Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  When the band arrived very late one night, we were in for a bit of a shock. They came straight from the airport and informed us that Paul’s brother, front man Shaun Ryder, had dropped and broken his six-week supply of methadone at the Manchester Airport. Nathan McGough described the scene of Sean on his hands and knees licking up as much of the methadone as he could from the floor of the airport. By the time they arrived in Barbados, Shaun was dope sick and the entire band and entourage of wives, girlfriends, and the Ryders’ parents were in a state of anxious exhaustion. Nobody had told us about Shaun’s bad habits. If Tina and I had been different types of people we would have quit right then and there. Instead, we tried to help everyone get settled in. Some of the band was staying in the studio’s residential quarters; the rest were staying in private cottages at Sam Lord’s Castle, a luxury resort several miles away. We told everyone to get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we would begin setting up to record.

  The following day, we waited for the band’s gear to be delivered from the airport. While we were hanging out, trying to get to know each other and understand the band’s Mancunian accents, we heard screaming from outside the studio. The studio was very private, surrounded by sugar cane fields and located way back from the main road. What the ruckus was about was that Mark “Bez” Berry, the band’s dancer and maraca shaker, had been doing donuts with his newly rented open-air Jeep in the sugar cane field and flipped the car, which landed right on his upper arm, shattering it and nearly cutting it off completely. Somebody brought Bez into the studio lounge while we tried to get an emergency doctor on the phone. I remember Tina staying with Bez and trying to hold his arm together while everyone else tried not to freak out. Tina was a steady presence no matter what was happening. His arm looked really, really bad. Eventually, an ambulance arrived and took Bez to the hospital. When he returned later that evening his arm was held together with some contraption resembling the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course, Shaun wanted Bez’s painkillers.

  Next thing we found out was that the band had not prepared any songs. Well, that was not great news, but we had been in a similar situation with Talking Heads for Remain in Light and the first Tom Tom Club album so we were not overly concerned. Songs would be composed in the studio. These guys had written hits before, right? Shaun was nowhere to be found, but the rest of the band—Paul Ryder, Gary “Gaz” Whelan, Paul “PD” Davis, Mark “Moose” Day—were getting their gear sorted out. There was also a tech man, a white guy with impressive dreadlocks named Simon. Simon had some programmed beats and keyboard parts, which was a start, but he had a tough time getting them to play back because his digital gear did not love the surging power signal in Barbados.

  Things were off to a bumpy start, but no one in the band seemed particularly concerned. I, however, was concerned about the fact that when I asked him what he wanted to hear in his headphones, Gary the drummer said, “Nothing. Don’t want to hear the rest of the band.” We found out why soon enough: Not only was the band without any prepared songs, they were seemingly unable to remember any arrangements. They would just jam endlessly without any song structure. Tina eventually devised a method of directing the band by holding up cue cards that indicated it was time to play the chorus or the bridge or return to the verse section. Mark the guitarist had a book of all the guitar chords known to man and he created guitar parts and riffs that the rest of the band used as a catalyst to create their parts.

  While we were in the studio with the band, Shaun made a discovery. While there was no heroin available in Barbados, there was loads of crack cocaine. He was supposed to be writing lyrics but Shaun managed to find a dealer and he began smoking rocks of crack instead. He tried to hide this from everybody else—as if we wouldn’t notice.

  Shaun and Paul’s parents were more or less present in Barbados. Their mother was a sweet and charming schoolteacher who was seemingly not aware of Shaun’s problems to the extent the rest of us were. Their father, who was known as Horse Man, was there at the studio to help with their gear like a roadie would. In the band’s early days, he’d provided them with the musical gear that “fell off” the back of his delivery truck. He spent his down time at the studio reading Wired, the biography of John Belushi by Bob Woodward, as if he were preparing for the worst. He knew there was a big problem but for some reason felt powerless to do anything about it. The Mondays were from Salford, part of greater Manchester. According to the Mondays and their crew, Salford was one of the worst neighborhoods in the entire United Kingdom. It was rat-infested, and plagued with chronic poverty, unemployment, violent crime, and desperate slums. The Mondays’ success was phenomenal and despite all of Shaun’s bad habits, even those close to him were hard pressed to question his druggy lifestyle. After all, there was more money to be made. It was interesting to see that the band considered their label, Factory Records, to be their boss and therefore would try to spend as much money as possible before the boss told them to stop. They never understood or cared that every cent would be recouped from the band’s royalties. I think their street sense told them that between the spending habits of Happy Mondays and label mate and fellow Mancunian band New Order, the Factory Records balloon was about to burst. There was also the idea that rock stars, like black sheep aristocracy, are supposed to be debauched and drug fueled, and don’t worry about it because nobody gives a fuck. I had noticed this attitude particularly among British musicians, although it was really becoming a worldwide cliché.

  While trying to get Shaun to write lyrics to go with the musical tracks that the band was creating without him, Tina found that he wrote best when lying on his stomach on the floor. While Shaun might have had dyslexia and ADHD, since he was unable to read and had great difficulty staying focused, somehow he was able to concentrate this way if Tina found him before his first hit of crack. After that first hit, though, it was hopeless. The band was recording very well now, but Shaun was unable or unwilling to keep up.

  One evening the percussionist, Bruce Martin, found Shaun loading furniture from the guesthouse at Blue Wave Studios into the back of his car—to trade for crack. Bruce had to physically restrain Shaun from doing so. Shaun drove off without the furniture and no one had any idea where he had gone until the following day, when he called for someone to come and get him. He had driven his rental car right though a plate-glass window into the living room of some poor lady’s home. In only a few weeks, the Mondays had managed to wreck five cars.

  Not long after this, while in the control room of the studio, I received a call from the Barbados police force. They told me that they knew what “my boys” were up to and if they didn’t behave themselves they would find themselves in jail the same way Jerry Hall did when she came down here with a suitcase full of marijuana. Barbados had zero tolerance for such things. As if Tina and I were not under enough pressure already. (As it turns out, Jerry Hall was not the right poster child for this threat, since while she had faced pot possession charges in Barbados, the charges turned out to be without basis.)

  I spoke to the Mondays’ manager, Nathan McGough. Nathan, who bore a strong resemblance to Paul McCartney, had told me that his mother was Thelma Pickles, who had dated three of the Beatles in their young Liverpool days. Nathan wasted no time in getting the one person that Shaun would obey, a guy named Muzza, down to Barbados. Muzza was able to keep Shaun more or less in line, but still no lyrics or vocals were forthcoming. One day we managed to get Shaun into the studio but he just wasn’t able to perform. He couldn’t even speak properly, never mind sing, and he kept trying to sing into the wrong side of the microphone. It was really heartbreaking.

  Elektra Records sent the charming A&R executive Howard Thompson and their publicist down to see what was happening. We played him the tracks without vocals and I explained the situation. He could see the state that Shaun was in with his own eyes and it wasn’t pretty. In order to blow off steam, Tina and I took Howard to see a great outdoor performance by the Mighty Sparrow that night, while the female publ
icist stayed behind and got loaded with Shaun on another all-night binge.

  I managed to get Tony Wilson and Phil Saxe at Factory on the phone and explained to them that this record would never be finished unless they got Shaun to dry out. We were out of time in Barbados. Their attitude was typically British rock star enabling: “Oh, that’s just Shaun being Shaun.” But after several more calls, including one from Gary Kurfirst’s office, they finally saw the seriousness of the problem. We all went home and Shaun agreed to get treatment at the Priory in London. We would record vocals when the doctors said Shaun was okay.

  When Shaun was finally clean, Tina and I flew to England and we recorded vocals at a residential studio called Comfort’s Farm in Sussex. Shaun was a new man. The rest of the band was forbidden to come to the studio on his doctor’s advice. Rowetta Idah, the Mondays’ background vocalist, was the only exception, and she was exceptional. She added a lot of power to the tracks. Tina worked with Shaun on his lyrics when he got stuck. It was the month of May, and on the eighth, Jerry Harrison sent a stripper to the studio to celebrate my birthday with me. She put on a little show for a few minutes and then whispered in my ear that she was available for private partying. I told her I was married and sent her off with a nice tip despite some protestation from Shaun.

  Shaun kept it together and delivered his vocals with great panache. He was still drinking—in this case, Boddingtons Pub Ale—but there was no other substance abuse that we could see. Within ten days the album was ready for mixing.

  We brought Steven Stanley up to New York from Jamaica to mix the album, titled Yes Please!, at Axis Studios, upstairs from where Studio 54 once was. Everyone was pleased with the mixes and there was great relief all around. When it was released in September 1992, Tina and I felt it was a miracle that any record had been made at all.

  55

  STRANGERS IN PARADISE

  I had done some sailing while I was at boarding school in Virginia on the Rappahannock River, but I had never cruised on a boat overnight. After Robin was born, Tina’s father chartered a small sailboat out of Nassau and took us on a cruise of the Exumas. Even baby Robin came along. Staying out on the water for two weeks, we had an absolute ball. Tina and I learned that sailing was a great way to clear our heads and decompress from the music business. Sailing was not only a good time, it was healthy.

  We decided to buy a sailboat of our own. Tina and her father contacted a good broker on the east coast and started looking at boats for sale. The broker knew that we didn’t want just any boat. We told him we wanted a boat with classic lines that was good for cruising with a family, not some floating cocktail-party boat. He told Tina, there is this boat and that boat and then there is Katrinka. Katrinka was owned by a Connecticut family named Winder who had commissioned the great nautical architect Bill Tripp to design her. She had been built in Bristol, Rhode Island, and had the classic lines that real sailors dream about. She was a forty-eight-foot-long sloop with a center cockpit. The steering wheel was mounted on a pivoting podium. She had a diesel engine, a neat galley, and two heads, and could sleep a party of eight. She was yar and we bought her.

  Our first cruise on Katrinka was traveling from New England to the Bahamas on the Intercoastal Waterway. We chose to make this trip slowly, stopping to enjoy the sights and regional cuisine along the way. Also, I had to fly back to New York once a week to an outpatient clinic, where I was learning to straighten myself out. Let’s just say that even I realized that I had developed a bad problem with cocaine. I was in a special program for successful people with drug problems. Tina was concerned that I might die, and I don’t blame her. I had been bingeing for years, but mostly keeping it under control. Being in the music business, I could always tell myself that some other guy I knew was in much worse shape than I was. Tina took baby Robin to France for the summer of ’84 and asked me not to come. After she left I found myself buying an ounce of coke and not stopping until it was gone. I was up for nine days. Nine days wandering from party to party, club to club, without sleep and not going home except to take a shower and change my clothes. I was not all right. In retrospect, I realize that I was in mourning for the Talking Heads dream I’d had. I could see what was happening to us after so many years of hard work and dedication. I was sad and depressed, but of course cocaine and alcohol were not going to help. What helped me, finally, was Tina. She demanded that I get treatment or our marriage was over.

  Katrinka undersail in the Exumas, Bahamas.

  Sailing was a way to renew myself and learn self-reliance. Tina’s father, Ralph, was a great skipper who had a very kind and patient way of teaching us how to handle such a big boat. Katrinka had a centerboard that, when raised, enabled us to get into the shallow anchorages of the Bahamas with ease. We did run aground every once in a while, but they say if you haven’t gone aground, you haven’t really sailed the Bahamas. For weeks and then months we cruised the islands of the Bahamas, visiting the Abacos, Eleuthera, the Exumas, Long Island, Cat Island, New Providence, and all sorts of beautiful tiny cays in between.

  One time we found ourselves in Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera. We were at anchor in the harbor on an early Saturday morning and the kids wanted us to make French toast, but we were out of bread. So I rowed the dinghy ashore and sat on the steps of the only small grocery store in town and waited for it to open. It was a warm, sunny morning and there was not a soul around. Governor’s Harbour is a very tiny out-island town and although there was a family-style Club Med across the harbor, at 7:00 A.M. the town was completely deserted and quiet.

  As I was waiting and sitting in the shade and the temperature got hotter and hotter, I noticed what appeared to be a huge white balloon floating down the beach, brightly reflecting the sun.

  As this big white thing in the distance came closer I began to see that it was, in fact, a person wearing a huge white cotton caftan and gliding slowly in my direction. As the apparition got closer I began to recognize who it was, but thought it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be Divine, the actor I had once met at Phebe’s on the Bowery some years ago, the transvestite star of Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. But, it was! Divine, sporting a bleach-blond crew cut, came up from the beach and glided past me while giving me a beatific smile and a little wave. I said, “Hi, Divine” and Divine said, “Oh, hiiiiiiiiii!” and then kept walking on though the dreamy calm Bahamian town. The store opened shortly after that and I bought some bread and eggs and rowed back to the boat.

  Once at Staniel Cay in the Exumas, where James Bond’s Thunderball Grotto is, I again rowed ashore to buy some groceries at a tiny general store. While getting back in the dingy a gentleman on the dock looking out over the harbor asked me, “Isn’t that Katrinka?” I said, “Yes, sir. That’s her.” He introduced himself as Thomas Hoving, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had sailed a Bermuda Race aboard her with the previous owners. He said, “I love that boat. You know, most people have only seen her from behind.”

  Another time I took Tina and the boys to a beach not far from Nassau that was accessible only by boat unless you owned a home there. We took our secondhand Mako 25 called Cool Runnings. When we arrived at the spot, I secured the anchor and swam the short distance to shore with the boys. Tina stayed on board to catch some rays and take a rest. It was a gorgeous day. The water was lovely and warm. We were swimming and playing on the beach when I spied a single, solitary figure dressed all in black walking slowly our way. As the figure came closer I thought, No, it can’t be, but there she was: Patti Smith, the High Priestess of Punk. I said, “Hi, Patti.” She looked at me with surprise or paranoia or perhaps both. I said, “It’s me, Chris Frantz from Talking Heads. Good to see you.” She still seemed extremely uncomfortable to be recognized in such beautiful surroundings. She said, “I’m only here for my boyfriend’s sister’s wedding.” I said, “Oh, that’s nice.” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “I’ve gotta go,” and turned and walked away in the direction she had come from. She was probab
ly the only person on the entire island dressed in black in such warm weather. Then again, if she hadn’t been, I might not have recognized her.

  Robin and Egan aboard Katrinka in Maine.

  We sailed back and forth from Nassau to Maine many times over the years. I can tell you that sailing north on the outside in the deep ocean can be one ass-kicking ride, particularly around Cape Hatteras. In fact, it was there in the “graveyard of the Atlantic” that we drank a toast to one of Tina’s great-grandfathers, a sea captain who had gone down with the ship. In our case, we lived to tell the tale. You could say we’d been sailing for years through the uncharted world of art and rock and roll, weathering storms, rolling water, and changing tides. But it was much more romantic to do it in a boat.

  56

  WITHOUT ADVENTURES WE WON’T HAVE STORIES

  Tina said to me, “Without adventures we won’t have stories.”

  In 1991 David sneaked out of Talking Heads. We got a call from the Los Angeles Times to confirm something that David had told one of their writers. He told them, “Talking Heads has broken up or whatever you want to call it.” We never had a meeting to decide we were breaking up. We’d never even discussed it. In the last meeting we had with David, in his SoHo loft, David shouted at me, Tina, Jerry, and Gary, “You should be calling me an asshole!” He was upset with us for keeping our cool in the face of his saying that he no longer wished to work with us. This was after keeping us on hold for several years. He had told other people this same thing so many times before and then come back to the band that we assumed he would change his mind. Evidently, a guy at Warner named Tim Carr—who later was murdered with a sword in his own apartment in Thailand—had told him that nobody at Warner would take his solo career seriously as long as Talking Heads was still in action. We believed just the opposite, that he could have his solo career and Talking Heads. After all, we’d done just that with Tom Tom Club. In fact, Gary had worked out a deal with Mo Ostin at Warner in which David would receive a million dollars per solo album for ten albums as long as he continued to make Talking Heads albums every two or three years. Unfortunately for us and our fans, when Mo sat down with David to discuss the deal, he said nothing to David about Talking Heads’ future. He gave David his solo deal with no obligation to continue with Talking Heads. Mo must have thought that David was the goose that laid the golden egg when, in fact, Talking Heads was the goose and David was the golden egg.