by Louise Voss
A ripple of crackly tittering filled the airwaves. I accelerated with irritation through an amber traffic light at a pedestrian crossing.
“Hiya, Millie!” they chorused eventually.
“So what are you two up to this morning?” Millie asked unimaginatively. DJing by numbers.
More tittering.
“Oh, you know, just getting ready for school an’ stuff.”
Yawn, I thought. After a couple more tedious minutes of chat about which school, which teacher, which subjects, Millie finally got around to asking them why they were calling.
“Well, like, we just wanted to say, we think your show is really, really wicked, and the music you play is deadly. All our mates used to listen to Radio One before school, right, you know, when that other one was on New World, Helena Whatserface, but since you’ve been doing the show, our whole French group listens to you, and we all think you’re totally happenin’.”
Millie laughed, a tinkly, frosted-pink, Met Bar kind of laugh.
“Hey, thanks, girls! That’s soooo nice of you to say so! Can I play you both a record this morning?”
“Yeah, Millie, can you play us ‘Over This’ by Kitsch ‘N Sync?”
“No problemos—consider it done! This one’s for Lucy and Meg: the fantastic Kitsch ‘N Sync, hottest band around, with a really, really amazing new single, ‘Over This. ‘I believe it’s an old song, but they’ve certainly made it a hit this time—number one for the second week running!”
I turned sharply off the road into a petrol station and screeched to a halt beside the car vacuum. Surely not.… But instead of my tender bass and the mellow Hammond Joe had spread like treacle on top of the intro, I heard the same notes tortured out of a synth. A naff five-part-harmony vocal “choo-choo chooooo” sound preceded the start of the verse.
It got worse. My lyrics were delivered in the hideous faux-R&B style of some teenage pretty boy who probably thought Ronan Keating was a pop legend; completely devoid of any real emotion, more concerned with how complicated he could make it sound.
Banging the radio’s Off button with my fist, I put my head down on the steering wheel and wept. With the humiliation of fifteen-year-olds liking Millie Myers better than me. With the shock of hearing my precious tribute to Sam’s strength and courage reduced to such soulless crap. With the fury of that daft bimbo not even knowing that it was my song: Sam’s song.
Everything that I’d felt when the record was released—all that joy and relief and optimism—was erased, like a chalk masterpiece on a rain-washed sidewalk.
Tears poured down one side of my face. I sat lost in memory until there was a loud beep behind me. Blearily I lifted my head and saw in the side mirror a man gesticulating at me from his Ford Escort. He was parked right up next to my rear bumper.
“Is yer gonna use the soddin’ hoover or wha’?” he demanded, leaning out of his window.
Giving him the finger, I put my car in gear and shot back onto the road, but I could drive only a few hundred yards before I had to stop again. One blurred eye, a deaf ear, and a head full of grief did not make for entirely safe driving conditions.
This time I pulled up outside an antique shop, which had a large amount of very un-antique anemic pine piled up on the pavement outside it. My head throbbed as I stared unseeing at spikes of blond chair leg and smooth Swedish tabletops, some inverted for ease of stacking.
There were so many bitter and sad thoughts crowding my head that it took me a few minutes to begin to articulate them to myself. When I finally stopped crying I managed to think up a small furious list. I could either:
Call Ringside Publishing to find out who gave permission for Kitsch ‘N Crap to use my song, then have them fired.
If they hadn’t gotten permission, sue Kitsch ‘N Crap for using my song without clearing it first.
Phone Millie right now, to point out that actually Blue Idea’s version of “Over This” had been number one for three weeks in 1989, and raised a million pounds for leukemia charities (how could she not know that?).
Finish the manuscript and do the show. No more assing about, no missionary trips to Zaire, no question of a copout. I had to go through with it—if not actually on air, then in the studio.
It was the only way I could be sure that the Millies of this world didn’t get remembered where I was forgotten. Life sucked, and now more than ever I wanted out.
The Cure
LOVESONG
I SAT DOWN ON A WINDOW LEDGE IN THE VIP AREA TO WATCH THE Cure’s set through the thick plate glass, my knees drawn up to my chin, giddy with the combined bliss of having played a fantastic show and being back in England. On a practical level it was also nice to get my feet off the sticky floor—at every step my soles had stuck to the filthy beer-soaked carpet tiles with tiny uncomfortable squelching sounds. And this was meant to be the “luxurious” hospitality area! We were in a long, narrow room that faced the stage, directly underneath the balcony. Not enhanced by the dingy lighting, everything around was black—walls, curtains, carpet—presumably in an attempt to render cleaning less necessary.
Justin was loving it. Every time he moved out of the relative safety of his vantage point next to me on the window seat, he would be surrounded by a group of gossip-hungry journalists, competition winners seeking autographs, or plain old groupies who had somehow inveigled a backstage pass, and he happily chatted away to all and sundry, reveling in the attention. I, on the other hand, had the black curtain practically wrapped around my head to avoid being quizzed, despite the resultant reek of stale cigarette smoke that enveloped me.
Our set had gone extremely well, and I was content; I just wasn’t in the mood to socialize with strangers. Besides, I liked to watch The Cure’s show too, even though the sound was muffled from up here. Blue Idea and The Cure were alternating between the middle and the headline spot every night on this tour, and it was their turn to go on last. I preferred it that way—more of a chance to get a relatively early night. I loved to slip back to the hotel, as soon as I could escape, to the peace of a crisp white pillow, some top-class British television, and a usually futile attempt to get through on the phone to the new man in my life, Patrick.
Patrick was a film actor. He’d recently played the lead in a medium-sized Hollywood movie called Time Waits for No Man, and since then had been inundated with offers, of different sorts, from film directors and nubile young waitresses. We’d met after he hosted a charity gig in San Francisco that Blue Idea headlined, and had spent a thrilling week together, licking Ghiradelli chocolate off each other’s navels in my hotel room, or walking hand in hand over the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn, when the paparazzi weren’t around to see us.
That had since been followed by the odd night of passion here and there, when we were in the same country, but I sensed without asking that Patrick saw it as a casual thing, and I felt somewhat hesitant about calling him my boyfriend. It was quite depressing, really—after the first thrill, it no longer seemed that different from any of the other flings I’d had on the road. Patrick was handsome and funny and successful, but I still felt like an accessory, or some kind of trophy.
I wished Sam was there. She’d nearly puked with envy when I told her about Patrick and me, and I’d been trying to think of a way to engineer a meeting between them for weeks. But it was hard enough to pin Patrick down at all, let alone get him and Sam both on the same continent at the same time.
Unbelievably, Sam hadn’t heard us play live since that time in New York, almost four years before, and she’d never heard me sing her song to her. But although the bone marrow transplant had been a success and her life was no longer under threat, she had been suffering from a condition called graft-versus-host disease, where her body had begun to reject the new bone marrow. She’d been trying all sorts of different treatments to combat it, but they all seemed to have horrific side effects, and consequently she still felt awful most of the time. She was definitely too delicate to endure a hot, smoky venue.
> She kept telling me that all she had to do to hear it was turn on the radio, though, and her song still seemed to be blasting out. She couldn’t get over the fact that a song about her had been at number one, let alone that it was still on the charts a year later.
I told her that next time hopefully we’d be playing a huge outdoor gig, and she would have no excuse not to come to that show. The success of “Over This” ensured that we were big enough in the U.K. already. In the meantime I had to be content with talking to her for hours on the phone every day I was in the U.K., with just one swift trip to Salisbury on our only free weekend.
Sam, although still feeling poorly, looked so much better than when I’d last seen her the year before—then she had been all chubby from the steroids she was taking, and following the chemotherapy, her hair had grown back in stringy patches. But this year there was a definite improvement. She was back to her old slim self, albeit much thinner than she should have been, and with a wheezy chest. She had an attractive fuzz of really short hair that made her look trendy and boyish. I’d cried with relief to see the improvement in both her spirits and her health: Some of her old verve had returned, and she was full of plans to get back to university as soon as she could, and catch up on all the work she had missed.
I became aware that I was panting slightly from the heat. Even the air seemed to be sweating—I’d forgotten, until I walked in, that English venues never had air-conditioning. I pressed my cool champagne glass against my hot cheek. Condensation on the black shiny walls had made most of the taped-up posters announcing the release of our new record hang disconsolately down at at least one corner, and I could see the harassed-looking junior product manager from the record company running around trying to make them stick up again.
The Cure struck up the opening sequence of their current single, “Lovesong,” and the audience went wild, dancing frenziedly, seeming not to care that it wasn’t the most uptempo of numbers. It was all about people expressing their appreciation with the movement of their bodies, an extension of applause. I could see flying drops of sweat caught silver in the spotlight that swept across the crowd’s heads, as they waved their arms and jumped up and down.
I heard Justin announce, “Back in a minute, guys,” prompting a synchronicity of heads turning to gaze after his retreating back. Deprived of his company, the groupies drifted instead toward me.
“That was a fabulous show, Helena.”
“Your voice sounded great.”
“Please could you sign this for my little sister?”
The question was from a boy of about fourteen; he was wearing his laminate proudly over his Blue Idea T-shirt, and a big badge stating, I WON THE RADIO ONE BLUE IDEA COMPETITION!. I smiled at him and took the sticky Biro he thrust at me, scribbling my name and three large X’ed kisses on the front of the poster he was holding. The others, I saw, had already signed it, too. “Wow, thanks,” he breathed reverentially. “Now I’ve got you all.”
The other two people who had spoken to me did not expect an answer. They were trying to be ultra-cool and had already drifted away, probably rehearsing how they would say to their friends, “Yeah, of course, when I was talking to Helena from Blue Idea backstage after their show …” Their sort would never deign to ask for an autograph. They usually either worked for the record company in some minor capacity, or they had a friend who was a crew member who’d somehow managed to get them on the guest list. They always adopted an aloof and slightly superior attitude to us, a sort of “Just because you’re famous, you needn’t think that I’m going to fall all over myself to be nice to you” look. Not that we ever did think that. But they always managed to get a piece of me somehow—a carefully posed snapshot taken of them by a friend which just happened to have me looming in the background; a seemingly casual request for a light, or use of a pen, some trivial thing, or just a throwaway comment in my direction.
I really didn’t mind when true fans came up and introduced themselves, or plucked up the courage to tell me how much they liked the band, or the record, or my bass playing, or whatever. At the risk of sounding corny, the light and passion in their eyes was what kept me going, what made it all worthwhile. I needed it. It was just those shallow, self-important industry liggers and their hangers-on I had a hard time dealing with.
The wife of the president of Ringside Records hove into sight, and I leaned forward to try and avoid her by swinging the damp curtains of my hair across my face. Focusing intently on an ugly bar ashtray next to me on the window ledge, I began to push it around in a circle by its heavy glass corners, the layer of old cigarette ash black and condensed in the bottom. Luckily Justin returned at that moment, and we both pressed our noses against the warm glass window, pretending to be engrossed in watching the band. He did not like this woman either. He said she once propositioned him in the back of a limo, plying him with Cristal and cocaine, then leaning seductively toward him until her famous breasts were almost completely adrift from their flimsy silk mooring. He told me that he wasn’t having any of it, but he didn’t sound entirely convincing.
“Has she gone yet?” he muttered as she teetered by in high heels and the latest Dolce & Gabbana miniskirt.
I looked sideways through my hair, which by now reeked of smoke. “Yes, you’re safe—if you want to be.”
“Phew!” He knocked back the contents of another glass of champagne.
Holly, Ringside U.K.’s cheerful press officer, rushed up to us, puffing and sweaty.
“Hello, Jolly Holly,” said Jus.
“Hello, you two. Gosh, it’s hot out there. Are you ready for your interview? David and Joe and Toby the journalist are waiting for you in the dressing room—hurry up!”
I’d forgotten we had an interview with Melody Maker, and Justin must have also, even though he normally loved giving interviews. But we’d done so many on this tour that we were all heartily sick of the same old questions. One particularly naff feature was for a glossy women’s magazine with the headline HELENA—SHOOTIN’ FROM THE HIP!, which had me parading around in cowboy clothes, complete with chaps and fringes, and brandishing a cap gun. Sam told me she’d laughed like a drain when she saw it.
Holly chivvied us along through the maze of narrow backstage corridors until we reached our dressing room, which was so cool and comfortable, in comparison to the dingy melee we’d just left, that I wondered why I had ever let Jus persuade me to go up there in the first place. Much as I loved The Cure, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen them a million times already. David and Joe obviously had more sense, and were lounging on an outsized sofa looking relaxed and refreshed, Joe puffing on a joint and David slugging a beer.
“This is Toby from Melody Maker,” Holly said, introducing us to a sweet-faced youthful guy in jeans and a checked shirt, with blond curly hair and huge red-framed glasses. He had such a gorgeous smile that I was prepared to forgo summoning the fashion police to have him arrested for the awful specs (it being a good year after they’d become a must in the wardrobe of every journalist and architect).
Toby shook my hand firmly and, still smiling broadly, looked me steadily in the eyes. I liked him right away. In fact, I really liked him. It was as if something zinged between us, a flash of connection acknowledging our mutual attraction. It hit me in the stomach, an unfamiliar hourglass-shaped feeling of quick suction.
He got on with the interview in a very businesslike manner, individually asking us interesting and well-researched questions, and proffering a handheld cassette player for our replies. After a while it seemed that he was asking me a lot more questions than the others—than Justin even, who began to fidget restlessly.
I talked about the tour, and the new record, and the usual question of what it was like being the only girl on the bus with the others as well as the all-male crew, and all the time Toby was looking at me with his friendly, crinkled-up eyes, and nodding enthusiastically so that his curls boinged around his head like an animated halo. I did have a weakness for men with curly ha
ir.…
“So how do you feel about your younger fans emulating your trademark style?” Toby asked seriously.
“What trademark style is that—singing flat and spending hours in front of the mirror?” asked Justin derisively. I punched his arm hard enough for him to squawk.
“Well, there are several girls outside wearing long coat-jackets over straight-legged trousers, and big shawly scarves,” Toby explained.
I was as surprised as Justin, and very flattered.
“Oh, that’s not emulating a style,” said Justin. “That’s because they obviously have as little taste as Helena.”
I knew Justin was jealous of the attention Toby was giving me, but I was embarrassed by his put-downs nonetheless, and blushed scarlet.
Joe slapped Justin upside the head, and David told him to shut up. Holly looked anxious, worried that a fight was about to break out, but Justin put his arms around me.
“Only joking, honeypie. We all know you’re gorgeous and totally fashionable, really.”
Toby acted as if nothing had happened. “Having done quite a bit of research on Blue Idea for this interview, I noticed that girls who join your fan club can actually send away for a ‘Helena scarf.’ Didn’t you notice how many of them were being waved in the audience when Helena was singing ‘Over This’? And Helena, if I might say so, you shouldn’t look so surprised that young girls are choosing to look like you. You are, after all, a very well-respected songwriter, not to mention an extremely attractive woman.”
“Wa-ay hey!” sniggered Jus lewdly, an English expression he had picked up from our Yorkshire bus driver. I felt my face grow hot again, but this time with pleasure and gratitude. Toby sounded as though he really meant it.
“Thanks,” I said, coyly. Even David and Joe tittered that time.
Toby mercifully took another tack. “Now, ‘Over This’ is your first chart-topper, and obviously a huge success, not to mention the first charity record by a single band ever to get to number one. Did all the proceeds go to help fund research into leukemia? David?”