‘Y’awright?’ whispers Bobby through thin lips.
‘Now tell us, you’re putting on a one-night music festival on a remote uninhabited island off the west of Scotland. Why?’ she asks with a rehearsed incredulity.
‘’Cos we can!’ replies Max, folding his arms, still looking at the man in the expensive suit.
‘Aye,’ says Bobby.
‘Like Everest, an’ that,’ adds Max, patting Anchorman’s knee. ‘But no’ the double glazing, hen … ’cos it’s there!’
Bobby is staring at this elegant female, transfixed. It helps settle his nerves.
She is beginning to suspect this might be her Russell Harty / Grace Jones moment.
‘But why Ailsa Craig?’ asks the suit, trying to help out his colleague.
Max breathes deeply and then says, ‘The gig’s just a smokescreen, ken? See Scots folk? They’re aw mouth an’ attitude but bugger all else.’
Bobby is forced to wipe the moisture from his brow. He has no idea where Max is headed with this.
‘See aw that independence bollocks last ye—’
The man – Bobby suddenly remembers he’s called Charlie Something – intervenes sharply and apologises for the use of the word. He tries to laugh it off and politely warns Max Mojo. Max stares down the camera with the red light on and he too apologises to the nation before continuing.
‘Never mind the bollocks, we had a referendum last year … ye’se might ae heard about it, doon here in Enger-land.’
Charlie Something nods whilst trying to remain composed. This isn’t the interview he thought they would be having.
‘But we blew it. So we thought that if wee Alex and Nicola could declare independence, then so could we!’ Max quickly takes off his shirt, dislodging the microphone in the process. He is wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan
INDEPENDENCE FOR AILSA CRAIG – HANDS OFF OOR FISH!
Charlie Something grapples for his notes. It’s clear he is receiving instructions to cut this piece sharply. So heavily is Bobby now perspiring and shaking, he is worried viewers might think he is having a stroke.
Before they can cut to an item about breast-feeding, Max Mojo shouts, ‘The Miraculous Vespas are the greatest fuckin’ band in history. FREEDOM!’ His microphone is trailing by his side, but he still makes himself heard.
The two professionals glance at one another and then try to laugh the incident off, but it’s clear they are rattled. No news presenter wants to be the subject of the news itself, and by that evening hundreds of thousands of people around the world will have watched this short clip after it has gone viral. Who needs a publicist when Max Mojo is on the case?
Unsurprisingly, the car that picked them up from the Lowry Hotel two hours earlier to take Max and Bobby to the BBC Media Centre in Salford Quays isn’t driving them back. They have been dumped out of the soulless steel-and-glass building with such force that Bobby expects security to follow them outside and give both of them a severe kicking. Max wears a smugly satisfied look on his face.
‘Right, now we can get tae work. We’ve finally got a fuckin’ audience!’
Back in Crosshouse, Joseph stares at the estimate. Five hundred thousand pounds to construct the small, eyelid stage out of a durable hardwood. Ten percent more to construct the ‘hull’ with a more contemporary production using glass-reinforced plastic. This alternative, but recommended, process proposes constructing a large mould and essentially forming the outer structure from a layer of fibreglass laid to the mould, then applying a core of balsa wood or foam before the inner skin is laid. This option for the parts that will be underwater takes special materials and specialist knowledge. They are basically building a boat, although the timescale is almost as pressurised as for the much bigger one once constructed by Noah. They have to cut the build time down by three months. Needless to say, faster construction times mean even more money. Max Mojo better be right about the sponsorship deals or they will all be going to prison over substantial unpaid debts.
Joseph lifts the phone and punches the numbers. It’s a short call; essentially confirming his wish for the specialist joiners to proceed. They will build it all from cedar. It needs to be ready in four months. He will pay twenty-five percent up front. The working capital is long gone, and although Bobby has reserves from the sale of the villa and Max clearly has money, even if he is loathe to part with any of it, this uniquely designed floating stage is being funded from Joseph’s sale of his shares in M(cubed) and from his redundancy. If it weren’t in some parts exciting, it would represent financial madness on a scale that only disgraced RBS boss, Sir Fred Goodwin, would sanction.
At Heatwave’s Ayrshire HQ, Hammy is dealing with an increasing amount of calls and correspondence. The rate of these has ramped up dramatically in the three hours since the Breakfast TV incident. Everyone wants to speak with Max, including someone senior from the Scottish National Party. Hammy has been told to simply log names and numbers, or favourite and like the social media posts to the venture’s new accounts. That way they can filter out the time wasters and focus on the ones who will pay well for apparent exclusives. Max Mojo is from the Malcolm McLaren School of Music Business Hustling. He is looking for advances that most likely won’t – or can’t – be paid back, for exclusive access rights that will be ‘sold’ to multiple competing organisations. If it all works out as he sees it in his head, the subsequent legal actions brought by any of them will be immaterial. Max has one ace card up his sleeve. But it gives him a negotiating position. The Miraculous Vespas have never been signed to a major label. A recent reissue of the original mix of ‘It’s A Miracle (Thank You)’ was released by Max himself to coincide with the film premiere. He narcissistically recorded a live interview with the journalist Norma Niven and put an edited version of this on the single’s B-side. In fact all of the recorded material of The Miraculous Vespas now is now owned exclusively by Max. The protracted and bitter legal dispute that followed this settlement were the principal reason that Grant Delgado vowed never to record music again. Why would he now wish to put any more money in the pockets of someone whom he considered to be on a par with Rupert Murdoch in terms of devious duplicity?
This is exactly the conundrum being extensively considered over the dinner table in a small but handsome house in Portland, Oregon. The opportunity to turn his debut novel into celluloid is now everything to Grant. Maggie knows it and her regular chipping away at his intransigence is slowly but surely working. She has noticed that the one remaining guitar he has kept – the classic Rickenbacker bought in a small Kilmarnock music store on the same day he first met both Maggie and Max – has been retrieved from the loft and has been placed under his bed. It is as if he is nervously working up to a first date with an old girlfriend. Steve Buscemi has sweetened the deal with Grant by suggesting that he also score the movie. It is an interesting if unusual proposition that Grant hasn’t previously considered. Although anxious about committing to composing new music for the first time in almost twenty years, his novel The First Picture originated from an idea contained within the lyrics of the song of the same name. He recalls how impressed he was by Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack for the film There Will Be Blood, particularly as Greenwood’s day job – guitarist in Radiohead – offered so few clues about the austere and minimalist tone of the film’s music. Grant is enticed, undoubtedly, but agreeing to the Miraculous Vespas gig is a high price to be paid. It has taken him two months, and an intensive course of counselling, to cope with the unpredictable panics the situation has induced, but he has decided to say yes to Max Mojo, via Maggie, of course.
Simon Sylvester is still in prison. Not as an inmate, though; he is now a senior figure in an organisation called Jail Guitar Doors – named after The Clash song and founded by Billy Bragg and Mick Jones. The organisation has grown and Simon is now the head of its activities in Scotland. His job is important. It requires him to travel around the country’s various penal institutes, encouraging younger offenders to find rehab
ilitation through music, as he once did. Simon still occasionally teaches music but only to those whom his colleagues consider to have a real aptitude, talent or ability to concentrate. Simon Sylvester’s attitude to the prospect of playing with The Miraculous Vespas is surprising. He welcomes it, but purely because of the positive example this increased profile will potentially give to the various lost boys he now feels compelled to help. Simon Sylvester has changed in many ways.
Simon’s younger brother Eddie – The Miraculous Vespas’ mercurial but troubled guitarist – is less convinced about the merits of restringing his guitar for this particular gig. Eddie Sylvester was known as The Motorcycle Boy in the band’s initial, short-lived burst of fame. Eddie suffered from a multitude of mental-health issues, which were traced back to seeing his mum die in the family’s front garden. Eddie had been watching from his bedroom window as she cut the sodden grass following a heated argument with her husband, who should have done it earlier before the rain had started. She cut through the lawnmower cable. Eddie Sylvester played on stage wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet. It allowed him to block out the demons – the insistent voices in his head – and lose himself in the only thing that offered him sanctuary: playing guitar, like an effortless combination of Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Marr.
The reasons for Eddie Sylvester’s nonchalance about the impending gig are unsurprisingly complex. He has conquered many of his previous disorders and has normalised his relationships with others within his circle; which is now a religious one: Eddie Sylvester is a preacher. In 1995, he was informed by a psychic that he had been placed on Earth for a purpose, and that he would begin to receive messages from the spirit world. Subsequently, and using the money he was paid for appearing with the rest of The Miraculous Vespas on the now legendary ’95 Top of The Pops Christmas Special, Eddie Sylvester invested in a Doctorate of Divinity from an obscure community university in Utah. He is now the Reverend Doctor Edward Sylvester, leader of the Church of the Infinite Mind, based in Prestwick in a rented dilapidated shed on the local airport’s estate. The Reverend only wears emerald green clothes, believing the distinctive colour to be a conduit for positivity. Gone is the nervousness; it has been replaced by a stupidly deluded self-confidence. Edward Sylvester is considered a figure of fun by his local community. He refers to himself in the third person. In a local radio interview fifteen years ago, he proclaimed that the world as some knew it would end before he, the Reverend Doctor Edward Sylvester, was fifty. He knew this as the spirit world regularly contacted him and calmly informed him that he had been chosen as its saviour. The end, when it came, would be by earthquakes and tidal waves. Their initial epicentre was to be the Isle of Arran. In the aftermath of Edward’s subsequent public shaming, Simon had stopped trying to reach his brother. The negative associations were affecting his work with aggressive, hard-bitten youngsters, who were still capable of being saved, but in a different, more tangible way. Now, Edward Sylvester’s only contact is with his flock. They normally number ten, but only six if it’s methadone day at the clinics. The good Reverend Doctor spends every day communicating with the spirits and preparing for when the time comes for him to save the world. He prays that it’s soon. Some angry, vindictive people just don’t deserve to be saved.
Chapter Thirty-Two
June 2015. Crosshouse, Ayrshire
After a tempestuous and unpredictable May, June is shaping up to be more measured. A number of interviews have been carried out and all have swollen the Heatwave coffers, to some degree covering the escalating infrastructure costs. The social media campaigns are skyrocketing, and although it has taken him a while, Hammy is becoming a master of retweeting and instagram posting. The event’s Twitter account has almost half a million followers. BBC Scotland has filmed a feature comparing the growing clamour for the gig tickets as similar to that of the new Apple iPhone release. Max still hasn’t revealed that the tickets will be distributed freely via The Big Issue: he’ll leave that to the last few weeks in order to avoid some overeager young journalist blowing the promotional impact.
Hairy Doug has sourced the requisite sound and light equipment and has roped in a crew. They are nearly all as old as him but their experience will count for a lot, given the unusual nature of the rigging.
Joseph has approached Hettie to create a series of abstract posters advertising The Big Bang. They are beautiful and mysterious, and, as a series, they are increasingly colourful. They are being treated like collectable works of art in their own right and several are now being replicated in spray-paint on concrete as far afield as Barcelona and Buenos Aires. Hettie is glad to be able to help, and the poster campaign has also boosted interest in her own upcoming Gallery show.
Bobby has also been spending more time with Lizzie King. They have been out to dinner several times and, despite Hammy’s continued warnings that she’ll just break his heart again, Bobby considers it a risk worth taking.
Joseph Miller has been interviewed extensively by a series of design magazines keen to understand the conceptual philosophy behind the emerging stage design. He has been encouraged to enter the design for a number of European Design Awards, all coming with an entrance price tag, but again Max Mojo has encouraged this, ‘all publicity being good publicity etc’.
The Miraculous Vespas have arrived in Scotland and, despite the periodic activity of newpaper men, media men and fans of the band from various locations hoping for tickets or information about how they can be acquired, the band – minus the Reverend Doctor – have been smuggled into the Manse without anyone knowing they are there. After the scrutiny around Operation Double Nougat, Washer Wishart erected a large boundary wall around the church grounds. All involved in the Big Bang are very grateful that he did.
Simon did visit his brother in Prestwick but left quickly. Edward had talked in riddles. He wanted to pray with, and for, his brother. He hoped to offer him salvation, although he found it hard to explain exactly what Simon needed saving from. Simon pities his brother. He has always seemed lost, but this wilderness is something different altogether. The only saving grace appears to be that he is content in this advanced state of madness. Simon asked him to do The Big Bang in the hope that the comparative normality of a one-off gig on a floating stage, playing to a small audience of sea-faring travellers, all compressed on the tiny shingle beach of an uninhabited island might shake the shite out of him; but as he explained the premise in detail, Simon Sylvester began to feel that his words seemed more mental than his brother’s. He left with the get-out clause: ‘Well, if ye’ll no’ dae it for anythin’ else, just dae it for the money. Every other cunt’s only dain’ it for that. Ye’ll can get the roof on this fuckin’ place fixed at least!’
Back at HQ, Max reasoned that of all of them, the artist formerly known as The Motorcycle Boy was the most dispensible. Just stick a helmet on any cunt that can pass the first round of a Britain’s Got Talent audition and nobody would be any the wiser. But much of the Vespas distinctive sound came from Eddie’s guitar, so Grant Delgado wants him in; Eddie’s inclusion has therefore become just another potential obstacle Max has to fix.
For now Bobby and Joseph are sitting on a small speedboat, chartered privately. They are heading across calm water towards Bobby’s island. With only two months to go, they have concluded that a detailed recce of the place is essential. The final documents of sale have been concluded and Bobby feels they should now spend a night on the island, protected only from the arbitrary elements by the tent they have brought with them, at the very least because they’re expecting five hundred other people to do the same.
The shape of the rocks changes gradually as they approach the shallower water. They have sailed from Ayr. From a number of places on the coast – Ayr, Girvan, Troon, Irvine – the island looks the closest. But it’s merely an optical illusion exaggerated by the curvature of the Ayrshire coastline that seems to surround it – the same type of illusion that doubtless persuaded prisoners on Alcatraz that they could swim to the
mainland. The boat slows as it closes in. The swell of the sea seems to grow out of the flat calm they have traversed. Razorbills swoop and guillemots bob. The boat sails closer, slower again. The bird population becomes apparent. There are thousands of the fuckers.
‘Never mind them bein’ aggravated by the music, they’ll have a fuckin’ field day wi’ aw the chips and cheese!’ Bobby remarks.
The speedboat pulls close to the narrow wooden jetty. The island’s unique shape looks totally different now they’re standing on it. It actually does feel like a desert island, especially today, with the unseasonal heat of the Ayrshire coast at its warmest. Joseph has studied plans of this part of the island’s shore. It is where the available ground widens most and in truth is the only useable terrain on which to locate a crowd of people in comparative safety. The jetty will need reinforcing: this is Joseph’s first observation; plus there is clearly no way that the bulk of the world’s oldest operating paddle steamer, which has been taking Glaswegian punters ‘doon the watter’ for over fifty years will get anywhere near the island’s only dropping off point. As the stage construction has developed, Joseph has become more interested in the techniques of ship and yacht design and construction. He researched the Waverley when it became a possible, if unlikely, transportation option for band and audience, and knows that, despite its relatively low draught, there is no way the waters around the perimeter of such a tiny island are deep enough to take the vessel. This is noted in the Joseph Miller ledger as Problem No.1.
In a series of post-sale conversations with the Conservation Trust, which initially tried to block his purchase, Bobby has agreed a tentative compromise. The existence of another private landowner isn’t an issue for the Trust per se; and their reservations about the damage that could be done to the breeding colonies have been assuaged by Bobby’s offer to gift the parts of the island that he won’t be using back to the Trust, post the event. Everyone has their price, it seems and everyone’s principles are ultimately up for sale. He’s learned this from Max, who so far, has proved to be pinpoint accurate. But, as they walk the flat base-land that should become the area for tents, allowing everyone to remain here overnight, Problem No. 2 emerges. Beyond the ruined Ailsa Craig Castle, there is only one reasonably substantial structure on the island: the old white lighthouse. The only other structures are four separate cottages for the lighthouse men. As should have been anticipated, they all need refurbishment to a greater or lesser degree. It remains the plan that the band, crew and Heatwave Promotions’ directors, staff, media pack and sponsor VIPs will stay in the buildings overnight. It is a romantic notion, but this isn’t Ibiza; the Scottish climate is unpredictable and the beaches of the Balearics have a regular supply of public utilities that seem to be missing from Ailsa Craig. The lighthouse has been converted to run on solar power – a persuasive notion on such a mesmeringly beautiful day: the type of day that can persuade a pale-blue skinned Scotsman like Joseph Miller that sleeping out here, under a blanket of glistening stars, is exactly what Gary Cassidy longed for. The peace and tranqulity and the raw, natural, rugged beauty of the bizarre topography makes the two even more determined that the lack of services can be overcome. They press on.
The Man Who Loved Islands Page 25