by Iain Banks
The first single was, after all, going to be 'Frozen Gold'. 'Another Rainy Day', ARC decided, was too downbeat for a debut. It was the better song, but just not right for that vital first impression. 'Frozen Gold' it would be then; and that suited my desire for neatness, and my vanity; F, G. My clever idea.
I'd written the song for a male voice; it was for Dave Balfour to sing. Never even occurred to me to do it any other way. When I wrote the words, 'Why do you bite me on the shoulder, why do you scratch me on the back? Why do you always have to make love, like you're making an attack?" I was imagining a couple screwing, missionary position, him on top, her scratching his back, biting him when she came... and I stress imagining; I was still very much a virgin at the time, but I'd read a lot of my flatmates' Penthouses and Forums, so I reckoned I knew what I was talking about, and of course such physicality was shown to be just a metaphor for a particular relationship, as the song developed (oh, I thought I was very clever) ...
Then Big Sam said keep the backing, but re-record it with Christine singing lead. Dave wasn't sure at first, but Sam said he could lead on the next single, probably 'Another Rainy Day'; he just had a hunch about this one being right for Christine. Rick Tumber didn't think it would make much difference at first, but then became very enthusiastic. ARC's management came round to the idea too. We held up the single for a week, Big Sam got me to re-write the subsequent verses a little, to make the song more personal, less abstract, then Christine spent just one more day in the studio and we released 'Frozen Gold' at the end of September , with Christine singing lead. I still hadn't realised.
The single came out, and I experienced that unreal, dizzying feeling of listening, for the first time, to something I had written being played on the radio. That sense of unreality continued. The publicity had started; there were posters, interviews (though not for me, of course) ... and not all that many sales. I felt curiously unworried. Something would happen.
ARC got us onto Top Of The Pops. I wasn't sure whether to be appalled or delighted. The same programme as Barry White? Jumping Jesus. But at least my ma and my pals would finally be convinced it was all really happening.
It wasn't until we were rehearsing for the programme that I understood just how smart Big Sam was. Christine's voice had been improving anyway, under Milne's direction, and she'd been loosening up generally, moving better, looking more relaxed and comfortable on the stage, really starting to show that she was enjoying it, but Big Sam had obviously had a word with her, and in that rehearsal I saw what he was up to. I didn't say anything.
Then came the recording in the TOTP studio. We got it first time; nobody fluffed their mimes. God knows how; Christine was stunning. I felt my eyes staring, I don't know about anybody else.
All it was was that she sang that first verse as though she was living it there and then; it was sex. She started with her hair tied up, in a sort of bun. That was unusual for a start. She wore a black dress with (of course) gold trimmings; Dave wore black flares and a white tuxedo (almost drably low key and tasteful for the time). F, G: F F, E G. We set off.
Christine didn't just sing; she strutted and pouted her way through that first verse, seemed about to kiss the camera, and as she sang 'attack?' she used her free hand to take hold of the collar of the dress and pull. It ripped. Just a little, but it ripped. She threw her head back and marched to the other side of the stage and another camera while we slammed out the middle eight built around F and G. The torn dress flapped a little, exposing her shoulder. She shook her head, spilling long blonde hair out, and sang the rest of the song as though she was just about to either orgasm or kick the next male she saw in the balls. Or both.
The BBC producer was no fool. He made us do it again anyway, even though there was nothing wrong with the first time.
The floor manager asked Christine if she'd mind not ripping her dress on this take, and we wasted quarter of an hour while a little old lady from the costume department was located and escorted to the bopper-infested studio. It took her all of thirty seconds to mend Christine's dress.
The second run-through was lacklustre. They broadcast the first one, dress-tearing and all. It had been a close-run thing, we discovered later (there was a reaction against 'permissiveness' at the time and, dammit, it was sexy), but they did use it. If they hadn't, we'd still have made it, though perhaps not with that single (the song wasn't all that strong, like I say). But Christine sold it. That dress sold it. Sex did.
I used to have a video of that programme, and it all looks fairly tame now, but only relatively. This was pre-punk, remember, and even though one shoulder was hardly in the same league as Jim Morrison's dick, we are talking about a family show here. But even watching it five or six years later I remember I still felt my hair rise a little and a slight sweat prickle on my skin. There was energy there; Christine exuded it, and Milne had captured it on the record. Energy; excitement. You know it when you see it, and when kids see it, when they hear it, they go out and buy records.
All well and good. Yahoo for us. But we started out with a gesture of exploitation, of sex and violence, and of male-against-female violence at that; we took some stick from the women's movement, and I didn't blame them. Some bands earn their fame; we bought ours.
God, there were letters to the papers, there were headlines in the papers, people wrote in and phoned to the BBC, we must have come fairly close to having questions asked in the House of Commons. And a couple of million adolescent boys wanked to the memory of Christine that night, and then went out and bought the single on the following day. Well... not two million, not buying it, but a lot. We made number two, which around Christmas means a lot more copies sold than the majority of number ones throughout the rest of the year. The album suddenly became Eagerly Awaited the morning after the programme was shown, and when Frozen Gold and Liquid Ice did hit the shops, it sold out. Even most of the critics liked it, which really was extraordinary. Pressing plants went onto three shifts. Christine turned down vast sums to appear nude for the sort of magazines my flatmates used to buy and I used to borrow from them.
All those young boys had come, but we had arrived. It was Fame City, and we'd been given the key.
Weirdness. Years later I'd look at old papers, or at Mickey's scrapbook, and I'd see photos of us at some party or celebration, with really famous people; other musicians, popular comedians, politicians, minor royalty, and there they'd be, and there I'd be, in the background, and I couldn't remember anything about it at all. Nothing. Nada. Total blank. If you asked me, Have you met these people? I'd swear blind I hadn't. No memory of it whatsoever.
The whole next year after that first hit passed in a daze. It was exactly like getting steaming drunk and waking up the next morning not knowing what the hell you'd done, only this lasted for a year, not a night. I look back on it now and I wonder how the hell I didn't walk in front of a truck, or sign away the world rights to all future compositions, or say something outrageously slanderous, or just drink myself to death or start on heroin; I was on the same automatic pilot that somehow (usually) sees utter drunkards through their binges, stops them from falling out of windows or off kerbs or picking fights with entire gangs.
'Another Rainy Day' (sung by Dave, but if you watch the TOTP programme we played it on, the camera spends more time on Christine than it does on Dave) got to number three in February '75. Dave, who'd insisted as being credited as 'Davey' on the album, and was becoming known as that, was disappointed we hadn't had a number one single yet, but the album had been number one album for five weeks, so it wasn't too hard to bear. It was probably only because so many people had the song on the album that they didn't bother buying the single, even though they were different versions of the song.
I think the main reason Dave was worried was that he wanted to be the band's usual lead singer, and was worried ARC would favour Christine over him because the single she'd fronted had done better. And I'd thought he'd just wanted to be a guitar hero.
Two
things: one; shortly after that first TV appearance, I mentioned to Dave how much better Christine's singing was; not so much technically, but in the way it came across, and how much looser she seemed to be, moving about the stage, confident, in control. She had seemed almost prim when I first saw the band at Paisley Tech, and now she was, well, I don't think I actually used the word 'raunchy', but that was what I was getting at. I put it down to the influences of Mike Milne and Big Sam, and just the fact of being in the big time now. Dave grinned and said, 'Na, all she needed was a good fuck,' winked at me and walked off.
Now, I'd always assumed they'd been at it constantly since long before I knew them (over a year previously by then), and apart from that... shit, I just objected to the whole idea, and not solely because I was jealous. Asshole, I remember thinking.
Two: middle-class planning again. A few years ago I asked Rick Tumber why even when we had a perfectly good mix on an album, ARC always re-mixed the songs before issuing them as singles. Rick grinned the way people do before they put a Royal Running Flush down on top of your three aces. 'For the singles album, Danny boy,' he told me, 'your real fans'll buy everything you've ever released, but even some real fans never buy 45s; they wouldn't buy a singles album either, if they already had all the material on the albums they've already bought, so we make all the mixes different and then they have to buy the singles album too and so you and I make even more money than we would have made anyway because they've bought seven albums not six, or eight not seven or whatever it is or however you count it, but what the hell; we sell more albums even though it's all the same material and it's cost the same amount of studio time and so on, not that that accounts for much of the unit cost but you know what I mean, and....' This explanation lasted another ten minutes. Never guess he'd just filled his nose with Columbian Ajax, would you?
But do you see the point? Jesus, I'd never have thought of that. They were looking at least four or five albums and maybe the same number of years ahead; that's real forward planning. That's middle-class thinking. That's looking ahead. The middle classes are brought up like that. They get salaries they make last all month, they'll take out Life Assurance without getting the hard sell, they'll invest in the future, they'll buy a wee stupid car so their kids can go to a good private school (and it makes good sense anyway; so economical). They can keep drink in the house without having to drink it all. Not like your working class at all. If you've got it, spend it; if it's there, drink it. Hence the weekly wage and the local off licence.
But there are common denominators everywhere. I can remember when it was a matter of real importance to know of a group more obscure than those your friends knew about; not just any old group, but a band playing progressive music. If that band then went on to become really famous (even though that would be regarded as selling out), then your status as a person of immense good taste was assured. It's called gambling, or investing. Looking for a horse they've been shoeing with lead until now, or a stock quoted low but about to rise. Everybody plays the same game; it's just some people make more money out of their version.
Then came All Wine Tastes Sour. From that, 'Old Budapest' (the song about the note lying in the grate) only made number eight, but 'You'd Never Believe' hit number one, and stayed there for three weeks. Davey sang that. He was very pleased. It was only knocked off the top spot by Rod Stewart's 'Sailing'; so, no disgrace.
The first album went gold the same week the second got to number one. The songs on All Wine... were credited to me. Dave and Christine shared a twenty per cent arrangement fee. That had led to some tension, but I felt I was in a position of power; nobody else in the band had written anything worth recording on anything other than a cassette machine. If what I said didn't go, I would. Take it or I'll leave.
Dear God, such arrogance shames me now.
UK tour; breaking in the States so over there for a two-week whistle-stop promo tour, answering the same questions and waking in Holiday or Ramada Inns and staring at the ceiling and wondering, Where the hell is this?, then back into the studio to record Gauche, and then, thank God, a rest.
Why do I remember these pastorals?
We'd recorded Gauche at Manorfield Studios, in Herefordshire; Lord Bodenham, socialite and photographer, had put us up at his little place while we were working. This wasn't just sixties style Hey-look-how-hip-I-am; he was a major shareholder in ARC. Took the snap on the back of the first album, even though everybody remembers the photo on the front; a solid tear of 24-carat gold caught with very fast film as it smashed into blue-stained water with a thin covering of ice (publicity made a lot of the fact that it was real gold and the tear-shaped blob weighed sixty pounds and there were three security guards in the studio when the shot was taken... all my idea, I am half-ashamed and half-proud to admit).
October again already, my goodness. Lord Bod had pissed off to Antibes, but he'd encouraged us to stay, so we did. We'd used backing singers on the UK tour, and kept them on for Gauche. One of the three girls was a lady called Inez Rose Walker. Tall, raven and ravishing, statuesque and stately, always well-spoken and occasionally foul-mouthed, Inez had impressed me no end. I suspected she'd impressed the good lord rather a lot as well, but nothing seemed to come of that.
Set the scene. The Sex Pistols were still in captivity, a year away from bringing the language of every street corner to a single television studio. Malcolm McClaren was presumably still fine-tuning the neat concept of turning the turntables on the big record companies; instead of a band selling lots of records and them not getting any money, he had the Sex Pistols act so unpleasantly that although they didn't sell any records the companies gave them lots and lots of money just to go away. Springsteen had just released 'Born To Run' in the States; the shock waves had yet to rock Britain. And Led Zeppelin were still selling very well indeed, thank you.
Mind you, so was James Last. Oh, and Disco was big.
Party time. ARC were saying 'Thank you' because Gauche had entered the album charts at number one, on advance orders alone. The fact that we had now completed our three album deal and could now go wherever the hell we wanted for as much money as possible had, of course, absolutely nothing to do with such conspicuous extravagance.
ARC brought a small circus to Lord Bod's. Lions and tigers and elephants too. Fire eaters and jugglers and trapeze artistes, multitudinous chimps and a human cannonball, not to mention three alcoholic clowns with real red noses.
I'd never seen a lady trapeze artiste in the flesh before, and immediately fell in love with the one that turned up. God, those muscles. It was only thanks to Inez that I got over her; I fell for Inez instead. As well. Both. Oh, Christ, I don't know. There was no safety net, I'll tell you that.
'You don't know what you want to do, do you?'
I looked aghast at her. We were walking up a narrow road in the place called Golden Valley, between a village called Vowchurch and another village called Turnastone. It was a bright autumn day, blue sky and fresh wind. The leaves were just starting to fall off the trees and we were walking up a clefted road between the two villages, high banks of earth and trees to either side, red, brown and yellow leaves beneath our feet.
'What?' I said. 'Of course I do. I know exactly what I want.'
'What then?'
'Well...'
'Ha! See?'
'No; come on... be fair. I'm thinking.'
'Oh, dear; you think that's an excuse?'
'Hey! Stop giving me such a hard t-time here...'
'Oh well, I'm sorry. . ,
'... I know exactly what I want to do. I want to... change the world!'
'Oh, I see. For the better?'
I laughed. 'Of course!' (I never could see when I was having the piss taken out of me.)
'Oh, well, good. That'll make a change.' Inez nodded, stared ahead up the slope of the steeply banked road.
'I'm not just in it for the mmm-money, you know. I know what it's like to be p-poor. I mean... "European" and "No Lesson For Us";' — she'd
sung on both — 'they've both got mmmmessages. I don't know if you could call them protest songs, but they're...
'Commercial. They're commercial songs. Bits off an album. Don't kid yourself.'
'Jee-zuz! You're really so cynical, aren't you?' I was amazed. Inez walked beside me, arms crossed, marching up that slope through the scattering of golden leaves.
'I'm cynical!' She laughed.
The sun broke through the clouds then, and at the same time a wind blew up from behind us, stirring and swirling the goldenbrown leaves around our feet, lifting her hair and mine and combing our faces with it, and belling out her long dress. The wind settled and strengthened, the leaves started to move, and as we walked up that short hill between the dry banks, the breeze filled, and it shifted the tumbling leaves along with us, moving them slowly uphill like a strange stream backing up against the pull of gravity, spreading them and rolling them slowly up the slope at the same speed as we were walking, so that for a long and dizzying moment we seemed to walk and stand quite still together, travelling islands caught within that bright, chaotic flow, our ankles tickled by the brittle flood, our eyes tricked by the relative movement of those charging, rolling, whispering leaves.
The effect lasted for only a few seconds before the wind blew stronger and the leaves outdistanced us, but for that brief time it was magical, and something so powerful and odd I could never express it. It remained something we shared, alone. Never could give it to anybody else, no matter how hard I tried.
I remember taking rather a lot of drugs that autumn, staying in that grand, impressive house. Once I climbed a tree and reclined on a long oak bough, quite at my ease, head buzzing, while watching a juggler on the gravel path beneath me. I lay there, elbow on branch, head in hand, looking down at the circus juggler, and watched the Indian clubs whirling up towards me and then back down, and thought that there was something quite profound and remarkable about watching juggling from above, especially when the juggler was too intent on his skill to notice the observer. It was one of those perfect metaphors one only ever experiences under the simplicities of a drug; at the time it is both obviously unique and impregnably apt, and — afterwards — utterly unfathomable .