Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  See those clouds... RAIN all day

  But they'll ne/ver wash these BLUES a-way

  No — Ah'm afraid they're here to stay... mmalove ...

  And it was right! I wanted to jump about the garage doing my Rex Harrison impression and shouting, 'She's got it! By George she's got it!' Everything else I'd worried about and been depressed by that evening evaporated, just disappeared. I had been right; it was worth it. I was quivering, half-stunned when she finished. I hardly heard the others humming and hahing and David Balfour saying, 'Aye, well, not bad... ' She held up her hand, launched into 'Blind Again'. She sang it all, and I was close to tears by the end, not because of the lyrics but because it was there, it was real; it had been inside me and now it was born; I saw its faults and knew it should be changed, but I loved it. And somebody else thought it was beautiful too; she must have, to have sung it like that...

  The last chord faded. I cleared my throat and could only grin inanely at Christine and give her a completely stupid thumbs-up sign. I looked at the others.

  'Aye... that's all right,' Steve the bassist nodded, looking me up and down. 'I'm sure it reminds me of something, though...' Mickey shook his head, I didn't know at what. Wes just stood looking at Christine and chewing on his lower lip.

  'Yeah... no bad,' Dave Balfour told me. 'Well done, hen,' he said to Christine.

  'Don't call me "hen",' she told him, putting the guitar in its case. I watched her, and remembered hearing some old saying; Ladies glowed, gentlemen perspired, and horses sweated. Christine was shining, then.

  Balfour grinned. 'So, what do you want to do, big man?' He crossed his arms, head to one side as he studied me.

  I shrugged. 'Write songs,' I told him.

  'What about the guitar?' He nodded at the Woolworthed bass, back standing against the wall.

  'What do you m-mean?'

  'You wanting to join the band, or what?'

  'No. It's just a b-b-bass anyway...' (that went down well with Steve) 'I just want to write. I'm not that g-g-g-good on it, aaactually,' (I was trying to reassure the bassist) 'I just wanted a good band to play ma stuff' (Diplomacy).

  'Aye.' Dave Balfour shrugged. 'Okay then.' (Success!)

  They took half a dozen songs to rehearse with; in three weeks they were ready to launch them on an unsuspecting public, at a Christmas gig in the Strathclyde Union, supporting some briefly successful Glasgow band called Master Samwise. Master Samwise were attracting attention from a couple of record companies, which was the important point.

  Frozen Gold were the warm-up band, but the audience was more sympathetic than normal, just because the beautiful Christine was a student there, and had a semi-serious fan club all of her own. It seemed to consist mostly of bespectacled wimps and over-enthusiastic Malaysian students shouting 'Strip! Strip!' at her, but what the hell; it's the thought that counts.

  Frozen Gold... I had tried to get them to change the name, honest.

  I gave them a list:

  French Kiss

  Lip Service

  Rocks

  MIRV

  Gauche

  Boulder

  Sine

  Spring

  Espada

  Z

  Revs

  Synch

  Rolls

  Trans

  Escadrille

  Torch

  XL

  Sky

  Linx/Lynx/Links/Lyncks

  Flux

  Braid

  North

  Berlin

  ... all brilliant names (dammit, at least three of them have been used since by other bands), but they weren't having it. That is, Dave Balfour wasn't having it. It had been his idea. Why not Percy Winterbottom and The Snowballs? I suggested at one point, though he didn't seem to get the joke. I played what I thought was my trump card and told Balfour that the name sounded too much like Frigid Pink, an American band that had had one hit back in '69 or '70, and hinted that he'd probably just half-remembered that name when he was trying to think of a title for his own band.

  No dice. Frozen Gold it was.

  So I started trying to think of a way of turning this into an asset. Strategic thinking; when stuck with a disadvantage, remove the'dis'.

  The band played a stormer at the Strathclyde gig.

  My songs weren't perfect even yet; they still had a few rough edges, but they went down well (as 'some of our own songs'; I had apparently been granted honorary membership of the band). Frozen Gold had a better reception than Master Samwise. They could have played for another hour but Master Samwise's manager was making threatening signals from the side of the stage.

  When I joined the band in the corridor that was passing for a dressing room, I got there at the same time as an enthusiastic young Artistes and Repertoire man from ARC Records called Rick Tumber.

  The Waterloo bar, Causeyside Street, August 1974:

  'How are you, Jean? Haven't seen you for yyy...yonks. You okay, aye?' I set a dark rum and coke down in front of her.

  'This a double, Daniel?' She inspected the glass.

  'Aye; I told you; we're celebratin.'

  'Oh aye?' 'Yeah; come on; no kiddin. I'm serious.'

  'You seen the money yet?' She asked, sceptical, drinking.

  'I've signed the contract. We've shhh...aken hands. It's all set up. Rich and famous; fame and fffortune. Here we go; yahoo!' I clapped my hands. 'It's g-great; we're away, Jean; we're off; this is it. You want ma autograph now?'

  'Ah'll wait till you're on Top Of The Pops.'

  'You think I'm jokin, don't you?'

  'No, Daniel, Ah'm sure you're serious.'

  'We're gonna be famous; honest. Want me tell ye how big the advance is?' I asked her. She laughed. 'ARC Records,' I told her.

  'Heard of them?'

  'Aye.'

  'They've taken us on; we're gonna make an album; we go to London next month, to a proper studio. Soundproofin; technicians ... big t-t-tape machines... everything.' My imagination failed. 'They're gonna rush it out in time for the Christmas,' I persisted. 'We'll be stars.'

  'The next Bay City Rollers, eh?'

  'Aw, Jean, come on...' I shook my head. 'This is serious stuff; more albums, no singles so much. You wait; just you wait and see.'

  'Aye, but will it last, eh?' Jean looked serious. 'What makes you think you'll see any of this money... you goantae leave any in the bank for tax, or just spend it all?'

  'Jean, ma main problem's goantae be decidin how tae spend it all!' I told her. She looked unconvinced. 'Look,' I said, 'don't you worry; yeah, we might have been ripped off, but one of the guys in the band, the lead guitarist, his dad's an accountant. He's looked at all the contracts and agreements an that, and had his lawyers look at them too; we've probably got a better deal than half the bands you see in the album charts. I'm telling you; we're off tae a brilliant start: An I'm going to be the bass player.' I made as though to nudge her elbow, accidentally did nudge her elbow, and spilled some of her dark rum. 'Oh, sorry... hell.' She dried her wrist with a hanky. 'Anyway, I'll be on stage; their bass player is leavin to go to music college and...'

  'Music college?' Jean looked at me oddly.

  'Yeah, what about it?'

  'Nuthin. Carryon.'

  '... So I'm gonna be the bass player. I mean, I'm still learnin, but I can do it.'

  'Daniel Weir, superstar.'

  'Well, no; I don't want t-to be in the limelight, like; really I just want to write the material, but seein as the bass player's leavin, we thought I might as well join, you know? No... Ah think I'll be stay in in the background; I'll leave the... the sort of figurehead work t-to the t-t-two guit-t-tarists. They're a bit more photogenic. I'll just be sort of... there, you know? Anyway; I'm writin the songs, well; I'm basically writin the songs, but we've agreed that for this album, seein as I'm needin a lot of help, we'll split the c-credits between me an Dave an Chris — they're the two guitarists; they've been helpin with the arrangements an things. I mean, this is really serio
us; they're all takin it really seriously; they're all ... well, apart from the guy that's leavin, and the guy that's a cclerk with the c-council ... they're p-p-p-postponin goan tae university, or takin a year off till we see what happens. I mean, they're holdin up their careers while they see how this goes.'

  This was all true. Things had moved quickly during the previous eight months. We'd been offered a contract almost immediately by ARC Records, courtesy of Rick Tumber, the A&R man who'd been so impressed by the band's Strathclyde Christmas gig. I'd been all for jumping at it and just arguing about the terms (and having a word in private with this guy Tumber about the need for a new name for the group), but Dave Balfour said no. He told Tumber he didn't think they were ready yet; they wanted more time to practise together. I told Balfour he was crazy.

  He wasn't, of course. Middle-class wisdom. Supply and demand. Tumber went away shaking his head and telling us we'd missed a great opportunity, but interest in the band only increased; the gigs improved, the crowds got bigger and the fans more numerous, various A&R people came to watch and listen, producers travelled up from London especially, and a couple of executives from small record companies came backstage after gigs with contracts which only needed our signatures. I looked at the figures and told Balfour he was totally insane and if he didn't sign something soon I'd take my songs somewhere else...

  ... Only he wasn't insane, and I'd no intention of going elsewhere.

  Apart from anything else, I was starting to get paranoid about the band ripping off my songs; I'd realised that the outside world only had my word for it that these were my creations; I hadn't deposited copies of the manuscripts with a bank or solicitor, nobody could swear that they'd heard these tunes before Frozen Gold did them; if it came to it, it would be their collective word against my single one.

  I'd panicked when I first thought of this, photocopied all my songs at enormous expense, and given the envelope full of scores to my mother with strict instructions to give it to Father McNaught, and not to forget to have him note the date he received the package. I prevaricated outrageously when Dave asked if they could have more songs; I said I was working on them. In fact I had about another forty finished — though of course they hadn't had Christine and Dave work on them — and raw material in the form of individual riffs and melodies for another twenty or thirty more. I wanted to see what happened to the ones I'd given them already.

  Under great pressure, I eventually gave them another four songs; they now had enough material for an album. This gave them increased credibility in the eyes of the A & R men. The serious offers started to come in in June. After much negotiating, in which I gradually realised that Dave's dad was having at least as big a say as any of the rest of us, ARC won the dubious distinction of signing Frozen Gold for what was then some sort of record sum in the industry. That was what Dave — and his dad had been waiting for; somebody to put so much money into the band that they couldn't afford for us to fail.

  The deal was signed, the details worked out. We would make an album, we'd be given all the technical help and session musicians we needed; and a hot-shot producer whose granny had been Scots was assigned to us to get the best out of us and make us feel at home (and they were serious). Publicity had already started.

  Dave hadn't got the required exam results to do medicine anyway, Christine had got permission to take a year off from her Physics course, and Wes had decided Eng Lit wasn't so attractive after all; he had his heart set on a Moog synthesiser and, even after trading in the Hammond, there was no way a student grant would pay for that. Mickey gave up his clerical post at the planning office with all the regret of a man wiping dog shit off his shoe.

  Only Steve preferred academe to the bright brash world of rock. The others tried to persuade him to stay, and so did I. I didn't want to play on stage; the idea terrified me. I'd never pranced about a bedroom in front of a mirror miming to Hendrix solos; I wanted to be the power behind the throne, the source. Loads of people could play music, it seemed to me, but far fewer could write it. I did do a sort of audition though, and I'm no more immune to flattery than anybody else — less; I have so little experience of being subjected to it — and I gave in. As long as they promised never to shine spotlights on me.

  We had three weeks of studio time, and our trio of academics had twelve months to decide whether Frozen Gold was more likely to provide them with liquid assets than a real job. Of course they might have been looking for Fulfilment rather than largesse, but that didn't even occur to me at the time, and I doubt it entered their heads either; 1967 was a long way away, even then.

  Dave, his dad, plus Christine and the Balfour family lawyer, had gone down to London to close the deal earlier that week, with written authority from the rest of us to do so. I'd taken a deep breath and made the frightening step of instructing my own lawyer — on Mr Balfour senior's advice. I'd been almost disappointed to discover that the agreement was pretty fair, on the whole. The only possible point of contention was that three-way split on the composition royalties... but I had needed the help composing and arranging, Christine and Dave had both done a lot of work, and I wasn't in a position to be too demanding, I thought.

  Anyway, I was learning fast; I might not need anybody else's help for the next batch of songs. I made sure the songwriting credits on future material weren't covered by that first agreement; it was a three-album deal (ARC had wanted a five-album deal originally), but there was no clause in the contract that the songs on the second two LPs should also be credited to the band rather than an individual. That was one of the smartest moves I ever made in my whole life. Possibly the only totally intelligent one in fact. Must have been a mistake.

  In fact I was being ripped off, but it's all relative. I look on it as the price for having all that wonderful middle-class advice in the first place. Without it I might have had sole credit, but no money.

  I've met guys in this business who've sold ten, fifteen million records worldwide, and who were, effectively, broke. Jesus, they should have been multi-millionaires even after tax, but the money had all just disappeared, frittered and filtered away through and between contracts and agreements and producers and lawyers and record companies and managers and agents and tax deals.

  Thirty-three and a third per cent (an appropriate figure) of a real fortune is worth a hell of a lot more than a hundred per cent of a fake one. A taste for the bottom-line is the most important sense to acquire in this industry.

  So there I sat in the Waterloo bar, with Jean Webb, me a man of the world now, set to do great things. Jean had looked cold and a little grey when I swept her off her feet in Espedair Street, but the warmth of the bar brought the colour back to her skin. Her fine brown hair was a little shorter than it had been, but bushy and lustrous. Her face had filled out a little, bringing more curves to her cheek and chin; before her lips had looked a little too full, half-pouting, but now they looked in proportion, and to me — now with a hundred per cent more sexual experience, thanks to a girl I'd met at a party in Dave Balfour's house that May — very kissable. Her breasts, under the ruched bodice of her long dress, looked as graspingly enticing as ever.

  'You watch,' I told her. 'The band's called Ffff-rozen Gold; the album'll probably be called Frozen Gold and Liquid Ice and the first single'll either be a song c-c-called "Another Rainy Day", or "Frozen Gold".'

  She smiled. 'You seem taken with the name.'

  'It's a t-terrible name; they wouldn't take any of the names I suggested. But I thought if we have to have that name then what c-can we do to t-turn it into an asset, you know? Something that'll work for us, so I t-took the letters of the t-t-two words, right? F and G, and just tried strumming the two chords, one after the other, and it sounded all right; sounded really good. So they form the start of the song, see? That'll be the first thing you hear on the album; F, G. Our c-c-code, see? Our theme tune, sort of. Not as c-clever as Bach using B, A, C, H, but it's clever, isn't it? It's the sort of thing that gets you publicity, see? Cos
it gives people something to write about, or mention on radio programmes; makes people remember the name, too.' My mouth was dry, I was doing so much talking. I gulped at my pint. I was gibbering away at a speed that would normally have had me tripping and stumbling over every word, but I was so excited my stutter, for a change, couldn't keep up with my mouth.

  'Well, don't be too clever,' Jean said. 'People don't like folk that're too clever. Nobody likes a show-off.'

  'Yes, they do!' I laughed. 'That's what all rock sss...tars are!' She didn't look too impressed. 'Aw, don't worry,' I told her. 'I'll not be the one that's showing off. The others can do that. I'm staying in the background, basically. An I don't want to write symphonies or anything show-offy like that; I just want to write songs, stuff you can whistle.'

  'Whistle,' Jean said. 'Aye.'

  I took another drink. ' Anyway... how are you?'

  She shrugged, looking into her glass. 'All right. Don't think I'm goantae go tae the art college after all though, but...'

  I vaguely recalled she'd wanted to do art in Glasgow. 'Oh... I'm sorry. How no?'

  'Oh... you know; various things. Not to worry...'

  'How's your mum these days?' I'd remembered her mother suffered from arthritis.

  'Ah, much the same,' she said. 'They send her away for tests and physiotherapy an that, but there's no really much they can do. Alec's found a job though, down at Inverkip.' I remembered Alec; he was one of the brothers with the come-and-get-yer-arms-broke eyes. 'So;' she looked at me. 'When you off to London?'

  'Umm ... don't know yet. I've handed in ma notice; leave next week. We might go down the week after next; maybe a b-bit later. But the album's to be finished by the end of October. The record company's got a flat near the studio they'll put us up in for free. It's near Oxford Sss...treet. You know? Where all the shops are.'

  'Aw, aye.' Jean said, nodding. She seemed gloomily amused somehow. I looked at her, and I remembered the times we'd gone out, and cuddling her, and how good her mouth had felt when I hadn't cut her lip or missed it entirely and kissed her nose; I remembered that time in the darkened room, before the bluebright, silent television; the texture of her skin and the touch of her lips and the hot, sharp scent of her.