Over the Moon

by David Essex

  It was a beautiful old building complete with its own olive trees and I hired a local builder to add a top floor and a swimming pool. The view from the house was magnificent, taking in both Gibraltar and the North African coast, and we had some blissful family holidays there during the years after our marital split.

  The location was so remote that I could walk unrecognised and unmolested, unlike in England or France, and I wasn’t the only person heading out there for some seclusion. There were English, Dutch, German and Italian people living on our side of the hill, and most of them had a story to tell.

  My nearest neighbour was a charming and charismatic Italian named Giovanni, or Gio, who said he had flown fighter planes for the Israelis in the Six-Day War, been an intelligence officer unearthing Nazi war criminals, and spent time raising hell in Paris with Jacques Brel. He had also flown a plane under a bridge in Malaga, to the huge annoyance of the local authorities, but now spent his time drinking and feeding the vicious guard dogs that patrolled his high-walled property.

  Gio and I occasionally spent days with the nomadic goat herders who roamed the hills above Marbella. Gio, a brilliant cook, would rustle up breakfast over an open fire and then act as an interpreter as the shepherds told me how they would wander an area a hundred miles wide to graze their herds, spending the night in any semi-derelict buildings they might stumble across. Hearing their rustic stories under the blazing Spanish sun was a fantastic experience, and I loved it.

  Giovanni, sadly, was to meet a sticky end. After one drinking session with the herders, he fell and broke his leg badly. After the local hospital inserted metal pins to hold it together, he never bothered to return and have them removed, and they rusted and fatally infected his bloodstream. It was a fittingly cavalier way for him to go.

  Mostly, though, time at the finca was all about Verity and Dan. They loved the swimming pool, although its existence was a matter of some controversy for the Spanish locals on the other side of the hill, who complained that it was an extravagance in an area of little rainfall where water was precious.

  Conceding their point, I got water for the pool delivered in a tanker from town rather than draining the local well, but the locals repaid this considerateness by stealing my water under cover of darkness. They also controlled the electricity for our side of the hill, which meant that we were sometimes plunged unexpectedly into darkness.

  Nevertheless, these holidays were wonderful and exactly what we needed to ensure that Verity, Dan and I remained inter-woven into the fabric of each other’s lives and didn’t drift apart. Danny and I had some great boys’ adventures there as he grew older, especially the hours that I bounced across the mountains on a Honda 250cc off-road motorbike, with Dan an excited passenger on the pillion in front of me.

  One day I lost control of the bike on a mountain track and, about to plummet down the side of a hill, threw Danny off before the bike and I vanished over the edge. Recovering my wits as I lay prone beneath the bike and a pile of ash, I looked up to see Dan, twenty feet above me, indignantly shouting, ‘What did you do that for?’

  Back in Britain, Hot Love had been a bit of a flop, and while the national tour to promote it later in 1980 had been fun, it had also been fairly gruelling. At the end of it, I was invited to be the first commoner to turn on the Christmas lights in Regent Street, which was a surprise and an honour. I even designed them, in collaboration with jewellery company Butler & Wilson. The following year Regent Street reverted to type and Princess Diana did it.

  After a tumultuous time in both my career and my private life, I felt as if I needed to get away. Yusuf Islam had offered me the opportunity to spend some time in his apartment in Rio and I decided to take him up on the offer and to extend it into a wider trip across South America. Packing a bag, I took off on a solo excursion across Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil like an aging gap-year student.

  Travelling alone is not for everyone but I loved it. Maybe it goes back once again to being an only child. Freed from the tiresome obligation to make conversation with a companion, you can be like a spy in a movie, observe everything at close hand and soak up the exoticism and foreignness of your surroundings. Maybe it is selfish, to a degree, but it is hugely satisfying. Sometimes, I think it’s the only way to travel.

  I flew first to Argentina, where I had been advised to keep a low profile, as Evita had not exactly been a huge hit with the ruling Junta. There again, they had a lot to answer for. As a member of Amnesty International, I was aware that the Argentine military regime was suspected of eliminating thousands of its citizens: the so-called Disappeared Ones.

  Nevertheless, when I landed in Buenos Aires the city seemed surprisingly European, even down to having a Harrods. As I settled in and began to meet the locals, I found them warm and welcoming. On the other hand, I suppose a couple of years later after the Falklands War it might have been a different story.

  It wasn’t hard to find confirmation of the kind of stories I had heard through Amnesty. In a bar I met a young man, who told me in whispers how his younger sister had been kidnapped and held to ransom. She was kept tied up and blindfolded in a cave for three weeks until her wealthy father paid the ransom: he knew that the military regime was to blame.

  He later introduced me to his sister, who was clearly traumatised and had been mentally scarred by her horrendous experience. It was heartbreaking to see, and when I returned to Britain I made sure to recount her tale, and those of other people that I met, to Amnesty.

  After the European feel of Buenos Aires, the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo was far more of an exciting culture shock and definitively Latin American. It was not unlike Cuba, particularly in the proliferation of pristine 1950s American gas-guzzler cars that are lovingly preserved by their owners and sail like galleons through the dusty streets of the city.

  It was in Montevideo that an extraordinary adventure began which, had it turned out differently, could have defined my life, ended my career and led to me languishing in a second-world jail for more years than I would care to contemplate. It began early one morning as I strolled by the Atlantic, musing that it was time for me to up sticks and head down to Yusuf’s place in time to catch the world-famous Rio Carnival.

  I nodded hello to two men who were leaning on a rather beaten-up Ford Mustang and they returned my greeting and then spoke to me in Spanish. When I indicated that I didn’t speak the language they asked me in broken English where I was from, and were delighted to hear England: ‘Ah! Manchester United!’ (What a shame they didn’t say West Ham.) Continuing our pidgin-English conversation, they asked where I was heading and I told them I was bound for Rio. ‘So are we!’ they told me. ‘Would you like a lift?’

  You only live once and this was exactly the sort of spontaneous adventure I had headed off to South America on my Jack Jones to enjoy. Of course I would! I headed back to my guest-house to pick up my bags and reconvened with my newfound friends by the beach an hour later.

  We pointed the Mustang towards Brazil and I got to know my companions better. Jesus was a handsome, long-haired man in his thirties with twinkling brown eyes, and proudly told me that he was from Chile. Mario was a slightly chubby Costa Rican in a worn blue suit whose English apparently extended no further than ‘Bobby Charlton’ and ‘Let’s boogie!’

  Montevideo to Rio is a seriously long journey but it passed in a haze largely because Jesus and Mario seemed to have a limitless stash of industrial-strength marijuana. I have never been a big dope-head and never even smoked my first joint until I was thirty, but taking occasional puffs on the endless spliffs that Jesus and Mario passed between each other, I was soon happily out of my box.

  The three of us shared petrol costs and the driving, and travelled long into the night. When we became exhausted, we would stop at some seriously basic roadside motels. This was a truly cheapskate trip: we all shared not just a room but a bed, which meant that I could lie awake all night listening to Mario talking in his sleep in Spanish.

 
One morning shortly after we hit Brazil, my need for speed got the better of me again and we were pulled over by a traffic cop. Jesus and Mario leapt from their cannabis-induced stupors and reached the policeman even before he had got off his bike. After their long, earnest conversation had ended in handshakes all round and the policeman riding off, they returned to the Mustang looking mightily relieved.

  ‘I must drive,’ reported Jesus. ‘He has let us go, but you must never drive again in Brazil! I told him you are English and so you are used to driving on the wrong side of the road.’

  I thanked them for their sterling efforts, but as they lit up yet another monster pure-marijuana spliff, I couldn’t help feeling a tad surprised by the alacrity with which they had intercepted the traffic cop. ‘Jesus,’ I asked, ‘where is Mario getting all of the grass from?’

  With a conspiratorial grin, Jesus pulled away one of the panels of the car to reveal a hidden compartment groaning with weed. So I was in the middle of an international drug run with two men for whom the Rio Carnival was the biggest payday of the year. As Mario skinned up another joint and proclaimed ‘Let’s boogie!’, I wondered just how that one would have played in the Sun or the Daily Express.

  My bandit friends dropped me off on a street corner in Rio and vanished and I was immediately struck by the vibrancy of the city. Carnival was a week away and heady excitement was in the air. I hailed a taxi to Yusuf’s apartment and enjoyed my first good night’s sleep since I had left Uruguay.

  The next morning I left Yusuf’s hillside home, which was spartan but lovely with beautiful views from its balcony, and set out to explore this new, magical and enchanting metropolis. Rio was certainly a city of extremes. Multi-million-pound luxury flats and apartments nestled alongside the Copacabana beach; a few hundred yards away, families languished in tin shacks in filthy shanty towns.

  The Brazilians, though, were friendly and passionate. Rio was a city that seemed to live for music, whether in the samba bands that occupied every street corner or the rhythmic ease that made even people walking look as if they were dancing. I fell in love with Rio, a city that confirmed my view that South America is a very special corner of the world.

  It is, though, a small world, as I learned when I had a couple of coincidental encounters during my first week there. One day in the street I bumped into Jim Capaldi, the drummer of the band Traffic and singer of the chart hit ‘Love Hurts’. Jim was living in Rio, where he had married a Brazilian girl. He had a daughter who spoke only Portuguese, and was learning the language so that he would be able to talk with her.

  Jim and I arranged to go for a drink and the evening featured a very bizarre scene. We met in a hotel and took a lift that promptly broke down between the eleventh and twelfth floors. With some people in the crowded lift beginning to panic, two English rockers wrenched the doors open and pulled its grateful inhabitants to safety like action heroes.

  I also visited the iconic statue of Christ that towers over Rio and bumped into Phil Lynott, the singer of Thin Lizzy whom I had met when he had also featured in Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. Phil was in Brazil on his honeymoon so I took care not to become a gooseberry, but we became firm friends until his sorry death a few years later.

  While I was staying in Yusuf’s flat, a few of his friends called on me and elaborated on the merits of Islam. I listened carefully as they gently attempted to convert me, and leafed through the copy of the Koran they gave me, but ultimately I figured I lack the fervour and belief to fully embrace any organised religion.

  As I walked around Rio I had realised just how central Carnival was to the city. Even the poorest families prepared their costumes and sent their children to the samba schools all year round, and as the momentous event dawned the mood in the city hit fever pitch.

  There was something diabolic about the fervid change in the atmosphere as Carnival devoured Rio. Thousands and thousands of garishly garbed men, women and children sambaed through the streets to inescapable, hypnotic rhythms in an explosion of life, power and passion. I had heard that every year people died at the height of Carnival frenzy, and now I could believe it.

  As an outsider it seemed clear to me that Carnival, this uniquely cathartic and crazy celebration, served as a pressure valve and exorcised the feelings of societal exclusion and inequality that could otherwise cause the people to rise up against their leaders. Whether this was a good thing was a different question entirely, but it was certainly a brilliant, unforgettable experience. I felt as if I had landed in Hades.

  Experiencing the riotous music of Brazil at Carnival had made me want to broaden my own musical palette and I returned to London eager for new ideas. My long-time bassist and friend Herbie Flowers introduced me to American producer Al Kooper and we began work on the record that was to become Be-Bop the Future.

  Al and I began the album in London and finished it off in Los Angeles, working with ace US musicians such as the guitarists Steve Lukather and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter. The critics were quite taken by this change in musical direction, but unfortunately the record-buying public appeared not to share their enthusiasm.

  My trip to LA, however, was to indirectly yield the inspiration for my next theatrical project. Derek had flown out to join me for the end of the Be-Bop the Future recording sessions, and on our way back we stopped off in my all-time favourite city, New York.

  Derek and I went to see an off-Broadway production of Childe Byron by an American writer named Romulus Linney. Both of us were hugely impressed by it: Derek with his voluminous and insatiable knowledge of drama, and me just because I thought it was an incredibly powerful and visceral piece of theatre.

  The play recounts the tale of the life and death of Lord Byron, England’s famously licentious mad, bad and dangerous to know libertine poet. It opens with his daughter Ada, whom he had never known, at death’s door. Sedated with laudanum, she hallucinates her father into being and demands that his ghostly presence confesses his errant ways.

  Having begun as a two-hander between Byron and Ada, Childe Byron then allows a larger cast to act out the various excesses and indiscretions of Byron’s scarcely believable life as the poet and his daughter watch and react. It seemed to me so special that I immediately knew I wanted to stage it in London.

  The American producers were happy for me to do this, and the Young Vic theatre and director Frank Dunlop came on board very quickly. I had not initially resolved to play Byron myself but as I threw myself into researching the life of the wild George Gordon Byron, the drinking, drugging Romantic poet who exiled himself to Greece to fight the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, the role simply became irresistible.

  Frank Dunlop and I cast the talented actress Sarah Kestelman as Ada and before rehearsals began we decided to take a trip to the house where Byron had spent his formative years. Byron had had an equally debauched antecedent in his Uncle Jack, widely known as Mad Jack, who was the squire of an estate named Newstead Abbey near Nottingham.

  Mad Jack had clearly fallen foul of the same strain of extraordinary psychosis that was later to possess Byron. His party pieces at Newstead Abbey had included ordering his servants to take to the lake in the grounds in rowing boats to reenact historical battles, and then firing cannons at them. This was when he was not lying naked while locusts crawled all over his body.

  Clearly a man of trenchant beliefs, Mad Jack had also shot dead his best friend in a duel after an argument about the optimum formula for making dog food. It is perhaps no surprise that accounts held little interest for him: he died a destitute recluse, leaving his equally erratic nephew to inherit the title Lord Byron and the bankrupt Newstead Abbey.

  This fantastic back-story had Frank, Sarah and I champing at the bit to experience Newstead Abbey for ourselves, so after a three-hour drive from London we were hugely disappointed to arrive to find the impressive mansion closed. We were desperate to examine the house and hunt for its ghosts, the Headless Monk and the White Lady, and I was determined our trip
should not be in vain.

  Frank gave me a leg-up and I began to shin up a drainpipe (well, it is certainly what Byron would have done) when my progress was rudely interrupted. The abbey’s caretaker, a gentleman named Sam Pierce, had materialised and was not impressed to find a random hooligan attempting to break into his property.

  Frank, Sarah and I managed to placate Mr Pierce and once I had explained our mission, he kindly let us inside the house. We were enchanted by its stately, evocative interior, and I still am: even today, if I find myself in Nottingham, I will always pay it a visit. I tend not to go in via the drainpipe nowadays, mind.

  Childe Byron ran at the Old Vic for a month from 15 July 1981 and was very well received by critics and public alike. There was talk of transferring to the West End, but I was in two minds about extending what was a very dialogue-heavy and demanding role, so in the end it never happened.

  One night in particular will live in my memory for ever. After we had met in LA years earlier I had kept in occasional touch with Richard Burton, and we spoke on the phone a month before the play opened. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked me, and when I replied that I was set to play the poet Byron, he said, ‘Get off! Where’s that?’ A short while later, he rang back and announced that he would like to come and see it.

  The night that he attended I was very conscious that I was being watched by possibly the greatest actor Britain had ever produced and I could only hope it wasn’t inhibiting my performance too badly. The curtain call seemed particularly enthusiastic, and I gazed out into the auditorium to see Richard Burton leading the standing ovation. I am surprised Derek didn’t explode with joy.

  Richard then came backstage to see me and lavished me with further compliments, even adopting a broad Cockney accent to tell me, ‘I didn’t know you could speak posh, you clever sod.’ How do you react to something like that? In truth, it was quite a relief: a big part of me had expected him to pat me on the head consolingly and say, ‘Never mind, son, better luck next time. I’m a proper actor. Just carry on with the singing, OK?’