The terror doesn’t let up, and down the hall we can hear Lou and Zlatan getting the same treatment. The dogs are positively throttling themselves in their attempt to get at me and rip my throat out. Brady starts blathering about attempting to pay rent but the lead ogre cuts him off.
“Shut the fuck up or I’ll let the canines tear your face off for dinner. We don’t want your fucking rent, we want you to fucking fuck off fucking quick. You got that, you fucking mick cunt? Fuck off back to fucking paddy land, you IRA shite, or I’ll have my dogs on your bollocks.”
I am standing on my bed, squeezed into the corner beside the window and a heartbeat away from jumping two floors down into the alley stark naked while not under the influence of LSD. One dog is up on my bed, snout drawn back from glistening rows of three-inch-long teeth snapping at the exact height of my crotch. Two other thugs step in and start smashing things at random. Thankfully, we haven’t got much so it’s over quickly.
Thug number one then yells something and the dogs immediately shut up and back off, gasping for breath, whining with disappointment and begging for another chance. He walks to the side of my bed, leans over me with beery breath, and snarls, “You got it, Nancy?”
Nancy replies, “Yes.” And then they’re gone. Thumping down the stairs and out past the front door hanging off its hinges, down the step and off into the night. It couldn’t have lasted more than five minutes.
Lou is as shaken up as we are, but Zlatan comes strolling down the hall, dirty feet poking out from underneath tie-dyed jelabba, composed, cucumber cool, rolling a joint with one hand. He sees our terrified faces.
“Be cool, be cool. I’ll get it sorted in the morning. I’ll have a word. All will be cool.”
“You’ll have a word? With who?”
“With the man. Who else? I’ll have a word with the man and all will be . . .” He pauses to lick his spliff.
“Cool?”
“Precisely.” What that means, we haven’t a clue. With a final “Be cool,” Zlatan wafts away back down the hall and into his room.
* * *
Next day, with a rock we hammer two screws through the bent hinge to get the front door working, then we hang around, terrified, for the rest of the day. Lou, sitting on the floor, fiddles with the wires dangling from the smashed radio. He twists a few together and turns the knob to “On.” The pile of junk sputters then, miraculously, comes to life. The Osmonds are singing “Crazy Horses.”
My cheapo acoustic guitar, permanently borrowed from Brillo, survived the attack because it was under the bed. It’s a pathetic old thing, but we’ve been through a lot together and I’ve written some good music with it, so I’m glad it’s okay.
Our busted-up room is shocking and depressing; it mirrors the rest of our existence. That night, to relieve the tension, we go out and get half-ripped. At the end of the evening we lug home more booze and complete the job. I pull my acoustic guitar from under the bed where it had been hidden, tuning pegs trembling with fear, during the recent assault. I look at it lovingly, strum a sad A minor, then smash it to bits on the fireplace.
We are all going slightly mad.
* * *
Days pass, and nothing violent or kneecap-threatening happens. Nights of fitful, nerve-wracked sleep pass without further dog attacks. Shakespeare says a coward dies a thousand deaths; we must be at least in the two hundreds by now. The old dear downstairs, shuffling blissfully around, doesn’t seem to have noticed a thing. Perhaps she’s deaf. That would be a blessing.
And it would account for her not complaining about the endless stream of bass players we audition. One of them is a lump from Sheffield. I hate Sheffield. He shows up in a brown corduroy jacket, carrying a Rickenbacker bass, the first one I’ve seen up close. He also has a seriously great name, Warwick Rose. On the downside, he is unforgivably portly and, final nail, has a wobbly thicket of curly hair bouncing around on his head. Standing on our recently de-ratted front doorstep, he looks around and marvels, “You must see a lot of stars in this neighborhood.”
Yeah, mate.
I’m sick. I have a permanent cold and a cough that just won’t quit. This is bad news for a singer. Lou and Brady convince me to go to a doctor. I find the nearest one, just down Mill Lane in a ratty little office. The doc is old and trodden down, stooped and surly. He looks enough like Josef Mengele to make me wonder, Is this where he’s hiding out? Or, if he’s British, what’s he doing in this armpit?
When he was young, popping and dispensing forbidden pills and nailing nurses by the dozen, did he think this is where he’d end up? Doubt it, but here he is, holding my tongue down with a popsicle stick and peering down my throat. He shakes his head, sighs, and plucks a bottle of light brown muck out of a cabinet. One teaspoon twice a day, starting now. It pours slowly, a thick sludge, and it tastes awful, like turpentine pudding. Says I’ve got bronchitis. This is bad news for a singer, worse news for a singer with a recording session coming up.
Days of rice, bass players, frustration, Crazy Eights, horrible-tasting medicine, and, our new pastime, competitive spitting. The window near my bed faces out onto the back wall, just below the loo window. Due to my condition I have to spit a lot, so spit I do, right out the window, with gusto and an ever-increasing level of aim and aplomb. When the lads need a quick gob they do too. The brick wall under the loo window begins to look, frankly, revolting. We christen it our Phlegm Wall.
We are aware that this is disgusting.
* * *
Thirtieth of June, in the year of your Lord 1973. Thirteen days to go before the Regent Sounds session and we haven’t got a bass player. Regent Sounds on Denmark Street is holy ground to us. Why? Easy. That’s where the Rolling Stones recorded their first album. “England’s Newest Hit Makers,” the album cover screamed. And we do feel like the natural spawn, the progeny, the bastard boys not mentioned in the will. We are truly excited about this but the bass-player situation is getting desperate. Don’t want to let Mr. O’Leary down. Don’t want to blow our first break, like we have all our other first breaks.
We browbeat Brady and finally pry some of that wig factory cash he’s been hoarding out of his strongbox, and the three of us go out to the Swiss Cottage pub. Brady’s noticeably tight with the pound notes and, come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve seen him buy a second round. Nonetheless, pints are downed, lies are told, laughs are laughed.
On this night I’m debuting a beautiful new pair of strides Sonja made for me, bless her heart. She’s great at this wardrobe business. The clothes she comes up with are better than anything you can find on the King’s Road or in Kensington Market or anywhere. And I am exactly her size, which is a blessing as I get her hand-me-downs. These particular trousers are a fab shade of green, tight where they need to be and loose where it counts least. I intend to wear them at our next gig.
A dark-haired girl sporting pink lipstick and a white dress takes a bit of a shine to me. She hears me yapping about the Kinks and tells me she used to go out with Dave Davies. You don’t say? You really got me. Brady’s talking to some girl who’s trying to be blonde and trying even harder to stand up.
More drinks are poured down throats, closing time approaches, and Brady, obviously traumatized by shelling out for a few rounds, takes his tottering tart and leaves, hoping to escape buying one for the road.
Soon enough, Lou and I and the young Kinkette leave the pub. It’s a picture-perfect night, it is: warm, stars probably shining somewhere up there, traffic roaring by as we make our way slowly along Finchley Road. The girl takes my arm and the three of us stroll along, chatting. Lou is the first one hit, a blow to the back of his head sending him to his knees.
The girl screams. Something lashes across my back. Out of the corner of my eye I see three of them jump on Lou, putting the boot in. I turn to face a dozen dodgy droogs straight out of A Clockwork Orange, white jumpsuits, bowlers, codpieces, an
d all. I am lashed again across my chest and instinctively grab whatever the weapon is. I then, just as instinctively, let it go. It is a modified bicycle chain with small spikes, and the palm of my right hand is smeared with black grease and blood.
I duck the swing of a cane aimed at my head, and three of them force me out into the traffic of Finchley Road. Cars swerving, screeching brakes, honking horns, the girl’s screaming, a van narrowly missing me, its mirror banging into my back.
The droog with the chain keeps swinging it back and forth, and I’m hit twice across the thighs, which tears my trousers to shreds and draws blood. Only because of the traffic do they back off. I see Lou on his hands and knees, trying to protect his head, getting a kicking from at least four of them.
Some cars have stopped, others are braking hard and squealing to a stop behind them, drivers cursing. With one final kick at Lou, the Woolworth droogs run away, laughing and whooping. Like a sleepwalker at Brands Hatch I come to my senses and realize I’m standing in the middle of racing traffic. I make my way unsteadily to the pavement, acting as a matador to the cars. The girl is crying and begging passersby for help. Lou is lying on his side, holding his face and moaning.
His face is kicked in, one eye almost closed and his mouth bleeding—maybe he’s lost a tooth. I slowly help him get to his feet. We stand there, holding on, checking each other out. The traffic quickly resumes its frantic Friday pace. Nobody stops to ask if we’re okay; nobody calls the police.
The girl does not live far from here. She wants us to come in so she can patch us up. She wants to call the police or an ambulance. We decline. We just want to get home. Bye, bye. We must do this again sometime. An hour later—after a staggering, fearful walk, leaning on each other, spitting blood—we are back at 11 Mill Lane. We wash our wounds at the kitchen sink. Of course, we have no bandages, medicine, antiseptic, or even an aspirin. We don’t even have Dettol. Which you have to dilute, by the way. One part Dettol, ten parts water. But we make do.
Seems Lou has lost a tooth, but not a crucial one. His eye is closed and he has bruises everywhere. He managed to successfully protect his man bits but his Achilles’ arse, of course, got a thorough kicking.
My back, legs, and palm are bloody and greasy, and I do my best to clean the wounds with dish detergent. I wash my back wound. The soap hurts like mad. Then we make a cup of tea. Not bad, really. No bones broken, no stitches required. Lou’s mouth hurts.
Shame about my trousers.
* * *
We’ve tried out twenty-three bass players. It’s July 10, three days before the session at Regent Sounds. Most of the time they hate us as much as we hate them. And that’s fine by me. It’s not the music; it’s personal.
Late afternoon of a bad day. Lou says he saw a fiver on the pavement but somebody nabbed it just before he could pounce. This is a tragedy. Two o’clock in the aft, Stein walks through the splintered door at Mill Lane and up the stairs with yet another four-string wonder.
Out of the case comes a white Fender Jazz. Not bad. We plug in, turn the dials up, and away we go. This time, though, everything is different. This guy is seriously good, immediately making the entire band sound better. He and Lou get locked in sync right from the first bar, giving us a rock-solid rhythm section perhaps for the first time ever. This is a different sound, a different world, and we like it.
This is the Hollywood Brats sound we’ve been starving for.
XII
Regent Sounds Studio on Denmark Street and, ladies and gentlemen, behold, a newly minted five-piece. Me, Stein, Lou, Brady, and now, Mick Groome. At high noon on July 13, 1973, we walk in like tourists on a pilgrimage, gaping around awestruck, imagining the great Brian Jones falling off a stool here, Charlie bored stiff there.
For about thirty seconds. In truth, there’s not a great deal of gaping around to do. It’s a medium-sized rectangular place with the control room at the far end. Despite this, the Stones were here and now we are here. That’s good enough for us.
Two engineer types help get us set up and, from the outset, it’s clear that they are not exactly giddy with excitement about the session and are even less impressed with our gear. Join the club, mate. Our gear is holding on by its fingernails at this point. Every amp we’ve got is working only because of solder, gaffer’s tape, and threat.
We’re doing two numbers, “Melinda Lee” and “Nightmare.” We are perfectly rehearsed and itching to go. Mick might have joined just seventy-two hours ago but it feels like he’s been in forever. And this is the Brats’ second studio experience, third if you count Hackney Wick’s patchouli boy and his harridan hippy harpy. So we feel ramped up and ready to rock ’n’ roll tape.
Tune up, get the sound, mic the drums, sort out the levels, one, two, three, four, and, riding a combo of lager and adrenaline, away we go. Two bars into the first take of “Melinda Lee,” the Laney blows up with a muffled but loud phut and a concussive bang. A three-foot-wide Nagasaki mushroom cloud forms above the amp, flames and sparks shooting out the back, scorching the fabric on the wall behind.
Engineer number one runs in and tries to smother the flames with a bunched-up News of the World that promptly catches fire and burns his hand. His reflex action is to shriek like a girl and throw the newspaper away. It lands at the bottom of floor-to-ceiling curtains that must be made of polyester or nylon or gunpowder, because they instantly burst into flames. Engineer number two rushes in, brandishing a big red fire extinguisher, and sprays white foam over everything, saving the day.
After various blood pressures descend and hearts go from expresso bongo to bass drum, we are encouraged to go to the pub while the place is mopped up, aired out, and returned to whatever normal was at Regent Sounds on Denmark Street before the Hollywood Brats walked in.
When we return from downing a couple of calming jars at the pub our popularity has not noticeably increased, and the engineers’ enthusiasm for the project seems, if anything, to have diminished a tad. Still, a replacement amp has been found and we are instructed to press on.
Four hours later the session is finished. On playback we hate every note. The sound is watered down, insipid, and tame. My vocals, turpentine-pudding Mengele medicine notwithstanding, are rubbish. No matter how we try to manipulate some action into the tracks, the engineers have found ways to smooth out our jagged edges and make it milquetoast. We are bereft. Those jagged edges are what make the Hollywood Brats.
Engineer number one says that they have orders to get the tapes to Laurie O’Leary right away. The way he says it leads us to believe that orders from Mr. O’Leary are to be obeyed right away. Schnell, schnell.
“Don’t worry,” says engineer number one. “Sounds great,” says engineer number one.
But engineer number one is the same guy that tried to put out a fire with the News of the World.
We troop out of Regent Studios downtrodden, snarling, seeking revenge, disappointed with the results as usual, and dragging our smoldering equipment behind. We have to figure out a way to record things the way we want them recorded. It’s just not rough enough, not exciting enough. We want that Slum Kitchen sound. We want control.
In the ensuing days in the doldrums tempus does not fugit. Tempus drags its arse. No calls from Mr. O’Leary’s office. We’ve blown it. We’re back to days and nights scared stiff of a return visit from the zombie dog-men. To add to the ignominy, at night the neighborhood rats congregate at 11 Mill Lane, climb up the chimney and through the fireplace into our room. As soon as the lights go out we can hear them scuttling up the bricks and flues. Makes it a bit hard to nod off when you hear vermin afoot. Someone, maybe Pepys, maybe not, once said that in London you are never more than six feet away from a rat. In 11 Mill Lane we’d love the luxury of a six-foot radius.
I take to boiling a pot of water at night and keeping it bedside. At the first sound of vermin I leap out of bed and pour it down into the broken brickwork of
the fireplace. Brady and I delight in their scalded squeals. It works for a while. Ten minutes at best. Long enough to let us get to sleep. There are more of them than there are pots of boiling water.
* * *
My tiny little insular world, replete with its in-granite preconceptions and tailor-made prejudices, steps on a landmine. The top of my skull is blown to the rafters. Here I be, sunk in my cinema seat, legs over the one in front of me, mid-afternoon, staring at the screen. Watching a musical.
With no bus in sight I came in on a whim, to get out of the rain. Now my eyeballs are on stalks, popping out of their sockets. I’m alternating between fever and chills. I keep having to remember to breathe. Every frame is sumptuous, delicious. Every note of music is perfect. The stage lighting on the musical numbers is simple and simply stunning: blues and reds and white spotlights.
What more could one possibly require? I don’t want it to end. I want to remember every detail to tell the boys. I want to steal everything. I can even stomach watching Liza Minnelli.
I end up watching this film four times in a row. I haven’t done that since A Hard Day’s Night when I was thirteen. What is happening here? Who is Christopher Isherwood? Who is Bob Fosse? I want the Hollywood Brats stage show to look exactly like this. I want to purloin every lighting idea. We’ve got to find someone to help us with this.
Next day, after much evangelical blabbedy-blah, I drag the lads along with me to watch it again. And again. They get it. The experience inspires us, eases our disappointment, drags our spirits out of the gutter.
And then, wouldn’t you know it, that very night we receive top-drawer news. Stein gets a call from Mr. O’Leary’s office saying we’re playing the Speakeasy, Saturday night, July 28. And not only that, but we can go to the Speak whenever we want before then, special invitation, drinks on the house. It is barely believable.
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