Hoag: They started dropping acid.
Bartucci: The Beatles, they flourished from LSD—gave the world Sergeant Pepper. Everyone else produced the worst kind of self-indulgent crap imaginable. The Stones, under the influence of acid, did Their Satanic Majesties Request, unquestionably their worst album. And Us, oh my, they got so very weird, those boys. Withdrew to their country retreats and blasted off into their own little worlds. T. S. went into what I call his T. S. Eliot stage. Started writing unbelievably wretched stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Poetry, they called it. Rory, he got obsessed with Irish folk ballads from olden times. Derek started collecting Victorian pornographic art, as well as slender blond boys. Puppy just got into being rather glazed. Surly as well. The product of all of this, when they finally went back into the studio, was Rock of Ages, which they called a musical exploration of their once and future selves.
Hoag: “Mystical vipers/Windscreen wipers/Across the twisting purple corridors/Inside our minds.”
Bartucci: I called it crap. Christ, they expressed themselves musically as druids! Chanted! And their music of tomorrow—it was noise. Two entire cuts were noise. There wasn’t one marketable single on it. Plus they took some very nasty shots at the royal family. The EMI people loathed it, fought with them every step of the way. Rock of Ages was a critical and commercial failure, here and abroad. Their first failure. But you couldn’t tell the boys this accurately reflected its quality. Oh no. Their heads were too large. They actually blamed EMI for its failure—creative interference, they called it. So T. S. brought in Tulip’s father to examine all of their contracts and financial affairs. He told them they should form their own label, which naturally appealed to their grandiose delusions. He also told them I was stealing from them. I wasn’t, as I’ve made clear to you, but the more drugs they took, the more they believed him. T. S. still blames me for the tax troubles he got into—and I wasn’t even around by then. They called me the vilest names, after all I did for them. Left me with no choice but to hire a solicitor of my own. We reached a settlement. Parted company. They went on to do some of their most successful work. But the truth is they were never happy again. Look what happened to them—heroin, divorce, death. There were no good times after that, Mr. Hoag. It gives me no pleasure to say so. I bear them no grudge. The hard feelings, those went away years ago … Anything else I can tell you? I’m rather busy.
Hoag: Just one thing: Where did you go after our interview on Friday?
Bartucci: Why do you ask?
Hoag: I was wondering if you happened to be around, say, Savile Row.
Bartucci: I was right here. Working.
Hoag: Can anyone here vouch for you?
Bartucci: Vouch for me?
Hoag: Yes. Do you mind if I ask some of them?
Bartucci: I most certainly do mind. Where I go and what I do is none of your or Tristam Scarr’s damned business. And you can tell that cheap, phony bastard I said so!
Hoag: Sure there still isn’t just the tiniest grudge?
Bartucci: I think you should leave, Mr. Hoag.
Hoag: I’ll do that. Again, thank you for your time and your—
Bartucci: Get the fuck out of my—!
(end tape)
(Tape #1 with Tulip recorded in her Chelsea flat Dec. 1. Located on King’s Road directly over a shop specializing in metal-studded collars and handcuffs. Parlor is messy. The Mod Bod weighs possibly fifty pounds more than in her heyday. Face is fleshy, blotchy. Hair uncombed and greasy. Wears large silver cross on chain around her neck. Holds Bible in her lap.)
Hoag: I’ve met your daughter Violet. Lovely girl.
Tulip: She’s no longer mine. I’ve lost her. He’s won.
Hoag: Do you mean Tris? (silence) So what are you doing with yourself these days?
Tulip: Do you mean now that I’m the Mod Blob?
Hoag: I mean now that you’re not nineteen, and London doesn’t swing like a pendulum do.
Tulip: I’ve a small family income. And I’m very active in my church.
Hoag: According to Tris it’s not one of the more established faiths.
Tulip: It’s so like him to condemn what he doesn’t understand.
Hoag: Could we talk about when you first met him?
Tulip: I was thin, rich and beautiful. A spoiled little bitch as well. Anything I’d ever wanted I’d gotten. Us were the hot new group, very gear. I was at the Ad Lib one night with David Bailey and a few others. And so were the two of them, Tris and Rory. I’d heard what people were saying about them, that they chewed up pretty little girls and spit them out. Perhaps that attracted me. I don’t know. I do know I thought it couldn’t possibly happen to me. Not Tulip. It was Rory I got involved with first, actually. He was the sweetest, baddest little boy. Had this way of cocking his head to one side when he talked to me, as if he knew he was bad and couldn’t help himself. And he couldn’t. Rory was the first man I ever fell for, and I fell hard … And it all turned out to be true, what people had said. He was mean. He lied to me, slept around on me. S-So I started sleeping with Tris, to get back at him. Only I fell even harder for Tris. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? I was an awful, drugged-out bitch. I was a slut.
Hoag: You were his wife.
Tulip: Yes, I was. And by the time that became public I was sleeping with Rory once again, God help me, and poor Derek was wishing he was. Madness, all of it. A loss of self-control brought on by abandoning the Lord and his teachings.
Hoag: What was it like being secretly married?
Tulip: I despised it. Ours was a proper marriage—for a while, at least—but the newspapers made me out to be some kind of rock ’n’ roll tramp. And I had to take it. He had his bloody image to maintain.
Hoag: Derek thinks you’re the only person who ever really got to know Tris.
Tulip: (pause) Tris was … is … a vulnerable person. Shy, actually. Whatever came out of him, whether it was meanness or genius, came from this well of insecurity. As a result, I could never hate him, even when I wanted to. He never did learn how to feel comfortable with people. They in turn never wanted to understand him. When I met him he was twenty-two. The music he made, the life he led—it was all totally new. What he came to resent, I think, was that everyone wanted him to stay the same angry boy making the same angry music. They wouldn’t allow him to grow as an artist or as a person. He was, for example, very excited and fulfilled by Rock of Ages. Until people totally rejected it … Our life together was a fairy tale. We were lovely, special little children who could buy all the toys and candy we wanted, and there were no adults around to slap our hands and tell us no. They bought these lovely Alice in Wonderland cottages in the Cotswolds, and filled them with toys and animals. Tris had an elephant, a giraffe, an entire zoo of his own, just like Dr. Dolittle, until he decided one night it was cruel and set them free. The village was not pleased … London wasn’t fun anymore. Fans would hassle us. Jack would drive us in sometimes for a night out, but mostly we stayed in the country. We all had cooks, and there were always lovely people around. George and Patti Harrison, Eric, Keith, Brian, Woody. All the mates. Lots of girls. Lots of jams. Lots of magic mushrooms, mescaline, THC …
Hoag: What kind of relationship did you have with Puppy?
Tulip: Puppy thought I was some kind of evil witch, bad for Tris and Rory’s heads, bad for the band. He was forever mean to me. And then after the ban he was just mean to everyone. Puppy didn’t care for the country life. He only came out when they got together to play. Usually he’d crash at Rory’s, where all of the equipment was.
Hoag: Like the weekend he died?
Tulip: Yes. Like the weekend he died.
Hoag: Can you tell me about that?
Tulip: It was after Rock of Ages flopped. Tris and Rory were taking it very hard. They felt personally betrayed by the fans and the critics. Puppy blamed himself for them not being able to give it American tour support. The weekend he died they’d gotten together at Rory’s to talk about their next album. They were not
getting far. I think their faith in each other had been shaken. It was frightening, the amount of pressure that was put on them by Marco, by EMI, by the good new groups—Cream, Traffic, Procol Harem. There was no laughter in Rory’s house that weekend. No joy. I remember this girl he was seeing then, she picked right up on that.
Hoag: The tarot card woman?
Tulip: Yes. That’s right.
Hoag: Do you remember her name?
Tulip: (pause) No. She was just some girl. Rory didn’t see her for long. He didn’t see anyone for long … They were in the music room, trying out some things, drinking some champagne, talking. Marco had just left to go back to London.
Hoag: What was Marco doing there?
Tulip: Hassling them, mostly. Jack and I were out in the kitchen with a few other girls and friends. They didn’t like for us to be in there with them when they were in the early stages. I remember there was an argument. Rory said something like, “Fuck this flower-power shit!” Then there was this terrible crash. Derek came rushing out, terribly pale, and said “Jackie, Pup has passed out and we can’t bring him to.” We all went in and found him collapsed amidst his drums. Jack tried to revive him while the rest of us looked for whatever it was he’d taken.
Hoag: You didn’t find anything.
Tulip: No. The pills weren’t to be found. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was gone. The Lord had taken him from us.
Hoag: Do you think someone acted as His agent?
Tulip: Agent?
Hoag: Tris thinks Puppy was murdered by one of you.
Tulip: We were all to blame.
Hoag: You were?
Tulip: He died for our sins. That’s why the Lord took him. To punish us. To warn us. But we didn’t heed His message. We were too blind. So things got worse. More drugs, more pain, more death … Us wasn’t the same after Puppy died. They used studio drummers from then on, none with his talent or flair. The focus shifted more to Tris and Rory. We’re Double Trouble, the album they turned out after Puppy’s death, was shit-kicking, wired rock ’n’ roll. They’d put away the hollow-body blues. The acid as well. From then on it was coke, smack, speed, all of the above. We three became serious smack freaks. I was getting it on with both of them then, God help me.
Hoag: How did they handle that? Didn’t they fight over you?
Tulip: Never. Deep down, they always meant more to each other than any woman could.
Hoag: Even you?
Tulip: Especially me … Their new sound clicked. They bounced back bigger than ever, and started acting like genuine bad-ass stars. Pissing people off. Getting shit-faced and disorderly in public. Seeing what they could get away with—just like two bad little boys. And when they toured, forget it. I tried going with them on their return tour to America in ’68. It was male macho madness. They trashed their hotel rooms with fire hoses. Threw the furniture in the street. One night in Detroit Rory got in a brawl with the hotel manager because they wanted to put him on the second floor. I said to him “So what?” He said “It’s no bleedin’ fun to dangle a groupie out of a second-story window.” In Kansas City, I came in one morning and found Tris in our bed with two girls and someone’s pet monkey. I split. I couldn’t take it. The following year, when they went over to tour promote Skullbuggery, Rory asked me to go with them. I didn’t want to but he begged me. So I traveled as Tris’s wife on the tour, while I was actually living with Rory. It was sick, sick, sick … My friends were always asking me which of them was better in bed. I always said it was like comparing coke with smack—they were both obscenely great and it was impossible to say which would kill you faster. At least Rory didn’t beat me.
Hoag: Tris beat you?
Tulip: Tris was often violent when he was on smack. Broke my nose once. Skullbuggery stayed at number one for something like five months. Then they put out Nasty, Nasty, and it was nearly as big. That’s when they had to cool out somewhere for tax reasons.
Hoag: Tris moved to L.A.
Tulip: And Rory and Derek to Italy. I stayed here and tried to get myself somewhat back together. Got off drugs. Went to Italy and got off Rory. Then I flew to L.A. to see Tris. He was living in a rented mansion in Malibu, and much, much closer to the edge. Shooting up. Drinking too much tequila. Hanging out with problem children like Moon, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Dennis he’d gotten to be friendly with after the ’68 tour, when Dennis was living on Sunset. Both of those two are dead now. The night before I got there the police caught Tris going a hundred and fifty miles per hour on Pacific Coast Highway in his Porsche—with a suspended license. I had to bail him out of jail. He’d changed for the worse. He was so absolutely full of anger. Hate.
Hoag: Do you know why?
Tulip: You’d have to ask him. He wouldn’t open up to me. That’s why I left him—that and the smack. It wasn’t until Jack and Derek moved out there and got hold of him that he started getting himself together again. When he did, I took him back. Had Violet. Then we split again, for good … All of it’s such a blur now. I can’t even remember most of the faces. I have my photo album, of course, but I haven’t been able to look at that for years now. Freaks me out too much. I took a lot of the pictures myself, actually.
Hoag: I’d love to see it.
Tulip: I actually fancied I’d be a photographer one day. David Bailey said I was quite good. I never followed through, though. Never followed through on anything, except falling apart. If I hadn’t found the Lord, I’d be dead just like Rory. Poor, poor Rory …
Hoag: I really would love to see it.
Tulip: Hmm? Oh, it’s somewhere … I had to put it away when I found Violet pawing through it. Pawing through my past. I’ll dig it up for you. Come back tomorrow
Hoag: Thank you. I will.
Tulip: All I ever did was model. Not that that’s anything. You’re just a slab of beef.
Hoag: How do you feel about Violet following in your footsteps?
Tulip: It’s her life.
Hoag: And T. S.?
Tulip: What about him?
Hoag: How do you feel about him?
Tulip: I don’t feel anything about him anymore.
(end tape)
CHAPTER EIGHT
LULU WAS GETTING SOFT.
Too much of Merilee’s cooking and too little physical activity had dulled her razor-sharp huntress instincts. She was slow to react when I let myself into the mews house. In fact, she didn’t react at all.
I knelt and scratched her ears. She sniffed at my fingers with the cool reserve she usually shows roach exterminators and federal census takers. I hadn’t visited her on her bed of pain for two whole days. I was getting the treatment for it.
“This has gone far enough,” I told her firmly. “I’ve already apologized numerous times for what happened. And you know I can’t be here with you all the time.”
I reached down to hoist her out of her bed. She resisted me, grunting unappreciatively. I’m bigger. I lifted her up and held her. Usually, she likes to nestle into me and put her head on my shoulder like a dance partner. Not now. Now she squirmed in my arms, and wanted to be put down. I obliged her.
“Okay, be a martyr,” I said, as I headed for the phone. “See what it gets you.”
Tris was still asleep and not taking any calls. I told Pamela I’d be late for work the next evening because I wanted to look through Tulip’s photo album. She said she’d pass the news on to Mr. Scarr. She also said she’d quite enjoyed transcribing our last couple of tapes.
“I really do hear him now, Hoagy.”
“Glad you think so,” I said, pleased she’d noticed a difference. I was getting him now. If only I was getting closer to figuring out who’d shot at me, too. Then I’d be making real progress.
I had just enough time to soak in a hot tub with a Laphroaig—it wasn’t too smoky for me—before it was time to watch part ten of Giant Worms of the Sea. I was very into this series now I wasn’t sure why. Two possibilities came to mind. Either it was an acquired taste or I’
d been in England too long.
When the show was over, I put my new suit on over a black cashmere turtleneck and spooned out a can of mackerel for Lulu. She glowered at it like it was Alpo beef chunks. Still, I said good-bye fondly, hoping she’d feel guilty over the way she’d been treating me. I’m sure she didn’t.
The mini was still out of service, so I was using the Peugeot diesel wagon. It went from zero to sixty in a day and a half, and had no fridge, but driving it made me nostalgic. I’d had a diesel just like it the year I lived in the Perigord Valley, subsisting on goose liver pâté and chilled Monbazillac while I struggled with the first draft of Our Family Enterprise. Ah, youth.
I parked near the theater and waited for Merilee at the performer’s entrance like a stage-door Johnny, flowers and all. A dapper older gent was also waiting there for a cast member, though I think it likely the fluffy blond object of his affections was named Steve.
She came out wearing her long, treasured Perry Ellis tweed suit—she’d wept when he died. A high-throated white silk blouse, alligator belt and shoes went with it. Her eyes got soft when I handed her the flowers.
Fans at the curb pushed autograph books at her. Flashbulbs popped. It was, possibly, indiscreet for the two of us to be seen together like this. But we’d decided it would be tawdry if we behaved like we had something to hide. We had never been tawdry, and didn’t intend to start now
“How’s T. S.?” she asked, as I steered her toward the car.
“I’m actually starting to respect him a little,” I replied. “Not that he’s a very nice guy—guys who make a commitment to being the best seldom are. He knows he hurt people. But he was willing to pay that price. You don’t meet many people anymore who care that much about their art. And have talent.”
The Man Who Lived by Night Page 12