I flipped it over and looked at her again. Sylvana Goldberg, with her heart-shaped face and long red hair. She was even more beautiful than Louise. Or at least, she had been. Poor, dead Sylvana. At that moment, I really wanted to hear her story. Wanted to feel it was vastly more tragic than my own.
The sound washed into the room in deep, comforting waves. Moody synths and that echo-driven guitar that was such a big deal in those days. Compared to a modern production, it actually all sounded a bit weedy, but for the first time I could sort of tell what they were getting at; trying to put a mood in your mind through sound. And, despite the crackles on the worn old vinyl, the occasional jump and hiss, age could not diminish the stark sensuality of her voice.
I stood there, transfixed, staring out of the window, over the misshapen hunch of the city, the rooftops, spires and domes that sprawled far into the distance, at the Dog Star high above. Something about this music went so perfectly with the melancholy afterburn of sunset, the fading of all colours into black. Something about it kept me calm.
‘Vince said she was a genius.’ I heard Steve Mullin’s words in my head again. When the first side was finished, before I flipped it over, I turned my computer on for the first time in a month. It was time to knock those words of Mr Mullin’s into shape. With a little background help from the woman he’d so despised.
It was funny, really. For a bloke I had found so obnoxious on first meeting, Steve really did keep me sane for the next couple of days. His big, foul-mouthed Yorkshire presence filled the room as if he was really there with me, and I was quite reluctant to let him go and turn my attention to those Lynton tapes that had been gathering even more dust.
So to spin it out a bit longer, I started trawling the Net and those old magazines of Christophe’s for more information on Mood Violet.
I had been somewhat spooked about doing this before, superstitious even, that calling them up would bring that wanker Leith back to my door. Now I truly didn’t care. There wasn’t anyone here for him to terrorise any more, was there? The fear I’d felt about him was all for Louise, not for myself. Stupid, smack-addled toerag couldn’t hurt me now.
Besides, I’d started to become rather addicted to his former lover’s tonsils by now. If this story was going to work, I needed to know a lot more about her than anyone else had been so far willing to tell me.
A familiar name popped up again from my web searches: Ray Spencer.
He’d been an early champion of the band, had interviewed them several times. So here was a link between the two factions who seemingly had only had good words to say about them both.
He appeared to have been a pretty big name in his day, did Spencer. Yet unlike his more famous peers, the Burchills, Parsons and Morleys, he didn’t seem to have had much of a public life after about 1984. I’d never seen his byline in any of the Sunday supplements or on the bestseller lists, never caught him lounging around in a swivel chair, pontificating at length on The Late Review. I wondered what had happened to him.
There was a photo of him in one of the magazines Christophe had given me. Noise! it was called. It had come out as a glossy sister magazine to Sounds in the early eighties, and had categories for Punk, Electrobop, Psychedelix and Heavy Metal. It hadn’t lasted very long. Maybe because of the terrifying photo of Garry Bushell’s gurning mush leering out of the Punk section.
Spencer’s picture was alongside this monstrosity. By comparison, he looked very cool, very youthful, with spiked-up peroxide hair, a line of sleepers down his left ear and a black-and-white stripey mohair jumper. While Bushell waxed lecherous about Becki Bondage, he was enthusing about GBH.
I asked Gavin about him, but he was pretty dismissive. ‘Sounds were the enemy, mate,’ he told me. ‘Particularly him. He went after all the same stories as me and Mick. Got there first a few times too. He was a nice enough bloke, I guess, but we didn’t really hang out a lot. I haven’t seen his name around for years.’
I finally found an email address for someone called Ray Spencer not on any of the punk sites, but on the Fulham FC Supporters web page. This Ray Spencer was one of the organisers of the Save Our Cottage campaign – whatever that meant. It possibly wasn’t the same person at all, but I didn’t see the harm in dropping him a line. He could only laugh at me, after all.
After that, it was time to start on Lynton’s transcription. Compared to Steve, he was a bit of a damp squib.
It was funny. I had memories of that day going so well, and him being so open with me. That’s one of those things that sometimes happens with interviews – gremlins get inside the tape recorder while it spins and turn all your fantastic quotes into banal rubbish. Plus, you get to hear yourself sitting back and letting them do it, only occasionally throwing a fatuous platitude into the mix when you could have actually asked a question.
It was because Lynton was so smooth. He had politely and graciously talked about every subject put to him – but he hadn’t really answered with anything of substance. No bad things to say about anyone, nothing controversial; if shit had happened, well, that was down to his youth and inexperience. Which was essentially all he had said about heroin. I had obviously just been so pleased he didn’t slap me upside the head for asking about it I’d deluded myself that I’d got a Pulitzer-winning quote from him.
By the time I’d got through all of the tapes I was staring out into another starless Camden midnight, realising just how gracefully I had been conned.
Sure, I could use bits of detail about music and tours, but for deep insight into how these people interacted with each other, I was going to have to look elsewhere. It was impossible to harbour a grudge against Lynton, mind you. If I had lived through what he had, I probably wouldn’t want to give any more of myself away either.
So now it was the end of April, and I was supposed to show the book’s editor at least a third, preferably half of this book in a month’s time.
Who was I going to turn to?
I clicked onto the Internet to check my Hotmail, not really holding out too much hope. It was two days since I’d sent off that email to Ray Spencer and if there was a reply, I expected it to be from some meathead football fan calling me a poof.
But I was wrong. There was an email from Ray Spencer, sent the day before. It read:
Dear Eddie,
I’m quite shocked that anyone remembers, but I am the same Ray Spencer who used to write for Sounds. I’m intrigued that you are writing about Blood Truth and Mood Violet, of course I remember them and the sad ends that they came to. I suppose it would be quite a good time to reappraise them now that everyone seems to be living back in the early 80’s again!
I would be happy to meet you and perhaps do an interview for the book. Where are you based? I’m still in London, I presume you are but I could be wrong. I work in Camden five days a week, so if that’s any good maybe we could meet up one evening? It would be interesting to take a trip down memory lane…
He gave me a daytime phone number and signed off with a matey, Cheers!
Wow. Who would have thought it? The illustrious punk scribe was here, right under my nose. I wrote back:
Dear Ray,
Thank you for replying so quickly – and for being the same Ray Spencer I was looking for! By strange coincidence, I live in Camden, so meeting up couldn’t be easier. Name a date and a place and I’ll be there. So long as it isn’t the Devonshire Arms.
I put both my numbers down for him, resolving to give him a call anyway the first thing tomorrow. After everything that had happened over the past couple of months, it was about time something went right.
It turned out Ray was working on a women’s magazine up on Oval Road – there was a big publishing house up there I didn’t even know existed. He was a sub-editor these days, having turned to a more reliable way of making money when he got married and started having children. Though he still seemed to have kept his hand in a little, reeling off a list of new bands he was keen on that I’d only vaguely ever heard of, a
nd telling me about an anarcho-punk shop on Plender Street of which I was blissfully ignorant. All in all, he seemed a really nice guy. He liked my comment about the Dev too.
‘Cor blimey,’ he said. ‘You want to keep away from a place like that. You get vampires going in there.’
Didn’t I know it.
Seeing as most of the bars in Camden were pretty noisy and anti-social, we decided I’d meet him from his work and we’d go for a pizza on Parkway instead. Because Gavin had given me the impression he wasn’t that keen on his old rival, I didn’t bother to tell him about it.
It would be nice to hear this story from a different angle.
Ray’s office was a hideous old sixties block that sprawled like a grey behemoth across the corner of Jamestown and Oval roads. A flurry of people was spewing out of it as I arrived at six o’clock, most of them women and none of them the trendy, youthful types you’d get in the world of men’s magazines. Not an iPod nor a Hoxton Pyramid in sight. This lot looked more like they were hurrying back to the kids in suburbia, eager to be away from the squalid environs of Camden.
Ray was easy to spot. He’d shaved his hair to about a number three, and only had one sleeper left in his left ear, but apart from that, he really wasn’t so different from that photograph in Noise! He was tall and slender, and like Steve Mullin, still was fashioned indelibly out of punk. Only Ray’s choice of black StaPrest, black Harrington jacket and vintage Robot creepers looked so sharp as to be almost cutting-edge contemporary. With his high cheekbones and cool blue eyes, he could still teach the kids a thing or two about style.
He greeted me with a warm smile and a steady handshake. He had a nice voice too, full of good humour. We walked amiably up Oval Road towards Parkway with him asking most of the questions.
‘Blood Truth, eh? What made you want to write a book about them? Brilliant band and all that, but not one that ever gets mentioned. It’s Gang of Four the kids all seem to be going after these days.’
‘That’s it really,’ I explained. ‘The mystery of them. The fact that they did disappear at the peak of their powers and haven’t been slogging it round the reunion circuit ever since.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, there is that, isn’t there? It’s strange how they got overlooked, but I suppose there were so many bands that came after them which sounded more or less like them that they just got lost in the ether. It wouldn’t be like that nowadays. Imagine if no one remembered Kurt Cobain but there were a load of new bands banging on about the glory of Counting Crows.’
I laughed. ‘Maybe there will be in ten years’ time.’
‘Maybe. It was a different world then, that’s for sure. So many scenes coming up, one after the other, so many brilliant new bands. I suppose it’s not surprising that some of them got lost. So how did you find out about them?’
‘Gavin Granger got me into them. You know him?’
‘Oh, Gavin,’ Ray said amiably. ‘Yeah, well I used to know him. He was a nice bloke and that other Aussie mate of his – Mick, was it? That’s right. Probably the best photographer of the day, Gavin was. Toss up between him and Pennie Smith anyway. How is he these days?’
Well, there was certainly no bitterness in Ray’s voice about the so-called enemy of old. He seemed genuinely interested in what my Antipodean chum was up to. Perhaps Gavin had been a bit jealous of him. He wasn’t the type who liked being out-suaved and Ray was certainly one suave dude.
We got to Pizza Express and ordered some garlic bread, pizzas and Peroni beers. It was so empty at that time of night that we practically had the place to ourselves. ‘Good call,’ I said, looking around.
‘Yeah, I always come here on the rare occasions I go to gigs these days. So,’ he clearly still saw himself in the interviewer mode, ‘have you met the rest of the band?’
Over the garlic bread I told him about my meetings with Steve, Lynton and Kevin. He laughed a lot at my description of Steve’s tour of Portobello and sympathised with the Lynton interview.
‘Well, he always was the quietest one, right from the start,’ he said. ‘The hardest one to get to know, definitely. I don’t think he ever did give too much away.’
‘So do you mind if I do a taped interview with you?’ I finally asked, as the waiter delivered our pizzas.
‘Yeah, OK,’ he said, looking a bit wary. ‘You know, it’s kind of strange it being the other way around.’
I don’t know if Ray had had an impressively anti-drugs grandfather as well, but his recall of the punk days seemed as sharp as Steve’s. Perhaps a time that was so brilliant would always be crystal clear in your memory. He could really explain what it was like to be there, and why Blood Truth had been such a vital band.
I told him how taken I had been with the interview Stevens had given me.
‘Ah, the testing-me-out interview,’ he said. ‘I got off lightly, I think. Vince was a pretty scary bloke, you know. He had a few fights with journalists he didn’t like. I mean, so did Captain Sensible and Jean Jacques Burnel – even Marc Almond once chased a guy round a room with a bullwhip. But there was something about Vince that was more genuinely disturbing than any of them. That’s why he was such a good frontman, but I don’t think he was at all a nice person.’
‘Really? Most of the people I’ve met so far seem to be almost in love with him.’
‘Yeah.’ Ray chewed his food thoughtfully. ‘There are certain types of bloke who do tend to affect other blokes that way. I suppose he’d be the sort who’d get all the others to go over the top in World War One or something. The rest of the band, they were all lovely blokes, and they did all follow him over the top, in a way.’
‘What do you think happened to him?’
Ray put his knife and fork down. ‘What I honestly think is that he picked a fight with someone even bigger and nastier than he was. I think that was probably always the way it was gonna end with him.’
‘Really?’
Ray caught my eye, looked away for a minute as if deciding something, then drew his peelers back level.
‘It’s weird thinking about all this stuff again. I’ve got a lot of good memories, but a lot of not-so-good ones too. Mainly around Mood Violet, to tell you the truth. See, I didn’t know Blood Truth all that well, you know, I was never part of their family like Gavin was, I was just a journalist they got on with, so things were always friendly. But Mood Violet was a bit different.’
I hadn’t expected this. But it was good. There was so much I didn’t know about them. Maybe I was about to hear another berserker Leith story. Maybe Ray had once looked at Sylvana funny or something.
I was acutely aware of the hovering waiter, circling like a buzzard. I didn’t want to get rushed out of there, so I ordered another couple of beers to distract him from our almost-finished plates.
‘Yeah,’ Ray continued when he had gone. ‘See, the thing is, my ex-girlfriend discovered them. I was kind of involved in getting their career off the ground and helping her set up a label. Only…’ He looked really uncomfortable. ‘Would you mind turning that off a minute?’
Here we go again, I thought, instantly deflating. He’s going to do a Kevin Holme on me now.
‘Sorry,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘I’m not trying to be some rock star prima donna. It’s just that this is personal stuff and, you know, I’ve got a wife and three kids and a quiet life these days. But my ex-girlfriend, Donna Woods, she dumped me twenty-three years ago, yet she still has the habit of coming back into my life when I don’t want her to. Which is why I have to consider whether to help you or not.’
Ray tapped his fingers against the side of the table. His eyes looked strained. ‘Because Donna is bad news, seriously,’ he said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘But if you want to get the real truth of the story, then you’ve really gotta speak to her. And then, if you do, there’s no saying whether you’ll be able to get rid of her again afterwards. Those goths in the Dev?’ He gave a wry chuckle but he didn’t look amused. ‘They ain’t got nothing on
her.’ I followed his troubled gaze, out into the Camden night.
I had thought Blood Truth were the Wild Bunch in this story. But having met Leith, and with Ray now saying this, it started to sound like the ethereal bollocks pedlars were the real Pandora’s Box.
‘Well, of course I’d like to speak to her if she’s important to the plot…’ I began.
‘I tell you what,’ Ray said. ‘Let me speak to Allie. You know, the guitarist from the band. You should probably speak to him as well, but I’d like to get his opinion on this first.’
It was shades of Kevin yet again, but I had the feeling that Ray would keep his word. Why would he bother to meet me and then tell me all this otherwise?
‘I’ll call you back in the next couple of days, I promise,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, I suppose there’s only one question we need to ask – do we really want to raise the dead?’
22
Party Fears Two
December 1980
Four months of sneaking around. Four months of late night assignations, snatched moments when schedules collided, illicit passions heightening the delirium of each encounter. Every time they parted, Donna felt as if he had taken another little part of her with him, another small chip off her heart, her brain, her self-control.
She could keep things normal on the surface while he wasn’t around, she could go about her business in the same self-contained manner as she always had done, giving nothing away to anyone. That first mad night had been a lesson to her. She had fucked up that night good and proper. She made sure that it never happened again.
But this passion, this love, this fire he had lit inside her – it would not let her rest in peace. When she was alone, she felt afraid and angry. Angry that he always went back to that drippy Rachel he had dragged down from Doncaster, who clung to him like a limp wallflower. Angry that it had to be that way to keep the deception in place. The deception that would always be necessary, because the fear was stronger. The fear of the other person that Vince went to meet in the middle of the night. Of Tone – and what he would do to her if he ever found out.
The Singer Page 26
