Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography

by Baker, Danny

  As it turned out, we didn’t get to New York till the following Monday, having sold everything we possessed – in my case the rump of the record collection – and securing visas after queuing all day at the American Embassy. We stayed for two nights in John Gillespie’s apartment near Columbus Circle, too terrified by tales of the lunatic Big Apple to go outside much, before embarking on a wild-goose chase to visit the only other connection we had in the States: my sister’s husband’s aunt, Marie Spoon, who had married a GI in the 1950s and now ran a motor-boat firm in land-locked Burlington, North Carolina. Any Kerouac-style romantic notions we had about taking a Greyhound bus such a distance was shattered within twenty minutes of leaving the Port Authority Terminal at 42nd Street. The bus smelled of urine, sick and carbolic, was full of twenty-stone wild-eyed maniacs who seemed to carry their whole lives with them, and made more stops than a London Routemaster. After about five hundred or so of these chaotic, noisy pick-ups, we found ourselves in Richmond, Virginia at four in the morning, both absolutely shattered and with no idea what to do with ourselves until the connecting bus – to Raleigh, North Carolina – arrived in an hour’s time.

  Having decanted into the grim empty terminus we found, to our great joy, the only other visitors were a group of about nine wild-looking youths, all drinking from bottles of booze hidden in paper bags and cursing loudly. Within minutes of the bus pulling away, they shouted some indistinct things at us before walking over, noisily kicking their empties out of their path as they approached. Oh, this was great. As they bore down on us I pondered the long odds that they might be fans of Kevin Rowland. Sebast muttered a low ‘Oh fuck’, as they gathered round.

  ‘Way you fraaarrrm?’ said a pug-faced skinhead, clearly pissed out of his mind.

  Before I could answer, another of them spat, ‘Why you wearing nigra shoes? They’s shoes nigras wear.’ To clarify the observation, another one told us that ‘faggots’ too favoured my footwear.

  I should explain that I, in some ludicrous gesture of individuality, had decided to travel into these most conservative of states wearing bright-red, crepe-soled, Teddy boy, brothel creepers. I snapped into action. I had developed a remarkably successful system for defusing atmospheres that are threatening to turn rancid – learned mainly when playing provincial towns with punk rock bands. What I do is begin talking to the most belligerent member of the lynch mob as though they were a long lost, great mate of mine. Looking down at the offending creepers, I launched into it.

  ‘These?’ I said, with so much perkiness it threatened to bring the sun up. ‘These? See, we’re from London, England and everybody has these there. You know, I’ve noticed in America you don’t have them, do you? Tell you what – you’ve got the right idea. They weigh a ton! I can’t wait to get them off – feel a right fuckin’ idiot in them, man. Where do you guys get shoes, because I need a pair!’

  They couldn’t make head or tail of it of course.

  ‘Where you from?’ they came again.

  ‘I know, I know – London, England! Like ten thousand miles away! What are we doing in Virginia, eh? Well, I’ve got to visit my fuckin’ relatives – you know what that’s like, right? Jesus, fellas – we’ve been on that fuckin’ bus for days, weeks! I thought America was the same size as England – this is a HUGE country, dudes. So how’s the action around here – we seen nothing but fuckin’ COWS for days, man! At last, this city looks like it might have somethin’ going on!’

  There was a minor stand-off at this point, until someone at the back said, ‘Richmond sucks.’ And then the one who appeared to be their leader declared to his crew, ‘They ain’t nothin’,’ and they all strolled away. Sebast, who I think had stopped breathing ages ago, congratulated me on the performance.

  The rest of our trip played out uneventfully, as probably any trip to Burlington, NC usually does. Four days later we were back in the Albion pub having not really exploded our lives as fully as we had planned (there originally having been some talk of never coming home at all). But at least we had done it, recklessly and pointlessly, and soon America would start to pack me to the hat brim with countless Technicolor adventures – starting with the proposed Village People trip.

  In fact, it’s strange that I still label my first assignment abroad with the name of this much-derided group, given that I actually filed two interviews during that fortnight away. Yes, I dutifully got a good cover story from the revealing and rather sad talks with the Indian, the Construction Worker, the Cop, et al.; perhaps the most telling moment being when the Leather Man, Glenn Hughes, said that the whole wild-and-crazy package was a façade and how he and the others were tied to brutal contracts that barely covered their weekly rent. ‘We are under no illusions,’ said the erstwhile actor who at that time was heading toward global stardom, ‘that anybody gives a fuck about us. Nobody pays to see Glenn Hughes or David Hodo or Randy Jones. They pay for a leather clone, a hard-hat, a dancing cowboy. We know that if we don’t like the money – pffft – they can re-cast this band like that.’

  However it was a chance meeting I had the day before my rendezvous with the downbeat disco sensations that rather upstaged the Village People and filled column inches far beyond the pages of the NME.

  As usual, I hadn’t travelled alone; the minute my friends heard that I had a pre-paid hotel room available in New York they rolled up to book their own seats on the Sky Train. Indeed, I think I enthusiastically encouraged them in this lark. This was going to be the Kent Coast chalet scam all over again, with six of us piggybacking into a one-room berth and with Phonogram Records picking up the eventual bill. Our home-from-home though, as it turned out, was one of the most disgraceful and revolting fleapits in the entire Western world. Called the Hotel Dixie, it sat on 43rd Street and has since been voted the Dirtiest Hotel in America’s History by the Trip Advisor website, with tales of crack dens in every other billet and an actual dead body stuffed under one of the beds that was discovered by a couple visiting from Indiana. Strangely, we never really noticed this at the time. On that first trip though we simply slung down our bags in my grimy, bug-infested ‘junior suite’ and headed out into the Big Apple, fearless. We were, after all, half a dozen wired-up Millwall supporters and this time there was to be no question of finding New York City too intimidating to explore.

  We had been in town only four hours when, shortly after exiting a terrific bar on Amsterdam Avenue, I was suddenly snapped out of our rapid-fire Budweiser-fuelled badinage by the sight of the couple coming towards us.

  It was John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

  Well, full of cold draught beer and jet-lag as I was, I knew a hot rock’n’roll scoop when I saw one. This was in the period when Lennon had totally withdrawn from the world and hadn’t made a record or given an interview for almost five years. Well, John, I thought, you’re giving one now. I think it would have gone better had not my mates all crowded around saying, ‘Didn’t you used to be John Lennon?’ and singing ‘She Loves You’ at him. As it was, John manfully continued to stride along the sidewalk and answer my fuzzy improvised questions with clipped but friendly monosyllables. Yoko seemed quite amused by it; possibly she was used to him being fawned over by eager to please males. The interview went something like this:

  Me: John!

  JL: Yeah, hi. Great.

  Me: How’s it going?

  JL: Yeah great.

  Me: We’re from London!

  JL: OK. Great.

  Me: Any message for the world?

  JL: Rock on. Be good.

  Me: I work for the NME!

  JL: Oh right. Is Alley Cat still going?

  [This was a reference to a long-running gossip feature in the sixties.]

  Me: No!

  JL: OK, great. Thanks.

  Me: Anything else?

  JL: Hello, England. OK?

  There was more, but I think you’re getting the depth of the thing by now. As soon as we all sat down again at the next bar I wrote down everything I remembered from the gi
ddy ninety-second exchange. The NME ran every word with even a front-page strap-line saying ‘Lennon Speaks!’ A couple of the dailies used bits too, adding that the ‘former Beatle’ looked content, well and happy – something I’d not included in my original copy but should have done.

  Over the coming decades I would not only meet, individually, the three other Beatles but get nicely drunk with all of them. This is because, at any level of the media, as soon as you become able to in any way influence such events, you craftily begin to move H&E in order to sit down with people you have always dreamed of pallying around with. Look at dear old Ricky Gervais. You may attempt to convince those about you and even yourself that interviewing so-and-so is simply an interesting idea for an article, but secretly you are saying, ‘Jesus Christ, I’ve done it! I’m going to be in the same room with George Harrison! He’s going to really like me! He’ll see I’m not like all the other shallow hangers-on – and we will sit about laughing at how awful the rest of humanity is!’ Many’s the piece I’ve read where the journalist’s sniffy attitude toward a celebrity is chiefly born from disappointment that the celeb didn’t live up to the fantasy and stubbornly refused to become Best Friends For Ever.

  Thus, it was for no other reason than I wanted to tell my sister about it that I trampled over the rest of the NME staff when Ringo Starr’s name came up in the editorial meeting. Now of course Ringo Starr is not some old bum looking for a bit of press. Certainly not; he never has been and he never could be described as such. Except at that time he was – how should I put this? – actually some old bum looking for a bit of press, but for a variety of reasons his record label never let him in on this awful secret. Ringo was deep into the worst period of his alcoholism and had recently released an ocean-going stinker of an album called Stop and Smell the Roses. Nobody cared, and only maniacs were going to buy it. You would also have to be the number one most blinded, craven, awestruck, embarrassing Beatles devotee on the planet to want to promote such a crock of shit as a credible piece of work to a cynical public. So off I went.

  I met Ringo at eleven in the morning at a pub near his huge home in Surrey. He was clearly already half-cut and the publican required no instruction whatsoever before placing an enormous glass of white wine in his hand. ‘There you are, Richie,’ he said. We sat at a little round table in the pub and I asked him if he preferred Richie or Ringo during our exchanges. He didn’t answer, but gave a short amused snort of derision as though I’d just told him I could transmute straw into gold. He then leaned into the cassette recorder I had placed on the table and shouted, ‘The single is called WRACK MY BRAIN! “Wrack My Brain”, people!’ It was as if he thought we were going out live.

  Now I had been told by the press office at RCA that I was to ‘spend the day’ with Ringo and so, after he’d finished shouting into my turned-off tape, I enquired if he wanted to begin the interview here or do it in one long stretch up at the house. With a perplexed expression bordering on sheer terror, he said, ‘At the house? You ain’t coming within a mile of the house, pal. This is it. You got half an hour to sell my record for me.’ Fair play to him, he giggled toward the end of the outburst.

  Rattled and discombobulated, I turned on the tape and made to begin the Great Pow-wow. I hadn’t prepared notes or proper questions – I rarely do to this day – but I’m usually pretty good at getting a conversation going. Except, as I looked into his sozzled old eyeballs, I could plainly detect the message, ‘You dare ask me about the fucking Beatles.’ Indeed, I had been warned about this by the record company the day before but, I don’t know, I really wanted to meet Ringo Starr and thought it’d all be all right. Now, as he sat goggle-eyed, looking at me, all I could hear was the arctic wind blowing through my head. Luckily, he got in first.

  ‘So, what do you think of the album?’ he asked, with a hopelessly misplaced air of confidence about the venture.

  I shifted in my seat. ‘Ringo. It’s a mess. You are obviously deeply unhappy with yourself right now and, frankly, it informs every aspect of your work. The world of music, that you once rightly commanded, has moved on beyond your control and this lazy, poorly written, shoddily played vanity album is riddled with bloated ego and substance abuse. You must realize that, were you not who you are, it would never have been released. Stop and Smell the Roses is a shambolic, unlistenable embarrassment that, even if your boot-licking entourage tell you otherwise, represents a true nadir in a once magnificent career.’

  Is what I was thinking.

  ‘Oh, it’s great. A real fun collection.’

  Is what I said.

  The barman brought him over another hefty tumbler of Sauvignon. I hadn’t so much as touched my bottle of beer. It was to be a pretty dry half-hour. At one point I had to pretend to be interested in the different types of snare-drum skins he’d used during the sessions. I had no idea what he was talking about and merely laughed whenever he did. It did, of course, occur to me that this very process explained exactly how bad records came to be made by big stars.

  I’ve met Ringo a few times over the years since then and always attempt to remind him we had a disastrous first encounter back in his drinking days. He laughs freely at the very words and will raise a hand: ‘Yes, well, I’m sure you can spare me the gory details. Half the world has got stories like that, I’m afraid.’

  Diversion

  I began drinking at around fourteen. It was inevitable and not at all uncommon then to be served when visibly under-age. It all depended on how much of a piss artist the particular publican was or if they knew your family. Some cared, most didn’t. I’ve pretty much enjoyed every single drink I’ve ever had. In fact, I’ll qualify that. I’ve enjoyed every single drink I’ve ever had. I still drink today, very much like being nicely alight, and have a reputation for being a particularly good drunk, happy and loud, always pursuing the aim to be a terrific host. I don’t slur or get sloppy but have been known to attempt to play the trumpet or give small children twenty-pound notes. The worst you can say about me when I’m boozed is I will get waspish with those who don’t agree with me about the glories of UK Prog Rock 1968–74. I know a percentage of you will be reaching now for pen and paper – leastways the publisher’s email – to chide me for ignoring the dreadful effects of alcohol upon families and society; in return, I would suggest we hear plenty about that. It’s undoubtedly rotten, but shouldn’t quell into submission the countless number of us who go through life drinking extremely happily and not terrorizing the neighbours. Even as a teenager friends would say, ‘I’ve never seen you really pissed,’ which I’m pretty proud of, given that I have been precisely that, I would say, on average, about once a week since 1971. I don’t drink every day and have a wonderful gift of knowing exactly when enough’s enough. Indeed, the only time in my life I can remember being out-of-control legless was when I was about fifteen and in Tommy Hodges’ backyard one night when his parents were out. We had no booze, and no way of getting any when Tom remembered there had been a bottle of Sweet Martini in a cupboard in his mum and dad’s front room for as long as he could remember. (I’m aware the rest of this story pretty much writes itself.)

  So we sat in his backyard among the R. Whites Cream Soda crates and bundles of sale-or-return copies of Titbits and Reveille – Tom’s parents ran a newsagents, remember – and drank a whole bottle of revolting Sweet Martini, straight up, from teacups, no ice. I can still taste it. When I stood up to go home I had, for the only time in my life, that sensation of disturbing momentum when the top half of your body is going at a different speed to your legs. The more I tried to make my legs catch up to the tilting upper reaches, the further my head and shoulders seemed to plough on ahead. Of course very soon down I went. Tom, meantime, equally stewed, simply stared at me lurching about with an accepting blank expression as if to say, ‘Ah. This is happening now. I’ll just watch then.’

  I got up and immediately went down to the side like a windscreen wiper. I remember thinking, ‘Oh God! Drunk! THIS is drunk, eh?
Easy now, Dan. Deep breath. Hold it together. You probably got away with the first two collapses as normal movement. One more fall and the world may suspect something.’

  Having bounced out of Tom’s backyard, I was immediately faced with climbing the wall that separated our two homes. I put my two arms on to it and suddenly realized I had no idea how the action could possibly proceed. The sequence of events to get over this obstacle simply escaped me and I stood flat up against the bricks totally bamboozled as to what to do next. One leg, dimly trying to recall its role in the manoeuvre, wanly circled the air like a dreaming dog hoping to locate an itch. After around twenty minutes of this – quite possible a month – I decided I would have to walk home the long way around. I remember nothing about what would normally have been a two-minute journey, other than I went into our local chip shop and tried to serve myself. George, who ran the chip shop, patiently put me back on the right path and I toddled off with no meal but his giant salt pot stuffed into my wind-cheater pocket.

  Blackie the dog let me in and I sat on the floor with him for a while, talking about this and that. Everyone else was in bed, but eventually a light came on on the landing upstairs and my mum padded down to see who I was talking to. She found me lying flat on my back by the telephone table in the passage. Not surprisingly, she asked me what I was doing. I told her I was having a rest.

  Mum helped me up the stairs, quite rightly reproaching me for getting in such a state, and then left me in my bedroom to get undressed. Well, I must have thought that this whole ‘getting undressed’ thing was for squares, because I came to about ten minutes later still fully clothed and somehow on the Big Wheel at an unknown funfair. At least, that’s how my bedroom now presented itself. I have heard about ‘the spinning room’ phenomenon countless times over the years, but this remains my only experience of it. If you’ve never had it, I can’t say it’s something everyone should try. From what I read, it’s pretty much the Ryanair version of a full-blown LSD trip.