by John Taylor
The war years. The very subject that had been so unmentionable for all of my youth was now all he could summon out of the past.
“I was lucky, not smoking. I could trade my cigarettes for an extra potato.”
He had developed a pathological hatred for full plates of food.
“How can I eat all this, John?” he fumed. “It’s so ridiculous. It’s all such a waste.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” I would say. “Just eat what you want, it’s not a big deal.”
“But it is, John, it is.”
The waste was symptomatic of a world he couldn’t understand anymore. There was too much of everything. He would go to the local chip shop and make an order of fish and chips last three days.
When the social services finally got involved, they said to him, “You can’t eat this anymore. It’s not safe.”
The most important war story was the one that took, oh, only about fifty years for him to get out of his system.
“On the march, there were thousands of us, walking across Poland and then through Germany.
“So many didn’t make it. I watched one after another fall at the roadside. At one point, I don’t know where we were, I saw a bridge up ahead and thought to myself, ‘I’m going to die when I get to that bridge.’ I was in so much pain, you see, I just could not imagine myself making it any further. I said to myself, ‘They can shoot me, hit me, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to fall down when I get to that bridge, and curl up and die.’”
His hands were clenched in fists on the pub table as he traveled back in time.
“What happened, Dad?”
“When I got to the bridge, the pain disappeared.”
He had learned to survive.
Nice lesson, Dad, thanks.
Dad never spoke in any more detail about exactly what happened to him in Germany—I had to find out for myself. Dad was one of the twelve thousand occupants of Stalag 344 involved in the “Lamsdorf death march,” sometimes known as “the March,” which took place at the end of the war, when Hitler moved his POWs out of territory that was about to fall to the Russians, and force-marched them more than five hundred miles during the coldest winter months of the twentieth century in Europe, with blizzards and temperatures as low as -25°C (-13°F).
Long columns of POWs wandered over the northern part of Germany with little or nothing in the way of food, clothing, shelter, or medical care; were reduced to scavenging, some eating dogs and cats; and sleeping outside on frozen ground, which resulted in frostbite that in many cases required amputations. Hundreds died along the way from exhaustion and pneumonia, diphtheria, and other diseases. Typhus was spread by body lice. Some who tried to escape or could not go on were shot by guards.
As the prisoners reached the Western side of Germany, they ran into the advancing British and American armies. Dad was one of those lucky ones. His last POW diary entry read, “American troops coming up the road. Kommandant going out with white flag to hand over. Is this the end?”
• • •
It was.
Communication with him went downhill fast. He lost patience with his hearing aid and stopped wearing it.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Dad!”
“Hello, hello, who is this?”
“It’s me, Dad, John.”
“I’m sorry, but please stop calling. I cannot hear you.”
“Dad, please. It’s JOHN.”
“I’m putting the phone down now. Bye.”
The guilt and concern piled on. I would call Liz and Eddie.
“He’s fine. We saw him at the weekend. A little grouchy but you’ve got to expect that.”
“I just feel so bad.”
“Don’t worry, he’s got the nurses coming in three times a day now, and you’ve got to live your life, haven’t you?”
“I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“We’ll keep an eye on him ’til then, all right?”
“Yeah. All right. Thanks, guys.”
As soon as my flight touched down at Heathrow, I would get on the motorway to Birmingham, let myself in the house with the Yale key I had taken off Mom’s key ring, the grooves and indentations worn smooth from fifty years of use. Closing the door behind me, I would get hit by the heat of the central heating on high and the sickly smells of medicines and disinfectants. He would be in the living room. The more time had passed, the more I would notice how his appearance had changed.
He would be as quiet as a mouse, wasting away in his easy chair, which was threatening to overwhelm him completely.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Hello, lad.” Tired, stirring, a glimpse of happiness at seeing me.
“How ya doin’, Dad?” A bony hug, me holding back a tear.
“Oh. Not too bad. More importantly, how are you?”
“Good. Good.”
“And where are you staying?”
“At the house, at Wiltshire.”
“Well, don’t leave it too late, lad. You don’t want to get caught in the traffic.”
And that was how it would go. The memory loss drove me crazy, so I could only imagine what it was doing to him. I would try to engage him on subjects he had always loved, like cars and dogs.
“Remember the Cortina, the bronze one?”
“I don’t, John, no.”
“Come on, Dad, you spent half your life working on that car.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Dad. Think about it. You had three Cortinas; the bronze was the first. It was a great car!”
“I don’t remember.”
I would have to back off.
His anger was understandable, I can see that now. I thought I was helping, digging into the family photographs; sepia-toned weddings, faded christenings, bleached-out holidays.
“Here’s your old dog, Bruce!” Handing him a tiny picture of the bull terrier I used to hear about all the time.
“What’s this?” Peering at it over his badly fitting glasses. They had grown like the chair.
“That’s Bruce, Dad. Your dog. You would talk about him all the time. You loved that dog.”
“Where was this taken?”
“In the back garden at Nan’s, I reckon.”
There was no recognition.
“Oh. I don’t know, John.” His voice would trail away. The loss of remembrance was more painful to him than the loss of things past.
I made a book for his Christmas present, “Jack’s Book.” I filled it with cards and photos that told his and Mom’s story. His family, her family. The two of them as children, teens, young adults. Dad in the army, Mom at the Austin. Courtship, wedding, honeymoon. Moving in together. The final page was a picture of me.
On the cover I put that picture of Bruce. It was a Jack and Jill book, but instead of being a teaching aid to show children the names of people, places, and things for the first time, this was to show an old person the names of people, places, and things he had forgotten, to stimulate, to stir something up.
But it was too late. I could have filled it up with photographs from anyone’s family album.
In late 2009, his elder sister Elsie passed on. Dad responded to that by going on hunger strike, and there was nothing I could do.
I could have bought him anything, taken him anywhere, got him in to see any specialist, but he was not interested. He did not want what I had to offer.
Surely, I asked him, he wanted to see his granddaughter at Christmas? What about the plans I was making for his ninetieth birthday party, which was going to be the biggest gala Simon Road had ever seen?
“John. Please. Just let me die.”
I had no answer to that. As Eddie put it, “He just didn’t want to play anymore.”
I wasn’t there for Dad’s passing. I had gone to New York for a session with Mark Ronson and went on from there to LA, intending to stay only a few days. Gela and I were woken by the telephone, one of those early morning calls we all live in fear of.
“It’s me, ki
d. Sorry if I woke you up.”
“It’s okay, Ed.”
“He’s gone, kid. Very peacefully.”
At the funeral, Simon sang “Save a Prayer.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
74 Coachella, Indio, California, April 17, 2011
Behind the stage, to the side of the ramp, our band has gathered. We’ve stepped off the pair of golf carts that have brought us the half mile from our dressing room in battery-powered silence. The air is warm, an electric blue. We acknowledge each other without words, using nods and smiles, backslaps and other gestures of encouragement.
Instincts surge, every other concern falls away.
Since 1981, we have released our songs on vinyl, cassette tape, CD, digital audio tape, minidisc, ringtones, MP3, streaming and download, for purchase or rental.
I’ve long since learned to relax and cease worrying about how the music finds its way to your ears.
Just play.
Just write.
As long as I keep those calluses on my fingertips hard and maintain an enthusiasm for making music, I’ll be happy most of the time.
The addictions are still there, and keeping them at bay requires work: therapy, physical exercise, journaling, and meeting up with other addicts in recovery many times each week. It’s a big commitment and not to be taken lightly.
Red Carpet Massacre was hard. We had massive problems getting the news out that we had a new album. No radio play, no MTV, and no interest in writing about the band at Rolling Stone or the NME.
But by the time we released our most recent album, All You Need Is Now, things were different. The industry had learned to love iTunes. In December 2010, we released the album as an exclusive digital download. The album went to number 1 on almost every iTunes chart around the world. It was one of the most thrilling moments I have had in thirty years of being in the music business. I could feel excitement around the band begin to build again. I joined Facebook and Twitter. Social networking put our fans back in touch with us and put them back in touch with each other.
By the time we began the All You Need Is Now tour, which tonight’s performance at Coachella is a part of, excitement levels had reached fever pitch.
We have come a long way together to get to this holy place, Coachella, and a lot has changed in the last thirty years. Cell phones. Computers. SUVs. Nose-hair trimmers. Supplements. Propecia. Paperless itineraries. In-room humidifiers. Steam rooms, saunas, and gyms. Pre-show massage. Twitter, Spotify, and Amazon. Touring with three thousand songs in my pocket and thirty books on an iPad. Therapy by Skype. Great coffee everywhere.
Another difference is out there, where there are just as many men as women in the audience tonight. At day’s end, my job is to be a catalyst for connectivity, to help bring people closer together. Men and women, girls and boys. That’s what the music has done for me.
What hasn’t changed are the notes that run up and down the neck of the bass, and the feeling that hits you when one note rubs against another in a way that sets the hair up on the back of your neck, and the sound of the crowd and the feeling of adrenaline that charges through my body when I hear it, holding that four-string machine gun onstage, less than six feet away from YOU.
Simon is running through his vocal warm-ups, which we so often rib him about. Nick has a plastic cup in his left hand and is taking sips from it, now reaching his right hand upward to flash a snapshot on his camera. We all fiddle with our in-ear monitors, trying the volume, listening for interference. A photographer from Spin magazine wants to take a picture. We assemble reluctantly, everyone just wanting to get on with the show.
It’s an outdoor festival, so tour manager Craig will not get to give his usual cue to take the house lights down. Tonight, that is one of God’s jobs. And what a job of it he is doing: A glittering bauble of sunlight fights to stay above the horizon; a full moon appears, a late-coming VIP that takes a seat above the lighting gantry at eleven o’clock high. Nature presents for us a better light show than any human could ever have created.
A perfect breeze causes my Buddha scarf to flutter. All the signs are good.
We walk together up the ramp. The stage is set, the electronics are primed, the audience ready. Nick walks on first, in a black net snood borrowed from Lady Gaga. He walks across the stage and onto his riser, puts down his camera, and touches the Andromeda synthesizer, from which issues forth a sample of the exact sound he used to begin our first single, “Planet Earth,” written and recorded more than thirty years ago.
My heart is pounding. There is no better time than this, when I am about to take the stage and the future belongs to me. This is what the moment feels like as I walk out onto the stage one more time.
Roger’s drums kick in. An eight bar count and I’m in with him, the galloping groove that started it all for me.
Thirty thousand California kids, eyes and teeth smiling, cameras and cell phones popping, a million tiny seductions all at once.
And the music never sounded better.
Acknowledgments
`Thank you, Tom Sykes, who, with good humor, kept me moving forward. He held the torch steady as we plowed through three decades of memorabilia from my parents’ attic. It wasn’t always pretty, but we kept laughing.
His agent, Jonathan Conway, became mine, and we have become friends.
Antonia Hodgson at Little, Brown signed the book and showed me what I could expect from the very best of editors. Jill Schwartzman in New York stepped into the breach and did the same from the American point of view. Thank you both for your detailed commentaries that, again, kept the show moving forward.
Thanks always to Wendy Laister at Magus Entertainment, Duran’s manager and mine on this deal, the best in the business, who, thankfully for us all, has a degree in psychotherapy.
Patty Palazzo did a sterling job on the cover art and helped to identify the images that would best accompany the text. Kristin Burns made the cover shoot a fun event.
Patti Pirooz produced the audiobook, helping to ease me through another first, simultaneously editing the final draft.
Thanks to Gela, Atlanta, Zoe, and Travis—my sweet inspirations—and, of course, to the guys: Nick, Simon, and Roger, without whom none of you would be reading this line.
Permissions
“Ordinary World” John Taylor, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and Warren Cuccurullo copyright © 1993, reproduced by permission of Skintrade Music Ltd (PRS). All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC.
“Sound of Thunder” Roger Taylor, John Taylor, Andy Taylor, Simon Le Bon, and Nick Rhodes copyright © 1981, reproduced by permission of Gloucester Place Music Limited. All rights administered by EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW.
“Night Boat” Roger Taylor, John Taylor, Andy Taylor, Simon Le Bon, and Nick Rhodes copyright © 1981, reproduced by permission of Gloucester Place Music Limited. All rights administered by EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW.
“Rio” Roger Taylor, John Taylor, Andy Taylor, Simon Le Bon, and Nick Rhodes copyright © 1982, reproduced by permission of Gloucester Place Music Limited. All rights administered by EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW.
“Communication” Andy Taylor, Derek Bramble, John Taylor, and Robert Allan Palmer copyright © 1985, reproduced by permission of Parchi Music, Gloucester Place Music Limited and Bungalow Music (ASCAP). All rights administered by EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW and Warner Chappell Music Inc.
“Skin Trade” John Taylor, Simon Le Bon, and Nick Rhodes copyright © 1986, reproduced by permission of Skintrade Music Ltd (PRS). All rights administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC.
“Better Way” John Taylor and Steve Jones copyright © 1996, reproduced by permission of A Thousand Miles Long Music Inc. and Lips Is a Penny (PRS). All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203, and Magus Entertainment, 40 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013.
Photograph Credits
Unless othe
rwise noted, photographs/images are courtesy of the author.
1 courtesy of Watal Asunama
1, 2 (bottom right), 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (top left & bottom right), 10, 11, 12 (top & bottom right), 13 courtesy of Denis O’Regan
1, 2, 3 courtesy of Paul Edmond
1, 2 (top & bottom right), 3, 4 (top left & right, bottom middle), 5, 6, 7 (middle left & top right), 8 (middle right) copyright © EMI Records Limited. All rights reserved.
1 courtesy of Allan Ballard
1 courtesy of Finn Costello
1 courtesy of Brad Elterman/Factory 77
1 courtesy of Finn Costello/Redferns/Getty Images
1 courtesy of Toshi Yajima
1 courtesy of Jeffrey Thomas
1 courtesy of Robert Hayes
1 courtesy of Tom Sheehan
1 courtesy of Popperfoto/Getty Images
1 courtesy of Waring Abbott/Getty Images
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (top left & middle bottom) courtesy of Virginia Liberatore/Duran Duran archive
1, 2 (bottom left), 3 courtesy of Ken Regan
1 (middle bottom) courtesy of Rebecca Blake
1 courtesy of Teajay Smith
1 courtesy of Bob Carlos Clarke
1 courtesy of Ellen Von Unwerth/Art and Commerce
1 courtesy of Chris Cuffaro
1 courtesy of Cynthia Brubaker
1 copyright © Chris Cuffaro/Maverick Records
1 (top left) courtesy of Nina Rich
1 (middle top) courtesy of Sofia Coppola
1 copyright © Kristian Schuller/Duran Duran archive
1 (middle bottom) courtesy of Patty Palazzo
1 (top & bottom left), 2 courtesy of Wendy Laister
1 (middle) courtesy of Roger Deckker
1 (bottom right), 2 courtesy of Kristin Burns
