BRIDGEHAMPTON, AUGUST 18, 1983
I get out of bed and lay my Telecaster against a chair. Holding my hand up to the light, I study the nails of any right hand. They look too long. Despite being in a rock band, I keep my nails in good shape-a habit left over from my years of obsessive classical guitar playing. I pull a diamond deb file and some fine sandpaper out of my travel bag and begin working on them, carefully holding them against a black T-shirt so that I can see the curve that I'm trying to get.
When Sting and I first began playing together, a point of contact between us was the classical guitar. It turned out that he was quite a fan, and as I could still play a lot of my repertoire, he would ask me to play certain pieces for him, usually Bach or Villa-Lobos. This was a pleasant discovery for me because it is unusual to find someone in the rock world who appreciates this kind of music, and it felt like a surprising but sure confirmation of where I had just landed, a mutual love of a music that despite being from another genre would find its way into our songs. I finish filing my nails into the perfect half-moons that make the thick, sweet sound on a nylon-string guitar and pick up the Fender, in the mood to play something from that time. I drop the bottom string down to a low D and begin playing a piece by the Mexican composer Ponce, "Scherzino Mexicana." I can just about remember it-the bridge with its pattern of changing harmonic movement is tricky, but it comes back, sweetly romantic, from another time, another place, Mexico....
We go to Mexico City and stay in a hotel in the Zona Rosa, an attractive tourist area in the center. I enjoy walking around and seeing a world I wouldn't have dreamed of a few years before. Our promoter is a very likable and crazy Mexican by the name of Mario Olmos. Many years later I play for him again, first with the Police but more notably on my own at the Teatra Angelo Peralta, where together we will enjoy a splendid riot with armed Mexican police and the night ending with Mario handing me a brown paper bag of pesos in payment as he slides dead drunk under the table.
One morning I drive down Laurel Canyon to our manager's office on Sunset Boulevard. I walk in and ask for David, manager of the Animals. A strange look passes across the secretary's face and she tells me that he will not be in that day because his best friend has been killed the night before, has in fact been murdered. His name was Jay Sebring.
This is the first time I hear about the Manson murders, although it isn't called that until later when the whole story begins to emerge. But gradually it takes over the news and the press, and there is a feeling of shock and disbelief. It feels as though a crack has appeared in the dream. How could this be? In the center of this grooving, loving scene, a grotesque distortion has surfaced; Manson, with his Christ-like appearance, hippie followers, and brutal acts of murder, has shattered all illusions.
In the days following as I talk to friends on the telephone, it's obvious that this horror has deeply shaken many people and some decide to get out of L.A. Wrapped in tie-dye and batik, they sit cross-legged and gaze out across Lookout Mountain while dipping their hand into a bag of Acapulco gold, rolling a joint, and saying, "Heavy trip, man-heavy trip." In Laurel Canyon the horror is palpable, a cold black shadow crawling across the hills. Hippies and flower children become figures of suspicion. It's hard to think in quite the same way about a bearded man buying a bag of lentils or a longhaired girl getting her short-grain rice at the country store halfway down the canyon. As the word spreads it's frightening how many people around the Strip have connections to Manson and his gang. David, our manager, might also have been there that night.
About this time we play a festival somewhere near L.A., and backstage I meet a very beautiful girl by the name of Cathy James. We eye each other up and soon get talking; within a week or so, I move in with her.
Cathy is eighteen and has been on the scene since she was fourteen. She has a baby by Denny Lame, who is now in Paul McCartney's Wings, but it hasn't worked out between them and she's returned to L.A. and a bevy of admirers. Often these Cathy fans turn up late at night, and I see a parade of famous people pass through her small apartment on Bronson Avenue. One of her most ardent fans is Tiny Tim, who arrives one night fluttering and quivering like a butterfly. It appears that the tremulous female personality isn't fake. All nerves and high-pitched voice, he sits at the end of the bed and sings to Cathy, accompanying himself on his ukulele. It's an extraordinary moment, but at the end of the song something freaks him out and he starts screaming and flapping his arms and says he has to run and literally bolts out the front door like a deer. We pursue him down the street for a while, trying to get him back as he vanishes into the night, screaming and waving his uke in the air.
But after about three weeks with Cathy it seems that despite the physical attraction, we don't really have any chemistry. We both recognize it and agree to split. I miss the riotous scene at Eric's house anyway. I call him up and move back in.
A tour of Japan has been on the books for a while, and finally we fly to Tokyo. This is a place I have fantasized about for a long time, and I am filled with excitement to investigate it firsthand. I indulge in vague thoughts about leaving the group to enter a monastery, take the Zen path to satori, and leave this mundane world behind-even if it means giving up the guitar-but it all turns out rather differently.
We arrive at Narita Airport and are greeted in the lounge by a large mob of screaming schoolgirls who wave, scream, laugh, and cover their mouths at precisely the same moment. It's strange but it's a positive reception, and anyway this is the Far East. But on the right-hand side a shadow appears in the form of an argument between David and the promoters, who have turned up to welcome us, or at least make sure we are there to honor the contract. David never says much--he's a pretty introverted type anyway-but there is a problem about contracts and money, and despite the continuous bowing and smiling, it appears we are in conflict.
We do the usual round of press interviews and stay at the Princess Hotel, where young girls gather in the lobby each day hoping for a glimpse of our pale English faces. I look high and low for signs of Zen or the odd stray koan but, to my disappointment, find nothing. The spiritual otherworldly Japan that I revere seems to have disappeared, to be replaced by a country obsessed with cameras, cars, American TV, and weird sex.
We always begin playing our shows at 6:30 P.M. sharp, a time that is set in stone for concerts in Japan. We're done by seven-thirty and then wonder what to do for the rest of the night. Apparently it's forbidden for young Japanese to get excited, stand up, or express enthusiasm, and the audiencemostly young girls-sit like statues and applaud politely as if on cue at the end of the songs. The clapping starts and stops with split-second timing, as if their hands are wired together or it has been repeatedly rehearsed-like a school of fish who all turn to the left together with an unseen telepathic communication. This is followed by a graveyard silence before we begin the next song. Announcing the songs is like reading an obituary. The whole thing is unnerving and the polar opposite of the raucous audiences in the United States. Here it's akin to lying in a coffin: eyes wide open, about to be buried, the scream locked in your throat.
It becomes obvious that the strain between David and the promoters is unresolved. Eric knows something about it, but he doesn't let on. But after a gig one night we are taken to a place in Shinjuku, the red-light district of Tokyo, a place that might be called a brothel/restaurant. We go down some steps into a basement room that is filled with yellow-blossom trees, running water, and a fake backdrop of Mount Fuji. Flitting through this ersatz Japan are several girls dressed as geishas. We plonk down in a row opposite our promoters, and they offer us all a whiskey. While the whiskeys are being delivered we get surrounded by a bevy of giggling faux geisha girls. They shove themselves into the table with us, giggling and making suggestive sounds. One of us gets his pants unzipped by a hostess and his penis is pulled out. This causes great hilarity, but right then the seven glasses of whiskey arrive on the table-six full and one empty except for a few cubes of ice. As we raise our glas
ses one of the henchmen leans over to David and whispers something to him with a leer on his face and then removes a pistol from inside his jacket and empties the chamber of 9mm bullets into the empty whiskey glass. At this point of samurai symbolism Eric gets up and storms out. Sitting at the table, the rest of us are frozen. "I'll be with you in cherry-blossom time," I whisper to the little mound of rice on my plate.
Above a seedy-looking joint located on a noisy street, a small sign with THE ANIMALS spelled out in dirty white plastic followed by a row of Japanese characters hangs in defeat. Our dismay at this booking is expressed in terse but poetic phrases like "what the fuck are we doing here?" and "fuck this for a sixpence." In truth it doesn't add up. We are the Animals-one of the world's most famous groups; this doesn't make sense and basically-reallywhat the fuck are we doing in this place?
The inside of the club is the usual small-time fare that can be found anywhere in the world. Dark and gloomy with an advertisement for Suntory on one wall and Asahi on the other. The clientele is mostly greasy-looking Japanese in suits who are already three sheets to the wind. As we enter, in an uncanny act of timing, so do our promoters. Several waiters bow extremely low in their direction, and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that beneath the veils of Eastern passivity lies Oriental duplicity. Terry McVey is with us, but David is nowhere to be seen. This is strange; normally he is with us at all times. We try to delay going onstage until our manager arrives, with Zoot in particular trying to hold us back as if he knows something we don't. But it gets later and later and eventually we haul out of the tiny dressing room and up onto the stage.
As we do the show feeling like a third-rate variety act, it's hard not to be suspicious of this audience. There are no teenyboppers in sight but mostly middle-aged men in suits and mouths full of gold teeth accompanied by sultry-looking women who look suspiciously like working girls. It comes to me that the whole setting is like something out of a forties film noir, with cliched Orientals, mysterious women, and either large amounts of opium or missing priceless artifacts. I may never be seen again, I think as I twang through the folksy chords of "The House of the Rising Sun": a minormysterious death in the Far East; C-out like a candle; D-the good die young; F-a brief intense flame; E7-may his spirit continue. The irony of playing a song with that title in this place suddenly cracks me up and I have a strong urge to pee. But we finish the show and there's still no sign of David, and we begin to feel like a baby without its mother. But we guess that he must be doing business or something, so after a few drinks we decide to head back to the hotel. We have to leave at nine A.M. the next morning for Hiroshima.
Everyone leaves except me. Typically, I have met a girl in the club, a nicelooking American girl from L.A., and am hoping to spend some extracurricular time with her. The boys return to the hotel and I go off to spend the night discussing Proust with this girl at her hotel. By a small miracle I manage to wake up early enough to make it back by taxi to the Princess Hotel in time to leave with everyone else. As I get ready to slouch out of the room, my new friend lifts her raven locks from the pillow to ask, "Where are you going?" to which I reply, "Hiroshima, mon amour."
I arrive at the hotel to find my room vacated and my bags gone. I start knocking on other doors, only to find that there is no one around-they have left without me. I go into a cowardly funk, and the word mummy silently crosses my lips. I am alone in the Far East: no money, no credit card, no passport, and no courage.
I run down to the lobby to inquire in fluent Japanese as to the whereabouts of my distinguished colleagues, the scumbags. As I enter the lobby Mick Watts, our erstwhile roadie, comes bursting through the entrance to the foyer. "Quick," he says breathlessly, "get airpor nah." "Whaaa the-," I reply suavely, not thinking that anything is really amiss but that I have just fucked up. On the way to the airport Mick gasps out the story.
Apparently our promoters are part of the Yakuza-the Japanese mafia. They had captured David last night and taken him at gunpoint to a filthy hole somewhere in the bowels of Tokyo. In this dark spot they threatened to cut off one of his fingers unless he signed security notes to the tune of $250,000 and added that they also might kill one of the band, probably the lead guitarist; in fact, they have actually named me as the demisee. Davidcool as a cucumber on a December day and flipping my paltry life in the air like a dime-cleverly surmises that they don't understand the queen's English and writes out the checks and a note stating that at the moment of writing he is being threatened at gunpoint by knaves of the Orient and that if he ever gets out of here, he will see them in the international courts. Luckily for David, none of the villains can read English (or Japanese, for that matter) and they seem satisfied, but they say we all have to leave Japan the next day and add that they have lost a lot of money because the original tour has been canceled and rebooked too many times.
I lean back in the cab in disbelief. This is bloody impossible and very disappointing-it just feels like more shit, and life-threatening at that. Do I really want this anymore? There must be another way. Meanwhile, our equipment-including my guitars and particularly a little cream-colored Les Paul Junior that I am starting to befriend-are en route to Hiroshima. I never get them back. The loss of my guitars cuts deep, and if I resent our "promoters" for anything, it's this even more than the threat of death at a young age.
At the airport, as Mick has warned me, our former thug employers are present, sitting in a row together and watching the band like predators; they are going to make sure that we leave and never return.
The good news is that David has made a decision that we should go stay in Honolulu for a few days to get over this nasty experience. It will also give him an opportunity to go to the bank and cancel all the checks he wrote. A week later an article is written in the International Herald Tribune giving details of the incident.
We stay in a hotel right on Waikiki Beach and sink with relief into the thick-scented air of Hawaii. For a moment it is seductive, as if this island paradise is the final reward for all the dreaming and striving. But I lift a cup of tea from the tray and stare out of the window at the white surf and the happy people below and feel a wave of sadness. With this failure in Japan, it feels as if something has just broken. I pick up my new guitar and strum a few chords while my bare feet make circles in the blue shag. I will be twenty-three on my next birthday, and then what? Everything feels like a great self-conscious effort; I feel as if I am peeling out of a skin, losing something; the years stretch on ahead like an endless maze-how am I supposed to fill them up? I suddenly experience fragility: I want something to hold on to, something to shore up this feeling of pointlessness. A sadness fills me-Eric is going to break up the band, I can feel it coming. What a drag. Maybe Zoot and I have been overpowering him onstage and it's put him off. That plus the squalid little drama we've just been through-he's tired of this scene. I run a few chords and stare at my guitar, a little plywood thing from downtown Honolulu with a palm tree silhouetted against a red sunset and the words Waikiki dreams just above the sound hole. Music-yeah, music. Just as I am about to become the victim of my own melodrama, I hear Mick's voice through the walls, shouting out in a flat East London voice, "'Ere, John, this 'Ead and Shouldersbeautiful shampoo, inn it?" I laugh out loud, and with Mick's Zen master proclamation, everything clears. I hit the beach and then fuck around for two weeks in Hawaii on my own.
Nine
I return to L.A. and the house in Laurel Canyon, where Zoot gives me the news that Eric is ending the Animals or the New Animals, as it's sometimes known. In the time-honored tradition of all who arrive in Hollywood, he now wants to be a film director. So that's it, my intuition was right, but I'm not ready to leave California. Having finally made it this far, I am intent on staying, but it's close to December and in a somewhat confused state I return to England for Christmas, with the vague idea of coming back.
In early January, not quite sure what to do, I go up to London. I have nowhere to stay but after a couple of calls g
et invited to crash at the Blossom Toes house in Lots Road, Chelsea.
I turn up in a night of pouring rain like a waif in a Dickens story. The group is away on tour, but I have been told that I can stay there until they come back. I am greeted at the door by a tall American girl who says I can share a bed with Rene. Well, as it turns out, Rene is not half bad and I slip into bed with a total stranger. Naturally, we become a humpbacked beast within-what?-five minutes. Small, dark-haired, with a pretty face, she shags like a minx, and between the sheets I bless the Blossom Toes and wish them a top ten hit. In fact, it turns out that there are a few girls in the house and I become-how should one put it?-wanted by all, a household sex pet. I enjoy this situation for a while but I have the light of the blue Pacific in my eyes and want to return. So, at the end of a cold and bitter January I turn my back on the sobs of women in distress and board a plane back to L.A.
I have some reasons for returning. David has told me that he will manage me, that he will put a. group around me, that I will be financed, and that maybe I can make a solo album; in other words, stardom is but a breath away. Los Angeles is still lingering in my head like a perfume, and these tenuous but thrilling possibilities are enough to lure me back. For a few months I carry on, intoxicated with the L.A. scene and living in a big house at the top of the canyon. I spend weeks at Sunset Sound, making a solo record, and people are interested in me. For a while I am able to maintain the illusion that returning to L.A. was the right move. But David's interest is now elsewhere. His heart is not really in management-it was fun to manage the Animals, but faced with the real job of building a career, his enthusiasm dies.
One Train Later: A Memoir Page 16