The Ruins

by Mat Osman

  Once the basics were accounted for — shelter, food, drink — I moved onto making money. There were two record stores among the phone numbers. From Tower Records on Sunset I ordered a ton of LA stuff that I didn’t really know, like John Phillips and Chet Baker and black-and-white noir films and books on architecture and mixtapes of local rappers and low-rider videos and Orange County punk stuff and then just set it running, just to get the city under my nails. Then, for the cash, I moved on to the big-ticket items — box-sets, reissues and collector’s editions — which I’d flip at Amoeba Records an hour later, only making about thirty cents on the dollar but it was enough for walking-around money. Dillon’s own stuff raised some cash too. His record collection went for $350, almost certainly much, much too little but I couldn’t help wince at the idea that the assistant thought that the collection of hopeless Britpop rarities was mine. By the end I was begging him just to give me the money. The musical gear got a little more.

  It was a kind of life. I went out every night somewhere different and only chose my back-story when I got asked. I hit on anyone who looked authentically Angeleno — let’s call it research — and then heard myself explaining that I was a golf caddy, or that I designed prosthetic limbs or I manned a toll-booth in Pasadena, words that tumbled out leaving me splayed between truth and lies and desire and fear. There were scenes in the morning when I’d forgotten which role I was playing and the whole thing seemed silly and cheap and the girl was looking for her underwear and fixing her makeup in one of Dillon’s mirrors propped up against the walls, asking me for heartbreakingly small investment advice or the best place to get pet insurance or anything that flowed from the lies that had been so easy the night before.

  It couldn’t last, obviously. I scoured Variety for any mention of delays to shooting on Dillon’s film but it was progressing well. I caught him on MTV, the VJ asking him if he might be the heir to Ridley Scott. The sheer fucking chutzpah of his wink to camera was enough for me to order eight jeroboams of champagne from his account and distribute them to bums on the street. I was just getting going when the real estate agent called. To say that Dillon would be back in a week, on Boxing Day. She didn’t need to say that I was expected to find myself an alternative manger.

  That final week may, I’m sad to say, be my finest work. When my clogs are in hock and the daisies have been pushed I haven’t actually achieved much. The people who remember REDACTED are scant, those for whom the music actually meant something scanter still. My acting roles were paltry things: scene-fillers, time-wasters. And the record that I have brewing at the moment? Who knows? But there’s still a swathe of Angelenos whose eyes light up if you mention the Neutra House party.

  To throw a party that comprehensively and minutely destroys a celebrated example of mid-century modern architecture and everything in it is, I’m sure you’ll agree, not too much of a problem. But to make that destruction a slow-burn, seven-day affair, with plot twists, recurring characters and cliff-hangers, including chapters of destruction and stories of redemption, all in a city you don’t know with nothing at your disposal but a handful of recently delivered credit cards, well that pal, is art. Flames had to be stoked, directed, left to rage and reduced to embers. Fresh fuel had to be introduced gently. Booze and drugs were natural accelerants but the cocktail’s measurements had to be exact. Invite too many hippies, with their sound systems and hydroponic grass and acoustic guitars, and the whole thing became safe. Turn up the gas by introducing Valley meth-heads, with their air of paranoia and penchant for destruction, ups the ante but my fear was always that they’d take the place apart, brick by brick, before the week was up. Police raids were cleansing, clock-resetting things, giving me a chance to sleep and tweak the guestlist, spread some rumours. I bought a cheap cellphone and called the agent. My Dillon impression was spot on: his mockney drawl was a breeze to another Home Counties drop-out like myself. Whenever she called, and boy did she call, I would fend her off. It was “about to be dealt with”, teams were “on their way”, she should “leave it to me”. Then I’d switch to my own phone to promise I’d hold down the fort, downplaying the stories of violence and drunkenness, the blood-red pool and the indoor fires.

  It was Champ who stocked the house with the spray paint beloved of east LA’s graffiti writers and spread the word of some virgin walls that needed defacing. It was Champ who convinced the younger Hollywood A-listers that this was the kind of happening that Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson would have stalked through in the Sixties. I brought terrifying Orange County schoolgirls for whom the drug use and chicken dancing was just a typical Friday night, and film students tired of Nineties blockbusters. I found that you were allowed to do anything in LA as long as you filmed it: prostitution became porn, destruction became spectacle.

  Champ brought another spice to the mix: a bunch of New York club kids, transplanted here by promoters trying to crowbar some cool into LA’s laughable club culture. When they heard of a then two-day bender out in Silver Lake where some Brit guy was dying or something and like, wrecking the place then they were in. This was much more along the lines of the high-concept, low-taste clubbing these kids liked so they moved in, dragging a long tail of dealers and stylists and pranksters to squirrel themselves away in the big, bare bedrooms of the upstairs. They nested like rats in sniffling, bitchy packs, hissing at anyone healthy looking who came too close. It was them who stained the pool red.

  But, like I say, it had to be conducted. The days were for art, the nights for destruction. I rigged a mike up to the house’s sound system and started each day with a holiday camp-style rundown of the forthcoming events and a blast of whichever yacht-rock monstrosity seemed most fitting. Kenny Loggins and the Doobie Brothers were staples but it was Steely Dan’s “Showbiz Kids” that got the biggest cheer. Then I’d scrape the barrels of Dillon’s credit in the last few stores that hadn’t got the message that these were bills that were never going to be honoured. We sent doughnuts and cigars to the cops who parked outside so they’d radio in the news that “that party” looked like it was dying down. Caterers set up long tables over piles of prone bodies and Champ documented everything on one of the few things in the house I hadn’t sold, a gorgeous large-format Leica camera. We walked the tightrope between police raids, booze shortages and structural damage right until Dillon was due back.

  That cover picture — the pool of blood, charcoaled palms, the war-zone of the house and the line-up of those who made it through to Christmas Day — was taken by Champ, squinting into the morning sun. I recognise a few of them; some went on to be household names. I’m not there of course. I was stringently deniable. Think of me as the eye of the storm. Still, steady, invisible.

  Christmas Day, once I’d showered off the food colouring and smoke and paint splatter and dressed to the sound of the party waking up, I took a cab up to Griffith Park. From there you could watch the dark spiral of smoke rising from the house. Too far to watch Dillon arrive, or to see the police turn up twenty minutes later, though sirens sounded for hours. Kudos to Dillon though. He may not have many qualities but making money from ruins is deep in his DNA. It was only weeks later that I was reading his Rolling Stone cover interview (headline “The Last Party — Marksman takes aim at the death of the American Dream”), where he explained how his new record was written and conceived during a week-long party that he’d thrown to destroy his “safe American life”. Champ’s pic was the cover of course, the super-8 films students had made there were co-opted as impossibly glamorous (and very cheap) music videos.

  So, now you know. The concept, the look and the origin of American XS was mine. But like mineral water, you have to admire the man who had the sheer balls to charge for it. And the music? I can’t and wouldn’t want to take credit for that. But as a parting gift I want to leave you with what I left for Dillon that Christmas morning. A postcard of Tower Bridge with the note KNOW I SHOULD HAVE TIDIED A BIT BEFORE I LEFT BUT IT’S NICE TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO ON BOXING DAY INNIT?
x K, and a tape with a song I wrote for him as an act of I’m-not-sure-what. Is there such thing as a contrite fuck you? I doubt it’ll find its way onto the box set so I’ll leave it to the estimable members of this forum to discuss the similarities between this track (recorded a full year before American XS) and track twelve of Dillon’s record, “Some Monsterism”.

  Chapter Seven

  There were lots of replies, at least half remonstrating with others for engaging with the troll, which just prolonged the discussion. People speculated on the thread’s author and Brandon got mentioned but plenty of others did too. As for the similarity between the tracks, there wasn’t much disagreement — they were basically the same tune, but without a timeline the most common response was “so what?” That was Rae’s take too.

  “He’s just fucking with them — I bet he knocked that up over there. If he had any way of making money from Dillon I would have heard about it. It’s just one more little hand grenade thrown into the record he’s making. More publicity, more sympathy.”

  “And the rest of it? The party? Did he make that up?”

  “Not at all. I was there, just for a while. It was wild.”

  “Is that where you met?”

  “No. Well, yes but no. I saw him, briefly, but we didn’t really speak. I’d been at a party over in Malibu with a bunch of girls from the agency. Y’know, go, look pretty, pretend to be interested if some old guy talks to you about the movie business. We went for the free food.” She looked around her room. “I was so broke. We’d go to these things and take it in turns to fill our handbags with canapés. This time it was paté and those little rice balls and a half bottle of Champagne and everything. And I was thinking ‘all I want to do is get home, get my pyjamas on and eat paté in front of the TV’ but the girls were all going on about this party being thrown by this crazy English guy and he’s trashing the place and Flea and Johnny Depp were there yesterday. It was on the way home so what the hell.”

  She jumped up and opened the fridge. “Now I really want one of those rice balls.” She returned with a plastic pack of carrot sticks.

  “You could hear the party from a block away. The police kept coming by and shutting it down and then Bran would open up the doors again, put a record on and the next shift would arrive. So we wandered around, hoping to see Johnny Depp and watching people come out of the pool looking like Carrie because they’d coloured the water red somehow. And I was starving so I went upstairs to find somewhere to eat in peace and I went into a room and there was Bran watching the party below, though I didn’t know it was him then. I was totally embarrassed because I had this bag of fish-sticks and stuff, so I said hi and he said hi and I went and sat on the toilet and ate sushi.”

  She nibbled on a carrot. She was looping the two tracks as she talked, one after another. If Brandon had faked his then he’d done a good job, you could hear the bones of the finished track in his acoustic version.

  “Let’s use it,” I said.

  Rae looked up mid-crunch, “Huh?”

  “Let’s use this track. On his record. I’m sure it’s not something he meant for his swansong but who cares? We’ve already got what, four tracks? Five with this one. If we could scrape a record together and tie it to his killing like he wanted then who’d get the royalties? His next of kin: you.”

  Rae rubbed her face. “Maybe. I guess. So what’s next?”

  In my head I counted the steps. Get the Smile record made. Convince Saul to sue. Get Kimi to release Brandon’s record.

  “First we get the Smile record cut.” The phrase was unfamiliar in my mouth. I opened up his notebook at the page with the PRESSER phone number. “I’m going to call and organise it. Get ready to message me if you have any advice.”

  She crossed her fingers.

  I dialled. It rang for maybe ten rings and then there was a voice: a London accent, bored.

  “Hot action. John.”

  “Hi, it’s Brandon.”

  “Uh huh.” A pause. A rush of breath that was probably a drag on a cigarette.

  “Brandon Kussgarten?”

  “I know.” Another drag.

  My only real tactic as Brandon had been to say as little as possible and hope the other person filled the silence, but it wasn’t working here. I forced myself to relax. Everything bores you, I told myself. “So, are we going to do this thing?”

  “I thought it was off. I was expecting you last week.”

  I remembered a line from the videos. “Something came up.” I brushed imaginary dirt from my cuff.

  There was another lung-filling drag. He said, “Dylan’s at the Novellos thing tonight.”

  Unexpected names going off like bombs: Dylan. Novello.

  “Um… so?” Pinching myself to smarten up. No hesitations. I should have had a line.

  “So? It’s up to you.”

  I looked to Rae onscreen. She shrugged. “Tonight then.” I forced myself to lose the question mark from the end of the sentence.

  “All right, fucking finally. We’ve got a session until ten. They’re not supposed to over-run but they will. Call it eleven when I finally get rid of them. I want to be well out of there by the time you’re in. Call it midnight so I’m back at home and accounted for, one would be even better. Check that Tony’s asleep and use the window I showed you. You know how to use the gear, right?”

  “Of course. Remind me which window?”

  “Fuck’s sake. Back bathroom like I told you. Right, I’ve done enough — it’s not my fault you missed the first time. If you don’t turn up tonight then I’m keeping the cash and there will not be a third chance. Goodbye Brandon Kussgarten.”

  A click. And nothing. My hands were shaking. Rae filled the screen.

  “You were awesome! I mean it.” She was on her feet back in Tahoe.

  “You think so? I’m not sure what I agreed to.”

  “To break in somewhere and cut a record I think. You bad-ass!” She did a little dance around the table and then sat down. “Where though? How did he answer the phone? Hard Action?”

  “‘Hot’ I think.”

  Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “Hot Action, London. Well not that, naturally. Ew. Oh snap.”

  “What?”

  She read from the screen. “Hot Action is a London-based studio owned and run by Dillon Marksman. It prides itself on providing the best pre-digital recording gear in Europe. It was originally an adults-only cinema and peep show, and Marksman has retained many of the original features.”

  Dillon. Dylan’s at the Novellos.

  “Wait, the guy we were just reading about? With the house?”

  “The house and the remix. This would so appeal to Bran’s sense of humour. Using Dillon’s gear to cut his record.”

  “I wonder who we spoke to.”

  “Well, it sounds like there’s a pressing room at the studio. So an engineer?”

  “But if he’s not going to be there who’s going to work the machinery?”

  “Well Bran would have done it I expect. It is the kind of thing he knows about.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m not sure it’s the something you could learn from YouTube.”

  I sensed hope fading from her. Her money. Robin’s money.

  “Give me an hour,” I told her.

  She was right about YouTube. There were odd clips showing records being made but nothing like a step-by-step guide. The machine itself looked uncomplicated enough but the jargon was impenetrable.

  I cut out two lines on the back of a record sleeve and snorted them as fast as I could. I called Baxter.

  “Bax. One piece of good news and one piece of bad.”

  “That’s an improvement on your usual ratio I suppose. Tell me.”

  “The cut’s all sorted. 1am, at Dillon’s place.” Brandon might have already told him but I couldn’t assume that.

  “Dillon? Dillon Marksman? Jesus, don’t get him involved. He’ll want to be part of it. The man’s a talent vampire.”

  “Str
ictly speaking he doesn’t know about it. I’ve got an in at the studio, this would be done off the books.”

  I could hear him relax. “Doesn’t he now? How satisfying. I’ve always wanted to get one over on that smug cunt. You know he hired Saul and Kimi for that tour and never even called me…”

  I interrupted him. “But the engineer can’t be there and it’s not something I can handle. You’re going to have to step up.”

  “Do the cut? No. I left this to you because it’s the kind of double-dealing that I’m no good at. I get the shakes if there’s an extra carton of Marlboro in my bag at Customs.”

  I felt doors shutting, darkness closing in. I willed power into my voice. “No skin off my nose Bax sweetheart, I haven’t staked my rep on this thing. Anyway, I‘ve had a bit of a windfall — the money’s not quite so urgent now.”

  He was silent for a long moment and then he starting complaining. I had him.

  I met him at the tube. He was wearing a huge parka with the hood down, making his face look like it was being served on a platter. He was grumbling away at me even as he came up the steps.

  “I mean I’ve got to find a buyer, and sell the thing, and it’s my name that’s attached if anything goes wrong but does that matter to him? No, he has to drag me into every little piece of this.”

  I didn’t have to dig deep into Brandon’s personality to find my scorn: there was something intensely annoying about the man.

  “Bax, always a pleasure.” I nodded hello. “Shall we?”

  We walked through empty Haggerston streets. It had rained earlier so London looked slick and clean and every streetlight was haloed with drizzle.

  Baxter couldn’t stop talking, veering between complaints about how badly he was being treated, and excitement over how much money we might make. We turned right and left through suburban streets with window boxes and 4x4s, past gloomy low-rise estates with just one or two lights showing, and cut through the grounds of a hospital where green-clad nurses and bandaged patients smoked silently in the pools of neon. I’d packed the tapes in a leather rucksack I’d found in Brandon’s closet and they tugged reproachfully at my shoulders.