Stein and I look at Chris. Then we look at each other. Then we look down at the mad swirls in the Persian rug on the floor. Silence reigns. A clock tick-tocks. Somewhere either a tap drips or a dog drools into a saucepan. The ice in the bucket holding the champagne shifts with a soft, wet crunch. The pause is pregnant. The delivery Caesarian.
Stein and I, by mutual unspoken consent, turn down the offer. Audible clops as jaws hit floor. Colin chokes on the stogie, splutters and coughs and coughs some more. Sentences follow, all high-pitched and beginning with the word “But.”
“But I’ve got you a record deal.”
“Yeah . . .”
“But it’s with one of the biggest labels in the world.”
“Um hmmn.”
“But that’s what you wanted, right?”
I stare at the ceiling. I’ve never noticed the ceiling before. The plaster is cracked—in three places. One crack must be twelve feet long, and I’m not a cartographer but it looks remarkably like the Amazon. Chris should do something about his ceiling. Instead, he spends time letting us know how aghast he is at our negative reaction to his German coup.
“You contacted me. You wanted a record deal. We recorded a demo. Two weeks later you’ve got a record deal. What could possibly be the problem?”
I yank my gaze from the ceiling. “Well, it’s just . . .” I trail off, hoping for help from Stein, or God, or somebody.
“It’s just what? Please tell me.”
“It’s just a little, well, on the chintzy side, isn’t it? I mean, two grand?” I hold my palms out and shrug as though a fabulously wealthy potentate such as myself couldn’t possibly entertain an offer as measly as this.
Chris splutters, there’s no other word for it.
“But . . . but . . . but Polydor are committing. Committing to this record, committing to a serious marketing campaign. And we can record a single next week, or forget next week, three days from now. Say, ‘Nightmare,’ get some action on it, and then reshape the deal to anything we want. Renegotiate from strength.”
I consider this “committing” business. “Yeah . . . but the fact is, we hate the demo. And if Polydor are expecting more along the same tame lines then they’ll ultimately pull the plug anyway. Catch my drift?”
I stare back up at the Amazon, the longest ceiling crack in the world. Chris Andrews is drop-jawed and shaking his head in a parody of incomprehension. Finally, he croaks, “So go in the studio next week and cut what you want, and meanwhile take the £2,000 in that envelope right there. Colin, show them . . .”
Colin reaches across the desk, opens the envelope, half withdraws the notes, licks his thumb, and, with said damp opposable digit, fans the wad of bills in what I’m sure is meant to be an irresistible flutter of enticement.
Chris continues. “That is yours right now, to walk out of here and do with what you will. Call it a bonus, a perk—call it whatever you want.”
I look at Stein, who says, finally, “Two grand? That’s it?”
Chris opens and closes his mouth like a recently beached carp then says, “Didn’t you tell me you live in a slum?”
We just don’t like the offer. We think it’s too cheap. We don’t like the music, either. We want to rerecord. And who is on Polydor, anyway? Nobody we know. The ensuing discussion goes nowhere fast and soon after we are heading down the stairs.
The bubbly stays in the bucket. The envelope stuffed with the two grand stays on the desk.
There is no £30 pressed into our palms this time.
That night we play the Pied Bull in Islington. Not for the faint of heart. They don’t like us; we don’t like them. My ensemble includes a boa for the first time. It is not well received. Menace and threats all night long. We daren’t go to the bar for a drink. They’d kill us. As it is, we barely get out of there with our teeth intact.
All this for a couple of quid each and a chance to shove a red piano up three flights of stairs.
Slade, it turns out, were on Polydor, and they turned out to be rubbish. After the promise of “Get Down and Get With It,” the bovver boots and braces, the ersatz aggro, they’ve gone all safe and comedic. Now it’s cheery pop with bad spelling, worse boots, mirrored capes, and bucktoothed smiles all around. A complete joke.
When Chris Andrews finally decides to speak to us again he says he will take our tape to the top record companies in London. When we finally decide to talk to him again we say great, get cracking.
On day one of his quest he calls Stein with the news that we have to change our name. There is already a band gamboling around town with the name of Queen. Not only that, but they have a record deal and are, in fact, in the studio recording their first album. Another band called Queen? I find this frankly astounding. It is a daft name, after all. And these guys aren’t even using the definite article? They are simply “Queen”?
Well, this is no heartache for me. The name has long since lost whatever allure it once held. The joke just wore too thin. Perhaps not officially, but in my head, Lou’s as well, we are the Brats. We just need to stick on a locale. I’m on the case. I’ll figure it out.
A week later, with us on tenterhooks the entire time, Chris Andrews has presented our tape to everyone who is anyone in the London music biz. In the publishing and recording scenes he strides forth, bringing all his gold-plated connections to bear. His bum cheeks sunk into soft sofas, he meets with the movers and the shakers in plush offices and on the top floors of ornate buildings. These are the men with the power to make the decisions, flourish the fountain pens, and write the fat checks.
Every record company and every publishing company listen with their famous slavering greed to the forefront, their waxed ears cocked and eager to hear what gem their old chum has brought in. They listen, their smiles disappear within seconds, they shake their heads, they turn him down flat. Old colleagues question his sanity. He uses up favors owed. Secretaries who love him and think he’s cute lower their eyes in embarrassment. In the hallways, tea ladies snicker as he slinks by. His reputation takes a bashing. Nothing compared to ours, of course.
But hey, what about that Polydor offer from ten days ago? Oh yeah, Polydor tell us to buzz off and never darken their porticos again.
Yet another postmortem meeting at Stein’s place. The stench of failure hangs in the air—or maybe it’s Lou’s socks. There’s no denying it, though: everybody thinks we are rubbish. Record companies, publishers . . . every one of them, apparently. This is one sour night in London Street.
I’m in a dark, murderous mood, while Stein is thoughtful, working on the next move. Roger is disengaged, almost in a sulk. He was once the driving force but he has definitely moved away from the steering wheel. Lou and Eunan are larking about like a couple of chimps. The overriding question: What do we do now?
Stein and I find a quiet moment and put our heads together. We have both noticed that the gleam of excitement and interest has perceptibly dimmed in the eyes of Chris Andrews. He is certainly not doing a Brian Epstein and persevering against the cold indifference of an antiquated industry. He is not making a stand, making a point, dragging his saber across the sand. And he’s certainly not doing what the best manager of all time, the great Andrew Loog Oldham, would do, which is something outrageous and unpredictable.
What’s it been, anyway? A month? A month since Chris heard the tape we recorded at Alvin’s hippy asylum? A tape, by the way, that I mightily prefer to the sanitized tripe we recorded at Gooseberry. But a mere month in, and the guy is in defeatist mode? Where’s the commitment?
Where are the swinging balls?
We’re fed up with the name the Queen but keep it a further month or two, purely because Chris Andrews says that it is annoying the four idiots who just recently signed a jealousy-inducing deal with EMI.
One night, Stein and I are leaning on the bar at the Marquee, drowning sorrows, drinking doubles,
and sneering at the band onstage, when up walks a guy with hair like black straw and teeth like a particularly alluring camel. He fronts up. He starts yapping a mile a minute, waving his arms, exhorting us to relinquish the name Queen. Says his name is Freddie. “What, like Freddie and the Dreamers?” I ask. “You don’t look like Freddie at all. Where are your specs? Do the Freddie and prove it.”
Freddie drones on and sticks a finger in my chest once too often, which is once. Since I don’t want Stein throwing a punch (we need those fingers for keyboards) my knuckles are designated to meet this twit’s lethally protuberant gnashers at high velocity and full clench. Kapow!
He goes down like a sack of spuds, rolling around on the Marquee floor, dripping the red stuff and squealing like a stuck pig. Meanwhile, I’m holding my hand and trying not to say, “Yeeeowch!”
Oily Jack is not impressed.
We don’t care. Keep the name Queen. You can have it. We’ve got our name teed up, and it’s the Hollywood Brats. Hollywood. It came to me, the word we’ve been looking for to accompany Brats, as I was walking home from Watford singing “Celluloid Heroes” by the Kinks. When it got to the part “You can see all the stars as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard,” that was it. The Hollywood Brats. It’s got a dash of louche decadence to it. The rest of the lads approve.
IV
Is a cup of tea too much to ask for? Of course it is. Our remaining two tea bags were used and used again last evening. Then, after they lay tossed and discarded in the sink for six hours, Lou fished them out, eviscerated them, spread the damp leaves on a tin plate, and toasted them in the stove. Then he rolled them up in cigarette paper and smoked them.
He’s a serious smoker, our Lou. He collects butts discarded on the street and on the floor of the Tube, brings the stash home, and painstakingly, on an LP cover, dissects them and creates his own blend. These are dispiriting times.
Sipping a cup of Tizer, I remember that I have arranged to call Stein at 2 p.m., and it’s ten to. All clothes are rummaged through until 2p is located in Lou’s jeans. I lean over him, pull the curtain aside, and peek out the window.
Rubble-strewn backyard, worn pitted brick walls, broken glass glistening in the gray drizzle. The fence, the crates of Tizer, a stained mattress only marginally grottier than the ones we sleep on, springs sprung, sprouted matting. A grim, freezing prospect, this walk up to the phone box.
I wrap myself up as warmly as possible and open the door with all necessary force to alert any loitering pestilence. No rat. I clump down the hall and stairs. Still no rat. Small mercies.
Out the door and through the debris-blighted yard, kicking a tin can in a beautiful arc. Small victories. I am so hungry. We must get something to eat today. Yesterday, all we had was a packet of stuffing. In the throes of cabin fever Lou had climbed on the sink to peek above the cupboard and there, among the filth, dust, and spiderwebs, he found a packet of instant stuffing. When opened it looked like sawdust with green specks and also bore a worrying resemblance to rodent poison. Hunger overrode the trepidation. We poured it in a pan, added water, boiled it, stirred it up, and ate the lot. It was like eating insulation, but nourishing, I suppose, in a Third World kind of way.
Sleet stings the eyes and infiltrates the scarf, chilling the throat, and, being the singer, I’ve got to be careful. We’ve always got colds, always sniffling and sneezing.
The phone box, red and cheery, not vandalized and mostly urine free. Quick prayer that Stein is there and pop in the coin.
Two rings, the pips, and then mercifully Mr. Groven. “Listen, we’ve been invited to dinner tonight,” he says.
“Wow. Fantastic. By whom?” What am I saying? Who cares?
“Some guy who wants to manage us. Saw us at the Pied Bull.”
“Jesus. We almost got lynched at the Pied Bull.”
“Yeah, well, still.”
“What’s he like?”
“Dunno.”
“Well, it would be great to eat.”
“Yeah, and he might be good. But what do we do about Chris?”
Then the time runs out and we just barely manage to arrange to meet at London Street at seven o’clock.
Back at 73 Aldenham Road, through the backyard, glance up, curtain drawn so Lou’s awake. Can’t wait to tell him about dinner. Through the back door and out of the awful weather. I’m just about to go up the stairs when I see the thing halfway up, not a trace of hurry or scurry. It’s huge, makes the skin crawl. Rattus norvegicus, I looked it up: Norwegian rat. Why Norwegian?
It glances back over its shoulder at me, and for one dreadful instant I think it’s going to leap down the stairs and rip my throat out. But it just sneers, thumps up the rest of the stairs, and saunters off.
An eternity later I summon the nerve to go up as well, and what a fey spectacle I make of myself. Where did it go? My head’s on a swivel, eyes wild, trying to locate the bastard. It would need a hole the size of a Volkswagen. I sprint down the hall and burst into our room, scaring the daylights out of Lou, who is wrapped in a blanket, smoking a tea bag.
I yell, “The rat’s out there and we’re going to dinner tonight.”
* * *
Traveling from Bushey to Paddington on British Rail without a ticket is no mean feat. Leaping from moving trains, dashing from platform to platform, and ducking into toilets is not for the faint of heart. Slithering out of one railway car and into another at the approach of officialdom can be nerve-wracking. Hurdling barriers and darting about furtively is a dodgy enterprise at the best of times, but try doing it in a cocktail dress, platform soles, and full makeup while sporting the odd swastika. See how far you get.
Paddington station is notoriously tough, too. It’s the Checkpoint Charlie of the London Underground. Stasi in pairs at the gate, palms filling up with travelers’ tickets, eyes trained to spot the dodgers and reprobates. The prospect of the hundred-yard scarper always looms. But not a ticket taker do we spy. This can sometimes happen but it is a rare occurrence, and irritatingly enough it generally happens on those even rarer occasions when we have actually purchased a ticket.
But on this charmed night Lou and I amble through, sans tickets and unmolested, the picture of nonchalance. Down London Street and a kick on Stein’s door.
Roger is perched on the edge of the bed, nightclub clothes ever so neatly pressed. He catches my eye and does a slight sneer and an eye-roll warning. What has he sussed? Eunan is stretched out on the floor, up on one elbow, dressed in tatty black satin.
In Stein’s armchair sits the managerial candidate. First impressions are everything and this chump adds up to not much. He is a portly rumpled-stiltskin in brown corduroy trousers and a saggy, musty jacket, tweedy as a Hebridean hedge. A broad cheerful face, ruddy as a butcher’s, sporting three blood-clotted tissue bits congealed to the more effusive of his shaving nicks. Twin millipede eyebrows undulate over pale blue eyes that appear to have the chameleon-like ability to operate independently of one another. He seems to be looking at Roger over there and me over here at the same time. This is more than disconcerting. This is Slats Silverstein.
Stein handles the introductions. Slats raises himself with some effort and one grunt from the armchair and sticks a pallid, damp, freckled thing with assorted protruding sausage fingers out at me. Intuitively, I deduce that he wants me to shake it and politeness dictates that I must. It is like grasping a drowned ferret.
“Andrew, Andrew. Hello, Andrew. Pleased, I’m sure. Heard a lot about you. Loved the show, the gig—loved it.”
“Slats?”
“Yeah. Window blinds. My office. Roscoe called me ‘Slats’ and it stuck.” He withdraws the pallid, damp, freckled thing with assorted protruding sausage fingers, curls it into a tunnel shape, coughs into it, then offers it to Lou, a man with apparently no qualms about germy palms.
“And this must be . . . ?”
“Hi, I’m
Lou, drums.”
“Pleased. Pleased, I’m sure.”
Nothing much happens for the next few seconds so I grab the reins.
“Well, let’s blow this joint. I’m starving. Where are we going?”
Slats spreads his arms wide and says, “Yes, yes, we could go out. It’s just that, well, I thought since we’re all, well, here, ensconced like, cozy, I thought I’d take the liberty of . . .”
He gestures like a game-show floozie, two-handed, palms up, at the coffee table and the large paper bag sitting on top. Lou, not a shy lad, steps over and opens it up.
“Hamburgers,” says Lou.
“Not just hamburgers,” says Slats. “Wimpy burgers.” He says it like they’ve just been rushed here from the Savoy Grill.
Wimpy burgers are to hamburgers what Lulu is to Brigitte Bardot, edible but not exactly mouthwatering. This is nothing like going out to dinner. This is a bag of burgers. Not even any chips in sight. I look at the lads. There is a lot of shoulder-shrugging and shoe-gazing. I scan the room for a like reaction but my incredulity meets only Roger’s limitless supply of pragmatism. He sighs.
“Yeah, well, I’m bloody starving. Let’s just eat.”
Slats holds out another bag. “I’ve brought beers, lads.” His saving grace.
We get stuck in, eating like a pack of wolves. We don’t talk. The only sounds we make are guttural, primal noises, probably identical to those made around peat-and-dung fires in caves a few thousand years ago.
Then we lean back and get to work on the tubes of lager. Slats Silverstein clears his throat, sucks wetly at an unlucky piece of gristle stuck somewhere in his mouth, and shrugs off the tweed jacket. Draping it over the back of the armchair, he announces, “Before we get down to, quote, biz, unquote, I think I’ll just go and point wee Percy at the porcelain. Heh, heh.”
As soon as he’s out the door Eunan, ever the artless dodger, reaches over and methodically goes through all the pockets of the tweed, coming up with nothing but a damp crumpled tissue and a few balls of lower-working-class lint.
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