by Ray Connolly
“So you seem to think. Next record, please.”
“Are you denying that you’re a dangerous, manipulative man?”
“Next record, I said.”
She’d reached the parameters of what would be allowed. “So, your fifth song?”
“Gimme Shelter, the Rolling Stones,” he replied quickly. “And the sixth, Talking Heads’ Take Me To The River. I used to sing that, not very well, when I was starting out, before I discovered which way I was going. We’ve no time to play them all now. Everybody knows how they go, anyway…” Impatient and increasingly nervy, he was moving about on his divan, incapable of remaining still, probably, she worried, going in and out of frame as the camera continued to record him.
“Do we have time for the seventh?”
He sighed, the pressure seeming to ease again. “It’s another ancient one of my mother’s.” The very Irish Jesse Gadden was back. “Mr Sandman by the Chordettes. I always thought it was about me when I was little, because she used to call me the Sandman, in that if I cuddled up to her I could send her to sleep and everything would be all right. I cuddled her a lot. But it wasn’t all right.”
“You called your last album The Sandman.”
“I did.”
“Can you tell me why?”
He shook his head. “No. I cannot.” Then, forestalling any further questions, he began to play the record.
“Mr Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen…” sang an all -girl a-cappella Fifties American group.
It sounded to Kate like the kind of pop song a child might like to sing along to; but to Gadden it was more than a song as he began weeping openly, tears running into his stubble, his head bowed forward into his hands, his fingers clutching into his long hair.
He was falling apart mentally, retiring just in time.
It took some moments after the record had ended before he was able to regain his composure. When he spoke his voice was cracked and gasping. “Well, there you are, Kate you’ve seen something no-one else has ever seen. Jesse Gadden crying.”
“What about a final record?”
He shook his head. “It might be breaking the rules a bit, but, if it’s all right with you, the last song will be one of my own. You’ll hear it pretty soon at the concert.”
“And its significance in your life?”
“You’ll see.” He looked at his watch again. “Now, I think it might be time to get ready. They’ll be coming for me soon.”
She put up a hand. “One last question. Why did you want to be interviewed?”
He shrugged. “Ah, well, you know us Catholics, always wanting to make a good act of contrition to purify the soul before going out and having a hell of night.” He stood up. “Come with me, Kate. And keep your camera running. Film everything. Come and see how they turn little Jesse Gadden Monaghan into a superstar. You’ll be amazed. I always am. You never know, if you get this right, you might even win one of those fly-on-wall, cinéma vérité prizes you TV people like so much.”
And, after waiting as she unclipped her camera, he led her from the room.
Chapter Forty Six
They were waiting for him at the top of the stairs, the make-up artists and the dressers along with Kerinova and assorted, radiant young helpers. Kate followed as the retinue entered a dressing room suite, where, slipping away his clothes, they ushered him into a shower; after which came the hair washing and the shaving. Finally a masseur loosened his muscles, as, under a small towel, he lay naked and silent on a bunk, his body thinner than she remembered, his smooth, hairless skin paler. Around him flunkies picked up what he dropped. Kerinova leant against the dressing room wall and watched.
Kate filmed everything.
At last, pulling on a gown, he climbed into a chair and examined his face in a large mirror. The chief make-up artist, a thin, androgynous girl, pursed her lips and waited. Eventually he smiled, as though in inner conversation with his reflection, then nodded, and the girl went to work. It was already after eight o’clock. Less than two hours to the concert.
Panning around, Kate's camera now took in the stacked bundles of unopened messages from well-wishers, the gardens of flowers still wrapped in cellophane and already dying because no-one had thought to put them in water, and the young coterie of silent Glee Club favourites whose names she'd never caught, but who were watching, envying, every movement of the make-up girl’s hands.
It took a little time, but eventually the miracles were worked, the abundant Jesse Gadden hair dried and the make-up applied, and once again he was beautiful. All that remained was for him to dress. Usually he wore black for concerts, but for tonight's appearance he'd selected cream silk trousers and a plain, cream, smock shirt. Three identical costumes hung from a rail. On being offered one he frowned as he found a fault in the stitching of the lining, dropped it on to the floor, and chose another. Then very carefully he stepped into his stage suit, his eyes never leaving the mirror.
By nine o’clock the preparations were complete. Jesse Gadden was ready for his farewell appearance.
A light November rain was falling as four stretched limousines threaded swiftly through the streets of Chelsea past flurries of waving fans, their faces glowing in the flames from candles they held. Gadden and Kerinova sat together in the back seat of the second car and Kate alone in a middle row. There was little light, but Gadden insisted she filmed him as they drove. "Then there’ll be a real video diary of the evening, Kate. Something to look at in years to come."
At Notting Hill Gate the car stopped at a red light and Kerinova took a hand off the beaded, silver bag she was carrying to block the public's view. For a second Kate caught Gadden looking at the Estonian, and noticed a glow of excitement deepen the woman’s pallid cheeks as she became aware of his gaze.
As the car moved on towards North Kensington, Stefano, who was driving, pointed into the sky where an orange airship floated, its inflated sides decorated by a giant picture of Gadden, looking down upon London with its message: “Tonight at 10 p.m. Jesse Gadden In Concert at www.jessegadden.com”.
The street was congested outside the old Pavilion Picture Palace, with crowds of fans, television news crews and sightseers corralled behind police barriers, and satellite and outside broadcast vans lining the pavement. As the car came to a halt, Gadden quickly opened the door and made his way alone past a battery of cameras, before, on the steps of the cinema, he turned back to look at the fans. A barrage of flashes peppered him. Then, with a wave, he turned and went inside. The entourage followed.
"Come along, Kate, I wouldn't want you to miss the show," he chided as, reaching the cinema lobby she began filming the herd of ticket holders who were waiting there, staring at him in devotional wonder, not yet allowed to take their seats.
"Why am I filming this, when there are so many proper cameramen here?" she asked as the party moved past security men and down a side aisle of the small art deco cinema.
Gadden smiled. "I told you. I like you. I like you a lot. Make sure you find a place on stage where you can see me, and I can see you.”
She was still puzzled.
They’d reached the stage and now moved immediately into the wings. Without looking, Gadden put a hand out. "Give me a line."
The order must have been anticipated, because immediately one of the retinue moved forward with a silver framed hand mirror bearing a white line of cocaine. Gadden had told Kate he didn’t do drugs anymore.
He smiled as he noticed her camera watching: "So, I lied,” he grinned into the lens. “This is a special occasion.” Then turning to Kerinova, he asked: "Are you all right?"
“I’m all right,” came her reply.
Soon everything was ready. The three or four hundred specially selected fans and Glee Club staff began expectantly making their way to their seats, and a squadron of TV camera men and women were at their posts.
Hidden from everyone, Gadden had moved behind the small stage and joined his four backing musici
ans.
"If you stay here, you'll be fine," a voice whispered to Kate, indicating that she stand at the side of a camera crane in the wings. It was Peter, the helpful young technician with the straggly hair she’d met at the recording studio.
“Thank you,” she murmured, and, as he hurried away, she looked at her watch and then her phone. If Chris Zeff had been able to help he would have at least texted her by now.
One by one the stage musicians, as anonymous as ever, began to take their positions in the semi-darkness on stage. Alongside them Gadden's guitars were lined up like weapons in an armoury.
Turning to the audience now, Kate filmed Kerinova, cradling her bag, and dropping into a reserved seat in the front row of the audience. A smiling face further back was a surprise. It was Elizabeth McDonagh. The police hadn’t found her. With transmission imminent, a Scottish floor manager was reminding that mobile phones must be turned off. Kate ignored the order.
The house lights were dimmed. Darkness.
Then it was time. Ten o’clock. On the monitors around the cinema the screens went black. Then the titles appeared:
In Concert
Jesse Gadden
And with the name the sound of an extended guitar chord echoed, a beckoning call, a Jesse Gadden trademark. Slowly a spotlight came up, and, from out of the blackness, he emerged, his eyes gazing deep into the camera, like a newcomer peering out on to the world. He waited. Then, as his hand came down on the twelve strings of his guitar, he lifted his head and began to sing.
Kate watched. More than ever she wanted to hate what he did, for his voice to be thin and tuneless and his performance to be melodramatic and absurd, the vain, bogus posturing of a madman. Perhaps it was. Perhaps he was all those things. But, she knew, it didn't matter,
because, at that moment, he was a shaman summoning the world to listen.
And still there was no word from Chris Zeff.
Chapter Forty Seven
He'd never looked so bewitching. Scarcely moving, he stood centre stage, the young man and his guitar, his eyes beseeching, his voice both pleading and commanding.
She could see what he was doing. He was performing for fifty million audiences of one, singing for that emotionally fragile person sitting alone in a room staring at a computer screen. Would Fraser and Robin Broomfield and the others at WSN who’d been so sceptical be watching now, praying that she’d got it wrong?
She’s spent weeks studying the songs, but, though she now knew them well, she listened harder than ever as the lyrics unfolded. At ten fifteen there was one from Crusader of Sadness, and at ten thirty five it was time for a selection from Chance Meadows Morn. A couple of times Gadden glanced towards her, but what the looks signified she had no way of telling. Was he just making sure that she was there, filming everything as he’d demanded? Could he even see her? Not properly, she was sure. The spotlight was only on him. Not once did he speak to his audience.
Behind her a young technical assistant wearing headphones was sitting with a laptop on her knee, monitoring the show, the stage-side link with the outside broadcast van through which the show was being streamed to the internet.
And now on either side of her, Kate noticed that Stefano and Kish were standing guard over her. She hadn’t noticed them take their places.
Please God, make me wrong, she prayed, when, just before the end of the eleventh song and through the scream of a guitar, a convulsion of applause erupted for no reason that she could see, and she wondered desperately if there’d been a message she hadn’t understood. Was it already too late?
At the front of the audience her camera picked out, in light reflected from the stage, Petra Kerinova staring in ghostly attention at Gadden. Kevin O’Brien had said there seemed to be a vacuum in this woman’s personality where her sense of self should have been. Perhaps that was the way it always was with chief disciples; they smothered their own personalities so that they might more fully worship the one to whom they were devoted. Further back Liz McDonagh was smiling and smiling.
Another song came and went and the technical assistant glanced at her stopwatch and made a note to herself. How strange, Kate found herself thinking, the girl was present at the concert, and just a few feet from Gadden, but her memory of the occasion would be only what she saw on her laptop. Perhaps it made sense: so much of life was now experienced through the prism of a screen.
Time was fleeing by with Gadden seeming to be singing almost to himself, so remote in mind did he appear. But as eleven thirty passed, and the songs became louder and in a higher key, she could sense the tension rising.
“Knights of the Night,” was next and she remembered how he'd played it for her when she'd been summoned to the recording studio. For a second she pictured herself as she'd been then, secretly thrilled to be there, trying to convince herself she didn't find him attractive. She winced at the notion.
"Knights of the night looking for the light..." Now the orchestra backing tracks recorded that night came into play and the electric guitar of an unseen, anonymous musician at the back of the stage sobbed. "Knights of the night, looking for the light..." Over and over the chorus went, and again and again the applause exploded. Kate kept her camera on Gadden.
At last as the song died and the ovations faded, the singer held up a hand. An obedient stillness fell. In the front row Kerinova now had a bouquet of white roses in her arms.
Unblinking, Gadden looked into a TV camera. “As you know,” he began, “this is my last ever concert…”
Inevitable pleas filled the little cinema. He ignored them.
“…so I just want to say thank you to every one of you for your love and support these past few years. And to tell you that I love you all. This has been the very, very best night of my life.”
And without waiting for the response he turned to the musicians and nodded them in.
“If it’s all right with you, the last song will be one of my own,” he’d told Kate of his final Desert Island Discs selection.
And now he began to sing again as a bass trembled behind him: "Life is just a start, a getting ready, Stumbling down the path, the way unsteady,” he half whispered.
Kate closed her eyes. He was singing A Sunny Day In Eden, the song Beverly had puzzled over.
“And its significance in your life?” Kate had asked him of his last choice.
“You’ll see,” he’d teased.
Did she? Did she see it now?
“How do you hold back time, how do you hang on to today?” he was murmuring. “By putting it in a bottle? No, sorry, Jim, I don’t think that’s the way…”
He was toying with his followers, but, yes, she did see it now. She understood what Donna Hallsden had heard. It wasn’t just the song. It was the way he sang it, the aural magic.
“It’s been a perfect day in Eden, but the serpent’s coming soon, to steal your youth and rip out your truth, and prick your pretty balloon…” Howls of electric guitars broke into the lyrics.
Now she knew: this was where the message would come.
“Deep-freeze the diem, if you really do love, And extreme sweet unction tonight. And don’t let the serpent suck innocence dry, with age and betrayal and spite…” With beads of sweat, or were they tears, running down his face, Gadden was addressing the microphone. "So live for love..." he sang, and, putting out his hands like a preacher at a revivalist meeting, invited his audience to sing with him. “Come on, now, live for love.”
“Live for love,” they chorused back.
“And love for love.”
“Love for love,” they echoed.
“And give for love...That's right, give for love..."
“Give for love.”
From behind her, Kate was aware of a sharp cry. It came from the girl who was watching the concert online. On her feet now, she was speaking urgently into a microphone hanging around her neck, her voice drowned by Gadden and the audience.
"And die for love...Yes, die for love...” he sang.
This was a new ending. He’d gone further than ever before.
She had to stop him. She tried to push a way past the camera crane to get to him, but Stefano and Kish immediately moved in front of her, their bulk blocking her path.
“Die for love,” parroted the Glee Club and fans.
"Live for love, love for love and die for love, do you hear me now, live for love, love for love and die for love ..." Gadden urged. The earlier lyrics had been a matter of interpretation for the brightest; but with the additional lines the message was aimed at everyone.
Kate was fighting; Stefano, the muscle hard minder, wrestling her back. Kish holding her.
“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…” came next.
Fans were standing, arms thrusting outwards towards him repeating: “Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…”
"That’s right, die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love.” It had turned into a mantra.
In the wings, Kate struggled to free her arms, her feet kicking.
Below the stage Kerinova was now out of her seat, carrying her bouquet, her silver bag over her arm, running laughing up the steps towards Gadden.
“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love...Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love,” chanted the devotees.
In that second Kate broke free. Smashing her camera into the side of Stefano’s head, her teeth sinking into Kish’s wrist, she stumbled across cables on to the stage.
Too late. As he audience chanted Kerinova’s bag was open, a gun in her hand: then in Gadden’s.
“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…” singer and audience sang together.
Then suddenly Gadden was aware of the advancing Kate. Turning to her he raised the gun, and pointed it directly at her.
“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…”
