We Are Toten Herzen

We Are Toten Herzen Page 6

by C Harrison

RavensWish - omg new @totenherzen track released #givemeyourheart rocks cant wait to see the vid dee vincent sounds a bit weird what they do to her voice?

  13 (May)

  He wondered when the call would come. Marco Jongbloed knew it would be made only after Toten Herzen's first incarnation, but not this long after. He had almost given up on the idea. In the years since The Plan was drawn up he'd been married, had kids, built and sold a business and grown old. He could deal with the first four events, but growing old, that was the killer. That sucked.

  But no use grumbling now, the call had come and he was off, maybe not so quick out of the starting blocks, but quick enough. He left the low open fire to crackle alone in the lounge; the landscaped gardens outside peered in wondering what the fuss was. Into the hall, long and slender, bare wood, white walls, nothing to interfere with the Giacomettis or the line of sketches by Klimt. He bounded up the stairs and along the top of the open well of the geometric stainless steel dining room below. Through a partition door he entered the original part of the house with its crooked timbers that were even more ancient than his sixty three year old bones, mullioned windows like compound eyes, low ceiling intent on making him crouch before he was ready to crouch. One day he would scuttle through this part of the house like a hermit, but not yet. He was still in his slender steely years, not ready for the crook and beams of his twilight.

  The room he eventually found himself in was a box room. A repository of cardboard waste, files, shelves crammed with old books and magazines - cars, bikes, photography, old music periodicals and newspapers - yellowed, some of them on the verge of powdery disintegration. On the floor were bigger boxes full of old telephones, prototype mobile handsets when batteries were almost as big as televisions. He couldn't even remember what some of the other gadgets were. Cables: straight, coiled, caked in dust . . . what the hell were they doing here? What possible purpose could they serve other than to strangle someone? The box he thought he was looking for offered no prize. It was a jumbled pile of scrapbooks with cuttings of Toten Herzen headlines, articles, stories, reports, the whole dreadful story played out in big bold letters and hazy pointillist photographs. Jongbloed allowed himself to search through the pile a little more slowly, but the procession of portraits and images like a ghostly roll call eventually forced him back to the quest.

  The Plan. Where is it?

  The shelves around him were bending with old business files and, in one corner, a bust of Beethoven. But no Plan. A crate next to a discarded bass guitar contained musical manuscripts, a foot pedal, two old microphones, part of a microphone stand and the handle that should have been on the case to carry the discarded bass guitar. But no Plan. The old cabinet with shoe boxes of music tapes, was actually empty. So, no Plan there either. He took a stack of books off an armchair, put them inside the cabinet and sat down. Jongbloed, surrounded by detritus and junk, exhaled. And the thing was, the annoying fact about all this, there was an absence of memories. Hardly anything he had rummaged through was here for nostalgic reasons. There were no keepsakes, no mementos, no treasures. It was the room of what never became. The room of lost opportunity.

  Had events turned out slightly different, Marco Jongbloed would probably have been sat amongst framed platinum discs, gold discs, silver discs, photos of famous people, photos of crowds, of arenas; photos on the road, on the tour bus, on the floor of a hotel. But there was none of that. Instead he had deals, purchases, investment meetings and apart from keeping the receipts they didn't really come with memorabilia. No one ever became misty eyed over that meeting in Groningen in '84; there were no fond memories of the licensing agreement of '89; no need to get out the Macallan and tell stories of the programme of expansion in '95. It didn't work like that. Business was business and show business wasn't real business. Show business, when it worked out, left you with an indelible tidemark and bad skin, a house full of reminders and an autobiography people would read. Business, when it worked out, just made you rich. The only positive side to all this unwanted, unwarranted rubbish was the certainty that The Plan had never been thrown out. One last look around gave no clues, but then he remembered.

  The Plan wasn't in here, because it wasn't junk. It had never been discarded, was never rendered obsolete. It was still a live document, a work in progress. It was in his library. Jongbloed upped and left, scurrying back to the extension, to the white walled modernity. The library was at the opposite end of the house facing the woodland that screened the house from the North Sea coast. He could hear the waves when the doors were open. Without any effort he scanned the books and there, at the end of a line of encyclopedias was a comb bound document, A3 in size and folded in half. He took it down and with barely contained excitement flicked through the pages. And it was all still there: the chapters; the section summaries; processes, methodology, protocols, rules and guidelines; ambitions, aspirations, targets, time-lines and diagrams; maps, drawings sketched by hand, drawings produced by computer, plans, elevations, isometric angles, exploded views; specifications, descriptions, details. . . . All of it, all intact, all complete. Perfect in its construction, simple in its ambition. After thirty five years of dormancy, ready to be revived.

  14 (May)

  As late night conference calls go this was one of the more complex and fraught that Jan Moencker had been involved in. At one end of the line in Rotterdam was Rob Wallet struggling to communicate the shitstorm blowing around him and in the malevolent atmosphere illustrate how unhappy the band were with the remix and the not insignificant fact that Moencker had sent it to Sony without their prior approval (and the colossal fact that someone had leaked it online for the whole world to judge). On another phone line, in a small recording studio in Berlin, was Martin Lundqvist who had carried out the remix and was casually justifying the 'muted lead guitars,' and the over-autotuned vocals, and the distant drums, and the excessive reverb, and the absence of any serious bass, in addition to the left right panning of the intro, and the flat mix and out of context vocal fills, and the omission of Dee's voice in favour of some unknown singer. In short, an unholy mess, to paraphrase Wallet.

  "It will appeal to a wider demographic," pleaded Lundqvist.

  "It sounds like something Lady Gaga would play around with," said Wallet.

  "Lady Gaga's big," said Lundqvist.

  "Rob, there's no harm in reaching out to that audience if you can catch some of it," said Moencker. "Beg, steal, borrow an existing fan base to get you going."

  "We don't want to catch part of that fucking audience, Jan," said Wallet. "We have an audience. They're called rock fans. Not pop fans. Toten Herzen are not a fucking pop group."

  "Rob," said Lundqvist, "at the moment Toten Herzen are not anything. They're four memories from a different era. They might not be interested in earning any money, but some of us have bills to pay and that means getting the music out there in a form that sells?"

  "Country and western sells, Martin. Why not just mix in a slide guitar and some harmonica?"

  "I don't know why you're so upset, Rob," said Moencker who was running out of fingernails to chew. "The suits at Sony were impressed. They liked it after one hearing, straight back on the phone wanting to take it further. They want to meet you and here we are yelling at one another because you don't like the sound of the guitars."

  "I'm not getting through to you am I? What did I say to you before you met the band? Be honest with them."

  "That's all a bit sentimental," added Lundqvist. "Does that still happen in the real world?"

  "You said yourself, Jan, you sat in that chair and you said I will not fuck with you guys. And they trusted you."

  Moencker needed to turn down the heating in his office. "And I also said to you and to them they would need to develop a thicker skin. And it sounds like they're throwing their toys out of the pram because they didn't like the sound of the guitars. Rob you have to persuade them to understand how the industry works now. This is not the stage to get picky about details. Wait unt
il you're in the studio with the money in the bank. We're over the first hurdle, for god's sake don't throw it away at this stage."

  "It's not just the guitars, Jan," said Wallet.

  "What is it?" said Moencker falling into his chair. Eva Matheus's CD was still on his desk. He hadn't listened to it and couldn't find the enthusiasm to endure any more of her observations on loss and regret. Moencker already had that by the tonne.

  "Come to the point, Rob," said Lundqvist. "It's getting late."

  "We've started everything on the wrong foot, Jan. Sony have heard this demo and now they'll expect more of the same. And that's not us."

  "Rob, Rob, you are getting not just a modern sound, but an effective modern sound," said Lundqvist. "Listen to Jan. It got the band through the door and he's sweated blood to get this song heard. Do you even know what you're talking about?"

  "What I'm talking about, look, both of you," said Wallet, "if you take a swing at a golf ball and you start it off a few millimetres out it eventually veers off into the rough. . . . " Wallet went quiet.

  "Well you're up there with the old rockers now, Rob," said Lundqvist laughing. "You know you guys couldn't be managed worse if Susan Bekker's mother was in charge."

  "Martin," said Moencker, taking the silence as a warning, "I think it would be a good idea if you shut up for a moment."

  "At last you've said something I agree with." Susan Bekker had taken the phone off Wallet. "I'll say this once. You made a promise to us that you'd let us hear the remix before it went away."

  "Susan, it was a question of timing. I had to get the file to Todd Moonaj at Sony before he went on vacation. There was no point sending it to anyone else. They couldn't make a decision. He was going away for two weeks and I don't have two weeks, Susan. I really don't have two weeks, do you understand?" Moencker hurled Eva's disc at the far wall.

  "Was this guy stood in line on the tarmac at the airport? The song is six minutes long; you couldn't send us that electronically so that we could hear it first? My belief is you didn't want us to hear it because you knew we'd stop it and you didn't want it stopping. My belief, Jan, is that you just want a result and any old shit will do so long as you get what you want."

  "It's not like that, Susan. We're running against time here. It's nothing more sinister than that," said Moencker. He waited for a reply. "My job is always against the clock. What I'm doing for you is no different than anyone else. Trust me."

  "And who the fuck is this other prick?" said Susan with a darkening tone of voice.

  "Jan," Lundqvist was trying to get a word in.

  "Just a moment, Martin. Susan, who do you mean?"

  "Jan."

  "This little pumped up piece of shit who did the remix? Was it his idea to make it sound like this or yours?"

  "Susan, let's just leave things as they are and move on. I will make it up to you, I promise, you'll see how this works out. . . ."

  "Jan!" Lundqvist was yelling.

  "What?"

  "Jan, Susan Bekker is standing right next me!"

  "What? Susan, I thought you were in Rotterdam?"

  "I don't care where you think I am. Let me tell you again because I hate it when I can't make myself clear to people. You broke your word. Fuck the guitars, it's the trust that's the big deal here. Ten years ago I wouldn't have given you a second chance for that, but I'm a little more tolerant these days. So make things right. Let Sony know that the demo was a mistake. You make it public that the leaked audio file is nothing to do with us, that we had no part in it, is unauthorised and does not have our approval. However you word it I'll leave it up to you, but you put things right, is that understood?"

  "Yes," Moencker was listening to Susan, but he knew before she spoke what she wanted. It was almost a relief, whatever happened now, the meeting was on and he could sit back issuing take down notices to websites, whatever. The meeting was on. "Leave it with me. I'll contact Rob when I've spoken to the people at Sony okay?"

  "No, it's not okay. You won't be dealing with him any more, you deal directly with me."

  "Fine. I'll be in touch."

  "Goodnight."

  Moencker put the phone down. The broken case of Eva's disc reflected the ceiling lights. Moencker looked around for a spare. He even had time to go to Eva's show, though he wasn't sure what he could tell her. No, he could tell her anything. Another artist spotted. Two in a month, chalk and cheese, the sublime and the ridiculous. Then he remembered Martin Lundqvist and rang his number, but it went straight to voicemail. The options were to stay here and let Lundqvist, a grown man, take care of himself. Or he could go round to his studio and walk in on god knows what! No, Moencker had his meeting. Time to go home.

  -

  To the east of Rotterdam, in the loneliest farmhouse on earth, Rob Wallet listened as Susan and Moencker hung up. So that was it then. He was out of the equation and without any evident responsibilities. Surplus. Redundant. Dee Vincent was the only person in the room standing; astonished at what she'd been listening to. She started to practice her golf swing.

  "You know it's like when you take a five iron, but you mean to play a sand wedge and you hit that ball and it just comes off the heel and spins right and then you're looking around those lateral water hazards hoping that Peter fucking Alison hasn't run off with your ball in his mouth. You stupid fucker!"

  She wasn't alone with an opinion. "Are we expected to let you handle the management responsibilities of this band," added Elaine with her eyes closed. "We are so so so fucking angry with all this shit and you start talking about a wayward golf shot?"

  "I'm sorry. I talk in metaphors sometimes."

  "I talk in metaphors sometimes," Dee mimicked. "Sounded more like a fucking allegory to me. You'd think a public schoolboy would know the difference. Useless bastard. You've been a freeloader since the day you knocked on our door. Susan should have left you in jail. Four critics would still be alive if it wasn't for you."

  "Where did Susan go?" said Wallet.

  -

  Martin Lundqvist sat in the chair of the recording studio control room more carefully than he had ever done anything in his life. Susan Bekker walked in front of him. "Turn everything on, set everything up and then we're going to record the guitar parts until they're just how I want them."

  Lundqvist obeyed.

  "And if it takes us forever then that's how long it will take."

  Lundqvist nodded. "Your guitar."

  "What about it?"

  "Where is it?"

  "Oh, it's right here." She was holding it! A black Gibson Flying V. Susan rested the pointed ends of the body against Lundqvist's chair, pinning him in place. The headstock nuzzled tightly against her stomach. Without the blink of an eye, she grabbed the arms of the chair, impaled herself on the neck of the instrument and pulled her body along it until she was face to face with the petrified producer. She gasped, inhaled a long deep satisfying breath and laughed revealing razor canines licked with the teasing tip of her tongue. Lundqvist started crying.

  "It sounds so much better when I tune it this way."

  INDEPENDENT COMMENT - Andrew Parnell

  A digital stake through the heart

  It now seems that when Toten Herzen's comeback single Give Me Your Heart was leaked online the only people in the world who batted an eyelid were the band. The backtracking by Sony's European A&R representative Jan Moencker was so hasty it's easy to assume that before a contract has even been signed a huge rift has opened up between the band and their would be (could be) record label.

  'The band in no way endorse, approve or support this track; it's re-engineering, remixing, release and unauthorised uploading to social media sites was done without the band's consent. All four members are disappointed and extremely angry at this unfortunate episode.'

  It's the 'extremely angry' bit that should have people worrying. Just ask Micky Redwall, Lenny Harper, Mike Gannon or even Martin Lundqvist, the producer of the single who has already been hospitalised aft
er being subjected to noise levels in his Berlin recording studio, reportedly in excess of 160 decibels. Someone obviously made a mistake and by the sounds of it are now worried sick, but there is a lesson here that Toten Herzen must also learn, no matter how hard it may be to stomach.

  In the 1970s, when the band first experienced success, they would have been unaware of the extent of people borrowing and copying their albums and singles. Ignorance is bliss, but with no way of knowing the scale of the copying they could happily carry on without seeing proof of the effect on their incomes. Not so today. Give Me Your Heart will have been listened to on Youtube and links from Facebook and Twitter. Bit torrents will be heading their way along cable lines as we speak and if they want to, the band will be able to see just how many times the song has been 'viewed', 'liked,' 'favourited' and downloaded. It may make grim reading that quantifies their anguish and puts accurate numbers to their sense of outrage.

  And they'll just have to get used to it. They can probably expect to see twenty to thirty per cent of their material disappear through the darker regions of the internet without anyone paying a penny. Back in the 1970s if a bell at Toten Herzen's headquarters had rung every time one of their songs was copied the constant noise would have driven them mad. No doubt this one solitary episode will have set alarm bells ringing long before the first act of this comeback is about to begin.

  15 (May)

  The gods were always looking down on people, thought Rob Wallet as he sat back along the windscreen of the car gazing up at the head of Draco. They created humans to make themselves look good. That's confidence for you: impress your peers by surrounding yourself with losers. "You know, you look nothing like a woman sat in a chair," he drawled at Cassiopeia. "Queen of the couch potatoes. You could be anything." All of them for that matter. Hercules, let's cut to the chase, it's a giant swastika, whatever time of year you clock him; a celestial nazi. "Like this bastard here. Draco the Dragon. In the cold light of day you look more like a fucking tadpole." Pegasus looked nothing like any horse he'd ever seen. Oh, the old myths bigged that one up. Untouchable, unobtainable. "Re: a euphemism for stuck-up, arrogant. Or, wait, is it a metaphor . . . or an allegory. You still don't look like a fucking horse."

  Wallet fiddled with the car keys. His original plan was to drive, drive anywhere, but whichever direction he chose would take him nowhere he wanted to go. Not even back home to pick up where he left off the previous year. His old career in journalism had been taking in water before finally sinking and his options now were the graveyard shifts of low paid work and a life of nocturnal secrecy, or stay here and be humiliated every waking moment. Overconfident, unrealistic and deceitful, like a one man myth he had acted out virtually every vice contained in that starry gallery circulating above him.

  In the forty eight hours since the conference call with Moencker the offending track had gone, extinguished, taken down from the internet wherever it was found. But like any crime scene the evidence was still there: descriptions of it in blogs and online articles, broken links; digital DNA scattered all over the place. Wallet closed his eyes and spread his arms out across the top of the windscreen. His right hand brushed something fabric, leathery. It was Susan's jacket.

  "Susan?"

  "It's half past three in the morning," she said quietly.

  "Where've you been?"

  "Finishing off some work. Getting the guitar levels right. They're much louder now. I've had a few conversations with people, called in some favours." She leaned back against the wing of the car placing her silhouette across the constellations along the horizon. "I hope you still feel pretty shit about what's happened."

  "I do. Even saying sorry makes it seem worse.

  "Yeah, it does. Spare us the self pity. But you have to make any opportunity you can out of something like this so Moencker's got us a meeting and that will give us an insight into how these people work, how things are done, maybe introduce us to a real manager.

  "So you're gonna meet with Sony?"

  "Why not? We don't have to say yes. It's become apparent to me that everyone is using us to get what they want. And that includes you. It's always been like that, we can't expect it to be any different, but this time we can play the same game. We're not the enthusiastic kids being taken for a ride like we were the first time. We can use people to get what we want."

  "And what do you want? I still don't understand why you agreed to all this."

  Susan pushed herself off the car. "Get down off there. Hold my hand," she said. Wallet jumped off the bonnet and felt her fingers instantly wrap tightly around his as the stars began to dim.

  -

  "This is where I grew up," Susan said as a narrow street of high, dull brick terraced houses appeared around them like prison walls. Several storeys of irregular patterned windows and concealed balconies rolled away in four directions from the junction where they stood. Planted in the street were lines of malnourished trees, not much more than timber stakes, shivering naked as a brutal April wind ripped through their empty grey branches. "It was always so cold here, it never seemed to get any better. That apartment in front of you, on the first floor with the cream curtains, that's where I lived. It's where I grew up. Down there is the old Fish Market where I twisted an ankle. I had a day off school and spent the time in my bedroom listening to the Yardbirds and Jimi Hendrix for the first time. When I went to school the day after my teacher asked me what I'd done and I sang Hey Joe. The teacher wasn't amused. Nobody had a clue what I was talking about except Rene. He loved it. He couldn't believe there was someone else who liked that stuff. The Beatles, Stones, everyone had heard of them. But not this. Can you hear that." Susan pulled Wallet closer to the building and the muffled sound of a guitar was coming from the walls. "Jeff Beck," Susan whispered. "My mother had all the albums and just about everything Jimi played on before he made it on his own. The Isley Brothers, Curtis Knight, Lonnie Youngblood. People bringing singles back from Britain. My father didn't really take much notice. He was as square as a tulip field, but Rene thought this flat was Shangri-la. He listened to Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker, I was all ears for Jimi and Jeff and Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton. We wanted to be like that."

  Susan and Renes' school was an uptight block watching over a wide street with unsmiling authority. Built with the same charmless brick as Susan's terrace, the school epitomised discipline and conformity. Devoid of decoration, every unit of its exterior seemed to be designed to contain expression and thought rather than encourage or celebrate it. "Rene and I used to walk home together wondering how long it would take to get to that level of skill. And even if you learned how to play the notes like that where do you get the emotion without living the way they did? Look at this place; what sort of emotion comes out of a place like this? What sort of music does it produce? We talked a lot of bullshit, but I never thought I'd be talking like that to a boy at my school. You know the Netherlands has produced more crimes against music than any other country on earth and even at that age it felt like I was the walking dead. No one to talk to about what I was really interested in. And Rene felt the same way."

  The lower branches of a street tree framed a small cafe on the end of a concrete row of shops. An overflowing rubbish bin spewed its wrappers and newspapers across the pavement. A two stroke motorbike belched out smoke and an echoing din, whilst cyclists struggled past on their clanking bikes. "We both got jobs. Nothing special. This is where we'd meet and talk. Rene was drinking Coke and I was wiping icing sugar off my lips when he suggested we form a band and do something more than listen to other people's music. He had two other guys lined up, Wim and Marco, who played guitar and bass and knew a bit about rock. I had my guitar and a half decent voice. Better than any of those three anyway, but Rene suggested Wim should sing and let me concentrate on playing lead. That's when life finally started to warm up."

  Across a wide road lay the shell of the old Ahoy Arena. "November 10th 1967. We all came down here and saw Jimi Hendrix. My mother wa
s with us, about twenty five years older, but as eager as we were to see him. We left the hall afterwards elated and crushed at the same time. We had to get on and do something, we didn't want to be just any old cover band pretending to be someone else. But we lived dull lives. We had nothing to draw on. Nothing to say. We were no different to our audience, we didn't offer them anything."

  A succession of venues came and went. Neon lit doorways down narrow alleys, the reactionary posters of a trade union club stranded in the middle of a capacious car park with its solitary rusting Volkswagen, a youth club attached to a bland Protestant church, the anonymous entrance to a city centre bar and finally, lining up to remind Susan that she and the band were going nowhere, the upright brick walls of the school and its empty hall. Right back where they started. "We played here in front of twenty six people. I had a bigger audience when I sang Hey Joe."

  From the expanse surrounding the Ahoy to the expanse of the river channel feeding Rotterdam's harbours and quays, Susan stopped to watch a container ship float through a dusky landscape dominated by sky. The dark water, flanked by a distant line of trees, flowed towards the toy cranes and model warehouses. A putrid yellow haze hung over the skyline from Rotterdam's latent light. Somewhere to the west, across the void, was a better future. "We had a bit of money from our jobs and what we didn't spend on equipment and printing posters we saved. We thought we could tour Holland, maybe find an audience in Amsterdam or Den Haag, Arnhem. When we felt ambitious we had plans to conquer Belgium. Belgium!

  "It was when Marco's father came back from Felixstowe with Deep Purple albums we decided we had to get to England. That's where all the bands we loved came from, so we added up how much money we had and bought a van". The van, an old Commer, had bug eyed lamps and a roof rack. It had been the workhorse of a local Rotterdam builder whose logo was still visible through a layer of whitewash hastily daubed across it with all the finesse of an act of vandalism, which it would have been on any other surface. Standing on a crate, Rene was finishing the artwork by painting an indecisive mix of jagged and scrolling letters: After Sunset.

  "Wim and Marco were worried, it was a big leap for them, giving up their jobs and going to another country. We drove round Rotterdam for a few months, gave them some time to think about it, but it was only when we heard Machine Head for the first time that they started to see the possibilities. The sound of that album and Highway Star did it, like something coming alive, heading towards you and it either runs you down or you jump on board. Wim started to think he could match Ian Gillan," Susan chuckled, "but at least he was ready to give it a shot and make the leap." From the back of the ferry Rotterdam gradually faded away behind the oil terminals and power lines before finally disappearing from view like it had never existed.

  "The van wasn't just our transport, it was our meeting room, psychiatrist's couch, jail cell, hotel room. Now and then someone would twitch in the middle of the night and catch their foot on a snare drum and that was your sleep well and truly wiped out." The Commer was parked alongside a large ornate pub called the Queen's Head, which stood like a brick and stone tooth on the corner of a demolition site. Slightly more upmarket, partly due to the fact that it was surrounded by occupied buildings, was the Kings Lynn Social Club; a flat roofed building with red window frames. Black jacketed youths slouched past a couple of Triumph motorbikes and a blue Vauxhall Viva parked in the Secretary's space. On the wall next to a yellow ochre door was a glass fronted display case with various events listed from the bingo night to Tony Valentino (accompanied as ever by Eric and Joy). Tonight was rock night and last on the bill 'from Holand AFTER SUNSET.' "A few people hung around to watch us."

  Now the van was parked at the gate of a field on the outskirts of Ipswich. Traffic was relentless and slow moving. The field was an arable quagmire surrounded by lifeless hedgerows and the captured litter of Quavers bags, Black Jack wrappers, cigarette packets and a soggy collector's football card with the unsmiling face of Leighton James. "Inside the van we're counting the money we have left. It doesn't take long to count one pound note and some silver. We had one gig at Hooly Goolys in Ipswich, which wasn't paying enough to get all four of us home. I guess England wasn't really ready for a Dutch band playing Deep Purple covers."

  Hooly Goolys was probably more attractive in the evening darkness when the gloom combined with the drizzle meant you couldn't see what it really looked like. A converted theatre, all the ornate details had long been stripped for architectural salvage and parts of the roof had corrugated sheets instead of tiles. Squalid would have been a compliment. But to the rock fans of Ipswich who didn't have the cash to see the big names at the Gaumont, Hooly Goolys must have been a goldmine. "By playing in Ipswich we could say we sort of followed in the footsteps of Hendrix. Every Wednesday night was rock night and for two shilling you got three live acts and a rock disco." On the steps outside the front entrance was a pot bellied bald man in oversized black jeans and a denim jacket, collecting the entrance fees off the punters queueing up. "Micky Redwall did it all himself. Manager, promoter, booked the acts, took the money, paid the fees, policed the venue, announced the bands, ran the disco. You couldn't question his enthusiasm for the music. We talked to him a lot that night. He knew everything there was to know about music: how it evolved, where the bands came from, what influenced them. He couldn't play a note on anything, but he thought he sounded like Robert Plant when he sang.

  "Top of the bill was a band from Cambridge. The Scavengers. Their bass player fell off the front of the stage and injured his leg so we and the other band, Cat's Cradle, had to cover for them. We took a chance and did Child in Time . . . without a keyboard player. About ten metres from the stage was an upright piano and we persuaded some guy to play Jon Lord's parts. I think the crowd appreciated the effort. Micky was grinning like a Cheshire cat all the way through it. He hadn't seen bands like us fill in like that and he was pretty pleased and impressed. We earned our money that night and he didn't mind paying a bit extra. It was a good night. It should have been a great night, but we were preoccupied with how we were gonna get home."

  Susan was no longer holding Wallet's hand. He was round the side of Hooly Goolys where Susan and Rene were up ahead in animated conversation with Micky Redwall before walking away from him. Wallet cautiously stepped closer to listen. Susan looked upset, Rene was walking round in small circles avoiding eye contact.

  "I know it's probably the last thing you want to hear," Redwall was saying, "I'm not trying to take advantage of you, but I've heard eight people tonight and four of you have real talent. Problem is, those four are not in the same band." Wim, the second guitarist, was leaning against the van, the back of his hair soaked by the drizzle running down the sides. Marco, the bass player, had his hands stuffed into his pockets. He stared at the windscreen unaware of Wallet's presence over his right shoulder. "I'm sorry lads, but you two bottled it tonight. These two were stars. I could see they wanted it and they rose to the challenge, but you looked uncomfortable. You're gonna hold these two back, you know that?"

  "I don't want to see this band split up, Mr Redwall," said Susan. "We've only just started, we don't expect to be big overnight. . . ."

  "You'll never be big, Susan. You sound like a million other local bands, competent, devoted, but you're wasting your talent if you don't find a way forward and get yourself a better band. Stop playing the covers, write your own stuff. The two girls from the other lot were almost playing on their own. They're a match for you two. You need to decide what you want. A group of friends making a bit of music now and then or a professional rock band. A real rock band."

  The tears she was crying that night dried up as Susan turned away from her friends and Redwall and took Wallet's hand to lead him away from the van and Hooly Goolys and the midnight drizzle. Before them was the terraced street in Rotterdam. The wind had relented and some of the trees were finally in leaf. "I was prepared to come back to this rather than split the band up," said Susan. "Micky gave us
ten minutes alone to come to a decision so we made a deal. Rene and I would give it three months and if we were no further on we were coming home and we'd start again. But we never came home."

  -

  "You know the rest of the story," Susan said as the stars reappeared. "We expected excitement, we were ready for the challenges, we were actually looking forward to figuring out how we'd take them on, but the challenge that night in Ipswich was a real punch, a low punch. Watching the two of them leave. It was their choice to go in the end, but the guilt never went away." Susan hugged herself as she spoke and looked for the constellations with Wim and Marcos' names, but there were no real stories up there: no real people who had suffered real regret. No mortals. Just a load of fakes.

  "I don't think you have any idea what all this means to me," Susan said. "How far back it goes, where it all came from. You're not gonna last much longer with us if you don't start thinking like us. My story is the same as Rene's. It's the same as Dee's: she never backed down in a fight, never let a problem get in her way. And Elaine was brought up to believe if you can't do something properly don't even try to do it at all. I don't know how it compares to your story, but you've got something to measure it against now. Think about it and decide what your priorities are."

  16 (May)

  Rob Wallet had never really stopped to think about the farmhouse. It had been chosen for its proximity to Rotterdam, a spiritual connection rather than anything physically logistical. Wallet wasn't sure how far away from their target the others needed to be before they 'took off' as he described it when they vanished into thin air. Could they visit someone in the small hours on the other side of the Atlantic or did some unseen vampiric generator limit their range to a specific number of kilometres? They still hadn't trained him in this particular dark art and it looked now like they never would. He bought the Audi A8 because it had room for the driver and up to four passengers, another point of embarrassment that he was often reminded of. And the car was starting to earn its keep even if it did look a bit excessive being driven around with only one occupant.

  No, the farmhouse had been chosen for its symbolic value and also because it belonged to a friend of the band, one of a number of nameless acquaintances who made up a network of assistance that had furnished and accommodated them over the thirty five years of their hermetic existence. The main building was timber, single storey with a double height dining room and pitched roof. The bedrooms were along a wing of the building with a corridor leading from the front door and separating them from the main living room. The kitchen was ultra modern, fitted out with hardwood and chrome, its fixtures and fittings moving with silky precision and respectful silence. And none of it ever used. The farmhouse was surrounded by a minimalist landscape, trim and tidy, surrounded by metal mesh fencing and acres of unmanaged fields that were once arable crops, but had now been left to grass.

  Wallet's bedroom looked out across one of these informal meadows. It was a large room, as they all were, and a mess. The seventies museum was becoming more like a junk shop as the available shelving and storage proved inadequate for the ragbag of items he was scavenging. Variety was the enemy of order, he thought. Having uniform interests led to interior uniformity. Take Dee's room; her sole interest was books and her room was a library, a cornucopia of book spines as regular as a mathematical equation. Elaine's room was a laboratory embellished with the exoskeletons of functional gadgetry that included a lampstand designed by the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and a chrome trimmed record player that would have been retro in the 19th century. Rene's room was dominated by his drum kit, but even in there the remaining space was organised around a vast, meticulously arranged vinyl music collection. And Susan's room. . . . It could have been an office, it appeared to be lacking any sentimental touches, but then he had never ventured far enough inside to see what was on the wall that was out of sight from the corridor. Like Susan herself the room gave nothing away, said very little, offered no clues.

  But on reflection, as Wallet fell backwards onto his bed, that was the old Susan. The Susan Bekker he had known twelve hours ago before she had taken him, like Virgil leading Dante, through her pre-vampiric past. Whatever her intentions had been the experience had revealed the trace of a human being inside her carnivorous armour. Wallet wanted to understand her more, to experience that rational, enthusiastic human side with its inexhaustible love of music and the almost childlike naivety it created. His bedside table had a small pile of unfamiliar notebooks. They had rich ornate covers, gold edges, embossed surfaces. Opening the first book he read the printed introduction 'This is the diary of' and the name written in the space: Susan Bekker. The date February 1974. "Jesus Christ!" Wallet sat up as he realised what he was holding. The truth direct from the source; no anecdotal evidence from the likes of Lance Beauly and Eric Mortimer, no fabricated headlines and underground gossip. Jonathan Knight's Gothic speculation was about to be put to rest. Susan must have left them here?

  February 22nd 1974 - Feel like shit again, hate not being able to keep the entries going, but today is the first time I feel strong enough to lift a pen.

  The handwriting was light, scrawled, printed rather than long hand. (A quick flick through the rest of the diary revealed most of Susan's handwriting to be partially printed.)

  February 23rd 1974 - had another shot for rabies, fuck me they hurt. I'd rather die than take any more of this. I wish I was dead. I don't believe in god, but if there is one will you please take me away from this.

  There were no more entries for another eight days.

  March 3rd 1974 - Rene, Dee and El came to see me. So good to see someone I love. It helps. Dee loves the colour of my eyes. Bloodshot is cool apparently. Doctor thinks I might recover.

  The suffering continued, but the band were turning up everyday to help her get through it.

  March 10th 1974 - Doctor keeps telling me to eat, I keep telling him I'm not hungry. El says they've all been told off for smuggling food in for me, but she doesn't know what that means. Neither do I. The last thing I remember eating was that guy's face at the Valentine's Day party. Wonder where that bastard is now.

  March 11th 1974 - Doctor gave me a long examination today. He seems puzzled that my weight is getting back to normal even though I'm not eating and don't feel hungry. He's decided to turn a blind eye to the so-called 'food smuggling.' Uh?

  March 13th 1974 - I asked the doctor today why he thought I was suffering from rabies. He told me all the symptoms along with the bite mark were the key indicators. I don't remember any of it, but apparently I had flu-like symptoms, mania, depression, freaking out at the sight of water, screaming pain, violent paroxysm. It was rare to survive when the disease reaches those stages. I asked where the bite mark was and he told me it was just above my left collar bone. Funny place to be bitten by a dog. But there it is. It's fading now, but there are the mounds of two teeth marks about three centimetres apart. I wonder when it happened? Dee told me it was Valentine's Day! We went to a post-gig party and I met some guy and didn't go back to the hotel that night. The day after the police found me wandering around, bleeding and delirious and took me to a hospital. Then nothing. The doctors started treating me for rabies after I started going mad! (I've always been mad. . . .) Mm?

  March 14th 1974 - Apparently the doctors are calling me White Rotterdam, a sort of codeword to imply my pale complexion, sickly pallor and, go on just say it, dead eyes (to go with my dead heart). I told them I've never been the bronzing type, but they say I'm whiter than a lot of corpses. Thanks doc! Dutch girls in mid winter with black hair do look a little paler than their olive skinned sisters. Wish I had Dee's complexion. Maybe now I should adopt a Byronesque lifestyle and move to a house on the shores of Lake Geneva. Yeah, to one who thus for kindred hearts must roam and seek abroad the love denied at home. Fuck me, where did that come from? There's still one problem we need to overcome. This sunlight is killing me.

  She left the hospital in Essen on March 17th. Her
parents took her home to Rotterdam in a car with the windows covered in layers of newspaper. The walk from the hospital to the car almost put her back in bed.

  March 18th 1974 - Rene, Dee and El were waiting for me when I got home. What a nightmare trip. The last couple of hours after the sun had set were so much easier. My skin is itching like fuck now, but I don't want to scratch. The doctors didn't tell me that dermatitis is the after effects of rabies. Now I know why dogs are scratching all the time. And so good to hold my V again. Can't wait to plug it in and make some noise. Gonna wring its neck first chance I get. Micky's booked a studio in England to start recording a new album. What? Thanks for giving me time to get over everything even though I do feel so much better.

  Wallet speed read entry after entry. Recovery was rapid, Susan's strength was greater than it was before the illness. The band shared her concern that Micky Redwall was pushing too fast to get a second album recorded, but Susan had written eight songs in three weeks. The others couldn't keep up.

  April 14th 1974 - Today's session was the best yet. I haven't played like this since the day I started. Walking along the coast at night helps. Seeing the lights out at see, the silhouettes and sound of the waves out there somewhere. Would love to capture that atmosphere. The others are at the top of their game right now, fired up. Dee sounds great, I've underestimated her in the past, but she can say so much with so little effort. El is on fire. Can't wait to play live alongside her when she's in this form. Rene is like a man possessed. Wish Micky could appreciate it, but his non stop crap about vampires is starting to piss me off. He thinks it would set us apart from everyone else, but I think it's a stupid idea. Rabies wasn't funny, but then he is a scrap metal merchant. You can take the guy out of the scrap yard, but you can't take the scrap yard out of the guy.

  So, Susan and Micky Redwall didn't see eye to eye about the vampire image and yet We Are Toten Herzen was only the start of a long line of lurid bloodsoaked promotional material. Wallet flicked through the pages unaware of time passing and the sun rising ever closer to the horizon. Redwall didn't like the way Susan slept all day and often argued with her about her new lifestyle. In one entry he told her she was nowhere near famous enough yet to behave like a superstar. Wallet almost missed the entry for April 22nd.

  April 22nd 1974 - As if yesterday's photo shoot wasn't embarrassing enough I still haven't got all the red paint off me. The album cover's gonna look shit, total nonsense. When we washed the fake blood off Rene he was still red from the embarrassment! The promoter guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time to come around kicking off like that. I don't think he expected me to follow him back to his club. I didn't expect it either. I didn't like the way he passed Micky and Rene and came onto Dee, El and me. Does he think we're the little girls who can be pushed around? I think four guys being just enough to pull me off him was a strong message. He wasn't the only one surprised by that. My temper seems to be so much shorter these days. But he was still laughing at me as he walked out of the door. Don't like that. He doesn't do that to me. He wasn't laughing when we met up again as he was closing up his club. And you know what, that first bite, deep deep deep into his throat. . . . I don't smoke except for a bit of weed now and again, but nothing lifted me like that. Not even the morphine they put me on in hospital turned my head inside out like that bite. My whole body felt like it was in outer space, every nerve relaxed, every muscle loose, no need to breathe. I'll have to do it again. Must do that again. Just need to find another fucker who doesn't mind dying though.

  April 23rd 1974 - Had a chance to think about last night. Hadn't really noticed what sort of teeth I was wandering around with inside my mouth. Had a look in the bathroom mirror tonight and now it all makes sense. The bitemark, never feeling hungry, the white skin, bloodshot eyes, and now last night. I can't see my teeth in the mirror because I can't see anything in the mirror . . . What the fuck happens now?

  April 24th 1974 - I cannot be harmed, I will never be hurt, I can do what I want, I am physically stronger, mentally sharper, I will never grow old. I'm in charge now. My future is whatever I say it will be.

  Wallet looked for the day when the others followed suit, but he felt a scorching point of light across his forehead. He dashed for the blinds just as the sun exploded over the distant fields. He would have to continue the following night, but when he woke up ten hours later the diaries were gone. Instead there was a note on the table, written in Susan's familiar choppy semi-printed style. 'It wasn't easy to live through that. Still not sure I'm comfortable with it, but I can't turn back the clock. Your golfing buddy Jan has left a message. We're meeting someone in England who'll shepherd us through some preparatory stuff before we go to New York. Could be interesting. Hopefully, we've regained the initiative. If not heads are gonna roll, Rob. Take care of the house until we're back.'

  17 (May)

  Dexter Collier left a comment on his Facebook time-line

  'Just got the call to tell me that I'm going to be shaperoning a band before they leave for New York. Major deal going down. Can't reveal the name of the band yet but everyone who hasn't already heard of them soon will.'

  Vikki Tomson replied

  'Great news. Pleased for you :-)'

  Bernie Caspar replied

  'Wow Dex!! great news.'

  Mike O'Sullivan replied

  'Lucky bastard. Is Nicole Scherzinger involved?'

  Dexter Collier replied

  'No. Alas! (At least I don't think so.)'

  Mike O'Sullivan replied

  'Whoever it is give them my regards and if they need a good looking backing singer with absolutely no ego give them my number.'

  Seb Mauser replied

  'Are they looking for groupies?'

  Dexter Collier replied

  'I'll ask them.'

  Turner Collier replied

  'Don't forget your condoms you got for Christmas.'

  Dexter Collier replied

  'Used em already bro. And anyways they might be male.'

  Bernice Jaxon replied

  'Good luck, Dex, you deserve it.'

  Ann Cheung replied

  'So jealous. Tell us all about it when you can.'

  Every room in the the Bellevue Hotel, or the Belle as locals referred to it, had a sumptuous booklet proudly describing the heritage. Dee was bored enough to read it twice, but still couldn't find the reason for Sony's UK management team dumping them here. A former gentleman's residence, it was once owned by the Earl of Oldbury who had made his fortune in the plantations of Central America. He died in World War I after being hit by a shell fired from his own side. After his daughters were married off and moved out the house became a hotel in 1961 and retained its gentility, character, landscaped gardens with nine hole golf course and, most importantly, its mock Gothic turret. Gothic turret, of course. Gothic turret. Clever. Vampires, gothic turrets. Funny bastards.

  The Balmoral Suite would be their home for the next two days. "Monarchical, flamboyant, ideal for the foreign guest with a large entourage," said Dee reading from the introduction, "or the traveller in need of real relaxation, or the rock band who are missing the gothic turrets of home."

  "It says that?" asked Rene who, along with Susan and Elaine, was reading some of the tourism leaflets.

  "Course it doesn't. Typical drummer."

  There was a gentle knock on the door. "Is this him?" Dee put the book down, opened the door an inch and peeped out. "Who's that knocking at our . . . chamber door, bleurgh, bleurgh, bleurgh!"

  Out in the corridor was a grinning, fidgeting boy too small for his jacket and wearing trousers with flares like boat sails. Stepping in with all the enthusiasm of a man with toothache visiting a Victorian dentist he nervously told them he was a student of Business Management at the LSE and twenty years old and had applied for the intern position after seeing it on the Monster job recruitment website and thought that a few months of unpaid excitement in the giddy world of rock music would look seriously good on his CV
and thought the hotel was fantastic and that his cousin had a house in Southampton a bit like it but not as big. . . .

  "What's your name?" interrupted Rene.

  "Dexter."

  "Dexter. Is that your first name or your last?"

  "First."

  "Never met anyone called Dexter before. Your parents weird?"

  "Sorry?"

  "Your parents," said Rene "are they like hippies or something."

  "No. They're from Loughborough."

  "Is that relevant to anything?" said Dee.

  "No. Not really." Dexter giggled then tried to sit down without looking embarrassed. A small occasional chair had been placed in the middle of the room specially for him. The curtains were drawn across the bay windows of the suite and the lights were dimmed. "So, they christened my brother Turner. After the painter."

  "Lucky for you they weren't fans of Heironymus Bosch," said Susan. She waited for Dexter to sit on his chair before she rose out of her own settee. In her heels she almost brushed the chandelier with the top of her head. "Now Dexter you'll probably notice that you're alone. That was our request. We like to get to know the people who are working closest to us, but with you it's a little different. We get hungry and when we get hungry we can't just send out for a meal, do you understand?"

  "No. Yes, I understand. I could order or collect your meals if you want I used to get the vegan specialities for . . . nearly mentioned their name. I'm not supposed to confidentiality clauses and all that you know I've signed one for you guys too did you know the lead singer of one of the UK's leading boy bands is intolerant to salt?"

  "Dexter, shut your fucking mouth."

  He nodded.

  "We don't eat meat. We also don't eat seafood, dairy products or vegetables or fruit. . . ."

  "Or nuts," Elaine added.

  "No nuts, Dexter," Susan said, wagging her finger. "We don't eat English food or Italian food, no Chinese or Indian or Thai, Mexican, Ethiopian or Lebanese. We don't eat salads, special diets, lo-fat, lo-carb, high fibre. We don't graze, nibble, eat on the move or grab snacks when we can or pop out for a sandwich. No business lunches or breakfast meetings. We don't do any of those things. Do you know why?" The other three stood up and slowly walked towards Dexter who was close to wetting himself.

  Susan stood in front of him and leaned into his face. "Because we get all the nourishment we need from our interns." She smiled revealing her white teeth and two long predatory canines. Dexter evidently felt a hot flush in the groin of his trousers. The band burst into hysterics.

  "You bastard," shouted Dee.

  "I knew I should have said five hundred," said Susan. "Sorry Dexter, just a little bet Dee and I always have with our assistants: will they piss their pants when we suggest we're going to eat them. And you pissed your pants, so she owes me two hundred pounds."

  Dexter laughed again. "Does anyone have any spare trousers?"

  "No," said Susan. "You wet them so you'll have to sit in them."

  The band sat down again like automatons or furniture programmed to come alive on the hour every hour before settling back into the decor. "What's your purpose here?" asked Susan. "What have they sent you to tell us?"

  Dexter dragged a small notebook out of his inside pocket. "So, Some instructions, they said. Des Tomlinson, from the UK management company."

  "Go on. Instructions?"

  "So, they thought you might need to be brought up to date with how the industry works these days. It's changed a bit since the seventies."

  "Like what?"

  "So, like today there are no more vinyl records. There's still a market, but it's like thousands, not millions."

  "No shit. No more records?" Dee looked horrified. Horrified!

  "They were replaced by compact discs in the 1980s."

  "And what happened to all those old gramophone players," said Dee.

  "Those what?" asked Dexter.

  "Gramophone players," said Dee, "you know with the fucking big horns and the dogs sitting next to them."

  "No, well, compact discs are played in cd players, but even they were superseded by audio files and now everyone listens to their music in what we call mp3 format. . . ."

  "Wait, wait," Elaine raised one hand as she typed with the other, "What does mp3 stand for, Dexter?"

  "Er, it's a standard industry standard format."

  "A standard industry standard. Answer the question, Dexter," said Susan. "What does mpfuckingthree stand for."

  "It's a multiplatform format, part of an ecosystem that includes avi, er, acc, wma, a multi-format listening experience. Sorry, but it's what music files are these days and you play them on a. . . ."

  "Let me guess, let me guess," said Elaine clicking her fingers. "An mpfuckingthree player."

  "Come on Dexter, open up," said Susan.

  "Some of it's proprietary like, er, but it's all developed for an enhanced visitor experience. We don't call them mp3 players as such. You play mp3 files on your ipod or smartphone or some other device synced to your computer. Or they can be stored somewhere else and you stream them to your device from the cloud."

  Dee looked across at Elaine. "Does that answer your question, dumbfuck?"

  "Yeah. I suppose it does." Elaine looked up at Susan. "Do we have any mpfuckingthrees, Susan?"

  "I'm sure we could find some."

  Dee pulled at her earlobe. "Dexter, I've read all of Umberto Eco's novels, including Baudolino, and even I don't understand a word you're saying."

  "Dexter, sweetheart," said Susan, "what other wonders of the modern age should we know about? Do people still drive around in motor cars?"

  "Yeah. But a lot of them are hybrid electric these days."

  Susan rolled her eyes. "Can you believe they sent this guy down here with this. Dexter, we haven't come out of a coma. We didn't travel here from the stars and we haven't been living underground in North Korea for the last thirty years. We know all about music formats, changing trends in music sales. Tell us about fans. Do bands still have fans these days?"

  "Yeah."

  "Are they edible?"

  Dexter giggled. "There are ecosystems with walled gardens so they might be part of a food chain." Nobody laughed.

  "How do they listen?" said Susan. "And if you say with their ears I'll cut yours off."

  "So, you build up a consolidated fanbase by maximising social media opportunities. You need a big reach strategy and keep the dialogue continuous."

  "How?"

  "Activity. Keep the Twittersphere buzzing with your name. You're already part of the blogosphere so you're trending already. Especially after the single was uploaded."

  "Don't mention that single," said Susan licking her canines.

  "Exactly. That's what everyone says: that single."

  "I said don't mention it." Susan looked at Elaine. "How many are we doing?"

  "Eleven so far," said Elaine.

  Dexter tried to continue. "So, the single got people talking. That's what made the label sit up."

  "They liked it for some reason. What do they want out of this, Dexter? You're immersed in this world. Salt intolerance, cannibal ecosystems, experiences in walled gardens. Are we about to be eaten alive?"

  "Oh, no. It's like. One guy I worked with, well not musically, but you know what I mean. Singer songwriter from Basildon. His three sixty degree deal has a revenue stream that pulls together naming rights, branding royalties, agreements across worldwide territories, the ones that matter, you know, Europe, US, South Korea, other monetizing arrangements. The whole exploitation of his brand and earning potential means income maximisation for him and the label."

  Susan checked Elaine again who was busy finishing the typing. "Nineteen."

  "Nineteen," Susan considered the number. Dexter chewed his lip.

  "If you find other collaborative opportunities," he continued, "you can extend the exposure to other markets, you know, reaching across genres, mixes, mash-ups. The old unplugged performances are still there
, but now they can be done in a studio in London and everyone in the world can listen to a live streaming broadcast."

  "Twenty-two," Elaine announced.

  "That's a good number," said Susan. Dee stared at Rene whose eyebrows and twisted mouth said he also didn't have a clue.

  "Things have come a long way," said Dee. "At one time all you needed was a washboard and an overcoat and Hughie Greene would take care of the rest."

  "Derrick Guyler," said Elaine without looking up. "Imagine if Derrick Guyler was here today, Dexter. A streaming broadcast across a multi-platform ecosystem, reaching out across a range of territories, including South Korea, with nothing but a washboard and rock hard fingertips."

  Dexter nodded, the way people do when they're spoken to in a language they don't understand.

  "Do you earn anything, doing this, Dexter?" asked Rene.

  "I've got savings."

  "And rich parents in Loughborough with a son called Turner," said Elaine.

  "Weird rich parents," said Rene.

  "We're not here for the money, Dexter," said Susan. "You should go and change those trousers now, please. Nice touch, by the way, wearing big flares like that." The band stood up as Dexter limped towards the door.

  "I know a joke about seventies clothing," said Dee.

  "Some other time, eh," said Susan.

  "A man walked into a clothes shop in Birmingham and said I'd like some seventies style clothes. And the shop assistant said certainly. Flared trousers? Yeah, said the guy. Jacket with big lapels and a shirt with frills down the front? Yeah, yeah, perfect, said the guy. And the shop assistant said what about a kipper tie and the guy said, oh lovely. Milk and two sugars please."

  Susan rang down to reception. "Hi, it's Susan from the Balmoral Suite. Can you replace one of our occasional chairs? A strange man has urinated all over this one. Thank you."

  DAILY MAIL

  Faces From the Past

  New software used to identify missing persons helps to track down rock band

  Experts at a security agency in Birmingham have issued photographs showing how the members of rock band Toten Herzen might look now, thirty five years after they disappeared. Bromwich Detection Sciences used the software to 'age' photographs of Dee Vincent, Susan Bekker, Rene van Voors and Elaine Daley who were last seen in their mid twenties.

  "It was quite exciting seeing the faces emerge in front of our eyes as we put old photographic images into the software," said Connor Goodmans, Managing Director of BDS. The firm, which employs eighteen people, operates from a small industrial unit in West Bromwich and normally helps police forces from numerous countries in Britain and Europe search for missing people.

  "A lot of our work helps to track down people who went missing over ten years ago. Certain facial characteristics tend not to change, whilst other elements such as musculature, skin tone and hair colour can. The software retains those unchanging features and ages the others." BDS's last success was identifying a man in Spain who went missing twelve years ago as a teenager. He was found this year in Portugal.

  The four images of the band members show the three women,Vincent, Bekker and Daley looking tired, chubbier, but surprisingly respectable considering the band's notorious past. Male drummer van Voors is shown to be paunchy and almost bald.

  "We heard about people being misidentified so thought these images might help the search to be a little more accurate," said Goodmans. Asked if he thought the band would be the same as they were in the seventies Goodman replied, "Doubtful. Old women don't make good rockers. I'm more of an Elton John fan myself."

  GUARDIAN COMMENT - Sarah Knowles

  This obsession with age demonstrates the media's unashamed sexism

  Old women don't make good rockers, says the managing director of a firm that helps find missing people. When he isn't wasting his time redirecting a useful police resource to help a ridiculous tabloid press campaign, Connor Goodman of Bromwich Detection Sciences is encapsulating what the media thinks of women in the arts. From actresses virtually redundant at thirty seven, television presenters jettisoned as soon as the first laughter lines appear, to rock guitarists subjected to ageing software that makes them look, according to the Daily Mail, tired and chubby, the obsession with Toten Herzen's twenty first century appearance overlooks more serious issues.

  The band has a string of questions to answer relating to its short and violent history. Why weren't they charged with wasting police time back in March 1977? Did their former manager Micky Redwall really die after being savaged by his own dogs? Why weren't numerous reports of fans disappearing taken seriously and, most disturbingly, will the family of Peter Miles, a musical associate of the band in their formative years, ever find out the truth about their son's disappearance? Why isn't Bromwich Detection Science's issuing his picture forty years after the event?

  Instead of these questions we have women being doorstepped in Milton Keynes and senior citizens being harassed by teenagers, claiming them to be geriatric vamps. As soon as Toten Herzen's reunion was announced this paper predicted the tabloid nonsense that would ensue, but instead of the focus being on the band's lawless image the media picked up one of its favourite hobby horses: writing off the older woman.

  My colleague at the Guardian, Jemima Tollet, has already pleaded with the band to emerge, axes shining, and show the media that it's the tabloids who are the dinosaurs, not Toten Herzen. The number of prominent older women in rock can almost be counted on one hand; for every Doro Pesch (b1964) there are hundreds of male rockers approaching their fiftieth year. If Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards can strut their Strats at their age, so can Susan Bekker with a Flying V. If Robert Plant and John Paul Jones can still rock way beyond their retirement pensions, Dee Vincent and Elaine Daley will be more than a match.

  Connor Goodman probably didn't realise the irony in his closing statement to the Mail. Old women don't make good rockers. Why then, in his own words, is he still a fan of Elton John?

  18 (June)

  Rob Wallet's hunch about the maximum distance a vampire can fly on one tank of petrol wasn't exactly answered by the band travelling to New York on an aeroplane out of Heathrow airport. Simply 'turning up' on the pavement outside 550 Madison Avenue was preposterous, but no one said it was impossible. It was a question to be answered some other day. Susan's diary had explained one or two puzzles and misunderstandings, but it had raised other dark issues, notably how, when and why she had turned the others. For now Wallet was waiting for the right moment, an appropriate moment (if such a thing existed), to talk to Dee.

  Wallet found the singer to be a mercurial person, always quick to change subjects, fly off at tangents, contradict and question whatever was said. But she had a strangely approachable character that Wallet was drawn to. She was brittle and caustic, but could take it as much as she dished it out and enjoyed it. Wallet didn't have any of the wariness he felt he needed around Elaine and Rene. There was, of course, the risk that she'd turn on you purely out of malevolent glee, but where Susan played the role of vampire queen, Dee was the joker. Knowing her taste for the unusual and obscure he now wondered what she could possibly find interesting in an airport bookstore. She was fluttering from one stand to another, hardly settling long enough to read the titles. Everything was a paperback, recently released or a universally known classic. There were none of the enormous back breaking monstrosities that bent and buckled the shelves of the farmhouse, no sign of any grizzled first editions or moth eaten original copies dug out of book piles in lost European shops.

  "I can't decide if Susan is happy in her current form," Wallet said.

  Dee spoke as she glanced at the books. "Current form. Is she a racehorse now?"

  "Vampire. Undead. . . ."

  "You have to admit, they're very unflattering terms. Why not just refer to her as guitarist who looks good for her age. Ah, here he is. Dan Brown. Oh, what that guy doesn't know!"

  "That sort of sidesteps the issue."

  Dee gro
aned. "What issue? Get to the fucking point."

  "Sorry. I'm getting off the point." Before he could make it Dee had vanished, then her head reappeared in a gap in a James Bond promotional display.

  She held up a paperback. "Captain Corelli's Early Prototype ESP Signature Michael Wilton."

  "I read her diary," said Wallet.

  From behind the display Dee's voice said, "Oh, fuck!" She appeared, leaning against Daniel Craig's cardboard effigy. "If you weren't already dead, you'd be dead. Have you not figured out yet that girl is a walking timebomb?"

  "No, it's okay. She left a couple of them in my room. I read the entry from 1974 about how she became a vampire."

  "Oh. Yeah, well, we all thought she was going to die when that happened. She did too. I don't think any of us had ever seen someone so ill. It was grotesque."

  "She appreciated you all being there for her."

  Dee walked away. "Of course she did. Doesn't take an Einstein to understand that." She spotted a copy of The Exorcist. "Ooh, scary projectile vomit. Bleurgh!"

  Another browser heard the noise, but didn't see the book. Dee's face appeared through another gap in a pile of cut price bestsellers. "Of course we cared for her, you knobend. We were nice people once." Then her face was gone again.

  Wallet followed her. "I'll get to the point."

  "Hurray!"

  "How did you turn? How did Susan persuade you to go the same way?"

  "None of your business," Dee replied. "That's a very personal question. Now, this is more like it. Look Rob. Stella Stevens' new proto-feminist bonkbuster for bored housewives not getting enough: The Stableboy Fucked the Middle Class Idle Rich Woman up the Arse Again." She turned it over to look at the blurb on the back cover. "Must be a sequel." Wallet shook his head. "Look Rob, there's even a picture of the stableboy's hand rubbing her minge."

  "It doesn't say that."

  "Six ninety-nine. You gonna buy it? Ah!"

  Now what? Wallet peered over the top of the stand to see Dee reading intensely the blurb of a paperback that was thicker than most of the others in the shop. Distracted by the opening pages, Dee's head bent forward and her jet black bob hairstyle parted to reveal the eye patched skull tattoo on the back of her neck; underneath the grinning face was the name Morty. So that's why she often called Wallet a pain in the Morty! "Salvatore Scallio's Una Montagne di Dolore. Mm. Buy that." Dee caught Wallet watching her. "What? You thought I was gonna buy The Stableboy. . . ."

  "No, no. I've taught myself not to be surprised by anything any more." Well at least one mystery had been solved. This was about as far as he was going to get today, he thought, as he watched her stroll around, book in hand, Morty hanging on at the back there. Then she stopped and without looking up, took a book off the shelves and waved the cover back in Wallet's direction.

  "Here's one for you," she said, still immersed in Scallio's Mountain of Sorrow, but holding up Tiger Woods' autobiography. "Should tell you how to correct that wayward swing of yours." She tossed it towards him and headed to the payment counter.

  -

  Once again Wallet was back on his own, sat on a row of chairs of the departure lounge surrounded by bored travellers with their backpacks and long handled suitcases, walking that slow walk so common at airports and stations, every travel bottleneck where plane, train or boat stands between you and where you really want to be. Rene joined him, settling into the low chair and letting out a slight old man's sigh as artificial as it was subtle. "Having a tough time?" he said.

  "Sort of." Wallet fiddled with the strap of his hand luggage.

  "Yeah. You're still not exactly flavour of the month. We're having to do everything we thought you were going to do."

  "Tell me about it. I tried talking to Dee just now, but she's like a clockwork toy."

  Rene agreed. "Try her after she's gorged. She gets a bit drowsy, slows down a little and talks with a bit more sense. Or maybe you could ask her about something she's interested in. She's been stuck with us for so long now and doesn't get a chance to talk to other people much. She can get a little lonely just like anyone, you know."

  "I suppose she would, yeah. Which subjects interest her the most?"

  Rene smiled. "What does she not like? History, science, politics, philosophy. All the books you see everywhere, she's read them all. Pick one up, read it, talk to her about it. Show an interest."

  "I do try to take an interest, but you've had forty years to get used to all this. I feel intimidated. I think Susan's trying to help me, but, it sounds strange saying this, there's a generation gap. Or it feels like a generation gap. Whatever you are or how you look, you're still older than me, wiser, more experienced. Do you ever stop and think about everything you've done?"

  Rene clasped his hands behind his head exasperated. "Rob, thirty five years we've had to think about it."

  Stupid question. "Point taken. Susan showed me some places from her life. Took me on a tour around where she lived, the school she went to, places where she played her first gigs. I didn't know you two were in the same class at school. I thought you were a year younger."

  "No, just a few months. She was intense even then. It's hard to make people appreciate how tough her life was before she turned. That was the deciding factor for her, I think. That's how she sold it to us; a form of protection, invincibility, strength. It was okay at first, we were a little naive about what was going on around us, but we felt insulated from it all. All the pressure may have crushed some people, but we didn't worry so much. It's only when you find yourself with nothing to do that you start to have second thoughts about it."

  "That's what I was trying to ask Dee, how she felt about it all, but she as good as told me to get lost."

  "Dee was easy to persuade. I think she's always been a risk taker. Someone who'll try anything once. Put yourself in Susan's position; amongst the four of us who are you going to tell first you've turned into a vampire?"

  "You. She knew you the longest. Wouldn't she confide in you?"

  "She told me last. I guess she always turned to me last to say, you've heard everybody else, now what do you think? No, you ask the risk taker first, then the easy going one. Then me. See if it kills the others first then ask me!" Rene chuckled and folded his arms. "I was there when Micky Redwall broke the band up." So was Wallet, but he kept the thought to himself. "The other guys, Wim and Marco, changed her mind, but she didn't want to do it. She was determined she would never be in that position again. When she came to me and explained what had happened and what she was, I didn't want to do it at first, I didn't want to change. It scared the shit out of me. I only agreed for two reasons: no one would ever exploit the band, push us around, make us do anything we didn't want to do, we could take it or leave it, no need to worry about starving if things didn't work out; and the second reason was because we both came from families who suffered during the war, who pulled together to get through all the shit that was happening in Rotterdam. We'd never be vulnerable like that. No one would try to destroy us to make a point. We'd be indestructible. When After Sunset split Susan and I promised the other guys we'd do the best we could for them, as much for them as for us and now we could do it, give it everything.

  "It was great, that feeling, you know, whatever happened we could just take it or leave it. The headlines and the horror stories, none of it was true, but so what, let them write what they want. Micky was playing the part of the big guy so he was happy. We didn't think he'd take it literally and spread the stories, but he never actually knew the truth."

  Micky Redwall must have been as thick as one of his car crushers. "In four years he never found out? He never once saw you near a mirror, never saw you appear and disappear?"

  Rene pulled his face. Obviously not. "We took care not to let him know. Maybe he had some thoughts about it. Maybe he just couldn't bring himself to believe it. He was a man who made a living out of solid metal and iron, stuff you could feel in your hand, that broke your bones if it hit you hard enough. He fo
rmed his own opinion and turned it into a gimmick."

  "Susan hated the cover of We Are Toten Herzen."

  "We thought he knew something at that point, but then he never asked the question. He'd laugh about it and then go home. It was money; everything he did, every urge was money. Everything was an opportunity and to give him credit he was good at seeing opportunities."

  Wallet puffed and shook his head. "He could see everything except the fucking obvious. He had four vampires in front of him and he thought it was an act!" Mind you look at this: two vampires sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow, three others loitering somewhere and all these people walking their traveller's slow walk: no one suspects, not one taking sneaky pics of the vampires, nobody passing the time with their vampire detection app; all of them more interested in hearing the life saving announcement to board. And later one of them will be sat next to or in front of or behind a real, physical, solid, in the flesh, no different to your or me fuck-off Vampire. Micky Redwall could almost be forgiven for not noticing. Let's face it, you wouldn't believe it even if one came up and bit you on the neck. "So Lenny Harper must have come out of the blue?" said Wallet.

  "For us yes, but. . . ." This looked like an issue still waiting for an explanation. Rene's features knotted together. "We still wonder if Micky saw it coming and let it happen. Another money spinner, more publicity. But, yeah, that was lucky. He was only a few inches away from fucking it all up. And he had four goes to get it right. It really brought everything into focus. Knocked us out of our complacency. We didn't take it seriously, to us it was like being Dutch or vegetarian. We had to step back from everything and ask some serious questions."

  Wallet suddenly felt self-conscious. A boy, maybe eight or nine years old, visible through a forest of legs, was staring at them both. He could have been fascinated by Rene being in a dayglo orange tee-shirt, or maybe his ghostly juvenile radar was picking up on something that adults were no longer sensitive too. Rene noticed him and stopped talking. Then stuck his tongue out. The boy looked around for his mother and in a second of uncertainty ambled away.

  "The big change came in 1985," Rene continued "when Susan's mother was ill. She was visiting and her father was asking all sorts of questions. You look at your daughter and she's like over forty years old and doesn't look a day over twenty five. Your own daughter's catching you up, but moving further away. Susan told him it was the mountain air in Germany, but you could tell he wasn't convinced. He didn't have the answer, but he wasn't convinced. Susan knew he suspected something, he was there when she was ill in '74. She could never tell him. It's strange how you can't tell the people closest to you. None of us told our families."

  "Was that hard?" Wallet hadn't reached that stage yet where people start to notice he wasn't changing. No ageing, no middle aged spread, no male menopause and mid-life crisis. No increasingly agitated partner watching a mental car crash take place with all its debris and bleeding heart analysis.

  "Yes. It still is. What you don't need is one of your parents dying. Susan was very close to her mother and they buried her during the day. The questions that emerge at a time like that are the most cruel. Do you keep someone alive or watch them die? I think part of Susan died with her mother that day and my worry is she's trying to turn the clock back. And she never will. Her father's in his nineties now. She hasn't seen him since 1986. Imagine what he'd think if he saw her now?"

  Wallet could see her now, waiting for them at the door of the departure lounge, tapping her wrist. She turned heads without effort, Wallet could see men glancing at her even if Susan couldn't, or didn't want to. "We have to go," he said. "Do you regret the change?"

  "No, not really. Maybe somehow we can enjoy it again, but it's still early days. And you keep fucking things up." They walked towards their waiting guardian. "I think she wants to complete what we started. We split After Sunset to make Toten Herzen work and I think that's what she intends to do, pay back what we owe to people and then, who knows."

  "You boys talking football?" said Susan.

  "Sexist comment," said Rene. "Not all of us men like football."

  "Oh yeah, I'm forgetting."

  "All right, all right. Can I just make it clear I don't actually play golf," said Wallet.

  "So what's the board game all about?" And there was just the hint, the slightest twist of Susan's lips to suggest a smile.

  -

  There was one last ritual before the band boarded the plane. As the other passengers gathered Susan asked Elaine if she had the stone bag. Wallet whispered to Rene, "What's the stone bag?"

  "Watch and learn."

  The band stood at a safe distance as Elaine casually stepped up to a middle aged man dressed in a dark business suit, punching out a text message with the stylus of his smartphone. "Excuse me," she asked politely, leaning a shoulder towards him, "Can you just take my bag while I get my passport?"

  "Sure," replied the guy as Elaine slid the bag off her shoulder. He was instantly pulled double and dragged to the floor by the weight of the bag, which almost ripped his arms out of the sockets. The bag hit the floor with a dreadful thud. The band creased with laughter, wiping their watering eyes, spluttering and choking. Elaine, without acknowledgement, but with the straightest face in the room, took her passport and boarding pass out of her inside pocket, thanked the guy and lifted the bag back over her shoulder without a hint of strain. Returning to the band she grinned and winked as the business guy rubbed his hands and stared at her with a mixture of embarrassment, confusion and respect.

  "What's in the bag?" whispered Wallet.

  "About a hundred and fifty kilos," said Susan. "Gets them every time. Oh, if you didn't laugh you'd cry."

  19 (June)

  A memo had been sent to all staff in the New York office reminding them of 'sunfree afternoon.' Word was already out about Martin Lundqvist's irreversible hearing loss and Jan Moencker's lucky escape and people were eager to find out more about the Europeans responsible. When senior management heard about the potential for an adoring flash mob forming in the corridors of Sony's headquarters another more urgent memo went out to be picked up by email, text, iphone and ipad (both sizes) or photocopied and pinned, glued and blu-tacked onto kitchen and corridor walls. It contained a list of instructions to be followed on the arrival of Toten Herzen.

  staff will not:

  speak to any member of the band

  make eye contact with any member of the band

  approach to shake hands or greet any member of the band

  request autographs

  take photographs

  make any kind of video or audio recording of the band

  attempt to retrieve hand or fingerprints from any surface

  collect as keepsakes or mementos any object handled by the band

  invoke or provoke a response from any member of the band

  stand within eight feet of any member of the band

  On a wall near a watercooler one of the photocopied memos had an additional entry handwritten at the bottom: 'in other words all staff should fuck off out of here when they arrive.' Todd Moonaj saw it, considered taking it down, but then thought his actions might be seen as heavy-handedness, censorship, just what the band would want. Trouble.

  The executive meeting with the band was to be held in a long wood panelled room on a floor with all window blinds closed. No amount of sunlight, however small, was allowed into the building as per the band's request. Moonaj had been happy to go along with the rider, well maybe happy wasn't quite the right word. "Whatever the assholes want, let them have it and get them on a plane back to Europeland," were his exact words. He occasionally stumbled across articles about Mariah Carey or Axl Rose and thanked every Abrahamic god there was he didn't have to deal with people like that. Evidently his luck had run out.

  "How long will it be, Todd, before you accept the music industry is like this?" said Mike Tindall, proposed Toten Herzen Finance Director.

  "Mike, I accept that traffic
congestion in New York is shit, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

  "They're here. . . !" A receptionist burst into the room. Moonaj deliberately hid his reaction by adjusting the angle of the back of his chair. The rest of his 'team,' hastily put together and open to restructuring should events take a certain unforeseen twist, took their positions along one side of the table. An executive silence greeted the visitors as Rob Wallet walked in and said hello. He looked for the most appropriate chair to sit on as the rest of the band appeared one by one behind him. All four of them were smartly dressed, as rock bands go, no outward signs of substance abuse unless painting your face white could be classified as such. One male, three females, possibly two, Moonaj wasn't sure about the one in the white jacket with red spikes in her head like an exotic fruit. Of course they were all surgically attached to their smartphones and tapped them as they sat down. No hellos, no eye contact, no admission of existence. There were no stories about the building being haunted, but then who would be the ghosts in here? Finally, finally one of them looked up. The tall one with the longest matt black hair like she'd been colouring it with the ashes from a crematorium nodded to Wallet.

  "Ready? Do we need introductions?" asked Wallet.

  "I think that would be the polite thing to do," replied Moonaj, loosening his tie. He spoke to the receptionist who was still waiting for an instruction. "Sharon can you pour some drinks for us please. I'm sorry we don't have any blood, but there is coffee."

  "We're fine thanks," said Wallet. Drinks were served, but none were drunk.

  Moonaj exhaled and blinked rapidly. "I'll go round the table, shall I? To my left here is Mike Tindall." The large geometric man in the tailored white shirt and silver tie smiled at the band, but quickly withdrew it when the void of four faceless expressions looked up at him. "He will handle your finances, expenses, receipts, recording costs, tour costs and any other expenses you may incur which I'm sure will be substantial. He has the enviable task of monetizing you for all you're worth."

  Dee's eyebrows raised and she tapped her phone. Rene looked at her suspiciously and copied her actions.

  Moonaj tried to continue. "Next to Mike is Bob Tazares, your tour manager. When we eventually get round to such things and from what I'm told there's already a clamour out in the blogosphere and Twittersphere and social mediasphere." Wallet, Susan and Rene responded with a flurry of taps on their phones. Were these bastards listening? "Bob has twenty seven years experience working with some of the biggest names in music, so bear it in mind he's seen everything there is to see. Throw it at him, everything you've got." He also had a receding hairline and bags under his eyes like two hammocks.

  "I'm unshockable," Bob said. He'd need to be. There was no response from the band.

  "Linda Macvie will be your marketing manager," Moonaj continued semi-patiently. "I know Toten Herzen is already a pretty strong brand with exploitation opportunities," tap tap! "and widely recognised, but Linda will guide you through the twenty first century and what a modern audience expects and demands. She'll explain the big reach strategy later." Macvie was a mirror image of the woman sat opposite her by tapping on her phone and scrolling through her ever expanding list of messages. On second thoughts maybe Susan Bekker was making notes. For the next few minutes Moonaj was prepared to give the band the benefit of the doubt and speak a little slower so that they could get it all down. Or he could fuck off for a late lunch now and leave the others to it. He didn't need to be here. Didn't want to be here. "On my right are probably two of the most important members of the team," he said sarcastically.

  "Shock, I don't believe it," said one of the two most important members of the team, holding up his empty Starbucks cup. "Songwriter is given credit by record label executive screams New York Times headline."

  "Torque Rez and Mike Flambor will be your songwriting production team. You will work with them on all new material and remastered material. You can continue to write your own songs, but Sony will not release them and you will not release them independently. All work comes through Torque and Mike, so welcome them into the team. Yours will be a collaborative arrangement and you'll be making use of their familiarity with multi-format platforms and proprietary ecosystems." There was a collective gasp and a spike of activity with the phones. Moonaj paused a moment, but the table was too wide to allow him to see what they were up to.

  "To their right is Bill Brandt, your legal manager. He'll deal with contracts, deals, all the boring stuff. . . ."

  "Naming rights, legal issues affecting territories other than the US and Europe, including Russia." Rene smiled at the little man in the big jacket, who was also given an inexplicable acknowledgement by Wallet.

  "And getting you out of jail," said Moonaj finally. "At the end of the table, Tom Scavinio is your manager. He will be your first point of contact on a day to day basis. After this meeting you'll have no more dealings with me. Everything goes through Tom."

  Susan transferred her attention from her phone to her new manager. Scavinio was half a man, a remnant of what he'd once been. He wore a suit like a bad thought and was the only one leaning forward at the table with his chin resting on his fist, pushing his mouth upwards until it was almost underneath the tip of his nose. He had a permanent disinterested scowl. His hair was the only part of him that came close to any sense of animation, statically electrified and grey, like an old mobster or a cartoon drawing. He could have been asleep with his eyes open, but Moonaj knew he was fully alert on the inside. Susan may have imperceptibly adjusted her body angle towards Scavinio and they occasionally, briefly exchanged mutual observations.

  "You'll see a lot of Torque and Mike and Linda," said Moonaj, "but Tom will pretty much be with you everyday from now on." He sat back, arms outstretched. Job done. "And that's pretty much it. I'm told by people I trust that you have potential and I have a duty to exploit that. But please do me a favour and just now and again drop the masks and behave like rational human beings, which I'm sure you are. It will make life so much easier for everyone."

  There was an awkward pause before Wallet felt the need to respond. "We just want to make music. Everything else is outside our control. Whatever you read or hear about, it's all media driven exaggeration and ninety nine percent of the time not of our making."

  "Not of your making? Are you taking the piss?" said Moonaj.

  Susan Bekker moved noticeably for the first time. She took a folded sheet of paper out of her back pocket and read from it. "Staff will not speak to any member of the band, make eye contact with any member of the band, approach to shake hands or greet any member of the band, request autographs, take photographs, make any kind of video or audio recording of the band, attempt to retrieve hand or fingerprints from any surface, collect as keepsakes or mementos any object handled by the band, invoke or provoke a response from any member of the band, stand within eight feet of any member of the band." She threw the paper at Moonaj. "Are we fucking infected with something?"

  "We wanted to save you the embarrassment. . . ."

  "You have the fucking gall to accuse us of excess and you're circulating things like this. Well let me introduce you to our side of the table. To my left is Elaine Daley, she plays bass guitar. Dee Vincent is our vocalist and plays rhythm guitar. Rene van Voors is our drummer and comes from Rotterdam like me, Susan Bekker, lead guitarist. You guys can sit there feeling as self-important as you like, but just remember without people like us, you'd probably be working on Wall Street and you know what people think about bankers. We make you guys look respectable, so don't hate us."

  "We don't hate you," said Bill Brandt offering the palms of his small hands. "This is purely a business agreement, Miss Bekker, it's a contract and if you break the terms of that contract we will seek redress. But we don't hate you."

  Wallet was signalling to Brandt to calm down. "We've had contracts before, we know the score. All Susan is trying to say is that we have a way of doing things which works, don't disrupt that or else you'l
l end up with a different band to the one you think you're signing."

  "A way of doing things that works?" said Moonaj. "Hasn't worked for the last thirty five years if you ask me. When did you last release an album? 1976?"

  "What's your market position?" asked Macvie. The band simultaneously looked at their phones as if her voice was coming out of them. "Amongst all the hard rock acts who are out there, why should anyone listen to you and not one of the others? Why you and not Metallica or Slipknot, Rammstein, ACDC."

  "I thought the job of marketing was to find that out," said Susan. "Earn your money and tell us."

  "No, that's your responsibility. Instead of drinking a lot and staying out late you have to speak to people, establish a relationship that creates a consolidated fanbase," tap tap, "what you're known for doesn't impress a generation who didn't bat an eyelid at wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's all about respect, making people feel as if you really are there at the other end of that Twitter stream or replying on Facebook. You can't act like gods these days. You have to be part of their circle not giving them permission to access yours." She started fiddling with her own phone to bring up pictures of the band's old record sleeves. She held up an image of the Dead Hearts Live artwork. "Stuff like this is a dime a dozen. You can see real gore on a million websites these days."

  Wallet was clicking his fingers. "We had nothing to do with that."

  Macvie smirked. "It has your name on it, sweetheart. Look, I'm saying all this for your benefit. You're coming back after thirty five years. How will you feel when you go out there for the first time and no one stops to look, no one stops to listen, everyone passes on by and tuts, 'yeah seen it done that.' I'm trying to make sure that the Onion doesn't give you the Marilyn Manson treatment."

  "So what do you suggest?" Wallet asked. "Do we have to guess are or you going to feed us clues. Why don't we build up a large art collection or relocate to a tax haven. We could get really close to our fans by suing the arses off them for the occasional illegal download. Or maybe just sign over the rights to some licensee who can sue them on our behalf then we don't get shit all over our fingers. Worked for Nuclear Blast and Century Media."

  "You're being stupid now," said Bill Brandt.

  "No, I'm being honest. We build up a large fan base and then distract them while you lot mug them from behind."

  Susan grinned.

  "Let's arrange another meeting sometime to discuss this properly," said Macvie. "Drop the old Munsters routine and bring you up to date."

  "Munsters?" said Dee. She turned to Elaine. "I told you those Russian plastic surgeons didn't know what they were doing."

  "We'll have that meeting, Linda" said Susan. "I think we should make it a priority. It's important for you to get the know who we really are."

  "I'll give Tom the details of my diary after the meeting," said Macvie.

  "And what about you two? Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee." Susan was casually waving her phone like she was waiting for someone to ring her back. Making small talk to pass the time.

  "We're ready," said Torque Rez. "We spoke to Jan in Berlin about what not to do. Would have been nice to speak to Martin Lundqvist, but you know."

  "All went a bit Beethoven for him, didn't it," said Dee.

  "That's one way of describing it, I guess," said Torque sharing Bill Brandt's evident disgust. Moonaj was solidifying with boredom.

  "Let's not run before we can walk," said Mike Flambor. "Why don't we just get together, book some space somewhere, crack open a few beers and just play some music. Keep it real, you know, a little bit unplugged," Rene and Susan got a shock off their phones. Flambor waited for them to deal with the cause.

  "Sorry, did you say unplugged?" said Susan.

  "Yeah, just see how we all get on. Hang out for a while, go places. I know you weren't happy with the song Jan arranged for you."

  "On our behalf," Wallet corrected.

  "But one friend to another," Flambor continued, "your music is the rock equivalent of Gregorian chant. And you look more like a group of hairdressers than a dangerous rock band. But," he held up his Starbucks cup again, "that's Linda's problem not ours. Trust us and we'll make sure you don't get bottled off when you support Uriah Heap next time they play Carnegie Hall."

  "Okay children," Moonaj stood up as Torque Rez walloped Flambor's ankle under the table. "this is where I go back to the real world and leave you babies to throw things at each other. I think everyone wearing a suit and tie is done here."

  But Mike Tindall wasn't done here. Moonaj remained on his feet to keep his colleague brief. "Can I just add something," Tindall said examining a document in his leather folder. "Our investment is underwritten and we'll need a medical examination from all of you as part of the insurance conditions. Tom can I leave that for you to arrange?"

  "Yeah, sure." Scavinio was making to leave too.

  "Medical examination?" said Wallet.

  "Yes. If one of you drops dead from a medical condition you already knew about we lose a significant sum of money from lost revenues and we don't want our insurers surprising us with a get out clause."

  "We'd be delighted," said Susan. "When would you like us to do that?"

  "Leave it with me," said Tom. "I'll fix a date and feed back to you."

  As the suits stood up Moonaj couldn't resist one final speech, a farewell gift. "I try to stay out of the more excessive corners of this industry. I am a self confessed rock atheist and pop agnostic so your image and all the terrible historic baggage it comes with is of no interest to me whatsoever. I don't want to see you on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, I want to see you on the covers of Time and Vogue and Cosmopolitan and GQ and anywhere else there's a market waiting to be razzle dazzled by your particular brand of sound and fury, I want you trending. . . ."

  "Bingo," Rene was the first to make the call and his triumph drew a collective groan from his colleagues.

  Moonaj was almost out the door when the call stopped him. "What? Bingo, what is that, a Dutch word?"

  "We got some tips and advice off your intern in England," said Susan as Dee and Elaine put their phones back into their pockets. Wallet was inspecting Rene's phone and handed it back to the drummer with disappointed resignation. "Bullshit Bingo," said Susan. "And Rene won."

  "Goodbye." Todd Moonaj pulled his jacket on taking several attempts to control an awkward left sleeve. On his way out Bill Brandt attempted to shake hands with the band.

  "We don't shake hands, Mr Brandt" said Elaine holding the paper memo in his face. "Haven't you read it? And stop looking at my tits, I'm not Rihanna."

  -

  Rob Wallet followed Tom Scavinio who was sneakily grinning at Susan as he left the room. The executives' polite retreat to the corridor exploded once outside with a salvo of belches and wall thumping. Bill Brandt described someone as assholes, but as Linda Macvie, Torque Rez and Mike Flambor remained in a huddled whisper at the far end of the table, the target of the little man's bile was unclear. Eventually Wallet came back, still in need of a bathroom now and again obviously, and said quietly to Rene, "I keep thinking his name's Torque Wrench. . . ."

  "Sh," said Susan. The band could hear what was being whispered in the other group.

  -

  "I think there's a huge disparity between the band's music and the image," mumbled Linda Macvie.

  "Yeah, I agree," replied Torque Rev.

  "They've been sold on the back of all this so called vampire gore and excess, but then you listen to them and it's like psychedelic sixties crap? Where's the energy that matches the image? It's like Lamb of God going on stage and playing the Carpenters. No one gives a shit about their image and the music is straight out of the ark."

  "And another problem," whispered Mike Flambor. "The vocalist," The other two agreed. "She's the weak link. Jan knew what he was doing cutting her out of the track. She's just a passenger."

  "I was already thinking about that," said Macvie. "Well, how about this. This is just off the t
op of my head, but I was chewing it over during the meeting. We approach one of the networks with a proposal for the band's next vocalist. X-Factor meets the Human Centipede or something. We have a tv show to pick their new vocalist. It would give us another twelve to eighteen months prime time before the next reinvention."

  Torque Rez nodded.

  "It wouldn't be impossible to engineer a split. Wouldn't be the first time. Maybe pull the Dutch away from the Brits. The fault line's already there. Two bands pulled together to make one. There's always guilt hanging round in the background when that happens. If we can pick out that guilt and build on that, you can split them up again."

  Flambor breathed in deeply. "Strip them down and then rebuild it from the bottom up."

  Macvie agreed. "Bekker and Daley, definitely, maybe the drummer, but the vocalist has to go."

  -

  Back at the dead end of the room the band listened without acknowledgement. The two clusters eventually met and exchanged smiles of varying intent. "Let us know when you're ready for that discussion, Linda. See if we can tease out the essence of Toten Herzen."

  "Then we can bottle it and sell it like all the other whores do," said Dee.

  "I'll be in touch. Next twenty four hours." And with that Linda Macvie was off, arranging her scarves and juggling all the hand held gadgets. Torque Rez and Mike Flambor made their excuses and followed her. Rob Wallet carefully drew back one of the window blinds.

  "Hurry up," he shouted. "Sun's going down."

  "And I should be joining them." Tom Scavinio rolled into the room like tumbleweed, overcoat on, small rucksack over his shoulder and studied the band who were now sitting all alone like abandoned children.

  "They left us all alone, Mr Tom," said Susan.

  "A word of advice." Scavinio sat on the edge of the table alongside them. "Mike is just doing his job and doesn't care about you guys one way or another, but the others. They see you as a lump of modelling clay and they're gonna try to mould you to suit their own needs, not yours. Don't let all the dismissive bullshit fool you. They've all been up all night jerking off at the thought of being in charge of Toten Herzen. Let them ride it for a little while, let them have their fifteen minutes and then do whatever you do. Trust me, you'll enjoy it more."

  "Thanks for the advice," said Susan. "And what were you doing all night last night?"

  "I was taking care of my wife."

  "What's that a euphemism for, Mr Tom?" said Dee.

  "She's dying of cancer. I like to be with her as much as I can these days." The silence left him uncomfortable and he tried to reverse what he'd said. "Looks like I'm showing you out of the building."

  "Well you are our manager, now," said Rene.

  "What prize did you win?" asked Scavinio as he led the way.

  "I don't know. What prize have I won?" asked Rene.

  "Linda Macvie's head mounted on a silver plate," said Dee.

  "Don't let them get to you," said Scavinio. "That's what they want. There's no other way of controlling you other than provoking a reaction."

  The weary group arrived at the elevator doors. "On a scale of one to ten," said Susan, "how much influence do we have over what happens?"

  "One to ten?" said Scavinio pressing the button. "This scale doesn't start at the ground floor. It's ten levels under the basement and you have to be pretty forceful to get on that scale in the first place." He turned and leaned back against the wall. "Two things. You, along with every other artist signing to a major label for the first time, you don't have any say in anything. And secondly, I know that you guys are not going to get anywhere near a contract with Sony."

  "What makes you say that?" asked Elaine.

  "You haven't come here to sign a contract." Scavinio was smiling. Fuck, this man was cleverer than he looked. "Call it a hunch. Now are you flying back to your hotel or do you ride elevators?"

  "We'll come down with you," said Susan with a broad smile.

  Scavinio stepped inside the elevator. "When we get to the ground floor will I still be alive?"

  "You ask a lot of questions there, Mr Tom," said Dee and the elevator doors closed with a rattle and a crunch.

  Financial Times

  Sony's Deal With Toten Herzen Could Be a Welcome Boost to Dwindling Coffers

  Signatures haven't been signed in blood, not yet at least, but when they are Sony's latest addition to its catalogue could be more lucrative than they think. The clamour to see what Toten Herzen look like after thirty five years, along with existing titles ready for remastering and re-release in digital format means that Sony have a lot of work already done for them even before a deal is signed.

  Davinia Trench, International Media Analyst at Speakman Venture Fund says the deal could be worth as much as twenty million dollars a year to Sony before they even begin to spend money on new material. "There will be a clamour of sponsorship opportunities with companies lining up to associate their brands with a familiar name. People of one generation, brought up in the seventies, will buy into the 'nostalgia fix,' whilst a younger audience, constantly looking for new material will buy into the granddad horror which they won't have experienced before."

  Taking a leaf out of EMI and Apple Corps, the Beatles back catalogue was remastered and released in CD format in 2009, digital format on iTunes in 2010, followed by the whole lot reissued a second time in vinyl, individually and as a sixteen album box set. "Toten Herzen don't have the following or the amount of material that the Beatles had, but the example has already been set. There is a precedent for multiple reissues of an old band's recordings."

  But Whilst EMI came good with the Beatles, they will also remember their less than successful dalliance with another 'notorious' rock band the Sex Pistols. "I'm sure Sony are too sophisticated to make the same mistake. The music industry's core values and business aspirations have moved on from the late seventies. Due diligence as a business concept probably didn't exist when EMI signed the Sex Pistols. Sony will not allow any kind of unauthorised behaviour to take place when so much is at stake."

  Sony's share price was unaffected by the announcement, remaining at 1,442.50.

 

‹ Prev Next ›