The Run-Out Groove

by Andrew Cartmel

  The woman came back. “Erik will see you in the guitar room.”

  “Excellent,” said Nevada.

  The guitar room, as it transpired, was in the basement with views from its tall barred windows of the interior of the concrete moat and, just visible at the top, a glimpse of daylight. It was indeed a room full of guitars, hung on the walls and free-standing on custom-made mounts on the floor. I was no expert but I recognised some vintage Fender Stratocasters. Dotted among the guitars were armchairs, dining chairs, sofas and settees. There didn’t seem to be any focal point in the room. It reminded me of a showroom at a music shop. We found a couple of seats that allowed us to watch the doorway and settled down, or tried to settle down, while we awaited our host.

  He came thumping down the stairs, trotted through the door and looked at us and then away from us, around the room. It was as though we were a disappointment and he was hoping that someone else might have come to interview him. He was barefoot, in jeans worn to exquisite paleness and thinness, so that they almost looked like they were fashioned of some delicate white muslin. He was deeply tanned and in very good shape for his age. He obviously worked out. Thick muscular arms emerged from a sleeveless Hawaiian shirt—something I’d never seen before. He had a lion’s mane of grey hair and a small earring. His dark face was lined and serious-looking with a bulbous nose, which, if it had been a less healthy outdoors colour, would have unambiguously signalled a heavy drinker.

  Finally, having surveyed the room carefully, he turned to us. It came to me that perhaps he’d been counting the guitars, to make sure we hadn’t stolen one while we were waiting.

  “What a lovely room,” said Nevada when he finally focused on us. “What a magnificent collection of guitars.”

  “Yeah,” said Erik wearily. I could see his attention draining away already.

  So could Nevada. “I hope you’ve taken measures to protect them in the event the river floods,” she said.

  He looked at her with a glimmer of increased interest. “Yeah, that’s why we had the moat built.”

  Ah, the moat, I thought. That will do a lot of fucking good if five million tons of Thames Floodway fails. Maybe the doubt showed on my face because he added, “And anyway, Bong Cha is under strict instructions to move everything upstairs if there’s any threat from the river.”

  “Bong Cha?” chuckled Nevada.

  “Yeah, my housekeeper.”

  “Bong Cha.” She gave me a mischievous look. “Perhaps she’d be the perfect girlfriend for Tinkler.”

  I doubted it. Tinkler had long since been spoiled by magazines full of naked supermodels. “She certainly has the name for it,” I said.

  “It doesn’t mean what you think,” said Erik Make Loud. “Apparently it signifies ‘superior daughter’.”

  “Funny,” said Nevada, “I always thought that was me.” Her bright aphorism just hung in the air. Erik yawned. Nevada smiled bravely, but I could feel the whole interview slipping rapidly south. He turned away from us and wandered to the window, the better to stare out at a concrete wall. Apparently that was of more interest than us.

  With his back to us he said, “So Stinky sent you.”

  “That’s right,” said Nevada. “I’m senior development executive at Stanmer Multimedia.” Another spurious promotion, I noticed. Soon she’d be running the company. Whatever it was called.

  “And I’m producing the documentary,” I said, thinking that I might as well get in on the act.

  He swivelled his head to look at me. “The documentary?”

  “About Valerian,” said Nevada.

  “Okay,” said Erik mildly, “okay.” He looked back out the window.

  “About Valerian and your involvement with her. I mean, musical involvement,” said Nevada. “That is to say, your involvement with the band.”

  He turned away from the window and looked at us. “You want to know about my involvement with Valerian?”

  I could see that we’d hit an unfortunate note and Nevada could see it, too. “Well…” she said, hastily backpedalling.

  Erik Make Loud strode towards us, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “My involvement with her was that I had to use the toilet on the band bus after she did and breathe the stink of her shit. I breathed the stink of her shit for four years in that band. Four years in a career that has spanned fifty years.” He actually said ‘spanned’. “I’ve played with dozens of bands and hundreds of musicians. But all anybody wants to talk about is Valerian. It was all over a lifetime ago, but all anyone asks me about is Valerian.” We’d hit a sore spot all right. He gave us a baleful gaze. “Well, if you’re asking if I fucked her, I didn’t. I’m one of the exclusive few. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  He turned away from us, staring out the window again. Nevada looked at me and I shrugged. I had the uncomfortable feeling that our interview was at an end. This was confirmed when he cleared his throat and said, “Listen, I don’t have much time and I really don’t know if I want to talk to you.”

  “Sorry?” said Nevada.

  He kept his back to us but his shoulders rose and fell. “The thing is, I don’t need to talk to you.”

  I said, “But yesterday when I spoke to you on the phone—”

  He turned and looked at us. “That was yesterday.” He shook his head and started towards the door. Nevada and I exchanged a look. Things weren’t going according to plan. “We only want a few minutes of your time.”

  He wheeled and stared at us. “My time. That’s right. It’s my time. You’re talking to me, not to Valerian.”

  “We understand that,” said Nevada mildly.

  “Do you? Do you even know who I am?” I wondered if he was going to tear his shirt open and start beating his chest.

  “Of course we do.” Nevada could see it all slipping away but she wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  “Really?” He gave us a mirthless grin. “I don’t think so. You’re a couple of iPod kiddies. Music begins and ends for you with pirated MP3 files. You think rock music is wankers like Blur and Oasis and, and—” I could see him struggling for a more contemporary reference. “The Kaiser Chiefs,” he finally spat out. “Elbow. The flaming Flaming Lips.” He came and loomed over us. “You don’t know the first thing about real music. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “I know you played with Zappa,” said Nevada.

  That shut him up.

  He stared at her. “Zappa?” he said.

  “Of course,” said Nevada. “Everyone knows that.”

  He looked at us both blankly, then turned and wandered in an apparently random fashion among the guitars, coming to a stop by the wall. He reached out and slapped something on the wall and I realised there was a small intercom discreetly fixed there. “Yeah, listen,” he said into the intercom, “how about some drinks?” Without waiting for a response he turned and threaded his way back towards us, picking up a wooden chair as he went by. He set the chair down in front of us and sat on it.

  “So, Zappa, huh?” I was hoping to god he wouldn’t ask what album he’d played on. Nevada had no idea and neither did I; it was a shame Tinkler wasn’t here. I wondered if I could slip out and surreptitiously phone him. “Frank was already sick by the time I was playing with him,” said Erik, sounding regretful and nostalgic. “But we did some nice sessions. Some of them were kind of like soirees, you know, musical evenings. He’d sit there and listen while I played and a bunch of other guys played. One time I was there with some Tibetan nose flutists. He loved it. He loved it all. He was getting weak, but still he was in the studio every day. And he used a bunch of my stuff.”

  There was a tactful knock on the door, or at least the doorway, and Bong Cha came in with a tray. On it there were three glasses with ice in them, a glass bowl full of additional ice and a large jug of clear liquid with a wedge of lime in it. I suspected it wasn’t water. She came over to us and stood there holding the tray, giving Erik a pointed look. He belatedly hopped to his feet and went off to g
et a small table, which he set in front of us. Bong Cha put the tray on it, scowled and left.

  It was obvious who was in charge in this household.

  Erik poured drinks and handed them to us. I took a cautious sip. Blueberry vodka. The breakfast of champions. “Here’s mud in your eye,” he said, and drained his glass. “Come on,” he urged, “are you going to drink with me, or what?”

  Nevada and I exchanged a look. In for a penny… I tilted my glass and swallowed half its contents. It was cool and pleasantly fragrant and seemed quite innocuous. I set my glass down on the tray and Erik suspiciously checked the level in it, then reluctantly accepted that I’d been a good boy. He topped it up and handed it back to me. I took another sip.

  A warm fuzzy feeling was gradually developing behind my eyeballs. Erik refilled Nevada’s glass, and then his own, which he proceeded to drain almost immediately. He was knocking them back like a trooper. I wondered if I’d been right about his drinker’s nose after all. “So, what can I tell you?” he said.

  “Well,” I said, “anything you remember, especially from towards the end, about Valerian.”

  “Towards the end?”

  “When she died, and the little boy…”

  He waved his hand in the air. “I wasn’t around when any of that shit happened. None of the band was. We were all here in London recording, just around the corner in fact, at Olympic Studios.”

  “You were recording, but she wasn’t with you?” said Nevada.

  Erik snorted. “By this point in her career she thought she was Frank Sinatra or something. We laid down the instrumental tracks all ready for her. For her royal highness.” He snorted again. “And boy was she high. Practically all the time. That was part of the problem. It got so we didn’t know if she’d show up for a gig. And we’re talking about important gigs. Major venues. Not Eel Pie fucking Island anymore. Anyway… she just wanted to come into the studio and do the vocals in one take. So we were down here in London, sweating away, while she was swanning around in that country house she was renting.”

  “So you don’t have any idea what actually happened?”

  He shook himself like a wet dog. “I know exactly what happened. She jumped out of a tree with a noose around her neck.”

  “To her son, I mean,” I said. “You don’t have any idea what happened to the boy?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve always had my suspicions,” he said darkly.

  “Really?” said Nevada.

  “Oh yeah. Oh yes. I mean, look at the freak show she was hanging out with. There was that business manager of hers. He was banging her. And that toady of a publicist. And that newspaper man. And that useless fuck of a bodyguard of hers. I mean, where was he when he was needed? They were all banging her.” He poured himself another drink, splashing the vodka into the glass and dropping in ice cubes one at a time with savage precision. “And that fucking psychiatrist of hers. The shrink. And then there was…” He paused and looked at us. “Have you ever heard of John Blacklock?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah,” he said, nodding, warming to his subject. “You should really look into him. Yeah, Blacklock. I’ve always had my suspicions.”

  “Who was he?”

  Erik laughed. “Okay, you have to remember that this was the era when the Beatles were hanging out with the Maharishi. All the other bands were doing similar things. You weren’t anyone if you didn’t have a guru or yogi or spiritual advisor.” He spat the words out. “But Valerian being Valerian she couldn’t get some nice friendly smiling Asian gentleman. She had to go for John Blacklock, that snake.”

  “But who was he, exactly?”

  “A fucking Irish fucker. Ireland’s bog-trotting answer to Aleister Crowley.”

  “So he was some kind of black magician?” said Nevada.

  Erik nodded. “Self-styled shaman to the stars.” I remembered the constant rumours of Valerian’s involvements with the dark arts and felt a small stirring of disquiet. But then I reflected that ‘Butterfly Dreams’ was supposed to have been stuffed with satanic messages, and look how that had turned out.

  “So you think he might have taken the little boy?” said Nevada.

  “Sure.”

  “Why? I mean, do you think he—”

  Erik shook his head, shrugging off the grisly implications. “No. Not that I’d put it past the snake. But I always reckoned that he might have been the boy’s father.”

  Nevada and I looked at each other. “Really?” said Nevada.

  “Sure. He was banging Valerian. Everybody had a go at her except me, but he was in the saddle at the crucial time.” Erik Make Loud paused and belched decorously.

  I said, “Do you have any idea why Valerian might have done it?”

  “Done it?”

  “Killed herself. Was she under any particular strain, or was she depressed or—”

  “Valerian?”

  “Yes. Anything you can tell us about her on that weekend.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t there.”

  “Around about that time then. Was Valerian—”

  He snarled, “Valerian, Valerian, Valerian.” He chanted the name in a high-pitched, effeminate voice. “It’s all about Valerian.” I uneasily sensed a return of his earlier surliness with the additional unwelcome component of booze sloshing around his rock star brain.

  “Or her sister, Cecilia,” said Nevada hastily. “Is there anything you can tell us about her?”

  He calmed down immediately. “Cecilia Drummond,” he said reminiscently, as though tasting the name. “Now, she was a sweetie. And, if you ask me, the more talented of the two sisters. Cecilia never got the credit she deserved for what she contributed to the band, and the songs. I think a lot of the songs that had Valerian’s name on them were as much Cecilia’s work as hers. And she was a proper musician, Cecilia. A lot of the chords in those songs could only have come from her. Lovely little voice, too. Not strong, not a blues shouter like her sister. But very frail and pure. Just lovely.” He sighed and refilled his glass.

  “The trouble with Cecilia was that her instrument, the place where she could really shine, was the piano. And a lot of gigs she couldn’t play because there was no piano on the bandstand. She never played electric keyboards, didn’t even like using an upright; always preferred a grand or baby grand. A purist, I guess. So she became almost like an auxiliary member of the group.”

  “Like Ian Stewart in the Rolling Stones,” said Nevada.

  Erik stared at her in surprise. “Exactly like that!” He thumped his thigh with his fist and grinned. “Exactly.” His bulging eyes gleamed fondly. Nevada smiled modestly. Butter certainly wouldn’t have melted in her mouth. He got up and strode to the wall and slapped the intercom again.

  “We need something to go with the Absolut,” he said. “How about fixing some caviar? The real stuff, not the lumpfish roe. And use the proper sour cream, not the ordinary cream. If we haven’t got any, go out and get some. The little supermarket around the corner has it.”

  He came back and sat down with us, grinning. The caviar arrived, on another tray, with sufficient dispatch to suggest that a foray to the little supermarket around the corner hadn’t proved necessary. The housekeeper withdrew after giving us all a coldly disapproving look. Since Erik hadn’t been excluded from this, I didn’t feel too bad about it. And the caviar was very good, served with small blinis as well as the sour cream. Erik sampled the latter with suspicion.

  “I think she used ordinary cream with some lemon juice in it,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think I fucking care,” said Nevada. “You don’t mind if we stuff our faces?”

  “Not at all.” He turned to me. “How do you like it, sport?”

  I liked everything fine except being called sport. “Nice blinis,” I said.

  “Home-baked with buckwheat flour. Bong Cha does have her uses.”

  The caviar went stereotypically well with the vodka and we drank—
and ate—considerably more than was good for us. But this seemed to put our host in a jolly frame of mind. He lolled back in his chair and regarded us fondly. “Do you want to hear something really weird about Cecilia Drummond?”

  “Yes please,” said Nevada, polishing off a blini heaped with caviar, then taking a neat little sip of her vodka. “Absolutely.” She peered into her glass. “No pun intended.”

  “Okay. So after Valerian died and all that shit hit the fan we were left with a band without a singer.” He peered at us. I could see the impact of the drink in his eyes but he still sounded entirely lucid. “Worse than that, we were left with a band without a name.”

  “You could have continued calling yourself Valerian,” hazarded Nevada.

  “We could have, if we’d been the kind of ball-less wonders who are forming reunion bands even as we speak and touring the world to wring the last penny out of a dead horse.” This seemed a substantially mixed metaphor but I said nothing. “So anyway, the first thing we had to do was come up with a name. Mickey who was the drummer said, ‘Let’s go about this scientifically. Our old name was Valerian and now Valerian is gone. So what are we left with?’” He looked at us expectantly. “Nothing. That’s what we were left with. You take Valerian away from Valerian and there’s nothing left. A blank title. So Mickey said, why didn’t we call ourselves that. Blank Title. So we did.”

  He looked at us proudly. Indeed he had some reason to be proud, Blank Title having gone on to considerable chart success and even managing to break America.

  “Blank Title was a hell of a band,” said Erik happily. “And we all still get along. We’re all still mates. Every few years we reform. I wouldn’t be surprised if we reformed again. I bet you could sell a lot of tickets to a Blank Title world tour.” I wondered if this wouldn’t be wringing the last penny out of a dead horse, but I kept my mouth shut.

  Erik suddenly fell silent and looked at us blankly. “What was my point? I was going to make a point.”

  “You were going to tell us something really weird about Cecilia Drummond,” said Nevada. I was impressed by the way she’d kept her eye on the ball, despite all the vodka she’d put away.