Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629)

by Hynde, Chrissie

  But the weirdest part was watching everyone run out of their houses after the Virgin, sticking ten-dollar bills to the flypaper—or twenties, or even fifties.

  So, not only did the sacred icon have to bear the indignation of being tied down in the back of a truck, but she had to be plastered with “the dirty paper with the ugly faces” to boot. Sorry, call me a religious fanatic, but I think that’s the sort of thing that would have had Jesus driving them off the streets with a whip. But then, how can I know that for sure?

  Anyway, because Bobby was black, the band had to wait in the car at the bottom of the hill under the bridge while someone came to get me. That in itself was an affront, but to make it worse some moron had left a dead dog in a garbage bag under the bridge. You couldn’t go near there for weeks without gagging. Just revolting. It was an all-around shitty place to live. The local kids were little bastards and used to moon Annie and me whenever we went out, presumably because we were outsiders and didn’t look like Annette Funicello and no doubt their greaser parents had something to say about us. Then, one afternoon, I called their bluff when they started their tiresome jeering by “dropping trou” to my ankles. They wouldn’t forget that for a while—and they didn’t.

  It all went downhill for me and Annie after that. The little pricks took to riding their bikes back and forth relentlessly in front of our place, yelling, “BOX SHOT! BOX SHOT! BOX SHOT! BOX SHOT!” We were like prisoners in our own home.

  The whole neighborhood made it crystal clear that we weren’t welcome there. I tried to ignore or at least out-glare my inhospitable neighbors, but we were massively outgunned. They wanted us out, and I certainly didn’t want the fuckers to start shooting at me too.

  Jack Rabbit was falling apart. Stress’s singer, Bill Miller, was out of the hospital, Donnie Baker was going back to Florida, and every time I heard the sound of a Harley I’d dive behind garbage cans or bushes, as I didn’t want that lot knowing I was in town—I’d never get out again. Cleveland was all played out for me.

  The last straw was when I went for a job in the bar of the Hotel Garfield. I thought I was onto a good thing. It said in the paper that I’d get “$100 per week,” which sounded right to me. But the first thing they asked when I started was, “Do you know how to use one of these?” I thought they were going to show me a cocktail shaker or something, but instead the guy opened a drawer behind the bar and pulled out a gun: “You pull this back and then you…”

  Anybody there could have reached over the counter and got his hand in that drawer, so it didn’t inspire a feeling of safety in me. Would I really pull a gun on someone? Seemed unlikely.

  I got fired after a week anyway, probably for buying some weed off one of the customers. Well, I think that’s why—I’ll never know. Of all the places I’d worked as a “server,” that place was the one I was least likely to succeed in. It was a number-runners’ joint, with the regulars starting on bourbon at eight in the morning—a real Don King hangout. A great big fat white guy, a dangerous-looking fucker, hired and fired me. Only a total imbecile wouldn’t have got the picture—I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I’d been trying to look like a student, in a fisherman’s sweater, but I would have done better to show up wearing crotchless knickers and a tattoo on my ass that said “Pay as You Enter.”

  I should have seen the writing on the wall in the first week I spent back in Cleveland, when I’d strayed down the wrong way on Euclid on one of my meditation walks. What a dummkopf! I realized I’d wandered into a strictly nonwhite stronghold, so I went to a bus depot and asked around for some spare change, enough to get a bus out. One or two white business-suited types changing buses looked straight ahead and ignored me.

  Everyone else looked more fucked-up than me, so I didn’t ask them. I went back on the street and asked some old guy which way took me back to Mayfair. He said, “It’s that way…but if you go that way, you mos’ likely end up in the graveyard!”

  —

  Annie had a friend and they were going to get a car and drive to Tucson, Arizona. She’d spent some time there and had an ex-boyfriend who might put us up. It was 2,000 miles away. Would I like to share the driving? Hold me back!

  I’d made enough at the Cellar Door to pay for my mic, which I left with Duane. The drive was wonderful. Every mile away from Cleveland was a mile cherished. I’m sorry to speak so ill of Cleveland, but c’mon—the place was a fucking disaster zone. And, anyway, I’m from Akron.

  22

  IS IT GETTING HOT IN HERE OR AM I JUST GOING CRAZY?

  Tucson was hot, unforgiving and it hated me. I’d left the brutality of Cleveland for dust—literally. Annie’s ex-boyfriend let me ride along in the cab of his pickup truck as he went about his daily business so I could jump out at bars along the way and ask for work. Me, the cocktail waitress: a good way to ruin anyone’s night.

  My last such gig at the Last Moving Picture Show in Cleveland (I keep remembering all these loser jobs I’ve tried to forget) was proof that I didn’t have whatever it takes to solicit tips. The only tip I got then was some asshole telling me I should get a different job.

  My dreams of getting a band together now seemed laughable as I sat on a barstool in the dark, waiting for the manager of whatever tavern I was in to emerge from a back room while outside the desert sun zapped the living and inanimate without mercy.

  I’d gone from being the singer of a cool R&B band to someone resembling a hopeful who’d arrived for the filming of Charley Varrick and been turned away: “I’m sorry, Miss Hynde, we already have our quota of hookers for the Beverly Whorehouse scene.” I’d fucked up. I’d panicked—too impulsive again.

  First thing each morning, I’d go to the yard behind the ex-boyfriend’s prefab, where I would sit and meditate in the dirt. It was far too hot for a lawn to grow or anything remotely green, but I had to get out of the house, away from the rattling, dripping air conditioner which blasted fake cold air to mask the insult of stale tobacco, incense, pot and the fuming cat tray—the signature of my generation. To make matters worse, the only thing they played in the bars where I applied for jobs was country music. I wanted to kill myself.

  One night, Annie’s ex was driving to New Mexico for a wedding or something, and said I could come and hang out if I didn’t mind riding in the back of the pickup truck. I stretched out on some old dog blankets, looking up at the stars in their billions, twinkling and spinning overhead as we bounced at speed along the dirt highway. I’d never seen stars like it. Of course, the desert is magic. But it wasn’t my magic.

  I felt like a real little prize, one that drops out of a machine after you’ve sunk the contents of both pockets into it: a troll doll with purple hair, something bass players used to hang from the headstocks of their guitars. I couldn’t do anything about my situation until I got some money, unless I could hitch a ride somewhere. California? Denver? The Arctic Circle? Take me!

  And then, a miracle. Annie dropped an envelope onto the kitchen table and said, “This came for you.” A telegram:

  COME TO PARIS. STOP. SING IN BAND. STOP. WILL SEND TICKET. STOP. MICHAEL MEMMI. STOP.

  Had we even met? He must have seen me thrashing about in one of my attempts in the Open Market. Oh, Glory on High—I was saved! I got the next flight to Paris.

  —

  I knocked on the door at Avenue Denfert-Rochereau with my tail between my legs. A whipped dog doesn’t cry. I was saved. I took Kalu out for a walk and prayed to God that I’d never do anything so mindlessly stupid again. I was glad to be back.

  Michael Memmi was a crazy fucker who rode a BMW like a lunatic but never came off, at least not when I was on the back. He was a rocker down to the ground. He’d been knocked about in the student riots in Paris in ’68, and I think he might have been dropped on his head.

  His band was due to perform at a festival—the Fête Rouge. I was the last-minute fill-in for another singer who’d come down with something. We worked up a few songs, covers like “You Can’t
Judge a Book by Looking at the Cover.” All of my well-meaning friends from the Open Market took me aside, one by one, before our big debut to pat me on the back and see me right before showtime. It was speedballs all round: the smack dropped my voice an octave and the coke froze my vocal chords.

  I got my big lesson in what happens when you get too fucked up before going onstage, and it was a lesson well worth the trip to France in itself. I never did it again. I never went on a stage in that state again. Oh, maybe once or twice I was a little high on weed, but never again did I get loaded before going onstage.

  I knew this wasn’t the band I’d been holding out for, but it was still devastating to get on a stage and underdeliver so spectacularly. My powers were so diminished that I knew I was heading for a serious depression as soon as I came offstage.

  I was so bummed the next morning, I got Sasha to drive the Merc to a hotel where I’d heard some of the British acts were staying. I needed to see someone English. The French agenda of drugs over performance had worn me down. Not to blame the French—it was becoming my agenda.

  More than anything, I wanted to see Nick Lowe, whose name I’d seen on the bill for the festival. Nick was one of the guys I knew from Limeytown. He’d been in a band called Brinsley Schwarz, a pub band. He was a stellar bass player, songwriter and singer, and a bit of a riot in the English band tradition—fun and not French. I thought twenty minutes with Nick would restore my strength—but Lowe he was gone.

  Sasha and I hung out in the hotel cafeteria for a bit so I could at least take in whatever was left of the Limeys. That’s when I first saw them, Chris and Nora.

  Chris Spedding was one of England’s great, unsung guitar heroes, a die-hard Elvis fan who loyally wore a quiff whatever the stylistic trend du jour. The woman he was with looked like one of Sabrina’s troupe from the Alcazar; German, blonde, not a kid—probably Sabrina’s age, late-thirties—and dressed in a fifties’ Hollywood-type glamour outfit that sat nicely next to Spedding in his Teddy Boy gear. To see them, you wouldn’t know what decade or country you were in. Nora, in her tulle skirt and stiletto heels, looked like she was about to step onto a yacht in the Med for a drinks party in 1954 or ’64…or ’74. Obviously, we had to talk to them and invite them back to the apartment in Denfert-Rochereau.

  Nora was totally at home in Sabrina’s theatrical surroundings—Sabo, in turn, delighted in having someone to show his designs and scrapbooks to. Cabaret was nothing new to Nora. Chris, Sasha and I, die-hard rock fans, talked bands, and Chris stopped by the next time he was in Paris and we forged a friendship.

  I’d reached my limit, like Waldo Jeffers; the band I was searching for wasn’t to be found in Paris. Once again, London was calling.

  23

  MICK’S GRAN’S

  It was right before it all started to kick off. You could feel it brewing like the ions in the air before a storm; I made it back just in time. Malcolm invited me along to see a band rehearse. They called themselves the Barracudas. That’s where I first met Mick Jones, who had “I want to be a guitar hero” written all over him.

  Bernie Rhodes, who had been silk-screening shirts for Malcolm, was there. Both Bernie and Malcolm had ideas to manage, nurture or even create a band. My money was on Malcolm, but they would both get there in the end.

  The next week, Mick had me come over to his place where he lived with his gran on the eleventh floor of a tower block overlooking the Westway (which, as it so happens, I can see from the window where I’m writing this now). I would get the Tube from Clapham South to Royal Oak, and his gran would make us beans on toast while we put our song ideas together.

  It became a regular thing, and I really looked forward to it, especially the beans on toast part, my favorite English dish. It was a joy to get out at Royal Oak and walk over the bridge carrying my guitar, knowing I was doing it, really doing it.

  Mick and I would swap ideas but I wasn’t really sure who I was in all of it. I had the idea of a band like a motorcycle club: outlaw, outside, antiestablishment. The goal was modest, just to be able to play in a little band somewhere, somehow. I wasn’t sure what I sounded like as a singer and had little faith in my guitar playing. I used the guitar to write, but would I say I was a guitar player? No. I didn’t think I qualified as a musician. But we were on the brink of punk so, you see, I was in the right place.

  The funny thing about my unyielding desire to be in a band was that I really had no idea what I was going for. I just knew it had to be hard, not soft. I never liked soft things. Hard for me, every time: tea, strong; coffee, black; ice cream, frozen not melty. Rock? Hard, not soft; aggressive, unapologetic, masculine—that was it.

  How I would fit into that scenario, I had no idea. It would have to be something that transcended gender. Rock was masculine but its listeners were feminine. It was never gender-restrictive—men loved to see a woman play guitar; they always had. I’d have to figure it out, as I didn’t want to be a waitress again.

  I wanted to play rhythm, not so much because I thought it would be easier than lead, but because rhythm turned me on. I’d never once been tempted to play a single note. Chords, for me, three, less is more. All that R&B and James “I don’t know K-Rate but I know K-Razy” Brown I’d been gorging myself on was exclusively reliant on rhythm. Someone had to hold the fort. Like sex, if the rhythm changed, even fractionally, the mood was lost.

  James Brown was a tyrant, fining his musicians, but I understood him. Don’t shoot your wad—keep it going. Never change the groove.

  Chet Baker singing so softly. Neil Young with his girl’s voice. Anita O’Day on the soul train. Janis turning herself inside out. Sarah Vaughan, so sure-footed. Dionne Warwick gliding, always gliding. Dusty with her angel voice. Those voices. Julie London. Marvin. Otis. Iggy.

  It was nothing you could be taught, coming from inside and upstairs: never black or white; never good or bad. Personal, personality—Him up there, that’s who we were all talking to. To address another human was one thing, but a singing voice was capable of so much more.

  Romance made you weak and love was about suffering. I wanted what the jazz musicians were looking for: the supreme. I wanted my voice to take life by the throat and rattle it until it made sense. “If you go that way, you mos’ likely end up in the graveyard.” No, I won’t. Don’t you get it? I can’t not be alive.

  Singing was direct—heart to brain to ear. I had to sing but had no idea if I could do it. What did I sound like? I couldn’t tell down at the Cellar Door. I couldn’t tell at the Fête Rouge. I just had the feeling—blind faith, that’s all I had.

  Those were the thoughts I’d have as the train pounded out its industrial clanging, winding through tunnels, flying overground into sunlight and disappearing down again: cha-chunk, cha-chunk, cha-chunk, cha-chunk…I didn’t care where I fit in. I’d happily be an outsider. Those women lining up at the tortilla factory, how were they now? And the Canadian with the blue eyes? Don’t think sad thoughts. You’re almost there.

  I’d get to Mick’s, have a cup of tea and take out my guitar: a few chords, where to start? But something more pertinent was bothering me: Mick’s hair. I was going to have to get rid of it. Mick was having a bad-hair year, and his hair knew it too. I was just waiting for an opportune moment. I had to be patient because I could sense that Mick was very sensitive about his hair. This was still in the days before I realized all guys were very sensitive about their hair.

  I finally lost it, launched into a tirade and he relented. I got him to sit on a chair and went at it with a pair of his gran’s kitchen scissors but he kept trying to squirm away to have a look in the mirror and make sure I wasn’t taking too much off. Honestly, what a girl!

  He remained unconvinced until a week later, when a gig review in the NME referred to “a Keith Richards lookalike in the audience.” It was Mick in my haircut! Now he was pleased, silly sod.

  Mick told me about a fight he’d had with his girlfriend. “Ignore her,” was my advice. I knew what hurt a w
oman. When a woman said, “Leave me alone,” she meant, “You’re not paying enough attention to me”; when a man said, “Leave me alone,” he meant, “Leave me alone.” I would coach Mick on how to slip the dagger in.

  The good thing about working with guys was that they rarely talked about emotional things. I liked that. I was trying to contain my emotions, not inflame them.

  The songs were coming along, even if it didn’t feel like we were going to make rock history—but, you know, we were trying. Mick had a few good tunes and my specialty was to toughen them up, or so I thought.

  Bernie was lurking in the wings, and I knew he wasn’t in favor of me at all. At one point he even suggested we call ourselves Big Girl’s Blouse. Fuck off, Rhodes!

  It all went south one day, when in walked this pretty boy with spiky hair carrying an album sleeve for the Sensational Alex Harvey Band that he’d designed—some kind of art project, or maybe just his own thing. I didn’t think he had that student thing about him. It was a painting of a tramp passed out next to a brick wall. Alex Harvey was worthy of legendary status at that time. Good choice, but never mind that—what was all this about?

  I could see straight away where this was going. Mick wanted this kid who couldn’t even play to be in the band. I didn’t want to be in a band with a bunch of pretty boys. What happened to my motorcycle-club-with-guitars idea?

  It was obvious that they were perfect for each other, and I was the odd one out, so I stopped going round to let them get on with their pretty-boy ideas. Within a week they had hooked up with the singer of the 101ers, a pub band who played down the Chippenham Hotel near the Elgin Avenue squat (a kind of headquarters for hopefuls); a guy my age who went by the name of Strummer. Joe Strummer. Shaken. And stirred.

  Mick’s song “I’m So Bored with You” morphed into “I’m So Bored with the U-S-A!” (referring to the Vietnam War). Nice touch, Joe. Strummer was turning the band into a banner-waving gang of social-conscience freedom fighters. Right on! And there was no denying that pretty-boy Paul Simonon, with his arty aspirations, was proving to be an asset. All that Jackson Pollock stuff and he came up with the name: the Clash.