. I would sit at the bar and try to make the manager’s acquaintance. Most could manage a few words of English or French. I would order a beer and invite them to join me. They usually accepted.

  I would open the conversation on safe ground – the weather, or the concert schedules. I had an encyclopaedic knowledge of both. Once contact was established, I would explain what I was doing in Berlin. I had some cards printed at the automat in the KaDeWe, the big city-centre department store. I had typed my name, Jacques Berger, and my trade – drummer. By way of an address, I had included the telephone number at the Graffiti.

  Man weisst ja nie! You never know. Gunther taught me the phrase. I would drop it in at the end, casually placing my card on the bar, with a few notes to cover the drinks and a tip.

  I was becoming more dishevelled by the day. My soul mirrored my decaying body, and my body mirrored the ruin of my soul. Pessimism darkened my days, hope had given way to disillusion. Mary was worried. Our love-making became laborious and infrequent, subject to the effects of dozens of pills. I was hooked on Tuinal, a red and blue capsule that helped conquer my inadequacy.

  By day, I took a mixture of Dexedrine and Preludin. The latter had been classed as a drug and taken off the market, but it could be bought illegally in Germany, and I managed to find it at a good price.

  I swallowed the pills down with beer. In the evenings, I smoked grass and chewed peyote buttons. The cocktail restored my prowess for a brief moment, and destroyed it the rest of the time

  I had stopped reading. Not that I lacked for time, or that Berlin was short on books, but I was incapable of concentrating on a text. I would stare at the lines, unable to fathom their meaning.

  I became firm friends with Gunther, one of the barmen at the Graffiti. He carried a vast beer gut and never smiled. He spoke fluent English and adored rock music. We would discourse at length on past successes and emerging trends.

  My position was unchanged. Rock should be pure and hard, or it wasn’t worthy of the name. I was loyal to the Rolling Stones, but the Beatles had betrayed the cause. Their latest single, ‘Strawberry Fields’, was a spineless morass.

  Gunther maintained it was a magical progression, basic three-chord rock couldn’t carry on the same way until the end of time. He liked the new, exotic sounds, and appreciated American groups like the B
yrds.

  One evening, just as Gunther was telling me what he thought of Pink Floyd’s latest single, ‘Arnold Layne’, the telephone rang. He exchanged a few words with the caller, then looked hard in my direction.

  I will remember that day to my dying breath. Mary’s contract was coming to an end. It was March the fourteenth, 1967.

  It was raining.

  50: BACK-UP

  Stern worked on the assumption that the recording session had taken place, and that it held the key to the whole affair.

  What had happened that evening?

  What had the recording unleashed?

  For a moment, he wondered whether the results of the session had proved unsatisfactory, which went some way to explaining why the organisers had never released the record.

  But on second thoughts, he discounted the theory. The money excluded that possibility. If their performance had been mediocre, the musicians wouldn’t have been paid, yet they received the money straightaway, at the end of the session, which was unusual in the music industry. In the United Kingdom, artists were paid a percentage of sales, or a fixed fee, and the money was disbursed one year after the record had been released, or a year and a half for sales overseas.

  Stern concluded that an unexpected turn of events had prevented the record’s release, or that it had been intended for a different market, or a different purpose altogether.

  He focused on the presumed absence of one of the musicians, the one who had been unable to attend, and had stayed behind at the apartment. He checked the table he had drawn up and proceeded by elimination.

  Jim Ruskin could be discounted quite reasonably, straightaway. He had clearly been the group’s point of contact with the organisers: he had a good command of German. His telephone calls from Birgit’s apartment, with the man named Karl, and the things he told her the day before and the day after March the fourteenth, confirmed his likely presence at the recording.

  Stern examined the profiles of the other three and concluded that Larry Finch’s absence from such a major event was inconceivable. He was the founder and leader of Pearl Harbor. No group could function without a head man, especially not when it came to laying down tracks in a studio.

  Steve Parker was Larry’s right-hand man from the start. He played lead guitar and sang. Together, they were the heart and soul of Pearl Harbor. It was highly unlikely the recording could have taken place without one or other of the two.

  That left the fourth member, Paul McDonald, the drummer.

  McDonald had talked about the recording to his friend Stuart when the two met in London, but had dodged his friends’ questions and given no details about what had taken place.

  McDonald was a powerfully built man. He drank heavily, but he had a reputation for rude health, and an ability to hold his drink.

  Michael Stern got in touch with Nick Kohn, a London music journalist he had met at a conference. He explained his approach, the context and the facts.

  Kohn replied that no musician was ever completely irreplaceable for a recording session.

  Many session musicians were happy to stand in, either to take the place of an absent player, or because the musical arrangement required it, or for a spot of added value on certain tracks.

  In many cases, if a musician was absent, an alternative technique would be used, namely re-recording. The process involved recording the missing parts after the event, on a supplementary track.

  He took the example of a recent track by Cream entitled ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Clapton had played both solo and rhythm guitar, using this method. According to him, Paul McCartney had recorded an entire song on his own, playing each instrument, and recording successive overdubs.

  Kohn also told Stern that in the small world of rock, when it came to the classic line-up of three musicians and a drummer, the drummer was often considered a necessary evil. Drummers were doomed to extinction, to be replaced by the rhythm machine, a revolutionary new electronic device. And while rhythm machines still weren’t perfect, he predicted they would soon prove more accurate and above all, much cheaper than their human counterparts. The first models had been developed in Japan, and many studios had begun using them.

  In conclusion, and in answer to Stern’s question, he figured that the player most easily replaced in any rock band was the drummer.

  Before ending the call, he added that in a city like Berlin, where so many decent groups were performing, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a capable drummer as back-up.

  51: GET TO A PHONE

  With the handset wedged against one ear, and his hand clapped over the other, Gunther listened, staring at me all the while.

  I could tell from his look that the message had something to do with me. At one point, he nodded and spoke a few words, raising his voice above the din of the music. He put his hand on the mouthpiece and called me over.

  The boss of the Viktoria was on the line. The Viktoria was a bar near the Europa Center, where I went from time to time to drink and listen to the resident rock group. The guy had just received a call from someone looking urgently for a back-up drummer. I had left him my card; it was worth a shot.

  Gunther asked me what he should say.

  I agreed, in principle.

  Gunther uncovered the mouthpiece and translated my reply. The boss at the Viktoria gave him a telephone number. I should call immediately, or the job would go to someone else.

  Gunther dialled the number straightaway. An overexcited voice at the other end gave the name Karl. I could hear him hollering down the line, despite the racket in the Graffiti.

  I was to find a taxi straightaway and get over there. No need to worry about equipment; there was a kit ready and waiting, and three guitarists. I would get six hundred marks for the evening, and my taxi fares.

  I agreed on the spot. Gunther sealed the deal and Karl gave him the address.

  Six hundred marks. Good money for a few hours’ back-up. But a paltry sum for the wreck of a life.

  I emerged from the Graffiti. Icy rain lashed the pavement. I ran to Richard-Wagner-Platz and dived into a taxi.

  The place was on Wegelystrasse, at the far end of Strasse des 17 Juni, on the west side of the Tiergarten. The taxi stopped in front of a soulless apartment block, like hundreds of others in Berlin.

  A man paced distractedly outside the entrance. He was bent forward with his coat pulled up over his head, against the rain. He hurried over as soon as he saw me emerge from the taxi. His name was Karl. He seized my arm and led me towards the building.

  The main doorway opened onto a spacious inner courtyard. He tried a few words in German as we ran across. I answered in English, telling him I didn’t understand. He switched straightaway, spouting the words in a disorderly jumble. I got the gist.

  I would be taking part in a recording session. Normally there were four members to the group, all English, but the drummer had fallen ill at the last minute. Apart from the three other musicians and Karl himself, no one knew, nor should they be told, that I wasn’t the regular drummer. The less said the better. The bass player would brief me when we arrived. If I wanted my money, I should play the game, pretend to know them and apologise for showing up late. Family problems, something like that.

  For 600 marks I was ready to swear my grandmother had died of an overdose.

  We went down to a basement, reached through a door at the back of the courtyard. A maze of narrow corridors led to a small, low-ceilinged room.

  The atmosphere was choking. The heating was on full blast and the room smelled of mould. A faint aroma of hashish floated on the air.

  The guitarists were tuning their instruments and testing the equipment. Two technicians were busying themselves, one in the studio, adjusting the mics, the other in the recording booth. The latter was fitted with a mixing deck and two big tape recorders. They were Studers, the top of the range. I knew the brand, but had never seen these models before.

  Besides the musicians and technicians, there were three ot
her men in the room. They stood motionless at the back of the booth, watching the preparations. Their plain suits and conformist haircuts contrasted with the rest of the scene. Karl went to join them, and delivered a seemingly endless monologue.

  The bass player came over and harangued me for showing up late. He had hollow features and a skin-and-bone figure. I mumbled a few words of apology. He pointed to the drum kit with an authoritative air and ordered me to get into position.

  I did as he said, with no fuss. This was all part of the scenario. I settled down, looking suitably contrite. The kit was a Ludwig, in good condition.

  While I was getting my bearings, the bassist turned his back on the booth and asked if I could count to eight. He seemed nervous, and tetchy. Without waiting for an answer, he said the session would revolve around one of their own compositions. The song was called ‘Girls Just Want it all Night Long’, and it opened with a guitar riff in four-four. The bass would come in after that. The second guitar and the drummer would come in after four more bars. He would tolerate one bad take, no more, I’d just have to fit in. He advised me to keep plenty in reserve for the bridge.

  Finally, he said he was expecting something more than what he called ‘rock for pussies.’

  He wandered off and one of the other guitarists came over. Unlike the bass player, he seemed relaxed and in good shape. He smiled, as if he had just played a great joke behind someone’s back. He had long, bleached hair and a ring on every finger.

  While pretending to tune his instrument, he proffered some information under his breath. The gig had come out of nowhere, two days ago. Karl had come to the club where they played, and suggested they make a recording. The guitarist’s name was Jim Ruskin, the bass player was Larry Finch and the second guitar was Steve Parker. I was Paul McDonald. The group was called Pearl Harbor. The real Paul McDonald had snorted poppers before coming out, to boost his performance, but had been taken ill.