Barlheath is not a picturesque town. Like much of the Midlands its industrial past is long over; vacant factories now just crumbling wasteland. Barlheath is not an affluent place either. It is merely functional: houses, shops, a cinema. Naomi Crystal has not lived here, nor visited, for a great number of years, yet it is here, where she and her brother grew up, where she wants us to meet.
We meet in a bar on the edge of a sprawling housing estate, an estate that has a plaque and a statue commemorating its favourite son. There have been petitions recently asking for the statue of Zach Crystal to be removed, and the plinth on which it stands has been vandalised with red paint.
MONSTER it reads.
Initially I was utterly flummoxed by the idea of meeting Naomi here, at The Sow, the site of The Crystal Twins’ first ever live concert. Surely this would create pandemonium, with fans and press in attendance. She tells me to trust her. She also says I have no choice on the matter. We meet here or not at all.
The Sow is quiet though. It’s certainly changed from those early days of The Crystal Twins, beautifully reconstructed in faux weathered wood and glass. A kitchen serves à la carte Sunday lunches, and local craft ales are behind the bar. The Sow has its own plaque, pride of place on one wall, beside a huge frame that contains a stained section of wooden tiles from its original dancefloor.
‘Site of The Crystal Twins’ first-ever gig’ it reads underneath. ‘Zach and Naomi Crystal’.
Naomi is waiting for me when I arrive. She’s wearing her vast, trademark sunglasses. There are a few others in the pub. I’m expecting a barrage – phones held aloft, a media circus. But not one person looks around at us.
—A group of lads came in earlier. One of them looked at me and nodded to the others. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘fat Naomi Crystal.’ Just loud enough for me to hear. And they all fell about laughing.
—What? Do they think you’re a fan?
—You’d be surprised how often that happens. But it means I can hide in plain sight, I suppose. I’m not even that fat, am I?
It’s surreal. Super-surreal, being sat here, opposite Naomi Crystal, just chatting away like everything is normal. Naomi has a very dry sense of humour, and her presence is hugely intimidating, I have to admit. There are a few Crystal fans in – young and old; but mainly people from overseas. A few have looked over, but no one gives us a second glance. Naomi tells me that since her brother’s death, since the attention in the press about the allegations, people don’t want to be seen as Zach Crystal fans anymore. I ask her how she feels about that.
—It’s almost … almost a relief, in a way. It’s been relentless, since we were very young. You don’t get a break from it. The fame. This time has helped me think, to be honest, helped me reflect on our life. On him. On us. On all of it.
—There’s so much I want to discuss, I don’t really know where to begin. I think the thing that I am wondering about the most is why you agreed to talk, at last? To me?
—I wish I could say because you’re very special and I’m a huge fan … but that’s not it. Sorry. I will tell you why – I’ll tell you all about my reasons – but at the end. I’ll explain at the end of the interview, if that’s OK?
—Of course.
—I mean, you don’t have a choice, to be honest. I’m just being polite. I’m in control of this, not you.
—So where’s good for you to start? At the beginning? What was it like, growing up here, in Barlheath? There’s been so much written, so much said. I’d be interested to get your take.
—Barlheath isn’t a nice place. The only thing going for it now really, for me, is the fact that it was once home. I had a walk up to our old house before I came here. I was expecting some wash of memory, some profound feeling, but there was nothing. It just made me sad.
—Why was that?
—Just old memories, old pain.
—I’m so sorry.
—Don’t be. There’s a great many children in the world with parents like ours. And worse.
—They were religious, weren’t they?
—Yes, but it wasn’t that, you know? Religion was just the stick they beat us with. They were ambitious, they wanted much more than what they had in their life, and they used Zach and me to get it. Religion was their method of control. Zach and I were commodities – we were their ticket out of the gutter.
—Is that why the music started?
—I think that it started, with Zach at least, for purely innocent reasons, for the love of it. Zach and Dad listening to records – that old story that everyone loves. I think that’s the only really true part of that story. They listened to Dad’s old jazz records together and they enjoyed it.
—And there’s a different story after that?
—There is. Zach says that he had this natural gift, that he learned to play by touch, by ear. Don’t get me wrong, he was talented, he had musical ability, but he didn’t have a choice in the matter, any more than I did. As soon as Dad realised Zach could play and sing, and that he was good at it, it then became a ‘gift’. That was the story Mum and Dad wrote. They called it a gift from God, of course – it was never Zach’s, it was never because he was good, it was because Zach had this gift bestowed upon him. Zach was nothing. Zach was their ticket out of mediocrity.
—And what about you? What was your part in this story?
—Me? I spent most of my childhood trying and failing to get the approval and love of my parents. It was only when I started singing with Zach that I got something back. So I kept doing it, no matter how much I hated it, no matter how much I felt demeaned, used, like a piece of meat. I did it because it made them happy, it got us noticed, we became somebodies.
—But behind that facade, things weren’t as rosy?
—They were really good at creating a believable story, especially in front of others. Especially the people at church. We had nothing in the way of money, so for them, it was about making us seem better than everyone else in other ways. We were the holiest, Zach and I, the best-behaved children, that sort of thing.
—So would you accuse your parents of being abusive in any way?
—That’s a hard one, because I think in their heads they genuinely believed they were doing good. I think their behaviour came from a good place, and a place of anxiety, perhaps. A place of fear. And to quell that fear, they had to have total control. I feel sad for them now. But I didn’t then.
—It sounds like Zach was the favourite.
—It felt like that for me. I never understood why. I could never understand what it was that I had done wrong. I tried, God knows I tried. I tried to do everything right, I tried to be what they wanted and I always fell by the wayside. A lot of the time, I think they thought they’d failed with me.
—I wonder why neither of you have ever spoken about this, in all these years?
—I guess that’s their legacy. Their shadow still falls long and dark over both of us. Zach and I were used to having the perfect image. We knew how to maintain it and we just … did I guess. That’s partly the reason why I’m talking to you right now, I suppose. It’s something we should have spoken about a long time ago. But now Zach’s gone and they’re gone…
Naomi tells me about growing up under the control of Maureen and Frank Crystal – the early-morning trips to church, the endless practising in their living room.
—We weren’t allowed to watch telly or anything, so what else were we going to do? For Zach it was always books. He was obsessed with reading – the scarier, the more forbidden, the better. He had this one he used to keep under the floorboards, Highland Folktales. He’d bought it from a charity shop and it was full of stories about selkies and kelpies, and that sort of thing. He used to read the tales to me at night, scared the shit out of me. But I loved it. Forbidden fruit. If Mum or Dad had caught him with it, there would have been hell to pay.
Could it have been here, all those years ago, reading a forbidden book of Scottish folktales where the story of the Frithghast first aw
oke in the mind of a young Zach Crystal? I put this to Naomi and she gives a sharp intake of breath at the word.
—Possibly. I don’t remember all the stories. I just remember being scared, lying there under the sheets while he whispered. Where Mum and Dad had the bible, Zach had his stories. They became almost religious to him; he knew them all off by heart. I used to close my eyes and believe I was there, up in those forests, those magical places. I think we both did. For us, those stories were our escape after having to practise those songs all afternoon, over and over again.
—Did the music give you any pleasure?
—For me, making up songs, singing, they were my way of pleasing our parents. I sang and danced and led the show, and it made them smile.
—You and Zach began to get quite famous in the late eighties and early nineties, as a duo. You were in your mid-teens – fifteen, sixteen – when you really started making a name for yourselves. That must have been tough.
—Zach always said we never got to be teenagers, and he was right. What is it that teenagers do? They explore who they are, they take risks, they do stupid things, have relationships. It’s all about growing up, learning about life. We learned how to be stars. That was our teenage-hood, learning to be what people wanted. Learning to be perfect.
—It seems like that affected Zach quite significantly.
—It affected us in different ways. I grew up quick, became independent. I did things for myself. I wasn’t going to be waited on. Zach was the exact opposite. I blame myself in a way – I did everything for both of us. I looked after him. I protected him from our parents and I tried to protect him from the attention we were getting.
—Deserved attention though, am I right? I mean the two of you were an act.
—It was Mum and Dad’s ideals rather than any sort of God-given talent we had. You work hard enough at something, and yeah, you’re going to do OK. We were popular because we were young. We played songs to drunk men in bars, got them all singing along. I was the eye candy and Zach was the talent. That’s how it worked.
—That sounds rather unpleasant.
—It was. For all of Dad’s piousness, all his God-bothering, he didn’t mind dressing up his twelve-year-old daughter to look like a woman and have her singing and dancing in front of a load of lecherous blokes. I had to grow up very quickly, so I had to find strength from somewhere. I had to learn to stand up for myself and stand up for Zach.
—Zach was the weaker of the pair?
—Always. He had night terrors as a kid, woke the whole house up with his screaming. Mum and Dad always used prayers to calm him down. They used to say the devil had a hold of him. Zach didn’t make friends easily. He never did. He was an easy target in school, so I had to look after him. And he was easily influenced, too – he was naive, infuriatingly so. All it took was one person to try and convince him of something and he’d be sold. That was what I was protecting him from. But as time went on and we got older, the only people who could never convince him of anything were Mum and Dad. They’d say black and he’d say white.
—Why was that, do you think?
—He’d watched me grow up being utterly in their thrall, under their control completely, and I think he just decided that he wouldn’t let them do that. Anyone else could but not them.
Then he met James. And everything changed.
James Cryer. His name has come up all the way through this podcast – it’s bound to Zach Crystal’s. Yet, aside from being a long-term friend of Zach’s, eventually becoming his top aide, there is little known about James Cryer, save for his death in 2018.
—Zach always told everyone James was his friend. I don’t think that was true. Not really. James started out as a fan. Our biggest fan. Well, mine, really.
Naomi tells me the story you heard at the top of the episode, about how she and James Cryer first met. It’s a sinister and unpleasant tale, as is the reaction of Naomi’s father – allowing James into their lives.
—James Cryer was obsessed with me from the start. He didn’t give two shits about Zach. It began right here, those first few gigs in Barlheath. His dad brought him into the bar, I think, to watch us play. After that he never left me alone. It always troubled me that even at that age, so young, he was able to create a character – this chivalrous young man who would walk me through an estate he seemed to consider rough and beneath him, when he lived there too.
Naomi explains that James Cryer soon became a constant in her and Zach’s lives. Either shifting equipment, microphone stands and Zach’s keyboard, or else drumming up huge enthusiasm for the pair wherever they went. James Cryer had become The Crystal Twins’ personal cheerleader. What I want to know now is how he got there. How did a creepy experience in a park lead to him being a permanent fixture?
—He’d created this wholesome, helpful image; he was a fan and just wanted to help out. Our dad fell for it hook, line and sinker. James knew how to play to his audience. He was good at it too; he was convincing. I don’t know how many times he managed to get onto local radio or into the papers, always championing us, The Crystal Twins, always telling everyone how great we were. It seemed that being close to us, close to me, was his repayment. I was a commodity. Dad dangled me like a carrot in front of James Cryer, to get us the publicity, the attention. He knew what he was doing. No one ever paid James until Zach went solo. I was enough before then.
This is hard to hear and it’s only now that I see how insidious the influence of James Cryer was for the Crystals. He was always there, Naomi tells me, a constant presence, allowed to hang about backstage, so long as he helped out setting up and selling tickets for the show.
—He had this really quiet, breathy little voice, and he would tell me just how great we were, just what a wonderful voice I had. He was forever trying to get me on my own, and I just … I just refused to let it happen. I would never be overt about it. Dad would lose his shit if I’d done that.
As the years went by, James Cryer would bring cards, flowers, cuddly toys to give to Naomi. It became, she says, acutely embarrassing.
—There wasn’t anything wrong with him as such. It was just … it was just too much when I was so young, like that.
—What sort of things would he do?
—He used to stand right at the front of every gig. I used to spend entire concerts trying to avoid his eyes. Ugh, the way he used to look at me, at my body. I was so self-conscious at that age, and the way James looked at me used to creep me out.
When we stayed over in hotels, he used to share a room with Zach, but in the middle of the night he used to call my room, always asking if I wanted to go for a walk with him the next day. I used to spend the car journeys coming up with all these different excuses – dentists, doctors, rehearsals, that sort of thing.
—Your father, though, I can’t imagine he was very happy with this. Did you ever express to him how uncomfortable you were?
—I never told him because I knew what his response would be. I knew he wouldn’t listen. I actually think he enabled James. Yeah. There, I’ve said it. I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but it’s true. If he didn’t enable him, he did absolutely nothing to stop him, and for me, that’s just as bad.
These are poignant words. I think it’s important we remember that doing nothing, that standing by in silence is just as bad as the abuse itself. While I have this opportunity to talk to Naomi Crystal, I want to pick apart her thoughts on the accusations of abuse against her brother – to find out if she might have had any role in that abuse.
If she gets up and walks, then so be it. But I’m not going to sit by and not ask the questions. But I’ll build up to that. I will get there.
—James Cryer ended up working for Zach. The two became close. But were they friends? Do you think this was solely to get to you?
—I mean … the whole reason he became friends with Zach was to get close to me. That was his mission. It wasn’t long before he was backstage at every gig, always helping Zach out. He w
as always getting things for him, treating him like a little prince. Dad thought he’d be great company for Zach, another boy like that. I remember an incident where I was getting changed, and Zach and James ‘accidentally’ walked in on me.
—Do you think Zach helped that sort of thing to happen?
—The thing was, Zach had never really had friends before. He was open to any sort of manipulation. I’d protected him for all this time, then James Cryer got in his head. I think James thought if he could get to Zach, then he could get to me.
As the years went by and we got more independent, that’s when it started getting worse.
As The Crystal Twins’ star began to rise, Zach, Naomi and James began travelling without their father. This was around 1993, 1994, when Zach and Naomi were leaving their teenage years behind.
—They went by in a blur, those years. Never-ending tours – buses, trains, lugging equipment about. By then we had people doing it for us. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t massive but we were living off the gigs. It was still hard work but we were starting to do well.
—What sort of gigs were you playing?
—Back then it was all very strange. We’d play in a dreadful working men’s club in the middle of some estate in God knows where, but then we had some wholesome kinds of gigs – Christian music festivals mainly, Praisefest, Greenbelt, those sorts of things. We were going down well but we both knew we had to branch out, start getting away from the church stuff. I didn’t mind it, but Zach was having none of it anymore.
Deity Page 24