The Man Who Loved Islands

by David F. Ross

  Bobby had smiled at the thought of his local deliberations causing as much widespread consternation as the Scotland striker’s decision to turn his back on Celtic to join their fiercest city rivals, Rangers. Maybe one day they would, he mused. Hamish May – Bobby’s de facto legal counsel – saw little benefit in deliberating over the small print. It was a four-fold increase on what Bobby was earning previously, and for two nights a week less. It had seemed mad to procrastinate. So Bobby didn’t.

  ‘We’ll be expanding Revolution in the winter. I’m going to build a bigger area with open-air terraces around a new pool. I’m putting a wave machine in. We need to pull more people in. Amnesia is getting over five thousand punters a night now. The music scene is changing fast, and we need to be at the forefront.’ Laurie Revlon spoke calmly but very assuredly.

  There were some enthusiastic nods from the new boys.

  ‘The days of chilling out and hippy-dippy beats while watching the sunset are gone, gentlemen. There’s a hardcore rave transformation going on out there. It’s going to be all about energy. High-energy music, high-energy drugs … and high-energy DJs.’ She glanced at Bobby, who was demonstrating about as much energy as a two-watt light bulb. ‘We’re going to be open around the clock from next month.’ Laurie Revlon continued. She now looked straight at the Italians. ‘Sleeping is simply not an option.’

  Bobby saw one of the lads from Rome silently mouth the words, ‘Not an option,’ as if hypnotised. He’ll go far, thought Bobby.

  ‘And we’re going to be making our own mixes … putting them on our own CDs.’

  If the earlier part of the meeting had been a bit ‘meat and potatoes’, this last bit was worthy of note. Bobby Cassidy was suddenly as attentive as the sparky Italians. Bobby had dreamed of making his own music mixes and recording them, as the emerging Ace Faces, Terry Farley and Danny Rampling were now rumoured to be doing.

  Working under Laurie Revlon’s banner at the new Revolution club had actually been good for Bobby. Laurie didn’t get too involved. Her expansive team of associates and acolytes did all the interfacing with the DJs and, by and large, Bobby was free to play what he wanted. The club had had a slow start. It was a converted hangar in a remote part of San Rafael, on the outskirts of San Antonio. Several early technical glitches had saddled it with an unfortunate reputation that might have been more easily dealt with in a more central location. Faced with the journey out to an uncertain experience, the early-season clubbers had elected to stick with the tried and tested. But Laurie Revlon knew the right people. The Club closed for a week, dusted itself down and then reopened having had its turbulent electrics overhauled. And soon, with the help of an army of promotional fly-posters and PR workers, the sweaty clubbers and drunken tourists returned in substantial numbers. Bobby worked Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

  Hammy had also been promoted at the campsite and had a name badge that proclaimed him ‘Assistant Campsite Manager’. His promotion was the result of his intervention in a fight between three English lads and a single German, who turned out to be the son of a friend of the owner. Hammy had suffered a black eye in his bid to calm the one-sided situation, and had received the equivalent of a £50-a-week pay rise for it.

  Beyond Laurie Revlon’s apparent ability to see into the future, it was clear that things were changing. The traditionally linear genres of music were already merging and crossing over into other territories. New Order – who had previously shared the same bedsit appeal as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure – had actually come to Ibiza to record an LP called Technique. Due to his fortuitously sharing a hotel lift with the band’s lead singer, Bernard Sumner, Bobby was one of the first White Isle DJs to play a white-label promo of the LP’s incredible opening single, ‘Fine Time’.

  In fact, the innovative Balearic DJs were at the forefront of an entire musical paradigm shift. Andy Weatherall and Terry Farley’s influence on Primal Scream’s new record ‘Loaded’ had indicated a dance-based direction for guitar bands, and in their hands cool samples were taken from a variety of unusual sources in ways that totally changed the sound of the source material. Weatherall even lifted Peter Fonda’s audio dialogue from his film The Wild Angels to start the seven-minute ‘Loaded’ before reinforcing its groove with vocals from the Emotions and a drum loop from an Edie Brickell song. Heard lolloping out of the massive Revolution speaker stacks and into the warm Ibizan summer air, it sounded transcendental. It heralded a new philosophy in which the DJ was an imaginative innovator let loose in a classic record store with everything ever recorded at his disposal. Although self-produced, The Stone Roses ‘Fools Gold’ was another ten-minute journey into a sound that – especially when aided by other stimulants – could take Bobby Cassidy to another place entirely, a place where such music seemed like the only thing in life that actually mattered.

  ‘Fools Gold’ was heavily influenced by the Dust Brothers-produced Young MC track ‘Know How’, and also incorporated a guitar line from ‘Theme From Shaft’ by Isaac Hayes, and the break from ‘Apache’ by The Incredible Bongo Band. The song’s basic repetitive lyrics made reference to the Humphrey Bogart film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and also, more subtly, Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ and The Velvet Underground’s Marquis De Sade-themed song ‘Venus In Furs’. Only a few months earlier, Bobby had been part of a VIP group flown over to the band’s momentous outdoor Spike Island gig: independent music labels in London were courting Laurie Revlon as a potential investor and there were a few spare seats on the Lear Jet. The experience had been incredible. Champagne bottles and solid-silver caviar dishes were everywhere. Perfectly formed mini-mountain ranges of Columbian marching powder adorned every flat surface on the plane. Blowjobs were being given as enthusiastically by beautiful company ‘hostesses’ as the boiled sweets to make your ears pop on landing were on more conventional flights. Turns out there were three possible interpretations of ‘a Jack Daniels and Coke, please’. Laurie sat in the front row, calmly writing notes in a black, leather-bound diary with a diamond-encrusted pen like she was the madam of a flying brothel, marking up appointments on ‘anything goes’ night. When the small jet finally landed it looked like it had flown through a tornado upside down before Keith Moon had been drafted in to administer the final touches to its appearance of orgiastic excess. Bobby had thoughtfully kept the flight details from Hammy, who was already indignant about not being invited. Having missed the opportunity to have his balls sucked at 30,000 feet by a naked woman who looked like the twin sister of Cindy Crawford would have sent him over the edge. It was the Bacchanalian excesses of an industry built on extreme self-indulgence. Watching the Stone Roses at Spike Island from stage left, and with twenty-eight thousand fans separated from the stage by a strange, green-hued creek, Bobby loved the ambition behind the gig. It felt like history in the making; like something you would tell disbelieving grandchildren about. To further compound its surreal quality, at the end he was almost certain he’d seen Joey Miller standing in the soaked crowd, being held back by a cordon of rough security men as the VIPs made their way to their limos. It looked really like him, but it couldn’t have been. He’d have shouted or waved, surely.

  Bobby began deconstructing these songs, the tasty melting pot of indie, dance, soul, rap and hip-hop that formed the ideas behind them. He kept notes and ideas in countless black books, and was spending more and more time in the club, watching those further up the DJ totem pole than him – which accounted for his current state of exhaustion in this meeting. Bobby had become a collector, a researcher and an alchemist all at once. The cultural clash of classic soul, indie attitudes and punk appropriation of cool movie motifs was the future of sound. He was suddenly appreciating what real DJ’ing was all about. It was about experimentation; about taking sonic risks and incorporating those risks into music that had evolved from its basic origins. About orchestrating the murmuration of thousands of clubbers all moving in a coordinated rhythm. Bobby Cassidy felt l
ike he was an apprentice scientist, learning at the knobs and faders of the most important people in music … the DJs of the Balearics.

  The two young men from Kilmarnock loved Ibiza during this frenetic period: the changing musical spectrum, the fashions moving back to a more glamorous era rather than the hippy slacker vibe, and the ecstatic drugs than made anything seem possible. They were both twenty-six years old and life was fucking magnificent.

  Chapter Seven

  October 2014. Huangshan, Anhui Province, China

  The word ‘democracy’ can be difficult to define, and its meaning changes according to which part of the world you apply it to. Most in the West would consider it to refer to a form of government in which the people hold supreme power through representatives that they have elected. Hand in hand with this is a demonstrable sense of social equality. Even described in these terms, democracy can be a very abstract concept. For China, as it gradually emerges from being a closed and relatively unknown environment to one engaging far more directly with the rest of the world, the issue may be less about democracy and more about personal liberty.

  It seems appropriate for Joseph to include a personal account of his time spent in China. It has been a considerable part of his own recent history and – he now accepts – a contributing factor in his descent into depression. He’s had a few drinks, and the tiny bottles are piling up like skittles on his fold-down table. Music plays in his ear: ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’…

  Prior to visiting China for the first time in 2009, my preconceptions about the country were fed by the media. I assumed it was a determinedly introspective, communistic place, where the individual rights and freedoms I take for granted are denied. In 2014, however, people in China have much more liberty than their parents had in the 80s – to love, work, shop, spend, enjoy, travel, speak, believe and, fundamentally, to live. With China recently overtaking Japan, becoming predominant in the new world order and the epicentre of world economic growth, the basic form of liberty that is required to survive the contemporary Chinese urban life does exist for all her citizens. However, it is becoming more evident that the extent of liberty is directly proportional to an individual’s wealth and power. In that sense, Chinese society as it currently develops may be far more recognisable to Western civilisation than the USA and its allies might be prepared to admit.

  ‘…and by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed…’

  If capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of land, capital and the means of production, China is rapidly moving much closer to this model. But it is the issues surrounding ownership of land and personal advancement where the greatest anomalies remain. By the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, virtually all land was state owned. Private property rights had all but disappeared and land transactions were illegal. Since China is still fundamentally socialist in ideology, land remains mostly in government ownership. However, private developers can now purchase the rights to use the land. It’s an interesting and subtle shift in approach; born from a policy rooted in socialism it has created a ‘right of use’ culture. Such rights are generally granted to those developers who have money – which suggests a more recognisable shift from communism to capitalism. Nonetheless, other factors, beyond differences in costs and land values, are now becoming more important and it is in this key aspect that times must change for China. By paying a huge price in social and environmental terms, China has achieved a strange mix of concern for the ignorance of its people and their human rights, and envy for the uncompromising momentum of its development.

  Joseph ponders this complex contradiction. Lucinda Burroughs was very similar to China, he muses. Admired by everyone who knew her for her drive, ambition and no-nonsense attitude to … What? Him? The people who worked for her? World fucking domination? She was feared – a fact in which she positively revelled. She was a total cunt. How had he not seen it, hiding beneath the veneer and the Max Factor mask?

  ‘…I’d like to smash every tooth in your head’.

  But this shift has also created an unsustainable acceleration in the real-estate market, leading to what many refer to as the ‘ghost towns’ of China. Built at breakneck speed in only five years, Kangbashi in Inner Mongolia is a state-of-the-art city full of architectural ‘marvels’ (not necessarily my term …) and sculpture gardens. There’s just one thing missing: people. The city stands as a physical representation of an obsession with GDP that makes no distinction between quantity and quality. Similarly, the massive Three Gorges Dam project is considered in China an historic engineering, economic and social success. The dam produces electricity, increases the Yangtze River’s shipping capacity and reduces the regularity of substantial flooding downstream by the creation of flood storage pockets. To achieve these things, more than 1.25 million people were evicted. There were allegations that the funds for relocating numerous farmers had ‘gone missing’, leaving them with no compensation.

  Where these notes will fit in a memoir of accountability which will attempt to explain everything to his daughter, he isn’t yet sure. He isn’t entirely convinced she’ll even read them; such is the canyon that now exists between the two of them. But at least she’ll have them. She’ll hopefully keep them, and perhaps one day she’ll read them. And then she’ll understand. And that is all he craves.

  ‘Bigmouth strikes again…’

  For other countries trying (and failing) to keep pace with China’s relentless financial growth, the law, market regulation, the environment and, most significantly, human capital are all highly topical and significant issues. Many expect China to gradually adjust its economic structure and reduce its environmental impact. There are also some small, but nonetheless hopeful signs that in future, China’s leaders might no longer seek growth at any cost. In President Hu Jintao’s summary, growth must serve a ‘harmonious society’. Harmony in this instance equates to a narrowing of the poverty gap between countryside and city, and more generally that the poorer inland regions catch up with the coastal ones.

  It is these very complex contradictions inherent in China’s rapid development that make it such a fascinating place for architects to work. The search for an architectural identity in an era of increasing globalisation is relatively universal and not restricted to China. However, China faces a very particular dilemma in regard to how its built environment develops. Chinese culture is one of the oldest and richest in the world. Many elements of old China – Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism – still play an important role in society, representing for many what it means to be Chinese, and demarcating Chinese culture from imports from other parts of the world. Unsurprisingly, these attitudes result in a focus on the past. On the other hand, the economic boom and the way the nation is reacting to global mechanisms have also created the desire for a new China, partly detached from the old, more restrictive traditions

  ‘… and I have no right to take my place with the human race.’

  He surprises himself with how easily the words flow. An extended delay during which he downed four gin and tonics on an empty stomach has loosened the pen somewhat. A tiny meal of rice and chicken might have soaked up some of that, had he not added another four during the flight. In some ways the sentences are of the nature expected when the task was initially set, but when analysed in the context of others he has already written about his times in Tripoli, Delhi and Cairo, they are merely allegories of his own complex contradictions and isolation. Joseph Miller has written most of these new words on the short flight between Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport and its less refined regional neighbour, Tunxi Airport, at the foot of Mount Huangshan. The contrast between the two structures – one, a new, polished free-form temple to Western consumerism and efficient movement of people; the other a much older, tired, and constrained compromise of an operation – isn’t lost on him as a metaphor for the relationships between himself and the two young women who are beginning to occupy his thoughts more and more.

  He smiles ruef
ully. The printed paper sign reads ‘MR JOSPEH MILLOR’. It is held by an atypical Odd-Job in a black suit. Most Chinese are slight but this lad is positively Sumo. Joseph knows there is no point in conversing even to ask his driver’s name. Very few people speak English this far away from the first-tier cities. There is an acknowledging nod and the briefest of smiles as the car’s door is opened for him, but that will be as far as the communication goes. It was one of the things he most liked about China when he first ventured further into the provinces, six years ago. Although Joseph feels relaxed enough now to do so, there’s no pressure on him to talk the international language of commercial business: bullshit.

  Mr Li’s hotels are modest in scale but very comfortable. The interiors are adorned with expensive paintings, ceramics and furnishings. They are all built around a central, vaulted and mahogany-lined social space in which nightly staged performances take place. Private dining rooms with large, circular glass tables circle the void. Even when the shutters are open to allow views of – or simply the ability to listen to – the actors, ubiquitous wall-mounted television screens spew out their headache-inducing graphics. Chinese theatre is a magical mix of decoration and illusion, and although Huangshan has been preparing itself for a tourist influx since the maglev cut the journey time from Shanghai and Beijing by two thirds, these incredibly beautiful events are still being played out to largely empty halls across the region. None of this seems to have perturbed Chan Li, who, despite new legislation from Beijing strangling the hitherto massive profits of commercial developers all over China, has pressed on with proposals for substantial land-grabbing masterplans across the Anhui region. His new thing, apparently, is golf clubs.

  ‘Mr Li want you to show him Scotland,’ says the interpreter as they sit down for dinner.