Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629)

by Hynde, Chrissie

  Eno’s loose-leaf tea was another story, requiring a tea strainer—a ton of factors that could go wrong. The only other time I’d felt cultural embarrassment that badly was the first time someone in Limeytown invited me to roll a joint. I was handed the kit: cigarette, box of matches, lump of hash, scissors, rolling papers and a piece of cardboard, but I might as well have been handed a Rubik’s Cube and told, “Ready? Begin!”

  I figured the scissors must be for cutting off bits of the hash, which I proceeded to do, only to be met with jolly amusement. I worked out that the cigarette was meant to be tipped out and rerolled with the hash. But what was the cardboard for? It would be a matter of time before I got hip to the method.

  The scissors, of course, were for cutting a ticket-sized bit of card to roll into a filter, the matches were for heating the hash up to then crumble and distribute evenly into the tobacco. Well, if you’re reading this you already know how to roll a joint, so you can imagine what a dunce I felt.

  Nick Kent pinched words from my vocabulary, of which there were about five, and started using them in his articles: turkey, wimp, twerp…okay, three.

  They wanted the dumbing down that only a purebred American could provide. I lucked out!

  Little teenagers out in the sticks like Julie Burchill lapped up my half-baked philosophical drivel and prepared their own versions of nonsensical tirades for the day when they too could make a “career” out of it. (I even sold the darling little Julie my typewriter for fifteen quid when my time was over, like passing on the baton of “how to fuck off the nation and get paid for it”; she insisted on giving me £17.)

  Good fortune smiled on me, but I knew I was a phony and, unlike some of my comrades, it bothered me. I learned that the things you find the most embarrassing about yourself are the very things the public will love you for.

  They kept giving me assignments so how could I refuse? They bought it. It was like getting paid to shoplift. Steal one and get one free on top of the one you already got free sort of thing. I couldn’t fathom what I was doing hanging out with guys like Tony Tyler, who was writing an encyclopedia on the complete works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I’d had trouble getting through The Hobbit.

  All I had were opinions, but my employers were intent on turning me into a star attraction of the rat pack of the British music press. Life was now an endless succession of album launches—early afternooners, with plates of smoked salmon (no, thanks!), sarnies, and lots of booze. The NME staff would hover over and hog the drinks table, get pissed, then stagger back up Long Acre to write an insulting profile of the artist whose launch it had been.

  Record companies were burning money, and there I was, tagging along and scarfing the free lunch with the rest of them. The difference was, of course, that the rest of them were serious writers. Ian MacDonald would one day be writing books on Shostakovich, for Chrissake!

  “Chrissie Hynd (who has a thing about black leather)” was a typical byline written by whoever was editing the paper that week. I did not have a thing about black leather; the NME staff did.

  I guess it was novel to have someone on board who didn’t know what the rest of them were talking about. Well, whatever. I was getting paid, and I was part of the team. But it was embarrassing if I got recognized when I went to gigs. Someone was going to call my bluff; it was just a matter of time. I was learning that people didn’t care if you were a total quack; if you were more famous than they were, they were impressed. But that didn’t feel okay to me, like someone posing with a guitar who can’t play it. It’s just wrong.

  I’d inadvertently started to make a name for myself, while the whole time I’d been wanting to back out. I’d forgotten about getting in a band. I didn’t want to be known for something that I knew I wasn’t good at.

  Then when the editor, Nick Logan, asked me to write a “looking back” piece on the Velvet Underground, I knew it was time to go. I didn’t want to look back. But I felt I was letting Logan down; he had been especially good to me, often giving me advances when I was behind in my rent.

  Still, I’d spent a year slagging off bands, saying everything was shit, and I was sorry. I wanted to love music again. Part of my constant slagging was a cover-up for my poor writing skills—arrogance over ability. (Hey—I really did have what it takes to be in a band!) It had even occurred to me once or twice that if someone was that critical, they should get out there and try it themselves.

  19

  CRAFT MUST HAVE CLOTHES BUT TRUTH LOVES TO GO NAKED

  So I wasn’t thinking about getting in a band anymore. I’d had designs on it when I first stepped off the boat, and often parked myself in a place on the King’s Road to pore over the “singers wanted” ads in the back pages of Melody Maker in the only place I could find that had coffee that wasn’t instant: an American burger joint. Rank. (The addict will go to any length.)

  Mythology would have it that I’d declared, “The next time you see my name, it will be in lights.” But that’s not how it was. I knew my time had run out. When I left Ohio my only ambition remaining had been to leave.

  I met a woman who lived on the King’s Road who I occasionally got pot from. Her cat had kittens and I had the notion to take one back to Clapham. I went to her place, above the Barclays Bank, to choose one when I was struck by a glorious sound: “What’s that?”

  “Oh, that’s my son’s band.”

  I went into the adjacent room where four fourteen-year-olds were in full flight. How wonderful, I thought, the crude sounds of raw beginnings. I listened appreciatively to their small repertoire.

  Gary Holton, local Keith Richards lookalike singer of the Heavy Metal Kids, lived nearby. “Heavy metal” wasn’t a term used to describe loud metal music yet. I think it was still associated with William Burroughs. (People were always lifting his descriptions for band names. Steely Dan, 10cc, Soft Machine?) Anyway, the young band was struggling to play some of Holton’s Heavy Metal Kids songs. I suggested they try some Velvet tunes if they were looking for something basic but tasty. They didn’t know who the Velvet Underground was, so I took a guitar and showed them “White Light/White Heat.” They watched and listened quizzically. Who was this friend of Mum’s who could play rock guitar and sing cool songs?

  It never occurred to me that I still had a shot of getting a band together myself. I was twenty-three, twenty-four now, way past it, but I thought that I could advise this spirited little group, so taken was I with their sound. But with zero business acumen and even less interest in learning about it, nothing came of the encounter except the reminder that I could play guitar and sing. I’d almost forgotten that. I left with a gray-striped kitten I called Mose.

  —

  Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood offered me a job as a shop assistant. Yeah! That’s more like it. Just being around them was going to be more creative than anything I could do at the NME. Nick and I used to go in their shop when it was called Let It Rock and schmooze around en route to Granny Takes a Trip, where all the real get-down boys bought their gear. (Keith got his blue velvet suit with the little flowers embroidered all over there, and naturally Nick had to go there too and buy the same suit.)

  “Craft Must Have Clothes but Truth Loves to Go Naked” was what it was now called, written above the door in spray paint. The little shop nestled discreetly in the curve where the King’s Road meets the World’s End. Malcolm and Vivienne were already the two people I most looked up to.

  It felt more progressive to be in the orbit of two genuine English eccentrics than churning out reviews. They saw things differently from everyone I’d ever met. They were “straight,” for a start. They didn’t take, and never had taken, drugs. They weren’t even pot smokers. That made them unique, in my book. They just drank whisky on the odd night out, and they’d never been hippies. It was more like hanging out with Emma Peel and John Steed, or even Laurel and Hardy, than the scruffy roadie types I was used to.

  They had fifties stuff on the jukebox in the shop and “Tell It Like
It Is” by Aaron Neville. I doubt they’d even heard of Buffalo Springfield, and surely had never bought a Led Zeppelin album. I was intrigued. And they looked great, especially Viv, with her spiky platinum-blonde hair, drainpipe trousers, winkle-picker shoes and fifties rocker shirts. Nobody else looked like her. Walking down the street with her, I knew what Colonel Tom Parker must have felt like walking next to Elvis.

  Malcolm, too, had his own look, totally original and subtle—but you noticed: curly ginger hair, pale and sensitive looking, with an inquisitive, almost pervy expression of wonder. You knew this guy didn’t play sports. It was all about the clothes; the clothes did the talking. If you saw Malcolm in any police lineup in the world, you would say, “Nope, I’d definitely remember him!”

  When the shop was called Let It Rock it catered to Teddy Boys, who wore quiffs (Elvis/James Dean–styled hair) and multiple earrings, and came in to buy drape jackets and brothel creepers—the stuff Rotten and Strummer would be wearing in a few years. I’d never seen anything like it in Akron or Cleveland.

  No sooner had the fifties signed out than that look, American in inspiration, was pushed aside and long hair took over in the States. But even the Beatles wore quiffs to begin with. Brian Epstein was spot-on getting them in mop-top bowl cuts, but you could tell Lennon was born to wear a quiff. He knew it too.

  The English kept a tribal thing going indefinitely. I’m sure I stuck out like a sore thumb, being, as I was, a victim of the American mall culture. But I was thrilled to be in on this fifties’ reworking into something with sexual innuendo, even though I didn’t really know what that meant.

  The shop was about to undergo another change. The word SEX, in pink latex letters, would soon appear curiously above the door. Soho comes to the World’s End: bondage gear; rubber masks. I think it was meant to be a political statement. I was never quite sure; you couldn’t tell with Malcolm.

  I didn’t think people really used those things—maybe politicians. All that kinky stuff and bondage was for the straight world. My impression was that the whole concept was a send-up and supposed to be ironic—an “up yours” to the establishment.

  Nobody I knew thought about fashion. Designer labels didn’t exist, not to people like us, anyway. Gucci? That was for someone’s sad auntie. But being around Malcolm and Viv, I started to understand the meaning of glamour; that how you present yourself to your fellow man is a way of communicating ideas.

  It was still the glory days when, unlike movie stars, what people in bands wore would never make it into the pages of a fashion magazine. They were two separate worlds. Fashion was for shop assistants, a bit of fun on the lower end, and less fun and more about status on the higher end.

  Being in a band meant you were exempt from fashion altogether, especially in the seventies which, up until Malcolm and Viv’s influence, was nothing short of hideous. The beginning of glam got away with it (the Faces), but by the time of ABBA or pretty much anything you’d see on Top of the Pops, it was quite disturbing: bad hair; satin trousers tucked into Frye boots; platform shoes; and sparkly glasses.

  In the gay community things were different. The designers had artistic expression, but it was still relatively underground or only for the rich. Yves St. Laurent was making those Mondrian print dresses and men’s suits for women—Le Smoking!—but no one on the street was wearing that stuff. We’d loved Mary Quant and Biba and Courrèges, but soon we were to embark on a DIY campaign that would only be considered “fashion” thirty years after the fact.

  —

  Malcolm and Vivienne were living in her council flat, in a thirties block on Nightingale Lane, not far from my place on Englewood Road, with their young son, Joe. I’d walk home with Malcolm after the shop closed, over Chelsea Bridge and across the Common, and we’d talk about music and how we saw things going. Who was to know that this strange bird, with his seditious take on clothes and culture, and his fierce but beautiful girlfriend were soon to set the whole fashion and music scene on its head with the Sex Pistols?

  The three of us went to see the New York Dolls at Biba’s Rainbow Room, and I could see the wheels turning in Malcolm’s head; you can always tell by the way someone watches a band. That was a pivotal night for all of us, each in our different ways. The Dolls were keeping the flame from going out, our favorite New York band.

  That evening was also memorable because Viv launched a bread roll at a waiter over something he’d said and ended up towering above the public on a table, making obscene gestures involving her rear end. Viv could be fearsome and you did not want to get on her bad side—or her backside.

  Other than the Dolls, there weren’t a lot of new, original bands out there. The mid-seventies sagged. There were some good blues-based pub bands on amphetamines, but you could feel things had to shift. Roots Reggae was the main creative force, but it wasn’t storming the charts. The scene was on hold. As always in a transitional period, you couldn’t put your finger on it.

  A teenage west London delinquent, Steve Jones, hung out around the shop. (I had no idea he had aspirations to play guitar; he had no idea I did, either.) Malcolm and Viv seemed to have taken him under their wing for some reason, to help keep him out of trouble. I guess it was better to let him hang out in the shop than for him to rob the shop. He used to put the grilles up for me at closing.

  —

  One evening after work, I was just about to light a cigarette at the bar in the Roebuck, the King’s Road local, when a feminine hand, long fingernails and silver rings, appeared seemingly out of nowhere, offering a lit match. I looked over to see an androgynous figure, darkly beautiful and possessed of something that would have sat nicely on a biker’s petrol tank next to a goblin crossing a sand dune.

  As any world traveler will tell you, the French are second to none when it comes to making things appear and disappear. And things were about to appear: this creature was to be my portal into Paris.

  It was Flipos who taught me how to walk in backwards through exits when everyone else was leaving (how I got into the Louvre the first time) and how to get into venues for free through skylights. (Don’t try it in a cinema. Miscalculating a descent and landing in the projectionist’s booth is just embarrassing.) Then after a week or two, like everything he touched, he disappeared.

  Malcolm and Viv had by now issued my walking papers, a direct result of the Nick Kent belt incident when he came into the shop, took off his cheap coin-studded belt and started swinging it around, trying to bash me in the face.

  He was cross with me for dumping him. Well, perhaps he shouldn’t have presented me with, first, scabies, then a virulent strain of something even worse, which had landed me in Hammersmith Hospital for three days.

  Malcolm ducked behind the counter just as a local guy who’d been sitting quietly in the corner stood up and knocked Kent out. Good punch! Kent was sprawled out on his back, tooth knocked out, unconscious long enough for me to step over him and run out of the shop. The next day, Viv said they didn’t need me anymore. I guess they didn’t want some wacko trashing the place because of me.

  So I was back in the mode of: “Now what?” In a bizarre twist of events, Star-eyed Stella had come to visit me and married Chris Webster, another tenant at Englewood Road and its resident sculptor. Now she too lived in the house with us, and she got a job in south London working as a schoolteacher. Debbie does Peckham! Now married, she at least was legal. I was on the run.

  Webster let me sleep on the desk in his studio as I was underfunded and couldn’t pay rent. It was cold, the desk hard, and I was permanently covered in a fine layer of white powder (plaster, not amphetamines). I was dossing.

  The payphone in the hall rang. I bounded to get it in a cloud of dust like the Lone Ranger. It was Flipos, inviting me to sing in a band he was putting together.

  “What makes you think I can sing?” I asked.

  “You look like you can.”

  I went immediately to three record companies, announcing myself, “Chrissie Hynd, NME.”
I walked out with as many albums “to review” as I could carry, took them straight to Cheapo Cheapo’s in Soho, sold the lot and was on the next hovercraft to the City of Love.

  20

  PARIS

  Flipos’ band had no name. In fact, Flipos’ band had no band. It was the fantasy of a mad urchin and homeless gypsy, a failed magician who could make things appear and disappear but couldn’t materialize musicians or guitars or songs. But it was a start. The bee trapped in my bonnet was now a roaring cicada demanding attention.

  The dark-eyed gitano, whose clanging silver talismans led a trail from up his sleeves, installed me in a tiny house near the Eiffel Tower, home to a Jewish heiress who kept fur throws, Moroccan pillows, Persian carpets and a sofa where I could crash. It was a typically Parisian one up, one down, connected by a spiral staircase, with a tiny kitchen and toilet at arm’s reach in a courtyard off Rue Lecourbe. (I was going to have to get used to staying in places whose names I couldn’t pronounce for the life of me.)

  Her name was Lilian; she had long blonde hair, wore silk scarves and served tea and oranges that came all the way from China. Her Jewishness made me feel like I was back in Debbie Smith’s mum’s house in Fairlawn, cozy, with a life-affirming full fridge. I came to realize that the Jewish Princess is a universal stereotype regardless of nationality (except in Israel).

  Then I met Sasha. Sasha was half-Dutch, half-Chinese and a little older than me, late twenties. I knew she had been a rock singer at some point, because Sabrina, her husband/wife, snuck me a picture showing her all done up like a rockabilly—quiff, short-sleeved checked shirt—and singing real intent down a mic in some basement club somewhere. Amsterdam, probably.

  We hid the picture of Sasha in a little drawer in the tiny Indian bureau near the brass tray. Sometimes I would sneak it out and Sabrina and I would laugh, unbeknownst to Sasha. It was one of the things that was understood between us, our only language in common. Sasha no longer looked like she did in the photo. Her blue-black hair fell down her back like a horse’s tail and she dressed like a monk now—but not for long.