Alannah slid open her wardrobe doors. ‘This is the vintage side,’ she said, analysing the spoils. ‘As in, vintage Dall. You might recognise some of these.’
Rose moaned. ‘Really? Oh my god.’
‘Those that didn’t get ripped to bits,’ said Alannah wistfully. Ditching subtlety, I snaked around the edge of the bed to the wardrobe. I could tell Rose was already mentally cocking her leg over the best bits.
‘This is beautiful,’ Rose cooed, pouncing on a lace hem like a seagull on a chip. ‘You can’t want to loan me this, surely?’
‘That’s Galliano,’ said Alannah. ‘As if I could still fit into that.’
I tugged out an original Katharine Hamnett ‘No War’ T-shirt that our aunt wore on the cover of ID. Rose tutted as the hanger snagged at the black Lycra dress she was stroking.
‘Now—Mickiewicz,’ Alannah said, skittling the hangers to the left. She paused to consider a pair of gold pants. ‘Don’t let him typecast you. No cover versions. No single out without an album behind it—you don’t want them “testing the water” and making fools of you. And no agreeing to anything until you’ve talked to my lawyer.’
She pulled out a black corset dress. ‘Thierry Mugler. Rose, you wear this. He likes this.’
The addition of a leather jacket for me saw Rose and I making peace over our winnings. We took in the region of three-hundred photographs all in all, so that we barely had time to make the trek back to the glittering mirage of the Gold Coast.
Alannah saw us off at the airport early that evening, parking the Toyota under a pandanus tree just a few metres from the terminal. You couldn’t do that in Sydney.
‘Good luck, girls. Give the old bastard my love,’ she said, looking stricken with emotion as she pressed an awkward kiss on each of us. ‘Tell him I’m watching him.’
Walking away from our aunt, I watched the numbers blur on the departure board. I wiped my eyes before Rose could notice. We still didn’t know what had harpooned Alannah’s career and cast her adrift from the family, but she was brushing all that aside for us.
It was Rose’s belief that everything in life happened for a reason. I was less inclined to believe that the universe had a plan for the likes of me, but thanks to Alannah’s confidence in The Dolls I was starting to dream. With the wind behind us and the stars aligning, perhaps we could hook onto an opportunity and be catapulted into the stratosphere.
9
THE BIG CHEESE
My carefully cultivated image was both a mask and a trap. By 1983 I couldn’t afford to be seen looking like anything less than Alannah Dall, ‘Australia’s most successful export’.
POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)
It was my policy to never cross the Harbour Bridge, but the Grandiose offices were in North Sydney. That Thursday I took the train across the water and noted with satisfaction that the neighbourhood indeed lacked soul and any decent boutiques.
I had to sort out a problem first. The problem was I often got stabbing pains in my stomach when I had to perform in any way, which included conversations. I found a sports bar two blocks from the place I was meeting Rose and Ian Essence and sank a couple of house whites, each vinegary gulp pooling hotly in my empty stomach.
Note to self, I thought, twirling the stem of my near-empty wine glass between thumb and forefinger as self-doubt began to dull my brain. Shake hands firmly. Make eye contact.
Hi, Mr Mitch-ke-vitch. I’m Nina Dall. I am Nina Dall. I am.
I was stressed out because the night before at Dingo’s, Carly pointed out a chick I’d seen around the gig circuit before, chugging on an espresso martini with her friends.
‘That’s John Villiers’ new girlfriend,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been working with him?’
They didn’t call Carly a door bitch for nothing.
The girl had the cute geek look going on, except she wasn’t that cute. Rose agreed. ‘Hair ear,’ she observed. Hair ear was when a fey-looking girl tucked her hair behind her ear in order to look more feeble.
‘I can’t believe he’s got a girlfriend,’ I fumed to Rose, out of earshot of Carly. ‘What a devious bastard.’
Rose sucked on her straw, making the ice cubes rumble.
‘Where is he then, if they’re supposedly going out?’
Say what you like about my cousin, but she was a good sport sometimes. We scanned the bar again. I saw geek girl chucking me serious shade, then looking away with her mouth set. So he’d told her about us. What had he told her? About some mad girl in a band he’d been working with, or that we’d totally pashed at the ARIAS?
But I had to focus on today. The next hour at Grandiose could be the most important of our lives. The stabbing pains in my guts were gone by the time I chanced a third glass, and as I swung through the doors to meet the others I was feeling more peppy.
I wore: fringed gold shirt, leather mini-skirt, knee-high boots. Hair up, peach lipstick. They hadn’t seen anything like that in North Sydney before.
Rose wore: burgundy pencil skirt with thin studded belt, fitted white shirt. Hair up, burgundy lipstick. Nice job: she must have gone to M.A.C especially to match the shade.
Ian Essence had brought along a man in a cheap-looking suit whom he introduced as a lawyer but who looked more like one of his dreary mates. Rose shook her head at me: We’ll deal with this later.
Up in the penthouse office, we were met by Mickiewicz’s PA. Mickiewicz was on the phone, reclining almost prone on a sofa with his feet up on the coffee table. He waved us to the opposite sofa. In the thirty seconds it had taken us to get from the bottom of the building to the top, it seemed he had begun a very important phone call. Rose stroked her hair into a raccoon’s tail.
Mickiewicz was one of those solid men who looked better with age. I watched him idly stroke his chest fuzz as he outlined a game plan to the person at the other end of the line. I could definitely imagine him raising a sound desk over his head and threatening to drop it unless the promoter promised to pay up. That sort of thing. I looked over at Rose, who I could tell was manifesting furiously as she scanned the discs on the walls. Multi-platinum record. Holidays in St Barts. Stadium tour. Universe, I am ready to receive.
Alannah had warned us that we would have Grandiose’s attention for as long as we remained in favour, but that once we bored them we would be churning out records without any promotional support—and be bound to them. Accordingly, she called Ian Essence and gave him strict instructions not to sign to anything above a two-album deal.
‘Let the old bastard compete for you if he wants to keep you,’ she’d ordered so sharply I could hear her words buzz past Ian Essence’s ear like angry wasps. ‘Then you can renegotiate what you’re worth if you want to stay.’
Mickiewicz finally hung up his call and turned his attention to us, but not before looking at his watch. He shook our hands, then resumed his position.
‘Well then,’ he said, folding his arms. He had a smoker’s rasp like Alannah’s and an expanding gut under his T-shirt. ‘I suppose I should go first.’
We rumbled to the affirmative. My eyes kept sliding to the silver Marshall amp under a shelf of ARIA awards and other trinkets. I’d never seen one of those before.
‘When I started out, pop was a very backyard industry.’
Punk, I corrected in my head.
‘It was controversial, it was rebellious and it had a bit of attitude, whereas these days every man and his dog is trying to be in music. I think The Dolls are positioned very well. Some might think I’m mad to say that, but then, people thought I was mad when I signed Wild Whimsy. They were getting pelted off stage by coins and glasses when I discovered them, but I knew that if people hated them that much, other people would love them even more. Why should I be interested in an act nobody cares about one way or the other?’
He jumped to his feet, did a circuit of his office and sat back down.
‘Talent shows are taking the place of artist development and for the most part
the result is homogenised shit. You’re different. Let’s use The Dolls to get back to what pop used to be about.’
Punk.
Mickiewicz stretched his arms along the top of the sofa. As a rallying opening statement it was a good one, although I felt a spike of doubt when he mused, ‘People shouldn’t undermine the value of good, honest pop music. It serves a purpose; it’s a release. It’s not there to change the world.’
Was he implying that we were disposable and mustn’t get ideas above our station? I looked across at Ian Essence, who was smiling blandly.
‘Stay in your box at first,’ Mickiewicz continued. ‘We’ll get you a tour support slot with the sort of band you want to align yourself with, to show you the ropes. Then, a few months later, your own dates. Start modest. We could easily do an Enmore Theatre, but we’ll put you on at the Factory and then let it sell out, add another date, let it sell out, add another date . . . get the picture? We’ll get you going hard.’
Going hard was what we’d been waiting for. I willed Rose not to kill the moment by asking her father’s question about superannuation.
Mickiewicz outlined his vision of getting us a sync on a TV show and a half-time slot at the State of the Origin, embedding us in people’s psyches. I started to comprehend the way his mind worked. I cruised on feelings, whereas he was a strategic thinker, mapping things out, identifying goals. His words fanned out in front of him like a grid. I saw it all lit up like something out of Tron, layer upon layer of blueprints and flashing targets.
‘Interesting move using John Villiers, the wanker,’ he said, regaining my attention. I made a mental note to google ‘John Villiers + Greg Mickiewicz’ later. ‘He’s got the right pop aesthetic, but now we’ll get his mixes sent to Dean Henmann in the States to master and then that’s another name under your belt.’
Rose looked up and stopped making notes as Mickiewicz instructed his personal assistant to figure out how to work the stereo. He put on ‘Fight Like a Girl’ thrillingly loud and conducted along, surveying the world below his penthouse window. With his back to us, it was our chance to mouth delighted profanities at each other. ‘No, you fucking rock,’ Rose was mouthing when he turned around again.
For the next twenty minutes, Mickiewicz sparred and wore us down with rhetoric, before delivering his KO: an umbrella deal, in which Grandoise and its subsidiary companies controlled all touring, merchandise and publishing. Alannah hadn’t mentioned this concept and Ian Essence merely nodded obsequiously.
‘Rest assured,’ Mickiewicz concluded, holding aloft an index finger. ‘We’re taking you to number one.’
It wasn’t a long courtship, so I could only assume my aunt had whispered something obscene into Mickiewicz’s ear during that phone call from the Gold Coast. Before too long, the industry papers would learn the size of our deal and suggest we had been the subject of a bidding war between the country’s biggest record companies. Neither Mickiewicz or The Dolls would correct them.
‘We’ll have to stipulate a two-album deal,’ I said, remembering our instructions from Alannah.
Mickiewicz tried various looks of disgust and impending regret, and contemplated reconsidering the whole idea, but we held steady. He sighed and scribbled out a clause, using the knee crossed over his leg as a boardroom table. Desired effect: spontaneity and danger.
‘I never do this,’ he said with some pleasure. ‘You’ve got me.’
Our new lawyer stopped leafing through the other contract and put it down on the coffee table.
‘Looks about right,’ he said.
Mickiewicz ignored him.
‘Take it home to your aunt and show her,’ he said to us. The paperwork was for Rose and me alone—the band would be on a retainer.
‘They can look after themselves,’ Mickiewicz said dismissively. ‘You can’t afford to carry people like you used to. These days it’s about seizing the moment and knowing when to get off the bus.’
We accepted the contract and our esteemed manager took a suite of blurred pictures on his camera phone. Great job, Ian Essence—one for the grandchildren.
‘Let me tell you, it never happens like that,’ Ian Essence said as we walked to a bar around the corner. It felt surreal to be under an open sky again, having had our entire future just funnel through a wormhole in Mickiewicz’s office. ‘That was incredibly easy. I can’t really understand it.’
‘You mean Corpsefinger and Stinkfist didn’t get signed straightaway?’ queried Rose innocently. ‘How strange.’ She circled on another coat of lipstick. Shade: jubilation.
•
One thing Mickiewicz was insistent on before the ink had even dried on our contracts was media training. If we didn’t learn how to handle the press, he said, we’d be like lambs to the slaughter. He was probably referring to an interview Rose gave to an industry paper, in which she was deftly talked into passing comment on a few of our competitors and giving away the figure we signed for, which was much higher than a lot of people thought it should be.
The head of publicity at Grandiose took us into her office and ran through some scenarios. ‘Always lightly tease the interviewer like you might a friend,’ Carmel said, critiquing us from across her desk, which was studded with framed pictures of two gap-toothed children. I could never understand why worker ants had to surround themselves with pictures of people they last saw at breakfast. It was turning your kids into status symbols. If I had a desk I’d rather have a picture of a Les Paul or a mansion on Lake Como. I was never going to have a desk, though. Instead, Rose and I were always making vision boards of things we aspired to have, cutting out pictures from magazines. Oprah reckoned if you focused on something hard enough, you’d attract it. That was called the law of attraction.
‘Keep saying their name,’ Carmel instructed. ‘Instil familiarity.
If they’ve interviewed you before, always pretend to remember and be pleased to see them. If a line of questioning throws you, stop talking. If in doubt, don’t.’
TOP 5 RESPONSES TO AWKWARD QUESTIONS
1. ‘What a good question. I’ll have to come back to that one.’
2. ‘You’ve nailed it.’
3. ‘What’s that accent, (use first name)?’
4. ‘How interesting. What do you mean?’
5. ‘We prefer to maintain an air of mystery on that front.’
Our press photos for Grandiose would be shot at a hotel in the Rocks. Mickiewicz came down to meet us before taking us out to dinner, but he paced around the studio on his phone for the first twenty minutes. I watched him from where I sat on the floor, working a Chupa Chup around my mouth. Idly, I superimposed his figure into scenes with AC/DC and Midnight Oil. I scrapped the rolled-up shirtsleeves and dad jeans and instead put him in high-waisted flares and sneakers, and fluffed out his hair at the back. He saw me staring and nodded.
Mickiewicz had hired a hair-and-make-up girl, and I decided that next time we would get Sadie—partly to reassure Rose that she sang really well, thus taking some of the pressure off me, and partly to do things the way we actually liked it. Make-up artists always tried to convince us to have nude lips and statement eyes, whereas in fact The Dolls were all about the lips and nothing about current trends. It was like trying to communicate in a foreign language sometimes.
Having a stylist was something Rose had meditated on since the days of playing with the dress-up box, so she was all over the rack of clothes like a rash. The photographer, an old guy, looked at my T-shirt, which said, ‘I Spit On Your Grave’.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ he said.
I shot him an evil look and wandered over to the rack. Rose was picking out a leopard-skin halter-neck. I was thinking crop top, bra, pencil skirt, bangles . . . kind of early Madonna. Concept: B-girl-meets-hooker.
‘We can put you in these shorts,’ said the stylist in a conspiratorial voice. They always spoke like that, to try and coerce us into things, like we were all girls on side here. ‘You can totally get away with those with your
arse.’
I took them off her. They were hideous things; green leather.
‘Why?’ I snapped. ‘Is this an Oktoberfest shoot?’
Rose was having rollers put in, and the studio filled with that lovely smell of heated hair and lacquer. The scent acted as a trigger, flicking the freak switch in my brain and amping me up for the night ahead.
Mickiewicz had hung up his call, but I could sense his presence as he scrutinised his phone. A guy with a presence that intense activated a homing device inside me. Right now he was beeping his way over to the window, pretending to check the weather.
The stylist lifted my arm and sprayed antiperspirant under it, then did the same with the other. ‘We’ve got to give these clothes back after,’ she said without apology. Once Rose was done in the chair, I joined her gingerly on the white backdrop in my heels and arranged her hair properly.
Mickiewicz, at five o’clock.
‘Do my girls look okay?’ Rose asked the photographer, fiddling with her bra. She threw her hair over her shoulder and arranged herself languidly on me, chin down. Rose wasn’t helping our reputation for being a pair of deboned sex kittens with a bumbling manager on the leash. We were going to become an industry joke if we weren’t careful, so I hoped Mickiewicz would take her in hand. Mickiewicz was nine parts entertaining bluster and one part genuine danger, I’d already discovered. He’d ring up and bawl us out, then be our best mate again a few minutes later. I got the distinct impression he liked it when we gave it back.
Halfway through our first costume change, the photographer ran out of memory and had to rummage around in his case. ‘Peaked too early,’ piped up Rose. We picked our way off the paper roll and went over to talk to Mickiewicz, who had finished his second call. We had a window of about ten seconds before he started another.
‘We need some attention,’ I said.
•
‘I saw you in the social pages,’ Helen said. It was illegal use of her mobile phone from the writers’ retreat.
Cherry Bomb Page 9