Q
"What do your families think of all this?"
That made them sit up. Wallet only heard the question, he didn't see where it came from. The camera flashes and squashed together heads made it impossible to find the source of some of the questions. The band paused awkwardly. Scavinio wouldn't, couldn't, answer for them.
DV
"If they were here I'm sure they'd be proud, excited, maybe a bit apprehensive how it might all work out."
A murmuring sound spread around the room and seconds started to pass as an appropriate follow up question was sought, but no one could think of one. The mechanised throat clearing of the camera motor winds filled the gaps between the swish and crumple of the uneasy pack. Wallet's perceived joke was turning awkward. It was turning outward, back on the press pack as if this was the culmination of an eight month plan of revenge for some unknown sleight, some unrecorded grudge. The joke was not the band anymore, it wasn't the mental image of three glamorous grans living it up with their geriatric mate on the drums. The joke looked like it was on them for following a trail of sugary media treats leading to this spectacle of ingenuity, this display of stage managed tomfoolery. A colossal gotcha that no one saw coming. An identikit band, a facsimile more accurate than the original.
And yet, and yet it wasn't a joke. The mirror hadn't been turned around to cast its mockery. The reality was there in all its unreal perfection. And no one could see it. No one believed it. No one could believe it if they stayed up all night trying. Wallet couldn't believe it when the band walked in on him at seven o'clock in the evening, March 21st 2013, in a house in a forest in southern Germany. He had to become like them before he could believe it. Without that contract, without those conditions written in blood, there was no way to join in with the pact, no way of obtaining the knowledge. No way of receiving the truth.
The murmuring grew to a babble and the babble to a cacophony and soon the questions stopped and individuals headed for the door and the uneasy fresh air of the bar. Wallet leaned forward to the others. "Stage two. Go out and speak to them. Mingle. Let them meet you one on one, no bullshit, no rehearsed lines."
Scavinio nodded and the four of them followed the pack as it spread out in a daze to fill the space in the hotel bar. "You look tired," Wallet said to Scavinio.
"If this goes on for another couple of hours I might need that bucket of coke."
-
For the next hour Wallet floated around, casually bouncing off questions and juggling small talk. He was always just over the shoulder of Elaine telling her interrogators, unconvincingly, that she was excited to be starting up again, ready to get onstage. Within earshot of Rene Wallet heard a convoluted explanation about making up for lost opportunities. It was heartfelt and personal. To Wallet it was genuine, it was Rene's soul speaking, but to those observers it must have sounded like a script written for the occasion and played to the camera. Dee was looking forward to using better equipment, not the battered old shit that carried her from town to town, city to city, not performing on sticky floored stages in rank venues and near derelict concert halls. Susan wasn't so forthcoming. Vague and opaque, she had a wait and see attitude to it all; wouldn't be happy until the box set was out and selling and the first concerts over. Then the real business of starting again would kick in. This was just the preamble, a dress rehearsal.
By four o'clock Tom Scavinio had long since given in to fatigue and his hotel bed. The press may or may not have been satisfied, it was hard to tell. Maybe the big question had been too big for them in the end and without a necromancer at hand to answer the pseudo-scientific questions their brains had reluctantly given in to the circumstances and played along. Wallet allowed himself one final satisfied glance at those still left in the bar sending off their copy, their opinions, their comments and conclusions and followed Susan up the stairs to the first floor.
"Elaine won the sweepstake," she said.
"I was wondering who would."
Susan took a scrap of paper out of her pocket. On it were the predictions of what the first question would be. Dee suggested 'Did you kill Lenny Harper?' Susan thought they might ask about New York: 'do you know anything about the murders of Torque Rez and Mike Flambor?' Rene took a less serious approach with 'have you arrived here tonight by spaceship?' Wallet thought someone might be serious and almost won with 'why did you choose vinyl?' Scavinio's own guess was 'how has the music industry changed since you came back?' But Elaine's five word prediction turned out to be right on the nail: 'who the fuck are you?'
-
The hotel corridor had a settee with a small brass lamp on a table next to it. Its invite was too relaxing to resist. Wallet sat down hoping Susan would settle next to him for a moment.
"So what did Pearl say?" she said standing over him.
Wallet inhaled deeply, a second to recall the telephone conversation. "He has this mad idea that he can help the band. Join you onstage during the first concert and kill you all again in a scene that celebrates Lenny Harper's failed attempt. Then you all rise from the dead, to delirious applause, his words not mine, you get on with the show and the press hails you for your audacity and self-mocking humility."
"Right."
"He asked if there were such things as blood bombs. Bags of blood that you explode over the audience's heads and shower them with it."
"Lovely."
"He then suggested we kill him on stage, and all the pantomime gets written about blah blah blah. It's good for him, good for us, good publicity all around. What was that word he used: Osmodic! And the best part is he doesn't want paying."
Susan finally settled into the corner of the settee with both arms spread like wings and her perfume creating a gently euphoric air around Wallet's head, tranquillising him, pacifying him. She had a lot of Marco's businesslike confidence the way she occupied a space; she became the space, became the illumination and the ambience, unmistakable, unavoidable. "Tell me what he's up to," she said.
"It's a ridiculous scenario, every cliche in the book. It would make Alice Cooper look like Bertold Brecht. It's a cover to get close to us."
"Yeah."
"But what I don't get is why he thinks we're going to agree to something that is so obviously, what's the word?"
"You already said it. Pantomime."
"Well, yes. Why does he think we'd agree to to do all that. He doesn't know we're suspicious, that we're onto him."
"Yeah he does," Susan interrupted. "I think that's it. Strange behaviour, totally over the top ideas that force us to have the very conversation we're having now. There's the option of carrying on talking to him, but he wants to meet us, doesn't he."
"Yeah. And that meeting is probably when the other guy makes his uninvited appearance."
Susan knew who he meant. Everyone in the band wanted to know who the doppelganger was, the Peter Miles lookalike. Wallet felt and understood the urgent need to meet Terence Pearl, but he was held up by a growing sense of animosity inside him. Not with Pearl, but with everyone and everything, the whole fucking world. It was a slow burning fury being prepared and stoked, ready to use as some cruel incentive to get his own way. Wallet could physically feel himself evolving into a creature out of the man he once recognised: the ex-journalist who had a habit of annoying the other members of the band with his facetiousness and flippancy. Far from using golfing analogies to make a point he felt he was becoming more likely to plant the heavy end of a one iron between someone's eyes and this urge to violence bothered him. He had never been a violent man, but as his time with Toten Herzen increased his initial disgust at their easy ability to reduce someone to a pile of mince was turning to an empathy and a casual disregard. Even a mild admiration. He wondered how long he would go before he too was making effortless demands for blood. Blood from total strangers. He could make Pearl talk, but did Pearl deserve it? Did he want to make him talk, force him to open up, bully him into surrender.
"If this guy is somehow connected to Peter Miles,
and I'm talking about the doppelganger, what's his agenda? Why might he be after you?"
Susan was reluctant to answer. She folded forward, sitting on the edge of the settee. Wallet wasn't going to make it easy for her. He felt it was time for an answer. Did they kill Peter Miles?
"No. He probably killed himself. And his family knew it, but they always blamed us."
"What happened?"
"He had the chance to join the band. Second guitarist, but he wanted to play lead. He was a good guitarist, but Micky thought I was the better player. I thought I was the better player. And we got together regularly, rehearsed, practised. We sort of got along, the band were happy to have him, but he wouldn't let it go. He was determined to be lead guitarist. It seems trivial now. Such a big fucking deal over nothing. He played on a couple of tracks on Pass on By, but after a few days he was demanding this and demanding that, every dud note I played he was jumping on it. Everyone started to get a bit pissed off by it. So he quit. Said he'd start his own band and we'd see who gets to the top first. We found him that night almost unconscious, he'd drunk so much. And he started going on about how his father beat him and his mother would watch and he was the best at everything he did, but his father wouldn't give him credit. We'd never heard him talk like that before so we assumed it was the drink talking. Micky said he'd get him back to his flat, but apparently, according to Micky, he went off on his own. He could hardly walk. He never got home. No one ever saw him again."
"And with all the rubbish spoken and written about the band you were blamed."
"Micky didn't help. Putting a gravestone on the album sleeve and saying it was Peter's. Can you imagine what his family thought when they saw that?"
"Have you never tried to contact them, tell them what you just told me?"
"We should have done when they took us to court, but Micky wanted it. . . ." Susan turned away, rigid with frustration. "Now you know why we sorted him out. That scrap bastard fucking; we were too young to argue with him." Susan was pleading with Wallet now. "He had us where he could do anything, anything he said, anything he suggested, we thought he was right. We thought it was what managers do. He's not even here and people still talk about the things he created. He created us. The monsters that we are, the monsters the public sees, he created that. And I'm not a monster. Rob, I am not a monster."
Several weeks ago Wallet would have left Susan alone on the settee too nervous to hang around for what might come next. But this was the second time he'd seen her upset and he wasn't afraid of her anymore. He sat closer and put his arms around her shoulders. He wanted her to know he cared. He needed her to know. It would be a reminder that there was still a human being inside him. "You're not a monster," he said quietly. "You're not a monster."
Montreal Star
I witnessed the impossible last night
At around nine thirty pm, last night, in a conference room in an unknown hotel on the edge of Rotterdam in Holland, I saw four sixty year old musicians who looked like they hadn't aged a day since they were last seen in 1977.
The band's guitarist introduced herself as Susan Bekker and the band as Toten Herzen. Now I don't know about you, but when I wait months to see what this band look like after all these years I don't expect to see four twenty year olds. I've been asking myself all night how could this be?
Firstly, the obvious answer is they are lookalikes who, with the blessing of the original band and a truck load of money from a Singaporean gambling syndicate, have come back in their place to restart the Toten Herzen phenomenon. And they certainly lived up to the hype last night; a thirty second appearance came at the end of two hours of waiting and a brawl the Canadiens would have been proud of. I was unlucky enough to be at the front where most of the fighting happened and I have to say they were uncannily like the original members, with the exception of Elaine Daley's shrieking red mohican hairstyle. Everything else about them was, it has to be said, identical to the real thing circa 1977.
Alternatively the band have used their time away from the spotlight to indulge themselves in a number of visits to the world's finest cosmetic surgeons. Yeah, right. Do cosmetic surgeons alter the skeleton these days. Not one of them groaned when they sat down, walked with a limp, crouched, slouched or had ears like trash can lids on the sides of their heads. I don't think any of them had voluntarily been under the knife.
I know what you're thinking: hey Lucas, maybe they're real vampires after all. You think that's funny? I don't. I'm not going to subscribe to Terence Pearl's wackowebsite any day soon, but when you see what I saw in a small hate filled room on the edge of Rotterdam last night, you start to think anything's possible. Maybe when all this is over a bunch of tech guys from Lockheed-Martin are gonna come out with huge grins all over their faces and pull a switch out of Susan Bekker's robot ass and turn her off.
RavensWish - OMG Theyre coming!!!! 20th Will get a ticket will get to meet them will become just like them second happiest day of my life @TotenHerzen #tourdates
Darrengroom - @ravenswish whats the first happiest day of your life?
RavensWish - the day I meet #susanbekker
WhiteRotterdam - @ravenswish careful what you wish for
The Independent
Toten Herzen Finalise Concert Dates and Album Reissues
New releases will only be available on vinyl
Forever devoted to being different and after earlier press releases stating the band wouldn't do things the normal way, Toten Herzen have announced that their back catalogue will be remastered and reissued as a box set on vinyl only.
Rob Wallet, the band's publicist explained, "We want fans to experience Toten Herzen as they would have done in the 1970s. On vinyl with a record player, listening to the music." The band feels that digital format allows people to be distracted by other things, making the music nothing more than background noise. "If people want to listen to Beyonce while they're ironing then that's up to them, but you can't carry a record player around with you. You have to make the effort."
The five original albums - four studio recordings and the live album DeadHeartsLive - will be accompanied by a bonus disc containing tracks made up of original Toten Herzen instrumental overdubs with remixed vocals recorded by fans on the internet. The bonus disc will be titled Janus Head, with royalties from sales going to the fans chosen to appear.
Regarding the six concert dates, tickets will only be available from the band's website. Fans will have to collect their tickets on the night with ID to stop them being bought by touts and then sold on at a mark up. Refunds will be available if fans can't make it to the show.
Toten Herzen first announced a comeback in March of this year, but the process to reach this point has been fraught, with one major label deal falling through and a series of murders connected to the band's visit to New York in September. When the Independent spoke to Rob Wallet he insisted the band would be arriving at the concerts by coach, not a spaceship. However, there are still no plans for the band to appear in public before the first concert at the New Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam on November 14th.
Barry Steeles, a business advisor to several independent record labels described Toten Herzen's vinyl exclusivity as both an acknowledgement of illegal downloading and the resurgence in the popularity of vinyl. "More people are rediscovering the appeal of vinyl. Whilst it is not going to reverse digital sales, people are finding that vinyl offers a wider dynamic range, which means better sound quality, better value for money in that sleeve artwork is more substantial, and the listening experience is, as Rob Wallet points out, more immediate. You are less inclined to do something else. Of course people will have to go out and start buying record players again, but I suspect a lot of people will buy the box set first and worry about how they're going to play it later."
But some things never change: the box set will be released at midnight on Halloween. "Purely coincidental," insisted Rob Wallet.
Daily Mirror
The Toten Herzen Advent Calendar
> Countdown to mayhem begins
Free in next week's Daily Mirror. Every day next week we'll be giving away free your own Toten Herzen Black Advent Calendar counting down to Armageddon, the Halloween release date of their unplayable remastered back catalogue.
To demonstrate their understanding of the modern music industry Toten Herzen have decided to re-release all their albums on vinyl, a format available to less than one percent of the population. Your Daily Mirror Black Advent Calendar will count the days before the fiasco begins. Fourteen days later Toten Herzen will play the first date of the comeback tour where, no doubt, frustrated fans will demand why the band haven't reissued the music digitally.
If you have a record player let us know so that we can tell Toten Herzen who to sell their overpriced white elephant to. Maybe they'll throw in a few unsold tickets while they're at it.
33 (September)
Stella Artois was on offer, four bottles for five pounds. Rob Wallet stood facing the windows of the Tesco Metro trying to remember the last time he had swallowed beer. The supermarket was living inside what used to be The Emporor inn; alive inside the dead shell of a former pub. But Wallet wasn't here to do a bit of evening shopping, he had agreed to meet Terence Pearl. The location was significant because the Emperor, in Ipswich, back in 1973, had been the last pub that Peter Miles had drunk in and from here, accompanied and then abandoned by Micky Redwall, had walked off into the night and vanished.
We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1) Page 24