#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  So there we were, alone at last, a couple of pop stars in a toilet and not a gram of coke between us. I half expected him to whip out a crucifix and start demanding repentance. Instead he burst into another snatch of song, singing directly into my face. ‘You make me feel like a motherless child.’ I had not the first fucking idea what he was on about, but smiled and nodded, as you do when confronted by potentially dangerous lunatics. ‘A song for the orphans!’ he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Everybody’s in town, this is the moment, we’ve got to do it, we’ve got to do something, show those children that we care. I’ve been working something up, a new version of “Motherless Child”. You know “Motherless Child”? Of course you do, everybody knows it: “Sometimes I fee-ee-eeel like a—”’

  ‘I know it,’ I assured him just to stop him breathing into my face.

  ‘We’ve got some new verses. I’ve already roped the sainted Bono in, I am sure we can get the Boss, Madge, Sir Elton, all the old guard. I just caught up with Honey and Breeze in the lobby and they’re up for it. If you get on board we’ll have critical mass. We’ll get everyone who’s in for the Generator show – Dean from The Smoking Babies, I’m sure we can count on him, the guys from Safety Boots, Ed Spectrum, Ca$$andra, Premier Cru can do a rap and if he does it Cristal will do it … Can you imagine Cristal singing that chorus? It’s going to be amazing, we’ve booked a studio, Softzone will lay down a track this afternoon, Atomic Dog are going to come and do their thing, then after the show just get everyone to put down a vocal, set up a feed at the ceremony, we can have this thing on iTunes by Monday. It’ll be Live Aid all over again, ‘feed the world’, this’ll be the biggest song on the planet and all proceeds go straight to the kids in MedellÍn. What do you say?’

  What do I say? What the fuck was I supposed to say? Those fucking orphans. Hadn’t they heard it was Weekend Zero?

  I fucking hate charity records. You want to give to the poor, give to the fucking poor, don’t make a song and dance about it. Songs are intimate, songs are personal, songs are the sound of a human voice expressing their innermost secrets, not a fucking celebrity rabble swapping lines for effect. And don’t talk to me about saving starving Africans. I watched Live8 on TV and even at eleven years old I wanted to puke at the sight of all those preening peacocks puffing up their social consciences then stuffing their gullets on a backstage buffet. And you know what? The Africans are still fucking starving. Yea, the meek shall inherit the earth but not until the rest of us have fucked it for all it’s worth. Live Earth was even worse: fly a bunch of pop stars around the planet to tell us to stop flying around the planet cause we’re doomed, we’re doomed, we’re all fucking doomed, like we didn’t know already, we grew up doomed, cause you had it all, you fucking users, you had it, you ate it, you snorted it, you burned it, you spent it, and now you want us to pick up the tab. Well you can fuck right off, cause like the song says, we grew up in a world you had already destroyed. You want to sing along? I’ve got a good one for you. I feel no pain. All the children sing with me now. I feel no pain. Let me hear you, Adam, let me hear Bono, let me hear you, Brucey baby. I feel no pain like my pain, feel my pain, feel my pain, feel my pain …

  That’s not what I said to Adam Monk, though. I told him I would do whatever I could to help, and he gave me a hug, and we left the washroom to the embrace of our entourages. We were whisked away for an on-camera love-in, in which we declared how much we admired each other’s work, joked about the domestic hell of being married to movie stars (‘Even on our honeymoon, Gena insisted on a body double’ was such a good line, I filed it away to use myself) and dropped heavy hints that we planned to record together, all to be revealed in due course. Then Adam went into a huddle with MTV execs and I corralled Beasley and Flavia and their favourite minions in an empty boardroom. I filled them in on the proposed charity record while throwing down mouthfuls of pasta covered in some kind of basil emulsion as Kelly fussed over my hair. There was general inane enthusiasm about Adam Monk’s idea from the minions, although Beasley’s face was unreadable. He would be fiercely calculating whether this would put a positive spin on our campaign or steal our thunder. ‘Well, I don’t want to do it,’ I said, just so they knew how I felt, as if they even cared.

  ‘Given that you practically just announced it live on MTV, it may be a little late to start expressing reservations,’ noted Flavia.

  ‘Download the lyrics of “Motherless Child”,’ Beasley instructed his assistant, Eugenie. ‘If we’re going to do this, I want to make sure Zero gets the money shot. Let’s identify the key line and make sure our boy is singing it. And get Adam Monk’s manager on the line. My artist doesn’t get railroaded by anybody, I don’t care how big they think they are.’

  ‘It’s for the orphans,’ said Kelly, timidly.

  ‘The orphans are not our concern,’ snapped Beasley. Oh, he was a man after my own black heart.

  5

  We staged a mass exodus to the Pilgrim Hotel for award rehearsals, an MTV crew expanding my entourage. Any normal person of sound mind and limb would walk the fifty metres across Times Square but we went twice round the block so that I could be transferred from limo to blacked-out people carrier and sneaked in through the rear goods entrance. The Zeromaniacs, of course, were way ahead of us, screaming and banging on the side of the van as it drove past production trucks into underground parking. I was hustled like a presidential candidate on assassination watch into a staff elevator, almost colliding with Sting as the holistic superstar made an exit after his own rehearsal. ‘Have you been roped in by the do-gooders to save the orphans?’ he enquired, while my people faced off his people, mobiles at the ready.

  ‘I hate charity records,’ I muttered.

  ‘We all hate charity records,’ the greying Adonis laughed. ‘It’s the things that test us that make us stronger.’

  Then we were on the move again, emerging amid a cackle of walkie-talkies into an enormous ballroom, the ceiling a sea of chandelier glass blazing in the glare of TV lighting. One wall bore a blow-up of the latest Generator cover, featuring yours truly, naked from the waist up, with a Superman logo painted on my chest beneath the headline ‘From Zero To Hero’. I was introduced to camera crews, stage managers and TV directors, tragically hip men the age of my father squeezed into clothes two generations too young. One was even wearing my own brand tailored trackies, which of course I complimented him on, even though they made him look like a lardass loser. Not the feel my designers were going for, I suspect.

  A tall, nervous, middle-aged effete in mod suit and ponytail turned out to be Generator’s editor. ‘Hope you enjoyed the cover feature,’ he murmured. ‘Brian Spitzer is America’s finest contemporary music writer and I really think he’s done you proud.’

  ‘I never read my own press,’ I said.

  It’s not true, of course, but why give them the satisfaction? But I had to wink and show him I was just joking. I am so weak.

  Our host for the evening’s event was lured out of his dressing room to pay his respects. I could see him switch into on-mode, casual stroll turning into shoulder-rolling, street-hustling slouch. Willard Meeks was a black American online comic with a hyperactive persona and a rep for tweeting the untweetable. I had caught his act on U-Bend and he was pretty funny but I was already cringing in anticipation of assault.

  ‘Yo, Zero, wassup, bro?’ he started in, like we were old friends. ‘You left my girl Penelope in the jungle with Troy Anthony? What’s wrong with you, man? You think she won’t go for a man her own age? Ain’t you watched any of his movies? Goddamn, his ass oughta have its own agent. He must be, like, contractually obligated to drop his pants every movie or the ass goes on strike. You got to respect an ass with the clout to swing a shower scene in a biopic of George Washington. Only man in the world I’d recognise by his buttocks. If he came into the room now, buck naked, backwards, I be like, “Hey, Troy, thanks for coming on the show.” You better pray those Amazonian mosquitoes ar
e sucking the blood out of his white ass, cause I don’t like to think what else is getting chewed up, you know what I’m saying?’ Then he let out a big yuck of trademark laughter to remind me we were all show buddies here, just trading banter.

  I have never understood people who think it’s a testament of character to be able to laugh at themselves. Why would I want to laugh at myself? It’s hard enough getting out of bed in the morning without starting with the premise that life’s a big fucking joke and I’m the punchline. I had enough of it in school, I had it all my fucking life, and I didn’t claw my way to the top of the fucking hit parade just to take more fucking abuse from fucking self-styled verbal vigilantes. But it’s no use trading one-liners with a comedian. It was either smile or punch him in the throat. I’d have a word with Beasley. No jokes about Penelope tonight or we’d pull the show.

  My band was already onstage, with Donut McCann fretting about the suitability of the hired backline, our own equipment being in a studio in Queens, where, he reminded me at least ten times, I was scheduled to do a full dress rehearsal at four. ‘What do you need me for, Donut?’ I chided him. ‘I know all the songs, I wrote them.’

  ‘Then don’t come crying to me on Monday night if you stand over the wrong trapdoor and get a firework up your arse in front of a full house at the Garden,’ snarled Donut.

  He had a point, I suppose.

  We ran through ‘Never Young’ a couple of times for camera blocking. The bright sparks at Generator had proposed bringing in a choir of infants dressed like war refugees to join in the chorus, which Beasley opposed out of concern that it might be perceived to be crass in light of the MedellÍn orphan situation, and Donut opposed on the more practical basis that you should never work with children, especially on a tight schedule. So we came up with a choir of septuagenarians, the oldest gospel singers we could find that could stand without a Zimmer frame and hold a note. Dressed in white robes, they looked like a choir of ghosts. The backdrop was supposed to be black-and-white footage of children in peril, in wars, famines and refugee camps throughout the last century, finally freeze-framing on a particularly appealing MedellÍn orphan, but when they sat down to watch the edit, no one could get through without bawling their eyes out. Well, no one except Beasley, obviously, but he pulled it on the grounds it would create negative associations. So instead, someone hastily assembled global-warming disaster footage, floods, fires, stranded polar bears and pictures of the Earth from outer space, ending with a newborn baby being held up to his mother for the first time. Her expression as she pulled this tiny creature to her breast still got me, to be honest, but I didn’t have to look at it, I was on the mic, back turned to the big screen. I wasn’t playing an instrument for this, just standing very still and singing my heart out, dropping to my knees for the finale. At the end, the studio techs broke into applause, which is usually a good sign.

  The old folks didn’t have the faintest idea who I was, which was nice. They just smiled at me benignly like I was a clever child who could sing. When I went over to say hello, only one man asked for my autograph, for his granddaughter, and then glowered intently when I scribbled in his book, before asking, ‘What’s that say?’

  ‘Zero,’ I said.

  ‘Your name, son, write your name,’ he insisted, rather fiercely, and had to be helped back onto the choir stand by Donut and my musical director, Carlton Wick.

  For a moment I stood and stared at this motley assembly of worn-out skin and bone, liver spots, rheumy eyes, wrinkles so deep they were like scars on the surface of the earth, and had to pull my gaze away with a shiver, a cold tremble running up my gullet. Was that where we were all going? I’ve never really known anybody old, not really old. My Irish grandparents were gone before I was born, or before I remember anyway. And my mother’s parents were an abstraction, I had never really given them any thought. I don’t know if she even had parents, maybe she was an orphan, or there was some big disruption with her family back in the mists of time, I don’t remember her ever talking about them, I don’t remember her ever talking, I don’t really remember her at all. She never got old. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. That’s rock and roll, isn’t it? My mother must have been rock and roll. Did she leave a beautiful corpse? I stared up into the choir, all these craggy faces, beauty long since having taken a leave of absence, all that was left was life, a fierce will to survive. Why couldn’t I remember my mother’s face? How could I forget something like that? She looked like me, that’s what my old man said, that’s why he found it hard to look at me sometimes.

  I sat down at Carlton’s piano. ‘I need some water,’ I announced, to no one in particular, and then chose from an array of bottles pressed upon me. I felt the cool, clean liquid glide down my throat. Sometimes there is nothing like water. And sometimes you need a little twist of something extra. It had been a long day and we weren’t even halfway through yet. ‘Are we done? What the fuck are we waiting for?’ I snapped at Carlton.

  ‘Just waiting to hear if they have got everything they need, then we’ll wrap it up,’ replied my long-suffering musical director. Carlton was a former one-hit wonder from the Eighties. You must remember ‘Komsi Komsa’ by Zen Twister? Carlton was that very same trustafarian with tatty dreadlocks who fashioned a jingle out of misspelled French and cod philosophy and has survived on the royalty cheques ever since. He was brought in on my first solo album to add a bit of polish to my home production and stayed on to enjoy finally being acclaimed a genius, when all he really did was transcribe my parts and use communication skills honed at Eton (and wasted for decades trying to follow up his only hit) to organise a team of top session musicians, who could have probably organised themselves just as well for a twelve-pack of beer and a couple of grams of coke.

  Since we had a few minutes on our hands, I asked Carlton if he knew ‘Motherless Child’. ‘Of course,’ he replied, as if I was impugning his professional integrity. ‘Everyone knows “Motherless Child”.’

  ‘Well, I don’t fucking know it, Carlton,’ I sighed, although there was some vague melody lurking in the back of my mind. ‘Would you mind playing it for me?’

  I pushed over on the piano stool to make room, and Eugenie came dashing forward with the lyrics on her tablet. There were just three verses, doubling as choruses, and they only had a couple of lines in each, with lots of repetition. I wondered how Adam Monk thought he was going to get his A-list chorus to share this around? Carlton was laying down some simple, soulful gospel chords with an underlying minor melancholia, and as the notes rang through me I realised I did know this song, fuck knows from where or when or how, perhaps it was imprinted in my neural circuits like an ancestral memory. I started to sing, softly, tentatively, to myself, feeling my way through the lines.

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  A long way from home …

  Something strange was happening, something moving across the stage like a breeze, the way that music can, the way that music does bring everything together. The old folks stirred. They were swaying gently with the chordal movement. And they started to sing along, at first a soft hum, rising with confidence to a mournful sigh.

  Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone

  Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone

  Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone

  Way up in the heavenly land

  True believer

  Way up in the heavenly land …

  Those old folks could sing. Their voices had the cracks and patina of age, they had the stretched thinness that years wreak on vocal chords, the dry timbre of kindling that might catch fire at any moment and disappear in a crackle and puff, but blended together in harmony the effect was awe-inspiring, a cathedral of sound, climbing up to the chandeliers and beyond. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to watch and listen. Even me.

  Sometimes I fee
l like freedom is near

  Sometimes I feel like freedom is here

  Sometimes I feel like freedom is near

  But we a long way from home …

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Carlton, his face suddenly looming before mine, snapping me out of my reverie.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, then realised I wasn’t. My eyes were swimming. There were tears pouring down my cheeks. My whole face was wet. Carlton had stopped playing and the choir resumed chatting among themselves, as if nothing had happened. But I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t even know where the tears were coming from. Kilo was at my side now, Kelly was dabbing my face with a tissue, my people were closing around me, cutting me off from prying eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ I protested. ‘It’s just … the lights …’

  In the privacy of a washroom, Kilo warily chopped out another line. I felt the nostril burn, the neural explosion, the adrenalin shot to the heart, then I rubbed my tongue across the delicious numbness of my gums and clapped my hands together, filling the washroom with an explosion of sound. This was more like it. ‘What next?’ I grinned.

  Did I really need to ask? We had half an hour before an international press conference scheduled at the neighbouring Enlightenment Hotel, where an advance party were already setting things in motion. In the meantime, there were more radio calls and Bruno Gil, The Times photographer, was pestering Flavia for ten minutes to shoot a classic New York skyline photo on the hotel roof. She had turned him down flat but I was feeling munificent now, cocaine crashing through my blood, and what the fuck, I could talk on the phone, ride an elevator to the roof and pose for photographs at the same time. Hell, I could even chew gum.