Back Up

by Paul Colize

  Steve was viscerally anti-American, blaming the Marshall Plan for making Germany the economic winner of the war. He also blamed eight long years of post-war rationing in Britain for creating a generation of small, thin, spotty, violent teenagers, fodder for the gangs of Teddy Boys that wreaked havoc in the Fifties. Throughout the same period, the German people had prospered thanks to an economic shot in the arm, from America.

  Steve maintained that the wave of British rock’n’roll groups crashing onto the US market and filling the top spots in the Billboard chart constituted a second assault on Uncle Sam after that fatal Sunday in December 1941.

  Oblivious to the irony at their expense, the American G.I.s who formed the backbone of Pearl Harbor’s devoted Berlin following saw the name as a tribute to their strength in adversity.

  Steve Parker had played guitar since he was eight years old. He had inherited a Fender Telecaster and a Stimer amp from a jazz-loving uncle.

  He showed an aptitude for the instrument early on, and progressed quickly, though he took no lessons and couldn’t read a note of music.

  At age thirteen he began writing lyrics, which he set to music and sang, accompanying himself on his guitar. Acerbic, angry stuff, lashing out at the British Crown, the school system, Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government and what he called the British people’s ‘blind submissiveness’.

  His response to criticism generally included foul language and declarations to the effect that he refused to communicate with ‘ordinary people’.

  At fifteen, he was prone to a variety of tics – nervous spasms that tightened his features. He would scratch himself, pull at his hair and wring his hands convulsively. Pupils at the school he attended began to avoid him. They said he was a nervous wreck, and called him a poof.

  His parents worried about his aggressive, anti-social nature and mood swings. They took him to see the family doctor.

  The GP referred him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed manic depression and prescribed antidepressants. In addition to his manic-depressive symptoms, Steve suffered acute pain from a curvature of the spine.

  At seventeen, he was addicted to a cocktail of antipsychotic drugs and painkillers, and regularly took more than his prescribed dose.

  Steve Parker and Larry Finch got together in the spring of 1963.

  Steve lived about five miles from Battersea at the time, near the Hammersmith Odeon, the famous concert hall that had hosted Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. He had quit studying and was working nights in a bakery.

  One morning, he spotted a small ad placed by Larry in Jazz News, calling for anyone interested in forming a rock group. Steve had sent off a few demos, without much hope.

  To his surprise, Larry asked him to come over the following week. They hit it off, and recruited a third guitarist to form The Weapons, their first band. The trio had no drummer because, as Larry had predicted, none replied to the ad. Kits were expensive, and there was a shortage of amateur players.

  After a few weeks, the third member was fired due to temperamental differences, and The Weapons disbanded.

  Rather than hunt for a new rhythm guitar, Steve decided on a different line-up: drums, bass and two lead guitars instead of the usual back-up rhythm and solo lead combo. The two leads would answer each other’s solos in a kind of dialogue. Two years later, listening to Keith Richards’ and Brian Jones’ intertwining guitar work on ‘The Last Time’, he reckoned the Rolling Stones had stolen his idea. He even considered suing them, briefly.

  It took three months to find a guitarist up to the task, and four more to find a drummer. Pearl Harbor’s definitive line-up was finalised in May 1964: Larry on bass, Steve as lead singer and guitar, Jim on second guitar and Paul on drums.

  Steve was eighteen now, and smoking his first joints.

  His back was giving him more and more pain. An X-ray revealed a slipped disc. The doctor said his long periods standing, and the weight of the guitar, were aggravating the condition. He was told to stop playing, or to play sitting down.

  At twenty, just before Pearl Harbor secured their Berlin contract, he swallowed twenty Benzedrine tablets in a failed suicide attempt.

  It took the police several days to establish Steve Parker’s movements between leaving Berlin on Friday the seventeenth of March, and his death in Hamburg on the night of the nineteenth to the twentieth of March, 1967.

  Steve had left Berlin late in the morning after securing a couple of bootleg tickets for Jimi Hendrix’s show at the Star Club on Sunday the nineteenth of March.

  He had taken the train, reached Hamburg by early evening, and checked into the Kastanien Hotel in the heart of Sankt Pauli, on a street parallel to the Reeperbahn, the notorious artery that was home to the city’s frenetic round-the-clock club and music scene.

  On the night of Friday to Saturday, numerous bar owners reported seeing him enter their establishments and leave after a glass or two. One said Steve seemed to be looking for something. Another assumed he was out to visit as many places as possible.

  He had concluded his tour with a visit to the Hotel Luxor, well known for the services of its exotic hostesses. Parker had a particular fondness for Thai girls, and his companion remembered him thanks to the generous tip he had left her.

  He had spent Saturday in his room, and left the hotel around 3:00p.m.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, he had a brief altercation with a drunk who jostled him in a bar. Words were exchanged, and then insults, and following the insults, blows. The fist-fight was settled after a few punches, leaving Steve with a black eye.

  He had sought treatment in a pharmacy, then went to an Italian restaurant. After that, he had drunk several beers at the Top Ten Club and ended the evening in a strip joint.

  The hotel porter saw him return at around 5:00a.m.

  On Sunday, he left his room only to go to the Hendrix concert. After the show, he had visited another well-known Sankt Pauli establishment, where his companion confirmed that he seemed drugged, and had been unable to see their evening through to its natural conclusion.

  He had returned to his hotel at 6:30a.m.

  One of the hotel residents had come down to reception at around 10:00a.m., claiming to have heard a shot fired at about seven, but with no clear idea as to where the sound had come from.

  The maids had knocked at Steve’s door around midday, despite being told to clear off on the other mornings of his stay. They had expected the usual volley of insults, and were surprised by his silence.

  Faced with a locked door and no response to their calls, they had contacted the hotel manager, who used his pass key.

  Steve Parker was sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed with his head thrown back. The bedroom ceiling was splattered with blood.

  The police investigation concluded a verdict of suicide.

  Steve Parker had shot himself in the mouth using a large-calibre hunting rifle. The police suggested that the gun had been bought on the black market, and that it was easy enough to find a weapon like that in a city like Hamburg.

  Toxicology tests established 1.52 milligrams of heroin per litre of blood.

  Two months later, overcome with grief at his death, Steve Parker’s parents hired a private detective. They told him of the events surrounding their son’s death, and their doubts about the conclusions of the German police enquiry.

  The detective travelled to Hamburg and conducted his own investigation, which unearthed a handful of elements to discredit the suicide theory.

  The first was the quantity of heroin found in Parker’s blood. According to the detective, the dose would have rendered him incapable of firing the gun.

  Second, the shotgun’s barrel was so long that Steve would have had to pull the trigger with his toe. Even then, he was found wearing shoes. The source of the weapon was another mystery. It was claimed that Steve had not brought it with him from Berlin. The detective could see buying a gun in Hamburg was easy, but a person still had to know where to look. And t
his was Steve’s first time in the city.

  Third, the detective felt that the relative lack of fingerprints found in the room, and especially on the gun, compounded the suspicious circumstances surrounding Steve’s death.

  Last of all, the few words the singer had scrawled on a scrap of paper on the bedside table were ambiguous and seemed to have been dictated.

  Steve’s parents referred the detective’s observations to the police. Despite this, the report and its conclusions were unchanged. The police closed the case, recording a verdict of death from a self-administered shot to the head.

  Steve Parker’s mysterious farewell message stated that it was better to explode in mid-flight than to crash into the crowd.

  11: THIS UNKNOWN MAN

  On the twenty-fifth of March 2010, six weeks after the accident at Brussels Midi station, the directorate of operations for the judicial police asked the Crown Prosecutor to issue a search notice across all media.

  Two photographs of the man, one bearded and one clean-shaven, were broadcast a few minutes before the evening news bulletin on both national TV networks.

  The photographs drew few responses.

  Besides the usual fantasists, three leads were followed up. After checking, one was found to concern a resident of Furnes who had died in 1999, and whose death could in no way be called into question. The other two led to men who were still alive, and quickly identified.

  Photographs of X Midi and a description of the accident were also posted on the judicial police website, under ‘Unidentified Persons’.

  Despite this, the chances of securing an identification dwindled daily.

  At the debrief, the inspector in charge of the enquiry delivered his conclusions with a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘If you want my opinion, no one but him, if he ever wakes up, can tell us the identity of this unknown man.’

  12: THE BEST IN THE WORLD

  The records came thick and fast after ‘Maybellene’.

  ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’,‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Johnny B. Goode’, and more. They took all my pocket money.

  The lady in the record shop where I spent more and more of my time showed me the new titles and urged me to buy them. They were flying off the shelves, she said. She predicted the craze for rock’n’roll would never last, and that something else would soon take its place.

  But while we waited for whatever might dethrone him, Chuck Berry was my god. His records were played over and over again in the apartment on Thursday and Sunday afternoons, when my father joined his friends at the café.

  Not content with shaking my backside and tapping out his relentless beat, I would mime his guitar playing, armed with a stick of wood. I shadowed his spasmodic solos, legs stuck out and feet turned in, my hair falling into my eyes.

  One day, while I was in the kitchen and Chuck was presiding in the living room, I had the idea of tapping along with a crayon against a glass. The results were convincing. I took a second crayon and drummed along in time.

  I noticed that the emptier the glass, the deeper the pitch. Seized with sudden inspiration, I fetched several glasses and filled them to differing levels, to produce a variety of notes.

  After that, I perfected my technique with a range of kitchen utensils. I placed a salad bowl, a saucepan and a frying pan in a half-circle around the glasses, balancing the saucepan precariously on top of a candlestick.

  It was a fine old racket to begin with, but my dexterity improved as the weeks went by, with the encouragement of my mother and (rather more hypocritically) my brother, who seized the opportunity to take refuge in our room with his new girlfriend.

  At Christmastime, heart thumping, I discovered a drum kit under the tree. My mother’s eyes shone. My father’s too, but for different reasons. He took me to one side and ordered me never to play it, at least not when he was around.

  It was an Italian kit, especially for children. It included a stool, a bass drum, a snare drum and a ride cymbal of sorts.

  I had no idea what their proper names were. I called them ‘boom’, ‘chak’ and ‘tsing’. The sound was appalling, but it was better than the substitutes I had played on up to then.

  I quickly familiarised myself with the characteristics of each. With practice, I managed a few rolls. I tried hard. I didn’t want to play any old how – unlike one of my classmates, who had an identical kit.

  It must have been that year’s bestselling toy. He invited me over to compare our skills. We took it in turns to play along with Elvis Presley (my friend’s personal god) on ‘Tutti Frutti’, the song he stole from Little Richard.

  When it was my turn to play, I did my best to distance myself from my friend’s banging and crashing. I tried hard to recreate the right effects at the right moments.

  All around me, people were talking more and more about Elvis Presley. To me he was just a truck driver with greasy hair who writhed obscenely while pretending to play guitar. Not for one minute could I picture him as the successor to Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran or Buddy Holly.

  I practised whenever the occasion presented itself, chiefly on Thursdays and Sundays, but also whenever my invented headaches kept me home from school.

  I made good progress. My speed and precision impressed more than a few, but I still needed to master my strokes if I was to drum with a more even beat, and greater intensity. Day after day, I worked at the fundamentals: control, coordination and the independent movement of all four limbs.

  Apart from my mother, my fan base included my cousin – and one of my aunts, who would laugh as I played, clapping her hands and declaring that I had quite a talent. My harshest critics were the tenants in the apartment above. More than once, my mother went upstairs to parlay.

  The garage on the ground floor, below, meant we were mostly left in peace, a privilege countered by the blasts of exhaust fumes that filled the apartment from time to time. I can smell the grease and motor oil even now.

  Sometimes, the screech of tyres and the shouts of the mechanics rise from the depths of my subconscious, and ring in my ears.

  My record collection grew little by little. I owned a few hits by Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. I was fascinated by an older song, too, from Bill Haley and the Comets, entitled ‘Rock Around the Clock’, a forgotten B side that came to light when it was chosen as part of the soundtrack to a film that was showing in all the cinemas.

  I was disappointed by the way Bill Haley looked on television. He was pudgy, with a mechanical smile that never reached his eyes, and he wore a strand of hair curled and stuck to his forehead in a halfmoon shape. Nothing like the menacing, pugnacious rocker of my imagination.

  To keep up with the influx of 45 rpms, and to help memorise my home-grown arrangements, I began to write my own scores.

  The first attempts were rudimentary notes of the elements I needed to play, in order, on a single line. Boom chak chak, boom chak chak, boom chak chak, tsing. The limitations of my method soon became clear.

  Little by little, I learned to listen and count, and to identify the beats and the tempos they composed. My scores became more sophisticated.

  Now, they consisted of three parallel lines identified by the initials B, CH, and TS. I divided them into bars and sections. Most rock songs are in four-four time. For each beat, I marked the sounds to be combined, with a cross.

  Later, poring over books of theory, and learning about the musical stave, I realised my intuition had served me well.

  My drumming improved, and my school results worsened. I spent more time thinking up new variations than learning my lessons. My all-consuming passion, and with it my growing scorn for human nature, began to worry my teachers.

  I set myself apart in my own private world, avoiding contact with my schoolmates and replying evasively to any questions that came my way. During break, the attendants watched me keep my distance in the farthest corner of the yard, or walk jerkily up and down the central line of trees, nodding my head.

  M
y mother was called in. Supportive of my tendencies, and preoccupied by the frequent escapades of my brother – who was experiencing a difficult adolescence – she answered that she knew what she must do.

  When I wasn’t playing the drums, I shut myself away in a book.

  My brother was reading The Diary of Anne Frank at school. I read it in a few hours, incredulous, but comforted in my distrust of human nature.

  The books I read for my own enjoyment were a far cry from the inane nonsense devoured by my classmates – Enid Blyton’s Famous Five or the unlikely adventures of Henri Vernes’ hero Bob Morane. I immersed myself in classics borrowed from the municipal library, claiming they were for my mother. Salinger, Dostoyevsky, Victor Hugo, and the rest.

  I didn’t understand everything, far from it. Certain turns of phrase, words or situations escaped me, but deep down I felt enriched by my contact with such fine writing.

  I bought myself a drumming method, eager to progress further. Rock-music classes were non-existent, but a rigorous jazz method did the trick.

  I slowed up on my record buying, too, in order to complete my drum kit with a sorely needed tom-tom.

  With the method open in front of me, I began practising a few fills, simple enough to start with. Then I learned my first flams.

  I bought a metronome to perfect my beat. I was ashamed at having to use a ‘cheat’ device to keep time. Later, I learned that plenty of drum heroes played with a metronome plugged in their ear.

  My classmates wanted to be firemen, fighter pilots, doctors, hairdressers, or whatever their fathers were.

  I dreamed of being a drummer. But not just any rock drummer. I dreamed of being the most gifted, the most ingenious drummer ever, the best in the world.