They remove their fingers from the plectrum with it yet to respond and get up to investigate the source of the noise. Max opens the church doors. Across the road and beyond the church’s high boundary wall, a white van has crashed headlong into a concrete lamp standard. From their elevated position, they observe that the driver seems dazed but unhurt. The front of the van is crumpled and steam is rising relentlessly in the cold winter air.
‘Look,’ says Max pointing at the van. ‘There’s yer answer.’
The van carries an advertisement for a local optician. The words ‘Eye – Right’ are as conclusive an affirmation to a sozzled Bobby Cassidy as the will written bequeathing him a multi-million-pound villa in Ibiza, the sale of which would now fund this magnificent folly.
‘Meant tae say tae ye’se … fancy comin’ tae London wi’ us next week? Ah’ve got tickets tae the BAFTAs.’
The casualness with which Max Mojo makes the offer is typical of him. They are clearing up after the impromptu séance and he just came out with it.
‘The Rise and Fall film’s up for Best Documentary an’ ah’ve got the guest tickets, but the band dinnae want them!’
Bobby and Joseph stare at each other in astonishment. A national televised awards event in which he might well win a significant award and Max Mojo has just asked two interlopers to accompany him with less than a week to go.
‘Too fuckin’ right,’ says Bobby Cassidy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
February 2015. London, England
‘This is brilliant, eh?’ says Bobby.
‘Aye, it is mate.’ Joseph agrees, and he means it.
They are sharing in the Dorchester Hotel, but the room they are in is truly enormous. And there’s another one only marginally smaller through the door. When Max gave them the details it sounded like they would be sharing a double bed in a shoebox-sized room in somewhere remote, like Barking, being forced to traverse into the centre by cramped tube while dressed in dinner suits. Their accommodation was advertised as a ‘double’ room but it is in fact a suite, and a sizeable one at that. They haven’t seen Max since the night of the séance. He is in the same hotel but he is on a separate floor, booked by the film company who made the documentary. They are conducting press and media interviews in the expectation that their film documenting the travails of a legendary but dysfunctional Scottish indie band and their driven but delusional manager will actually win the Best Documentary Award.
As they flew down the night before, scribbled notes and a strange drawing materialised amidst the British Airways snacks and copious gin and tonics. These described an idea that a week ago seemed derisible. Now though, with funds from the sale of the Ibizan villa back to Laurie Revlon’s son Laurence propping it up, it appears not only possible but likely.
There is much to consider, the list not limited to: How do you get various pieces of disco equipment over to a remote island with little in the way of a jetty and with no services or general infrastructure? Having tackled that, how do you then get the people who buy tickets for the event there and back? If there’s nowhere for them to stay overnight, will the whole thing need to be conducted during daylight hours?
There are so many imponderables and there does seem to be a certain slapstick lunacy to it all. But nonetheless, the venture has galvanised the pair and nothing is now going to stop them attempting to deliver a Heatwave Disco reunion on Ailsa Craig for a bunch of their old friends and colleagues, in honour of Gary Cassidy: The Man Who Loved Islands.
They approach the room. Both are wearing black dinner suits, with cummerbunds and black bow ties. They scrub up well, and whilst Daniel Craig need not worry about his franchise gig being threatened, Joseph still feels they look a bit too conventional, especially when he tries to imagine how Max will be dressed. They have passed three levels of security, from the initial ‘girl with clipboard’ at the lift lobby, right up to ‘Head of PR’ for the film company: a stern no-nonsense woman named Marge. She makes them show their passes to three different people before she allows them to progress further down the hall. They reach the open door. Max Mojo is lounging on a large purple sofa. He is dressed in a wildly colourful smoking jacket. He has a fur-lined fez on his head and black leather trousers around his legs. Numerous lights are focused on him. Black Raybans make the task of focusing easier for him. A chair faces him and, as they peer in to the room, acknowledging Max’s wave, they see a serious-looking man with an unusual hairline sit down in the chair.
‘Is it aw’right if ma associates sit in, man?’ asks Max of the man.
‘Yes, no problem,’ replies the man, but in a way that implies that he feels it’s an imposition.
Max waves Bobby and Joseph in and ushers them towards a side room out of the line of the camera. As they watch transfixed, Bobby and Joseph understand that this is a piece for a BBC Arts programme. The journalist, a remarkable-looking man with longish hair flowing down from a balding pate introduces himself as Will Gompertz. At the beginning of the recording he asks Max Mojo a whole series of searching questions about The Miraculous Vespas. Max responds calmly to all of them, apart from a spiky one, to which he responds by pondering on the irony of a bald man splitting hairs. Will Gompertz takes this in good part, and by and large; Max is on his best behaviour.
Bobby knows most of this incredible story, having taken part in – and watched – the completed film. But much of their extraordinary rise and fall is news to Joseph Miller. He was aware of the band’s tumultuous rise and the incredible success of their one recorded hit single, ‘It’s a Miracle’, but he has no real idea about the criminal back story, and he hasn’t appreciated the depth of the legacy of the band’s only recorded LP. He therefore finds the interview fascinating, particularly as it opens up a side of Max Mojo he hasn’t previously realised existed. Max sounds reflective, reasoned and rational. He laments the break-up of relations within the band and regrets the various subsequent legal actions taken in terms of royalties.
‘So, Max Mojo, given the likelihood of a success at the BAFTAs tonight, and the likely clamour for the band to reform, what does the future hold for The Miraculous Vespas?’
Max scratches his chin and leans forward to look straight down the camera lens, just over Will Gompertz’s left shoulder.
‘The band are reforming,’ he announces, to the surprise of everyone in the room. ‘We’re doin’ a special one-off gig later in the year,’ he says.
‘Glastonbury? T in the Park?’ asks a surprised Gompertz. He thinks he’s hit on a major arts exclusive.
‘Naw,’ says Max. He looks up at Bobby.
Joseph knows what’s coming but Bobby hasn’t got there quickly enough.
‘It’s called The Big Bang an’ it’s bein’ held on the Ailsa Craig.’
Bobby laughs, thinking it’s a joke.
‘Fuck sake, Max!’ says Joseph.
‘Can we edit that?’ Gompertz asks a colleague, before wrapping up the interview.
‘These are the promoters,’ announces Max, proudly.
Will Gompertz simply nods, and then a lightbulb goes on over his shiny dome.
‘Max, gentlemen, can we secure the first interview with the band?’ he asks.
‘We’ll see, pal,’ says Max. ‘Loads ae competiton for that exclusive. Big money deals, ken?’
‘We’ll definitely be in touch, Max,’ says Will Gompertz, packing up his gear. ‘And good luck for tonight, guys. I hear it’s a bit of a certainty.’
He stands, shakes hands with everyone in the room and then leaves. His sound and cameraman remain, dismantling their own equipment. Max ushers Bobby and Joseph through to an adjacent bedroom; a room the size of the penalty box on a football pitch.
‘What the fuck wis that?’ asks Joseph angrily.
‘Whit?’ pleads Max.
‘What actually just happened there?’ asks a stunned Bobby Cassidy.
‘This devious cunt has just nicked oor idea!’ says Joseph.
‘Whit? Have ah fuck!’ say
s Max. ‘It’s the same fuckin’ idea, man.’ He sees the glazed look that remains on Bobby’s face. ‘Look, nae disrespect, but who the fuck’s gonnae pay tae be imprisoned on a tiny island aw day just tae see you two geriatric clowns playin’ Shakatak records?’
Bobby and Joseph don’t speak but both know Max has zeroed in on a major flaw in the plan.
‘Ye need fuckin’ headliners, Bobby,’ says Max. ‘Ye need profile. It’s a fuckin’ event, but yer approachin’ it like it’s just a dream tae score affa some cunt’s bucket list.’
‘Aw that might be so, Max,’ says Joseph, ‘but it wasn’t your fuckin’ prerogative tae reveal it tae the media before ye’d even spoken tae us!’
‘Look, opportunity knocked, Joey. That’s how it fuckin’ works some times. A door opened an’ ah dived through it. Ah figured you two would be fine wi’ it. A much bigger problem’s gonnae be the band. They cunts aren’t even speakin’ tae one another.’
‘Whit?’ screams Joseph. ‘Ye huvnae discussed it wi’ the band?’
‘No’ exactly,’ says Max.
‘What dae ye mean “exactly”?’ asks Bobby.
‘Well, ah meant “at all”,’ Max admits.
‘Holy fuck,’ says Bobby. He sits down and puts his head in his hands.
‘Look, we’re gonnae win this stupid fuckin’ award th’night. Then the offers tae reform’ll be floodin’ in.’
‘Disnae mean that they’ll aw say aye though, does it? No’ every cunt’s driven by money,’ says an exasperated Joseph.
‘That’s pish!’ says Max.
‘The Smiths? Oasis? The fuckin’ Jam?’ says Joseph. ‘If they don’t fuckin’ speak tae each other, how are ye gonnae get them tae agree?’
‘You leave that tae me,’ says Max. ‘You two need tae get on wi’ organisin’. Get a date set. Get promotion material sorted. Get a Facebook account goin’. Sort oot support acts an’ the stage an’ everythin’. An’ most important, get permission affa the cunts that own the fuckin’ place.’
This last point jolts Bobby. He has simply assumed that an uninhabited island is freely available to anyone who wants to visit and occupy it.
Joseph feels foolish for not having considered this, even though it is only a matter of days since the idea has even materialised.
Max grabs Bobby and waltzes him around. ‘…So, take a chance on a couple ae crooks, hung up on some dancin’,’ he croons.
Bobby and Joseph refuse the lines of cocaine Max has just cut for them. They feel high enough as it is. Max hoovers up all three. The septum separating his enlarged nostrils is as inconsequential as a tennis net, Joseph notices.
The rest of the evening passes by in a total blur for Bobby and Joseph. The Rise and Fall of the Miraculous Vespas film does indeed win the Best Documentary Award and both of them stagger blindly onto the stage, propelled by a febrile Max, and with four other film company executives. They shake hands with Stephen Fry, and kiss Olivia Coleman, who is presenting the award. Max naturally takes the prized mask statue, thanking everyone he’s ever met, but especially his close friend, Bobby Cassidy – MC Bobcat – whose 1995 remix of the band’s single lit the fuse of this renaissance. He finishes by dedicating the award to Clifford ‘X-Ray’ Raymonde, who passed away in 2008, and saying straight to camera: ‘Grant … ah love ya, man. See ye soon, buddy!’
In a loft apartment in downtown Portland, USA, a fifty-year-old man sits calmly at a typewriter in his study. It is mid-afternoon, and he has just returned from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He is typing some notes for a new novel. It is about addiction but it isn’t autobiographical. Later, he will be heading out for dinner with his son, Wolf, his daughter-in-law, Carrie and their six-year-old son, Aaron. The man’s partner, Maggie, is on an assignment in South America and can’t help the family celebrate. The man’s acclaimed novel The First Picture has been acquired by the American actor Steve Buscemi, and, that very day, a film treatment has been fast-tracked by his production company. The man’s name is Grant Dale, and he has no idea of the shitstorm of press interest that is about to descend.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
February 2015. Portland, Oregon, USA
He lives a disciplined life now, by necessity. Predictability has replaced spontaneity. His younger self would baulk at the boredom of his existence. But then his younger self would’ve driven him headlong into a concrete wall, like a crash-test dummy. Circumstances force change. Nowadays, his repetitive daily routine causes no abrasion. He gets up early. He makes breakfast: scrambled eggs on brown toast with coffee. He reads the newspapers; an activity in decline, he accepts, but he’ll persevere with it. He writes for three hours. He goes to a gym and boxes – the heavy bag a metaphor for his demons, real and imagined. He goes to the cinema, alternating this with addiction meetings, as required. He returns and rereads and corrects his earlier writing. He cooks, often for just himself, or when she’s home, for Maggie too. He watches television for an hour or so: sports, or heavyweight, literary dramas, such as The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or Fargo. He goes for a late walk around the neighbourhood. He goes to bed. It’s a routine that is consistent regardless of weekday or weekend. Only events like a dinner out with his close family to celebrate a birthday – although never his own – interrupt this monastic schedule
His neighbours don’t know about his history. He isn’t especially close to any of them in any case, and those that care simply know him as Grant Dale. For all official purposes, including his publishing deal, he uses his original surname. Some have remarked on his astonishing likeness to Steve Jobs: the gauntness, the round-rimmed glasses, the thinning, greying hair and light stubble, and the predominance of black in his attire. But this isn’t deliberate. Before it was mentioned to him, it hadn’t dawned on him that he shared the ordinariness of his appearance with one of the most extraordinary people in history. All Grant wanted was simply to vanish.
Grant Dale was, once upon a time, Grant Delgado – the controversial singer and songwriter of The Miraculous Vespas, one of the most influential and mysterious rock and roll bands of the twentieth century. The bizarre and barely believable story of the band’s rise and subsequent fall has been documented in a new film, scripted by their visionary but deceptive manager, Max Mojo. It is a truly astonishing tale of success and excess on the band’s own independent terms in the early 80s, before their peripheral part in a major Scottish police crackdown on organised crime destroyed their future. Max Mojo has somehow turned this into legend, and when tapes of the band’s only recorded LP surfaced in the mid-90s, far from being cast as irrelevant, one-hit wonders, The Miraculous Vespas were being hailed as the missing link between New Wave and Britpop. And for Grant Delgado and his fellow band members – Maggie Abernethy and the Sylvester brothers – that’s where the problems really started.
The phone rings. It is such a rare occurrence that Grant has to think about where it is located. He tracks it down.
‘Hullo?’ he says tentatively.
‘Hello, is that Grant Dale?’ It’s an unfamiliar voice with a pronounced New York accent.
‘Eh … aye. It is. Who’s this?’
‘Sorry, for callin’ you directly, Mr Dale. I hope you’re having a great day,’ says the voice. It pauses.
Grant is blindsided. Is he supposed to answer? It seemed rhetorical. They must be selling some shit that nobody wants. It’ll be gauged as a successful call if the New York voice can keep him on the line for more than five seconds, he assumes. ‘Eh, aye … it’s alright,’ he says. ‘Look, ah’m actually workin’…’
‘Yes, sorry Mr Dale. I’ll get to the point. My name is Alexis. Alexis Amberson. I’m the head of Mr Buscemi’s production company. We recently acquired the rights to your book The First Picture.’ Again a pause, to let him absorb this.
‘Ah, okay. Right,’ he says.
‘I contacted your agent, and explained our perspective, but perhaps she hasn’t been in touch yet,’ says Alexis.
‘No, she hasn’t,’ says
Grant. No surprise there though. Relations with his agent are fractious at best. Despite The First Picture being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012, Grant refused to attend the prize-giving in London. He also avoided any of the promotional duties the exasperated agent suggested. Although the book was a modest commercial success for a small publishing house, selling around 12,000 copies in the European market alone, it achieved this on the strength of the writing, not as a result of the sparkling personality of its author.
‘Well, we floated an interesting idea past Ms Burke. She seemed positive but pointed out that any decisions, especially about investment, would be yours alone.’
‘Investment? What d’ye mean?’ says Grant.
‘We have a proposal about how to get the film fast-tracked and without it being diluted by the bigger studios to broaden its appeal,’ says Alexis. ‘Steve is keen to meet you to discuss the option of you becoming Executive Producer.’
‘What does that involve, like?’
‘Well, you’d have a far greater level of input into everything – the look, the casting, the story, the music etc – in return for—’
‘How much?’ he says abruptly.
‘Steve would like to meet you for lunch to talk through the options. Can you come to New York?’ asks Alexis. ‘We’ll obviously cover any costs.’
Grant feels his internal anxiety-meter rising.
Long ago, Grant Delgado developed a reputation for being difficult – and deservedly so. It was the result of the band’s final, incendiary appearance on Top of the Pops during the Christmas Day Special of 1995. The Miraculous Vespas had been persuaded to appear together for the first time in almost ten years to promote a remixed, rereleased version of their debut single ‘It’s a Miracle’. Rather than miming, as instructed, Grant took off his shirt and taped up first his own mouth and then that of his fellow bandmates. The Top of the Pops executives were furious. Various legal actions were raised. The act killed any possibility of the band reforming, but simultaneously guaranteed their legendary status in rock and roll history. From that point on he was regarded as a modern-day Syd Barrett; something of an innovative genius, but not one you’d want to spend a long-haul flight sitting next to. For ten years, his descent into a form of personal, provincial madness robbed him of his creativity, his sanity and his relationships with everyone he cared for. But the roots of his unreasonable and volatile behaviour were sown in the late 80s.
The Man Who Loved Islands Page 22
