Over the Moon

by David Essex

  16

  THE WORLD IS MY LOBSTER

  FINDING MYSELF A single man in the early eighties, it was more tempting than ever to gather up a band and hit the road. The work ethic nurtured by my East End roots and the experience of clocking on and off at Plessey’s all those years ago mean that I have always played very long British tours – lining up fifty dates where most bands will do fifteen. Yet as the eighties dawned, I decided to take things a little more international.

  My 1982 album Stage-Struck saw me return to chart action after the damp squib of Hot Love and spawned a Top Twenty single in ‘Me and My Girl (Nightclubbing)’. Elton John’s manager John Reid liked the album and, with Derek and Mel’s blessing, took over my management temporarily to see if he could foster more interest in the country I had always neglected: America.

  It was a short-lived liaison but John was a larger-than-life figure who left me with some very funny memories. One night I was over at his house when West Ham were playing Elton’s football team, Watford. John grandly announced that he would bet his Bentley Mulsanne against my Range Rover that Watford would win. Gambling is not one of my vices, so I declined the bet. At which point – wouldn’t you just know it? – West Ham won.

  Derek and Mel were firmly back in the management saddle when Mel called to tell me he had booked me five nights in the Thai capital of Bangkok. Mel had been meeting in London with a decidedly shifty Asian tour promoter, who promised to pay half of our fee before we flew out and the other half after the last show.

  This deal seemed reasonable, but appeared less so as our flights neared and we had still seen no money. Mel was perturbed but the band and I were keen to go, and phone reassurances from our Far Eastern friend were enough to persuade us to take a chance and head out to Bangkok.

  Thailand was as much of a shock as South America had been, but in different ways. Bangkok was hot, bustling and engagingly exotic, and seemed to house the busiest and most preoccupied people in the world. There again, Jesus and Mario would have been impressed with the quality – and quantity – of their Thai sticks.

  Herbie Flowers and I may possibly have indulged a little too enthusiastically in those lethal weapons the night that we spent what felt like hours whizzing up and down in a hotel lift, too stoned to get out and laughing uncontrollably at every puzzled fellow passenger who entered. The trip acquired an even more surreal edge when a box of dozens of pairs of awful synthetic underpants was delivered to my hotel door with no explanation. It later became clear from a TV advert that their manufacturers were my ‘tour sponsor’.

  Neither the pants barons nor the tour promoter had come up with any money by the day of the first show but I decided to play it anyway as it was sold out and I didn’t want to let people down. The venue was a large cinema in the centre of Bangkok, the gig was a blast, and it moved me to see people who didn’t speak English mouthing every word of my lyrics.

  The second night also went well, but as the halfway point of our supposed five-night run came with no sign of payment, it looked to Mel and me as if we had been had. I had decided to honour all the shows and attempt to resolve the money problems later, but we arrived at the cinema to find hundreds of very disappointed-looking people milling around. Something was clearly amiss.

  By the venue entrance, a cardboard sign in two languages stated:

  DAVID ESSEX SHOW CANCELLED – ELECTRICAL PROBLEM

  We went inside and discovered that this ‘problem’ didn’t seem to have stopped the management showing a film, which was being avidly watched by two people. It transpired the Australian gig-sound company, who were less tolerant than us of not being paid, had removed all their gear. The band and I, guitars in hand, collapsed in fits of giggles.

  Matters were rather more professional when we undertook a mini-tour of the United Arab Emirates. The facilities there were breathtaking and my main memory is of learning to ice-skate on a rink in the middle of the desert.

  Australia has always been one of my favourite countries for live tours but I’ve had one or two run-ins with the local wildlife. Playing golf in Perth one morning, I was poised to tee off when a stray emu emerged from a bunker and attacked me, leading me to fend it off with a five-iron. Another time, as we drove a hire car across the outback, a kangaroo launched itself at our vehicle. Skippy was fine; we spent the night in a very broken car.

  I also enjoyed a few early eighties on-the-road misadventures rather nearer to home. One British tour kicked off in Ireland, so we decided to rent a house near Limerick for pre-tour rehearsals. The mansion that we chose was massive, remote and extremely eccentrically furnished.

  One night off, our driver Michael procured us six bottles of the local firewater, poteen, a white spirit made from potatoes. It tasted like I imagine Domestos would but was clearly powerful stuff and we were swigging freely as we adjourned to the games room that featured a snooker table with a few balls missing, a dartboard with five plastic darts and a three-stringed harp.

  As the poteen kicked in, the evening degenerated into one of those surrealistic image montages that Roald Dahl would reject as overly fanciful. I vividly recall two band members eschewing cues to play snooker with their willies; my sax player, Alan Wakeman, waltzing up and down a small set of stairs to Bing Crosby Christmas songs; and, in the corner, somebody with a lampshade on his head. No one took the slightest notice of anyone else. Everybody was off in his own warped little world.

  For my part, I spent the evening making comically ineffectual attempts to hit the dartboard with the plastic darts and trying to apologise for our antics to the Irish housekeeper, Mary, who was stoicism personified: ‘Ah, the boys have to relax!’ When Michael the driver appeared from the village with two local girls, they took one look at the Bacchanalian scenes unfolding around them and walked out. I can’t say I blamed them.

  Back in England, another interesting avenue opened up when the BBC asked me to host a talent show. I was initially reticent to take this on, but was persuaded that it would be a valuable outlet for struggling new performers: after all, if it had been around in my day, I might have been spared Prince Zelim in Guildford and Dandini in Manchester.

  The David Essex Showcase was filmed in Harrogate and was a gentle, supportive affair a long way from the sneering tone often adopted by shows like The X Factor today. We weren’t too bad as talent scouts, either: Richard Digance, Mari Wilson, Thomas Dolby, Talk Talk and the Belle Stars all scored a break with us.

  My own music career was in decent shape and I enjoyed getting together with Mike Batt again for 1983’s album The Whisper. The record didn’t pull up any trees sales-wise but it did spawn one of my biggest hits. Mike and Tim Rice had written some lyrics for me for a song that used the metaphor of the seasons to examine a declining relationship.

  Mike had just finished scoring the Watership Down movie and working with Art Garfunkel on ‘Bright Eyes’, so when we went into Air Studios to record ‘A Winter’s Tale’ he initially asked me to sing it as Art might. I didn’t fancy doing that and I didn’t need to, as ‘A Winter’s Tale’ just missed out on being a Christmas number one and even now, thirty years on, still seems to pop up on the radio every festive season. I guess I know how Noddy Holder feels.

  My working life seemed to be ticking over nicely at this point but every man needs a hobby and in the early eighties I acquired a very exciting – and, in truth, rather expensive – one. Together with my old friend Kenney Jones, I learned to fly a helicopter: specifically, a Bell 47, the old-school chopper you used to see on the opening credits to Korean War-themed US TV comedy show M*A*S*H.

  We became pilots under the tutelage of an ex-Army man named Captain Ken Stephens, who noted that we had both picked up the physical co-ordination aspect of flying quicker than most of his trainees, probably because we were both drummers. Even so, this didn’t prevent me from hearing ‘You bounced it!’ – Ken’s trademark description of a bumpy landing – rather more often than I would have liked.

  My first solo fl
ight was extremely harrowing, as was my first solo cross-country trip from Goodwood Airport when I almost had an airborne near-miss with three military jet fighters. After we qualified, Kenney and I bought an old ex-Army Bell 47 and shared its upkeep and flying hours between us.

  This airborne crate was to give me untold happy hours. I took Dan up in it from a very early age and he adored it, as any boy would. In truth, I suspect his favourite trip was the one when a technical fault led to us making an emergency landing in a cornfield in Kent to the horror of the farmer, who thought the SAS were paying him a visit.

  After I had moved back from Essex into London, I had given my mum and dad the house at Havering-Atte-Bower (it had seemed only fair, as they were having to endure occasional coach parties of my fans turning up to gawp at the outside of their Chadwell Heath gaff). I used to chopper down there to visit them and land in the back garden, until Mum banned me from doing it as the rotor blades were blowing the tops off her rhododendrons.

  I will always cherish the day I persuaded my mum into the Bell 47 and took her on a sunset flight over the fields of Kent where we had picked hops all those centuries ago. She absolutely loved it, as did my dad when we took a low-level flight over his old stamping ground of the east London docks.

  As I sat by my dear old dad, it was lovely to reflect that our father-son bond felt exactly the same as when we had bumped across the same streets on his pushbike together thirty years earlier. I guess we had just moved to a rather more rarefied altitude.

  17

  IT’S UP TO YOU, NEW YORK

  MY FATHER WAS about to take an even more momentous trip with me than a nostalgic helicopter swoop over Canning Town. As the eighties hit their stride and we moved towards the middle of the decade, I became increasingly aware that I wanted to spend more time in New York.

  Partly this was to give myself a bolthole. I had now been famous in one form or another for more than a decade, and while I had long become used to being public property and appreciated the love and affection that people in the street normally showed me, there were moments that I longed to be anonymous again. Also, the tabloids had been showing a rather tiresome interest in my private life since Maureen and I had split. But this was only half of the story.

  New York had always drawn me like a magnet. Ever since I had first set eyes on the city, it had electrified me. Manhattan felt like the centre of the world, a teeming, multicultural, artistic and creative melting pot where anything and everything was possible. My infatuation had not dimmed with repeat visits and I decided it was time to buy a place there.

  My dad had always longed to visit New York so I asked him to join me on my mission. My mum would probably have liked to come as well, but she was happy to see her two boys going off on an adventure together as we flew off to America.

  Anybody’s first visit to New York is amazing and so it was wonderful for me to see the city anew through my dad’s eyes. He took to it like a duck to water. His TB-damaged lungs didn’t stop us from sampling diner breakfasts on Broadway, wandering through Little Italy and Chinatown and heading up to the top of the Empire State Building.

  Ever practical, my dad wasn’t convinced that it made sense for me to buy a place there. I still had the finca in Spain, he pointed out – how often would I even get to NY, anyway? But I was determined, so we visited the neighbourhood estate agents, or realtors, as they prefer to call them.

  We visited a loft apartment at 620 Broadway, near to Green-wich Village. It was in a rundown part of Manhattan where old textile warehouses were being converted into studio complexes: some of them could only be sold to artists. It was a scruffy area trying – with considerable success – to become fashionable.

  Entering the sales office, we were greeted by a small, nervous Jewish guy who rammed a wig on top of his bald bonce as soon as he saw us, triggering memories of my old mini-cab boss from all those years ago. The archetypal neurotic salesman, Sidney had all the spiel and patter as he strove to convince us of the glories of the complex.

  The Woody Allen-like Sid took us to a first-floor apartment that must have been 3,000 sq ft and had enormous windows that overlooked Broadway. He gabbled on about partition walls and adding balconies but all I could think as I surveyed the flat was, ‘Wow! What a place!’

  Sidney was hellbent on making his sale – ‘If David Essex buys here, it will attract other buyers!’ he claimed, unconvincingly – but he had no need to burst a blood vessel. I was in. We made a deal: Sid would organise a team of Mexican builders to split the space into two apartments, and I would use one half as my NY pad and rent the other half out to help cover expenses.

  Now I was a proud Manhattan property-owner, I began spending two to three months per year in New York and had a fantastic time. I loved walking unrecognised through its insatiable streets and avenues; taking in the theatres, art galleries and gig venues. Like many people, I always feel most alive in New York.

  I also had some interesting encounters there. Hearing I was in town, Andy Warhol invited me over to his house for lunch. Not being an acolyte of the Factory or the Velvet Underground, he didn’t mean that much to me but I was interested to meet this iconic figure. I found an awkward, inscrutable man who hardly said a word. I’m not much of a talker either, so our lunch was a bit of a non-event.

  It meant more to me to tick off one of my heroes when I went to see Little Richard play a Manhattan gig. I was so excited I even broke one of my cardinal rules and went backstage to meet him afterwards. Very gay and very camp, Richard was charmingly flamboyant and praised ‘Rock On’ to the skies. Another early idol of mine, Bo Diddley, was also there. Bo gravely informed me, ‘I’ll tell you one thing – you keep your money!’ and walked off.

  Yet my most significant New York encounter by far came early in 1984. At a loose end one evening, I glanced through the local Village Voice arts newspaper to see if there was anything going on. A gig caught my eye: a band with the lurid name of Rash of Stabbings were playing at CBGB’s around the corner from me.

  A rock ’n’ roll fleapit on a squalid avenue called The Bowery, CBGB’s had become internationally famous a few years earlier as the crucible of New York’s punk scene, with Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads all regularly playing gigs there. Rash of Stabbings sounded as if they would be just as punky as any of them, or more so. I decided to take a butcher’s.

  It might have surprised the Clash with their misplaced sneers about my white Rolls-Royce but I’ve always been into all sorts of music, punk included, and when I got down to the charmingly grotty CBGB’s, it was hard not to be excited by Rash of Stabbings’ primal, thrilling racket. One member of the group, though, stood out a mile.

  Their diminutive, pretty lead singer, with one side of her hair shaved and the other side tumbling over her eyes, was attacking their material like a woman possessed. She had to strain to reach the microphone and her guitar looked a size too big for her, but her stage presence was so explosive that it was impossible to take your eyes off her.

  I thought Rash of Stabbings had something special and was so taken with them that I went back to meet them after their set to see if I could maybe produce a record by them. It turned out they were from Providence, Rhode Island and their lead singer, Carlotta Christy, was the main writer and driving force of the band.

  We swapped details and arranged to meet again and Carlotta and the band’s manager came back up to New York a few days later to discuss the possibility of me adding them to my producing CV. That never materialised but I found Carlotta’s energy and intensity as captivating in person as I had watching her on stage.

  Carlotta was one of the most quirkily artistic and creative people I had ever met, whether in music, art, drawing or simply the way that she approached everyday life. She was from an Italian-American background but not at all loud or extrovert. There were hippy and wacky elements to her character, but most of all she was a strong, fascinating, unique individual.

  She was still living in Rh
ode Island, where Rash of Stabbings had a cult following on the local post-punk hardcore scene, and over the next few weeks we got closer and closer. It began with meetings in New York and daily phone calls, and when I went back to the UK for a while, the phone conversations continued.

  After three months or so we were an item and I went down to Rhode Island to meet her family. They were typical larger-than-life Italian-Americans, with everyone talking at once and the volume wrenched up to eleven, and my ears would be ringing after a visit. The loudest of all was her Uncle Frank, who would roll up in his classic 1958 Cadillac.

  I seemed to be living at 35,000 feet, flying back and forth to the UK to see Verity and Dan and for various work projects, and I started to find I missed Carlotta more and more while we were apart. I was also having severe problems with my Manhattan apartment, as my plan to rent out half of the floor space had turned out to be a bit of a nightmare.

  This was not actually Sidney’s fault but rather a consequence of the colourful characters I had inadvertently chosen to rent it out to. My first tenant was an Italian dress designer who seemed perfectly pleasant when I vetted him and handed over the keys before heading back to England for a while.

  I returned to a torrent of complaints from the building’s Residents’ Co-Operative. It transpired the designer had a rather fiery girlfriend who would show up and argue with him into the early hours; rows that frequently ended with the bruised, partly clothed girlfriend roaming the complex screaming insults into the night before sleeping in the lift. I had no choice but to give him his marching orders.

  His replacement was a seemingly amiable young guy called Sol who claimed to have invented the electronic garment tags that stores use to prevent shoplifting. We got on well, although the alarm bells sounded one time that Sol invited me into his flat. While I was there, the entry phone went off and three massive dudes walked in with a football-sized rock of cocaine: one of them was in stockings and high heels. I could turn a blind eye to that, but when the neighbours complained that Sol had imported a pet wolf to the building, he had to go.