by Jim Pollard
‘My dad’s a publishing magnate’ he began.
I shuffled, my window seat beginning to feel uncomfortable.
‘He attracts money.’ He erupted into grating laughter again. But it’s the way you tell them and Cal could always do that. Even through puberty, Cal kept his confidence when, amidst the confusion of broken voices, volcanic acne and wayward testicles, all around were losing theirs. This despite the fact that he wasn’t gaining the inches that to the rest of us were the compensation for surviving adolescence.
He held his satchel up to me like an offering. It smelled of my Mum’s best handbag – the one she kept in the top drawer of her dressing table and only took out on special occasions or when we went to see Aunty Anne.
‘I don’t want your bag,’ I said.
‘Can’t have it, so,’ he said, snatching it back. His eyes were keenly fixed on my bag now. ‘That’s what bank robbers use, that is. Or the perpetrators of major heists or Mafia.’
I spat my gum out to near where he was standing.
‘Gum’s bad for you,’ he said. ‘It’s just glue, you know. It’s made out of animals’ bones. If you swallow it, it sticks your intestines together, the long one and the small one and you die a long, lingering and extremely painful death.’
There were another five balls of gum in my blazer pocket and I jiggled them around uneasily as I looked to get down from the window. I am sure that I had had cause to doubt my father’s wisdom on previous occasions but this is the first such moment I recall, the moment my memory has ascribed a significance. In his campaign against my chewing habit, why had my father never informed me of these facts?
I looked Cal up and down. The half-pint kid with a gold top. It didn’t take long.
My blue blazer was frayed and threadbare in places from a wash or two too many, his was shop window clean, his gold braided school badge demanding my attention like a stuck out tongue. My sleeves ended just beyond the elbow, his covered his shirt-cuffs like a suit. My shoes were scuffed from playground football and walking in the gutter, his were gleamingly polished and, I fancied, like his satchel, real leather.
But, I told myself, he was a shrimp and I, as my father would say, was a good deal bigger and stronger. I jumped down close to him, narrowly missing the masticated blob of gum on the pavement. This, with an emphatic swing of my considerably longer than his legs, I kicked into the road where it stuck to the door of a parked car.
‘Bet you can’t get up there,’ I said to Cal, gesturing at the window.
As I walked off, taking big, tall strides, I looked back over my shoulder to watch him trying and failing. After perhaps half a dozen attempts, he looked back at me and then walked off in the opposite direction, his satchel over his left shoulder and against his right hip. On properly, like a snob school kid. I kicked a stone along the gutter and pretended I was Jimmy Greaves.
A few months later, when I passed the eleven-plus, all was happy, joyous celebration in the Dane household for a period of approximately a day and a half.
My enthusiasm for the exam had blossomed when I learned that it was the difference between travelling several miles on a couple of buses (if you failed) and walking a few hundred yards (if you passed): the difference between leaving the house at eight and eight thirty. I didn’t yet appreciate, as I constantly tried to convince myself during my teens, that the exam was a measure of intellectual capacity. It seemed more like the puzzle page of The Wizard.
When Cal passed the eleven-plus, his mother and father were sufficiently confident of Beech Park Grammar to allow their son to return to the state system. We bumped into each other on the first day or rather, Cal sought me out. It was in the main assembly hall. I was with the other kids from my primary school concentrating on waiting patiently. There weren’t many of us and none of them were particularly friends of mine. I was trying to make conversation with a fat boy with whom my only previous contact had been to yell, ‘out of the way gut-bucket’ on the occasion he had strayed onto our playground football pitch.
Cal came up and poked me in the ribs. ‘Got any bubble-gum?’, he asked. A good six months had passed since our first meeting - an eternity at that age - but I remembered him immediately. He did not appear to have grown any.
He still had that leather satchel only now he was carrying it like a briefcase. He also had a new blazer. I tried to ignore him. I switched my fountain pen from one blazer pocket to the other, hoping it might hide the stitching marks left behind when my mother replaced my primary school badge with the new one.
‘I know your name,’ he said. ‘It’s Frankie.’
His voice was becoming loud enough to attract attention. The teachers were standing up the front of the hall, taking it in turns to step forward, read out the names of their forms and then lead their charges off to their classroom. There were only enough kids left now for two, maybe three, classes and I was beginning to worry that I had missed my name. There had been a Dean called but the teacher had had some sort of accent. Perhaps he meant Dane.
‘Ssh,’ I said.
‘Got any gum?’ he asked again.
I put my hand in my blazer pocket and, keeping my eyes fixed on the front of the hall cupped my hand around a bubble gum ball. I released it into his outstretched hand. The stupid little sod dropped it, of course, and to make matters worse got down on all fours to pursue it like a hound as it skated across the hall.
It completed one tight parabola before rolling across the polished floor like a little green jet propelled marble. At the front of the hall, Mr Blake trapped it, flicked it up with the toe of his slip-on shoe, caught it and dropped it in the bin. A suppressed titter rippled round the hall. He cast a hard stare in our general direction. I looked ahead like a squaddie. Then Mr Blake started reading names out. From the corner of my eye, I was aware of Cal smirking, trying to stop himself laughing.
Mr Blake called my name and, as I followed him out of the hall, I was relieved to see that Cal, whose name I still did not know, was not tagging along.
‘So,’ said Mr Blake, dropping back to walk next to me. ‘Like bubble gum do we, Mr Dane?’ Once again Cal’s advice on the dangers of chewing gum flashed red across my mind. Advice I realised he no longer himself heeded.
The word in the playground at break was that the classes were called out in reverse order and therefore I was in the second from top class. The fat kid told me this while we were waiting to be picked for a football game. After two hours in which we appeared to have done nothing but tell people our names, write our names and spell our names, secondary school had already taught me what six years of primary school had failed to do: the fat kid’s name was Hawkins. Obviously nobody was going to pick him for their team but they seemed to have decided that as I was talking to him, I was his friend and so I must be rubbish at footie too. I shuffled along the wall. If they picked him before they picked me I might as well throw myself under a train.
Kids were bagging position. Some were taking off jumpers and blazers, making goalposts and measuring out goals. The bigger kids were juggling with the tennis ball impatient for the game to start. Captains were scratching their heads. I was still standing against the wall.
‘Him,’ said a boy who was captain because he didn’t have a proper school uniform or a tie. He was also bigger and broader than the average first year. I resisted the temptation to look over my shoulder. I smiled. He was picking me. His name was Terry Chambers. I hand’t realised he was at Beech Park because he hadn’t been in assembly that morning. Must have sauntered in late as usual. He’d also come from my primary school and he was hard.
‘You can go in goal,’ he said, turning on a well-scuffed heel.
Now, I am crap in goal. Always was. Still am. My palms were already sweating when a voice piped up, ‘I’ll go in goal’. It was Cal.
‘We’ve got this kid,’ I yelled to everyone bar Cal himself. The game was already
underway.
The captain was unsure. ‘He’s a shrimp’ he said.
‘They’ve got one more player than you have’, said Cal as the ball flew past his right ear. He put out his left hand to try and stop it, flailing a bit like a girl hitting you. He missed it by miles and the ball continued goalward.
‘No goal’, shouted Cal. ‘Over the post.’
‘You’ve moved the post’, said someone from the other team but Cal had already restarted the game by throwing the ball out to our captain and the incident was over. I think we won the match. I played terribly, even missing an open goal and tripping over a duffel bag but the reason I am sure that we won is that our goalkeeper had moved our goalposts some three feet closer together. Cal, I realised, was in the top class.
Frankie Dane’s entry in the most recent edition of The Encyclopedia Of Rock:
Frankie Dane
English, singer-guitarist-songwriter
Born 1959
First exploded onto the London punk scene as one of The Go-Karts. On strength of excellent debut album Rotten In Denmark (1978), he and songwriting partner Cal Carter were hailed by the critics as the bards of the new wave - ‘the thinking men of punk’. After Carter’s untimely death the following year, Dane moved initially to France and disappeared from the rock scene. He returned with one of the biggest popular and critical successes of the 80s in Stolen Moments (1984). It went platinum - an achievement he matched with Phoenix (1989). His strength is in his unswerving approach unaffected by fashion - both solo albums display the Go-Karts hallmarks of dual guitars, infectious melodies and kitchen sink lyrics. His lack of pretentiousness throughout the 80s was wholly refreshing and now the circle has come around again - Dane is often cited as the Godfather of Grunge or the Great Uncle of Brit-Pop - his limited catalogue, just like that of The Beatles, is emerging as a strength as the runaway success of Frank (1998), the recent greatest hits repackaging proves. Dane enjoys both longevity and integrity - a combination, rare in the rock industry, which could yet see him become the biggest of them all.
3
Beech Park, the present day
The water splashes off the proud white hood and laps against the window, coming in long slow rushes like waves on an easy beach. Brushes like hairy paint-rollers, vertical Dougal dogs, grunt into action, licking the fibre-glass and chrome body, swallowing it. Soap runs down the glass. For a moment, foam and suds are everywhere, vision obscured. Then more water. Violently. Jets taming us from all directions. Clean, clean water. The car wash is nearly over.
Anyone watching would think us business men. Jonathan is regularly unconventional in contrasting jacket and tie, broadly cut, perhaps an advertising executive. He’s got some sort of a souped up sports car with a twin this and turbo that and a top speed more than double the legal maximum. You’ll know him as my regular bass player; he’s actually my manager too.
I remove my hat to mop my brow. It’s a warm morning and I am uncomfortable. For a moment, Jonathan’s car beaming in the morning sun reminds me of Cal’s old red Ford Escort and a dawn over Durham town.
From where we are standing, the car gleams, its chassis ready to pounce. But anyone looking closely, looking at the parts seen only by timid cats, would discover some secrets: caked on grease and dirt and features slightly off-centre. That’s the trouble with looking closely at anything - perhaps that’s why the modern world so lacks enthusiasm for it - but that is what I as an autobiographer am doomed to do.
Hand in my jacket pocket, I switch on and off the small cassette recorder that I have purchased to help me write this book. They’re already saying it will be a best-seller. My publishers and the music press, that is. So Jonathan tells me. I’ve stopped taking much notice of the music mags. In fact, I dislike them more now that I’m a ‘true original’ with ‘integrity’ than I did when I was ‘derivative’, ‘unambitious’ and ‘smugly overweight’.
Jonathan says the record company want me to record another album. ‘They’re phoning twice a day’ he keeps saying. ‘Before they go to lunch and four hours later when they get back’. I can’t help. Not until I’ve got this book out of my system. Maybe never.
I want everything in the open so we are on our way to see Tony Beale, our Artists and Repertoire man at my record company Phonodisc to tell him what I’m planning. He’ll be assuming we’re going to tell him the new album’s finally ready. I have no respect for Tony - he’s an Oxbridge-educated chump - but I am nervous nonetheless about telling him anything different.
‘I shouldn’t bring it to London,’ Jonathan begins as we shuffle along the Strand. He’s talking about the car. With the windows down, we are at the optimum height to inhale the exhaust from the vehicle in front. ‘You can’t leave it anywhere. You put your life-savings in a meter and ten minutes later some bastard on piece-rate claps a wheel clamp on. Or you put it where they’ve sledgehammered the tops off the meters and come back to find the chassis on bricks. That’s if you can find it at all. Don’t know what’s worse.’ His hand hovers menacingly over the gear stick.
As we crawl past Old Compton Street, a couple of guys wave.
‘Your expectant fans, Frank,’ says Jon, but I don’t see it like that. To me, they’re waving at him.
‘I don’t know why we didn’t get the bus.’ I say, fiddling about with the cassette recorder. It’s voice-activated and cuts off the first word of every new sentence. I am contemplating recording the meeting with Tony. Lighting the blue touchpaper of my career and retiring might make a significant moment for my book.
‘We didn’t get the bus because…’ Jonathan turns to peer at me over his Ray-bans. They have a curious medicinal green tint. ‘Well, when was the last time you actually got a bus, Frank. I think they’ve been abolished.’
‘There’s one.’
‘Of course, they have them up here. For the tourists. When is that arsehole going to move? Anyway the meeting’s today not next week.’
Jonathan swings the car off the road into an underground car park. He operates the gear stick for the first time in half-an-hour. ‘Should be an attendant here. It’s expensive enough.’
I’m trying to relax. Remind myself that Tony is not what he was. He used to be sixpenny sharp with fine judgement and a natural authority, making and breaking teenage hearts. Safety-pins and tie pins. Bollinger and bitter. Out of marketing meetings into The Vortex without missing a stride. But that was then.
And all these years later, I could bank with Coutts if I wanted to. Nobody would ask squirming questions or quibble over the number of noughts in my current account. But I cough and shuffle in the glossy leather passenger seat either wishing I had or feeling like I’ve already got a great mouthful of bubble gum. I still want to please. I know that Tony is not going to be happy and it sickens me. And it sickens me that it sickens me.
‘I still think of you as my little Van Morrison, Frankie,’ Tony will say as he always says at some point during our meetings, spitting the end of his cigar into the wastebasket like a pea from a shooter. ‘You split the bollocking band, do one like a whatsit, Lord Lucan, and out Astral Weeks, Astral Weeks. Fucking brilliant. And again. Sod it. Like a fucking little Jack Horner. You keep pulling out the plums, Frankie boy. Keep pulling out those plums.’
But even the liberal plunder of his limited but graphic collection of curses is insufficient to take the cultured edge from his accent. He is, quite simply, an affected fucker and despite his having overseen my career since the beginning, our only point of contact is when we shake hands.
Tony nearly spits out his preprandial gin when I tell him. Nearly. Would have done if he wasn’t supposed to be on the wagon. I enjoy the moment. Freudian, I am. Not Sigmund but schaden. Tony is getting old. He hasn’t signed anyone decent for years. Still thinks a sample is something you provide for the doctor. If I dry up, what then? I can read it in the lines of his face. If he can’t do the business with that diffic
ult bastard whose pal topped himself…
‘A book! Most fucking rock fans are illiterate,’ he splutters. He fixes his eyes on mine. Slowly, he places the drink down on his leather-topped mahogany desk and looks at me as if I were a lump of excrement or a roadie.
‘Actually, most of them are ABC1 white collar professionals,’ chirps Jon.
‘I’m all washed-up,’ I say, churning on the clichés, Tony-esque. ‘All played out.’
Tony changes by inches between our meetings: a couple more around the waist, a couple less at the temples and crown. Looking at his play-doh cheeks, I wonder if he moves by inches too. I’d like to be able to relate that his face turned red with anger but it was rosy red already – three parts alcohol, two parts cocaine and one part tropical sunshine. Tony flexes his nostrils. ‘Shit. Fuck. Jesus.’
He inclines an unfocused gaze towards me. ‘Fucking illiterate,’ he says, shaking his head like an ageing uncle at a loss with the ways of the world.
‘There are no more songs, Tony. It’s as simple as that.’
We were all young once and, if Jon and Cal and I had been hungry, Tony was ravenous. Now, heavier, tireder and desperate, he smiles. ‘Frankie, Frankie, believe me: you should be sitting at a mixing desk not a word-processor. You’re an artist not a fantasist.’ I tighten my resolve not to speak. ‘You make fantasies, Frankie. You are a fantasy. You’re a. Shit. Bollocks.’ He looks at Jon again. There’s something in their eyes that’s like parents with a wayward son.
‘Tony,’ I say after a pause. ‘Don’t get so hung up on product. This is the age of the multinational. Phonodisc own the publishing house anyway. You’ll still get your profit-share.’
‘Don’t fuck with me Frankie as if this is just some bollocking financial kiss my arse relationship. We’re talking…’ Once again the rage evaporates to be replaced by a slow shake of the fleshy jowl. ‘We’re talking rock’n’roll here. The lifeblood of a generation. Fuck.’
