Chris Andrews is the producer, the studio owner is the engineer. The first time I put on the headphones and move up close to the microphone—gadzooks!—my every breath, sigh, and swallow in echoing stereo all through my skull.
We record “Melinda Lee” and two new ones, “Nightmare” (lyrics finished on the train on the way in) and “Oh What a Show.” Chris and the engineer keep trying to tame it down, eradicating squeaks and squeals, telling us it will be all right in the mix. All right is not what we’re going for. The guitar sound is too clean and the vocals don’t have enough attack. Throughout the afternoon we find ways to sabotage the saccharine, and by the evening the two rock tracks grind to a compromise conclusion. It’s not what I’m going for, though, and I can see Stein feels the same. Take away our edge and we are dull boys.
“Oh What a Show” is a new song, acoustic, that I composed after reading a book on the French Revolution. This is also the first song we’ve written on which Stein has contributed some of the lyrics. The lad has come up with the chorus.
Oh what a show it’s going to be
Oh what a show for you and me
I play a twelve-string acoustic I found in the corner of the studio, Stein is on the Steinway, Lou and Roger come in for the last chorus, and Eunan escorts us out on the fade with an ethereal guitar piece. Not bad. Bit of a departure, but interesting nonetheless. Chris likes all three tracks.
Next day, we’re back for the mix and a photo shoot. Chris has lined up Clive McLean, the lensman famous for taking shots of naked babes for Mayfair magazine. So he’s our hero. He’s also famous for his Mayfair model wife, Stephanie, who isn’t shy about getting her kit off. And for that we are extremely grateful as she comes equipped with quite an eye-popping set of headlights.
While we pose and preen in the studio, lipstick, mascara, and eyeliner slathered on, Chris handles the mix in the control room, tweaking this and adding a touch of reverb to that. Roger shows up with some sort of nasty virus that makes him look like an aggrieved bloodhound for the photo shoot. Not a terrible look. He bids us adieu right afterward.
The tape sounds good, competent, professional; it just doesn’t sound like us, that’s the problem. We like that three-guitar-track, slightly out-of-sync sound that we got at Alvin’s. But what do we know? If this gets us a record contract we’ll be driving around trying to find a parking spot on easy street. Chris must know what he’s doing.
At the end of the session he says he’s going to Germany in a couple of days to speak to Polydor, the record company he feels will be the best for us. As we head out into the frigid night he hands us £30. I wonder where he comes up with that figure.
It’s great having a manager.
III
Once upon a time the ground floor of our non-beloved slum at 73 Aldenham Road in Bushey was a fish ’n’ chip emporium, but now it is long defunct, closed to the public, filthy and cobwebbed. You peer in at street level through the plate-glass windows and see the counter, the chairs and tables, the deep fryer, and all the other fishy-soise covered in dust.
Sometime on Thursday morning the phone in the shop, never before heard, begins ringing and does not stop. It rings and rings, hour upon hour, the harsh brranng from the black British Telecom phone piercing the flimsy walls and driving us—all of us, as we come to find out—bonkers. It’s tolerable in the daytime when you’re busy making tea, toddling along, and listening to Little Jimmy Osmond or some such rot, on your roadkill radio, but at night, lying in bed, there it is, like Chinese water torture, drilling into your psyche, ring after ring. You wrap your noggin in a sweater, in a coat. Still the monumentally annoying ring gets through. We are on the second floor, but even Dick, when we see him, hurrying by so as not to be buttonholed for a loan of a quid or two, says that up on the third floor the incessant ring has him baggy-eyed and haggard when he rolls out of bed. That’s a long way up for the sound of a phone to drive you nuts.
Saturday night, Lou and I put on coats, wrap up throats, and leave our doss house for the evening. Off to the pub with what remains of Chris Andrews’s thirty nicker. Thirty divided by four (well, Roger went home, remember, so he disqualified himself) is not bad, so there are some pints to be had.
At the pub we meet a doe-eyed lass who is in possession of three tabs of LSD. Generally, I disapprove of lysergic acid diethylamide—not for any moral reason, but for its unsavory association with American hippies. No human being, and certainly no American, has ever been filmed dancing well or sexily while on acid. They all do that closed-eyes, flailing-arms, beatific-smile, snake-like body-heave, which makes you want to enjoy the laugh for a few minutes and then punch them in the mouth.
And I’ve never bought into that leaping-off-a-tall-building-while-thinking-you-can-fly rubbish. I’m all for those who do it, though. I heartily approve of culling the daft. Still, this pub bunny has these three tabs of acid. So down the hatch times three. It’s a lark, and larks are in short supply in England these days.
Let me tell you, after half an hour the interior of an English pub is quite a sight when you’re on hallucinogenics.
Lou and I arrive back home, happy as the Who’s Jack, near midnight, and there in the hall stands the hippy mum from the ground-floor hovel, crying babe in arms, complaining that she hasn’t slept in two days because of the phone. We’ve never met her before but we “aw, tut-tut,” squeeze past her, and go up the stairs to our doss-hole.
Two hours later, brains truly stimulated and freakishly inspired, we decide to relieve our fellow slum-dweller’s agony by breaking into the fish ’n’ chip shop and disconnecting that damned phone. It is an excellent plan, well thought out, relying upon darkness of night, stealth, and Lou’s undeniable talent for lock-picking.
Three o’clock on a deathly freezing night, under a bright streetlamp (there goes the “darkness of night”), I stand, laughing hysterically (there goes the “stealth”), while Lou works on his knees with a variety of specialized tools (a bit of wire, a fork, and the handle of a broken spoon) to pick the lock on the door of the fish ’n’ chip shop. Inside we hear the relentless brang, brang, brang of the phone.
Lou succeeds, never a doubt, and the door swings open with a long, monster-movie-type creak, rapidly picking up speed and smashing into a metal display stand, which in turn topples over and crashes to the tiled floor with a sound like a particularly bad gong in a particularly bad Emerson, Lake & Palmer opus.
We dash in, closing the door behind us. What a caper. Went off without a hitch. We’re master crims. Just at the moment, though, we are on our knees, busting a gut, cheeks puffed out trying to muffle the merriment, looking like imbeciles. Eventually, after a minute or so, this passes and we get to our feet. I walk to the ringing phone behind the counter and pick up the receiver. “Hello?” At the other end there is a click and then the dial tone. Then a blessed silence.
To us this is unbearably hilarious, and we fall back down on our knees on the dusty floor like Southern snake-handling Baptists with a sense of humor. Finally, in an orchestration of gasps, chokes, and mighty sighs, we stifle the chuckles, stand up, and head for the door. On the way, Lou spies an array of dust-covered bottles of Coca-Cola on the counter, and after inspection puts three of them in his pockets. We give a quick shifty peek outside for Dixon of Dock Green and then exit the grime scene. Lou locks up, and Robert’s your mum’s brother.
Back in our room, our upstairs progress unimpeded by weeping, grateful, back-slapping, flower-tossing tenants, we relax and laugh, safe in the knowledge that we’ve done our bit for our immediate fellow man. A couple of veritable Abou Ben Adhems. May our tribe increase.
The acid and pints of bitter, coupled with our cunning caper, take their inevitable toll and finally, near dawn and with no further option, we lay down our weary noggins. Lou and I bid each other bonsoir and succumb immediately to the lure of the land of Nod, where sleepy, not to mention heroic, musicians intend to remain
comfy and comatose until the very late hours of the following afternoon. Peace and the silky darkness of deep slumber descend upon our squalid little world.
For twenty-two minutes.
The long arm of the law is sometimes replaced by the long leg, at the end of which is a big, shiny, black boot. And that is exactly what smashes through our door shortly after bedtime. Four coppers rouse us out of bed with maximum yelling, swearing, and kicking. We stand shivering in our underwear, bewildered, scared, and blasted out of our minds. (Note to all would-be psychedelic tripsters out there: I do not recommend you make this part of your trip, man.) They ask a dozen questions at once. Out of the corner of my mouth I tell Lou not to say anything, which earns me a hand around my throat and my head bashed into a wall. This is getting to be a habit.
We are told to dress and then we are marched out and down the hall. There stand three more boys in blue. We are haggard as Merle, half-dressed, shoelaces undone. Down the stairs, we are shoved into a police van then away through the night to the station, where we each get a cell to ourselves.
I sit there, wide-eyed and whacked, with a brand-new lump on the back of my head. Through the bars of my cell I spot myself in a metal mirror on the door of a locker across the room. “Woebegone” springs to mind. My eyes, ringed and streaked with two days’ worth of smeared mascara, peer out from a cadaver-pale face. I am wearing black corduroy trousers, ballet slippers, and a black overcoat. It is cold and I am apprehensive, to say the least. Where’s Spider Murphy when you need him? I jump every time I hear bangs and clangs, but otherwise I am left alone to read the graffiti scratched into the walls.
It’s not very witty.
This lasts for almost an hour. A copper comes, and with some severe key jangling he unlocks the cell and orders me out and into another room, where another officer sits behind a desk with a pen and a form in front of him. He looks me up, down, and back up again, as though I am something steamy and earth-toned that he has just stepped in.
“What on earth do we have here, then?”
In a rush to state my case, I begin to answer, “I’m Andrew Mathe—” but he cuts me off.
“It was a rhetorical question, if you take my meaning.” He clicks his ballpoint pen.
In a rush to state my familiarity with rhetoric, I begin to answer, “Yes, I know what rhetorical—” but he cuts me off again.
“Listen, sonny. It’s late and I’m fed the fuck up so shut it. I am here to take a detailed list of such personal possessions as you may have on your person and then dispossess you of them. Once detailed on the piece of paper in front of me, you can rest assured that you may reclaim said items at the conclusion of this—which I suspect must be an extremely upsetting, though no doubt common, experience in your shabby little life. Is that clear, sunshine?”
I decide the word yes is my best recourse. “Yes.”
“Right then, empty your pockets. Give me your wallet, your keys, the lot.”
I reach into my overcoat pockets, fumble around, pull out the only items in there, and place them on the desk in front of the officer. He looks at them for more seconds than is strictly necessary and then looks up at me. “You cannot be fucking serious.”
I nod and realize immediately that nodding is a mistake. He snaps to attention.
“What’s that? Are you tired, my son? Are you nodding off? Are you falling asleep? I ask you a question and you fucking doze off. Is that it?”
I stammer a defense and an apology and an answer to the original question. “Sorry, sorry. Yes, I’m serious, that’s all I’ve got in my pockets.”
His chair scrapes, loud in the concrete room. He stands up.
“Do you have a nervous condition, a medical fucking malady that causes your head to bob up and down like a fucking bird? Do you?”
“No, no, no.”
“Then why is your head bobbing up and down like a nancy boy in a cubicle in Piccafuckingdilly Circus? Eh?”
“I’m sorry. That’s all I have in my pockets. Look.” I pull out the pocket linings.
“Because if you like bobbing your head up and down in cubicles, I can arrange it so that you are handcuffed and locked in the most rancid cubicle in the British Isles. Would you like that, Sonny Jim?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t. It’s just that I was trying—” But he cuts me off again and comes around his desk to stand over me, hands behind his back, verbals on full blast.
“No, no, indeed. I concur. You would not like it and shall I tell you why you would not like it?” I wonder if this is rhetoric as well and so I just stare in terrified fashion at the wall. The question turns out not to be in the least bit rhetorical. He bellows, “I’ll repeat myself, cloth ears. Shall I tell you why you would not like it?”
“Yeah. Yes, please.” Yeah, officer, please tell me why I would not like being handcuffed in a police station toilet at five o’clock in the morning while smacked out on acid.
“I will tell you why. Because that is the cubicle assigned to two fucking Arabs we’ve got locked up here and they won’t shit or piss in them. Why will they not shit or piss in them?”
I am beyond any answer. I try, “I don’t know. Why won’t they?”
“Because, according to them, their bum ’oles and willies would face Mecca if they did. So what do they do? What alternative do our Bedouin guests come up with, Sonny Jim?”
“I don’t know? Hold it in?”
“Hold it in? Hold it fucking in? I’ll tell you what they do, my curious friend. They turn around in that tiny cubicle and they do their filthy business anywhere but the toilet. Can you fucking believe that?”
Actually, I can’t. And no, I do not want to be handcuffed in that cubicle for nodding my head. I make this known. The officer finally goes back and sits down at his desk. I am a bag of nerves, shivering and shaking. He reclicks his ballpoint pen. “So, I am led to believe that you only have on your person these two items. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“I will describe the items out loud so that there can be no future dispute as to the descriptions thereof. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Right, then. First item: one coin of the realm, a two-pence piece. Correct?” He looks at me over glasses perched on the end of his nose. I concede to my current and foreseeable penury.
“Yes.”
He examines the second item, reading the tiny words. In a voice dripping with disdain, he continues. “Second item: one tube lipstick, Cherry Blaze–Outdoor Girl. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“You disgust me.”
“Yes,” is all I can think of.
The constabulary, in their zeal to maintain law and order for the citizenry of Hertfordshire, try to get Lou to turn, suggesting that I am the evil influence in our duo of criminality. To his credit he does not grass, does not even utter a discouraging word. Curiously, I am not offered a similar route out of our current troubles. They must truly think I am the criminal mastermind.
After our grilling we are charged with breaking and entering, and also with “permanently depriving” our slumlord of something or other. We are told that we will have our day in court. Then we are escorted to our cells by wisecracking coppers clearly enjoying this break from their regular Sunday-morning hose-down-the-drunks, mop-up-the-puke routine.
Though my brain is in the grip of acid, beer, and police-induced terror, the ridiculous thought occurs to me that I might actually have some rights, and with all the courage I can muster, which ain’t much, I ask to make a phone call. Surprisingly, this works, and I am led into a room with a phone where the two officers step back while I dial the number. Carole answers and I ask to speak to Brillo. He is having a Sunday-morning lie-in after a long, hard week at the factory and is naturally thrilled to hear from me. I explain the situation, getting increasingly hysterical and babbling details incoherently, until one
of the coppers steps up and, with the press of a thick forefinger, disconnects the phone.
In my cell I think about the past few hours. Somebody grassed, that’s for sure. We got out of the chippy clean. The bobbies were there within a couple of hours. Ah, well. I wonder if the LSD, coursing through vein and brain, will let me get up to the roof of this building, jump off, and fly away.
Two hours later we are informed that Brillo is in the cop shop and has bailed us out. After I retrieve my two pence and lipstick, he takes us to Bradshaw Road, where Carole kindly forgets past grievances and feeds us a delicious Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding.
* * *
Chris Andrews calls Stein and me into the office for a meeting. Stein reports a hint of excitement and a splash of pride in Chris’s voice on the phone. Dare we dare to think positively? By the time we reach the office we are bubbling with optimism and have to get a grip on ourselves before we go in. We fight to maintain our cool as we go up the stairs.
Off to the side of the room we can see a small round table on which stands a dark green bottle of bubbly, cork unpopped, on ice, with a snowy-white cloth draped just so over the neck. The Norwegian and I sit on the couch. Sidekick Colin reclines in a leather chair, smoking a cigar. Chris leans back at his desk, hands clasped behind his head. His hair is an immaculate conception: part helmet, part Tony Blackburn wig, all natural.
He has a look wrapped around his mug like the cat that just ordered a canary sandwich. He says he’s got good news. We’re all ears.
Chris Andrews, “Yesterday Man” incarnate, tells us that on hearing our demo tape Polydor Records have offered us a deal: two singles and an LP, option for more, first single to be recorded immediately, album to follow. Cash advance of £2,000 in an envelope on Chris’s desk as we speak.
Sick On You Page 11