Nico

by James Young

  Having paid a kid to lead us out of the barrio, we arrived at the venue – Club 666 – to find ourselves enigmatically billed as ‘Nico and the Hasidim’. The mystery was solved, however, when who should walk on stage in the middle of the performance, but Dr Demetrius himself, dress as Hasidic rabbi, in long black overcoat the hat, brandishing a copy of the Bible.

  ‘The Angel of Death. The Angel of Death,’ he kept repeating. The audience was completely mystified. We carried on playing, like it was part of the show. Nico didn’t notice him, until he was standing up against her, staring manically.

  ‘The Angel of Death.’

  ‘What are yooooo doooing here?’ Nico asked.

  Demetrius just stood there, impassively staring.

  ‘Get out! … Go!’

  He didn’t move.

  She shoved him.

  He swayed a little, but remained rooted to the spot.

  We turned up the volume and blasted him off.

  Then he showed up again the next day at a live TV date: The Angel Cassas Show. It was in a variety theatre. A traditional sloping stage, footlights, individual dressing-rooms, the works. The stall seats had been removed and tables and chairs put in their place, so it would resemble a cabaret. The audience sat eating and drinking, while the host, Angel Cassas himself, smoothly compered an eclectic show that consisted of topless dancers, James Burke (the communicator), a Rumba troupe, and Nico. Demetrius was still carrying his Bible, and now wearing a crucifix as well as the Hassidic gear.

  Nico was anxious about Demetrius’s craziness, whether he was going to pull another stunt like the night before. He was hanging around outside her dressing-room, pacing the corridor, reading aloud apocryphal passages from the Book of Revelations.

  Eric Random and I sniffed about the Bluebell Girls. Though they were a permanent feature of the Angel Cassas show, half of them came from Blackburn. They had long fantails of pink ostrich feathers, worn over a sequined G-string, and up top nothing but pert, powdered, pink titties and smiles as wide and eyes as blue as an empty sky. One of them plucked a tail feather and gave it to Random. I asked him if I could borrow his Tantric talisman to see if I had any luck.

  ‘This’asn’t left my neck since I was in Nepal,’ he said in a hushed, reverential voice. ‘It was blessed by Baba Yoni’imself.’

  We were on after the girls. Angel Cassas was giving mouth, some silky-slick patter to the middle-aged punters, getting them horny. Then Nico was supposed to come on and sing her saeta of woe.

  Cue. Camera. No Nico.

  We had to start playing, so we did a long intro … then a verse … but still no Nico. A third of the way through the song, we heard the clump and jangle of her boots. She stomped on stage, furious. Strangely, her dressing-room intercom had been switched off. The audience started tittering. I looked up at the backstage balcony: there was Demetrius, eating his Bible. We finished the song, the clap man signalled the audience to applaud. Above the polite patter, Demetrius could be heard admonishing us all to ‘beware the Angel of Death.’ This caused some offence to the management as they thought Demetrius was referring to Angel Cassas. I managed to calm them down, explaining that Nico’s manager was undergoing some sort of spiritual crisis and had been this way for weeks.

  In all this hysteria, Nico seemed to have become strangely steady. An atmosphere of insanity seemed conducive to her sense of well-being. It made her feel normal. She was now just another person in the bus. And that’s the way she liked it. That’s who she was. One of the boys.

  Digital Delight/Ringfinger Surprise

  Beating the borders was always a challenge. Various subterfuges were employed as we crisscrossed our way across fortress Europe. Nico would adopt the disguise of a prim librarian – specs, hair in a bun – but unfortunately it was undermined by the black leather trousers, the biker boots and the leather bracelet with silver skulls. And, as her eyesight was perfect, the alien lenses distorted her vision so much that she could barely discern a familiar face, let alone the inquisitorial stares of officialdom.

  Customs officials, it has to be said, ain’t the brightest of individuals. They always pull the broken-down old 2CVs with broken-down hippies inside, or the conspicuously guilty pop group with the pills and potions in their underpants. Meanwhile the professional hustler in the black BMW with a briefcase full of cocaine is waved on through. This prejudice infuriated Nico, to the point where she would become contemptuous of even her own fear. Once, as we were driving off the car ferry at Dover, she handed me a bunch of used syringes, a whole tour’s worth. I quickly threw them off the ramp and into the oily black water below, thanking her profusely for the macabre bouquet.

  Nico’s preferred method of concealment was to buy a pack of condoms (a source of great embarrassment to her: ‘I’m sure they must think I’m a hooker when I buy these things’) and a jar of vaseline. Then she’d fill the prophylactic with a clingfilmed ball of heroin. This she would insert into her behind, generally about five minutes from the border. This is how it would go:

  ‘Are we ne-ar the booorder?’ We’d heard it sung so many times it had become a familiar refrain along with ‘Have you got a little bit of haa-aash?’ Out would come the condom, a look of disgust on her face. Then she’d wriggle out of her leathers. Everyone would suddenly busy themselves with displacement activities: books that hadn’t been opened throughout the tour would suddenly become intensely fascinating.

  There’s a particular customs post north of Lille, on the French/Belgian border, every time … every single time …

  Demetrius was whistling inanely a nerveless, tuneless ditty of his own making.

  ‘We’re a touring party of jazz musicians … we have a carnet … I am Miss Paffgen’s personal physician …’ It was never any use. They pulled the bus apart, seats upturned, instruments out of the cases, dirty laundry everywhere. Then the pockets – we lined up one by one, emptying our pathetic secrets on to the desk. The chief poked through the pile, saying nothing, nose twitching above his black moustache. You could picture him at home, a photo of Jean-Marie Le Pen on the dressing-table; humping his wife while she picked spinach from her teeth.

  We knew what was in store, it was ritualistic and we were resigned. They probably knew it was a waste of time, but that’s what they were there in the world to do – waste our time.

  One by one we were led off to the ‘interview room’. Nico banging into things, blind as a bat (the glasses had to go).

  A thin little guy with rat eyes asks me to undress. He inspects each garment, examining the lining. Then he holds my arms under a lamp to check for needle marks. On the table lies a pair of surgical gloves and a tube of lubricating jelly. If you piss these guys off you don’t get the jelly. There’s a knock at the door. A female officer is standing there, a small bull dyke with cropped hair and a big black gunbelt. She’s excited, they’ve found something.

  Back in the chief’s office, I ask Eric Random if he got the finger.

  ‘Yeh,’ his eyes lowered. ‘Creep asked if ’e could ’ave me phone number afterwards.’

  Nico comes in with the dyke, looking suitably crushed and repentant.

  The chief starts typing out a charge: possession of prohibited substances and unpaid debt. The central Paris computer has thrown up some ancient hospital bill Nico hasn’t paid.

  They got what they wanted. A token. Nico had stashed a shot’s worth of dope in her knickers (the rest of the stuff still safely concealed in its traditional hiding place). They were happy with that. A few smiles, a few jokes. Demetrius resumed his whistling.

  Fear is always a problem of scale.

  Brixton

  ‘’Im aint naw docturr!’ Mrs Chin blocked the top of the stairs to our flat. ‘An’ she aint naw music teacher neither.’

  ‘An’ ’im,’ she pointed to me, ‘’im naw in the middle ages … An’ ’oo be’e?’ She pointed to the svelte figure of Eric Random. ‘What’as bin goin’ on in this’ere ’ouse aint nawbady’s bisness … like a �
��erd o’ buffalo, up an’ down dese steers … Amma feart a knock on mi own door fer t’look inside … blood! Blood on de walls!’

  Mrs Chin had got into the flat while we were away. Clarke and Echo had been in permanent residence, contributing their unique refinements to our Brixton salon. Needle orgies every night. The place looked like it had been gangbanged.

  Echo and Clarke crept in later, after Mrs Chin had shaken the rest of us for the rent and given us our notice to quit. Needless to say, Bertie and Jeeves hadn’t paid a penny towards the upkeep of the place. The phone was off – red bills of over £500 to Dr Mengele threatening disconnection. Demetrius’s annoyance was tempered by the thought that not only did the evil doctor of Auschwitz have Mossad on his trail, but he would also have to answer to British Telecom as well.

  *

  Clarke and Echo had been to Australia together for a couple of weeks. Echo spelt out the hazards to me as Nico was to do the same tour imminently. He told me how the promoter had personally threatened him, accusing him of being a parasite on Clarke. Nico said, ‘You two should get married – I guess for them it’s like you’re living in sin.’

  Any hints of homosexuality threw them both into a stir of Catholic homophobia. ‘It sez in the Bible,’ etc etc. In fact, for Clarke, mentioning any kind of male sexuality risked an unwanted reference to the seat of shame itself: ‘the three-piece suite, the sausage and mash – God’s cruellest joke.’

  Echo reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of snapshots. One was of a girl who looked like Alice in Wonderland but with an Edgar Allen Poe twist, an emaciated child-woman who looked like she’d scratched her way out of a coffin. ‘Met ’er in Sydney, wonderful girl, ’Elena, amazin’ ’ow she’s kept ’erself tergether – yer’d never guess she was on the gear would yer?’ He showed me his other snap. ‘They’ave whales up near Brisbane,’ he said with awe. I looked at the photo, it was a picture of the empty sea, nothing else.

  ‘But where are the whales?’ I asked.

  ‘They dived,’ he said, pointing to a blank area of sea. ‘But that’s where they were.’

  Echo complained of a perpetual toothache but said he couldn’t go to the dentist as he was scared of injections. Also he’d told Dr Strang back in Prestwich hospital that he was ‘sick of the bloody methadone … I want what they give prisoners – bromide. Ev’ry time I get the bus up ter Prestwich I get a fookin’ ’ard-on cos o’ the vibrations … the only way I can ged it down is ter think o’ the bleedin’ dentist.’

  You’d get dizzy listening to Echo’s explanations of his life. Sooner or later he’d get round to how disloyal I’d been not quitting Nico’s ensemble when he did.

  ‘But you didn’t quit,’ I said, ‘you were fired.’

  ‘Yeh, but I wouldn’t’ave bin if you’d quit too, then it would ’ave bin proper workers’ solidarity.’

  ‘Workers? Nico and Demetrius fired you because you’re a junkie,’ I said. ‘She’s not your mother … she doesn’t need dependants, she’s got her own habit to look after.’

  ‘But after all I fookin’ did fer’er … an’ fer you.’

  Nico was also turning weirder by the minute. One day I caught her rifling through my coat pockets, probably in search of cigs or a bit of change. The kleptomania reached its peak when I found out she’d pinched a love-letter of mine from Norway.

  ‘It wasn’t very interesting,’ she said, ‘the usual gerrl’s stuff.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ I replied, ‘just pass on the bills as usual.’

  We had a red-hot row about it that became really childish. She started off with all that nymphomaniac stuff again so I called her a nosy old nun.

  ‘Can I have it back?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’ve lost it,’ she said.

  I grabbed her shoulder bag and rummaged inside … God, the junk in there, something from every hotel of every tour, packets of soap and shampoo (never to be used), stationery, an ashtray … but no letter.

  ‘You see, I’m telling the truth,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost it … so you can believe me when I tell you it’s not worth reading.’

  It was always the same old junkie meta-logic. Any nonsense could be justified, any absurdity rationalised.

  Demetrius had also had enough, retreating to Manchester to recuperate. He had to find another road manager in his stead, someone dependable and unbreakable. Raincoat pleaded for the job, but after the poisoning attempt Raincoat’s days were numbered. Besides, Raincoat was doing a new Frankie impersonation – the Man With the Golden Arm – for real. Raincoat had joined up with the Undead and was now plying his mission on the street. Demetrius felt there was no alternative but to bring in a character he’d threatened us with before – the Big Grief.

  We-e-e-ll … ’ere we are

  ’n ’ere we go ’n geddawayeeay

  … Rockin’ all over the world.

  ‘C’mon, let’s fookin’ ’ear yer! Sing up! That means you, snog-gin’ each other in the back … Now, are yer right, Nico? ’Ave yer got yer words sorted, luv? Sound. Right, I’ll count ter four an’ then all tergether …’

  Grief was the last in a long line of missing links, Cro-Magnon throwbacks from Eccles. Demetrius had pulled him in to control us and to punish us. Eccles is a social anthropologist’s paradise, the sinkhole of Manchester, where the indigenous troglodytic inhabitants have squatted round campfires, roasting carcasses and molesting each other’s wives for millennia. Now their caves all have satellite dishes but their table manners remain the same. Grief was indigenous Eccles. Hair a long frizzy helmet, huge canine teeth and an expression of permanent rabid rage. He’d learned his craft down the Stretford End, cracking skulls, throwing (and catching) Irish grenades, potatoes with razorblades stuck in their sides. Grief was playtime dread, everything you ever feared back in the schoolyard.

  ‘Right! One more time! … Just listen ter Nico – singin’ ’er ’eart out, arntyer luv? An’ they lost the fookin’ war! So, come on, loud an’ clear … ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ one more time!’

  February–March ’86:

  DOWN UNDER NICO

  Dennis picked us up at Sydney Airport in a Rolls. He’d hired it just for the trip into town. He wanted to spoil us because it was in his nature – he had this good feeling about us. Late forties, stocky, tough, he was the Boss of the Job in Sydney. He knew every angle, every crack behind the wallpaper. His girlfriend ran a chain of high-class brothels called That Touch of Venus. Venus had many moons, one of which was a mobile bordello in a converted trailer, lined with pink fur, called Transports of Delight.

  ‘When we started out t’gither, Venus told me I couldn’t fack ’er … straight up, said I’d ’ave t’ wait til the wedding night – but I could ’ave it on the’ouse till then … wadda woman.’

  ‘A goddess,’ I said.

  He dropped us at the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Bondi.

  ‘Anythin’ y’want – come t’me. Any problems – come t’me.’

  ‘We want ter go to That Touch of Venus,’ said Random.

  We went to the beach instead, where we immediately fell asleep, dreaming of Venus and catching sunstroke. That night we both had a fever. Then the next day our skins started to fall off in great patches. ‘Enough to make a lampshade,’ said Nico. It looked like she’d brought a couple of lepers along with her when we did our first date at the Piggery in Byron Bay.

  The Piggery was a converted abattoir, if you could call it a conversion; basically they’d just slaughtered all the pigs. It still stank of pigshit and animal fear. It was a deeply inauspicious place to start a tour. The Piggery audience were expecting to hear a hugely popular local support group called the Headless Chickens, but they got killed in a road smash on the way to the gig. There was an atmosphere of sadness and latent anger, as if we were somehow responsible. The Curse of Nico.

  Everywhere we went, we bombed. It just wasn’t their thing: like California before, they danced to a different beat, theirs being essentially garage
rock – lots of grungy guitars, fast and funny lyrics, walloping drums – no poetry, it just makes you feel good. Nico’s ship of doom had definitely docked into the wrong port. For the first time, though, she was philosophical about it. She knew her stuff was an alien brew and it didn’t hurt her too deeply, it didn’t feel like total failure. Though Dennis’s ‘good feeling’ about us had rapidly degenerated into acid indigestion he still remained charming and encouraging. He genuinely adored Nico, wanted to protect her. She was a real lady, she had ‘class, mate’. He knew all about Nico’s habit and it concerned him, even hurt him, to see her mistreat herself like that – but he’d been around enough to know that there were no quick cures or clever explanations. He liked us all, even Grief. When Dennis told us the girls at That Touch of Venus had all been trained in the arts of love by a Thai sex guru, Random’s talisman started to twinkle. We kept bugging him for an intro. It was only fifty yards up the hill from his own club. The girls lived in. We’d see them drinking coffee and hanging up their smalls in the laundry room as we passed by, to while away the afternoon in Dennis’s office, while Nico followed the white rabbit through Wonderland with Echo’s girl, Helena.

  Helena was indeed Echo’s anima, his feminine counterpart. Thin and wasted, obsessed with heroin and its whole history, she would hold seminars. Did we know, for instance, that Bayer, the company that first manufactured aspirin, also came up with the first synthesised Diacetylmorphine and that they patented it under the name ‘Heroin’, as a cough cure? That was back in 1898. Did we also know that it was legal for nearly twenty years? We didn’t. She offered everyone a sample and then went into a detailed description of the physiological and neurological effects as they occurred. Did we know that opiate molecules attach themselves to certain receptor sites in the brain? We didn’t. The high being the act of making these neurological connections, and that the opiate molecules imitate the action of endorphins, which are the body’s natural analgesic? We didn’t.