by Alex James
The Toad Hall martinis were big and sloppy with whopping great olives. At least they were made with good gin. I sat on the barstool, sparked up a Camel and cast my clearing thoughts wide. That was when I knew I had to get some magnets. I had a really good chew over the properties of magnets, a whole martini’s worth. They suddenly seemed very strange and interesting. Why did they want to stick to each other, and why did they have two ends?
I said, ‘Where can I get some magnets?’ to the next guy at the bar. He said, ‘Canal Street, they’ve got all kinds. Yikes, what a nasty martini. It’s too long. The gin wasn’t cold enough. They should keep it in the refrigerator.’
He took some postcards out of a jacket that had a lot of pockets and began to hunt for a pen. He offered me a postcard, which I wrote to Magnea. I explained to her that I was in New York, looking for magnets. I bought the guy a beer. His name was Robert, he was an artist and his father was a scientist, and he knew a lot about magnets. We decided to get some good martinis. I called Kelly. Kelly ran Spy. In London, going out was straightforward. The Groucho was the best place to go. Everybody knew that and everybody went there. In New York, the best place to go was always changing. You’d go somewhere in February and Jasmine Guinness and Liberty Ross would be there and you’d leave with Chloë Sevigny, and then if you went back to the same spot in April it would have closed and the whole neighbourhood become completely passé and unmentionable. Spy had a good eighteen months at the top. It was a huge cave with big sofas and small martinis, low lighting, and all the most expensive and impossible women in New York.
‘Kelly, it’s Alex James, cheers, mate. Yeah, great, look, I’m round the corner, but I’ve lost my shoes. Is that going to be all right? Two of us. Of course I’m drunk! Best behaviour, promise. See you in a mo, then.’
It’s most pleasing to be told by a door gorilla that there is absolutely no way you can come in without any shoes, asking for the boss and being greeted by him with open arms and escorted to a table. Robert had taken his shoes off and hung them around his neck. His hands were covered in oil, his hair was a mad frizz and he was wearing supermarket clothes. He was good-looking though.
We had a couple of martinis and went back to Toad Hall. Angela was there. She was Damien’s ex-girlfriend. She’d lost everyone, too. It was getting late and the three of us went to play snooker. She was quite good at it. I crashed in her room at The Gramercy Park Hotel, woke up, got some new shoes and a toothbrush. Things always work out eventually in New York.
I managed to stay up for the rest of the weekend and took the redeye back to Heathrow, arriving Monday morning. I wasn’t allowed to take any of the magnets on to the plane, though. They set off every buzzer in the airport. I got to the studio in time, but I was in pieces. I could hardly speak. Damon’s face was as tightly set as Damien’s had been before his show when I arrived at the session, in my ragged couture. Everything was set up and ready to go. As soon as Graham started playing the guitar I felt superhuman. I picked up the bass and music was pouring out of me. Melody had an intensity that it lacked in my everyday state of mind. The music collected and connected all the strange emotions I was brimming with. By midday we’d written ‘Beetlebum’. It was a completely new sound.
Still, it was relentless. It was Dave’s birthday and he wanted to go out. London was in full swing, Cool Britannia was in business and governed from its headquarters, the Groucho Club, which was getting bigger and more packed with out-of-control success stories. I took Dave there. He hated everything about it and had a really good time. The walking wounded were returning from New York and there were cheers as unaccounted-for stragglers arrived.
Mayfair
I was missing Iceland. I thought about Magnea sometimes, living in that faraway place. We had similar minds. She was as full of hedonistic abandon as I was. I wondered what life with her would be like. She was carefree, clever and pretty and it was impossible to say where life would whisk her. She had everything; she had the whole world at her fingertips and the whole world wanted to grab her and swallow her. Damon had found something in Iceland, too, not a woman but a place of sanctuary. He wanted to record all his vocals in Reykjavik.
We both couldn’t wait to get back there. Graham wasn’t keen on leaving Camden. The four of us laid down more backing tracks at Mayfair Studios in Primrose Hill. Maison Rouge had become too smelly.
Primrose Hill is a precious enclave of beautiful houses and beautiful people just to the north of Regent’s Park, a quiet and pretty haven. A trip to the ciabatta man at lunchtime would often yield a minor celebrity encounter.
Mayfair was a new studio and a new way of working. Until then, everything had been recorded on to tape but Streetie had a new computer-recording system. Songs and parts could be edited, slowed down, speeded up, reversed, quantised and cut and pasted together very easily. ‘Essex Dogs’, the last track on the album, used a lot of computer trickery. Musically, it’s probably the most accomplished thing the band have done, with quite sophisticated counterpoint and cross rhythms, virtuoso playing. Those are never the ones people remember, though.
‘Song 2’ was about the simplest thing we’ve ever done, and the quickest. Dave set up two drumkits and he and Graham played them both at the same time. The loud guitar in the chorus is actually a bass going through a home-made distortion box. The whole thing was done in about fifteen minutes. I had a bad hangover and I felt horrible. It’s a nasty record and it wouldn’t have sounded so nasty if I’d gone to bed early the night before. We did it without thinking too much about it and felt better afterwards.
‘Beetlebum’ and ‘Song 2’, the two big singles on the Blur album, our fifth, were written much the same way as we’d written everything, around a chord sequence or riff or melody initiated by Damon, four guys in a room with no windows, kicking arse. Some of the other songs on that record were more individual efforts. We were all making records with other people and we didn’t need each other so much as we had, but when the four of us were all on form, collaborating, was when the best music was made.
Graham and I were both the worse for wear one Friday morning and popped into the Queen, a pub on the corner of Regent’s Park. For some reason we had our Ivor Novello awards with us. I guess we were showing off. They’d just been delivered to the studio as we were leaving for the pub. Among musicians, ‘Ivors’ are probably the most coveted of all the industry gongs. They are awarded for songwriting. Having gold and platinum discs on display at home is in bad taste. I gave those to my mum. I always find it peculiar when people have big pictures of themselves on the walls, too. It’s not quite right. Most awards get lost, given away or broken on the night they are received. Even if they survive the evening, awards belong in offices, not in the home. Apart from Ivor Novellos. You can put those on your mantel-piece and people in the know will think all the better of you for it. Graham and I were sitting on stools in ‘the top Queen’ with the awards sitting on the bar in front of us. They are quite distinctive, a small figurine of a Muse.
The pub was quite empty. We sat there, easy in each other’s company. Graham and I so often spent time in an empty pub, somewhere or other. I hadn’t really seen much of him lately, because I’d been in Iceland with Damon and also because he had a new girlfriend. I could talk to Graham about anything, and he usually knew more than I did, but he needed looking after. That was part of his charm. He was very lovable. There was no one cooler than Graham. He always fucked things up more fantastically than I could ever manage, which, somehow, I respected him for. If I was drunk, he managed to make me look less ridiculous by being always a little bit drunker. If I was worried about something irrational, it usually turned out that he was slightly more worried about something slightly further fetched. I worried about a lot of things. Unsupportable anxiety was commonplace, especially in the mornings, when the gross misconduct of the night before came flooding back. Despite all our triumphs and conquests we all worried and felt just as hopeless and stupid as everybody else.
&n
bsp; All four of us drove each other into rages occasionally but we all wore each other’s company well, usually. I felt closer to Graham than anybody, though. He was my best friend; not just in the band: in the world. I would have sat next to him at school. There was nothing I ever had to hide from him, no matter how heinous it seemed. He was totally absorbed by music and had such an obviously brilliant musical mind that I don’t think he ever felt the need to demonstrate anything to anybody, unless he was in the mood. Most people accept the mindless drudgery of record promotion. It was painful for him. He was only interested in playing the guitar. Music is a natural, continuous quality and it flowed from him.
I was trying to draw Magnea’s nose, to show Graham exactly what it looked like. It was a good nose. An elderly gentleman came to the bar to order a drink. He said, ‘I’ve got one of those.’ I said, ‘What? One of Magnea’s noses?’ He said, ‘No, one of those - an Ivor.’ We didn’t believe him at all, so he went home and got it. Then he put it on the bar next to ours. His name was Sandy, and he’d got his Ivor for writing the theme music to Upstairs, Downstairs. It happened to be Graham’s favourite song ever. They became very involved after that, and I wandered back to the studio. Damon had put his award on one of the speakers behind the mixing desk. I put mine on the other one, to make a stereo pair. Many hours later, Graham arrived back at the studio with Sandy. Damon saw them stumbling through the front door on the CCTV. He said, ‘Who the FUCK has Graham dragged in now?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a songwriter he met in the pub.’ ‘Songwriter?’ said Damon. ‘Songwriter! He’s a songwriter, is he? Has he got a fucking Ivor Novello award? No. I don’t think so.’ At which point Sandy fell through the door clutching a figurine in an outstretched hand.
Favourite Places
We all occupied different corners of London. Dave was married in Hampstead. Graham was a confirmed Camden Town person. He spent most of his time in the Good Mixer with his entourage, like it was his dressing room. He was cock of the roost there. It was a cul-de-sac though. There was never anyone new and interesting in that pub. Damon lived in Notting Hill. I find that part of town particularly irritating. It suits him because he thrives on antagonism. All the most annoying people in the world live in Notting Hill. The people who live there think they’re it because they had dinner in a restaurant and that Damon Albarn was there and he was making such a fuss, and they’re on the guest list for Reading because Hugo did the sponsorship marketing. Damon is the only cool person who lives in Notting Hill. Forget about the rest of them, they don’t know Jack, even if they’ve got his phone number.
I loved living in the West End, the fountain of everything new and wonderful. The others muttered their disapproval about the company I was keeping. It’s fair to say that the Groucho Club was not a wholesome place. Damon and Graham weren’t the only ones who objected to it. To some people, it was objectionable overall in every way imaginable: a proudly exclusive, sugary cocktail of celebrity, money, frocks and genius. I loved it. In 1996, forget New York: the Groucho Club was the best place in the world to go for a drink. Famous people are the worst star-fuckers of everybody and there’s nothing that goes down better in the Groucho than the latest new famous person, and, just for a moment, that was me.
Like a toddlers’ playgroup, the place was run almost entirely by women. There were men working behind the bar, but the power and the discipline were in the hands of no-messing matriarchs. Bollockings for atrocious behaviour were meted out with terrible feminine force, usually in the cold light of day, when offenders were confronted with a laundry list of misdemeanours. Gordanna was the most feared manageress. ‘Forget about what Keith was doing, I’ll be talking to him about that separately, you can’t keep riding that bicycle down the stairs. Someone is going to get hurt.’ ‘What? Well, I’m not surprised you’ve got a sore leg. You’re a bloody idiot. Do you want another Bloody Mary? And if you want to pay the pianist five hundred pounds to play “Wichita Lineman” for an hour, get him to come round your house and do it.’ ‘Well, I’m not surprised you can’t remember, you’re a fucking idiot. Honestly, Alex.’
In the Groucho it was sometimes hard to tell whether the person next to me at the bar was someone I’d recently met, or someone I recognised vaguely from off the television. Sometimes it was both. It didn’t seem to matter too much. Quite regularly now people were making that kind of mistake with my face. ‘Hey, don’t I know you? I’m sure we’ve met.’ They were always mortally embarrassed when they realised. Living behind a familiar face is like driving a flash car. There are always some people who’ll want to put a big scratch on it, and you have to be careful where you park. The Groucho was the right kind of car park, but the thing that made it really special was that Damien was often there. Britpop was never a scene. It was a lot of not very brilliant bands copying two or three good ones, and the good bands never really saw eye to eye. The burgeoning art explosion was exactly the opposite. The artists were unified as a group and they relied on each other but they didn’t plagiarise each other.
Damien’s star was rising. He’d completely charmed the entire staff of the Groucho by buying them drinks, telling them jokes and doing drawings for them. They vied for his attention and the place was never closed to him. He could delight and attract people in a way that opened doors and arms, like Tabitha’s face did. Even when he was wearing Prada he had a faintly agricultural mien. His main talent, and he had many, was that he was good at getting the best out of people. He raised everyone’s game.
Damien was the undisputed king of the art set. The artists in his circle were like a huge band. Their work was all highly individual, but his ambition, charisma and acumen drew them all together. He was a true catalyst, he stimulated everybody and as they all tried to outsmart each other, the range and content of their work blossomed. The art crowd’s appetite for each other and for everything raged and they decorated the dives of Dean Street with their presence. Soho was fizzing. It meant staying up all night could lead to interesting encounters. There was a big mad family of extraordinary people who didn’t want to go to bed yet. I was drawn into the crowd by a cocktail of sexual chemistry and intellectual magnetism. Minds raced all through the night. It was inspiring. I found new reference points, my horizons broadened.
Damien’s discourse was a combination of gags, poetry, repartee and swearing and his mind raced to the top and bottom of things and made strange connections. He loved making people change their minds and was good at it. Famous faces might turn heads, but he was someone who could turn minds inside out. He was part goblin and almost insane and could so easily have been in prison; but then you could say that about most of the Groucho’s cast.
The Groucho led inevitably to other glitzy places. All great artists are great cooks and maybe great cooks are all great artists. Charles Fontaine, the fourth member of the gang, was partial to tripe and prone to huge fits of temper. He had been the chef at Le Caprice.
Damien was a big fan of swanky restaurants, the swankier and more expensive, exclusive and elitist, the better. The posh restaurant is part of the natural environment of the artist. The best restaurants are the ones with the best people in. Unless you’re really hungry, people are far more interesting than food. A great restaurant makes the rest of the world seem very ordinary and that sensation of glamour is a hard thing to achieve. Very few places have glamour. Glamour makes hearts beat a bit faster, luxury makes hearts beat slower and, when the balance is right, you float away. Le Caprice is so discreet that you could walk right past it without realising it was there. You wouldn’t ever walk past it because it’s tucked at the bottom of a dead-end street behind Piccadilly.
To eat there is to leave a clamouring world behind and spend a couple of hours in the clouds. It’s the best restaurant in the world. America is great for pizza and anything you can eat with your fingers, but they can’t do the fiddly, classy stuff. There are restaurants in France where the food is better and the rooms are grander, but they are often full of ghastly rich no
n-French people boasting to each other in loud voices. Le Caprice is chic. From the moment I walked in for the first time and caught the mellow hum of hot gossip, until the brandies arrived, nothing could have been finer.
It was a long summer Sunday evening the first time I went there. We strolled up Piccadilly. I was wearing shorts from Deptford Market. It was easy to see why Keith and Damien irritated people. Damien was going through a phase of shouting exquisite obscenities whenever it went quiet and you just never knew what Keith was going to do next. I sometimes found it excruciatingly funny and begged them to stop, and sometimes I just begged them to stop. Their girlfriends were with us, and Jay Jopling, Damien’s Old Etonian art dealer. The maître d’ greeted Damien warmly and professionally. Then Damien whispered something in his ear that made him practically bend in two. No matter how drunk Damien was, he never lost the ability to make people split their sides, even sometimes people he’d really been annoying. He’d go to great lengths to win people over or exasperate them further. The jokes flowed continuously. I had tears streaming down my face, and pains in my sides.
There was slapstick, wit, wordplay, anecdote, funny faces and rude noises. Because he could deliver a joke so perfectly the punchline spent most of the time waiting in the distance as he elaborated and extemporised. A regular customer on the next table made a complaint about Damien’s language, and having discovered who he was complaining about, came over to say hello. I think Jay managed to sell him a painting. Ideas flew out of Damien, like they fly out of everybody, but he was a man of action. He made his dreams come true.