by Liza Cody
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘You mean it’s not a done deal?’
‘You might say that.’
‘Me and my big mouth,’ he said, sounding pleasingly anxious.
‘Oh, it’s fine from my point of view,’ I told him. ‘I’m happy to know how they’re thinking on the top floor. It’ll give me more negotiating clout, but …’
‘Me and my very big flapping mouth. For God’s sake, Birdie, don’t tell them where the information came from.’
I laughed. He was saying exactly what I was wanting to hear.
He said, ‘Please, Birdie. I’m on a knife edge as it is. Wrong accent, wrong era. Dog’s dumping people right, left and centre. I’m fucked in the long run. I know that.’
Oh yes, the music business is a greasy pole all right – hard to climb, terrifyingly easy to slide down.
‘I think I’m only kept on the payroll because of this retro thing,’ Ozzy said.
‘Why don’t you get out?’ I asked. I could ask myself the same question.
‘It’s what I know,’ he said.
Good safe answer, and I suppose I could say the same thing. ‘Or move sideways? Management? Work for yourself. Publishing?’
‘Too much paper in publishing.’
Amen, I said silently.
‘I’ve thought about managing though. I’m well-placed to make a go of that. But I do need the old salary for a while yet.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘InnerVersions needs a good manager. All they’ve got is a so-so drummer who thinks he’s way more together than he is.’
‘It’s a thought,’ he said.
‘So think about it.’ But I could hear the baby crying again in the background and I wondered if he’d have the balls to jump before someone pushed him. And maybe he was too honest and too trusting. Look what he told me! He hasn’t a clue how important that piece of information is.
I say, ‘Ozzy, I think maybe InnerVersions could be part of my negotiations with Dog. It looks like they’re bending over backwards to sweeten me up for that deal which you know nothing about and about which you kept your very big flapping mouth shut.’
‘You won’t let on? Birdie, you’re a princess.’ Some people are so easy to reassure.
I say, ‘But Ozzy, think about it. If Dog are trying to keep me sweet, and I want them to make a deal with Inner Versions, then chances are, Inner Versions could have a deal. How nice a deal depends on who’s representing them. If it’s Flambo, they’ll be fucked-over twice before breakfast. However, if a guy with several years of experiences in the business and a good working knowledge of Dog took a hand in it …’
‘See what you mean.’
‘Well, your first clients could be paying clients. Wouldn’t that be a good start?’
‘It needs thinking about,’ he says. Disappointing.
I say, ‘Hey, why don’t I do it myself?’
‘Hold on, Birdie, I said I was thinking about it.’ Better.
‘I’m not management material,’ I say, as if I haven’t heard him, ‘but I know I could cut a stronger deal than Flambo.’
‘I’d have to start my own business. It’s expensive.’ Wimp.
‘All I’d need is phone, fax and p.c. And lots of contacts,’ I say thoughtfully. ‘I could do it from home to begin with.’
Jack and I had a company once. We set it up to protect his publishing rights and to buy back his old catalogue. It was called Jackdaw Corps. There were four shares. He had three and I had one.
Ah, well, who cares? It became Jackdaw Corpse soon enough, and the liquidator sold it for a song to the very people from whom we’d bought back Jack’s old list. Great idea, that one, great protection.
‘Everyone needs protection,’ I say to Ozzy.
‘I just had a thought,’ he says. ‘Maybe you’re going to need representation too – with this thing I know nothing about.’
In your dreams, Ozzy Ireland.
‘That’s a thought,’ I say. ‘Except obviously there’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Obviously.’
‘On the other hand, if someone were representing me, perhaps I could get off wages and back on points for songs I write or co-write.’
‘Actually, I’ve never understood that about you, Birdie. Other people who deserve it less get way more credit than you do. Why?’
‘Don’t ask,’ I say. ‘You know what happens when you’re in no position to bargain.’
Like when all your earnings in the UK are already garnished because you owe an unimaginable sum to the taxman, and if you want to keep any at all you have to be paid in cash under the table.
‘So you might need an agent or a manager?’ Ozzy says. ‘Because it’d be a whole lot more attractive going into business for two clients than just for one.’
‘Are you hustling me?’ I ask with a breathless, defenceless laugh.
‘I’m offering to hustle for you,’ he says bravely. I listen carefully, but I can’t hear the baby any more.
‘Best offer I’ve had all day,’ I say. ‘Looks like we’ve both got a bit to think about.’
‘See you tonight?’ he says.
Oh yes. Got to see if my baby band has learned to crawl while I was away. Has Karen acquired the balls to use her new voice in front of a crowd? Will Sapper support her on her songs the way she supports him on his? Has Dram brought a little more discipline and a little less arty-axeman attitude to his technique? Might Corky have, just once, played against a metronome and checked to see if his instinctive sense of time is quite as brilliant as he thinks it is? And Flambo? Will he ever come to the sad conclusion that he is not Mick Fleetwood or Keith Moon and stop being the playground bully?
Oh, yeah, the continuing saga of a baby band. Less a musical than a soap. Tune in this evening at a scruffy club near you for tonight’s thrilling episode.
Meanwhile, I must cover my footprints and wipe away all traces of the private work I’ve been doing in this office – including the draft of an anonymous communication sent to Barry Stears about the existence of at least ten unreleased tracks by the great Jack. It was sent from LA and it told of how greedy, thieving Birdie Walker attached her sticky little fingers to materials that were rightfully the property of Square Hole Records and spirited them out of the country.
George and Tina marvel at my efficiency and the way I take care of every little detail, so that when they’re out in the field, they never have to think about what’s happening back at the shop. I make sure they never forget a piece of equipment or paper, and they never have to interrupt a job or a meeting.
I organise the shit out of them so that when they’re gone they stay bloody gone and don’t come back to find me trying to work out what happened to Cutz UK or where Cutz Cayman’s considerable assets went. Or I might be following the path that Square Hole took after it was bought by XY, which was in turn subsumed by Mo’Zee, which may, in the near future, eat a Dog. It’s a big project, because it’s also useful to learn what happened to the personnel at each stage. Which MD turned up on which board? Who was paid off? Who died? Who’s pulling all those tangled strings now?
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the music business. But the funny thing is that it isn’t all music. Cutz Cayman, for instance, wasn’t about music at all. It was about money. And the money from an odd little Latin number called ‘Dance for Daddy’ didn’t sit in a bank for twenty years gathering dust and interest. No, it was used to develop hotels and holiday villages all around the Caribbean. ‘Dance for Daddy’ was a nice little earner. For someone.
Big dogs eat little dogs. Little dogs eat lesser dogs, and so on – down to the fleas on their backs. Poor fleas, hopping around, looking for a mouthful, writing their songs, hoping for a starring role in the flea circus – chomp-slurp, and you’re history.
At the time, I never knew how small I was. I was courted and fêted, illuminated by flashbulbs. So was Jack. We were protected, transported, interviewed. Jack played to stadia. He was seen on TV by millions of people at a t
ime. He was loved, sought after, waited for by heads of state. Nobody knew he was a flea. Except at the end, maybe Jack guessed it himself.
We were at a celebrity charity auction once – the sort of glittering bun-fight where nobs and moguls are shamed by their wives into buying one of Lee Marvin’s paintings or one of Barbra Streisand’s fingernails or a denim jacket Marlon Brando wore once upon a time. Not our scene at all. In fact, so very not our scene that we ignored the invitation. But the organiser was a fan, and she needed yoof and live entertainment to jazz up her middle-aged freak show. And Jack was the happening thing. So she put the arm on the top banana of a TV station who owed her husband a favour. The top banana put the arm on the head honcho of Jack’s US label. And the head honcho put the arm on Jack.
The deal was that Jack had to do a short acoustic set and then sell one song to the highest bidder and sing it especially for him or her. And me? I was the hottest chick in town so what did I have to auction? Well, it was a kiss. Oh my! A true reflection of my talent.
It didn’t matter that we were in a Bel Air studio at the time doing the overdubs for a record which was already over-schedule and over-budget. We were dusted off and wheeled out to be auctioned for charity.
‘We’re just meat on the hoof,’ Jack said, in the limo. ‘They might as well cut us up for the finger buffet and serve us with asparagus tips.’
There was a sweet corollary to this incident which I never told Jack: the plump and powerful pig who bought my kiss enjoyed it so much that he offered me five thousand dollars to spend the night with him. When it finally got through to him that I was insulted he gave me a list of singers and film stars he’d bought for the same amount. Eventually he upped the offer to twenty thousand. At least when you play the whore you have a say in how much you’re sold for. There’s a very direct relationship between goods, services and money in that business. I might have been a flea, but I was a flea who knew her price.
What I didn’t know was that the pig videoed his night of passion. I found out years later when his son tried to sell the video back to me after the pig died of fatty heart disease. By that time I had no money and no reputation anyway, so I just laughed. Who knows what happened to the video.
Today, a delivery man brought in a box of assorted stationery which needed to be signed for. While I was checking the contents against the invoice he said, ‘What a way to spend your life, eh? Stuck in here counting envelopes and paper clips. At least I’m out driving around and meeting people.’
He’d looked at me and thought I was someone who’d spent her whole life checking invoices. No twenty-thousand-dollar nights for a middle-aged office manager apparently. No champagne adventures. I am what a delivery man expects to see. Perhaps I should start wearing lipstick to work.
That night, wearing lipstick, I took Grace and Alec to listen to Inner Versions. Oh, I’m so cool, I always know where the next band is coming from. What a rave! They know I’m working but I include them. How kind. Party time.
The band was already playing when we walked in. They were playing what used to be an endless, shapeless number called ‘More and More’. Now it’s four minutes long and called ‘Gimme More’. And it’s tight. It’s so tight that the dance floor is packed, and Grace heads straight for it towing Alec by the hand.
I stood for a minute and watched the dancers. Clearly, they trusted the band. They got up and moved because it was easier to dance than to sit still and drink. The band carried them there and they knew they were in safe hands. It was a good sight to see – a visible sign of progress.
I was waiting particularly for the end of the break between two choruses, because if the band was going to lose its nerve and blow it, that’s where they’d do it. There were two linking bars which could lose them all the trust they’d built. They had trouble with them because they were so spare and simple it made them nervous.
Here we go, hiatus time. The band stops playing. The solid mass of sound is suspended. Karen peels away with a lonely electric sound. She climbs into the sudden silence with an ascending run – a modified minor pentatonic scale, sixteen beats to the bar. Half way up, she meets Corky coming down – a punched-out bass line, one and two, three, four and … wait for it now, hold your breath, we’re coming home … and bang, everyone hits the key chord together. And it’s loud. Tension released. Whoosh. Oh yeah, let’s dance!
Excellent. Well done, babes, mama’s proud of you. Wasn’t that worth a little work?
Karen is almost laughing, triumphant. Go for it, girl.
It was such a small thing – just two bars – but it depended on precision. The people from Dog probably wouldn’t even notice.
They were sitting at a table in a central position, giving nothing away. I slid through the crowd and sat at the edge of the group, nodding hello to Sasson and Ozzy. Sasson was watching Sapper. I half closed my eyes and tried to see Sapper for the first time too, ignoring the fact that he was an arrogant little shit who still took his laundry home to his mother. Can he make me believe in him? Because, in this game, it doesn’t matter a dry fart who does your laundry. It’s the illusion that counts.
IV
Dance the Night Away
Helen and Petra stood side by side in front of the mirror, their slippery strappy dresses almost touching. They looked like sisters, but they were best friends.
Helen said, ‘Try it up.’
Petra lifted her hair off her neck and turned slowly from left to right.
‘You should wear it up,’ Helen said.
‘It makes my face look too long,’ Petra said, staring at her own neck. A boyfriend once told her that she had a neck like a model. She loved her neck.
Helen, too, looked at Petra’s slender neck. ‘You’re right,’ she said. Petra had too many advantages already.
‘No, be honest,’ Petra said.
‘I was being.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ Petra said. ‘I want him to notice us, that’s all. Do you really think my face is too long?’
They were brimful of optimism and self-doubt. They knew which was the band’s table. They knew exactly the spot on the dance floor they should occupy when the disco took over from the band. They had practised cool moves and body-rolls in Helen’s bedroom until they looked like a pair of sophisticated clubbers. Their dresses had caused rows with their parents. But was it enough to make Sapper look at them? And if he looked, what would he see?
‘Oh God,’ said Helen. ‘I think I’ve started to bloat.’ She turned sideways in the mirror. ‘Do you think I’m looking bloated?’
‘It doesn’t notice,’ Petra said. She let her hair fall to her shoulders. A million magazines, a million pop videos, had shown her what the perfect face looked like. Surely hers was only a little too long.
‘Oh God,’ they said in unison, and attacked their make-up again.
Sapper comes off stage, his skin vibrating, applause acting on him like a cocaine body-rub.
Someone presses a beer into his hand, says, ‘Good set, man. Wow.’
Dram and Corky stumble towards him. What are they doing here? Surely he’s alone. Two minutes ago he’d owned the stage, the music. He’d been in sole command. The applause was his.
Dram says, ‘Fuck! We’re shooting ’em dead tonight.’
Stay cool. ‘It went okay,’ Sapper says.
‘Get you!’ Corky says. ‘Mr Ice. You can’t kid me. I saw you lapping it up.’
Sapper tips his head back and lets a mouthful of beer slide down his throat. His throat feels like a polished, oiled tube, infinitely supple. Could be those vocal exercises mean something. Could be they’re worth more than Flambo says.
He searches through the crowd, looking for Birdie. She’s been so focused on his faults. Where is she when he’s showing his strengths?
There she is, on the other side of the room at a table with the record company suits. She’s languid, keeping her distance, making the hard club chair look comfortable. Before Sapper can decide to risk Corky’s barbe
d comments about arse-licking and go over to talk to her, she rises and follows Karen to the women’s room.
‘Typical,’ Flambo mutters. ‘I always thought Karen was a closet dyke.’
‘She wasn’t before she started shagging you,’ jeers Corky.
Karen began the set with shaking hands and her heart in her mouth. She ended it on an unaccustomed spasm of triumph. Is this what confidence is? she asked herself, this feeling that you have what you’re doing under your own control.
The bit she never told the others in Inner Versions was that the weeks in the rehearsal room, the writing, arranging and practising were a pleasure to her. They bitched and complained. They said, ‘This is a farce and a waste of time: we should be out there playing live.’
She, on the other hand, felt for the first time that she was coming to grips with the material. In private.
Now they were testing the material and she still felt she’d kept a grip on it. Even in public.
The women’s room is crowded. When she walked through, the other women turned to watch her and for once she didn’t feel they would all start sniggering behind her back.
She takes several deep breaths to calm herself. Having tasted confidence, she is suddenly afraid of arrogance.
But Birdie hugs her and says, ‘Good stuff, kid. Mama’s proud of you.’
‘You’re just saying that,’ Karen replies automatically.
‘There’s only you between prod and proud,’ Birdie says. And Karen can’t figure out what she means.
With the set finished Helen and Petra have to jostle to keep their places in front of the mirror. They see Karen come in and go straight to one of the bogs.
‘That’s Karen,’ someone says.
Helen and Petra have seen her on-stage but they didn’t know her name. She isn’t Sapper, so she doesn’t count.
‘We could get to know her,’ Petra whispers. ‘It’s a way to meet HIM.’
The old woman who came in with Karen is washing her hands.
‘Do you think that’s Karen’s mum?’ Helen whispers.
A tall girl pushes through the swing door, all hair and energy. She rushes up to the old woman and says, ‘It’s great, Lin. I wish I’d worn those other shoes.’