Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography

by Baker, Danny

  Actually I had had one very short and humiliating taste of being a DJ prior to these few years of Bermondsey gigs. Dear Lord I had clean forgotten it – expunged the thing – until recalling the hot song titles above brought back the shame of this humbling shambles.

  A few weeks before I left the record shop, one of our regulars, Tom Browne – an actual Radio One jock and voice of the chart rundown each week – asked me if I’d ever thought of having a crack at the nightclubs – very specifically the clubs of Scandinavia. I told him that I had absolutely no experience of DJing and could never figure out how those crafty wizards kept the beats simmering along like that. Tom replied that it was a piece of cake and, besides, the clubs that he supplied in Norway and similar were VERY grateful for any fairly good-looking half-competent English talent because having that up on the marquee attracted girls who in turn brought aboard the hordes of desperate blokes. Would I like to have a bash at it? After all, as he put it, ‘You’ve got plenty of chat, right?’

  Well, you’ll recall that I had absolutely nothing else in the diary so I convinced myself – and I think even told my family – that I would need my own suitcase soon because I was going off to be a big star among the Vikings. Tom had explained that I would need to audition for the lascivious post but not to worry about that because he always had the casting vote and I might as well go and get my passport now. I would also, he suggested, need to buy a large knife for carving all those new notches into my Scandinavian hotel bedposts. I thanked Tom for the opportunity and was genuinely touched he had taken the trouble to do this for me, us not being exactly buddies or anything. Exactly why he was going out of his way for me would soon become embarrassingly clear.

  About ten days after Tom’s job offer I found myself entering a nightclub at around ten in the morning along with about thirty other DJs – real DJs who had boxes of records with them – all hopeful to land one of the ten vacancies advertised. I had – like somebody who is NOT a DJ, or more accurately, like an idiot – brought one record with me: ‘Love Hangover’ by Diana Ross. Then again, I was a shoo-in for the sex-fest; this was all for show.

  Everybody sat about the empty, darkened disco with its air full of stale booze and jaded thrills until called up to present five minutes of their typical music and patter. Oh fuck. The music I had anticipated, but patter? You mean, actually come up with the gruesome ‘sexy’ entreaties these people routinely spout between disc changes and right up until the vocal starts? I couldn’t do – and had no intention of attempting – such a withering public exhibition. To be fair, if it had to be done and done publicly, the first five chaps were very good at it.

  ‘Hey, babes, let’s keep this happening vibe a-going all night long, okay? How ya all doing?! Gettin’ crazy? I said, are you getting CRAYZEE?? You betcha! And don’t you know we are gonna find spaces in your funk trunk even yo’ momma don’t know you have – you dig me? How ’bout you all get to the sweat right now with some Fatback funk at the BUSSSS STOOOOOPP!’

  Yes, that was the stuff to send the Aryan fjord hordes wild all right. Well done, mate. But would I be able to do that? Not a fucking chance. After a few more of these sleazy but doubtless effective master classes I heard my name called and moved toward the podium – there was no booth – as if trapped in a fevered hallucination. I took the twelve-inch copy of Diana Ross’ very latest smash from its sleeve and, after what seemed like a silent eternity trying to fit the hole in the middle over the turntable’s spindle, dropped the needle on to the groove. I couldn’t have made a worse choice of song. In case you can’t recall it, ‘Love Hangover’ is a song that comes in two parts; the first a sort of slow, loping sequence that increases in intensity until the upbeat orgasmic release of the piece’s denouement that trundles around happily for about four minutes. I had no problem with that last four minutes. It was the preceding three that I hadn’t budgeted for. On the twelve-inch version, things sort of musically loaf about for a goodish time before Diana makes her first appearance, and as the record began playing through the ear-splitting club speaker system I realized I would be expected to fill until she arrived. I let the first ten seconds play without comment and could feel the eyes of every single one of those professionals burning through me like lasers. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ they quite rightly seemed to demand. ‘Has anybody ever come across this Herbert on the circuit before?’ would have been a fair follow-up. Looking down at the spinning Motown label before me, I pulled the adjustable metal mic a fraction toward me and started my provocative Swede-seducing routine. Except I didn’t. The words seemed to peep out from the back of my throat and then immediately flee down into the safety of Mother Larynx. All I came out with was a noise like someone who had been shot and was surprisingly disappointed in the sensation. I apologized and asked to start again. As my shaking hand took the head of the record player back to the start I could hear a voice in my head literally screaming, ‘What are you going to say? What are you going to say?’

  At the same point in the intro I shaped up to deliver some kind of heavy suggestive appealing to my imagined mass of bopping Norwegians and, in a voice something like a chicken being given the bumps I went,

  ‘Wo-ho. Yeah. Yeah. I feel great. Honestly. Gotta love Diana Ross and her new one.’

  And then down came the shutters once more. I stood there for ages, concentrating on the record going round and around, making gurgling noises, my hands gripping either side of this raised public pillory like grim death, hoping that when I looked up again the whole place would be magically alive with thirty professional DJs frugging in uncontrollable ecstasy to what I had just created. In fact, on looking up all I saw was Tom Browne right in front of me, holding up a clipboard and running his finger across his throat in the international gesture for ‘cut’. I lifted the needle from the disc with a loud comedy scratch. ‘Okay, thank you,’ he said in a clipped manner. I was shaking so much I could barely get the record back in its sleeve and, when I did, I held it upside down so it fell out again and rolled away in shame.

  Calling Tom over, I began babbling at him in a low voice: ‘Tom, I couldn’t do this in a million years. That was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do – they must think I’m a right cunt. I am. That’s exactly what I am. I think I’m gonna faint. I just wanna run under a lorry now.’

  He made some calming noises but seemed a bit shocked at my collapse. How could he justify that fiasco to his colleagues? ‘Listen, if you really don’t think you can do this . . .’ he started, and I gripped his arm in gratitude.

  As Tom walked bemused back to his business partners I sank into a chair, needing to sit down for a few moments. I was joined by one of the proper DJs.

  ‘Have you never done this before?’ he asked with a smirk.

  ‘No, never,’ I croaked, still seized by shame and panic. ‘Was it obvious?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said. ‘Some of the blokes said you were only here because of who you are, like.’

  I looked at him stunned. Who I am?

  ‘Yeah. Tom reckons you’re David Essex’s brother.’

  Oh, good God! Talk about things coming back to bite you on the arse. So that was why I was here. But who was still floating this moribund old legend about? I hadn’t used that line for ages. Well, about eight months, anyway. Apparently, somebody had told poor old Tom some time back that I was indeed fucking DEB, and he had figured the billing would be pretty hot poop to serve up to the star-starved frozen Scandies. Sadly, I had now revealed that, even with this association, I would stink up all the discos like a month-old barrel of herrings.

  It says much about the power of music, not to mention my own broad back, that the scalding, dreadful memory of that morning did not sour me toward the entire dance genre forever and now, with my toehold at the NME, I was ready to visit the nightclub floor once more – this time from safely behind my manual typewriter. I still had some way to go though before I made a name for myself or even developed any kind of recognizable style. The first actual interview
the paper sent me to do was with a young singer who currently worked at the Exchange & Mart offices in Croydon. She was called Kirsty MacColl and Stiff Records were about to release her first 45 – ‘They Don’t Know’. Well, from our first handshake she completely bowled me over. I thought she was super hot, super talented and we got on terrifically well during her allotted lunch hour away from the E&M. When we parted I like to think she had something of a twinkle in her eye and a ‘come hither’ undertone to her goodbyes. In fact, I can plainly recall our final exchange:

  Me: I would love to buy you another lunchtime sandwich sometime.

  She: Well, if you’re ever in Croydon, I’d love for you to buy me that sandwich.

  I mean, what? There’s plenty there, eh? If that’s not giving a chap the glad-eye then I’d like to know what is. Anyway, I skipped back to the NME and got on with the reception duties all the while hoping that nobody would notice the series of visible pink hearts that now bulged from my eyes like Pepé Le Pew the amorous cartoon skunk. About four days later Phil McNeill, NME’s assistant editor and a proper journalist, came out to me and asked how my ‘piece’ was going. I had dreaded this enquiry. You see, once the initial intoxication with Kirsty had passed I realized I hadn’t made one note in the seventy-five minutes we had spent together. Worse still, I couldn’t recall asking a single question. I seemed to have spent all my time with her trying to be charming and making her laugh. I knew absolutely nothing about her, beyond the fact I owed her a sandwich. Taking the Stiff Records press release that came with her record I cobbled together about 800 words – all of them positive – and handed them to Phil for him to give them a prominent spot in that week’s edition. I stood there while he read the splash. When he looked up he said, ‘Did you actually meet her? This is fucking awful. It reads like a press release.’ He had me there. Of course the NME was famous for its hard-bitten, joke-filled cynical world view in which the writer was usually the subject and hero of any article. What I had delivered was, frankly, colourless pap.

  ‘Why’s there nothing in here about her father?’ pressed Phil, dumbfounded. Her father? While I did recall the press release mentioning the names of both her parents I’d thought that was of no significance and had dropped such dull niceties from my rewrite. Phil explained that that her father was Ewan MacColl, just about the most famous folk singer these islands have ever produced. I had never heard of him – a fact that now causes me to blush deeply. Kirsty’s mother was the dancer Jean Newlove. This was a heady background and rather at odds with my patronizing angle about the little girl from Exchange & Mart hoping to get a glimpse of the big city. During our chat – or rather my monologue – I could now remember her saying everyone usually wanted to talk about her parents, but I’d sailed by that remark as if it were a distant lighthouse.

  Fortunately my useless effort cannot be said to have hampered the wonderful career of Kirsty MacColl, and my ‘interview’ with her remains the only piece I have ever had spiked – though there are a few others I wish had been. Take, for example, the very next assignment I was given. This was a rendezvous with yet another up-and-coming female singer, this time called Kate Bush. She hadn’t done very much publicity and so the EMI press office was absolutely thrilled when the mighty NME said they were keen to give this rising kid some exposure. They probably didn’t let on that they were sending their receptionist to write the piece.

  I met Kate at the EMI offices on Manchester Square and, once again, I fancied that there were seductive wheels within wheels spinning away behind the surface level of my questions and her answers. Kate, it turned out, was from my part of the world – well, South-East London anyway – and we both squealed with recognition when we picked out shabby little landmarks we both knew in Lewisham and New Cross. She told me how scary some people at EMI were and how she hated talking about herself. I told her I was the NME receptionist and she gasped. We seemed like two giggling conspirators suddenly swept up in a big adult machine. I liked Kate Bush and, as with everyone I came across, really thought she liked me. I can’t lie to you, that’s just the way I am. (Deep breath.) Anyway. What happened next was this – and it is something I have felt truly rotten about ever since.

  When I came to play the tape of the interview back (this time I’d actually taken a recorder along) I knew I couldn’t be as anodyne as with the Kirsty puff and so found myself very unfairly going for the gags. True, some of Kate’s pronouncements about the world did border on the airy-fairy, but on the tape I could hear myself cooing along with each one like I was getting it straight from the Dalai Lama. I had two choices: write up a fairly straight report of the meeting and risk Phil McNeill washing his hands of this formerly promising street punk, or have fun with the encounter – even if that meant relegating Kate Bush to merely a foil for my whizz-bangs. Had I the slightest clue that she would go on to be the Kate Bush, perhaps I would have decided differently but, as it was, I sat down behind the typewriter, cracked my knuckles and cranked out the folderol. Here’s how it began:

  EMI: three letters that have come to represent ‘the enemy’ in rock’n’roll’s war games. EMI House rambles like a country home with a thousand warrens of ministry-type boring pools and divisions. The guard on the reception listens to me announce my appointment with Kate Bush with all the emotion of a weighing machine being told a hard luck story. Like everyone else, I get told to take a seat while he talks, unheard, into one of the extension phones. About 10 minutes later I’m led down and through EMI House and up to a corridor down which the Daily Mirror’s Pauline McLeod is striding. She’s out – I’m in. Kate Bush is sipping Perrier water from an elegant glass. I tell her she’ll get a rosy old bugle if she carries on guzzling the gin like that, and she laughs naturally. She’s far more attractive than I’d ever thought.

  Hey Kate. Do you feel obliged to sing in that style all the time these days?

  ‘What? You mean . . .’

  Y’know, like you could age the nation’s glassblowers.

  ‘Oh sure, I mean I don’t feel obliged, it just flows that way. As a writer I just try to express an idea. I can’t possibly think differently of songs of mine because they’re past now, and quite honestly I don’t like them anymore.’

  Have you still got people around you who’ll tell you something’s rubbish?

  ‘My brother Jay, who’s been with me since I was writing stuff that really embarrasses me – he’d let me know for sure!’

  And so on into an interview where I always seem to entirely have the upper hand, an attitude even. The ‘glassblowers’ gag wasn’t a bad line, of course, but I hadn’t been anything like as chippy as that face to face. I emphasized her hippy phrasing at the expense of what she actually had to say. I ended the article like this:

  Kate Bush is a happy, charming woman that can totally win your heart. But afterwards on tape, when she’s not there and you actually listen to all this . . . well golly gosh. Don’t lose sleep, old mates, it’s just pop music folk and the games they spin. But like, you know, Wow.

  This was Chicken Licken, Cosmic News, Atlantis, goodnight, man . . .

  It was a rotten thing to do. I knew that even as I typed it up and yet I also knew it was exactly the sort of thing people bought the NME for – why I had bought it like a ritual all those years. Why? Because it was funny and it took a position against the music industry on behalf of the readers. It would also get some remarks and laughs from the other writers, which was, for me, the most important thing of all. I remember once seeing Chuck Jones, the genius director of countless Warner Brothers cartoons, being asked, probably for the millionth time, who it was his animations were aimed at: children or adults? ‘Neither,’ said Jones with a shrug. ‘We made ’em for ourselves.’ That was also very true of the New Musical Express in the 1970s. Writing and reading such stuff was pure exhilarating fun. That Kate Bush’s publicity had to be devoured by our vanity was simply the house style. In time, the whole of mainstream pop culture developed a similar relationship with fame, bu
t I like to think that the NME fired its darts with a certain renegade panache and wagonloads of humour. We were making hay while the sun shone too, seeing how today the music industry is protective to the point of paranoia about the hapless hollow product that pop has become. Anyway, I apologize, Kate, even after all these years. At the time, however, I couldn’t have felt too bad about sending her up because about a fortnight later I was doing exactly the same thing to a pious Brian Eno. At last I was drawing encouraging remarks from Nick, Charlie, Tony and Julie. I had fully arrived on the team and I was getting good at it.

  Lennon Speaks

  The first big trip NME sent me on was to interview Village People in New York. It wasn’t my first trip to the city. About a year previously I had been lounging over a lunchtime drink in the Albion pub, Rotherhithe. Chum Sebast was tugging on his ever-present roll-up and reading an article in the Evening Standard about the sensational new Sky Train service entrepreneur Freddie Laker had introduced, which offered a revolutionary low-cost airfare to the USA of only £59. Resting the paper on his knees, he took a sip of beer and said, ‘We should have some of that.’ I had little in the diary, so my reply was, ‘When?’ ‘I dunno – Friday?’ he said. This was on a Wednesday and we were both technically unemployed at the time.