One Train Later: A Memoir

by Andy Summers;The Edge (Introduction)

  The show with the Yardbirds doesn't happen, but Sean gets us to Paris anyway on a great sixties extravaganza called La Fenetre Rose, an indoor festival of psychedelic music, happenings, dance, film, light shows, and enough drugs to sink the British navy. Something like thirty English rock groups are scheduled to play, and it promises to be an event that will stay in the memory-if memory remains.

  Two weeks later on the drab grey platform of Victoria Station among advertisements for Tit bits, Omo, tipped Woodbines, and Cornish Dairy brick ice cream, we-a ragged multihued army of young musicians-come together like a cluster of monarch butterflies milling about in the station, bonding and smiling in recognition of the extraordinary weekend it promises to be. We are all on the same trip and beatific in our assurance that we are the revolution. Robert Wyatt, the drummer of the Soft Machine, approaches me and tells me that he admires my solo on a track we have recorded called "The Mound Moves," that he listened to it on a jukebox in Kent and has always wanted to play with that guitarist. He is funny, and self-deprecating. I'm flattered by his remarks, attracted to him, and immediately become interested in hearing his band.

  As the clock strikes the hour, we leave Victoria for Paris-a blue cloud of hashish, twanging guitars, ribald jokes, velvet, caftans, loon pants, and highheeled boots. It's nine o'clock in the morning.

  In Paris we play at Olympia. La Fenetre Rose is an all-night extravaganza of trippy lighting, wafting clouds of incense, pulsating music, and painted faces. With music, color, light, and the chemical message coming together in a brilliant synesthesia, it's a celebration of throbbing tribal intensity.

  I wander in and out of the backstage area and out into the crowd, where the heat of the bodies, the forest of faces painted with whorls and symbols, the thick smell of hashish, and the pulse of the electronic dance combine to make me feel as if I am levitating. Onstage a beautiful woman appears in a flimsy diaphanous tunic and slowly disrobes to the sound of a violin a few feet away. The Soft Machine take the stage. Mike Ratledge pushes his arm into the keyboard to make a large rainbow-colored dissonance and they crash into their set with Robert Wyatt's soulful vocals arching over the angular harmonies.

  We play, and the performance passes like a dream, with music, light, bodies, and minds fusing into a synaptic meltdown. We end the set with our strobe lights pulsing like two white sums and float offstage hardly knowing we'd been there. I drift off with a crowd of French hippies and a headful of hashish to lie on the floor of someone's hotel room, Ravi Shankar's sitar droning in any head like a buzz saw.

  After playing a show in Cornwall one night, we spend the night in a nearby hotel. A friend of ours-Vic Briggs, the guitarist with Brian Auger-comes to see us, saying that he has something special. Naturally enough, before the adrenaline of the gig wears off, we end up hanging out in someone's room and getting festive. Vic pulls out some acid that he says is especially good, just in from the States; it's called Window Pane and, well, why not? We each swallow a tab, all of us except Vic, who surreptitiously palms his. (And I will always feel suspicious of this cunning move.) While we crawl around the room in a deranged state, he merely observes. The night unfolds with the usual set of extraordinary fantasies, hallucinations, and insane laughter. Vic puts on an Indian film music LP called Guide, which apparently is a big hit on the subcontinent. He plays a track called "Piya Tose," a glorious piece of music and arranging with a beautiful Hindi vocal sung by the incomparable Lata Mangeshkar.

  This track is so transcendent to me, so utterly joyful, that I ask for it to be played over and over again for what (under the time-stretching effects of Window Pane) seems like hours or even years. The acid takes me to a place somewhere in the South Pacific, where I sit in the prow of a dugout canoe that is being paddled by a team of young and bronzed Tahitian natives. It's a drug hallucination, but so vivid and intensely happy that it is printed deep into my cortex, never to be forgotten. In the distant future I will record that song on an album called The Golden Wire with the beautiful Indian singer Najma Akhtar.

  The night progresses or, rather, descends, into a prismatic fantasy. After a brief episode of working in a wheat field in late-sixteenth-century Germany, followed by running with wolves in the Arctic Circle, I put myself into the lotus position. With a realization as deep as the ocean, I understand that this, the lotus position, is the ancient key to life. From this revelation I begin to experience birth (maybe I have cramps after sitting in the lotus for a while) but-and this is discussed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead-I suddenly start going through a process that somehow I know or remember from before as parturition-birth. In Tibetan terms it is referred to as the birth and death. of the ego-two sides of the same coin.

  Appearing to us as a place we have occupied before and after the end of time, the room we are crawling about in has, in typical good English taste, floral wallpaper that not only covers the walls but also the doors and ceiling. This creates the effect of having the walls of your brain pasted with flowers, which is heavenly but also really fucks you up. At one point I open what I think is a door to the bathroom but end up stepping into a clothes closet for a piss. Pissing while on acid is an experience all its own. Staring at the pink shriveled thing lying in your hand like a baby carrot, you wonder who it belongs to and what it is. But whatever, it's cute. If you actually manage to urinate, you will observe the golden stream with wonder and see its great beauty arcing forward in an infinite rainbow and the mind of God at work in all his mystery and power. Flushing is probably forgotten but if attempted will be greeted with childlike awe and glee and then repeated as many times as possible until someone gently guides you away. This Cornish night ends with us slumped in great flower-covered armchairs like men who have traveled a vast distance and now, like the flowers themselves, slowly fade and wither.

  Toward the end of our sojourn as Dantalian's Chariot we do a minitour of Scotland-two gigs actually. We cross the border slumped in the van in various states of disarray. After a long day's slogging drive from London and with bellies full of fried bread, Heinz baked beans, eggs, and sausage a la transport cafe, there is a suspiciously sulfurous edge in the air and someone suggests we rename ourselves the Farting Zombies.

  At this point we are heading into the Cairngorms and hopefully to a place called Craigellachie, the location of the gig. We study the map and find that apparently it doesn't exist; this, of course, would be par for the course, the ineptitude of an office secretary, a misspelling, tea spilled over the word we are supposed to decipher. No doubt we are meant to be in Caddiff but naturally we are in Scotland. We can't find it on the heavily creased and misfolded rag that is our map. Like an ancient Celtic code, it is nothing but dark brown patches covered with unpronounceable Scottish names and circles describing the heights of the mountains.

  It's getting late. Out on the hillsides kindly old shepherds are herding their flocks back to the farm after a hard day's sheep shagging in the heather, and as the sun begins to sink behind the ancient mountains and we are faced with the sturdy reality of the Scottish hillsides, our garish psychedelic clothing and benumbed state suddenly feel rather ridiculous. A strong pair of brogues, thick kilt, tweed jacket, a pipe maybe, a keen eye for hawks, would feel right, not the bright-red-and-yellow pantaloons, fringed jackets, shoulder-length hair, and mascaraed eyes. Laird of the glen material? I don't think so. The argument over "where the fugawe" continues, and I decide to retire from the bother of it all knowing that surely we will arrive there somehow. I'm in an intense Zen phase, full of koans, satori, and lines from Basho, and rather smugly I lean back into my seat, trying to savor the moment in all of its cracked perfection.

  Fine people, the Scots, I think to myself as I open The Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau and begin to read, "The mind must be like a well-tuned piano string taut but not tight." I sit up straighter in my seat and imagine my mind growing taut and aware just as we narrowly avoid an entire flock of sheep coming unannounced around the narrow bend. "For fuck's sake!" I yell as
we swerve and miss death by wool by a mere inch or two. "Shit-very fuckin' taut," I curse to myself. I read on: "Nirvana is the way of life which ensues when clutching at life has come to an end." Any more near misses like that last one and I'll get this first, fucking-hand, I think. "To attain Nirvana is also to attain buddhahood." "Yr nae goon tha right was y shouldna hae com this fargit y se turned aboot." We have skidded to a halt about two inches in front of an abundant hedgerow, and I look out the window to see a small, oddly dressed gnome in a kilt gesticulating with vigor at the road behind us. The next forty-five minutes may be neatly summarized as follows: "to know by seeing, to become cognition, to become truth, to become vision-this is the ideal," "yr no on the right roade, y' shouda turned left by McCocelby's farm," "the supreme form of knowledge is knowledge conforming to reality," "git to fuck," "realization of the voidness, the unbecome, the unborn, the unmade, the unformed implies buddhahood, perfect enlightenment," "can ye lend us a quid, ahm dyin `for a wee drink,"' "form is no other than emptiness; emptiness is no other than form." And then, "Ye no sayinit right, `Craigellachie' "; with the fizz of an exploding lightbulb, a Krishna wave of enlightenment passes through the van. Sid, who is driving the van and also our chief inquirer of directions, has been asking the way by leaning out of the driver's window and asking in a thick South London accent, "'Scuse me, mate, know a place called Krajer- latchi?" The Scottish pronunciation that at last we hear correctly is a tight small word that is perfect in form. It is issued like a tight musical phrase from the back of the throat--imagine late Sean Connery. Through ignorance and ineptitude, we have just wasted two hours being lost in the Scottish mountains. "Take a wee right, lads, jes right up the road here and follow tae signs." I put my book down, stretch, and yawn as evening slips into night and we sail into a small Scottish village.

  We do play, but it's a case of colliding worlds. The gig is in a small hall overlooking the village green. All rather lovely in a way, but not suitable for droning drug-based rock; it's more of a kilts-and-reels scene. Shattered as we are, we haul our gear out of the van and set up. The village hall is an allpurpose affair that serves as a school, a place for the village council, and a shelter in case the Germans ever get this far north or the Vikings make an unscheduled return. As we set up, a small crowd of interested parties stands around us, some actually in kilts and several small children with lollipops. "Whas that, mister?" "That's a wah wah pedal, son." "Wass a wah wah?" "It's something that scares small children." "Wassat, then?" "That's a banana." "Looks like a guitar." "You made a mistake, didn't you, Rob Roy." "Wass yr ban could?" "Max and the Bruisers from Hell." "Up yr kilt, yr no could tha." "Yes, we are."

  Setting up the light show, Phil and Mick have their own group of admirers, especially when they start running images to test the equipment, which is greeted by "och aye the noo" and many other varieties of guttural sounds. The whole procedure has the faint ring of showing a Kalahari Bushman a Polaroid or his own face in a mirror. I am sure that booking us has been a mistake or a perverse joke on the agent's part. They had probably asked for Dan McChallon and his Jiggerty Reelers, or Glen Fiddich and his Tartan Trombones. By the time we have completed the sound check, it feels as if we've done the show.

  About an hour later we hit the stage, or rather we wander out of the tea room and climb up the full six inches of scaffolding that is covered with old planks, and off we go. To say that the good people of Craigellachie are gobsmacked would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. It's as if we are visiting aliens, delivering a strange intergalactic message to a new planet. There is very little applause, mostly just a low Scottish moaning interspersed with a few "och ayes" and grim headshaking. At one point I hear a bleating sound and look over at Zoot, thinking that he might have some new effects pedal that he hasn't told me about, and then a sheep on a leash wanders by the stage, held by a very old lady who looks about ready to croak. This is surreal enough to send me into hysterics, and they think we're strange. To put the icing on the cake, a bearded gentleman with what looks like a stomach full of haggis sidles up to me and says out of the corner of his mouth, "Can ye no play the `Campbells 'rrr Comin' or sum mat? Yrrr people rrrr getting a wee bit frustrated the noo." So throwing any last thread of musical integrity down the drain, I nod vigorously, look over at Zoot, say, "The `Campbells are Comin'," and hear back something like "fuckin right" and launch off into the stirring melody. Zoot, with a look of ahh, what the fuck, shrugs his shoulders and joins along with Colin and Pat. There's a loud cheer from the tartan clan in front of us, and to a man they lock arms and begin reelin' and jiggin' around the hall. It's a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"; we do about ten minutes of "Campbells" and finish to wild applause. This is good, so we carry on with "Loch Lomond," again greeted with wild enthusiasm, then "I Belong to Glasgow" and on and on until we have played everything faintly Scottish we can remember. Eventually we run out of material, but it doesn't matter; everyone is in need of a wee drinkie anyway. The hall manager comes up and thanks us vociferously. "Greet show, lads, ahmm gonny buck yoo wee yungsters agin, ye kan riily play ah meelody, but ah thynk we can do away wi those silly lights the noo-jes tek a luuk out sie wil ye." We don't know what he is on about but we climb down from the six-inch stage and follow him outside. Out on the green the entire village is standing together and staring up at the sky in awe, where a magnificent display of the Northern Lights is taking place. The Aurora Borealis, more beautiful and psychedelic than anything we have played all night.

  Maybe this is where we should have ended our time together as Dantalian's Chariot-under a sky full of light. But as if grinning into the face of the devil, we play on for about another six months; and then as if Dantalian himself has put a curse on us, it all comes to an end one stormy night....

  We are driving back from Newcastle, and it's snowing and we have to cross the Yorkshire moors on B roads. There are four of us in the car-me, Phil, Pat Donaldson, and Colin Allen-Zoot having taken alternative transport. We aren't driving fast, as the snow is coming down steadily and headon, but we are passing around a joint and I do have some apprehension about Colin taking a hit because I think he might get mesmerized by the snow. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but we suddenly go into a slow skid right off the road. The car hits the left-hand ditch and goes into what feels like an eternity of somersaults. As if in a dream, I bounce in slow motion from the roof to the floor to the window and back again, until with a final grind of metal the car crashes to a standstill in the ditch. All is quiet; the snow gently pattering down from the sky seems beneficent and peaceful as if gently whispering, Fuck you, fuck you.

  The silence is broken by groaning, profanities, and gasps. And then, "Are you alright?" "Yeah-fuck." "I think so." "Fuck." I feel broken in half, smashed and in deep, swamplike pain. Somehow I get out through the trunk of the car into snow and crawl up the embankment to the road. My face feels pummeled, my back broken, and I can't stand up straight. But Colin, Phil, and Pat eventually emerge and, apart from the groans, seem okay. But I don't feel good. I am experiencing some kind of trauma, it's below freezing, and we're in the middle of nowhere in the eye of a blizzard. There's nothing to do except stand there--or in my case, bend-and wait for a car to come along this freezing strip of road and take us to warmth and safety. After twenty minutes I feel the onset of death and mentally begin to compose my own obituary.

  But just as I begin making a list of superlatives, lights appear. Thanking God or whoever that we are going to make it, we start imagining warm Yorkshire hospitality, steaming mugs of tea, brandy, warm beds, etc. As our car is upside down in the ditch with its headlight brilliantly lighting the night sky, it's a sure thing that whoever comes by must stop. But with growing anxiety we realize as a car approaches that this fool is not slowing down; we stand there in deep shock as this heartless Yorkshire person simply drives right by us. We warm our shivering bodies for a few paltry moments by hurling nasty epithets after the retreating auto (some of which involve his mother in
a rather sordid way) and wait again. The snow continues peacefully, freezing and killing, until about three minutes before my release from the earthly plane, at which time salvation arrives.

  Wheezing and coughing with one windscreen wiper not working, our chariot of mercy slides to a halt. A cheery face appears as the window rolls down. "Eh, lads, what y doin out there? Trouble like-berra gerrin." Numb and relieved, we squash into the back of his tiny car, someone croaks out that we need a hospital fast, and we do a greasy U-turn on the icy road and head in the opposite direction. The hospital is in a small town-or village, actually-about twenty miles down the road. When we get there I am in fact dead, but by a miracle I am returned to this life with an incredible, lingering kiss from a ravishing young nurse and then carried into a semiprivate ward in the dark.

  The night nurse tells me to wait-and I wonder where she thinks I might be going in this condition-a doctor will come. I'm floating in a vast Sargasso of pain, and the examining doctor tells me I have a badly lacerated back and a broken nose. "Now get some sleep; we'll fix you tomorrow," and then he sticks a foot-long syringe into my arm. As I am about to black out with a quiet version of the "DamBusters March" playing through my head, I remember that I have my contact lenses in and probably should get them out unless I want to add deeply scarred eyeballs to my problems. I feebly ring for the night nurse and explain my predicament. It's difficult to move and get into the correct position to remove the bloody things, but by some Houdini-like contortions we manage the removal with only two or three bloodcurdling screams, and then a blanket of black.

  I wake up the next morning hurting all over. Where am I.? Oh yeahnowhere. It turns out that the others have all fucked off back to London and left me to tough it out with the Yorkies on my own. Thanks, boys.

  The medical authorities inform me that I am to be kept in the hospital for about a week to recuperate and that I will never have children, walk, or play the guitar again. Fuck it, I think, back to the dole. But then my spirit kicks in and I decide to fight this thing, to rise, to be twice the man I was ... which is not saying a lot.