‘You think you’ve been in some bad places, you don’t know what my mind is capable of.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I’d say. ‘What’s the worst you could do to me?’
That number stayed in the box. I left her name off it. Just in case.
Melody Maker Reviews
December 21st, 1981
Hope And Anchor
Joyless seriousness aside, Diameter are saved by sheer firepower, and glamorous support.
Audiences don’t come more puritanical than this. We’re in punk territory here. Elvis Costello himself was seen propping up the bar for a pint of snakebite a week back. Now it’s Transit Record’s new signing Diameter who’re taking the stage. Few in number but determined in taste, the local punks sit resolutely at the back, adopting an impress-me stance. Frankly, if Diameter can impress here, nothing can stop them.
But first, there’s Rosary. With some stripped-back punk rock as puritanical as their name suggests and a singer who is – yikes!- a girl. A young girl at that. Siouxie Sioux with more Penguin Paperbacks than she knows what to do with. Scrubbed of all makeup, serious as an off-duty ballerina. Fronting a band who rock like her neglected younger siblings, vying for attention.
No doubt that’s a comparison set to haunt singer Nataly Callis. All sharp stares and sharper stilettos, she’s the female dictator that you hope refuses to yield. At the end she has us all marching to her tune. A perfect storm of brittle guitar, angular poses and a gut-shaking vox. Watch this space for more…
After all that, Diameter take their time to impress. Frontman Alex McGregor doesn’t have an iota of Callis’ charm, and you’re left praying for the arrival of a riff that’ll set The Starship Diameter on course for the heart of the sun. A hope that fades when he introduces himself with the words ‘We’re from Birmingham. But can you forgive us?’
Faux-naivety aside, Diameter are redeemed by the sheer force of their sound. They smash through their stage set with just the right degree of willful abandon, suggesting that those recent Cure records have not been neglected by the Brummie set. In the brilliant ‘Fingers In Ears’ the keyboardist unleashes a wall of fire that almost satisfies your hunger for a magnificent riff. It’s a more meat-and-potatoes set than Rosary offer, certainly. But as McGregor circles the stage like a caged tiger, mesmerized by the exertions of his band, it is almost as exciting. To screams of feedback, Diameter rumble nosily to an end, and London’s punk mafia pat each other on the back for a night out well done.
2
Sam got off the tube at Shoreditch, resisting the offers of free newspapers as he struggled to follow the instructions on a crumpled printout. The pictures on the publisher’s website had suggested he was heading into a business empire, with various different wings. But having arrived at a cramped alley off the main road, he instead found himself having to search for mere clues. Fragments of the company’s aesthetic, hinted at on their lurid website.
Behind posters hurriedly pasted to walls there were few street numbers visible. Did Mason House only exist online, he wondered? Lost beneath more recent ideas? Consulting the map, Sam reasoned that it had to be somewhere between the stall selling genuine Jamaican jerk chicken at his side and the messy mobile phone shop at the end.
A sign indicated that the publishers owned the building glistening by an array of phone covers. Outside it, music played from a ghetto blaster encrusted with glitter.
As he walked through the glass entrance Sam saw a semi-circle of staff taking turns to blast graffiti onto a wooden panel. ‘Mason House’ it said. ‘The future they promised us.’ Sam giggled, unable to supress his derision.
He offered his name to a woman with a pierced lip at the front desk, and asked where he might find Martin Graham. ‘Hi Sam, yes, Martin is expecting you,’ she said, reaching for the intercom. ‘Mart, Sam is here.’
‘Great. Send him up,’ the voice replied.
She led Sam up a sticky set of steel steps at the back of the room, into an open-plan office on the first floor. Martin was a lean man with a thatch of wiry hair, and a jutting jaw. He somehow worked amongst a circle of blow-up furniture. Framed prints of book covers surrounded him on the walls. Culture slimed over him from all sides, demanding excessive praise.
‘This is Martin,’ the woman said, extending her hand. Martin instantly flipped down the lid of his laptop. He tore off his designer glasses and rose to greet Sam.
‘Sam! It was good of you to come. I hope you didn’t travel all the way down just for this?’
‘Er, no. Not at all. I was down for other business as well.’
‘Wonderful.’
Sam found himself being steered onto a beanbag, on which he struggled to stay upright. Women with bright red lips and insolent expressions tapped at computers. Martin saw Sam taking it all in, and smiled. ‘Can we get you a drink at all? We have a blender somewhere in the office. Polly can whip us up a mean smoothie.’ A woman in a spotted headscarf rose, somewhat joylessly, at the mention of her name.
‘An orange juice would be fine.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Can I get you anything, Martin?’ Polly asked.
‘I’ll have a skinny caramel frappuccino with the chocolate space-dust,’ he said, twirling his fingers. His eyes rested on Sam, expectant and suspicious.
‘So. What have you got for me?’
Sam tried to remember his notes, but his mind went blank. A woman wearing a sailor hat pushed a pencil into a whirring machine, and Sam gritted his teeth. ‘There are forums about The National Grid online that have gone into overdrive with the rumours that Wardner’s going to make a return. They didn’t even know if he was alive. When he vanished people assumed it was suicide, but his family were always so sure he would never have done that.’
‘So these fans are not put off by this talk that he might be a murderer?’
‘I don’t think they believe he could be.’
‘I hear that he developed this intense relationship with a fan of his. She wouldn’t let him out of her sight so he drove down to the coast with her. Stabbed her in his car and then threw her body off a cliff.’
‘That story is the reason he’s never stayed out of the papers for very long. But there was never a body, so I don’t know how that could be true.’
Martin leaned back on his chair, and started squeezing a small stuffed toy.
‘Could it have been washed away? What about the head of his record label, this Andrew Cunningham? I was told him and Wardner had a big blow out and Cunningham was found dead not long after. Could there be something in that?’
Sam shook his head. ‘There was a lot about Cunningham’s death in the papers at the time. But the coroner’s verdict was Cunningham died of a heart attack. Wardner wasn’t implicated.’
‘But then why did he vanish?’
‘Well no one even knows where Wardner went,’ Sam said, sitting up. ‘There is a market for this story. I still have all the contacts from the early years, and I’ve stayed on top of the case as it’s developed. It’s been a bit of a preoccupation of mine. I could interview those closest to him, all in the course of tracking him down. Then get his side of the story, write it up. I really think…’ He gulped. Was he really going to say these words? ‘I really think that Mason House could be sitting on the biggest music news story of the next decade.’
That was terrible, Sam thought. I’ve blown it.
Martin laughed. ‘I don’t know about that. But of course, I’m curious. Otherwise I wouldn’t have called. I think we could make this happen.’ As he smiled Sam noticed a rather sharp set of incisors.
Behind Sam, someone coughed.
‘Ah, yes,’ Martin said. ‘Sam, I’d like you to meet the person whose been pushing this story down at my end. Camille.’
He raised his eyes as a slender, dark-haired woman stepped forward. As she looked up he saw she had brooding, finely cut features. She wore a white vintage lace dress, with a blue bow in her hair.
‘Camille, this is S
am,’ Martin said. Sam noticed Camille’s face had vulnerability, as if it could express any emotion at just a moment’s notice. As she leant forward to shake his hand Sam had the sense she wasn’t aware of the potency of her presence.
‘I’m glad you came down,’ she said. ‘I was worried this book was going to be pie-in-the-sky.’
Sam laughed. Her voice was an unusual combination of accents. The soft, creamy vowels of a Parisian blended with a touch of recent Cockney.
‘No, I’m going to pull that pie right out of the sky,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘I don’t know if Martin has told you,’ she said, ‘but I used to read all of your columns in the weeklies when I was at school. I loved your character studies of Robert. I think you really got what he was about.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ he replied.
‘I read all your articles on The National Grid again when I was preparing a brief for Martin,’ she continued. ‘Have you never thought about releasing them as a collection?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Sam said, rubbing his neck. ‘But if you were instrumental in getting Martin interested in the story I should probably thank you.’ He found himself taking on the rhythms of her voice.
‘Only if you manage to escape unscathed,’ Martin said.
‘I don’t believe he was a murderer,’ Camille replied. She stood upright, and clasped her hands against her hips. ‘How could he go from Top Of The Pops to cold-blooded murder in a year?’
Martin made eye contact with Sam. ‘Let’s hope he didn’t, for Sam’s sake.’
‘It would just break my heart to even think that he was a killer,’ Camille said. ‘When I was a girl, he was one of the few people who seemed to speak about the truth of the modern world. I used to read him talking about Manchester, and their club scene, and it made me think England must be so exotic!’
‘That’s great. That’s just great,’ Martin said, looking between them. ‘Now, where is that file I had for Ivan? We put together a budget for this guy to write a book on his hunt for Banksy, and I see no reason why we can’t work with the same numbers.’
‘Great.’
He leant over a computer on the corner of his desk and clicked a few times, before walking over to the printer as it spewed out a page. He handed it to Sam.
‘As you can see,’ Martin said, ‘we’ll give you £1500 just to get you on your way, and that should be more than enough to fund your first few weeks of research. Do some interviews with the key players from Wardner’s life. Whoever will lead you to him. He’ll need to be tracked down by the final deadline to release the final payment, which is obviously the biggest.’
‘It’s okay. I can do this full-time.’
‘For one and a half grand?’
I would need to find Wardner straight away, Sam thought. The money would cover the first mortgage payment. He could go back to Elsa with his head held high, just.
‘Can you live with that?’
‘Of course. I’m itching to get started.’
Polly came back into the room, with a plastic flask of orange juice and a glass of elaborately decorated milky fluid. ‘Thanks, Polly,’ Martin said.
‘That’s so exciting,’ Camille said, her eyes on the piece of paper. ‘And if you are lucky enough to be able to speak with Wardner you must phone and let me know what he’s like straight away.’
‘If I survive it.’
‘I wouldn’t be brave enough to try and track him down.’
‘Sounds like you know as much about his work as I do?’
‘Maybe. Wardner’s records meant the world to me,’ she said. ‘I grew up in Paris and had those terrible teenage years. Bullied at school, always trying to hide. Just lived in records, that sort of thing. Spent a week inside ‘Tainted Love’.’
‘That must have been cramped,’ Martin said.
‘Bit pretentious, isn’t it, to live that way?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sam said.
‘Anyway,’ she answered, blushing. ‘Here’s my business card, Sherlock. If you ever need a Dr. Watson, you know where to find me.’
‘Thanks,’ Sam said. He fished a scrap piece of paper from his pocket, and receiving a pen from Martin, scrawled out his numbers for her. ‘I could do with those too,’ Martin said. ‘We got your new number off a journalist who used to work with you, and we weren’t even sure it was right.’
‘Tristan?’ Sam didn’t let on he was the only friend he still had in that world.
Martin nodded, finishing his drink nosily. ‘I can see that I’m going to struggle to keep Camille on task now, Sam. You have her all fired up.’
Camille looked Sam up and down. ‘He does indeed,’ she said.
ROBERT WARDNER
Twenty three years of my life had been leading to this moment. I was about to start recording my debut album.
It felt a bit like being a teenager, when every moment seemed important, permanent.
We were booked into a wood-panelled recording studio out in the Hertfordshire countryside. As we pulled into the drive in a battered Volvo an ashen-faced Robert Plant was leaving, flanked with his entourage. We hadn’t had our advance through yet so all our instruments were still in bin bags. When Theo moved to pull his bass out the back seat Simon pulled him back.
‘What are you doing?’ Theo asked.
‘What I’m doing is preventing Led Zeppelin from seeing that we still use black bin liners to transport our instruments.’
‘So what if he sees?’
Theo was mad for it, never cared what people thought.
Simon watched big-haired musos pass in front of the car, before turning to Theo. ‘That’s going to look good in Smash Hits, isn’t it Theo? When a reporter asks them, ‘Did you meet any other bands while you were recording,’ and Robert Plant goes ‘No, but a group of dustmen in skin-tight leather were mincing inside when we left’.’
‘It’s the eighties,’ I said. ‘We’re taking over from them.’
I watched as Plant pushed his hands into his leather jacket and made his way to a Mercedes.
‘We can’t hang about in here all day,’ Jack said.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We have got work to do.’
Through the car windscreen we saw Bonny advancing towards us, in a huge fur coat. She opened the door.
‘Get out the car,’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Simon started to move.
‘We’ve entered the big league now,’ she said, as we unloaded. There was a tremor in her voice. She couldn’t stop grinning. She knew it was only a matter of time before she became famous herself, now.
Bonny loved moments like this. Lived for them.
It was only when we were inside that I stopped feeling like a joke. I realized something special was about to happen. Standing in that performance space. My lyrics scrawled out in front of me.
A few inches from me, Simon was on his knees, adjusting his bank of pedals. Theo, jumping like a grass hopper, headphones falling off his head. Jack, twirling drum sticks. His left knee bouncing.
I looked round, through the screen separating us from our producer, Vicente.
Exit Discs hadn’t been able to arrange it. It was Bonny who pulled that off. In the last five years Vicente had turned countless amateurs into platinum-selling, critically acclaimed artists. What’s more, he’d agreed to do it for half the price when he heard our demo. Sent a postcard to Bonny with the words, ‘I’m speechless.’
He stood behind the screen in outsized sunglasses, chest hair poking through gold medallions. Bonny behind him, biting her nails.
You realize then that everyone’s looking at you. The vision they’re all wanting to come to life only exists in your head. It’s on that crumpled piece of paper in front of you.
You’ve convinced them you can do it. You can’t screw up.
Vicente came on the intercom. You and him have prepared for this moment for weeks. You’ve stayed up all night in his Kensington mansion, in the ki
nd of house you never knew existed. Trying to work out arrangements for your songs with one finger, on his grand piano in a huge white room. Him standing there with a pair of scissors, shredding your lyrics and rearranging them. Burroughs’ cut-up technique. Rasping, with his weird blend of Italian and Estuary the words, ‘We’ll keep it raw. You’ll all play it live.’
You’ve sat with a Mini-Moog in his front room while his Yugoslavian supermodel wife offers you canapés, your lyrics about a decaying Britain bristling up at you. You’ve talked until the small hours about what this record means to you. How you don’t care about the luxury, how you just want to create the perfect cry for help. You’ve told him how you feel about Thatcher, about the recession. How angry it makes you. He’s seen the ‘Britain Isn’t Working’ posters and he talks about Mussolini, post-war Italy. He tells you to be careful of your twenties. Tells you they’re a tightrope.
Arriving in the studio, you’ve lain on the sofa in the reception suite, trying to imagine how the record will sound. Bonny’s stood over you, put her hand on your shoulder and told you to make it good. Both of you knowing this is your only chance of making a better life for yourselves.
All of that, leading up to this moment.
Vicente clears his throat. ‘Gentlemen, ‘A State Of Exile’ first,’ he shouts. ‘Four counts, Jack, and we’ll drop you in.’
Simon looks round us all. ‘Right, keep them eyes up lads,’ he says.
Vicente raises a finger. You close your eyes.
A moment later the synths fill your ears. They’re soon pinned back by the opening attack from Jack’s drums, blasting your jeans against your legs. Even with your eyes closed you can still make out Theo’s silhouette. He arches over his bass. Attacking the two-note riff that creates a canvas for Simon.
Vicente is frantically waving from the control booth, motioning to Simon to improvise for a few bars.
Simon doesn’t need prompting. He’s forgotten the plot long ago, and when his plectrum strikes the strings it’s not the soothing cloud you’re all expecting, but a jagged stab of noise. He bends over his guitar, jerking the tremolo arm. Throws his head back. Theo’s knocked sideways as Simon strikes the strings above the nut of the guitar, unleashing a brittle shower of shards. Theo’s bass line then combining with his own, drill-like imitation. Then Simon stamps on a pedal and that familiar sound emerges. He turns to you, one foot on the pedal, and snaps it off.
How I Left the National Grid Page 4