Rotten in Denmark

by Jim Pollard

  I look into his eyes and he doesn’t see me because that’s it. The one who’s all played out is Tony. After a moment of heavyweight silence, I pick up my hat and Jon and I leave, closing the door carefully as if on grief.

  All of the young punks got new boots and contracts, according to the Clash. We certainly did. A contract. An advance. Everyone within five years of your age and ten miles of your school claiming that they were in your class. It’s a dream, until the second single bombs and you’re back behind the counter at Dixons faster than you can say ‘one-hit wonder’. And if you are successful, it doesn’t really change. Things just get bigger. The same feudal principle remains: they own you and they can finish you. It’s hard to take control unless being finished doesn’t bother you.

  The Go-Karts split up in disarray following Cal’s death. Tony says that he hasn’t touched amphetamines since. (This is probably true though he’s touched, caressed, manhandled and mauled everything else.) Our first, our only, album Rotten In Denmark was still riding high in the charts and had gone gold.

  The rest is the omniscient H. Five years later Frankie Dane and the Denmarks returned with Stolen Moments. Pleasantly surprised, the critics said. Thought he’d be nothing without Carter. We did it again with Phoenix. And sold even more albums. Now, as the tabloids might say, I am telling it all. I am sitting at my desk, I am sorting my papers and I am rewinding my cassette recorder. It is time for the truth.

  First, some starters for ten. Frankie Dane. That’s Francis Derek Dane. Francis was my mother’s choice, Derek, my father’s. He let her have her own way on that one. Nothing if not reasonable my father. He told me that himself. ‘Let her decide everything,’ he would say. ‘Except when it’s important. And let you decide what’s important. That’s the way.’

  FD Dane it would have said had I been a cricketer. Born 6th June 1959 in south east London. Education: Beech Park Grammar and the Open University. Club: Tottenham Hotspur FC.

  My mother comes from a village in County Durham, her father a miner. He ought to have died before I was born, victim of a tragedy of folk song proportions but it wasn’t like that. I am the spawn of the families who don’t have stories. Where there is no heroism save existence and no passion greater than good sense. No glory days nor vital hours. Few enough poignant moments. On our rare sorties north, my grandfather was always to be found sat in a tight little chair wheezing away, wasting away and always, to my grandmother’s disappointment, letting his tea go cold. He may have been a big man once - his great arms hung over the wooden arms of the chair almost to the floor - but one Sunday he wasn’t there anymore and I didn’t really notice until we were driving home.

  My father grew up beneath the monochrome monoxide skies of Battersea (or South Chelsea as the estate agents now like to call it). His father worked in Covent Garden fruit market in an administrative capacity. I remember my Grandad’s proud voice - me on his lap, his glass of stout in his hand. ‘Porter this is, Frankie. Named after the porters in Covent Garden.’

  ‘Are you a porter, Grandad?’

  ‘No, son. I’m a book-keeper.’ Too dull he was even to lug around potatoes.

  My own father, a meat and two veg man but never one for fruit didn’t follow his father into the market. Until his recent retirement my Dad drove for a living. Not black taxis but minicabs. Park Cabs was one of the first in London, apparently. Before that he drove lorries.

  Both my grandparents with a smug Protestant symmetry that continues down the line produced one of each. My mum’s brother Uncle Alan lives up north, my father’s sister Aunty Anne just around the corner. As a child I used to wish it were the other way round. While I couldn’t understand why when granted the freedom of the skies his pigeons should want to fly home so rapidly and repeatedly, at least Uncle Alan with his coot and his crisp country mornings offered something of interest. Aunty Anne just had her endless cups of coffee.

  I was an only child, of course. My father, cheated by a handful of months of the chance to serve in combat did his homefront bit for blighty with a diligence that never abated. He rationed even children and although I remember my mother asking me a couple of times if I would like ‘someone to play with’, no sister or brother materialised.

  Today, I’m lucky enough to have two of everything. I have two homes – a semi in London and the apartment in Paris where we lived for a handful of years in the early eighties. Despite my dislike of motoring, I have two cars. And, I have, in the family tradition, two, as they say, lovely kids - Philip and Rebecca.

  I also have a wife, Wendy, elder sister of Cal Carter. When I tell you that we have been married for nearly 20 years, the mathematical among you will calculate correctly that we took the plunge in the wake of Cal’s death. Her first husband - a gentleman named Julian - could not handle being married to the sister of a pop star and he could handle being married to the sister of a dead pop star even less. She, like her father, works in publishing.

  I tease Wendy that she got lumbered with the workhorse of the partnership when the creative one died. Certainly, that was the media’s response once it drew breath long enough to reflect. ‘Workhorse?’ she says raising an already arched eyebrow still further. ‘When are you going to do some work then?’

  ‘When you can drive directly to the supermarket without getting lost,’ I smile. ‘I mean we come every fortnight.’

  ‘Yeh, and they reroute the one-way system every week.’

  I have been criticised because my songs are still about chip shops and vinegar kisses, Babycham and darts, broken hearts and rubber band engagement rings. ‘Are we supposed to credit that a man with four platinum albums regularly adjourns to his local fish and chip emporium?’ scoffed the reviewer in The Independent. Well, the answer, at the risk of making my family sound like The Brady Bunch, is yes. Or, at least, Wendy and the kids do. I usually stay at home and prepare a side salad with vinaigrette dressing. Wild man of rock. In general, we still live much as we ever did when Wendy was married to another and I was a civil servant with a battered guitar beneath his bed. The same part of town. A slightly bigger house.

  You may have all my albums (and if you do, thanks very much) but I doubt you know what I look like - not anymore anyway. There isn’t an accurate photograph of me in circulation taken later than about 1983. I have a range of glasses, plain and tinted. And I have the hat collection from hell. Trilbies. Boaters. Panamas. Fedoras. Baseball caps. Balaclavas. Berets. Some of these I have been pictured in, some not and ne’er the twain. Some of the locals know who I am, of course they do - the few who have been here as long as I have. Others, those who have asked directly, think that like my wife I work in publishing - proof-reading and editing from home - but few ask. People don’t. Suburbs, you see.

  I haven’t toured since The Go-Karts broke up. I reappear when a new album comes out and do the TV and the interviews, but I don’t make a big deal out of my lifestyle or call myself a recluse. That’s the way to guarantee that you get hounded. Nobody thinks my low-profile is a matter of policy. Indeed, I’ve never mentioned it at all until now. The truth, you see. That’s what I want. After I’ve been on the box or done the pics for what they amusingly call the lifestyle mags, I shave the beard off and allow the apparently receding hairline to grow back again. I think that is the secret of my success: I make myself look less attractive for the media and who’d credit that?

  Once, a make-up girl noticed the follicled pores on the top of my head, the dots of hair, and blabbed. This gave rise to the ‘Dane Has Hair Transplant’ story in the mid-eighties. It was quite the opposite of the truth but it kept my name alive between the two albums. One of the tabloids was ready to camp on my doorstep to monitor my visits to the trichologist but they never turned up. Jonathan says they found my address easily enough but the editor couldn’t believe that with all my spondys I still lived in Beech Park. He assumed the info was out of date and sacked the researcher. Dull anonymity - it’s
the family trait.

  PEDAL POWER POP

  by Ian Martyn-Baker

  (from the New Rock Journal, 1978)

  Careering. They mean it, maaan. That’s The Go-Karts. Go-getters, going places, all four. Places this scribe has never seen. We’re in Goddard’s Pie and Mash emporium in Greenwich near that big boat. Their choice, natch. Find it on the map and make it a shrine. These boys are gonna be BIG. Or should be. One day.

  They’re talking of meat and eels, gravy and liquor and some of the most infectious punk-pop this side of the safety-pin. Calum Carter, the little kid with the Telecaster, has hair longer than regulation but the hippie taunts don’t harm him. He downs his cup of rosie. The chips aren’t on these shoulders. ‘If ripped T’s are the new uniform we want nothing of it,’ he says to communal nodding. ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,’ The Go-Karts sing Peter Townsend to the accompaniment of Mr Goddard’s LSD cash-register (sic). No new wave–old wave snobbery here.

  Carter continues, ‘It’s part of what we’re about.’ He picks up a battered brown brief-case and puts it down on the table. ‘This is where I keep the songs that will single-handedly bring down the establishment,’ he says with an ironic chuckle. I dare to mention tongues and cheeks and don’t get my pie and two mash upended on my head. It’s a little refreshing.

  Frankie Dane, Carter’s songwriting partner, the one who plays the Townsend/Weller-esque Rickenbacker, is wearing a pin-striped jacket two sizes too small over his Too-Thick-for-University T. ‘It was Cal’s dad’s,’ he explains. (The jacket, natch) ‘We’re not in favour of that suburban conformity, anymore than we’re in favour of everyone wearing biker jackets and bondage strides or tightly knotted ties. Or flares for that matter.’ Bassist Jon Waters has a pair of loon pants broader than Jimmy Page’s ego and Carter himself sports a leather jacket. The point is well-made.

  There’s a quiet - and not so quiet when CC’s in full flow – confidence about south-east London’s brightest hope. No dedicated followers these. Individuals all. They even cover Presley. Three times. Tonight they’ll be packing them in in Wardour St. First-time headliners at the Marquee and they’ll be opening with ‘You Were Always On My Mind’. That’s confidence.

  ‘We usually do “Promised Land” as an encore but tonight we might just do it second,’ says drummer Charlie Ball. [They did too–Ed]

  But these are no worshippers of the cabaret King neither. The Presley numbers get the same frenetic treatment as the originals, chainsaw guitars wrestling with the melodies.

  Some people say you’re too small to front a band, Cal. Is that the reason for the on-stage aggro with Jon here. ‘We want to be known for playing good songs,’ Carter says emphatically. ‘Anybody worried about that is stupid,’ says Dane, interrupting. ‘The same people who say women can’t be in groups and that you have to be able to play a diminished seventh augmented fifth twice removed to be a good guitar player.’

  ‘No sweat,’ smiles Carter, twisting his fingers into bizarre positions round the neck of a ketchup bottle.

  They seem too happy with themselves to be as angry as they claim and somehow they don’t quite sit (or stand or pogo) with their contemps. The Clash eating mash, The Jam saying what you wear doesn’t matter (yikes!), The Pistols praising Presley? I don’t think.

  Phonodisc are said to be interested in The Go-Karts with the original ‘Rotten In Denmark’ earmarked as the single. This boy hopes that these boys get that little break they need but, as Calum Carter sings, nay roars, at the climax of their set, ‘Do not adjust your scepticism. Do not adjust your mind-set. Do not adjust.’ Can rock’n’roll adjust just enough to let The Go-Karts in?

  4

  After two weeks, I moved classes.

  Mr Parker was rearranging the tobacco dispenser at the back of his kiosk, a task to which he appeared to devote most of his non-serving time. He smiled his policeman’s smile when he noticed me lurking. I didn’t like to go too close. The edge of the counter extended a foot or so beyond the booth and when I was small I was forever cracking my skull on it, the blue paint flaking off into my hair.

  ‘Is that the usual, young man?’ he asked. Mr Parker always wore a bow-tie.

  I nodded, running my finger along the narrow strip of wood which was supposed to stop the newspapers falling on the floor. The nails were clogged with the fibres of inattentive sweaters.

  ‘Mind you don’t get a splinter.’

  My pockets were full of foreign coins and football cards as usual. I sorted through them trying to assemble the right money. Mr Parker sold a couple of newspapers to men in a hurry.

  ‘You’ll have noticed you’ve lost your resting place, I dare say,’ he said as I pushed my little pile of coins across the counter.

  I turned towards my window. I could guess from the shadowy shape pressed against the glass that somebody else was already sitting there and I had a fair idea who, too. Rapping on the pane with my knuckles as I passed, I strode casually out of the station. Casually for Mr Parker’s benefit - he didn’t strike me as the sort of man who approved of haste.

  But it wasn’t Cal looking down at me as I emerged onto the pavement. In my seat was his briefcase. He looked at me expectantly. I tossed him a ball of gum and popped another into my own mouth.

  ‘You’re coming in our class, you know,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. It was the first I had heard of it.

  ‘Mr Jackson told us yesterday at home time.’

  I nodded. Sometimes, most times, Cal sounded like a refugee from one of those Enid Blyton books which my mother brought home from the library and which my father discouraged me from reading. Mr Jackson was Jackson or Jacko and only primary school kids talked about home time. Yet at the same time I admired Cal’s unorthodox language, his unashamedly schoolboy language. I sweated and squirmed, struggling to ensure that nobody ever noticed me. Cal gave the impression of deliberately choosing words that would attract attention – as if his size were not enough.

  Cal looked up at the seat and then at me without saying anything. I looked at the wrist where my watch would have been had I not forgotten it again. ‘We’d best get to school,’ I said, handing him his briefcase.

  Cal and I walked up the hill. I gave him another bubble-gum. ‘What did Jacko say to you, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘He just said we were having three boys from Mr Blake’s class and then he asked three boys from our class to stay behind afterwards for a quick word.’ He raised his voice slightly as he said ‘a quick word’ and shook his head from side to side at the piteous inadequacy of adult euphemisms. ‘They’re being chucked out,’ he explained.

  ‘Who are the other two from Blakey’s class,’ I said, still fishing for some sort of confirmation. ‘Apart from me, that is.’ I didn’t know if he was playing me along or not.

  ‘He didn’t say,’ said Cal, swinging his satchel-cum-briefcase back and forth. He sniffed. ‘But I know you’re one. You’re much smarter than those der brains in Mr Blake’s class.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. My hand, sticky in my blazer pocket, groped around for another ball of gum but there was only one left. I gave it to Cal and dropped the bag onto the pavement.

  ‘Don’t be a litterbug’, said Cal. He barely had to bend to retrieve the bag. ‘That’s what the bins are for. And it spreads diseases.’

  I had to bite on my lip to stop myself from saying sorry.

  Cal was right. That morning after assembly, Mr Blake took me and a couple of other kids aside and told us we were being moved to another class. ‘In Beech Park, we like to talk about moving sideways,’ he said but he looked dead proud.

  ‘Probably thinks it’s something that he’s done for you in the last two weeks,’ Cal snorted when I told him a break-time.

  ‘Now, I know you lads won’t let me down,’ Blake said as he led us down the corridor to the more rarefied atmosphere of the annexe block. The
three of us behind Blake, we walked through the main school, along its tiled floors and up its concrete stairways. It was a great privilege to be out of the classroom during lessons.

  In the annexe block, the old school, it was cooler and darker as if curtains were closing out the morning sunlight. We moved to single file to climb the softly spiralling staircase to Jacko’s room. I had never seen a spiral staircase before. It was a staircase that should have been in a museum.

  I put my hand onto the gleaming bannister. I wasn’t losing my balance but it was as if I needed to steady myself. The brown wood was gently gnarled, the grain flowing along its length disappearing in darker unpredictable whirlpools.

  I sat next to Cal and by break-time we were best friends. I felt happy - no, content - and Cal bought me a wholly-coated chocolate digestive biscuit, a plain one. The one with the red wrapper.

  ‘Thanks for all the bubble-gum,’ he said.

  We walked home together. He told me all about their teachers, their habits, the classwork, the homework, the other pupils. He didn’t need to tell me about the subtly different way in which the teachers talked to us compared with how they talked to Mr Blake’s class because I had noticed that immediately. At the station, from where we were to go our separate ways, we paused, both looking up at the window ledge, my window seat.

  ‘Are you getting up there, then?’ he asked

  I looked down at him. ‘No, it’s fine, you can.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, not moving. Cal’s hands were in his pockets and in deep like a playground loner. It was as if he didn’t want to meet my eyes.

  ‘Here,’ I said, ‘let me.’ I put my bag down and picked him up - he wasn’t much heavier than the bag - and put him up on the ledge. He smiled broadly.