The Singer

by Cathi Unsworth

  In the kitchen, a Duellit 1950s style toaster, a Smeg fridge, all the other things that looked good and so were more important than feeling comfortable.

  A Polaroid of me and her tacked to the side of the fridge. Smiling, laughing.

  Ten years ago. When the librarian and the libertarian still made a winning combination.

  She didn’t even bother to leave notes any more. The kitchen table was empty, but for a fruit bowl containing a shriveled-looking lemon.

  Me and Louise today.

  I stooped to turn on the fan heater, pointed it towards my desk, fired up the G3. Filled up the kettle and put it on to boil.

  The answerphone was blinking in the corner.

  But it was just the routine Sunday night call from Mother, sounding, as usual, like a battle address from Margaret Thatcher. I didn’t have the will to return it.

  By the time the kettle had boiled, the G3 had powered itself up. It wasn’t a bad machine, considering I got it off the IT department at work with a shitload of software installed all for nothing. But the new iMacs looked so much better. So small and neat and Futurist.

  It was still too cold to take my coat off, so I sat down with my instant coffee, clicked on the Internet Explorer icon.

  She wouldn’t be able to phone here now, even if she wanted to. Her or Mother.

  I went straight to Google. Typed in four words: Vincent Smith Blood Truth and watched the pages come up.

  The first hit was called Careless Love: Doomed Rock Relationships. Underneath it listed Kurt and Courtney, Sid and Nancy, Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence, Vincent Smith and Sylvana…

  A chick happened, mate.

  ‘You and me both,’ I said aloud as I clicked onto the link. The site was done up like a pulp magazine, with lurid headlines in LA Confidential-style typefaces. I scrolled down pages and pages about Sid and Nancy and Kurt and Courtney, the authors deliberately comparing and contrasting the women, their blonde hair and bombed eyes, clear implication: deadlier than the male. Skipped past Paula and Hutch, a story far too depressing for Sunday afternoon turning into Sunday night. I’d always secretly fancied Paula, couldn’t fault Hutchence for that, not like hapless Sid and Kurt.

  Finally, under the headline: Kiss of Death: A Gothic Love Story, a big picture of the couple sprawled across the back seat of an old Cadillac. Vince with a pompadour oiled and gleaming, black Tuxedo and a blood-red shirt, cigarette dangling from one hand, the other arm around the shoulders of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

  She almost looked like a doll. Little porcelain face and red bow lips, huge green eyes peering up from thick lashes, framed by a Ronnie Spector-style bouffant of bright red hair. Red velvet dress with a white lace collar, the sort they put on those antique Victorian figurines, looking tiny and surreal in Vincent Smith’s embrace.

  Vincent and Sylvana Smith, just married, Paris, January 1981 read the caption. Only six months later, Sylvana would be dead…

  The hook was too good to resist. I read on:

  Largely forgotten now, in the post-punk era, Vincent Smith was the self-styled King of Nothing and his band Blood Truth made the most searing and unholy racket of anyone around. Their live shows were legendary for starting riots: Smith did his best to incite the volatile mix of punks, goths and skins that made up the ranks of his following, with seemingly half his audience turning up more for the prospect of a fight than the music. Just as well, legend has it that the longest show they ever played lasted thirty minutes.

  Blood Truth were formed in Hull in 1977, by Sex Pistols-mad guitarist Steve Mullin (who always emulated the playing style of his hero, Steve Jones), bassist Lynton Powell and drummer Kevin Holme. They met Smith, from Doncaster, at a Sex Pistols gig in that town in August of that year. He was two years older than the then sixteen-year-old upstarts and able to relocate to Hull, where he immediately took charge of the fledgling band, picking out a name and writing the lyrics for their songs in earnest.

  Smith was obsessed with Americana, in particular Elvis and the writer Flannery O’Connor, from whose classic novel Wise Blood he was inspired to take band’s name. The Memphis King had been dead for only a week when he met up with Mullin and co., and Smith saw this as his sign to resurrect the fallen Presley in his own performance as the anti-establishment Elvis. Coupled with Mullin’s natural flair as a guitarist, this gave them a different edge on the post-Pistols sound than any of their rivals from the industrial North. Blood Truth’s other secret weapon was Powell, a brilliant musician who had studied jazz trumpet for years before meeting Mullin and reputedly learned the bass overnight in order to play in the band. Even by the time they had scraped together their first single ‘Blind Preach/Dockyard’ in January 1978, they had the beginnings of a distinctive sound that was all the stronger for their disparate influences. They also looked brilliant – along with Siouxsie Sioux, Vince Smith can genuinely be traced back as the first gothic role model.

  Initially managed by local entrepreneur Don Dawson, who put out their first records on his own Dawsongs label, Blood Truth set about conquering the North in ’78 with a succession of gigs that saw them rise from supporting the likes of The Damned and The Stranglers to their own headline tour before the year was out. A string of further singles accompanied their gradual rise, and the mini-LP that spawned their legendary track, ‘King of Nothing’, fell into the hands of new London-based label Exile. Ever the champion of all things batwinged, they signed Blood Truth early in 1979 and quickly recorded their first full-length LP Down in the World, which rapidly made them the darlings of the music weeklies. Their propensity for outrageous behaviour claimed yet more column inches and a front cover for NME in which Mullin persuaded a young woman to be tied to the front of their tour van half naked as their figurehead, a photograph that nearly landed the paper in serious legal trouble.

  More albums followed. Ruined (1979), The Crooked Mile and From the Bottom of the Glass in 1980, when the band hit a creative and commercial high, denting the bottom of the official chart and staying at Number One in the Indie charts for six weeks solid.

  It looked as though 1981 would be the year of their commercial breakthrough, but fate had another idea: Sylvana Goldberg.

  Sylvana, an American Jewish princess from a rich New Jersey family, had come to London to follow the Pistols in ’77 and never left. She’d met a young Scottish musician, Robin Leith, at a Damned gig, fallen in love and formed the band Mood Violet with him and guitarist Aliester McTavish, a schoolmate of Leith’s.

  Thanks to the fact that Sylvana (who generally dispensed with her surname) sounded as exotic and eerily childlike as she looked, Mood Violet soon attracted a cult following. Leith’s inventiveness with synths and atmospheric guitar style lent them an assured accessibility beyond the grasp of most of their goth peers. By the time Sylvana met Vince, at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by Exile records’ founder Tony Stevens, Mood Violet were a breakthrough act who’d had three singles in the Top 20.

  According to legend, the attraction was so instant that Vincent and Sylvana slipped away from the party within half an hour of meeting – leaving her hapless then fiancé Robin Leith stranded over the canapés…

  The sudden vibration of my mobile in my jacket pocket startled me out of my reverie. I checked the number and sighed, giving in to the inevitable.

  ‘Hello Mother,’ I tried to sound cheerful. ‘Yes, just walked through the door five minutes ago…’

  ‘You’re on that Internet again, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘How much money is that costing you? And this mobile phone – you know I hate calling you on it. It’s twice the price of British Telecom…’

  ‘I’ll ring you back on the landline, shall I?’ I tried not to grind my teeth as I made a bookmark of the Careless Love website, turned the remote access off.

  ‘If you don’t mind, dear.’

  She always got her way.

  Live and loud from Guildford, thirty minutes of further interrogation followed. How was work? Fine, Mum.
I’m lining up another trip to the States. Why do I like it so much there? Just, well, it’s different, isn’t it? I know they have strange values, Mother, and what that President Clinton got up to and how he got away with it. Terrible, yes, quite so.

  And on and on, until she got to the really excruciating bit, the sore spots she always stuck her voodoo pins into with unfailing accuracy.

  ‘Louise not with you then, tonight?’ A thoughtful pause as I tried to mumble out an answer, followed by a swift: ‘That why you’re wasting all that time on the Internet?’

  ‘Actually I’m doing research, Mother,’ the annoyance resounding down the line, giving her the reassurance of my discomfort she so dearly needed. ‘I’m thinking about writing a book.’

  ‘Really?’ her tone poised between scepticism and sudden interest. ‘What kind of book would that be? A novel?’

  ‘No,’ I should never have started this. ‘A biography…’

  ‘Has someone asked you to ghostwrite their memoirs?’ her tone getting fruitier, more expectant.

  ‘No, it’s not authorised. It’s just an idea at the moment. Probably nothing will come of it.’

  ‘Who did you say, dear?’ Not letting me back down again now. ‘Anyone we know?’

  I pictured Dad in the background, hovering like a little grey ghost, nodding earnestly at her every exclamation.

  ‘No, no one you would have heard of.’

  ‘One of your musician friends, then?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Vincent Smith. Ever heard of him? He was very big with skinheads and punks in the eighties…’

  ‘Really?” she said again, this time it sounded more like a sigh. ‘Well, that’s lovely for you, dear. And have you a publisher?’

  ‘I’m seeing someone tomorrow,’ I lied. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when there’s actually something to tell. Now, I’m going to have to get off now and get myself some dinner…’

  Shouldn’t have said that either.

  ‘She isn’t there, then, Louise?’ Mother scenting blood. ‘I didn’t think she was. Is there something you’re not telling me, Edward?’

  ‘She just went to Sainsbury’s to pick up a few things,’ I blurted the first thing that came into my head. ‘She’ll be back any minute to get the dinner on, that’s what I was trying to tell you.’

  ‘There’s no need to shout, dear.’

  ‘Sorry Mother.’ No, there’s every need.

  Teeth grinding spontaneously. ‘Ta ta for now then?’

  ‘Well, enjoy your dinner,’ she concluded, her voice saying she knew it was actually going to be a bowl of Crunchy Nut cornflakes, eaten alone. ‘Give my love to Louise. When she gets there.’

  ‘I will. And give mine to Dad. Bye now…’

  I put the phone down feeling fat, useless and one hundred years old.

  Still freezing inside this room.

  My breath hung on the air.

  Still empty.

  Interminable Sunday night blues coming down.

  After Mother’s interrogation, it was nearly five o’clock, but there was no way of telling how long Louise had actually been out. Seeing as I hadn’t bothered to either come home last night or phone her to tell her I wasn’t, there was no way she was going to extend me any such courtesy. This was designed to make me suffer.

  A gremlin in my head said: What if she didn’t come home last night either?

  I pushed it away, banged my hand down on the mouse and brought the G3 back to life. Hit remote access status to reconnect and put the kettle back on as it loaded up. I actually could have done with Louise’s fictitious trip to Sainsbury’s. That was the last of the milk, which meant not even cornflakes on the menu, unless I could be bothered to go downstairs to Ali’s.

  Which I couldn’t. Just have to eat them dry, I supposed, taking the packet back to my desk. Back to the eighties.

  ‘What followed sounds like an unholy amalgam of Spinal Tap, Fatal Attraction and Panic in Needle Park’, I read on:

  Leith was none too pleased about the sudden exit of his girlfriend and quickly mounted an escalating campaign of stalking, threats and attempted violence against Sylvana and Smith. Their immediate reaction was to get married in Paris, announcing they were to relocate to the City of Lovers to get away from the ‘drag’ of the London scene. This in turn didn’t go down too well with Vincent’s band, but Blood Truth were contractually obligated to a month-long tour of America before anyone could actually settle down anywhere.

  Sylvana’s presence on the tour bus added to the tensions, as did Uncle Sam’s lacklustre enthusiasm for Blood Truth, especially in the Southern states where Smith’s Elvis apparel was viewed as an insult. The band struggled through their commitments before flying back to London to record their new album, nursing grudges and burgeoning substance problems.

  Initially, Smith left his new missus in Paris, either to protect her from the attentions of Leith or to shield himself from an increasingly irate Steve Mullin. The on-edge band began recording at Nomis studios in March 1981. Within a week, Sylvana was back at Vincent’s side and maintained a Yoko-like presence there during the rest of the torturous month-and-a-half long session. In that time, Mullin was arrested for drunken disorder, Kevin Holme was hospitalised for injuries apparently caused by the rest of the band, and Lynton Powell began quietly following in Sylvana and Smith’s trackmarks.

  Even so, the resultant ‘Butchers’ Brew’ (Powell’s idea, now that he was seeing more clearly where Miles had been coming from) remains a post-punk masterpiece, up there with Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and PiL’s ‘Metal Box’. Whatever conflicts they endured only seemed to galvanise Blood Truth into even greater musical feats. On the week of its release, late in May 1981, it entered the UK national charts at 25 and the band headlined the Lyceum Ballroom, their biggest London date and a total sell-out. Smith and Mullin managed to keep it together for what aficionados generally regard as the greatest gig of the band’s career.

  Sadly, this triumph was to be short-lived. Three weeks later, after a violent argument with her husband, Sylvana Smith took a fatal overdose in Paris.

  Blood Truth never played together again. The split was so acrimonious that Mullin vowed he would never so much as step into the same room as Smith again, blaming the singer not only for putting a woman before his friends to the cost of his band, but also (and with some justification) for turning Powell into a junkie. Smith remained in Paris for six months after Sylvana’s death, depressed and alone. Finally, he packed up his belongings from their shared apartment in Montmartre and disappeared into the night on New Year’s Eve 1981, never to be heard of again.

  In this post-Richie Manic world, Vincent Smith’s exit from the music business would have been spectacular, ensuring for him enduring notoriety and endless front cover features on every anniversary of his moonlight flit. But in 1981, a nearly-popular goth/punk band were never going to be the stuff of such legend. Smith remained a curio for the next couple of years, like his hero Elvis he popped up in supermarkets and bars on three continents, but it didn’t take long for everyone to move on to something else. The Birthday Party, Southern Death Cult, The Sisters of Mercy – skinny young men with black hair and mysterious personas were a booming genre.

  Today it is likely that Alien Sex Fiend have left a more lasting impression than Blood Truth, which, like the rest of this tale, is a tragedy. Anyone moved by this Gothic Love Story is urged to seek out the compilation Shots, released by Exile on CD to an indifferent world in 1997, and listen to the future as it could have been.

  My heart was pounding by the time I reached the end of all this.

  Fuck.

  Who was the author of this piece? It was signed MG.

  I scrolled back up to the top of the web page, looking for elaboration on these credits. There was a little editorial box on the side of the page, listing contributors: David Burbeck, Andrew Hain, Sara Spedding, Kenneth Cox, Annie Hanson, Mick Greer…

  Mick Greer. The name rang a vague bell s
omewhere in the memory vault.

  Sweating now, I pulled off my overcoat and scarf and threw them onto the sofa.

  Fuck. Mick Greer. I knew that name. About to punch Granger’s number into the mobile when it came to me.

  Greer was Granger’s old partner in the NME days. The one that provided most of the ink that went with his images – the John Lydon piece, the Ian Curtis, the Siouxsie Sioux. Of course. They must have done their Blood Truth pieces together, the two Gs.

  Fuck. What if this Greer cunt had already had the same idea that I did? What if he had it ages ago? If he already had a book deal? He knew the fucking band, for Christ’s sake…

  Back over to the sofa, rummaging for my fags in my coat pocket. Only a book of matches swiped from the Market Bar to light them with, fumbling to rip one off with sweaty palms, practically ripping the book to pieces before I had the fag alight, sucking down the nicotine, telling myself: Calm down. You haven’t heard the name in years. Means he’s not working for anyone big. If he’s writing for a web fanzine that proves it.

  I moved back to the desk, nodding to myself, thinking: Print that one out and look for some more. Start compiling a dossier.

  I turned the printer on, fed through the first few sheets by hand until it got the idea. Mick Greer’s feature dropping out onto the tray while I went to the next site, Exile records.

  It was a plug for the Shots album Greer mentioned, complete with biography penned by…Mick Greer.

  I was starting to hate the guy already. What he’d written for Exile was a less flowery version of the Careless Love feature, concentrating more on the music and how highly Vince Smith rated on Greer’s personal genius scale. It did provide more of an insight into what the rest of the band got up to in the years after, however, with a handful of quotes from Lynton Powell (reformed junkie, now respected jazzer), Kevin Holme (now backing up Lou Feane, the former singer with a weedy early eighties pop band who reinvented himself as a loungecore act) and finally, the thoughts of Steven Mullin, successful record producer and occasional collaborator with Powell.