by Finch, Paul
With the single exception, apparently, of Mike Broderick, Executive Music Producer for Century Films.
“What I don’t get, Troy,” Joe said from the bar, where he was inexpertly mixing himself a cocktail, “is why, if this movie is about Julius Caesar, it’s got anything to do with a stately home in Hampshire.”
“Ah …” Troy winked. “You will.”
Joe sipped at his drink, before pulling a disgusted face and shoving it to one side.
Our budget didn’t seemingly stretch to having our own on-board barkeep, though, as it was, we were riding a forty-seat, fully air-conditioned long-haul cruiser, complete with bar facilities (so long as you were prepared to pour your own), reclining seats and VCR. We were currently speeding through the leafy byways of southern England, having agreed – with no small reluctance (the whole thing was testimony to Troy’s powers of persuasion) – to spend a whole week at a seventeenth century pad called Rillington Chase, and to mull over a potential new project that our manager was dead keen for us to work on. Aside from that, none of us knew too much about it.
“Just accept it as a nice holiday, and the chance to make a quick few hundred-thou while you’re at it,” Troy added. “If not a whole lot more.”
Joe grunted. “I was already on holiday.”
“Suppose you were about to make a few hundred-thou as well?” Charlie asked, glancing over the top of his broadsheet.
Joe looked hurt at that. “You never know.”
But of course we did know. All of us.
Joe Lee’s career as a professional showbiz pundit wasn’t exactly catapulting him across the firmament like a meteor; I don’t think he’d been asked for his opinion on a new release by any radio station that mattered for eight years or more. The truth was that we’d, none of us, really done well since we’d stopped recording. We all had plenty of money, it would be churlish to deny that; but a string of failed business ventures lay in our collective wake, not to mention the odd disastrous book or solo project. Joe, our lead guitar, had done his share of session work, but he’d always been first and foremost an ‘axe-grinder’, lacking the true finesse of a Clapton or a Brian May, and even that door had eventually closed on him.
In fact, to look at any one of us now, you’d never believe that we’d once filled countless football stadia or sold over a hundred million records. To begin with we were all in our early fifties, in terms both of age and waistline. Charlie Smollet, our drummer and elder statesman, tended to wear sweaters, slacks and sensible shoes, and today resembled someone from middle management out on a team-building break, rather than a one-time rock and roll hellraiser. Rob Ricketson, our keyboards and percussion wizard – and probably the genius behind our most groundbreaking work – still sported the shaggy mane and untrimmed ’tash that he’d had all those years ago, but it was now generously streaked with grey. Joe, who’d used to come swaggering on stage in full biker regalia, with a ciggie hanging from his lips and a menacing sneer on his truculent, boyish face, these days opted for nothing more outlandish than a t-shirt and tracksuit pants, not at all concerned to conceal his hefty beer-paunch. Then there was me, Rick Bailey: I’d always suffered from that archetypical bass-player’s affliction – anonymity, though these days, possibly because I worked out and lived in Tenerife, and was thus reasonably tanned and fit, I tended to get pushed to the front if there was an interview to be given. Not that I ever enjoyed this. With my bronzed looks and iron-grey curls, I always felt like some latter-day George Hamilton. And finally, there was Luke Hennessey, our lead vocalist, who would always, basically – be Luke.
2
I don’t think we’d ever set out with the express intention of becoming metal-heads.
We formed Wolfbane in April ’71, in Blackburn, Lancashire, with a simple plan to play high energy rock and roll. We’d only had long hair and sideburns and wore greasy, stonewashed denims because everybody else did. Troy Tooley had seen something in us, however – some inner wrath or turmoil, some frenzied but creative tour de force that simply had to be unleashed. And of course, as always, he’d had his finger right on the pulse, because in 1971 all that violent, vitriolic stuff was just about to become very, very hip.
We were doing the clubs at the time; small, sweaty, smoky venues, whose volatile atmosphere had ideally encapsulated what we were about. But it wasn’t all anger and aggression. Thanks to the recently-deceased ‘acid era’, rock was still about the weird and wonderful: mysticism, fantasy, dream-like states in which ideal, ‘Elvish’ modes of existence vied with darker powers often represented in the unsophisticated but instantly understandable forms of goblins and evil sorcerers. Our first album was Swords of Chaos , and it contained tracks like Knight’s Vigil and Woe to the Conquered . Our second, Firestorm , featured a fifteen minute epic called Iliad , which at one point was cut with battle noises – pounding hooves, clashing blades and screams of rage – unofficially pillaged from various ‘sword and sandal’ movie soundtracks. And all of this, of course, was served up with spasms of searing guitar-work, ear-splitting vocals, state-of-the-art synth effects and thunderous, bludgeoning drum rhythms. At the time, the only bands in the UK doing anything similar to us were Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Not bad company to be in, if you know your music, though we didn’t just feed off their publicity. We were able to riff with the best of them, and while our songs weren’t perhaps so memorable, our onstage performances were, frankly, explosive. Audiences were still lulled by the peace-loving late-’60s, many exponents of which were by then drifting out of flower power and into the even more gentle and melodic folk and country scene. We must have hit them like a steel fist. I remember certain reviews at the time. Rolling Stone said we were “rock’s new power-punchers”. Oz called us “a shock even to our system!”
And yet here we were, a blink of an eye later (at least, that’s the way it seemed) wandering around a gravelled car park, straightening out cricks in our backs, rubbing our stiff necks and generally grumbling like aged codgers as we tried to get the circulation going after only a couple of hours’ on a coach. We didn’t even have a bunch of glamorous, sleazy women to help us out with it.
In fact, only one member of the fair sex was present, and that was Barbara, Charlie’s wife, who was now as much a part of Wolfbane history as screaming guitars, tasseled leather jackets or phantasmagoric album sleeves. She’d started out, like so many, as a groupie, an ex-biker chick in fact, but once she’d got her hooks into our drum maestro she’d never let him go. Not that he’d wanted her to. Bleached blonde but with a pretty face and incredible, torpedo-like bosoms, and good company to boot – a riot at dinner parties, and able to argue intellectualisms with the best of them (but never a power-seeker, and thus no threat to the band’s unity) – she had clearly been the soul-mate that God had always intended for him, and we’d been happy to take her along. They’d married in 1978, and had been inseparable ever since. These days she was a less sultry presence, being grey-haired (short and spiked up – it suited her) and running voluptuous-to-overweight, but she was as witty and intelligent as ever, and now so familiar to us that I think we regarded her as a sort of surrogate mother rather than a mate’s tantalizing bit of fluff.
The rest of us were currently without female company. Joe, though he’d waded through rivers of prostrate women in his rampant youth, had never married; in fact he’d never even had a regular girlfriend, which I think he now bitterly regretted. Rob had got married, back in the early ’70s, to a childhood sweetheart, but it hadn’t lasted. His new girlfriend, Sheena – who was about twenty years his junior, and something big in the fashion industry – was presently in Paris at a show. My wife, Andrea, who I’d only hooked up with in the early ’90s, and who was also my business partner, had not been able to come over as it was now May, and the season was just warming up down in the Canaries. We ran three bars and two nightclubs in Los Cristianos, so there was no way we could both be absent at this time of year. In fact, I’d scarcely been off my mob
ile to her since I’d arrived back in England, which had probably got on everyone else’s nerves.
But my loyalty to Andrea, like Charlie’s loyalty to Barbara and Rob’s loyalty to Sheena, did not stop us all suddenly ceasing our feeble perambulations and gazing in open admiration at the woman who Troy was now bringing across the car park towards us. If you can imagine Gwyneth Paltrow in riding boots, jodhpurs and a smart tweed jacket, you’d be somewhere close to the mark. This lady was thirty at the most, but tall, statuesque and wore her long, darkly golden hair twisted into a neat pony-tail, which hung over her right shoulder. In addition to this she was devilishly handsome, with glittering green eyes and very full lips. Before we could compliment her, however, she complimented us .
“Wow!” she said with an excited smile. “The original Wolfbane.”
We glanced at each other nervously. There was a hurried clearing of throats.
Charlie ambled forward, hands behind his back. “You look impressed, Miss …?”
“Ryder-Howe,” she said, still beaming.
“Miss Ryder-Howe.” Then he shook his head with deep regret. “Unfortunately, that’s a sure sign you can’t remember us.”
Miss Ryder-Howe laughed. “I remember you alright. I saw you at Reading in ’83.”
Charlie shook his head all the more. “That’s a shame.”
“Oh?”
Joe – on stage the aggressive face of the band, but off it always shy and tongue-tied – shuffled from one foot to the other. “He means you didn’t catch us at our best. We were starting to get old.”
“Well it didn’t show,” Miss Ryder-Howe replied. “I loved that record you did about the Trojan War.”
Joe smiled. “Iliad .”
“Iliad , yes.”
“I think that one got slagged off for being pretentious even at the time,” Charlie said.
“Well I liked it,” she asserted.
“Because you have exquisite taste,” Troy put in. “Folks, come over here. I’d like to introduce you to Lucille properly.”
We shuffled forward, still awkward, desperately trying to mind our manners. And that would be us – Wolfbane, who’d once been as famous for our bar room brawls, police busts and round-the-world shagging exploits as the Royal Navy ever were. One by one, we nodded and smiled as Troy introduced us, stepping up and shaking Miss Ryder-Howe’s hand. I swear, it was all we could do not to tug our forelocks. This was probably a combination of our hostess’s effortless upper class grace, and the low self-esteem, which, after so many years of watching ourselves fade from the music-buying public’s memory, now afflicted us like a daily dose of the clap (one Radio One DJ had recently played a rap cover-version of our classic number, Dog’s Moon , and afterward asked if anyone knew who the credited songwriters, Hennessey, Lee and Ricketson were). Not that Miss Ryder-Howe was in any way snooty or superior, even though she was clearly a fully paid-up member of the landed gentry and we were working-class oiks born and bred.
“Lucille is the proud owner of Rillington Chase,” Troy said, turning and presenting the house and its expansive grounds to us. “Where you’ll be spending the next week, entirely at her generous expense.”
It was hard not to be impressed by the house. We’d all spotted it immediately on arrival here, but now that we had the owner in our company, and the stiffness of the coach-trip was wearing off, we could appreciate it properly. It wasn’t gigantically vast, but of a sufficient size to dominate the surrounding parkland, and built in an economic, rectangular style with marble and white stone. I’m no expert on architecture, but a brochure I’d already read had informed me that the house’s ‘classical’ design dated from the Restoration period of the 1660s, and that its many elegant adornments included “hipped roofs, pediments, dornier windows and cornices”. At a guess, I’d expect it to go for five or six million, the rolling acres of formal gardens included, of course; the gravel drive swept up to its palatial front doors between two lawns that were more like green velvet.
“People still own these places?” Joe said wonderingly. “I thought they were all in the hands of the National Trust, or something?”
“It’s been in my family a long time,” Miss Ryder-Howe replied. “And I intend to keep it that way.”
“Well … if we can strike the album deal that we’re hoping for, the spin-offs for you will be terrific,” Troy said.
Charlie snorted. “If we can strike the deal.” He turned his gloomy face on our hostess again. “You know what the necromancer’s apprentice said to his boss when they tried to revive the Bronze Age warrior they found in the nearby peat bog? … long time dead, man, long time dead.”
Troy waved him away. “Ignore these pessimistic bastards, Lucille. They never thought they were any good even when A King Will Come went to Number One in the UK and Number Three in the States. The deal’s practically done.”
And then, it came.
The inevitable first expletive of the day, delivered in hoarse, screeching tones.
“Oh, baby … oh, fucking hell, baby! ”
And that was Luke’s first contribution to the weekend.
Reluctant as I am to get onto the subject, my hands are tied. I have to talk about Luke Hennessey, our “throat-guy” as he’d always liked to introduce himself, our “lead vocalist” in normal parlance. I’d prefer not to mention him at all, but I simply have to. He’s too integral to the tale. And to the biography of Wolfbane, if the truth be told.
What a waste, though. What a sad waste of an excellent front-man.
Luke had been a founder member of the band; in fact, we’d all been founder members – the line-up had never changed, but it’s important to remember that Luke had been there at the outset because he was so rarely there later on. Formerly a church choirboy, but now with an incredible adult range – he could reach three octaves, can you believe that! – he had thrown himself into the birth of the band with such gusto that for the first few years he was the band. A natural performer in the Mick Jagger mold, he didn’t just sing up a storm on vinyl, but was so charismatic on stage that he had girls throwing their knickers at him long before Tom Jones had ever heard of such lewd antics. He also wrote. Boy, did he write – soaring, extravagant lyrics, which drew on all the familiar mythologies and Tolkienesque fantasies of the era, but which were so politicised, so scathing, so riddled with angst and violence that they took the traditional, empty-headed hippie dreaming onto an entirely new plane. In appearance too, he was right on the nail. I mean, Luke cut a dash even in the age of Glam. He’d come on stage in skin-tight spandex pants, billowing silk shirts, reams of beads and gothic jewellery, leather doublets, thigh-length boots. His lacquered jet-black tresses flowed around him; mascara stained his pallid cheeks. At the time, such in-yer-face flamboyance was more than sexy; it was dark, decadent, dangerously transgressive.
And this, I think, is where the problems start. Because all these years later – and yes, he still dressed in exactly the same way – with his once-formidable physique shrunken through years of abuse, his limbs like pipe-stems, his hair dyed and thinning, his face a wrinkled parchment and personal hygiene his lowest priority, it was all rather – well, skuzzy. You see, Luke had spent the best part of his career doing the many risky things that rock stars are supposed to do, but which those who really want to make a success of themselves, actually don’t: partying ’til dawn every night of the week, getting arrested, endlessly bingeing, not just on wild and willing girls, but on drugs and booze, and potentially lethal mixtures of both – to such an extent, in fact, that entire tours had had to be cancelled because he simply wasn’t up to the job. He’d twice had to be resuscitated in hospital intensive-care units after unintentionally OD’ing.
He was more of an apparition now than an actual presence, and as he came stumbling off the bus that warm May evening, still yawning, his unwashed hair sticking every which way, a pair of purple-tinted shades protecting his fragile eyes, he made a very unpleasant apparition indeed. As he homed in on Mis
s Ryder-Howe, she regarded him with something close to undisguised horror.
“You must know Luke Hennessey?” Troy said, stepping nimbly between them.
“Er … how could I not?” she replied.
“Used to be our vocalist,” Troy added.
Luke glanced round at him. “Used to be?”
“Slip of the tongue. Sorry.” Troy turned back to Miss Ryder-Howe. “Well … shall we go in? I believe there’re some staff who can come and collect our bags, yes?”
She beamed. “Of course. This way, everyone.”
We followed her at a leisurely pace, trying, I think, to take it all in our stride, to make out that we were used to such lavish environs.
“We’re here, bud,” Joe said, taking Luke by the arm and trying to draw him back to reality.
“Er … yeah,” Luke replied, tottering alongside him. “Where’s here, man?”
I brought up the rear, enjoying the tranquility of the evening. And it was only then, as I strolled casually along, that I first noticed the trees. Don’t misunderstand me. To get to the manor house, we’d driven for ten minutes through its grounds, and as I said, they were all superbly landscaped and included stands of trees everywhere, but this particular bunch of trees looked different from the rest. They were densely packed together, and, while everything else we’d seen had been pruned and snipped and trimmed, these seemed to have been allowed to grow with wild abandon. They were located to the left-hand side of the main drive, just beyond the nearest lawn, which was about thirty yards from where we were now. Every type of species was visible – chestnut, holly, hazel, sallow, hornbeam, sycamore, yew, silver birch – in a single unbroken rampart. I realised I was seeing the outer fringe of an actual wood, though even by English woodland standards, there was very little space in there, and even less daylight. How far back it went was anyone’s guess. Sunlight dappled the outer trunks, but beyond those I saw nothing except leaf and shadow.
And – very fleetingly – a hint of movement.