The Singer

by Cathi Unsworth

  We have to do this band, he realised with fevered intensity. It has to work. It has to get us out of Hull...

  As if in agreement, Jones struck up the first chords of ‘Pretty Vacant’. The room erupted in a second wave of flailing limbs and plastic glasses hurtled towards the ceiling.

  Five seconds later, Barry pushed past, propelling the Sid lookalike through the throng on the end of his arm. Blood was running down the kid’s face, but his expression was rapturous.

  Stevie’s head swivelled round to follow their progress. Barry pushed the kid up against the bar, waved a warning finger in his face. The kid just smiled back at him, slouched against the bar like he owned it, despite the trail of gore sliding down from a cut above his right eyebrow. Barry stomped back past them, heaving his way to the front of the stage.

  ‘No fun/My friend/No fuuuun,’ Johnny was sneering, while Steve Jones powered the Stooges’ original industrial guitar. Sid with his foot on the monitor, blood running off his chest too.

  Steve wondered if the two things were connected.

  ‘Mate,’ he suddenly heard in his right ear, and a minute later there was someone with his arm around his neck, pushing a pint of lager in his face.

  ‘The drink I owe you. Sorry it’s late.’ The kid’s face was covered in blood but his eyes were bright and round, the pupils like pissholes in the snow.

  ‘Er, ta,’ Stevie’s big fingers gripped the plastic pint jug, his newfound friend still hanging round his neck.

  ‘What you do to your face?’ he couldn’t help but ask.

  ‘I kissed Sid Vicious’s bass,’ the eyes now rapturous. ‘Trouble was, fucker kissed me back!’

  Stevie looked at him, incredulous, then started to laugh and started to pogo, the gig nearing its end, the crowd moving in one final surge towards the dirty godheads on the tiny stage.

  ‘No fuuuuunnnnnnn/No fuuuuuunnnnnn…’

  Lynton knew it was about to be over, never wanted it to end. His eyes still stared at the spot where Rotten had hunched over his mic even after the band had left the stage, the crowd had finally accepted they’d gone and Terry and Barry tried to push everyone back out of the doors.

  No one had called him a nigger tonight, Lynton realised. He hadn’t even heard ‘nignog’, ‘chocolate drop’, ‘wog’ or ‘Chalkie’. Not a one.

  Stevie brought him back to reality. ‘Eh up, Lynt.’ He felt a tugging on his sleeve. ‘I think duty calls.’ One of the London bouncers was motioning them towards the stage.

  ‘Tek care of things a minute,’ Stevie urged. ‘I’ve just got to nip out back a sec. Tell ’em I won’t be long.’

  Lynton nodded, moved towards the stage, then looked back to see what Stevie was up to. His friend was headed towards the load-in door. He seemed to have a large, bloody, Sid Vicious lookalike attached to his neck.

  ‘Get started on that,’ the London roadie ordered Lynton in the direction of the drumkit. It wasn’t long before Stevie was at his side, unscrewing the kit and stashing it into boxes. Dismantling seemed to take even longer than setting up, and both were tired now the euphoria of seeing the band had diminished into the slog of tidying up after them.

  The floor was a carnage of crushed plastic and spilt beer, discarded scarves and pools of vomit by the time they had finished. A pissed-off looking middle-aged woman with a fag clamped to her bottom lip was out with a mop and bucket.

  Don Dawson smiling from the bar, a thick roll of money in his hand. ‘Well done, lads,’ he clapped Stevie across the back as they assembled for their wages. ‘I like to see you young ’uns having fun.’

  Barry didn’t look like he echoed his boss’s feelings. ‘Bunch of fuckin’ yobs,’ he muttered, flexing his fist. ‘We had some right bastards in here tonight.’

  ‘Bastards they might be, but their money’s still good for me,’ leered Dawson gleefully, licking his fingers and peeling some notes off. ‘Here, lad, tek some extra.’

  ‘Cheers, Don,’ Barry’s eyebrows raised.

  ‘And you lads, tek this between you,’ he proffered a fiver at Stevie, nodded towards Lynton. ‘I’d like to know more about this punk-rock lark from you what know it best,’ he told them. ‘You’ll have to come up and see us some day.’

  Stevie and Lynton exchanged glances.

  ‘Terry tells me you have your own band,’ Dawson furthered. ‘I’d like to know more about it. I’ll let you know when’s convenient.’ The big man stashed his roll back safely in the pockets of his faux Italian suit, nodded to one and all. ‘Right then, lads, we’ll call that a night.’

  As they got back into the van, Stevie whispered a strange thing to Lynton. ‘Sit over here. Don’t go near that.’ Something long and large had been bundled in the back of the mattress and covered over with sheets.

  ‘Have you nicked something?’ Lynton hissed back in alarm.

  Stevie shook his head furiously. ‘Just don’t touch it. I’ll explain it to you later.’

  They were halfway back down the A63 when the sheets suddenly shook into furious life.

  ‘What the…?’ Lynton began.

  A hand emerged, then another, then a shock of black, shiny hair.

  ‘Where the fuck am I?’ moaned the Sid Vicious lookalike, rubbing his head that was caked with dried blood.

  ‘What bloody hell is that?’ Barry’s head spun round from the front of the van. ‘Not that bastard!’ He recognised him instantly. ‘What’s he doing in our van?’

  ‘Calm down,’ Stevie moved forwards, palms oustretched. ‘That’s just me mate Vince. He said he needed somewhere to stay the night and I said me Ma’d put him up. He’s completely harmless, honest.’

  ‘No he’s bloody not,’ Barry fumed. ‘He nearly had us eye out earlier.’

  Vince started chuckling.

  ‘Shurrup!’ Stevie warned him.

  ‘What you playin’ at, Stevie?’ Terry’s eyes in the driver’s mirror were stern.

  ‘Nowt, honest,’ Stevie started, then relented. ‘I think he had a bit of concussion like, from Sid’s bass. I thought he needed a lie-down so I just put him in here while we loaded out…and then I kind of forgot. I’m sorry, Terry, But we can’t just chuck ’im out on motorway.’

  ‘Can’t we?’ Barry was fuming.

  Vince had by now struggled upright and was staring in awe at the Elvis pennant that hung between Terry and Barry’s seats.

  ‘You’re true believers,’ he said, glassy-eyed, pointing at the object of his awe. ‘True believers in the one King.’

  Then he slumped backwards. Seconds later he was snoring.

  ‘I’ve heard it all now,’ said Terry. ‘Heard it bloody all.’

  8

  A Brand New Switch

  January 2002

  We did the first interview in the first week of the New Year, with Tony Stevens of Exile. His company was still run from an end-of-terrace house on Shepherd’s Bush Green, the place it had all started from in 1978. From Granger’s pad on Elgin it was a short stroll through the languid luxury of Holland Park and then a sharp descent into the badlands of the Bush.

  The night before, my all-seeing smudger had given me his personal lowdown on Stevens, along with some freshly reprinted black and whites of the signing itself, which had taken place on the green, with the Exile office in the background.

  I stared long and hard at the young faces in the frame. Stevens could have been no more than thirty, but he had that slightly older, Nick Lowe air about him with the suit and the skinny tie, tousled but not spiky hair, and a strong, determined jaw. He was beaming avuncularly as he shook hands with a clearly delighted Steve Mullin, still wearing his Popeye Doyle hat and a battered leather jacket. Next to him, Lynton Powell stood with his hands in the back pockets of his skinny black jeans, wearing a hipster’s turtle neck sweater and shades and laughing. To the other side of Stevens, spiky-topped Kevin Holme wore a Damned T-shirt and looked about fifteen. Next to him and leaning into the camera, Vincent Smith, in a white T-shirt under an unbuttoned black shi
rt, yawned openly.

  We approached the very spot across the litter-strewn green the next day. A couple of skinheads sauntered past us, sucking nonchalantly on bags of glue and reassuring me that not much had changed in this part of West London. Least of all the Exile building itself, which looked just like an ordinary house and had nothing by way of sign, plaque or awning to tell you what its function actually was. The receptionist, with her ironic eighties wedge cut and black eyeliner only added to the eerie feeling that time was standing still on this corner of W12.

  That was, until Stevens himself appeared from upstairs and it became clear that more than just his tie had filled out in the past twenty-four years. He was a big, robust, Germanic-looking man with a florid complexion and an enviable thatch of thick, unruly blond hair. He still had that firm jaw and eyes that sparkled with pleasure as he recognised Gavin and reached out his hand in greeting. With his camel-hair coat and hand-tooled shoes, Stevens really was the money.

  When he took us round the corner and into the vastly more upmarket Brook Green for lunch in a chic little bistro, the impression cemented in my brain. Stevens had come from money in the first place; he didn’t have that chip on his shoulder that so many self-made men do. As Granger had already told me, he’d made his company’s fortune from a couple of astute signings in the early eighties that still continued to pack stadiums in America. This had allowed him the money to develop less conventional acts at his leisure, some of them taking nearly ten years to make back their advances before success had finally come. It was like a creative kindergarten and many were the comfortably-off, middle-aged rock stars who claimed they owed it all to Stevens.

  Yet, despite his magnanimous nature – which extended over three hours, four courses and vintage wines to match – I could sense there was something granite at the core of Tony Stevens.

  The first time I got a flash of it was when he mentioned Don Dawson. Listening back to the tape, I could hear how his voice hardened, even though he’d kept the smile on his face.

  We were still on the starters, general pleasantries having extended through the bread rolls. I’d asked him about the first time he ever saw Blood Truth, and why it was he wanted to sign them. Stevens was a natural raconteur; he enjoyed looking back on the whole story and bringing it back to life, and he’d leaned over to fill our glasses before settling comfortably into his tale.

  A friend of his, Paul King, who now ran Exile’s publishing arm, Outlaw Songs, had tipped him off. King was working for Chiswick at the time, and Blood Truth had got the support slot on The Damned’s pre-Christmas tour. As soon as he saw them, King knew Stevens would want them, and sure enough he was so blown away by a twenty-minute set they played at the Electric Ballroom that he was backstage wanting to make an offer before the band had even wiped the sweat off their brows.

  ‘The only thing I couldn’t work out,’ Stevens had said, twisting his glass between his fingers, ‘was why no one else had got in there first. There was a lot of competition coming straight after punk, anything with spiky hair and legs normally had a scrum of A&R men all waving their chequebooks around it. There were plenty in the audience that night, as I recall, most of them majors, so I made sure Paul got me into that dressing room even before the set had ended. I thought I was gonna be smacking them off, and I knew they all had more money than me.

  ‘But as it happens, no. Apart from their girlfriends, I’m the only one in there. Paul makes the introduction and I’m chatting up Vincent straight away, with Steve and the others looking more interested by the second. Then suddenly, boom, the door bangs open and there he is…the cock of the North, Mr Don Dawson.’

  Stevens’s eyes had narrowed slightly and on the tape, his comments sounded more weighted than they had at the time, when it had all seemed a bit jovial.

  ‘He had the full get up, just so you understood. The suit, the rings, the football manager’s sheepskin and the great smell of Brut coming on after him. Aha, I thought – so that’s why everyone else pissed themselves and ran away.

  ‘As soon as he clocked what I was doing, he was ready to start throwing his weight about, but—’ Stevens paused, sighed and examined his cuticles ‘—that’s not the way I do business. I made sure Vincent had my number and we took it from there…’

  ‘Did Dawson threaten you then?’ I had asked at this point, and my voice came back highly overexcited.

  ‘He tried it on,’ Stevens said. ‘The problem was, he was their manager, their agent and their record company. That’s a clear conflict of interests and should it ever have got as far as a courtroom he wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. No. Dawson used those old dog’s tricks that had worked for him before when he was building his ropey empire on slots and comedy clubs up North. Well, they might have worked for him there…’ a shit-eating grin lit up Stevens’s face, ‘but it don’t wash down here.’

  Then the subject of Dawson was closed, except in my head, where I wondered if the old bastard was still actually alive, and if so, how I could get hold of him.

  Stevens spent the rest of the main course fondly discussing the band and their achievements. They certainly came alive as characters, the way he told it. Stevie as a combination joker and grafter, the one who put it all together and kept it all together. Lynton as a modest musical chameleon. Kevin Holme as the drummer.

  But it was soon evident that Stevens loved Vincent the most. He saw him as a total genius, not just as a songwriter, singer or performer but almost as a visionary, a punk-rock William Blake who was too far ahead of his time. Following this analogy, he even offered the surprising revelation that Vincent was a secret churchgoer. Stevens didn’t say if Smith ever saw any angels floating around in trees, but he did say the singer got a lot of inspiration from visiting the houses of the holy.

  ‘That’s why he was so pleased when he first got a place near the Sacré Coeur in Paris,’ Stevens revealed. ‘You wouldn’t think so from his lyrics, but there you go. Maybe it was an extension of his faith in Elvis…’

  Despite his comic flourishes, there was a level of respect in Stevens’s voice when he talked about Smith that he didn’t apply to the others. He regarded them with a more fatherly affection.

  ‘I’ve seen Stevie Mullin punch a bloke from one end of the bar and out the door,’ he reflected, ‘but then I’ve seen him more protective and sensitive than Mother Teresa, especially when Lynton got himself into bother…’

  Naturally, the record company boss didn’t want to talk too much about the darker sides of the story. ‘If he wants to tell you, then that’s fair enough, but I ain’t telling any tales out of school about personal problems. It’s already on the record that Lynton got strung out, I can’t exactly deny it. Poor bloke was always too sensitive for his own skin, not surprising, really, considering where he grew up. Came across in his playing, though. He’s the best natural musician I’ve ever met, Lynton. You ask him how he learned the bass,’ Stevens raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I will,’ I nodded, remembering with slight distaste know-it-all Mick Greer’s testimony on Powell. ‘But if you don’t mind me asking, all the articles I’ve read seem to blame Vincent for Lynton’s drug problems. Was that what you saw?’

  Stevens pursed his lips and shrugged. ‘The trouble was with Vincent,’ he considered, ‘all along, he could do stuff that nobody else could. It just didn’t affect him in the same way. Spliff, speed, smack…it was the same to him as a few jars is to us. A way of winding down, something amusing to pass the time. He could take loads of everything, drink like a mule at the same time, stay up all night writing songs, or laying down tracks, or just talking in the bar, and there never seemed to be any payback. So what Lynton saw was pretty different from how it affected him. I don’t think Vincent had a normal constitution, therefore I don’t think he did that old junky’s trick of turning on everyone around him. I know this sounds strange, but there didn’t seem to be any form of chemical or booze that he could get addicted to.’

  ‘Apart from love, mat
e,’ Gavin had said then.

  Which was when I saw Stevens harden for the second time. ‘If you want to call it that,’ he muttered, then smiled, shaking his head as if casting off a bad feeling.

  The waitress came then to take our dinner plates and offer us the dessert menu. Stevens continued his commentary as his eyes scanned down the list.

  ‘Little Sylvana,’ he sighed. ‘Don’t make me speak ill of the dead, Gavin.’ He looked up and straight at me.

  ‘You want to be careful what you write about her. Seriously. Her family are loaded, they could shut you down like that,’ he snapped his fingers.

  ‘Well he’s gotta write something about the bitch,’ Granger noted. ‘Otherwise, it’s not gonna be the whole story. You can’t libel the dead, whether the Schmoldberg family like it or not.’

  Stevens continued to eyeball me in a way that was almost uncomfortable. ‘She was nothing but trouble,’ he told me, and on tape it sounded nonchalant, nothing like the moment it actually happened. ‘Other people will probably tell you, continue to proliferate that tall story about them falling in love with each other over the sausage rolls at my Christmas party…’

  Granger winced a bit at that and I suppressed a smile. So Mick Greer wasn’t so all-knowing, then.

  ‘Don’t you believe it. She had him in her sights a long way off. She was working up to it, and she seized her chance that night. You want my opinion? You can write her down as Nancy Spungen – came over here to try and bag a Sex Pistol, wound up with some poor little effeminate Scotsman who she quickly turned into a cripple. She got her own band out of it, and yeah, they were pretty good for a while, but that wasn’t really what she was all about. Little Sylvana wanted to write herself into some rock’n’roll legend and she did so at the expense of everyone around her. Vincent, the band, that poor bastard Leith – all the ones with the talent.’ Then he turned on that smile again. ‘Fancy some dessert?’