by Jim Pollard
For a minute I sounded adult. ‘But you’ve got the ability, Cal. Isn’t it a waste?’
He carried on, scornfully. ‘And he was appalled I was going to the States because of course the family don’t go there anymore. That’s beneath them since they decided to buy a gîte.’
‘A jeep?’
‘A gîte - it’s a French peasant house. They want to buy one in Provence - it’s so fucking unspoilt, apparently. They’ve got a poxy caravan nearby for the time being so they can search for the right little one in the right little spot. Well, a pox on your unspoilt. America’s spoilt to death. It’s a spoilt brat. Just like me. And you know what spoilt brats have got. They’ve got everything. You call it ability. I call it privilege on a plate.’
He expected a response. ‘How did Linda like it?’ I asked.
He looked at me like I was way behind. ‘Linda? I’ll tell you about Linda. In Las Vegas she walked up to the first fruit machine she saw, put in a quarter and watched as the coins rolled out. Poured and poured like in a cartoon. She’d won a pile of money, an absolute fucking heap of the stuff, bags full. Nearly pissed herself she was so thrilled, people around clapping, free bottle of champers and a plastic smile from the hostess. She’s hugging everyone and they’re saying ‘well, whaddaya know, missy?’ and stuff. Me? I couldn’t give a fuck. Took a cab to the Hilton Hotel and gatecrashed a Presley gig.’ he shrugged. ‘We covered the bed in dollars later and shagged in it. That was quite good. But gleaming gold? What do I need that for? I’ll take a chance on the buried treasure anytime.’
‘But if you’d kept it you could have stayed longer.’
‘We stayed another nine months. How much longer do you want? How long does it take to get the message?’
I looked blank.
‘There’s a vacancy at the top, Frank. Has been since August the 16th 1977.’ Another shrug. ‘I’ve got to give the music a go.’
I wasn’t sure for a moment whether he was about to burst into song or tears. ‘So, how does he feel about that, your father?’
‘Let’s just say, as they say stateside, we’ve cut a deal.’ He winked.
I finished my tea.
‘Come on,’ said Cal. ‘Let’s shop.’
I was about to protest that I had no money but I knew from the way that he was looking at me what he meant. He had pound signs for pupils.
The sea front was quiet. The tide was out, the water’s edge off in the morning mist somewhere. Three silhouettes of men were digging for worms. We walked across the prom and jumped down onto the beach, the stones yielding with a crunch. I wasn’t really dressed for this. Further out the sand was still damply brown, drying to an ooze of ochre beneath our feet as we walked. Down here, the wind was more vigorous, sweeping at Cal’s blonde locks with a singing rush and even disturbing my civil service short back and sides. I turned up the collar on my suit.
I felt like a particularly stupid incarnation of Dr Watson. ‘The one thing I don’t understand, Cal,’ I said, ‘is what’s so bad about going to Oxford University, anyway?’ (I wasn’t about to give my right arm for anything but if I was the right-arm giving sort, Oxford University was the sort of return I would have coveted.)
‘Nothing if that’s what you want to do,’ he said. I kicked at a pebble. ‘If it isn’t there’s no point. It doesn’t make you happy. Look at Wendy.’
‘What about Wendy?’
‘A good job in the family firm, a husband in a suitably high-flying job but believe me, Frank, she’s not the contented honey you might imagine from that heart melting smile.’
‘But she doesn’t work for the family firm.’
‘There’s family and there’s family,’ he said mysteriously. ‘It’s a different publishing house to the old fella’s agreed, but these people are like the mafia with dust jackets. It was father who opened the door. And the guy virtually pimps for her.’ With the weight he was giving his words Cal ought to have been becoming sombre but he appeared unmoved.
‘Your dad pimps for Wendy?’ This, I was laughing at.
‘Well, I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect obviously but if your father throws you a twenty-first birthday party to which he refuses to let you invite any guests and the only person there of your own age is the son of your father’s schoolfriend who also happens to be a broker in the square mile, you’d get the message, wouldn’t you and you’d reap the rewards - the money, the house, the society wedding.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Sure it is. She’s daddy’s golden girl now but a happy bunny she ain’t. Look, come on, those shoes of yours are letting in water.’ Then Cal was running.
As a civil servant I spent every working day processing paperwork in a manner that was ostensibly as egalitarian as possible. But even the dumbest clerical could not fail to be struck by the uncomfortable fit between this principle and what was really going on in the world. Cal’s words scratched at this feeling but as I took off my sodden shoes and hurled them out to sea I realised that I still wasn’t understanding it.
‘It’s about getting inside people, Frankie, moving them, communicating with their souls - you, me, everybody.’ He was looking up to the clouds appealing to them with his arms like a supplicant. ‘We must transcend the material.’
We climbed onto a breakwater and, like a balancing act on a beam, walked pigeon-toed back up to the promenade, Cal, leading, kicking at the limpets as we went.
I cut quite a figure in the village, barefoot in my city suit. In London you have to be murdering someone before anyone notices and even then you need to be doing it clumsily, noisily and with a callous disregard for the spray of blood. Down here heads turn and eyes lock at the drop of a hat. My appearance attracted much of this and, from some, the accompaniment of a low-level tutting sound. One old lady leading a sausage dog and wearing a clear polythene rain hood and heavy blue mackintosh despite the clemency of the weather asked me if I was cold, dear.
‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘We’re just going to buy some shoes.’
‘There’s a Clarks round the corner,’ she smiled.
‘Thank you.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Cal. ‘Can you remind me where the bank is? I need to cash a cheque.’
The woman pointed out a flint-fronted Lloyds.
He went in and I waited outside trying to keep moving so that nobody would think I was begging. Apart from being shoeless, my trouser turn-ups were covered in sand and I’d managed to get chalk on my jacket. I read the parish noticeboard. I picked up a discarded sweet packet and put it in the municipal litter-bin. I read the headlines on yesterday’s Argus through the newsagent’s window. I counted the number of jars of sweets on the three shelves behind his counter. I thought briefly of Mr Parker; I wanted to hear more about Wendy.
‘Where’s Linda, now?’ I asked when Cal emerged with his fistful of fivers.
‘At home I should imagine but this is not relevant, Frankie. We have a band to get back together. Just as soon as we’ve stopped you looking like old man Steptoe.’
I looked across the square to the village’s one clothes store and winced. ‘Can’t we go to Brighton?’ I asked. So we did.
That morning I bought my first pair of straight jeans, drainpipes. They still had flared ones in the shop but you could almost see them skulking off shamefacedly to the back of the store. I got sports socks and a pair of maroon baseball boots to replace my faithful but ageing Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes. Cal bought baseball boots for everyone: turquoise for himself, black for Charlie and a golden orangey colour for Jon. In one of those print your own T-shirt places I chose one that said ‘Too Thick For University’.
‘What did you want that one for?’ asked Cal. We were on the pier now playing Air-Hockey. I smacked the puck goalwards and it spun off the the blue playing surface towards the Penny Falls machine.
‘Well, I never took the poxy A-l
evels either, did I?’
As Cal sent the puck back up the table on its millimetre cushion of air so the machine cut out and the puck died.
‘I never sat the exams,’ I explained. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘What’s that got to do with the T-shirt?’
I put a coin in a fruit machine, didn’t answer. Cal started on a trivia machine.
In the boot of the car, Cal had both our guitars. We spent the remains of the day writing the balance of what became The Go-Karts set and planning how to put it all back together again.
Charlie, incredibly, had got into art school. He’d persuaded the school to let him retake O-level Art which he had passed and then he’d persuaded the college to accept him on the basis of that, two A-levels in other subjects and the portfolio he’d put together. They admired his work, his paintings almost as thick as sculptures, and agreed to take him provided he paid for his own paint. We didn’t foresee any problem with him. Camberwell College was just down the road from Beech Park. ‘Everyone at art school’s in a rock band anyway,’ said Cal. ‘That’s what they’re there for.’
Jonathan was more of a problem. He’d passed his A-levels and gone to Durham University. We talked about it over fish and chips sitting on a covered bench on the prom. We could have got another bass-player or one of us could have switched to bass but neither of these options felt right. At ten past closing time we loaded the guitars back into the boot of the car and set off on the long drive north to kidnap Jon.
‘Aren’t you too tired to drive?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Cal and handed me a small sandwich bag containing white powder like sea salt, a handbag mirror and a razor blade.
‘Be careful with the blade,’ said Cal, making a chopping motion on the dashboard with his hand. ‘They’re dangerous.’
27
The National Film Theatre, the present day
I finish my pint. It mixes with the taste of panic in my mouth. Wendy knocks back her second Scotch - for some reason this evening is making her nervous too. Perhaps it’s on my behalf. This is my first public appearance for donkey’s years.
At the next table a guy with a dog called Rotten is trying to make it sit down. I wonder if he’s going to try to take it into the cinema. His thick dog collar is jet black, heavy with studs and partially coated in saliva. Rotten’s is slightly smaller. Both have long, straw brown hair with a centre parting.
The guy asks Rotten if he can be trusted not to get heavy in the one and nines. Those who recognise me try not to stare but they can’t help it. They get themselves into uncomfortable positions and casually look over. They almost smile. I feel awkward, shuffle in my seat. It’s like the school playground when you’ve trodden in shit or got piss on your shorts.
Ian Martyn Baker drags himself away from a cute black girl half his age and half his width and saunters over - he’ll be asking the questions tonight. He places his porky hand on my tightening shoulder. ‘All set, Frank old son.’
He sounds like Jonathan’s older brother, a sort of pipe and slippers around the swimming pool voice. His brief sojourn as presenter for yet another possible replacement for The South Bank Show never got to second series - Ian’s girth is not camera friendly - but he’s made it as far as most could want to. Matched his inheritance and then some. He’s shaking hands around our table, gives Wendy a peck on the cheek and a squeeze on the arm. His greetings are as to fellow members of a club. Finally he pats me on the shoulder again. ‘It’ll be fine, old boy - you’ll get no curve balls from me I promise.’ He’s still smiling with a Cheshire glow. ‘And now, ladies and gents,’ he says to the assembly. ‘The show commences.’
Jonathan has seen the clips although not in their final edited form. I didn’t want to - I would have got too involved and then I wouldn’t have wanted to see them again on the night. My only request was that they keep it chronological. I like chronological. I wish I could do it.
‘So, Jonathan,’ asks Wendy as we rise. ‘Are we in for a treat tonight?’
When Ian reappears at the front of the gently raked auditorium to welcome us all to ‘“Dane Framed”, part of the BFI’s Rock On Reel season, to be followed by an interview with the great man himself’, every seat is full. He calls me the Godfather of grunge and the favourite uncle of Brit-pop, mentions my unpretentious unswerving style. There is the soft buzz of laughter at his self-deprecatory parting gag and the lights go down. Wendy takes my hand and squeezes it.
My heart is pumping like an amphetamine rush and as Cal’s face, six feet tall and fresh, appears on the screen beside my own I am back there. Nights when the world existed in a demimonde. Nights when my heart beat like this, a hammer pounding in my sternum like a clockwork drummer, my insides as taut, tight and tender as the toughest drum skin. Sometimes Cal looked that big then.
On the screen the credits are rolling over some Electric Ballroom footage. Cal and I are back to back, leaning on each other. We’re the same height. He’s standing on the drum riser watching Charlie’s tendon charged forearm as it brings the stick down with a whip-crack back beat on the snare. Our arms whirl in a swirling unison. Cut from one grin to the other. As the shot pulls away from us it moves from black and white to colour and we break, me striding Chelsea-booted, Cal almost dancing, to our respective microphones. The camera is level with his turquoise baseball boots looking up, examining every fold of Cal’s jeans and T-shirt as his Adam’s apple rises and falls. It must have been mounted on the monitors, the camera. I try to remember but I can’t. I’m right back there, you see, empty headed and frantic.
Suddenly we, the audience, are on the stage, the camera framed to something very close to what must have been, back in 1978 or whenever it was, my point of view. Was the cameraman crouching at my side or shooting over my shoulder? I still can’t remember, can only guess from the angle of the shot. The crowd are leaping and dancing as far as this artificial eye can see. There is a lot of sweat and spit, some wayward glasses spilling lager and then an ID parade of female faces. I know from the direction of their pleading eyes that it is Cal for whom they pine but the caption doesn’t admit that. ‘A portrait of Frankie Dane’ it says over their evocative young faces preserved forever in freeze-frame. Wendy squeezes my hand again.
And just like those nights, my heart just won’t slow down. It wants to overtake itself. I want a drink. There’s a taste in my mouth like white spirit.
I think I like the film. The assault of images: the live stuff when we were cooking, the studio shots with Cal and I calling the tune, the jabber-jabber of the young talking heads, some of which turn out to be ours. It has no commentary and doesn’t really try to tell a story which I appreciate. It accepts the great holes in my output. Inevitably it concentrates on The Go-Karts - partly because of the immortality of death and also because there is no live footage of Frankie Dane And The Denmarks. In a sound-bite I’ve not seen before, this fact enables Tony Beale, having compared Cal to Dean and Lennon in the usual way, to compare me to Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. I should feel complimented but in the back of my racing mind there’s a little ticker tape message that says Wilson’s over-weight, certifiably insane and plays in a sandpit. I really want a drink. I wish I had prepared properly by reading the list of questions that Ian Martyn Baker provided but then what can I tell him or anyone about anything?
Although there is studio footage of us cutting Stolen Moments and Phoenix, it’s pretty tame stuff. It shows the putting of the final touches rather than the heart of the creative process. The Stolen Moments material was actually taken by Jon on Super 8, I think. At one point they resort to panning over newspaper cuttings and even throw in a bit of Jody Clarke on Top Of The Pops.
The pace has been quick fire but suddenly we’re in a slow silent pan. It’s a dressing room I recognise and from somewhere off in an alleyed recess of my mind in a cobwebbed cabinet marked ancient history, I dredge up that specific night. The cam
era slowly moves the length of the room. It’s long and thin and it’s got graffiti on the wall. I am adding to it. Finally there is a commentary. It’s the voice of Ian Martyn Baker. ‘Frankie Dane has written his name large in the annals of rock,’ he begins. I know that night. It’s mere weeks before Cal’s death and in three hours time The Go-Karts will write their wills. The camera, while it crawls like a snail, feels like a vulture circling.
There’s Charlie, his baseball cap dripping with sweat, inserting his tongue into a welcoming orifice - the girl with the thighs - and with his fingers on her bottom still drumming a beat. There’s Tony, talking with dripping gestures, arms expansive, clothes expensive. Jon’s similarly suited cronies. Cal. Cal’s tickling out little licks on his unplugged Telecaster, tossing jokes to the couple of girls squatting on the floor nearby and to all beyond. The camera is going on crutches now. The white door at the end of the room opens inwards and chalked on a blackboard mounted on the outside just below the frosted window you can make out the word Go-Karts. In the doorway, two figures hover in a half-light the camera can barely penetrate. The light from the room’s what, two, three, naked bulbs plays on the folds in their clothes as they slowly make motion - a female flare quivers like a denim curtain, a slim-fingered hand slides to where only a lover’s caress should be. Comfortably bold, edging forward now, bodies touching, the tip of a golden orange baseball boot.
In our plush upholstered seats my leg is hard against Wendy’s. Again she squeezes my hand. To me it is an involuntary confirmation. It feels tight as a shackle and my palm begins to perspire. On the screen her hair, so much like Cal’s, cannot help but be caught in the light as she sweeps it back to incline her head upwards.
The picture is changing shape now. Compressed to half their natural width the doorway shadows are forced to continue their hazy, crazy tale still closer together. On the other half of the screen, over a golden hue selected to match the baseball boots, the credits begin to roll. My throat is arid.