by John Niven
♦
Without warning, with no warning at all, winter just becomes summer somewhere in the middle of May. There is no spring. The heat does what it does to London; cars become boiling torture boxes as—and everyone is surprised about this, no one thought it possible—the traffic slows even further. Everywhere seems to be under construction; the navvies, stripped to the waist, or wrapped in fluorescent yellow and orange vests, scratch their heads as they stare at some mad coil of piping they’ve dragged up through the broken bubbling tarmac. They stand on the hard shoulder, on the pavement, in the middle of the road, chewing gum and insolently holding up their circular red ‘STOP’ signs, or—rarer and briefer—their bright green ‘GO’ signs. All the slip roads lead to despair. In their torture boxes the people sluice Evian, light cigarettes, drum their hands on the wheel and fiddle with the radio and all the time you hear the sampled string loop and Richard Ashcroft singing ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and you punch through the stations and you hear ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.
The summer does something else to London too. You’ve noticed, haven’t you? How could you not? Look at them appearing; pouring from the tubes and buses, emerging from doorways and office blocks, chattering and stretching out in wine bars and at wooden tables outside the pubs: the fucking boilers.
I mean, girls, where do you all go in the winter? Fill us in. October rolls around and you all vanish underground. Or you fly off to some island somewhere, some girls-only paradise where you work on your tans and leaf through lingerie catalogues, planning the summer attack. From October until May the female population of London is composed entirely of octogenarian Polack hags wearing carpet-thick tights and growing beards. You look around Oxford Street and you think—what the fuck is going on? It’s just blokes, benders and beasts. Then the sun comes back and—bosh—it’s a boiler-fest, a sea of silicone-jugged teenage porn stars in micro-skirts, sawn-off tops and thongs. Taunting midriffs, heckling arse-cheeks and abusive nipples all over the fucking shop. Even Nicky has abandoned her traditional fat-chick black leggings and has taken to parading around the office in some kind of condom-thin kaftan, her gigantic, nightmare paps sloshing around beneath it like a couple of carrier bags filled with glue.
It gets worse every summer. It fucks us up. It interferes with work. The needle of my libidometer, which is generally nudging ‘RAPIST’ at the best of times, is jumping off the scale. The other night, stumbling through Soho, I became so enraged with lust that I had to dive into one of those festering doorways off Berwick Street to spend fifteen minutes and fifty quid having my pulsing balls drained by an East European teenager in a grubby satin slip. (In London after midnight, as in many capital cities, it is far easier to get your cock sucked by a pair of terrified fourteen-year-old immigrant twins with a gun at their heads than it is to buy a bottle of Chardonnay. And there are lots of young fit Bosnian and Kosovan chicks on the game at the moment—a pleasing by-product of the recent punch-ups over there.) And, yes, of course I feel guilty about contributing to the sum total of this kind of human misery and all that. But, come on, what are we meant to do? I mean, have a heart. Put some fucking clothes on.
It gets hotter and things happen.
Rage is arrested for attacking a British Rail employee who asked him to put his cigarette out. We still have no plans to release his album.
It looks like Seagrams will buy EMI.
Ellie Crush’s record goes gold—half a million—in the US. Parker-Hall is officially the industry fucking wonder boy.
I have a couple more meetings with Danny Rent about Songbirds. A couple of other labels are interested in them now, which is always good news as it means I’m not completely off my nugget, but…I just don’t know. They’re so fucking bad. Having said that, apparently Tracy Bennett over at London Records has just signed some cobbled-together bunch of sows called All Saints, so it looks like a few people will be having a pop with the Spice Girls cash-ins. I need to be signing something soon.
Neither Waters nor Schneider has been replaced yet and I am de facto running the department, although there is no official recognition of this and no extra remuneration. If ‘Why Don’t You…’ was shaping up to be a hit I reckon I’d have been offered the job by now.
Trellick gets some girl from Sony pregnant. But he does the decent thing and forks out for a top-drawer abortion, an overnight-stay job at the Wellington near Regent’s Park.
The Lazies fly into the country soon. They’re doing a short European tour, playing a few warm-up dates for Glastonbury and meeting record companies. No less than seven labels are now trying to sign them. Apparently Parker-Hall is all over them. With the possible exception of Ultrasound, they are now the hottest unsigned band on the planet. I have managed to convince Jimmy, their indie-manager loser, to let me take them to dinner while they’re in town.
♦
I quadruple-park the car on Parkway across from the Spread Eagle, which is already rammed with summer drinkers, and run into the off-licence to buy cigarettes and whisky. Waiting for my change I happen to glance along the top shelf, at the glut of hardcore: CumSluts, Anal Housewives, Fifty-Plus, Suck. Pump. Grinder.
My eyes settle on a pair of brown cheeks, thrust high in the air, a red satin G-string splitting the cleft, barely covering the faceless boiler’s gleefully proffered anus. The strapline reads: “She Wants You Up Her. Now!” I am immediately overwhelmed by a sickening rush of lust so powerful as to be indistinguishable from total rage. The shopkeeper—a toothless, octogenarian Paki—doesn’t bat an eyelid, doesn’t register a flicker of alarm or interest as I add an armful of the most hardcore titles to my purchases, even though the top magazine is called Asian Whores and features one of his Sikh or Hindu sisters naked and fingering herself while sucking greedily on a huge orange plastic prick.
“Sorry, sir. No bags,” he says.
I stagger out to the car, teetering with fags, Scotch and hardcore, and there he is: a hulking Nigerian monstrosity in serge blue uniform, frowning at my licence plate as he punches numbers into his little machine. “Come on, mate,” I begin.
“No parking,” he grunts, not looking up.
“I was only in there a minute.”
He just repeats the two words. The only two words of English he knows.
I mean, Jesus Christ. They bowl over here, straight out of some boiling HIV cauldron, some genocide-rape-famine meltdown entirely of their own making, and are they grateful? Are they fuck. They go to some language class (probably at the taxpayers’ expense) to learn how to say ‘no parking’, and then they march around London nicking you up.
“Look,” I say reasonably, “fuck off, cunt.”
“No parking.” The ticket whirrs out of the machine.
He holds it out to me. I throw it on the ground and spit on it. He shakes his head and starts writing something in his notebook.
“Oh yeah?” I say. “You can write, can you, you fucking animal? Why don’t you—”
“Hi, Steven.”
I turn. It’s a girl called Charlie, or Chrissie or something. She’s a scout somewhere. Sony? EMI? “Ah, hi there,” I say.
“You going to see Ultrasound?” she asks me brightly.
“Ah, yeah. Trying to.” I shift the magazines, trying to huddle them in towards my chest, but it’s too late, her gaze is already ambling down towards the glossy pile of total disgrace.
“Right…” She says uncertainly, already backing away, “maybe I’ll see you in there.”
“Yeah, see you there.” I turn back, but he’s already across the street and the spittle-flecked ticket has been fixed to my windscreen.
♦
The Ultrasound show is rammed: A&R people from Virgin, Island, Warner Chappell. I see Nick Mander, Andy MacDonald, Andy Leese and Malcolm Dunbar from Mother, Leamington, Dave Gilmour. No Parker-Hall, who is already on record as saying the band are ‘pony’. Across the room I see Rebecca talking to some girl I don’t know. I wave hello and she smiles back. You often see Reb
ecca out at gigs. Why the fuck does she bother? I mean, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.
I’m in a filthy mood, lounging at the bar sipping a triple Rockschool when someone taps me on the shoulder. “Hi, Steven,” this guy says. He’s in his late twenties, a bit old to be in here. I’ve no idea who he is, probably some manager, some agent. “Hi,” I say shaking his offered hand, no light of recognition whatsoever in my eyes. He senses this and says, “It’s Alan Woodham.”
Nothing.
“DC Woodham? I came to interview you about Roger Waters?”
Fuck, the copper. “Oh, hi! Didn’t recognise you, you know, in civvies.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Err,” he looks confused, “about the band,” he gestures towards the stage where the singer of Ultrasound, who must weigh twenty fucking stone by the way, is screaming over an angry fizz of noise.
“Oh them.” I pretend to think. Maybe I actually am thinking. I don’t know the difference any more. “Not bad. Angular.” He nods, like this means something. “What brings you here?” I ask.
“Oh, I’d heard some good things about them. Thought I’d check it out.”
Christ, what a fucking loser. What the fuck is he doing here watching some poxy unsigned band? Shouldn’t he be out cracking crime?
“So,” he says grinning, “what did you think of our demo? Be frank, I can take it.”
“Actually,” I say, putting my drink down on the bar for emphasis, “I was going to call you about this, but I couldn’t find your card. I have to say…” His face is doing a good impression of passive, professional disinterest but you can see the ticks and judders of fear and apprehension in the way his eyeballs flicker and dart, the way his lips squirm and quiver. They all look like this just before you tell them what you think. Obviously I have no idea what I am about to say. I listened to about half a song of his demo—worthless sub-Oasis drivel—before I pegged it into the bin. So I say, “I was really impressed.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Great songs. Honestly.”
“Any song in particular stand out?”
Fuck. “Track three.”
“Time Keeps Moving’?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
“Yeah, I like that too. I was trying to…”
He starts to crap on about whatever influences he was trying to merge in the song or something. It’s good because I can stop listening now. It’s just a bunch of self-serving toss requiring no comeback, no specific rejoinders. I nod away, looking across the room at some girl’s arse and thinking about an Asian boiler being smacked repeatedly in the face by a very stiff cock. I catch Rebecca’s eye across the room and she looks away quickly. Finally Woodham finishes speaking so it’s my turn.
“Listen,” I say, “the only thing that’s letting you down is the production.” He nods eagerly. “What if I spring you a little demo money? Put you in the studio with a decent engineer for a couple of days?”
“Really? Shit, that would be great.”
“Give the office a ring and ask for Darren, yeah? I’ll get him to sort it out. Have you made any progress on finding out what happened to Roger?”
“Not really. None of the neighbours saw anything, we don’t have any witnesses. It was most likely a disturbed burglar.”
“Fucking bastards,” I say, draining my glass and plonking it on the bar. “Well, keep me posted, won’t you?”
“Of course. And thanks, Steven. Thanks for the chance. I mean, obviously with the job and the kids and ‘everything and being, well, nearly thirty, I’m not still harbouring any illusions about being a rock star…”
No shit, mate. You look like a fucking copper. No—you are a fucking copper.
“…but I thought,” he continues, “with the songwriting, maybe I could get a publishing deal? Write songs for other people?”
Fuck me. Fuck me. “Yeah, definitely,” I say instantly, “I mean, don’t give up on it just yet, Alan. Noel Gallagher was, like, twenty-eight or something when he got signed. And Mark Knopfler. And Sting was old and he was a fucking teacher!”
We share a laugh and I can see he’s thinking the same crazy shit that they all think. It goes something like this: “Yeah. It happened for them, it could still happen for me. Why not? I’m talented. You just need the break. Right place at the right time. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
They really do think like that these people. They think that Dame Fame and Lady Fortune are going to loaf into the room and single them out. You wouldn’t fucking believe it.
I’m making my way through the crowded bar towards the door when, for the second time that evening, a heavy hand falls on my shoulder. Wearily I turn round—straight into a snarling mess of burnished fangs, a pair of burning devil’s eyes. Tony-Blair-poster eyes.
“Oi, cunt, what the fuck is going on?” Flecks of spittle hit me.
“Ah, hi, Rage.” What the fuck is he doing here?
“Don’t fucking give me that. What the fuck is happening with my album?” There’s a couple of big darkies with him. One of them carries a record box. Rage must be DJing somewhere later.
What is happening with the album is nothing. We’re sitting on the abortion until the cretin speaking to me writes something approaching a hit single.
“How do you mean?” I say innocently.
“Are you trying to be fucking funny?”
“No.”
“Schneider gets fired, that fucking queer Sommers ain’t returning our calls, I ain’t got a release date, I ain’t been fucking paid, I…” he goes on and I see now that he really is angry.
“Listen,” I say, interrupting, “can we go somewhere quieter and have a chat? I need to speak to you. Alone, yeah?” One of his boys glares at me and kisses his teeth but Rage waves them away and leads me off towards the dressing room, managing to get into only two serious arguments with security guards on the way there.
Soon enough we’re hunkered down over the nosebag and, once he’s got a thick line of my chang into his greedy fucking face, I hit him with the truth. Schneider hated the record. Derek’s on the fence. I think it’s a masterpiece. I tell him that I have some strong ideas on how to market it properly. That we have to get it released.
“That cunt of a fucking Jew-boy,” Rage says.
“I mean,” I say incredulously, “he wanted you to fuck about writing some pop single! The fucking cheek. I kept telling him, you’re an albums artist.”
“Yeah. Fucking straight up, blood.”
“We’ll get great press and build it from there. Fuck Radio 1. Fuck them.” I smack a fist into my palm. I’m getting into it myself now, almost believing the utter shite I’m spewing.
“Yeah, fuck radio,” Rage says.
“Listen, when we came to the studio, to that playback, that track you played us, ‘Birth’, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I shake my head solemnly. “I had tears in my eyes,” (this much was true) “fucking goosebumps, mate. I mean, who gives a fuck if its sixty-four minutes long? It’s a classic.”
“Yeah? Cheers, Steven.”
“Look, everything’s fucked right now with Schneider going. But it ain’t gonna be that way for long.” I have started to speak like Rage, a trait I have when talking to bands. If this conversation goes on much longer I’ll be breaking out the fucking boot dubbin. “I’m not saying I’ve got the job yet, but when—if—I do, I want you to know you’ll be a priority act, mate. A priority act.”
Rage looks at me for a long moment, the silence dripping with cocaine. Finally he points a finger at me. The finger has three heavy gold rings on it. “I always said to Fisher that you fucking understood what I was doing,” he says.
“Yeah? Cheers, Rage,” I say raising my glass.
“I’ll tell you what I was trying to do with that track…” He starts talking about the piece-of-shit song in mind-frying detail, but it’s OK because I don’t have to list
en any more. It’s fine. I can just stand here, nodding, and moving frozen shards of coke around the roof of mouth with my tongue while saying over and over to myself “you black bastard, you black bastard, you black bastard…”
The following morning, in business affairs, I wholeheartedly add my vote to the unanimous landslide as we decide to drop Rage from the label. “All righty,” says Trellick rapping his notes on the table “…moving on, boys and girls. Unsigned bands…” Within a few months Rage will probably be back to whatever he did before—chiselling stereos out of dashboards, holding Stanley knives to the throats of terrified pensioners, and filling council flats with half-caste babies.
Darren and I take The Lazies out to an insanely expensive Russian restaurant on the Embankment—caviar and thirty-seven different lands of vodka and private dining rooms where you can do nose-up right off the table without being seen.
“Jimmy! Good to see you again, man,” I say, getting up and slapping him on the arm, trying to remember what we talked about over lunch in Austin the month before. “How’s things? This is Darren,” I say as Darren gets up and extends a hand.
“Uh, hi, guys. Darren? Yeah. I’m good man. This is Greg, and Adam and Kevin…” He introduces a shy, gangly, six-legged tangle of pimples, torn jeans and BO. The musicians.
We shake hands and do the ‘hi, how are you’ stuff. None of them makes eye contact. It is probably blowing their minds to be ordering a meal somewhere you don’t just put the handbrake on and speak into a grille. “…and this is Marcy.” The singer comes out from behind them. She’s tiny, stunning. Skin white as a fridge and perfect features half hidden under thick black, bowl-cut hair.
We do the small talk—how was your flight? Been to London before? Bish, bash, bosh. What you’re trying to figure out here is: who am I talking to? Whose band is it? You can usually—not always—forget the drummer and the bass player. It’s normally a guitarist/singer deal. I make sure I’m sitting next to Adam, the guitar player, and across from Marcy. Darren gets plonked with the rhythm section, the Muppet Show.
