Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  I-i-i-i-i-f life has shot yer full of ho-o-ooooles –

  a-a-a-a-nd hung yer out to-ooo-oo-o dry …

  Mick Jagger told Dean the hardest part of his job was singing ‘Satisfaction’ for the five-hundredth time as if he’d only written it an hour before, but there’s no danger of ‘Roll Away The Stone’ sounding tired this evening. The size of the crowd heightens Dean’s senses. His voice booms out over the PA and off into the universe like the voice of God …

  a-a-aaa-and slung you in a pau-au-auper’s grave

  down where the dead men li-i-i-i-iiiii-i-i-i-ie –

  Griff clicks his sticks to launch the first chorus. The song grows bigger to fill the bowl of the showground. Dean’s stagecraft is more theatrical than usual and Jasper’s playing is fiercer. During Elf’s roller-coasting Hammond solo, Dean looks at people in the crowd nodding in time and swaying as they drink beers and toke on roll-ups. Where the crush is less, near naked revellers perform the shamanistic dance beloved of film crews at mad hippie festivals.

  The song ends in applause that goes on much longer than Dean would expect for act number eleven on day two. ‘Prove It’ gets a similar reception. Combed-out clouds glow incandescent as the sun sinks. As Jasper hits the first chord of ‘Darkroom’, the stage-lights come on. Jasper’s posh English voice carries an exoticness in the oncoming American twilight that it lacks when they perform the song at home. The rapid punch of ‘The Hook’ grounds the set. They extend the bridge and swathes of audience clap in time. Dean sings with a harnessed ferocity. Everything he tries works. Griff takes a drum solo and gets into a call-and-response sequence with Elf. Somehow it’s funny. Jasper takes a solo that burns up slowly, like a meteor, and smashes to bits at the end of the song. The applause is long and loud. Cocaine’s a pale imitation o’ this, thinks Dean. He mops his face with a damp towel. I hope someone somewhere’s making a quality bootleg o’ this ’cause tonight we’re bloody brilliant. He glances at Levon in the wings, and sees Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead clapping with four fingers against his palm. Dean nods back. Bolívar and his parents are sitting up on some scaffolding.

  Elf plays a few lines of the Moonlight Sonata for fun before seguing into ‘A Raft And A River’. After the riff-sticky madness of ‘The Hook’, her song is a cool glass of water. Faces stare at her, hypnotised. Griff pitter-patters and shushes on his cymbals and hi-hat. Dean and Jasper join in on Elf’s new three-part harmony chorus, inspired by hearing Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and David Crosby singing in Mama Cass’s kitchen. It’s risky – there’s nowhere to hide if harmony turns bad – but they’ve been practising and the applause is vigorous. Bill Quarry calls from the side, tapping his watch and megaphoning through his hands, ‘One more big one!’ It’s Jasper’s pick. Dean’s expecting ‘Sound Mind’, but Jasper calls, ‘Let’s do “Who Shall I Say Is Calling?”’ He wrote the entire song on the flight from New York. His onstage seizure appears to have had the benign side-effect of curing Jasper’s fear of flying. It’s a brave choice. They’ve only played the piece through a few times in the studio, but it does feel like one of those gigs when the songs half play themselves. Elf nods at Dean, who nods at Jasper, who addresses the crowd. ‘Our last song’s our newest. It’s one day old and it’s called “Who Shall I Say Is Calling?”’ He looks at Dean, nods, ‘And one, and two, and three, and—’

  Dean’s there with the blues riff. A, G, F back to A.

  Elf’s Hammond gatecrashes the party, finds its feet and dances a drunken jig. Griff joins in with a round of backbeats, the snare, and distant thunder on the bass drum. Jasper’s guitar picks out a hovering Grateful Dead-style intro before he sings into the mic:

  You loved him in the tropics,

  they labelled you ‘Immoral’;

  you gave me life and kissed my head,

  then sank among the coral.

  You loved her in the tropics,

  when Europe was aflame.

  I’m your indiscretion,

  I have your name.

  Dean wonders if the words make any sense at all to people who don’t know it’s about Jasper’s father. ‘Nightwatchman’ and ‘Darkroom’ feel personal but, actually, aren’t. The first two verses of this new one are raw. In lieu of a chorus, Elf plays a half-jazz-half-blues piano solo of cascading runs before the next verse:

  A priest from long ago,

  hid in the family tree.

  Generations passed until

  the priest demanded liberty.

  A stranger from Mongolia,

  turned me back from suicide.

  He walled the priest up in my mind,

  and gave me five more years to hide.

  When Dean asked Jasper who the priest and the Mongolian were, he just replied, ‘A long story. The short version is, they were voices in my head.’ Jasper now plays a solo. The level’s wrong on his wah-wah pedal and it buzzes, half drowning the guitar. It sounds like an icebreaker smashing through ice. Actually it sounds bloody great, thinks Dean. Jasper must agree: he waves away the sound guy and extends the solo by another round. Even the mishaps are on our side tonight. Jasper steps up to his mic:

  One dark day, the walled-up priest

  erupted from the past –

  I tripped into Hell in the Chelsea Hotel.

  I wasn’t the first, I won’t be the last.

  A psycho-surgeon for the damned,

  A shelter in the gale –

  If not for Marinus of Tyre,

  I’d not be here to tell the tale.

  These two verses have been modified since Dean last heard them: ‘Marinus of Tyre’? Is ‘Tyre’ a place? Or just a tyre? The song’s like ‘Desolation Row’, Dean decides. I can’t say I understand it, but I know ’xactly what it means. He notices Mecca crouching between the spotlights, taking an upwards shot of Jasper. Jasper sees her too, and gives her a look. Since his collapse at the Ghepardo, Jasper’s been present and calm and different. If I believed in curses, I’d say a curse was lifted. Jasper’s third cosmic solo spirals over the showground, like a thing with wings. Dean joins Jasper at his mic and Elf leans into hers for the final three repeats of – verse? Chorus? Bridge? Who cares?

  Who shall I say is calling?

  Who shall I say is calling?

  A ghost now asks a ghost-to-be,

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  The ending is a minute-long Wait for it of whirling dervish keyboards, bass runs, yowling feedback and drum cascades before the band comes to a sudden, perfect stop.

  The crowd doesn’t react. What’s wrong?

  Dean looks at Elf. Did we fuck it up?

  The showground ignites with the noise of eight thousand people yelling, cheering, whistling and clapping as loud as they possibly can.

  All that it cost us to get here was worth it.

  Griff, Elf and Jasper line up by his side.

  Venus is a glint in the eye of the sky.

  Utopia Avenue take a bow.

  The Narrow Road To The Far West

  On Monday, the band went to record in Studio C at Turk Street Studios, a short walk from their hotel. They laid down solid demos of Elf’s ‘Chelsea Hotel #939’, a bluesy waltz about their New York digs, and ‘What’s Inside What’s Inside’, a love song with zithers, an Appalachian dulcimer, and a flute solo played by a friend of Max’s from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. They finished at ten p.m., ate at a Chinese restaurant and crawled into bed. Yesterday, the band recorded a diamond-bright version of ‘Who Shall I Say Is Calling?’ during the course of the morning, then an eight-minute composition of Jasper’s called ‘Timepiece’ featuring amplified clockwork, wind chimes, Elf on harpsichord, a backwards twelve-string guitar solo, an ethereal vocal stack and recordings Mecca made on Monday of a funeral bell, the sea and a railway terminus. Today, their last full day in San Francisco, has been spent on two new songs of Dean’s: a riff-heavy number, ‘I’m A Stranger Here Myself’, and a spacier, mystical song, ‘Eight Of Cups’. Dean, Elf and Jasper are offer
ing and accepting suggestions for each other’s songs more than they ever did at their Fungus Hut sessions. Griff listens closely to each new song as its writer introduces it, and by the third or fourth run-through is laying down a rhythm track.

  Levon comes from an afternoon of meetings and the band stop to play him the latest take of ‘Eight Of Cups’. He leans back, listens intently, and pronounces, ‘Glorious. Paradise was a few months behind the trend. Stuff of Life is kind of marching in lockstep with the trend. This new stuff is going to be the trend. When Max hears it, he’ll wet his pants.’

  ‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing?’ asks Jasper.

  ‘Good,’ says Dean. ‘What about Günther?’

  ‘Günther’s not a pants-wetter, but he will tap along with one finger. During the racier passages, maybe two.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Yer reckon?’

  The light flashes on the telephone. Levon picks up. ‘Hello?’ Pause. ‘Oh, yeah, sure. Put him through.’ Levon cups the mouthpiece and tells the others, ‘It’s Anthony Hershey.’

  Of course it is. He’s found out ’bout me ’n’ Tiff. Dean’s not as scared as he should be. What’s there to be scared of?

  ‘Tony,’ begins Levon. ‘How the hell are you? Did—’ A pause. Levon frowns at Dean. ‘Uh … Okay. Is it anything I can help with?’ A pause. ‘Then let me see if he’s still around.’ Levon cups the mouthpiece and whispers, ‘He wants to speak to you, but he sounds homicidal.’

  Let’s get it over with. Dean presses the speakerphone button so everyone can hear. ‘Tony. How’s the weather down in Los Angeles?’

  Anthony Hershey’s outraged upper-class voice blasts through the tinny speaker. ‘How dare you? How RUDDY DARE you?’

  ‘How dare I what, ’xactly, Tony?’

  ‘Oh, you know! You’ve VIOLATED my marriage.’

  ‘Howdy, Mr Pot – have you met Mr Kettle?’ Elf’s jaw has dropped. Griff is frowning. Levon is already making calculations. Jasper lights a cigarette and passes it to Dean. ‘It’s an eight-hour drive up from LA, if yer fancy pistols at dawn. Or I could meet yer halfway.’

  ‘You’d not be worth the bullet, you pig-ignorant, yobbish, flash-in-the-pan, coke-snorting, wife-snatching … oik.’

  Griff has shut his eyes and is shaking his head.

  ‘Nobody’s perfect, Tony, but at least I didn’t snatch my wife’s career off her and give it to Jane Fonda. I mean, if you were Tiff, would you think, Oh, well, I’ll just have to put up ’n’ shut up ’n’ scrub Tony’s shirts ’n’ undies? Or would yer think, Sod this for a lark, what’s good for the gander’s good for the goose?’

  ‘My wife is the mother of my children!’

  ‘See, that’s yer problem, Tony.’ Dean mimics Hershey’s accent. ‘“My wife is the mother of my children.” Yer not a feudal lord, matey. Tiff’s not yer possession. She’s a human being. If yer care so much, go back to The Narrow Road to the Deep North starring Tiffany Seabrook. She’s a great actor. So what if she’s not a Hollywood name? Make it anyway. It’ll be a better film. Yer’ll rescue yer marriage.’

  Anthony Hershey makes outraged popping, hissing noises, then: ‘I’m not taking marital advice from you!’

  ‘Yer bloody need it from someone. Acting is Tiff’s art. You took it from her. Give it back. She still likes yer, deep down. Even if yer do drop her like a dish-rag the moment the phone goes.’

  The timbre of Hershey’s anger goes from hot to icy. ‘You’ll do film work in London or LA over my dead body.’

  ‘Oh, Tony, don’t tempt Death like that. Look, before one of us hangs up on the other, I’m curious: were these glad tidings brought to yer by one Rod Dempsey? East End gangster-y kind o’ voice?’

  The director does not say, ‘Who?’: he hesitates, then says, ‘If you touch my wife again, I’ll crush you like a cockroach. If I see you again, I’ll give you the thrashing of your ruddy life. Am I clear?’

  ‘Does that mean Utopia Avenue isn’t going to be doing the soundtrack for—’

  The phone line from Los Angeles goes dead.

  If that’s Rod Dempsey’s revenge, Dean thinks, I can take it. ‘Sorry,’ he tells the band. ‘There goes our shot at Hollywood glory.’

  ‘And I thought I was a dark horse,’ says Elf.

  ‘On the bright side,’ says Jasper, ‘we don’t have to worry about hacking ninety seconds off “Narrow Road” any more.’

  ‘I can’t say I don’t wish you’d keep it in your trousers,’ says Levon, ‘but Warners’ lawyers were a pain in the hole.’

  ‘Tiffany Seabrook?’ Griff winces with admiration. ‘Back o’ the fookin’ net, Deano.’ His stomach growls. ‘Is Jerry Garcia still expecting us for a bite to eat?’

  710 Ashbury Street is a tall, bay-and-gable, wood-fronted, black-and-white house on a hefty slope. Steep steps climb from the pavement to an arched porch on the second floor. Up on the porch sits a man in a rocking chair. A baseball bat leans against a pillar. To Dean’s eyes, he looks Red Indian. ‘My sisters and I had a doll’s house like this,’ says Elf. ‘The front opened up like a book.’

  Jasper faces the afternoon sun. ‘Everything’s a few degrees more real after a day in the studio.’

  A small tour bus painted in psychedelic swirls pulls up. ‘This, folks,’ declares the guide, ‘is the home of Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan – better known to the world as rock phenomenon the Grateful Dead.’

  ‘No mention of the fookin’ drummers,’ says Griff. ‘Typical.’

  Tourists jostle to take a photograph. The possible Indian on the porch blesses the coach with a finger.

  ‘If this house could talk,’ says the tour guide, ‘Ashbury Street would blush. Who dares to imagine what scenes of rock ’n’ roll abandon are going down behind those windows right now?’

  The bus pulls off. ‘Fingers crossed,’ says Dean. They begin the ascent, gripping the handrail. A stumble could cost a broken neck. Up on the porch, the possible Indian has a moon grey cat on his lap. ‘Hello,’ says Dean. ‘We’re Utopia Avenue.’

  ‘You’re expected.’ The possible Indian leans back to call through the half-open door. ‘Jerry, your guests are here.’

  The cat rubs against Elf’s legs. Elf picks the animal up. ‘Aren’t you adorable?’ Its leaf-green eyes stay on Dean.

  ‘Utopians!’ Jerry Garcia, beaming, bearded, flannel-shirted and barefoot, appears. ‘I thought I heard friendly voices climbing up the stairway to Heaven. So, you found us okay.’

  ‘We told our taxi, “Follow that tourist bus,”’ says Griff.

  Jerry Garcia’s smile turns to a grimace. ‘First they revile us, then they turn us into an attraction. Come in. Marty and Paul from Jefferson Airplane have dropped by. They’re cool. Obviously.’

  Tibetan mandalas, an American Stars and Stripes and scrolls decorate the wall. Somewhere in 710, John Coltrane’s saxophone is playing. Dope-smoke, incense and the aroma of Chinese food mingle in the air. A few people drift in and out of the kitchen including a girl wearing nothing but a sheet. Nobody seems too sure who lives here and who is visiting. Dean dunks a spring roll in the sweet chilli sauce. ‘God, I bloody love these.’

  ‘Too bad you’re not staying longer,’ says Pigpen, who, Dean can’t help thinking, looks like his name. ‘I’d take you to Chinatown. One dollar, you eat like an emperor.’

  Dean thinks of Allen Klein’s offer to meet and discuss a quarter of a million. ‘Next time.’

  At a corner of the table, Jerry Garcia and Jasper are swapping scales over a pair of guitars. ‘This one’s called the Mixolydian,’ the Dead-head tells the Utopian, ‘and it uses a flattened seventh …’ He plays it through. Marty Balin – short, round and mushroom-coloured – is flirting with Elf.

  Good luck with that, thinks Dean, as the eerily golden Paul Kantner asks him, ‘So did you ever run into Jimi in his London period?’

  ‘Only in passing,’ says Dean. ‘We never hung out.’

  ‘Jimi played at the Fillmore the w
eek after Monterey,’ says Paul. ‘Started below us on the bill, but after a couple of days, he was headlining. What – a – cat.’

  Marty slurps noodles. ‘You and me, we play with hands and fingers, right? We taught ourselves, sitting down in rooms. Jimi’s a street guitarist. Plays with his whole body. Calves, waist, hips.’

  ‘Balls, ass and cock,’ adds Pigpen. ‘He’s the first black cat who white women, y’ know, frothed for. I’ve never seen anything like it. They kinda … dripped lust.’

  ‘Some white women,’ Elf corrects Pigpen.

  ‘Sure, I hear ya. But lots. Guys too, that’s the thing. The first black leather pants I ever saw were Jimi’s.’

  ‘That scarf round the knee and scarf round the head thing he does?’ adds Paul. ‘It spread through San Francisco faster than the clap during the Summer of Love.’

  ‘My Summer of Love was spent driving a van up and down the M1 with this lot.’ Griff indicates the band. ‘Right time, wrong place.’

  ‘’Sixty-six was the year.’ Marty slurps egg-drop soup. ‘The summer before the Summer of Love. You agree, Jerry?’

  ‘Yup.’ Jerry Garcia looks up from his fretboard. ‘The Summer of Granted Wishes. If you were a band, you had an audience. Bill Graham opened the Fillmore and put on four or five bands a night. You didn’t even need to be that good. A whole new scene sprang up, unlike anything in America. Or on Earth. Or in history.’

  ‘This is the Bill Graham?’ asks Dean. ‘The same Bill Graham who manages Jefferson Airplane?’

  Marty makes a face and looks at Paul, who munches a rice cracker. ‘Uh-huh, though Bill’s only technically our manager.’

  ‘You’ll hear many views about Bill,’ says Jerry. ‘Detractors say he’s only fed the psychedelic cow to milk it. But he works like crazy, he never denies wanting to get rich, he holds benefits for HALO – lawyers for busted kids – and for the Diggers, a radical community group who feed hungry people.’

  ‘Most revolutionary of all,’ says Pigpen, ‘he actually pays bands what he promises to pay. There’s none of this “We didn’t make as much on the door as we hoped, so here’s a beer and a ball of dope, now piss off” bullshit. Not ever. Not with Bill.’