by Jim Pollard
Jon’s talking about Cal now. We look at each other across the floor and through our collective haze our eyes manage to meet. There’s a morning glow about us and I feel on the level with Jon. Cal’s name on our lips and I feel on the level. But I am wise enough not to ask the one question that remains, wise enough to know that the wrong answer could hurt more than I could understand.
‘Jon,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘And I’m sorry I’ve never told you before. You don’t know how often I’ve wanted to, even when we were at school. Especially when we were at school. I was always on the outside and I thought it would bring us all closer but I couldn’t take the risk and…’ He trails off. For the first time ever in his life Jon is inarticulate. And for the first time in mine he feels like my friend.
I smile and clink my bottle against his. He smiles too and pushes the newspapers across the floor to me. ‘You seem to have struck a chord,’ he says.
Frankie Dane’s Masterclass, says The Guardian’s arts page, the reviewer welcoming my contribution to the social debate while wondering if my analysis is not oversimplistic in post modern Britain. Class Act says The Independent. Is Dane On Drugs? asks that idiot columnist in The Mail.
‘You’ve even made the editorial in your favourite tabloid,’ Jon chuckles. He opens it for me and there it is in block capitals reversed white out of black: Dane Has Brain Transplant. ‘There’s no class in this newspaper and has-been rock star Frankie Dane’s ludicrous suggestion that there is in this great country of ours…’
We’re both laughing. I don’t care what they say about me. I don’t care about any of it because now Jon’s words, Wendy’s words, are beginning to ring like church bells in my mind. ‘If I’d wanted one of them I’d have come to you.’ These words are headier than any brew. They are an inspiration, an affirmation.
30
It started going wrong when the band went to America in 1979. Since Cal had returned from the States all those short but sweet months earlier it had all been plain sailing and no-one had been more surprised than me. I’d had my spotty teenage head buried in enough rock biographies to know that it wasn’t supposed to be that easy: a question of doing the rounds, the pubs and clubs, halls and balls, looking for the break and riding your luck. For us, it was a piece of piss.
Midway through the British gigs we recorded the album. As with most bands the material for this first album wasn’t a problem. You’ve been preparing for it for so long. The songs have been around. The band know them. The audience know them. You can take your pick from your whole repertoire. Cal and I wrote some of those first songs in the lower sixth. We were three years older when we recorded the album and in between we’d got every note of every arrangement sorted. The recording took a fortnight and it was to be rush-released so that it would be in the shops before the end of the UK dates. Already Tony was creaming himself over the advance sales. We were beginning to think we could do no wrong.
Cal had been talking about doing some American dates ever since we’d walked off the stage at The Roxy and now he wouldn’t shut up about them. Tony sorted some out and then tagged on a couple in Europe too. We started talking about our World Tour. ‘Do you think it will be over by Christmas?’ asked Jon.
I felt a rare moment of sympathy for Tony. His job was not made any easier by Cal’s insistence that the US dates should follow a bizarre itinerary of his own devising. He didn’t discuss it with me but then Cal knew America, I didn’t. Tony took one look at the list and said that the least we could do was to begin in New York.
‘But I’ve been to New York,’ moaned Cal.
The result of all this was that we were booked to play what looked like some pretty strange places.
We travelled light - the formula that had worked for the album. We took just a couple of roadies and a sound man. Tony had arranged for one of Phonodisc’s men in America to be tour manager. He was meeting us at JFK airport. In the plane Charlie had a map open across the seat and was scouring it for the towns in the tour schedule. ‘Which state’s that one in?’ he asked every five minutes. While the names were sometimes familiar to me I didn’t actually know the answers. Nor, I suspected, did Jon, hiding behind a Henry James novel. ‘Georgia,’ Cal would reply, ‘Alabama,’ but without interrupting his own monologue on the delights of the USA. It took a stewardess with the two bottles of champagne he’d ordered to do that.
Cal began to get irritated at customs. He couldn’t wait to get into the country but we had to hang around for ages to get through immigration. He appeared to think that his sundry previous visits entitled him to express treatment.
On Charlie’s insistence Tony had reluctantly booked us into the Waldorf Astoria.
‘Do you realise how fucking much it costs just to fart in the lobby at that bloody place,’ he demanded. ‘And you haven’t made me a cock-sucking cent yet?’
‘Think big. Think globally,’ said Cal. ‘We’ve made you plenty of pounds sterling and there’s no reason the States should be any different.’
Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a fucking ball-breaking business to penetrate the States, like Jodrell bloody bank or Mary Whitehouse’s knickers, especially if we can’t get airplay. No one knows you from Mrs Mills over there.’
‘No one knew us here six months ago.’
Tony was getting hot under the collar.
‘Why exactly do you want to stay in the Waldorf, Charlie?’ I asked.
‘I want to order a salad.’
‘Oh, very fucking rock’n’roll.’ Tony did his indulgent uncle laugh - ‘One night only, savvy?’ - then he disappeared before we could make any more ludicrous demands.
At the airport there was a message from Phonodisc saying that the tour manager would meet us at the hotel instead. We tried chatting up the cabbie on the way but he didn’t speak English. As he pulled away I noticed him looking up Park Avenue on the map. He was a slight mustachioed man who held tight onto his steering wheel as if to let it go would be fatal.
‘Musicians. We’re musicians.’ Charlie was shouting at him trying to make him understand. He demonstrated his own particular art by pounding vigorously on an imaginary drumkit. In the rear-view mirror I could see the shock of recognition dart across the driver’s eyes.
‘Oh, you policeman,’ he said and refused to utter another word thereafter.
The four of us checked in and adjourned immediately to the lobby bar where Cal summoned a bellboy. Cal was determined that we should all try the cocktails. The hotel was all Chinese carpets and colonnades. Even time was beautifully fashioned in the Waldorf Astoria. There was a lobby clock like something from a church. Charlie ordered his salad. From his pocket he produced three sachets of Heinz salad cream that looked as if they could have been stolen from the cafe near the school and drowned the thing.
The crew arrived. They’d waited at the airport to collect the gear and pick up the two vans Tony had hired for us. They were moaning. Tony had booked them into some flea-pit near the venue. He had told them that it was for reasons of convenience but one look at where we were staying told them it was for reasons of economy. Mac, the beefy Glaswegian roadie, who seemed to be their foreman was saying that an act like us, who’d had a number one single ‘by the way’ should be providing something better.
‘We haven’t had a number one in America,’ said Jon.
‘Och, details,’ said Mac.
The three of them looked around the lobby: Mac, Nev - his younger but equally substantial Jamaican sidekick and Ant - the partially deaf sound-man. Ant’s line was ‘Brian Wilson was deaf in one ear, you know’. He would repeat this mantra dozens of times daily, partly because many people queried Ant’s aptitude for the job, and partly because, as Ant could rarely hear what they were asking him, he repeated himself a lot.
Mac flexed his nostrils and took a sniff of glamorous old New York. He notic
ed our cocktails and the absence of anyone who could really be said to be ‘in charge’.
‘D’ ye want a wee drink, mates?’ he said appropriating a seat at the other end of the bar. He was talking to Nev and Ant not us. I felt awkward enough anyway in this hotel drinking a cocktail the name of which I’d had to ask Cal to pronounce but I truly felt my palms sweating now.
So we drank. After a couple of rums Nev was telling the lobby how the hotel reminded him of the days of slavery.
‘That would make you over 100,’ said Charlie. He had walked over to share his second salad with them.
‘He works like a man of 100,’ said Mac.
‘Pardon,’ said Ant.
Jon and Cal took it in their strides. ‘The tour manager will sort them out,’ said Jon as if he was talking about children or, at least, people who weren’t in ear-shot. Scampering nervously between the two groups, I was the obvious one to respond when the reception paged ‘Mr G. Karts’. The message was from the tour manager saying that he would meet us at the venue.
By the time we set off we’d all had too much to drink. The crew followed in the two vans. I could see them snaking about the road behind us. I don’t know if it was alcohol or the fact that they were still laughing over the valet parking service and the white bellboy who had had to say, through gritted teeth, ‘have a nice day, sir’ to Nev. ‘Don’t worry, Frank, these people can hold their drink,’ said Jon.
‘But can you?’ said Cal.
Unfortunately, the tour manager couldn’t sort it out. He wasn’t there. Mac and Nev set the stage up while Ant deafened the rest of us with some unscheduled feedback. We were playing CBGB’s, the punk venue in Bovary: sleazier than anything the good madame of the same name might have imagined with a great sound-system to boot. Except there wasn’t going to be any booting - at least not of the sound system, Cal reminded Jon.
In the event, Jon could have done all the booting he wanted. Nothing would have saved us. Hardly anyone turned up. I don’t think the Americans actually knew what a Go-Kart was. The nearest thing nomenclature-wise was Go-Cat so God knows what the punters of New York thought - perhaps they thought we were the house-band for a pet food manufacturer. Nobody else seemed to find this notion funny except Nev but then Nev found everything funny.
If we had had a crowd, I probably would have moaned about the sound which was appalling. We all know your hearing gets impaired by alcohol and it’s even worse if you only have one ear to start off with. Moreover, Ant was a one venue man. He knew the mixing desk at the Greyhound inside out and used this knowledge to disguise his aural shortcomings. After we came off stage to a trickle of applause and a swelling squawk of feedback worthy of Hitchcock’s The Birds, he revealed he had worked at the Greyhound for nine years and nowhere else.
‘Why the fuck didn’t you say before we left?’ demanded Charlie who after an hour’s fruitless labour on his drumkit was looking for a more profitable outlet for his hitting activities.
‘I fancied a holiday, like.’
‘So you heard that then.’
‘Pardon.’
One of the many people who didn’t turn up to witness our US debut was the tour manager. Back at the hotel there was a message that he’d catch up with us at the next venue.
We sat silently in the bar - heads bowed over our glasses. At length, Cal looked up at me. ‘Well, there’s only one way we’re going to survive this isn’t there?’ Without a backward glance he disappeared out of the lobby into the night and the following morning he began consuming copious amounts of speed.
31
Beech Park, the present day
Jon has to get a cab home. I walk to the supermarket, hope it will clear my head but it doesn’t. I think only a bazooka can do that job. Instead I opt for sleep. Wendy comes home in the middle of the afternoon.
‘I would have thought you were dead but I could hear you snoring out in the drive,’ she says as she wakes me with a touch that tickles my nose. ‘I was expecting to find one of you dead. There wasn’t much on at work so I decided to come home and clear up the mess.’
I don’t ask how she knows because I don’t care.
‘We talked. We had a lot to drink,’ I say. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t snoring in the drive.’
Wendy smiles. ‘I’ll make a pot of coffee.’
I get out of bed. I have that 5am taste in my mouth. I feel heady but in an empty way like after a dope party. I edge hesitantly towards the mirror. My tongue looks like a slice of red sponge. Beneath each eye is a sack of coal. A rush of water courses through the cistern as downstairs Wendy puts the kettle on. I want a shower - a shower beneath a waterfall like we had that day in Portmeirion when we were recording the album. That day the water was so cold it cleaned right the way through you. I put on my bath robe. On the way downstairs, I check on my watch and pause at the bathroom to clean my teeth.
Wendy is filling the big cafetière - the eight cup one for when we have guests. I guess she is expecting a long talk. From the fridge I take one of the three family size pots of yoghurt that I bought at the supermarket. I take two steps and am right behind her. I place the yoghurt in front of her on the work surface, and join my arms around her tummy. It’s soft. I let my own stomach nestle against her back. My erection rises, opening my loosely belted bathrobe as it does so. I lower my head and kiss her at the point where proud neck becomes gently curved shoulder.
‘Can I help you?’ asks Wendy.
She twists round and we are facing each other. She is smiling, unbuttoning.
‘We haven’t done it in the kitchen for ages,’ I say.
‘You’re right. Must be at least a week.’
Later, we are in bed watching at the clock when I have the idea. I allow my hand to slide down Wendy’s torso, her chest rising and falling with life, her tummy gently yielding to the touch, her navel complete with a sticky residue of strawberry yoghurt, her soft mossy mound of pubic hair.
‘The kids’ll be home soon,’ she says.
‘Let’s go on a second honeymoon,’ I say.
Wendy levers herself up on her elbow. She’s interested. ‘You mean, no kids.’
‘Just that. Mum keeps nagging about having them. We could send the three of them off somewhere.’
Wendy giggles. ‘Do you think your Mum’s having a second childhood?’
‘Probably. She’s certainly young enough to mother pre-teens again. I suppose I’m not saying we couldn’t all go to the same place. We’d just need a few ground-rules...’
As we dress, my wife and I play Desert Island Life together and even add a practical dimension by fetching our suitcases from what I still call the box room. We discuss the duration. Will three weeks be long enough? Will it be too long at our age?
‘Your age, sweetheart,’ I say. At this point Wendy takes a break from folding the swimming costume she is already packing to kick me. I love to see her like this.
We discuss the location and conclude that it isn’t where that matters - ‘there are plenty of beautiful places in the world if you have money in the bank, sweetheart,’ Wendy says in a cod accent - but when? We want to go immediately. I am detailed to visit the travel agents first thing tomorrow.
‘We don’t want some toffee-nosed affair,’ I say. ‘We want somewhere for normal people.’
‘So you’re not coming then?’
I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in the studio. It stinks of beer so for the first hour I chain-light joss-sticks. Then it smells like the 1970s and I am ready to work. Settle myself into the swivel chair, guitar and keyboard both close to hand. To one side stands a pile of old manuscripts and lyric sheets. On the top is the list of questions Ian Martyn Baker provided before the NFT interview. My gaze hops down the page. There’s a cliched familiarity about most of the contents. How did you get into the business? What characterises your approach to song-writing? How did you and
Cal collaborate? But one question causes me to pause. Have you ever done anything evil? it says. I stop. That’s getting close. That’s the sort of thing that keeps me awake at nights. I’m still thinking about Jon too. I’ve got the tape of our conversation playing in the background. His words are chasing the image of his bloodied face around my mind like a kitten chases its tail. For a moment the two things gel. I sit back and the footage being playing in my head is as vivid as anything the NFT could provide.
Cal has been dead a few months and the balance of The Go-Karts are walking in the West End. We walk slowly. None of us thinks a night out is a very good idea but we are determined. This time there are just three but we intend to do it like we used to. Train to Charing Cross, walk to Trafalgar Square, feed the pigeons if it’s afternoon, pint in The Chandos if it’s evening, walk up Charing Cross Rd, past the the National Portrait Gallery and the theatres, cut through Leicester Square, past The Talk Of The Town and the Empire (The Ray McVay Band so it must be Saturday Night), round the back of Piccadilly Circus bathed in the red neon of Coca Cola, wander beneath the giant disembodied arm mounted on the Peter Stuyvesant advertising billboard to Wardour Street. The church and its courtyard, a small green sanctuary where little save litter congregates, an amusement arcade, another pint in The Intrepid Fox. The Marquee. Nights to die for.
Except that this time, as we emerge from the forecourt at Charing Cross station into the autumn sun, I already have cold feet.
‘I’m not ready for this.’
‘No,’ says Charlie. He kicks at a pile of unsold Evening Newses. It’s as if half of our lives have been taken away, buried in that coffin with Cal.