2008 - Kill Your Friends

by John Niven

  Rudi sits there for a moment breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring, his eyes closed in rapt silence. Before I can say anything he leaps to his feet and thrusts his arms in the air as though he’s scored the winner in the World Cup final. “DIDN’T I TELL YOU!” he screams. “A SMASH! OUR BIGGEST HIT YET!”

  A few things are instantly apparent: 1) Rudi is off his fucking chanks (but we knew this already), 2) obviously no radio station in the civilised world will go anywhere near the record, and 3) the tune is insanely catchy.

  “Wow,” I say, “have you played it at the club yet?”

  “Last Friday we dropped it for the first time. Schteeven, I cannot tell you. You have been to Technotron, ja? You know what they are like in there, they know their music. Well, they went FUCKING INSANE!” He always says this.

  “Wow,” I repeat.

  “Who’s the singer?” asks Darren redundantly, for something to say.

  “Michelle. She is, what do you call them, Schteeven, a moose?” He waves a hand dismissively, “Ha ha! But this is not a problem. We will find someone else to front it.”

  “It’s fantastic, Rudi. It’s just…” I spread my palms.

  “The lyrics?”

  “Exactly, Rudi.”

  “Ach, you English! So schquare! It is no problem, we have a radio edit almost finished.”

  “Yeah? Wow. Really? How, er, what did you do?”

  “We have changed the chorus to ‘Why don’t you slap me on the ass!’”

  Holy shit. If this isn’t the tackiest, stupidest, most unworkable idea I ever fucking heard then it’s definitely in the top five. “Great!” I say. “That could work.”

  “So, what do you think, my friend? You know I will offer this to you for the UK.”

  What do I think? The record is absolutely, off-the-scale, demented, tacky, cheesy, single-entendre garbage. But, and never forget this, this is exactly what 99 per cent of the Great British Public enjoy. It is also properly infectious and stranger things have happened. However, I must also be mindful that while Rudi has as good a track record as you can have with this type of crap, he has also shafted a few labels for hundreds of thousands of pounds for records that have charted at 41 before disappearing without trace. (Last year Virgin paid a fortune for a record of Rudi’s called ‘Happy Song!’. I remember being in Trellick’s office when the midweeks came in showing it at N°46, with a strontium fucking anchor. Laugh? We nearly needed oxygen masks.)

  “How much, Rudi?”

  “Ach, Schteeven, I do not know. You paid us, what, twenty-five for the last one?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Whatever. I could not take less than thirty and eighteen points.” (Percentage points—his royalty rate from us.)

  I nod. “That doesn’t sound unreasonable.” Like fuck it doesn’t. By the time we pay this Nazi paedo thirty grand for the record, commission some remixes, do artwork, promo the record to club and radio, manufacture the stock, take out print and street advertising and make a video, it will cost us maybe a hundred grand to try and have a hit with this piece of shit. This is what is involved every time you say ‘yes’.

  “Schteeven, it is a fucking bargain. Where are your ears? It’s a smash.”

  “Tell you what, let me talk to business affairs, crunch some numbers and I’ll come back to you tomorrow. OK?”

  “OK,” he shrugs, “but don’t hang around, my friend. I want you to have this, I am playing it to you first, but you know what this place is like!” He gestures out the open window towards Cannes. Several floors below throngs of industry people are heading out for the evening, their laughter and chatter drifting up towards us.

  “I’ll call you,” I say as I get up.

  “Good! Good! Will I see you tonight? Where are you eating?”

  “I’m not sure yet. What are you guys up to?”

  “I will be in the Barracuda! Getting my FUCKING DICK SCHUCKED!” he roars, punching me playfully on the arm.

  As soon as the lift doors close Darren bursts out laughing. “Christ, he’s off his tits.”

  “No shit. But what did you think?”

  “It’s a fucking tune, mate, no question, but those lyrics, man.” He shakes his head. “Would this edit work? I don’t know. What are you thinking?”

  What am I thinking? I don’t know. It’s my job to know, but I don’t. “I’m thinking…two world wars and one World Cup,” I say.

  He cracks up. His laughter contains just the right amount of hysteria and reverence due to a superior and benefactor.

  ♦

  Later, looking through some crap in my hotel room (a decent enough, sea-facing room at the Majestic—Rebecca came through), I noticed that there were delegates from no fewer than ninety-one countries attending this year’s convention. Apart from the obvious—the Krauts, Frogs, Shermans, Japs and Brits—there’s a raft of the less obvious—New Zealanders, Mexicans, Russians—and a clutch of the downright crazy—Ugandans, Romanians, fucking Tanzanians. I mean, I don’t know much about the domestic affairs of Tanzania, granted, but I’d have imagined they had more pressing concerns back there—and better uses for their cash—than sending some witch doctor to Cannes at incredible expense so he can watch a load of drunk, chang’d-up fools shout abuse at each other and vomit hundred-quid dinners down the toilets of nightclubs. How high can music be on their agenda?

  But everyone gets along. Oh yes. Background and ethnic origin form no barrier to trade here. If there’s a deal to be struck, if there’s dollar, yen, rouble or franc to be made then differences will be put aside. Diversity tolerated. Look over there—the Arab contingent is uncorking the Cristal to celebrate a potentially lucrative licensing deal for Ultimate Bar Mitzvah Classics! In another corner the staunchly Catholic label boss is snapping up the exclusive distribution rights for an exciting new label called Red Hand: Kill All Fenian Bastards. Music really does cross all barriers. Greed is so incredibly inclusive.

  ♦

  The following afternoon, and Schneider and I have a table on the glass-encased veranda of an insanely expensive restaurant at the far end of the Croissette, overlooking the harbour. There’s lead crystal, thick, starched table linnen and heavy silver cutlery. Personally I think it’s an own goal bringing Rage into a place like this, but Schneider, anticipating a disagreement (because, with someone like Rage, there is only ever disagreement), wanted somewhere off the beaten track, somewhere that wasn’t going to be rammed with industry. Which this place isn’t—there’s just lots of chic lunching Frogs, cracking open the rust-red exoskeletons of big lobsters and scraping the creamy flesh from the softer, mottled-white shells of the langoustines. Rage and Fisher, his manager, are so late that we’ve ordered: huge tureens of thirty-quid bouillabaisse sit steaming in front of us. We spoon and sip Sauvignon and make small talk about deals and rumours. Schneider is nervous, his foot tapping away beneath the table. He knows he is on ultra-thin ice with this record. Below the ice, waiting to tear him to pieces, are the sharks. Terrible, ravenous sharks with rusted hypodermics for teeth, the chambers of the syringes filled with plague, anthrax and AIDS. They swim in fast circles, coming nearer and nearer to the surface as the ice begins to creak and splinter beneath Schneider’s gleaming Patrick Cox loafers.

  Suddenly we sense the pulse, the heartbeat of the place, change and we look up to see Rage and Fisher come swaggering in.

  Fisher is impressive enough in here—a bald, twenty-stone East End hooligan with a heavy, gold cord around his neck, dressed in billowing, baggy sportswear topped off with dodgem-sized paper-white trainers—but Rage…fuck me.

  Forget the fact that he’s wearing shades, a baseball cap and a T-shirt that says ‘NIGGER’, it’s the jewellery. Half a dozen gold studs are punched into each earlobe. Three thick cables of gold hang around his neck. On every finger of each hand is at least one, often two, huge gold rings, all studded with rocks—diamonds, rubies, emeralds. On his right wrist is a custom-made gold Rolex so encrusted with gems that to try and read the t
ime on it might induce a brain haemorrhage. From his left wrist dangles a half-kilo platinum-gold bracelet. Just to take a step must be like a half-hour workout. He looks like he’s covered himself in glue and charged headlong through an outlet called Rich Black Bastard.

  “All right, boys?” he says, simultaneously slapping my shoulder, pumping Schneider’s hand, aggressively tugging a chair out and casting an imperious glance around the place. The rest of the clientele suddenly find things of great interest in their soup bowls and among the dismembered sea creatures on their plates.

  Rage’s success is recent and he’s not used to being in places like this. Consequently he’s on red alert, Defcon 3, ferociously on the lookout for any sign of being patronised, any flicker of condescension. He doesn’t even look at the menu proffered by the swallowing waiter. “Burger and chips, mate, yeah?” he says.

  Burger and chips. Steak and chips. Always ordered ‘well done’. These are the staple restaurant foods that will be ordered by every filthy working-class toerag you will ever sign. (Until they get saddled with some Hampstead girlfriend—some Millie, some Sophie—who starts civilising them, teaching them about wine and telling them what a fish is. Then you’ve got to put up with the bastards ordering Rioja with Dover sole and talking about fucking restaurants.) The waiter backs away, looking sick and uncertain, and, after the briefest of “How’s tricks?”, Fisher gets straight to making his point. It’s basically the same point he makes in every meeting: how we should be paying them more money.

  “We gotta go out on this fucking tour, right?” he says.

  “I don’t wanna do it in the first fucking place,” says Rage.

  “Easy,” says Fisher, placing one of his massive wanking paddles reassuringly on his client’s arm but not taking his eyes from Schneider, “we’re gonna do the fucking tour…” he says benevolently. I wonder how thoroughly they’ve rehearsed this.

  “Great,” says Schneider.

  “But we ain’t gonna dismantle the studio to take it on the road…”

  “No way, man,” says Rage, shaking his head solemnly, as if we’re asking him to sell one of his—surely many and illegitimate—children into sex slavery.

  “So we need to rep, repli…” Fisher has a quick pop at pronouncing ‘replicate’, then changes his mind, “buy all the gear again, you know? To have a touring rig.”

  “How much are we talking about?” Schneider asks.

  “Sixty,” says Fisher with a straight face, but his left hand goes automatically to his lobe to finger a big gold stud. This tour—with backing musicians, lighting, transport, hotels, crew, catering, sound, etc.—is already costing us something like eight grand a show in tour support.

  “Mmmm,” says Schneider.

  “Excuse me, sir?” The manager is standing there, our waiter hiding behind him. Rage swivels around, already, always, angry.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m afraid, with your order, we are a zeefood restron and—”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Rage says.

  “Peraps sir would like to shoes another dish?” The guy offers him the menu again. Rage doesn’t even look at it.

  “Look, you can make me some fucking chips, man. You got potatoes in the back, ain’t you? All you do is fry ‘em up in…” Rage thinks, “stuff.”

  “There are potatoes on the menu, sir, oven-roasted in oleeve oil, thyme and zee salt?”

  Rage clenches his fists together, black skin banding white around gold rings. Here we go.

  Every time I have been in a public place with Rage there has been an angry, dramatic scene—a walkout, a storm-off, physical violence on more than one occasion. I’m not of what you’d call a ‘cheery’ disposition myself, but these guys, guys like Rage, you wonder how they do it. What does it take to wake up every morning already furious, and for that anger to increase steadily during the course of every single fucking day! He lives in a world where every possible encounter—from parking the car, to buying a pint of milk, to eating dinner, to having a business meeting—is fraught with the potential for real or imagined ‘disrespects’, which must be immediately, viciously, avenged. How does he do it? Then you remember his childhood: the foster-homes, the beatings. His actual conception: a radioactive wad of angry nigger-rapist semen getting pumped into some gibbering crack whore to produce the ‘drum’n’bass superstar’ sitting opposite me.

  Hefe’s the thing. When Rage was a little boy his mother drove them from London up to Manchester for the day. She pulled up in the city centre and made him get out of the car. Then she drove back to London. He never saw her again. He lived on the streets—crying and begging—for a couple of days before the cops got hold of him. They slung him in and out of a bunch of care homes for the next ten years, where he was doubtless constantly beaten and fucked in the ass. Let’s face it, that’d fuck you off, wouldn’t it? That’d about do it for you with regard to the notion of unconditional love.

  But today, surprisingly, he decides to be benevolent. Graceful even. “Whatever,” he says airily, somehow managing to wave an ingot-heavy hand, “just bring me some fucking food. Yeah?”

  “Couldn’t we just hire the gear for the tour?” I say.

  Rage shakes his head, sucking air in through a mouthful of chrome teeth. “Can’t work with no hired gear, man. No way.”

  “Look,” says Fisher, “do you guys believe in this fucking guy,” he jerks a pudgy thumb at Rage, “long term?”

  “Yes,” we both lie.

  “Then this ain’t gonna be the only tour we ever do. It’s an investment.”

  “I just don’t think we can justify the additional expense,” Schneider says, nervously. “The tour support’s high as it is.”

  “Right,” Fisher sighs as he lays down his last card, “we’ll have to pull the tour.”

  We laugh. They don’t.

  “I ain’t fucking doing it,” says Rage. There’s a long silence.

  “But,” Schneider says, realising they’re perfectly serious, “we’ve already paid for advertising, we’ve—”

  “Not our problem,” says Fisher.

  Would they pull their own tour out of spite? Of course they fucking would. When your own mother tells you to go and get fucked at the age of seven, telling the rest of the world to go and get Ricked on a daily basis holds no terrors. I wonder why they bothered with lunch. Why didn’t they just walk into the boardroom with stockings over their heads, wielding shotguns and demanding sixty grand?

  Schneider pretends to think for a long time. There’s nothing to think about.

  “Thirty grand,” he says, “recoupable.”

  “Fifty,” Fisher says.

  “Forty.”

  “Deal, man.”

  They shake hands. At some point we’ll see a Fantasy Island budget from Fisher’s management company with a bunch of fake receipts stapled to it for silly money they never spent on gear they do not own. Essentially Schneider has just agreed to give them forty grand, no strings attached. We might get it back if—and it’s a continent-sized ‘if’—Rage’s album ever recoups all of its costs.

  Neither Rage nor Fisher really had any formal schooling, but, in their own ways, their backgrounds prepared them thoroughly for a successful career in the music business. There was a visa problem for a trip to the States last year and the legal department had to sort it out. Trellick got to see the rap sheets.

  Yes, you guessed it. Back in the day Rage and Fisher were both muggers.

  “So,” Schneider says pleasantly, “how’s the album coming?”

  “Mate,” Rage says sombrely, slowly removing his Oakley’s for the first time and making eye contact with Schneider. His irises are so brown as to effectively be black. A shark’s eyes. “It’s gonna blow your fucking tits off.”

  “When can we hear it?”

  “Soon, mate. Soon.”

  The waiter glides into view. With a triumphant “Voila!” he sets an enormous platter of fruits de mer in front of Rage. Rage looks at it—at the spines
, tendrils and tentacles, the claws, wobbling antennae and glistening jet eyes of dozens of dead crustaceans. He looks up and says to the beaming waiter, “Are you having a fucking giraffe, cunt?”

  ♦

  Midnight in the lobby bar of the Martinez. There must be at least three hundred people in here—a boiling scrum of booze and noise and networking. Business cards are constantly exchanged, phone numbers scribbled on napkins and punched into mobiles. People hold imaginary receivers up to their ears and mouth ‘Call me’ across the room while others throw their heads back and unleash torrents of horrible laughter. The roar of forced bonhomie is deafening. Massively outnumbered, a handful of melting, white-jacketed waiters squeeze through the crush with silver trays, bearing bottles of Krug, Cristal, San Miguel, Budweiser, Heineken, Stoli and Johnnie Walker. A beer costs about eight quid. To have a bottle of Scotch or vodka left on your table will cost you about three hundred. Plenty of people are happily paying that rather than trying to tag an exhausted, near-fainting waiter every fifteen minutes.

  Dinner had been the usual deal you fall into over here, with fourteen of us sharing a table at a seafood place on the Croisette: Chardonnay, champagne, cognac, cocaine and untouched food. Swearing and shouting and braying laughter. Elderly customers asking to be moved then the tightly smiling maitre d’ and the trio of harassed waiters hunched over the metre-long bill and the stack of credit cards and francs we’ve flicked onto the ruined tablecloth.

  Trellick and I have shouldered our way in at the bar, passing close to Parker-Hall and Marty Kersch, a senior Vice President at Capitol in LA. Parker-Hall—as I knew he would—nodded politely but made no move to introduce me or bring me into the conversation, in fact, I watched as he quickly thought of some detailed, urgent question he had to put to Kersch and leaned in close to yell it until I passed by. This is SOP; if you are engaged in a visible, centre-of-the-room, high-profile conversation with someone very powerful then you must jealously protect that conversation from interlopers of your own, or lower, stature. Conversely, had Parker-Hall been talking to some muppet—some guy who works in marketing for some tiny French dance label whom he had mistakenly fallen into conversation with—he would have greeted me like a long-lost brother, brought me into the discussion, and then fucked off leaving me with the muppet. And I would do the same to him in a heartbeat.