by Louise Voss
“Hey, Ron, you might know this. A bunch of brats have covered ‘Over This’—Kitsch ’N Sync. Apparently it’s number one—”
“Oh, I love that record! Of course it’s number one. Congratulations! That’ll be a nice little earner for you. I think they’ve done a really great job, don’t you?”
I glowered at him. “No, I do not. ‘Over This’ is a very important song to me, and I certainly would never give permission for it to be slaughtered by a posse of prepubescent morons. I want you to call Ringside Publishing for me and find out who was responsible for letting them—”
Ron was shaking his head again.
“What?”
“Helena, I can’t call the publishers. There’s no point. They don’t need the publishers’ permission to do a cover version of a song, because it’s an interpretation. You only have to get permission if you sample it. You ought to be pleased—it’s more money for you.”
I thought of Sam’s face and wanted to weep again.
Just then Cindy appeared back in the office clutching a faintly paunchy A4 brown envelope. She handed it to me.
“There you go, Helena. Sorry I didn’t bring it straight in, but I was desperate for a pee.”
I blinked at her, which in my one-eyed state must have looked like a wink. I hoped furiously that she didn’t think I was coming on to her.
“Is that it?” I was genuinely surprised.
Cindy nodded, blushing and not meeting my eye. I took the envelope and peered inside to see about ten unopened letters.
“There must be some mistake—where’s the rest?” The words fell out before I could stop myself.
Cindy and Ron exchanged looks, and Cindy edged tactfully back out of the room. Ron assumed his best long-suffering expression. “No, sweetie, I’m afraid that really is it. Don’t take it personally. Being a DJ isn’t the same as being in a band, you know. People don’t get so attached. I’m sure you got heaps of letters when you were in Blue Idea, but that’s because kids really loved your music, wasn’t it? They don’t bother to write to DJs on the whole: DJs are just part of their life like their mates, or bus drivers, or whoever. I bet Chris Evans and Zoë Ball don’t get that many letters.”
I bet they did, but it wasn’t worth arguing about.
“You did an awesome job, Helena,” Ron plowed on. “You know how far you bumped up New World’s ratings—but trends change so fast in radio. That confessional thing is a bit, well, over now. We all just have to move on.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Ron. I’m going to be moving on, all right.” I laughed bitterly.
“So you are going to take that nighttime slot, then?”
I looked at him for a long time, thinking how little I cared about never seeing him again. “Yeah. I’ll give it a whirl. Let’s just see what happens, shall we?”
Happy Mondays
KINKY AFRO
TWO YEARS LATER I WAS BACK IN LONDON FOR ANOTHER SHOW, although it didn’t feel that long. We’d been around the world twice, and had number-one hits in eighteen different countries. I was older, more tired, much richer, and utterly ecstatic because Sam was with me.
“It’s going to be really hot today, I heard it on the radio this morning. It’s boiling already, and it’s only eleven-thirty,” she said when she came to meet me in my hotel room. She was wearing baggy denim cutoffs and an antique sleeveless lace top that buttoned up the back.
“I love your top,” I said, fixing her a cold drink from the minibar.
“Gee thanks, hon,” she said, trying to imitate my American accent. “I swear, Helena, you sound more like a Yank every time I talk to you. I’m afraid if this continues we will no longer be able to maintain our friendship.… ” She grinned, and pushed past me into the room to inspect everything.
“This is incredible! This room is bigger than my whole flat! You didn’t stay in such a posh hotel last time, did you?”
“Not quite, but almost. Onwards and upwards, you know.”
“That was my school motto. What was yours?” Sam looked out the window at the spectacular view of Hyde Park.
“Oh, I dunno. No, wait, I remember. It was ‘The Fighting Bucks,’ or as Justin called it, ‘The Biting—’ ”
Sam cut me off. “I can imagine, thank you, Helena. Moving swiftly on …”
I laughed. “Okay. Well, speaking of your flat, how’s the decorating coming on?”
The Grants had sold the license to the pub and bought a house on the outskirts of Salisbury with a basement granny flat for Sam so that she could have her independence but be near the family, too. Mr. Grant had gotten a job as a brewery sales rep, but before he started, he was decorating Sam’s flat from top to bottom.
Sam still wasn’t very well—the legacy of the graft-versus-host disease (exhaustion, miserable skin problems, and a nasty asthmatic-type wheeze) still persisted—but it hadn’t stopped her from continuing to study for her law degree, part-time and by correspondence. I could not fathom how she had the strength of character and determination to do it, when every ounce of her energy was at a premium.
“Great,” she said, taking the cellophane off my huge complimentary fruit basket to get to the grapes. “I can’t believe I’ve got the whole place to myself—and I can still take my washing upstairs to Mum! Mum loves not having to work in the bar. She’s always off having these really long lunches with her mates, and she’s taken up aerobics, and done a tie-dying course. She wants to tie-dye my curtains, but I’ve told her to forget it.”
“I would have thought she knew how to tie-dye already, without needing a course,” I commented, zipping my stage clothes carefully into their plastic carrier and hooking its coat-hanger top over the bathroom door.
“Oh, she did. It was like a refresher course. Actually, I think it was really just an excuse for her to get together with a load of other old hippies-turned-housewives.”
Sam’s voice got a bit echoey as she disappeared into the bathroom to riffle through the freebies by the sink. “Can I have this shampoo? I love Molton Brown! Are you going to steal the bathrobe?”
The phone rang. It was the front desk to tell me that my car had arrived.
“Yes, take it—the shampoo, not the bathrobe! And you can have that little shoe-polishing thing, too, if you like. Are you ready? The car’s here.”
I ran around collecting everything I needed for the gig: vanity case, a bottle of mineral water from the minibar, my toothbrush and toothpaste. Sam was emptying half the contents of the fruit basket into her backpack.
I thrust the suit carrier into her arms. “Here, you carry this. I’ll take your backpack—it’ll be heavy with all that stolen fruit in it.”
She made a face at me, then grinned. “Wembley, here we come!” she said as we set off down to the marble-and-glass lobby.
I handed in my key and pushed through the heavy revolving doors, Sam being swept along in the next segment behind me. The roasting sunshine hit us as we emerged from the air-conditioning onto the sticky tarmac of the hotel’s driveway. It felt more like Arizona in high summer than London.
A huge black stretch limousine was purring in front of us, both the passenger door and the driver door opening simultaneously as we approached. Mickey leaned out and beckoned us into the backseat, and the driver came round and put our things into the boot with a courteous stiff-faced nod and a muttered “Good morning, ladies” in our direction. A doorman leapt forward and needlessly held the already-open passenger door. At the same time, five Japanese girls rushed up, squealing, with Blue Idea records for me to sign. They snapped a volley of shots of me with their Nikons, laughing and nodding at one another ecstatically as I scribbled my name for them. Sam’s mouth was hanging open at the size of the car and the spectacle of me signing autographs, and I had to prod her in the back to make her get in as I waved good-bye to the fans.
Once inside, I was grateful to feel cool air on my cheeks again. Sam and I sat facing the driver, and Mickey made his way across the carpeted floor to sit opposite u
s. The car was so long and low that he had to walk with a movement like a hunker in motion, which made him look like a chimp loping through the forest.
“Sam, this is our manager, Mickey. Mickey, this is my friend Sam, who ‘Over This’ is about.”
“Ah, the famous Sam! We meet at last—I’m honored. I would shake your hand but you’re too far away.” Instead he blew her a smarmy kiss and inclined his head in a little bow.
Sam smiled graciously at him. “Actually, we have met before. When Blue Idea played New York, about six years ago. But I’m not surprised you don’t remember me—you were otherwise occupied that night.”
Mickey laughed uneasily as the car glided away from the hotel and swung out into the London traffic. There were many shows to which Sam’s comment might have applied.
“We’re meeting the boys at seven, aren’t we?” I asked Mickey, making sure I had my facts straight. We had been out there the previous day for rehearsal and soundcheck, and as we were headlining, technically none of us needed to be at the venue until the evening. But Sam had wanted to watch the entire day-long concert, and Mickey said he had some “business” to attend to there—hence our early departure. I didn’t mind going early. I was looking forward to a day out with Sam.
We stopped at a red light and laughed at the pedestrians gazing curiously at the car, trying to make out who was behind the black tinted windows.
“It’s funny how people always stare at limos, even though they know they can’t see anything inside,” Mickey said, making a rude face at a Chinese boy who almost had his nose pressed up against the glass.
“They’re just wishing that for once they could be the one inside being driven around in luxury, and not having to go down the market and get fish for dinner, or deliver the newspapers, or go to their dreary Saturday jobs. I think it’s envy as much as curiosity, and who can blame them?” Sam was looking with sympathy at the crowds of harassed shoppers.
We drove on, until the shopping streets turned to residential ones, and a few scrappy trees began to dot roads outside dusty rows of semis. Not many had front gardens, and those that did had mostly been paved over to make off-street parking. Everything seemed much smaller than its American counterpart; cars, houses, birds, even the people appeared hunched and melted-looking. The sun had bleached every sparse blade of grass to an almost colorless shade of bile.
“Where are we, anyway?” I asked.
Sam and Mickey both shrugged.
“Don’t ask me.” Mickey reached over his shoulder to slide back the glass partition separating us from the driver. “Where are we, bud?”
“Willesden Green, sir,” came the faint reply from under the driver’s peaked cap. “Shocking roadworks on the A41, so we’re much better off going through town.”
There seemed to be shocking roadworks everywhere. The sound of pneumatic drills hung in the air, and orange traffic cones and big yellow diggers were strewn around countless junctions. Sweating road menders toiled away, their upper bodies as bronzed as if they had been lying on a Caribbean beach for a fortnight.
The white twin towers of Wembley Stadium eventually hove into sight. The driver whisked us through various security gates, following handwritten signs tied to fences that read ARTIST ENTRANCE THIS WAY.
Sam squeezed my hand. “I’m so excited!” she said, her eyes out on stalks as she looked at the other limos lining up in front of and behind us. “Isn’t that Kylie Minogue over there?”
Mickey dug in his bag and produced our laminates in a tangle of black shiny cord strings, which he separated and put over our heads as though awarding us medals. They had swirly red and yellow patterns on their shiny plastic, with thick black letters over the top saying RADIO ONE’S BIG DAY OUT: ACCESS ALL AREAS. Mine also said ARTIST at the bottom.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s go find the dressing rooms and you girls can dump your stuff. Then I’ll see you back there at seven.”
He consulted a Xeroxed map and motioned for us to follow him. As we climbed out of the limo, the heat once again filled my eyes, nose, and mouth. I dreaded to think how hot the stage would be after baking in the sun all afternoon. Sam and I set off behind Mickey, me carrying Sam’s backpack and her with my suit. After a few yards, however, Sam was lagging behind.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, anxiously. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
“No, I feel fine,” she said, a little crossly. “It’s just this plastic stuff, it keeps wrapping itself around my legs. It’s making my shins sweat.”
She was trying to hold the suit protector by its coat-hanger handle aloft and away from her body, as though it were a lead with a snappy dog on the end. Sure enough, the thin plastic casing was drifting back as she walked and insidiously tangling itself around her. I laughed.
“Why don’t you just fold it in half and put it over your arm?”
“Well, because then I have to hold all that sweaty plastic, and that’s even worse.”
“Shall I take it?”
“No, I can manage. I just need to twist it out of my way, that’s all.”
Mickey turned round to see where we’d gotten to, almost bumping into a huge black man wearing a PVC bib-type garment emblazoned with the word SECURITY. The man glared at him.
“Come on, girls, hurry it along here!” he chivvied, glaring slightly nervously back at the security guard. We trotted after him again.
“I didn’t think shins could sweat,” I mused aloud to Sam.
“I bet they bloody can in this weather. Let’s see, shall we? Shin check!” she barked in a military fashion. We bent down, giggling, and rubbed our respective bare shins. Sure enough, there was a thin film of condensation on our skin.
Grumbling at our childishness, Mickey managed to lead us to my dressing room, whereupon he promptly disappeared in the opposite direction to try to locate the production manager, muttering worriedly about stage plots. Once inside, I relieved Sam of the troublesome suit cover by hanging it on a metal rail between the mirror and the wall. Sam gazed around.
“It’s even got a star on the door!” she said in an awed voice.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll show you the stage.”
We dumped our bags and headed off again, both keen to get back outside. The glaring sunshine and rocketing temperatures were still preferable to the strip lights and dingy corridors of the interior.
I opened a door marked TO STAGE, and we followed a passageway round a couple of corners until we saw daylight. Emerging as though from the bowels of the earth, we came out, blinking like moles. All we could see was blue sky and what seemed like miles and miles of scaffolding with heavy black material covering parts of it.
“Blimey, it’s enormous,” said Sam, sounding faint. “Just look at all those people!”
The stadium loomed hugely all around us—towering banks of seats as far as the eye could see, and the massive central area, still filling up with bobbing heads. A dull roar from the crowd could be heard over the throb of the music from the towering stacks of speakers on either side of the stage.
The sound desk in the middle looked like a little boat on a big lake. It had all looked very different yesterday when the seats were empty; blank, and less intimidating. The expectation from the waiting audience was hanging in the air like heat haze, mingling with the smell of hot dogs and the slight acrid scent of sweat. I sniffed the air and got an additional inexplicable whiff of fresh raspberries.
We were right at the back of the stage, in itself an area about the size of four tennis courts. Technicians, sound men, lighting men, stage managers, and promoters, all with their laminates flapping as they ran, were milling around frantically. People were marking out lines on the floor with duct tape. There were men swinging from lighting rigs; men popping up from trapdoors in the stage like rabbits from a magician’s hat; men tapping microphones and fuzzily intoning “Testing, testing, one-two-three”; men screwing together drum kits and tuning up guitars. One minute thumbs-up signs were being proffered; th
e next, obscenities were ringing out. Everyone, without exception, was sweating like Nixon. The first band of the six on the day’s bill was about to come onstage.
“I feel as if I’ve just walked into a beehive,” said Sam, staring at all the activity before her. “I’m certainly sticky enough.” She fanned the neck of her shirt and wiped her forehead. Then she looked more serious. “How can you stand the thought that there will be seventy thousand pairs of eyes looking at you this evening?”
I wished she hadn’t asked. This was almost twice the size of any gig we’d ever played before, and up to this point I had chosen not to consider this bowel-loosening statistic. The whole daylong show was also being broadcast live to the nation on Radio One, but I didn’t remind Sam of this.
“Um—I’ll be okay once we start playing,” I said nervously.
Sam suddenly threw her arms around me.
“This is incredible!” she said. “I am so proud of you! I can’t believe I’m here, and you’re here, and you’re doing this unbelievable thing!” She had tears in her eyes.
“I’m just glad you’re here to see me do it,” I said, hugging her back.
We found an out-of-the-way space at the side of the stage, and perched on top of a huge square flight case: Sam nearest the audience, me (trying to be inconspicuous) lurking out of sight behind her, watching the excited crowd preparing for their day’s entertainment. I fanned my hot face with a tabloid newspaper I found next to me, and thought about how all those people had come to be there. Maybe they had heard the show announced on the radio, and they had been excited at the thought of three or four of their favorite bands playing at the same gig. Perhaps all their favorite bands were playing. They’d have mustered up a group of friends, or told their partners to mark it in their diaries, and then gotten their credit cards out to phone the ticket hotline; or maybe they had sent away for tickets in the post.
Either way, their tickets would have arrived a week or so later, plopping onto the doormat in an anonymous envelope, with that exciting, shiny new-paper smell. They’d have put them somewhere safe—a drawer, or stuck to the fridge door with a magnet in the shape of a London bus—and told all their other unluckier friends that they were going to the Big Show. Finally, the day had arrived, and they had climbed onto trains at dawn, or filled up their cars with petrol and packed lunches, or boarded chartered coaches.