The Man Who Lived by Night

by David Handler

  Hoag: He wasn’t wrong—he was only off by one generation.

  Scarr: You got that right. Mum, she became a practical nurse. Strong woman. Very good posture. Liked everything clean, especially her little Tristam. Wore his proper school uniform, he did. Starched white shirt. Black blazer. Gray short pants. Tie. Gap. My very first act of rebellion was to be dirty … She saw to old ladies who were dying, and was always telling Dad about it at the table. “She’s got blood in her stool again, Martin. Blood in her stool. …”

  Hoag: You were raised in … ?

  Scarr: A bunch of nothing London suburbs. Acton, then Ealing, then Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston … We were always moving.

  Hoag: Wait. Time out. I thought you grew up in Liverpool.

  Scarr: No. Never.

  Hoag: But everything I’ve ever read about you said—

  Scarr: All made up. They made up a lot.

  Hoag: You mean the record company?

  Scarr: And our manager, Marco Bartucci—the man who made us Us. Liverpool was hot. Kids from greater London weren’t. So they gave us fake biographies. Christ, they said Puppy’s dad was a merchant seaman from Dingle, the Liverpool docks. He was actually in jail in Louisiana for killing a man.

  Hoag: And your Liverpool accent?

  Scarr: The scouse was put on, like a costume. Show business.

  Hoag: It certainly is. You were saying you moved around a lot.

  Scarr: Mum would ask the neighborhood shopkeepers to put it on the slate. Then, when they’d get touchy about money, we’d move on to another furnished flat somewhere. “Someday, Tristam,” m’dad would say, “I want you to be a professional man. A man in a proper chalk-striped suit and bowler who rides the train into the City every morning with the Times under his arm. Yessir.”

  Hoag: Did you want that?

  Scarr: Not if he did, mate.

  Hoag: You didn’t get along?

  Scarr: It wasn’t as if we ever had a go at one another. He never had goes with anybody. Over anything. Too weak. Too afraid. He just quietly took it up the bumhole. I hated that about him. It was as if he was spending his whole life getting ready to die. Only thing he succeeded at.

  Hoag: What kind of boy were you?

  Scarr: You mean was I a jolly little pink-cheeked laddie? The apple of Martin and Meta’s eye?

  Hoag: Something like that.

  Scarr: It wasn’t like that.

  Hoag: Didn’t think it was.

  Scarr: I was sickly. Asthma. Pneumonia. Tonsils. Always had breathing problems. Still do. I was home in bed a lot, swallowing bad-tasting medicines, Mum nursing me like one of her old ladies. Didn’t have many mates, between that and moving to the different schools. I remember I did a lot of jigsaw puzzles. Picadilly Circus. The Grand Canyon. Diamond Fucking Head. And I spun these fairy tales in m’head—that I was a pirate king or an Indian fighter. Someone brave and strong, with mates … Mostly, I remember silence. The wallpaper was blue.

  Hoag: You know, I’ve never met a celebrity who had a happy childhood.

  Scarr: Nobody has a happy childhood. We just happen to get asked about ours, is all.

  Hoag: Did you do well in school?

  Scarr: Not very. Missed too much. Wasn’t very bright either. (laughs) I showed no evidence of any talent of any kind as a boy. Except for m’ears. I can wiggle them. Very few people can.

  Hoag: You can wiggle? I can, too. All of the Hoag men can. Let’s see … (silence) Pretty decent. But can you wiggle one ear at a time?

  Scarr: Impossible. No one can.

  Hoag: I can.

  Scarr: Balls. (silence) You’re not really doing it.

  Hoag: I am, too.

  Scarr: Yes, well, as I said—I was not a good student. Somehow, I did manage to pass m’eleven-plus exams and move on up. We were living in Teddington then, I was sent to Hampton Grammar. Some pretty posh people sent their teenies there. A good crowd for young Tristam to meet on his road to becoming a professional man. Only, I fell in with the wrong crowd.

  Hoag: By the wrong crowd you mean Rory?

  Scarr: I do, mate.

  Hoag: Can you remember the first time you two met?

  Scarr: (laughs) It was in ’56. I was twelve. I knew of him, of course, because he got himself in so many scrapes. A blond bloke, with a big chest and unusually short legs. Self-conscious about that, he was. To the day he died he was sensitive about his height. He was a cockney, a hard nut—quick with his mouth and his fists. The other boys were afraid of him. He was already a bit of a ted. Wore these heavy black shoes and smoked ciggies and didn’t show up for classes. One day he comes up to me in the corridor and takes m’fountain pen out of m’shirt pocket and doesn’t give it back. I says, “Let’s have m’pen.” He says, “Piss off.” I says, “You piss off.” He says, “You’re a skinny little cunt, aren’t you.” I says, “It’s m’mum’s pen—she’ll have m’hide if I lose it.” He says, “Then she’s a cunt as well.” The other lads are listening by now. I’m sort of on the spot, I am. If I let him keep the pen then I’ve got no bloody social standing from that day forward. So we had a proper punch-up.

  Hoag: Who won?

  Scarr: He did. Bloodied m’nose. Tore m’shirt.

  Hoag: But he gave you the pen back.

  Scarr: No, he kept the pen. But he did decide I was a mate. Next morning he says to me, “I’m gonna smoke me a fag in class today.” I says, “Go on.” He says, “Watch me.” And he did it—lit up a bleeding Woodbine right there in the middle of class. Teacher couldn’t fucking believe it. Got himself royally caned for that, Rory did. But he just didn’t care. They couldn’t teach him anything and they couldn’t hurt him. He figured as how he was smarter than all of them.

  Hoag: Was he?

  Scarr: Rory? He was just bloody contrary’s what he was. Different. Crazy. Still, I reckoned as how he was onto something.

  Hoag: What was it?

  Scarr: Being alive. (pause) His dad was a big, tough bloke. Had his own roofing business. He and Rory fought all the time. “Mr. Law” he called his dad, with a sneer. Quick with the belt, the old bugger was—especially after a few pints. Rory’s older brother, Bob, usually got it, only he was away in the RAF at that time, so Mr. Law went after Rory.

  Hoag: You and Rory became friends.

  Scarr: Mates, right off. There was this, I don’t know, righteous energy between us. We sparked off of each other. Did things together we’d not dream of doing on our own.

  Hoag: Such as?

  Scarr: Such as … Christ, what didn’t we do? Started trash fires inside of stores. Threw rocks at nuns and cripples. Ran in front of cars in the street to make ’em hit the brakes. One time we grabbed a neighbor’s cat and stuck a firecracker up its arse and lit it to see what would happen.

  Hoag: And what happened?

  Scarr: (laughs) They may have nine lives but they only got but one arsehole.

  Hoag: That’s absolutely disgusting.

  Scarr: Isn’t it? I’d never been happier. Even started getting a bit of a rep in the neighborhood for being a scruff. M’dad decided to have it out with me about it. Says to me, very serious, “You’re being a bad boy, Tristam. Your schoolwork is inadequate. Your behavior and language are unacceptable. You’ll never be a proper gentleman at this rate, just a lout. I want you to stop seeing this Rory Law.”

  Hoag: And what did you say?

  Scarr: “Make me.”

  Hoag: And what did he say?

  Scarr: Not a thing. I won. (pause) Show me that ear thing of yours again, would you, Hogarth?

  (end tape)

  (Tape #2 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 20. Appears subdued. Wears only a tweed overcoat, long Johns. Hair is in a ponytail.)

  Hoag: You look tired tonight, Tristam.

  Scarr: I was practicing. Haven’t been to bed yet.

  Hoag: Taking up a new instrument?

  Scarr: No, it’s that ear thing of yours. I don’t get it, mate. “What’s the trick?

  Hoa
g: There’s no trick. Either your ears can move independently of each other or they can’t.

  Scarr: Show it to me again. (silence) Bloody hell!

  Hoag: Let’s talk about when you heard Elvis sing “Heartbreak Hotel” on the radio that first time. You wanted to sound like him, look like him, be him … ?

  Scarr: Me and Rory both. We were ripe for it, y’know? Something new. Something that our parents and teachers wouldn’t approve of. Something that was ours. Rock ’n’ roll music, it simply didn’t exist here in ’56. We had Tommy Steele and Johnny Gentle and vanilla pop like that. But we had no one like Elvis. No records. No radio. Nothing. Just the American movies.

  Hoag: What movies?

  Scarr: We were just knocked out by The Wild One with Marion Brando. The motorcycles. The black leather jackets. The way the adults were so freaked out by him. The attitude. It was like he was saying, “Fuck all of you,” y’know? I’ll never forget this one conversation. Somebody says to him “What are you rebelling against?” And Brando, he says, “Whattaya got?” (laughs) Whattaya fucking got! We couldn’t get over that. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. That was another movie we freaked for. And Blackboard Jungle, with all of these wonderfully scruff students who hated Glenn Ford’s bleedin’ guts. The theme song to that was “Rock Around the Clock,” sung by Bill Haley and the Comets. Me and Rory we ate those movies up. Saw ’em over and over again. America, it seemed like some kind of paradise to us over here then. It was Technicolor. We were black and white. It was Marilyn Monroe. We were Dame May Whitty. You blokes over there had your own bleedin’ cars to take your dolly birds for rides in. Our parents couldn’t afford cars here, mate. America, it was the land of the free.

  Hoag: Wait, wait: “What’s that I see/From across the sea?/The land of the free/More for me/Over there, the sky/It don’t ever get gray/Ain’t no one to tell ya/What not to say/More for me.”

  Scarr: You were a regular bleedin’ little rocker, weren’t you? Wouldn’t know it to look at you now.

  Hoag: Good breeding prevails in the end.

  Scarr: Don’t wager on it, Hogarth. Where was I? … Ah yes, once we got into Radio Luxembourg, we got turned on to a lot of the American rock ’n’ roll music—Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson. Blew our minds. All of it. It was definitely where we wanted to be.

  Hoag: What about skiffle? Wasn’t that an important influence on early groups like Us?

  Scarr: Skiffle was a craze, and it was ours—kind of a cross between washboard folk and trad jazz. Got started by the song “Rock Island Line” by Lonnie Donegan, who played in Chris Barber’s jazz band. A skiffle band had two guitars, a banjo, washboard and upright bass. Three chords. Four/four beat. Very basic like, y’know? But it was there. We could hear Elvis and Bill Haley in it. And we could do it. All we needed was a 78 of “Hock Island Line,” which cost six shillings, and a guitar. And we didn’t necessarily have to play it that well. Guitar was entirely different back then. Wasn’t the top-gun lead thing it became after Clapton and Page came along. Back then it was more of a rhythm instrument, like a ukulele. The saxophone was the lead instrument. Ricky Nelson had a guitarist who could bend a note, James Burton. And Cliff Richard, who I reckon you could call the first genuine British rock ’n’ roll star, he had a fellow called Hank Marvin who could play.

  Hoag: You and Rory decided you wanted to play.

  Scarr: Rory, he got his mum to give him one for Christmas. I sent away for mine, a Spanish acoustic with wire strings that made m’fingers bleed. Came with an instruction book, Guitar Made Easy, by this geezer with glasses called Johnny Baughan.

  Hoag: You wrote a song about him, too.

  Scarr: Yes. “For Johnny Baughan.” He was m’first and only music teacher. The book was mostly about how to play folk songs, but it did have these diagrams in the back showing where to put the fingers to make this or that chord. So we got our guitars, Rory and me, and we set about learning ’em. After school. Instead of school. At m’flat, since nobody was around during the day, and we had a phonograph. We smoked Woodies and played the 78 of “Rock Island Line” over and over and tried to imitate how it sounded. It could be done, y’see. So could the look, the Elvis look. The look was perhaps even more important. Creased ducks-arse hair with sidies—that’s sideburns, to you. Drainies …

  Hoag: Drainies?

  Scarr: Drainpipes, which is what your jeans looked like since they were so bleeding tight. Only way to get ’em that tight was to wear ’em in the bath with you, the water as hot as you could stand it. M’dad figured as how I was daft. Looked in on me once in there and said “Mrs. Scarr, your son Tristam is taking a bath with his new trousers on, he is. Moaning, he is.”

  Hoag: Moaning?

  Scarr: Bath was also where I learned to sing. The echo, y’know. At first I tried to imitate Elvis. Then it was Little Richard.

  Hoag: Why him?

  Scarr: My voice wasn’t deep enough to do a really proper Elvis.

  Hoag: That sandpapery quality your voice has—was that how you sounded from the start?

  Scarr: Christ, no. That took years of Woodbines and whiskey and screaming into shitty microphones.

  Hoag: What did you sound like back then, in the tub?

  Scarr: Like any other lad, I expect. Bad. Actually, I’ve never had a great voice, mate. Or even a good one. It’s effective.

  Hoag: Aren’t you being a little modest?

  Scarr: I’m being honest, like you asked. I mean, Rod Stewart isn’t Placido Fucking Domingo either, y’know?

  Hoag: How did you end up being the singer?

  Scarr: Rory didn’t like doing it. Thought it was too feminine.

  Hoag: You were telling me about the look.

  Scarr: Right. Pointy black shoes—winkle-pickers we called ’em. Black leather jacket. Pink shirt and socks.

  Hoag: Sounds like a swell outfit.

  Scarr: Oh, we were bleedin’ swells, all right, with our Spanish acoustics, spots on our faces, twelve, thirteen years old. Double trouble, we were.

  Hoag: What did Martin and Meta think of all of this?

  Scarr: They’d always figured as how I’d never amount to anything, and this here was proof of it.

  Hoag: What about the others at school? What did they think of you?

  Scarr: That we were teds. The surprise was the dollies. For the first time, they started taking notice of us two scruffs at the chip shops. Partly because they knew Mum and Dad wouldn’t want ’em to. Partly because our trousers were so bloody tight. (laughs)

  Hoag: You mentioned Little Richard. He was an important influence?

  Scarr: I told you about Rory’s brother Bob being away in Bremen. When he finished his conscript and came home we were telling him how much we loved Elvis and Bill Haley, and he said if that’s the case then it’s time you hear the real thing. He said Bill Haley didn’t invent “Shake, Rattle and Roll”—Joe Turner did. And he pulled out a bleedin’ trunk full of records he’d bought over there by black performers we’d never heard of—Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, James Brown, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters—on labels like Chess of Chicago, and Sun of Memphis. Rhythm and blues, Hogarth. A lot of the rock ’n’ roll music we’d been into was nothing more than a cleaned-up white version of R and B, which was much nastier than Elvis. We freaked out over it, of course. Wore out Bob’s records. Went into London looking for more in the jazz shops on Charing Cross Road. Found some used ones—Otis Spann, Bo Diddley, T-Bone Walker …

  Hoag: Was anyone else listening to R and B here?

  Scarr: Mate, nobody here had ever heard of it. Except for a handful of us. There were a few other blokes at school playing skiffle, forming groups. It was when Rory and me were fourteen that we decided it was time to start a group of our own. (end tape)

  (Tape #3 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 21. Wears flannel shirt and faded denim overalls. Seems especially anxious to talk.)

  Scarr: There’s something I neglected to m
ention before. About myself. You should know about it.

  Hoag: Yes?

  Scarr: I can raise one of m’eyebrows. (silence) See?

  Hoag: How about the other eyebrow?

  Scarr: Other eyebrow?

  Hoag: Can you raise it, too? On its own, I mean.

  Scarr: No, that one doesn’t move. (pause) Are you saying you can raise either eyebrow? (silence) Bloody hell!

  Hoag: You decided to form a rock ’n’ roll band. How come?

  Scarr: To meet dolly birds.

  Hoag: That was the only reason?

  Scarr: That was plenty. First thing we did, right off, was work on a name. Had to have a name, didn’t we?

  Hoag: You know, I keep finding myself surprised when you and Rory sound like a couple of kids. But you were kids.

  Scarr: That we were. We talked it over real serious like. Came up with a number of possibilities—The Desperados, The Rebels, The Rattlers, The Rock Men, The Rough Boys. That’s what we settled on—The Rough Boys. Sounded, I don’t know …

  Hoag: Rough?

  Scarr: That’s it. Now that we had a name we had to have some proper electric guitars. Our acoustics just wouldn’t do, not for rock ’n’ rolling. We begged our mums and dads for the money to buy ’em, but they said no—Rory was about to get thrown out of Hampton, and I wasn’t doing much better. To them, rock ’n’ roll music was partly to blame. It was all we did.

  Hoag: So where did you get the money?

  Scarr: (pause) From the cash drawer of a fish-and-chips shop.