Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  I think I hoped to find myself in my fantasies, to see the shape of who I really was in the pattern of my realised dreams, and when it all happened, and I did, I just wasn't very impressed with what I found there. It wasn't that I actively disliked myself, just that I wasn't as interesting and fine and noble a person as I'd thought I was. I used to think that all I needed was the opportunity, and I'd blossom, I'd flower, I'd spread my wings and fly... but discovered in the end that I was a weed, and that some buds just never open, and that some caterpillars were only ever worms with an identity crisis.

  So I became a hermit crab instead, and look at the big shell I found! Well, I'm no shortarse. I need the headroom.

  St Jute's and I are suited.

  'Wes, you're not serious.'

  'Hey, of course I'm serious.'

  'No, I... no, not even you. You c-can't be serious. You can't mean it. Come on; it's a joke.'

  'It's not a joke, man. One day everybody'll live like that. This is the future and you'd better get used to it.'

  'Jesus, you are serious.'

  'I already told you that.'

  'You're mad.' I turned to Inez. 'Tell him he's mad.'

  Inez looked up from her magazine. 'You're mad.'

  'See?' I said to him. 'Even Inez agrees.'

  Wes just shook his head and looked out of the car window at the passing Cornish scenery. 'It's the future, man. Might as well get used to it now.'

  The Panther de Ville swept down the high-banked Cornish lanes, between the rainswept golden fields of summer. Clouds moved like bright ships, alternately battleship grey and the colour of the sun. The air was warm and a little humid outside and we had the air conditioning on. I refilled Inez' tumbler with champagne. She, Wes and I were on our way down from London to Wes' house, for that weekend's party.

  The big car braked suddenly as we came round a bend and found a tractor backing a trailer into a field from the road. I tutted, shook my hand and reached for a napkin. 'Hey, Jas,' I said, 'we're not in a hurry.' Jasmine stopped the car to wait for the tractor to unblock the road. She looked round from the driver's seat and pushed her cap back, showing the shaved sides of her head. She'd rather taken to the punk look over the last month. I'd preferred it when she had long blonde hair, but I wasn't going to say anything.

  'Spill your champers, did I?'

  'Yeah.' I filled Wes' glass too, then my own.

  'Never mind, love; carpet's champagne coloured, innit?'

  'Jas, the bodywork is champagne coloured, but that doesn't mean I'm going to wash it with Moët.'

  Jas looked at my full tumbler. (Flutes are impractical when you're travelling. Especially when Jas is driving.) 'Give us a glass, Dan,' she said.

  'Wait till we get to the house,' I told her. She looked peeved.

  'Give us some coke, then,' she suggested.

  'What?' I shoured. 'Are you kidding? Last time I gave you that stuff we ended up doing a hundred and forty down the M6! Never again!'

  This was all true, by the way; no exaggeration. After that incident, I'd decided the de Ville was maybe a bit too highly powered for Jasmine; she'd only passed her test that spring, after all, and the twelve cylinder Jaguar engine was tuned-up to lay about four hundred horsepower on the road, if you kicked the beast hard enough.

  I'd rung up Panther and asked if there was any way of sort of shutting off half the cylinders or something, bur the dealer said no, there wasn't, in a voice that seemed to want to ask me whether I was certain I was really fit to own such a fine motor.

  I'd have switched to another car but I didn't want to let the de Ville our of my sight; I'd mislaid five grand's worth of coke in the upholstery somewhere when I'd been drunk, and I was still looking for it.

  I remembered stashing the drug, but not exactly where; as well as being drunk and stoned I'd been in a severe paranoid fugue, nor simply because I was carrying the stuff but because we were in the middle of Hyde Park at lunchtime, and Jasmine had the Panther doing fifty miles an hour over the grass, scattering sunbathers like startled grouse and accounting for at least two brace of deckchairs.

  We'd had an argument about sex; Jasmine wanted some and I had prioritised getting to the record company office for a Rolling Stone photo session above finding the nearest drive-through car wash and parking in it while Jas climbed into the back with me and took off her uniform. She calmed down eventually and somehow we got out of the park without being arrested, but in all the excitement I forgot I'd planted the coke in a Safe Place and didn't remember until a week later when we were starting to run out of the stuff. I knew I hadn't thrown it out of a door or window because Jas had found a way of locking them all so I couldn't jump out. Anyway, I was still looking for the cocaine and when I did find it Jasmine wasn't getting any, not when she was driving, not after that last time on the M6.

  'Thought it was speed, didn't I?' Jasmine giggled roguishly.

  'Oh, very funny, Jas.' The tractor had cleared the road. I nodded forward. 'Road's clear, Jasmine.'

  'Go on,' she said, winking at me. 'Just one glass.'

  Inez put her magazine down. 'Jasmine,' she said tiredly.

  'I...' Jas began. Then a fusillade of car horns sounded from behind us. Jas looked unconcernedly over our shoulders through the rear window, then put both elbows on the back of her seat. 'Come on,' she said. 'I drive better smashed.'

  'I wish she wouldn't use that word,' Wes muttered, shaking his head and looking at the earth bank opposite. The honking noises behind us increased.

  'Jas,' I said, pointing forward again, 'just drive.' I pressed the button that elevated the glass screen between us, and Jasmine's elbows were slowly lifted up; her face assumed a look of annoyance, and as the glass hissed up into place she was turning round to look furiously at a small red Mini, squeezing past us from behind. She lowered her window and started shouting inaudibly at the car and giving it the finger. I listened in via the intercom.

  '-unt!' Jas' tinny voice shouted. 'Ever been fist fucked? Wanna start?' I turned the intercom off again. The car leapt away, spilling more champagne. I rocked back in my seat. The Panther was accelerating hard, the grassy banks and hedgerows blurring past. The rear of the red Mini was rapidly coming closer. I stabbed at the intercom button again.

  'And don't you dare run that car off the road, you bitch! Just slow down! You know what happened the last time! I'm warning you!' Jas stamped on the brakes, looked round glaring at me, then threw her champagne-coloured chauffeuse's cap down into the footwell. She settled down to thirty miles an hour and thereafter drove hunched up over the wheel with her epauletted shoulders set in their 'I do not want to talk about it' position. I dried my hands again and sat back in the seat.

  'She's got to go,' Inez said, turning a page in her Cosmopolitan.

  'She's right; it's you or her,' Wes told me. I shook my head.

  'I'll keep her on till I learn to drive myself,' I told them. Inez guffawed. Wes looked away at the fields again, shaking his head.

  'Wes,' Inez said, putting the magazine down and looking at him seriously.

  'Yeah?'

  'Are you serious about this... bugging?'

  'Sure.' He nodded. He took the silver cigarette case from the rosewood table set between Inez and me and took out a joint. 'Yeah; of course.' He used the cigar lighter, sat back, looking at Inez and me in turn. Inez pursed her lips.

  'Well, I'm not staying in your house then, Weston. I'll find a hotel in Newquay. How about you?' She asked me. I shrugged, took one of the spliffs as well.

  Beautifully rolled. This was the other reason I kept Jas on.

  That and the fact that her father was a gangster from the East End and she'd threatened to tell him I'd raped her if I didn't keep her near me. I didn't fancy a radical penisectomy just then so I agreed. Jas wanted me to screw her but I was half-terrified that if I ever did she'd develop an even closer attachment and I'd never get rid of her (elephantiasis of the ego is endemic amongst rock stars, never forget), and also half-reluctant
not to have her around. She was a pet, a conversation piece. She had character. It was all bad, but she had it.

  'Well?' Inez said, pointedly. I sighed. I still wanted to stay at Wes' place; it would be something different. But Inez probably expected me to come with her .

  'Yeah, all right,' I said. 'Hotel.' I gestured with the flats of my hands to Wes. 'Sorry,' I told him.

  'Hey, that's all right, man.' Wes stared out over a low hedge at the sloping fields and towards the distant line of surf breaking on the rocks of the north Cornish coast. 'Still a free country,' he muttered, then sighed and said, 'hey; let's put on some sounds. Too quiet in here.'

  Jasmine eventually passed the red Mini on a straight stretch of A class road. She cut in sharply and the Mini flashed its lights at her, but at least she didn't spill any champagne.

  Ah, Jesus, big houses, fast cars and sleek women. Fame and fortune; nothing wrong with it as long as you're young enough to enjoy it and old enough to control it.

  The others didn't make as much as I did, but they all made a lot. We hit the industry at a good time, when albums were selling well. We peaked in the UK in '78, the same year the greatest number of records were sold, and by then we were big in the States too; big worldwide, in fact. Far too much has been written already about what we represented, where we fitted in and what we stood for, but I suppose there's some truth in it all somewhere, and I guess I would go along with the idea we were a sort of half step towards punk; just different enough to be novel, not quite mad enough to be a threat.

  We fell between two stools and made our piles, if you want the gist of it. We were claimed as being all sorts of things; we had a foot in more camps than we had feet to put them in. We were the band that made your brain think and your foot tap at the same time (not a trick everybody can manage, mind you; there are some real thickets around). We had — dare I say it — class.

  And we were the band whose gimmick was... music. Oh, yes, we had that reputation, God knows how. I was immensely proud of it at the time but it all seems meaningless now. We put our songs together differently, we used different patterns of musical development, unusual chords, unlikely but convincing layers of sound. Hell, all I was trying to do was sound just the same as everybody else; those were my attempts to be normal, for God's sake. I just kept getting it wrong, that was all.

  But when anyone asked how we did it, how we'd got where we had, I used to tell them that it was just the tunes. That was it. In the end it's the music that sells. Tunes people can remember and hum and whistle and plunk out on their own guitars.

  All the rest, from the chords, the arrangement, the instrumental virtuosity, to the image, the marketing, the pyrotechnic stage shows... all of it's just window dressing. In the end there's only the music. In my case, literally the tunes; my lyrics are rarely more than competent, and not even always that. Music is the stuff; comparatively few people have sold lots of records on the strength of just the lyrics. And music travels better, too.

  Of course, fashion sells, a beat can sell, a particular style or technique or skill or just artist can sell, and increasingly what the industry tries to package and sell is image, but none of those are as reliable or as durable as a good tune.

  Image is easier to manipulate corporately, though, and the big companies feel it's something they control rather than the artist, so they like it for that reason alone. We just happened to be what people wanted at the time; we were lucky. But ever since Elvis Presley — possibly ever since Frank Sinatra — the companies have been trying to take the luck out of it and design the images of the bands and singers they push. They've been trying it for years and they're getting very adept, and now — ironically — the whole idea of an image is so much taken for granted as an important — often vital — part of what makes a group successful that the kids have started doing it themselves; they work on their image as much as the songs, before they ever get as far as the A&R men! Strange days indeed.

  Oh, well, what the hell. Wasn't like this in my young days though. Well, not as far as I know...

  We toured the UK, Europe and Scandinavia, and the US; we made Night Shines Darkly and got ready to tour the world. We'd stayed with ARC, but we'd negotiated another three album deal so reasonable and fair that to this day Rick Tumber winces whenever it's mentioned.

  We'd had plans to form our own record company, put out our own stuff, have more control, but... we never got around to it. It took all our time and effort touring and recording; setting up a record company and making it work would have needed too much time. I was disappointed and relieved at the same time. I'd had all sorts of crazy plans (and bad titles) ready. I'd wanted to call it the Obscure Record Label, but that was shouted down as soon as I mentioned it, and I think I lost interest after that. We stayed with the big boys and they gave us lots of sweeties; tons and tons of candy.

  As Frozen Gold, the five of us were probably outgrossing the GNP of some small third world countries, but most of us had no fixed abode. I had to ring up my accountants to find out where I lived. We'd all bought places of some sort in Britain; I had my Scottish estate, Davey had a mansion in Kent, Wes had his house in Cornwall, Christine owned a small block of fiats in Kensington, Mickey had installed his parents in a house near Drymen, overlooking Loch Lomond, but none of us were domiciled in the UK.

  Tax reasons, of course. We weren't allowed to spend more than three months in Britain, but for three years running we didn't even manage that amount. We spent so much time out of the country touring there was no point in being registered for tax in Britain (and I didn't think Sunny Jim Callaghan's watered-down-rosé government deserved my money anyway... what a joke that seems now). I think, technically, we lived in LA for the second half of the seventies. But it might have been the Cayman Islands.

  Made no difference to us. We stayed in hotels in major cities, we stayed in apartments and houses connected to recording studios in Paris or Florida or Jamaica, we stayed with friends and famous people and sometimes we spent a week or two in our places in the UK, and occasionally visited our parents.

  Just living out the dream... or our separate dreams.

  Davey's was to be the guitar hero incarnate, but I think he knew even then that their heyday had been and gone. He got there just too late, in time to hit the wave as it started to collapse. He didn't play any worse because he wasn't getting the adulation he thought he ought to get; he may even have played better, trying harder, but I don't think he ever thought he'd fulfilled his dreams.

  He didn't just want to be mentioned in the same breath as Hendrix or Clapton or Jimmy Page; he wanted them to be mentioned in the same breath as him. But the time to construct such legends had passed. He'd never quite be on the same level, even if he was as good (and he believed he was). So there was always something left for him to aim for.

  At the time, I didn't envy him.

  Perhaps it was some unfulfilled part of Davey's extemporising talent that sublimated itself in practical jokes and hair-raising stunts. He'd gone from being David Balfour, esquire, to Dave Balfour, to Davey Balfour to Crazy Davey Balfour. That was what they ended up calling him in the papers. For once, they were just about right.

  Davey started doing things to hotels. He'd taken up climbing, and would occasionally swarm up the outside of the hotel rather than use the elevators. There's a hotel in Hamburg where they still talk about the time the mad Schottlander decided to set up a record for getting from lobby to roof, up the stairs, by motorbike. He did almost kill himself with that one; came down in the lift with the motor idling, and arrived back in the lobby half-stupefied with carbon monoxide poisoning.

  On stage, for one UK tour, Crazy Davey had been Mad Man. This had been his own idea, not mine. What happened was that Davey would go offstage for ten minutes or so, and then reappear in a blaze of lights and dry ice through (if it was available) a hole in the stage.

  He had a power saw strapped to each arm, screaming away with the trigger throttles taped on maximum revs; lit welding
torches were tied to his knees and flaming blowtorches to his ankles. On his head he had a light crash helmet like the ones canoeists wear, with a couple of electric drills bolted to the top and running. Dozens of lights and sequenced flash units completed the immediate effect. He'd just stand there for a few moments, while the crowd, most of whom had heard of the stunt and had been waiting for Mad Man to appear, went wild.

  Then stage hands would come up with bits of brick, steel, wood and plastic, and hold them up to Davey; who stretched out an arm, or flexed a leg, or just nodded; sparks flew and metal tore; dust rose and bricks disintegrated; sawdust showered and boards snapped; plastic burned. All the time, Davey was singing ('Afterburn') ... or trying to. The noise was bedlam, actually, full of interference, but it was effective.

  It was an insanely dangerous stunt, and we had some problems with fire regulations, but what really killed the act were two things. First, Davey nicked a little finger on a drill at the Glasgow Apollo gig and had to have it bandaged; it was his right hand, so it didn't matter too much, though he still felt he was only playing at about ninety per cent; but nobody would insure his fingers while he was doing the act, and that did worry him. The other thing that killed it was Big Sam; the stunt wasn't right for us, he said; too violent, just not the right image.

  The rest of us agreed, and Davey seemed happy just to have done it.

  Then there were the practical jokes. There was one American tour when he took to sabotaging my hotel room every second or third night. It started out with unscrewing the door handle from the inside, so that it came away in my hand, but escalated to the stage that the guy must have been putting more effort and thought into how to surprise me that night than he was into playing for a stadium full of customers.

  I'd almost got used to coming back to my room to find everything in it had been turned upside down, or that it was utterly bare, stripped even of the carpets and light fittings, when one evening Davey surprised me with a better trick; he lowered himself on a rope into my room, hung the television out of the window held only by a rope tied to the inside door handle, then took all the screws out of the door hinges.