‘Are we okay, Charlie?’ asked Nicko.
‘Ah, yeah . . . should be.’ But there was an unconvincing tone, and he was starting to pull so vigorously on his moustache that I thought it might come off.
We clambered aboard and put the bags in the baggage compartment, where they still stuck out between the rear seats. I leaned back; the plane toppled over onto its tail.
‘Oh, shit,’ Nicko muttered.
‘Is it supposed to do that?’
‘No. Fuck. It’s not.’
Charlie turned and surveyed the scene behind him: two lads in the back, two heavy bags further back, Nicko in the front, tail on the ground, nose wheel dangling in the air, gendarme starting to become interested.
He finally spoke: ‘Right, lads. I’ve got an idea . . .’
Straight out of The Italian Job, I thought, and appropriate too. The coach, balanced on the precipice, with the gold at one end – we were in exactly the same predicament.
‘Everyone lean forward . . .’
We did so. Nothing changed.
‘Move the bags into the space between the front and back seats . . .’
We manhandled the bags until we were trapped behind them.
‘Right. Nicko, when I yell “Start the engine” . . .’
Charlie ran around to the tail and lifted it off the ground, cradling it while the nose wheel touched terra firma at last.
‘Start the engine.’
I watched, fascinated, as Nicko read the instructions. Now, of course, I know it’s called a checklist, but it is in fact the instructions on how to start an engine.
There was a series of squelches and squeaks, and a ‘boing’ noise as he pulled a lever. He tapped several dials, rotated a couple of instruments and filled the cabin with the overwhelming smell of gasoline. After pumping a small plunger into the dash, Nicko stuck his head out of the door and shouted, ‘Clear prop!’
This was splendid stuff, and I half expected a squadron scramble. Nicko turned the ignition key and the engine rattled into life. As soon as the prop was spinning, the plane settled on an even keel, and Charlie leapt into the seat yelling, ‘I have control!’
We taxied very fast, I thought, and the low cloud scurried rapidly over the runway in the strong gusty winds. We careered onto the runway, and the racket from the engine and prop rose till the windows started to vibrate.
‘Everyone lean right forward,’ Charlie yelled above the din, his own head pressed firmly against the dashboard.
The runway in Cherbourg, I later discovered, is very long, which is good, because we used all of it to get airborne.
Despite what turned out to be a beneficial headwind on take-off, the wheels barely left the ground at all. The altitude above sea level became clear when we fell, or rather almost fell, off the edge of the cliff that marked the end of the runway.
Below us lay jagged rocks, a grey and angry sea with white horses cresting and crashing, and a low, miserable-looking cloud base to sandwich us.
After about five minutes I worked out what all the instruments were indicating, and 800 feet seemed to be about all we could manage.
‘Keep leaning forward,’ Charlie urged as another cliff came in sight with a runway attached to the end of it. I noticed that Charlie was quite pale by now, and was sweating – a lot. As we approached the ground I noticed the runway dipped away and rose up in front of us . . .
‘Don’t lean back! Keep leaning forward!’ Charlie pulled back on the control column, but not very much, and we taxied very fast to park up on a patch of grass.
There was a long sigh.
‘Welcome to Jersey,’ said Nicko.
Nicko got his pilot’s licence and, as you would expect from a drummer with all that coordination, he had a very good pair of hands when it came to flying an aeroplane. Later on, during the US leg of the tour, he flew himself around in a small turboprop owned by a commercial pilot who went with him as instructor.
I tagged along on a few of their trips, and I was fascinated by the instruments. So fascinated, in fact, that a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator was my next port of call, which I installed on the suitcase-sized monster that was the Mac Portable, or Mac Luggable, as I termed it. I was already on the slippery slope towards the runway, but first I had to negotiate our last stop in the Bahamas, and a prolonged stay in Amsterdam.
Double Dutch
The Bahamas was relatively brief. The rest of the album would be finished and mixed in Holland, in Hilversum, at Wisseloord Studios.
Marvin still managed to make an appearance, in quite memorable fashion. I was sound asleep but the sun was already up. There was a loud banging from downstairs. Each small house had three bedrooms upstairs, and there was a courtyard at the back with an external door opening out onto the road, across from the studies. The initial banging was Marvin trying to get in. I woke up, the banging ceased, and I started to doze.
Seconds later the sound of splintering window frame, muffled shouts, a woman’s voice, a door being kicked in – and the unmistakable sound of Martin in transformation.
He knocked at my door: ‘Aha, are you in . . .?’
‘What is it?’
‘You need to come downstairs.’
‘It’s 7.30 in the morning.’
‘Now. You need to come downstairs now.’
‘Why do I need to come downstairs now?’ I had already started putting my pants on, or this would only end in tears, which it possibly would do anyway, but hey.
‘It’s the most important person . . . you will ever meet . . . in the whole world . . .’
I put my trainers on. ‘And who might that be?’
‘Just get down here, boy.’
I heard a thumping crash as Marvin collided with the stairs.
Downstairs, Marvin was standing on the furniture again, on one leg, but this time he was covered in earth and his forearm was heavily bleeding.
‘Are you alright?’
‘AHA! Alright? See . . .’ He pointed to his eye. ‘This . . . the eye of the tiger.’
‘Martin, you’re bleeding . . .’
‘HA! This . . . the blood of the samurai.’
‘I would get that seen to. Do you want some antiseptic?’
‘Death . . . one blow . . . Shotokan.’ He hopped from one leg to the other. ‘For I . . . am the court jester.’
I sighed. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea . . .’
Martin had started out with good intentions several hours before, but had been misled by his own internal Mr Hyde, and finally ran out of people to drink with. After banging on my door at 7 a.m., he had scaled the eight-foot wall and then fallen off into a rose bush, hence the earth, hence the blood.
Undeterred, Marvin had scaled the trellis and kicked in the mosquito mesh, clambered into a roadie’s bedroom, and then, imagining that my bedroom lay beyond, kicked the door open to reveal a naked lady in flagrante with another roadie.
‘Carry on, dear boy,’ was his response.
The doorbell rang and the last piece of the evening’s jigsaw revealed itself. I opened the courtyard door and there, immaculately dressed in dressing gown and slippers, was Robert Palmer, clutching a bottle of rum and two glasses.
Martin and Robert went way back to the days when Martin worked with a band called Vinegar Joe. Robert was the singer.
After running out of drinking partners, and having not seen Robert for around 30 years, Marvin knocked on his door at four in the morning.
Unfazed, Robert greeted him with, ‘Martin, it’s been a long time. Do come in.’
One bottle of rum had already been consumed, and the second was already half-empty, I noted. ‘I’ll make another cup of tea . . .’
‘This is the most important man you will ever meet,’ muttered Marvin, and then he went out on to the balcony, standing on one leg overlooking the sea, but luckily always falling back onto dry land.
I sat down opposite Robert.
‘I’m having so much trouble with the album,’ he began. ‘It’s like a mounta
in and I don’t know where to start.’
I sipped my tea. ‘Try the steps,’ I suggested.
‘The steps?’
‘Yes, the steps in the side of the mountain. That’s what they are for.’
‘The steps,’ he whispered. ‘The steps. Yes, I’ll try the steps.’ And he wandered out of the door, saying, ‘Brilliant. Of course – the steps. Use the steps . . .’
I finished my tea and left Marvin to his karate exercises.
A couple of hours later, I walked out of the front door to find Marvin standing in the middle of the road, barefoot, still bleeding, and with a manic grin on his face. His hands clutched at the pockets of his shorts, which had been turned inside out.
‘Keys, dear boy,’ he said, ‘can’t find the house keys.’
Marvin finally got put to bed, and before long we decamped to a place of even greater temptation, the fleshpots of Amsterdam.
The studio in Hilversum was boring as hell. It was in a complex used mainly for TV and radio, so we had to put up with The Smurfs in the next-door studio and the world’s most boring cheese sandwiches in the canteen. Hilversum itself is a deathly quiet conservative suburb, and Steve stayed there.
I stayed in Amsterdam, in a loft apartment with a circular staircase and great triangular wooden beams. Downstairs was a nightclub open till dawn, a gay cinema and three red-light window girls. The central station was a 10-minute walk away, and I quickly purchased a stolen bike for 25 guilders. I had a stack of books to read, and I bought a candelabra and would eat in the Italian restaurant next door, carafe of wine, candelabra and book of the month club. Boring it was not, and as I got to know the locals life became yet more illuminating.
I asked Steve why he didn’t stay in the centre of Amsterdam.
‘Too much dog shit,’ he muttered.
Not entirely incorrect, I have to say, and the size of some of the droppings was quite extreme. Not the dogs’ fault, and the size of some of the dogs matched the unwanted logs they deposited on the kerb. One such dog was a huge Great Dane that hung out with the equally huge Hells Angel at the neighbouring Café Midnight.
Café Midnight no longer exists, and the gay couple who ran it may or may not have been released from jail by now, but the web that was spun out of one establishment was typical of the underbelly of what, on the surface, was a happy-go-lucky, free-spirited city.
Henrik, shall we call him, was the capo dei capi of Hells Angels in the city. Incredibly tall and mild-mannered, his girlfriend worked the bar at the café and she was trouble, but one look at her and it was easy to see why men (and women) fell over every which way.
She had already been responsible for the downfall of a Dutch cabinet minister, and was herself ministering to my very entrepreneurial Hells Angel friend.
‘I’m going through hell with the girlfriend,’ he told me.
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Let’s go for a drink.’
So began a long evening of small beers ending up in a deserted nightclub with the sun rising over the canals.
He explained his business empire and his philanthropic nature: ‘We run the chapter like a sort of social-security club.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Ja. For example, one of my guys was dying of cancer. So we all got together and got him something. You know, to make him feel better.’
‘What did you get him?’
‘A washing machine.’
‘A washing machine?’
‘Ja, exactly. He was in tears. He said nobody had ever bought him a washing machine before. That’s the sort of stuff we do. Good, eh? But oh, fuck. I got a big shipment I’m waiting for this month.’
‘Washing machines?’ I ventured.
‘No, drugs.’
‘Gosh, how big is the shipment?’ I was picturing a couple of plastic bags, or a sack at most.
‘A container-full,’ he said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I looked around the empty nightclub; the windows were all portholes, I realised, for a port city.
‘That sounds like a lot of stress, let alone the girlfriend.’
‘Ja,’ he sighed, world-weary entrepreneur that he was. ‘You get it wrong you end up in the bottom of the river . . .’ He had a sip of Heineken. ‘You know, last time I was in here a guy tried to shoot me with a Luger. Seven shots.’
‘Hmm. You’re a big chap. He must have been a rotten shot.’
‘Ja, ja. That’s what I told him when I got hold of him.’
I didn’t press the line of enquiry further.
‘It’s been really good to talk,’ he said. ‘I feel much better.’
Nights like these were surreal windows into the not-so-nice side of Amsterdam. Often I would end up in the late-night club opposite my apartment. There was a very happy hooker who came in after work. She was Australian, and was always delighted to see me.
‘Strewth, mate, yer not bad looking. Fancy a freebie?’
I politely declined.
‘No, mate, seriously, straight up. I’ll blow your mind.’
Probably not the only thing that would get blown, I imagined, but I surprised myself by sticking to beer and conversation. She had a bandage on her arm.
‘What happened there?’ I asked.
‘Jeez, mate. Some fucking guy got out of jail and turned up to work, and then he starts to fucking bite me and draws blood.’
She was a window girl, so walk-in trade was the norm. She was personable and quite good-looking. I was baffled by why she did it.
‘Still, the cops are great. They banged him up right away. They take a very dim view of beating up the girls.’
This was a harsh place beneath the fluffy, ‘open city’ propaganda. No one I met was quite what they seemed: the Liverpudlian scallywag on the run from the British police, happily settled down with a stunning Dutch girl and two children; the Mancunian with a barge full of empty clay pots and vases from Thailand for sale. No clue as to what might have been contained within them during their transit, of course.
There was the happy couple that painted John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce and made stage clothes for Led Zeppelin and tried to sell me a piano and introduce me to the new drug ecstasy.
My ecstatic moments did not revolve around drugs. I had found the most bizarre fencing club in a basement. The coach was wonderfully mad and gave lessons outside by the canal on the cobblestones. This basement was so small that fighting was only possible if you fenced across the room diagonally, and even then you ran out of space after three or four steps.
My Australian window girl lived just down the street, and one evening she invited me to her flat, saying, ‘There is someone I want you to meet.’ Frankly, I didn’t want to go, but she was insistent.
‘Oh, very well,’ I said, ‘but just five minutes.’
Up the dingy staircase, one, two, three floors up, twisting around in the old wooden-framed building.
‘Who is this person?’ I said. ‘Is he a fan or what?’
‘Shoosh!’ Suddenly she looked concerned. A quick glance over her shoulder was, I thought, a trifle melodramatic. ‘He’s the most wanted man in Holland,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Yeah, mate. He’s on the run and just hanging out with me for a few days.’
I entered the small flat and two men were sitting around the kitchen table. They weren’t exactly talkative.
‘Here’s my mate, Bruce,’ she said.
I smiled, but not really. ‘Thanks. Nice to meet you. Well, I really must be going . . .’
I exited very quickly. I don’t know if she was dishing out freebies for fugitives as a sort of public service, but I was glad I never indulged.
Amsterdam was like that, unpredictable and sometimes tragic. Like our Liverpool scallywag with the gorgeous Dutch girlfriend. She ended up in a French jail after he persuaded her to drive to France with her children, carrying drugs in boxes of chocolate. He ended up being slit from one side of his stomach to the other in a kni
fe attack. Nice people, drug dealers. You can’t persuade me that Robin Hood is out there selling dope, not any more.
As for the girl in Café Midnight, she lost her job when the building was set on fire by the proprietors. Alas for them they didn’t do a good job, and returned with more petrol a couple of hours later. The next-door neighbours had already alerted the police because of the smell of gasoline.
Even then bail was jumped, but the miscreants were dumb enough to re-enter Holland, and ended up staying rather longer than they intended. Ten years, to be exact.
Amsterdam is also the only city in Europe where I have had a gun pulled on me, after I remonstrated with a car that almost ran me down outside the American Hotel.
It’s not just dog shit that is on the streets of Amsterdam.
So, with a bit more of an education than I got from my A levels, I moved on to be fired from the starting cannon that was the Somewhere in Time world tour.
You Cannot Be Serious
The Marquis de Sade wrote famously gross fantasies, though he never got the opportunity to play some of them out. He was firmly locked up for much of the duration of his writing career, where the only material available for composing his scatological hymns was toilet paper.
For very different reasons, on the Somewhere in Time tour I found myself shackled in hotel rooms around the globe, and in the spirit of ‘What does this button do?’ I decided to write a saucy comic novel because, well, I could – and there was plenty of hotel stationery to do it on.
The end result was The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace, a hybrid of Tom Sharpe’s Wilt series and Carry On Camping-style innuendo.
The blame for this fledgling writing career must go down to only being runner-up in the English prize at Birkdale preparatory school. Second place was always going to be life’s cattle prod, and the shock-treatment was administered by horror writer and Iron Maiden fan Shaun Hutson.
I have read most of Shaun’s popular horror fiction. I have also had no choice in the matter, because he gave them to me and everyone else in the band.
I could see the formula in what he did, but also the hand of the artisan in the way he delivered the story. What I enjoyed was the way that the books actually produced a physical reaction. This was not long-winded character development and descriptions of detailed sunsets or locations. This was a universal, gratuitous page-turner with an outrageous death every few pages. Jane Austen, eat your heart out (and leave the bleeding mess pumping helplessly as the coppery smell of blood filled the room. The walls sprayed as his fist pumped and crushed the organ wrenched from the smashed ribs, which stood upended like broken teeth. Sorry – couldn’t resist a go at a Shaun Hutson homage . . .).
What Does This Button Do? Page 17
