Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  Even Jasper can identify the hatred in Steve Marriott’s face.

  ‘So sorry if I touched a raw nerve,’ says Jimmy Savile. ‘Shall I lend you the bus fare home?’

  Chin-chingggggg! Howie Stoker, freshly returned from Saint-Tropez, sporting a turquoise blazer, taps a wine glass with a spoon in the private function room in Durrants Hotel. His week in Saint-Tropez has deepened his tan. If he was a roast chicken, thinks Jasper, he was in the oven twenty minutes too long. Chinggggggggg! Howie’s gaze circumambulates the private room. Guests include Freddy Duke of the Duke-Stoker Agency, underneath Moonwhale; Levon, in a raspberry-and-vanilla-striped suit; Bethany, with her hair up, black pearls and a black dress; Elf still in her Top of the Pops warrior squaw get-up; Bruce Fletcher in rusty flannel and shark’s tooth necklace; Bea Holloway, dressed like an acting student at RADA; a pale art student called Trevor Pink who’s come with Bea and has pink paint on his hands, so he’s easy to remember; Dean in his Union Jack jacket, Dean’s girlfriend Jude, who’s fractionally taller than Dean; Griff; Humpty-faced A&R man Victor French, and whippet-faced publicist Nigel Horner. Too many eyes. Social gatherings are archery ranges and memory tests.

  Chingggggggggggg! A hush descends.

  ‘Friends,’ Howie Stoker begins, ‘Moonwhalers and well-wishers. I’d like to say just a few words. So I shall! When I told my buddies back in New York I was venturing into the music biz in London, a typical reaction was, “Howie, are you nuts? A Wall Street maestro you may be, but you’re a showbiz novice and those limeys’ll milk you dry!” My enemies just laughed, fit to bust, at the prospect of Howie Stoker losing his goddamn shirt. Well. Those sons of bitches sure as hell aren’t laughing now! Not now that my very first signing’s very first single is in the UK Top Thirty!’

  Cheers and applause bubble up and spill over.

  ‘We’re here today because of five truly talented individuals,’ says Howie Stoker. ‘Let’s name ’em and shame ’em, one by one.’

  Five? wonders Jasper. He must be including Levon.

  ‘First: our gorgeously proportioned, lyre-strumming, ivory-tinkling Queen of Folk. The one, the only, Miss Elf Holloway!’

  Applause. Aristocrats look down from paintings spaced around the room. Elf’s smile strikes Jasper as complicated.

  Howie Stoker turns to Dean. ‘Plenty of folks say that a bassist is a failed lead guitarist. I say, “Horse pucky!” Round of applause!’

  People applaud. Dean lifts his glass jauntily.

  Howie Stoker pushes on. ‘Drummers are unjustly the butt of too many jokes. Jokes like …’ Howie unfolds a sheet of paper and puts on his glasses ‘… “What’s the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?” Anyone? “One will mature and make money.”’ A few polite smiles. Griff nods, like he’s heard it all before. ‘“What has three legs and an asshole?” No? “A drum-stool”! One more? Here we go: “What do you call a beautiful woman on the arm of a drummer?”’

  Griff makes a megaphone of his hands: ‘A tattoo.’

  ‘You’re treading on my lines, Griff! Next up – the man who penned Utopia Avenue’s first hit, first of many, I have no doubt. Our King of the Stratocaster, Jasper de Zoet!’ He mispronounces Jasper’s name and raises his glass. Jasper avoids all the eyes by focusing very hard on the flake of pastry on Howie Stoker’s lapel.

  Chingggggggggggg. ‘I’m not a man to blow my own trumpet,’ says Howie Stoker, brushing his lapel, ‘so I won’t bang on about my instrumental role – pun intended, you betcha – in creating Utopia Avenue. So I’ll let the results speak for themselves and say a few words about my guide and my mentor – my own “gut instinct”. Expertise is cheap. Expertise you can learn, hire or poach. But guts? You’ve got it or you ain’t. Am I right, Victor?’

  The A&R man raises his glass at Howie. ‘Too true, Howie.’

  ‘You see? And when I first met Levon at Bertolucci’s on Seventh Avenue, where Rob Redford, Dick Burton and Humph Bogart often eat, my gut said, “Howie, this is your man.” Same story when I heard the tapes of the band’s Marquee show. My gut literally sat up and told me, “This is your band.” When I met Victor at the Dorchester – why stay anywhere else when en frolique in London, right? – my gut said, “This is the label.” Bang bang bang! Over sixteen thousand sales and one stellar performance on the English TV showcase prove that my gut was on the money again.’

  ‘Guts,’ Griff says in Jasper’s ear, ‘are full o’ fookin’ shit.’

  ‘Do you know the best part?’ Howie Stoker’s grin sweeps the room. ‘This is just the beginning. Victor, I think the hour is nigh for your surprise announcement, s’il vous plaît.’

  ‘Thanks for that inspirational speech, Howie,’ Victor French says. ‘I do indeed bear glad tidings. I just got off the blower with Toto Schiffer in Hamburg. Ilex’s head honcho. He’s given us the green light to record not only a follow-up single to “Darkroom” but also … an LP.’

  Bea, Jude and Elf let out a spontaneous ‘Wooh-wooh!’

  ‘Back o’ the fookin’ net!’ says Griff.

  Dean tilts his chair. ‘Thought yer’d never ask.’

  ‘You’ll need to get cracking,’ Victor French tells the band. ‘We want the LP in the shops well before Christmas.’

  ‘No problem,’ promises Levon. ‘The band has a stack of gig-polished songs ready for vinyl.’

  ‘Ideally, we’ll release a second single a week before the album,’ says Nigel Horner. ‘Maximum noise is the name of the game.’

  ‘I’ll review the gig-book first thing,’ says Levon. ‘Ditch a few of the smaller-fry bookings to make room for studio sessions.’

  ‘Any chance of a real studio this time?’ asks Dean.

  ‘Fungus Hut did a good enough job on “Darkroom”,’ says Victor French. ‘Competitive prices, too.’

  Levon straightens his tie. ‘I know the band will repay Mr Schiffer’s faith with one of the albums of the year.’

  ‘You’re being very quiet, Jasper,’ comments Howie.

  Jasper isn’t sure if this is a criticism or an invitation to speak. He sips at his wine glass and finds it empty.

  ‘We’ll need a couple of new songs out of you,’ says Nigel Horner. ‘Something as catchy as “Darkroom”. Please.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Jasper wants all the eyes off him. He has to concentrate on what he’s afraid he can hear.

  ‘Me ’n’ Elf write songs too, yer know,’ says Dean.

  Here it is … a steady knuckle-on-wood. Knock … knock … knock … quieter than Dean’s protestations, but louder than it was the other day. Nobody else hears it. This message has only one addressee.

  Jasper followed Formaggio’s advice and kept a notebook entitled ‘K2’ for the twelve months between April 1962 and April 1963. In it, he recorded the times, durations and contexts of Knock Knock’s ‘episodes’, written in Dutch. Jasper adopted musical notation to describe the varying styles of knocking: f for forte, ff, fff, cres. for crescendo, bruscamente, rubato, etc. The data established several facts. Knock Knock’s visits tended to cluster close to noon and midnight. Visits were as likely to occur when Jasper was alone as they were when in company, in the shower, studying, in choir, or in the refectory. As the year progressed, the frequency increased from two, three or four visits a week to two, three or four a day. Knock Knock accompanied Jasper to his summer lodgings at Domburg in Zeeland. The knockings lengthened from the triad of knock-knocks heard on the cricket pitch to complex strings of knocks that lasted up to a minute. They also grew louder or nearer. Jasper sensed an intelligence behind the knocks. Sometimes the quality of the knocking sounded desperate, or angry, or grim. Attempts to communicate with Knock Knock – tap once for yes, twice for no – came to nothing. Despite this increased activity, as the months passed, Jasper grew accustomed to him. As aural hallucinations went, a knocking sound was relatively innocuous. It wasn’t a voice claiming to be God, or the devil telling him to kill himself, or even the hanged Jacobite reputed to haunt the stairwell of Swa
ffham House. Compared to Jasper’s classmates who endured epilepsy, the after-effects of polio, blindness in one eye or even a severe stammer, Knock Knock was an easy cross to bear. The loyal Formaggio told nobody, and maintained his curiosity about his roommate’s oddity, but days might pass without the boys mentioning it. Days that Jasper would soon look back upon as the closing of a golden age.

  ‘Those lyrics,’ Victor French tells Jasper, ‘in the last verse of “Darkroom”: “We hid under trees from the rain and the dice; but under the trees the rain rains twice.” I don’t know what it means, but I know what it means.’ A hotel waiter is pouring coffee into china cups from a narrow-spouted silver jug. Port is distributed on silver trays. ‘Where do words like that come from?’

  Jasper wishes he could celebrate Top of the Pops by smoking a joint on a rowing boat on the Serpentine, away from Victor French and Howie Stoker and anyone who requires him to act. ‘It’s hard to talk about writing. I get my words from the same place where you get yours: the language that calls itself “English”. What catches your eye, or ear, are the combinations I put those words into. Ideas float in, like seeds, from the world, from art, from dreams. Or they just occur to me. I don’t know how or why. Then I’ll have a line, which I try to massage so it scans into the rhythm of the whole. I have to consider rhyme, too. Am I choosing an easily rhyme-able last word? Is it too easy to rhyme? Cliché that way lies. Never rhyme “fire” with “desire”. Or “hold me tight” with “tonight”. If it’s too artful, it sounds contrived. “Pepsi Cola” and “Angola”.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Victor French glances at his watch.

  Bruce swaps his empty port glass for a full one, ‘Elf looked incredible on the TV monitors earlier. The camera adored her.’

  ‘We all scrubbed up nicely,’ says Elf.

  ‘I’m waiting for Vogue to call about a cover issue,’ says Griff. ‘I may get a matching scar on the other side of my face.’

  ‘Any woman on Top of the Pops gets a lot of camera time,’ says Elf. ‘We’re an exotic species on the show.’

  ‘It’s your folk background,’ says Bruce. ‘Folk’s all about rapport and authenticity. That’s what the camera picked up on.’

  Dean exhales a blade of smoke. ‘Yer reckon folk music’s got a monopoly on authenticity, do yer Bruce?’

  ‘If you screw up in a folk-club, there’s nowhere to hide. There’s no hordes of screaming girlies to cover you. You’re naked.’

  ‘Sounds like I’ve been visiting the wrong clubs,’ quips Howie.

  ‘So the question is,’ says Bruce, ‘which of Elf’s songs is going to be the follow-up single?’

  ‘Let’s discuss this another time,’ says Elf.

  ‘We settled this in June, Bruce,’ Dean looks for an ashtray and uses a saucer, ‘while yer were dipping in and out and in and out of Gay Paris. Jasper gets the debut, I get the follow-up and Elf gets the third single. That’s also why Elf got the B side on “Darkroom”. Which she’s paid the same royalties for as Jasper’s A side, by the by.’

  ‘It might be wiser,’ says Victor French, ‘to see what comes out of the first few sessions at Fungus Hut before deciding.’

  ‘Victor’s right,’ says Bruce. ‘He’s seen a hundred one-hit wonders die early because they cocked up the second single. The follow up must display the band’s range of flavours.’

  Dean’s turning pink. ‘We’re not a bloody ice-cream parlour.’

  ‘Mate,’ says Bruce, ‘this is the autumn of the Summer of Love. When I hear “Abandon Hope” I hear doom and gloom. To adapt Howie’s pithy phrase, it’s Not Very Now. Elf’s new song, though – “Unexpectedly” – it’s so now, it’s next year. Right, Howie?’

  Jasper doesn’t think that Howie has heard ‘Unexpectedly’, but Moonwhale’s chief investor purses his lips and nods. ‘Surely there’s no harm in seeing what comes out of the sessions.’

  ‘I appreciate everyone’s interest,’ says Elf, ‘but—’

  ‘If the second hit’s an Elf Holloway song,’ says Bruce, ‘our fans will dig that Utopia Avenue is yin and yang. They’ll think, There’s nothing this band can’t do. Girls will dig the band. “Abandon Hope”’s a fab little tune, Dean, don’t get me wrong, but if it follows on from “Darkroom”, Utopia Avenue’ll get put into a pigeonhole labelled “Cream Clones”. Then when Elf sings lead on the third single, all your blues fans’ll think, What’s this girl doing in my band? Imagine a new Rolling Stones single, sung by some chick. Di-saster. We have to establish that Elf’s a core singer now.’

  Dean addresses the room. ‘Ain’t no-one going to say it?’

  ‘Say what?’ Bruce’s smile is illegible to Jasper.

  ‘Sleeping with Elf doesn’t earn yer voting rights.’

  A few gasps, a few mumbles: everyone looks at Elf.

  ‘Guys,’ says Levon, ‘let’s just mellow out a little …’

  ‘How Elf amuses herself in her spare time’s her business,’ says Dean. ‘What is my business is the band. Long ’n’ short of it is, Bruce, yer’ve got no bloody vote in Utopia Avenue. None.’

  Elf sighs. ‘Can we all stop this? We should be celebrating.’

  ‘I don’t want a vote, Dean.’ Bruce speaks like a patient teacher. ‘Yes, I’m Elf’s feller, yes, I’m a lucky man, no, I’m not in the band. But if I see you cruising straight at an enormous iceberg, I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to yell, “Watch out for that bloody enormous iceberg!” And if “Abandon Hope” is your next single, I’m afraid that’s an iceberg.’

  ‘Remind me,’ says Dean. ‘How many Top Twenty hits’ve you had lately, Mr McCartney? I’ve gone ’n’ forgotten.’

  Bruce smiles, confusing Jasper. ‘You don’t have to be a Beatle to have valid views about the music business. Dean.’

  ‘Acting like yer the King of Showbiz when yer’ve got fuck-all on yer CV’ll make yer look a twat. Twat.’

  Brakes screech on the cobbles of Mason’s Yard. The stars are out. A few doors away, the Indica Gallery is having a late private view. Jasper hears laughter. ‘Here we go again,’ says Dean. The two Utopians stand before the door of 13A. Four months have passed since they tried to blag their way in using Brian Epstein’s name. The Beatles’ manager took his own life only a fortnight ago. It was global news for a day or two. ‘Yer new pal promised he’d put our names down, yeah?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Jasper. ‘Though it was just after he’d had a bump of cocaine in the BBC toilets, so … No guarantees.’

  ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ Dean presses the golden doorbell. It rings. The window-slot snaps open and the all-seeing eye appears. ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’

  ‘Hi,’ says Dean. ‘Um, so we’re, um, uh, actually—’

  ‘Mr Moss, Mr de Zoet,’ says the eye. ‘How are you?’

  Dean looks at Jasper, then back to the eye. ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Congratulations on Top of the Pops,’ says the all-seeing eye. ‘The first of many appearances, I’m sure.’

  ‘Cheers,’ says Dean. ‘I didn’t expect, uh …’

  The eye-slot snaps shut and 13A opens, revealing a bald man with a wrestler’s build dressed like a stagecoach driver. Music and chatter spill out. ‘Welcome to the Scotch of St James. I’m Clive. The management instructed me to offer you membership. The office’ll send the paperwork along to Moonwhale in the morning, but for tonight, please step inside …’

  High walls, beautiful people, next year’s fashion, eyes that don’t miss a trick, a corridor that ends in a salon. Smoke is thick, lamplight is golden, mirrors might be doorways or might be mirrors. Jasper avoids these as best he can. Diamonds dangle, laughter boomerangs, champagne is foaming, walls are tartan, bottles line shelves, rumours are spreading, faces are famous but at odd angles, talent is hungry, talent is assessed, lips are glossy, teeth are shown, perfume is French, yobs are northern, debutantes loll and flirt with the rough and the smooth, age woos youth, youth weighs up the pros and cons, senses commingle. Booths line walls. A real stagec
oach sits in a corner. Music throbs up from the cellar. ‘Stick with me, darlin’!’ exclaims a man’s voice, ‘and you’ll fart through silk.’ Jasper feels as if he’s wandered into a zoo without cages.

  Dean mutters in Jasper’s ear, ‘Look! Michael Caine. George Best. No, don’t look.’

  Jasper looks. The famous actor’s laughing at something a swarthy, bearded, shorter man’s saying. ‘Who’s George Best?’

  ‘Yer seriously don’t know who George Best is?’

  ‘I seriously don’t know who George Best is.’

  ‘One o’ the best three footballers on the planet.’

  ‘Right. I’ll get the drinks. What’ll you have?’

  Dean makes a face. ‘What d’yer drink in a place like this?’

  ‘My grandfather always used to say, “If in doubt, ask for a whisky on ice.”’

  ‘Perfect. Cheers. I’ll pop to the bogs. Be right back.’

  Jasper edges a path to the bar, where three voices are bellowing to penetrate the dim din. ‘Yes, Eppy made the Beatles a fortune,’ says Voice One, ‘but he gave the merchandising away. Eppy was just a furniture salesman who got very, very lucky.’

  ‘How come the boys stuck with him?’ asks Voice Two.

  ‘Aha,’ says Voice Three. ‘My driver heard it from Ringo’s driver that they’d agreed to give him the heave-ho when they got back from their weekend with the Maharishi in Wales.’

  ‘But Eppy got wind of the dastardly plot,’ says Voice One. ‘See? His “accidental overdose” starts to look less accidental.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ says Voice Two. ‘He swilled down too many pills, that’s all. Eppy always was more ham than bacon …’

  ‘Stand and deliver.’ Sporting a Mexican hat, Brian Jones is ensconced in a booth with two women. ‘Your whisky or your life. Glad you got here.’ There’s no sign of Dean, so Jasper hands Brian Jones his glass of Kilmagoon. I can always get another when Dean shows up. ‘Meet Miss Cressy –’ Brian Jones indicates a willowy girl with dark ringlets ‘– and Miss Cressy’s bosom friend …’