2008 - Kill Your Friends

by John Niven

  “Do you know what I mean, Steven?”

  “Umm, yeah. Definitely,” I say, tuning back in, having no idea what I’m replying to.

  “Good. Because there’s rumours doing the rounds that I’m going to poach so-and-so from Island, that so-and-so from EMI is going to come over with me. All the usual bollocks. I just want you two to know that your jobs are safe. I’m gonna have complete faith in you until you give me a reason not to. Right?”

  “Yeah,” Hastings says, “thanks, Tony.”

  “No problem, Rob. Steven, I hear you’ve been looking at signing Songbirds, them girls Danny Rent’s managing?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. What do you reckon?”

  “I didn’t reckon much to any of the songs on the demos.”

  “Me neither, but—”

  “But that ain’t necessarily a problem with that type of band, is it? And they’re lookers, the girls. Trashy, but lookers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of advance is he looking for?”

  “Fuck all really.”

  “So, do we wanna be doing the deal or what?”

  “What do you think?”

  He laughs. “I’m asking you, mate. It’s your call,” he says, signalling for the bill.

  Do I want to sign them?

  I really don’t know. It’s so much easier not to sign bands. Signing bands can cost you your fucking job. Also, I must be mindful of Parker-Hall’s intentions here. He could be privately convinced that Songbirds are grade A, oven-ready turkeys with lead wings and hobnailed boots on. He could be cheerfully doling me out enough rope here to hang myself properly once and for all. What does he care about the advance? It’s not his fucking money. Having me sign a pop act also makes practical and political sense for him.

  Practical sense because he’s just signed a three-year contract and you can break a pop act in six months to a year. As for breaking a ‘proper’ band…the Manic Street Preachers were signed in 1991 and only started properly selling records last year. Same kind of time frame with Radiohead. Do you really want to be fannying about for five fucking years trying to break something like that? Chances are they’ll be a billion quid unrecouped and you’ll be clearing out your desk before they sell one record.

  Political sense because, if Songbirds are huge, he looks the King of Rock because he authorised the deal and supervised the project. If they go down like the Titanic with boulders strapped to it he’ll say something about how he had to allow me the autonomy to make my own mistakes, how he always had his reservations, etc., etc.

  However, on the other hand, I’ve got fuck all else going on at the moment. If I don’t sign Songbirds and some other fucker does and then they’re huge, then I’m dead anyway. You’re the guy who passed on the Beatles. It’s a fucking nightmare. Poisoned chalices and loaded dice all over the shop. My call. What do I want to do?

  “Yeah,” I hear myself saying, “I think we should sign them.”

  “All right then. Get Trellick to put an offer in.”

  The bill arrives and Parker-Hall nimbly presses his plutonium credit card down on top of it. His card is from Coutts and I am raped by envy.

  ♦

  The last one of the girls puts her childish uncertain signature on the contract (the ‘i’ in ‘Debbie’ is a little balloon), “That’s your career over then,” says Trellick, cracking his usual gag and the cork cracks out of another bottle and goes flying across the boardroom as the other girls—Annette, Kelly and Jo—shriek piercingly for the umpteenth time.

  I hate signing celebrations. You get drunk and do coke and have to listen to some manager, some singer, some drummer even, crapping on about how great you both are and how you’re going to rule the world. I often think back to these moments when we’re dropping the cunts a year later.

  Crammed into the boardroom along with the girls and Danny Rent are Trellick, Derek (who, perhaps thinking⁄hoping that this bunch of dogs are doomed from the off, kept his ludicrous ‘we’re going to rule the world’ speech mercifully short), Ross, Darren, Rebecca, a couple of junior muppets from press and radio and Parker-Hall. Dunn isn’t here but should be. Where is the Geordie cunt?

  Everyone is smiling and laughing, but, to the trained eye, to the practised ear, there is a marked difference in the quality of the happiness: that of the band and the manager is of a genuine, top-of-the-world, time-of-your-life quality. They’re thinking that they’ve won the lottery. The laughter and smiles of the executives is brittle and plastic; we’ve done this so many times, often for bands and singers who turned out to be about as commercial as tooth-kind drinkable HIV for children. Ours is the forced jollity of the whore, cracking a joke as she tiredly addresses herself to the fifth or sixth cock of the evening. Everyone is thinking something like ‘What are the chances of this piece-of-shit band actually happening? How can I position myself so that if—when—they go down screaming in flames I don’t get burned, but, at the same time, if by some miracle, some unforeseen quirk of taste and radio play they actually sell a few fucking records, then how can I have some of the glory spatter onto me?’

  Parker-Hall gives me a wink from across the room and raises his glass. Congratulating me? Or congratulating himself on letting me trowel a few more bricks onto my DIY mausoleum? I smile back at the lowlife and take a seat next to one of the girls. Jo, I think. “Congratulations,” I say clinking her glass.

  “Oh fank you, Steven,” she says all breathy, her eyelashes fluttering and her hard little peasant’s eyes glittering, “we won’t let ya down, mate.” She smiles at me from under her fringe, tracing her finger around the rim of her champagne flute. I suppose she’s being as subtly and classily flirtatious as she can be, given that her teenage sexual ‘awakenings’ probably consisted of hiking her jeans down in a car park under some tower block and bending over while a trio of thugs lined up behind her.

  The door bursts open and Dunn strides into the room looking incredibly pleased with himself. “Hi there!” he brays, shaking a few hands. “Sorry I’m late, just got back from Radio 1.” There’s a hush of anticipation.

  “The Lazies single?” Dunn continues, looking around the room, savouring the moment. “Straight on the fucking B-list, six weeks upfront!” he says, punching the air. The room explodes—Nicky shrieks, literally shrieks with joy—and Derek is immediately by Parker-Hall’s side, clapping him frantically on the back as everyone whoops and cheers.

  Fucking. Shit.

  ♦

  “Nah,” Parker-Hall says, stretching back in his chair, “that’s pony. Take it off, Darren.” Darren, manning the stereo, takes whatever demo is playing off and slips something else in. I’m sitting on one of the sofas in Parker-Hall’s office (Schneider’s old office), Hastings is on the other sofa, Parker-Hall sits at his desk reading emails, and Darren and Stan are on the floor with a pile of demos and records.

  “This is Coco and the Bean,” Stan says, getting up, “Edinburgh band, a few people are talking about this.”

  A&R meetings are now weekly under Parker-Hall, rather than whenever we felt like it under Schneider. They are also driven by a new focus and clarity: he’s right up every lawyer, agent and manager in town. He’s on everything early and he has a sharp idea of what he likes and what he doesn’t like. What he thinks will work in the marketplace and what won’t. One and a half songs into the Coco and the Bean demo he says, “Next,” and we listen to Polar Bear, Earl Brutus, Catch, the Low Fidelity All-Stars and many more. Parker-Hall tells us why none of them will sell records.

  In the last couple of weeks I have sent Woodham’s demo over to a few of the big publishers; Island Music, Sony, BMG, Warner-Chappell. I struck out everywhere. I put a call in to Woodham and told him I’ve been getting some good reactions, people like the songs, but it’ll take some time. I’ll get back to him. He’s perfectly pleasant.

  Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe he doesn’t…

  A further indignity. The Lazies signed their deal and we h
ad a party at the Halcyon in Holland Park. The night before the party Parker-Hall shuffled into my office and said he thought it’d be a good idea if I didn’t come. “I can’t come anyway,” I lied, “I’ve got a gig to go to. But, just out of interest, why the fuck not?”

  “No offence, mate,” he said, “and I don’t know what happened, but Marcy says she gets a bad vibe off ya…”

  “Right,” Parker-Hall says after we’ve listened to all the new music kicking around this week. “I’ve been thinking about producers for the Lazies album and wondered if any of you lot had any bright ideas…”

  Fortunately this week’s Music Week is open on the floor next to me at the top hundred albums and I hastily run my eye down the page, over the names of producers, which are listed in brackets after the albums themselves, while Hastings craps on.

  “Steven?” Parker-Hall says, swivelling in his chair to face me.

  “Bird and Bush? Bacon and Quarmby? Gil Norton? Dave Bascombe? Langer and Winstanley?” I say, reeling them off.

  “Why?” Parker-Hall says, looking blank.

  “Why what?”

  “Steven, mate,” he sighs, “it sounds like you’ve just stuck a fucking pin in the Music Week directory and come up with a list of people who’ve produced a few records that are in the charts this week.”

  “No, I…” My face is colouring. This answer would have worked fine under the old regime. “Well, who are you thinking of?” I say.

  “Steve Albini,” Parker-Hall says.

  Hastings nods solemnly, I do too, while thinking, “Who the fuck is Steve Albini?”

  “He produced In Utero, the last Nirvana record. He rocks up with a box of microphones and records the band live. Don’t take points either.” Eh? This guy Albini must be out of his fucking mind. “The way I see it,” Parker-Hall continues, “we’re gonna have enough of a buzz on the band to have a gold record with this one whatever it sounds like. Let’s make an extreme record, establish credibility, and then we can look to make something more commercial with the second one. Yeah?”

  He’s thought all this through. He isn’t really asking our opinions on anything.

  It is just some horrible test.

  ♦

  I go into the studio with Songbirds.

  Now, I hate going to the studio. (Unlike Parker-Hall who seems to love it. Also—and check this out, you won’t believe it—he goes away for the weekend with his artists. Honestly. Picture it, if you will. They sit around and get stoned and talk about…I don’t know. I guess they talk about chords and middle eights and B-sides and stuff. I’ve tried to imagine doing this myself but, come on. There’s a limit.) In the studio nothing happens for four days and then they play you something and ask for your opinion and you pretty much tell them to make it shorter and make the vocals louder. I mean, there’s not a lot to it. But I need to fill the days somehow, so here I am. (“How do you write a song? Well, you get some kids in a room, you get a beat going…”)

  On the other side of the glass the girls have been trying to record some harmonies for the past four hours. I’m reading the FT while Allan, the producer, fucks around with the Autotune—a studio device that, in theory, should allow a tramp gargling with razor blades and spunk to sound like Pavarotti.

  The Dow hit a record high the other week. People I know are making money and I’m sinking in a quagmire of delays and debt. I had another heart-caving conference with Murdoch at the new house last week. Another wall may have to come down. I am haemorrhaging cash I do not have and if I do not turn this bunch of whores around soon it is possible I will be finished before the building work is. I take some comfort from the fact that Trellick bought a load of EMI shares recently, thinking they’d hit the floor. He was wrong. They’re still going down. Every morning he’s waking up to find his dough has been gang-banged over night. Schadenfreudes all round.

  “Shall we see if that’s any better, Steven?” Allan says after a while. “Yeah,” I say sullenly, swapping the FT for FHM. He hits a button somewhere on the huge desk and music fills the room.

  The girls’ harmonies…it’s hard to describe. Imagine you’d got four fishwives together, filled them full of Special Brew, and told them to scream random, primal abuse at each other. It sounds absolutely satanic. Allan turns it down and looks at me sadly.

  “I don’t see that we have any other option,” he says.

  “Fine,” I say getting up and slipping into my suit jacket, “let them fuck around a bit more, tell ‘em it’s great and send them home. Then we’ll get some singers in and get it done properly tonight.”

  “Right,” he says with visible relief.

  As soon as he kills the track shouting can be heard coming from the live room, even through the phone-book-thick glass. I squint through. Two of girls, maybe Annette and Debbie, are screaming and pushing at each other. Allan hits the talkback and the sound of the playground comes out of the speakers.

  “FACK OFF, YOU FACKING SLAAAG!”

  “YOU’RE THE FACKING SLAG, SLAG!”

  “At least they’re taking it seriously,” I say to Allan as microphone stands and sound baffles get knocked over.

  “I’M WEARING THE FACKING GREEN ONES!”

  “YOU LOOK LIKE A FACKING FAT COW!”

  I realise as they really go for each other—nails flailing, feet lashing out—that they are actually fighting over a consignment of shoes a stylist has brought down for a photo shoot. I swivel round in my chair to Rent who is stretched out on a sofa at the back of the control room reading Billboard.

  “For fuck’s sake, Dan,” I say wearily.

  “All right, all right,” he says getting up and slouching off towards the sliding glass door to go and break it up.

  “And talk to them about the fucking cab accounts.”

  “OK. Christ.”

  Since the stupid whores got signed—sluts who had never seen the inside of a taxi in their lives—they’ve been using company cabs for everything. Going to the corner shop for a pint of milk seems to involve a people-carrier on wait-and-return. Fucking bands always do this. Us too. Every few months a memo will go round vetoing all cab use without the signature of a head of department. Then, gradually, it slips back to the old ways. This climaxed a couple of years ago when a secretary in the marketing department used company cabs for her fucking wedding.

  And then the cretins wonder why they don’t make any money. Let’s see, your album sold eight copies and you spent fourteen thousand quid a month on cabs.

  Later that week, sitting at the traffic lights off Shepherd’s Bush, staring at the blue water in the huge ornamental syringe they’ve stuck in the middle of the roundabout, I hear the Lazies single for the third time that day on Radio 1 and I come to a painful conclusion about Parker-Hall. He’s actually very good at his job and—unlike Schneider—is not going to simply destroy himself through incompetence.

  So, the following night, I drive across London to a seedy Internet cafe in Whitechapel: filthy, slow, old computers and a few Pakis scattered around scrolling through search results for cheap flights.

  Although the place is almost empty I still make a point of choosing a screen in a far away corner. I log on and start doing some research, prepaying for my user time with cash.

  I do not want to leave any sort of paper trail.

  August

  Epic trumpets the launch of the new Echobelly LP. MD Rob Stringer says, “What a fine act they are. I was very involved in the signing.” Andersen Consulting and Sun Microsystems are to spend 50K hosting a Music Industry Trust dinner in honour of Jonathan King. All the time you hear Will Smith singing ‘Men in Black’ and you hear ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawumba.

  Twelve

  “It’s a mean industry—especially when you’re on the buts.”

  Richard Dobbis, former Sony Music President

  By the time the Reading Festival and Carnival roll around the Lazies single is shaping up be a proper hit—possibly top ten—and they’re getting ready to record
their debut album, which is already being freely talked about around the office as being ‘a landmark’, “a classic’ (Parker-Hall) and, from a coked-up Derek, as ‘the best debut album since Nevermind”. (And nevermind that the homo-fool doesn’t know that Nevermind reception can hear us and everything wasn’t a debut LP.) Meanwhile, over in the Songbirds camp, I’m onto the second producer, third studio, and fourth or fifth lot of songwriters—and well into six figures’ worth of recording costs—and I still don’t have so much as a B-side.

  It’s Sunday morning and everyone’s in the bar at the Ramada, a few miles from the Reading site.

  Cigarette smoke and hoarse laughter in the air and groups of people buckle over their Bloody Marys. The place is packed with scouts, journalists, press officers, managers, agents, A&R guys, guys from bands—all talking about bands they saw the previous day: Symposium, Kent, Pavement, Remy Zero and Les Rhythms Digitales. They enthuse about Cha Cha Cohen, Chicks, Space Raiders, Delgados, Smog, Seafood, the Webb Brothers and Dawn of the Replicants. About Rosita, Seafruit, Cinerama, Skinny and Indian Ropeman. We have opinions about Lit, Black Box Recorder, Cornelius and SubCircus. Now, most of that lot will probably end up going down the tubes for a small fortune, probably taking a few people like me out along the way. This is why you have to watch it with signing bands—they can literally cost you your fucking job. One minute you’re nodding away at the back of some indie gig. A rash wave of a recording contract later and you’re down the dole office, shouldering your way between a couple of stinking tolers and a bunch of teenage mothers.

  I see Darren, Leamington and a couple of people at the bar. As I make my way towards them Jon Carter passes me. “All right, mate,” he croaks, his voice a shredded bark—a dog who has been in kennels all night, howling and yelping along with his cell mates. I nod hello.

  “Large Bloody Mary,” I say to the bartender, who looks crippled with exhaustion, like a soldier who’s been left too long on his own to guard some remote outpost of the empire.