*
The next day, as promised, Hastings accompanied Marty by rail to the Bromley offices of Aureola Records (a holding of Empress Tobacco Ltd., which itself is a division of The Magister Corporation Plc.), the world’s second largest record company, as judged by annual sales figures. Bromley, once a peaceful semirural suburb, is now the southern business center of London. The relationship between the new wave of rock and roll bands and the traditional record companies was a strained one at best but had become one from which it was hard to break free. Hastings was not the only musician to recognize the hypocrisy of activists out to change the world passively watching their music and views marketed as product by corporations whose profit-mongering was the very opposite of everything they stood for. The issue had been nagging in the back of his mind for some time, as it had been for all the members of The Spheres (the Hammer probably excepted). The topic had rarely come to the forefront of any conversation; they had been too busy working, recording, and basking in their newfound celebrity to become too discontented with their handlers at this point in their career.
The Spheres had believed they needed the money the big company provided in order to obtain the necessary exposure to start an international career and to assist in subversively spreading their message, the old “infiltrate from within” theory that has always failed throughout history. But now that their records were selling in large quantities, Hastings had come to realize that all they really were was a cash cow for the company, while receiving a minute percentage of the profits as a royalty in return. In short, they were being robbed. The entertainment industry had attached itself like a leech to the ever-changing counterculture and showed no sign of letting go. The musicians continued to innovate, and the industry reaped the rewards. Daevid Mallorn had recently taken the daring step of cutting The Flying Teapots’ ties with Virginia-based Columbus Records, signing a contract instead with London independent Groovy Melon Productions, which was run by an old Jamaican fellow from his basement and was mainly known for calypso recordings. Mallorn claimed (although he was known to lie simply to amuse himself) that his band’s popularity and financial security had actually improved since the change. Now that The Spheres were likely done as a band, it was high time for the two surviving members to consider a similar step.
Hastings broached the topic gingerly as they sat enjoying some watery tea in styrofoam cups and soggy crumpets in a brightly lit, sterile Bromley teashop, gaining strength for their impending visit. Marty still looked something like an embalmed corpse but said he felt decent. The shop was full of businessmen in pinstripes.
“Well, Simon,” Marty said thoughtfully through a mouthful of crumpet (he had only just recovered his appetite), “it’s not like the paradox of our relationship with these shifty bastards hadn’t occurred to me before. And you’re probably right. If we’re going to form a new band, and you want to make a break from Aureola, I think now’s the time. But I do think that we should see what they might offer us. I haven’t had a chat with anyone from the company in quite a while.”
Hastings frowned. “Yes, Marty, but Guy was their star, and as far as they’re likely concerned, he was the sole reason for our success. If anything, I’m afraid they’ll cut our advances and royalties, and I’m not prepared to accept that kind of insult after all the profit we’ve made for them in the last couple of years.”
“True, true.” Marty grinned and shoved the last piece of breakfast into his mouth. “This was a disgusting meal. Well, we might as well find out, eh?”
They finished their tea in silence then went back out into Bromley High Street, where a chilly breeze was blowing and the sun was finally peeking out. It was a short walk to the high-rise office building that housed Aureola. On their way through the characterless suburban business district, they passed several fast food chain restaurants and two massive supermarkets on opposite sides, wedged between the skyscrapers.
“Nice atmosphere.”
“You can say that again,” Marty said, neatly tripping up a middle-aged, well-dressed businessman with his umbrella.
They could hear him yelling back at them for a few seconds, but presumably intimidated by their “antisocial” exterior, he did not follow. Marty chuckled. “Welcome to the future, old boy,” he said softly, with a surprising trace of sadness, maybe regret that his own anger had briefly gotten the best of him.
The old security guard at the desk recognized them and gave them a friendly nod as they clomped across the heavy pink marble floor, their footsteps echoing hollowly in the bland emptiness. Hastings pressed the button for the ninety-ninth floor.
“Here goes then,” he said grimly. The stepped out onto a lush carpet in front of a reception desk in a large room lit by tall windows. The full eastern morning sun was streaming in blindingly. The company’s workspace was modern and open-concept. The offices, with the exception of those belonging to the executives, were made of head-high cubicle dividers. The receptionist, whose blonde hair was pulled back tightly into a bun, regarded them coldly over the top of her spectacles.
“Yes?” she said in a voice like glass shards.
“We’re here to see Franklin Ferris. Tell him Simon and Marty from The Spheres are here to see him.”
The secretary’s demeanor abruptly became obsequious. “Well, our Virginian stars! This is an honor. You’ll have to forgive me; I’m new here. Please, help yourself to some tea and have a seat.” She picked up the phone to dial Franklin Ferris.
“Pretty bird, huh?” Marty whispered as he sat in one of the plush chairs. Hastings rolled his eyes and remained standing.
A minute or so later, an eccentric figure came bounding up to them, dressed in a pair of purple flares, a tweed blazer, and an impossibly wide tie. He had short, very messy hair and a pair of huge sideburns. His face was covered in an unnaturally wide, beaming grin underneath a pair of bulging eyes. Franklin Ferris was head of A&R for Aureola and probably the most influential music industry personality in the whole kingdom. He had signed up The Spheres after going mad over one of their shows at the UFO. A mostly decent sort, he had once confided in Hastings while extremely high that he often felt uncomfortable as a go-between dealing both with the underpaid talent and his padded employers. He had later vehemently denied saying any such thing. He was good friends with Billy Prestwick, a former Aureola employee himself, and possessed a similarly effusive personality.
“Simon! Marty! How the fuck are you!” he fairly screamed. Heads bobbed up over cubicle dividers for a few moments before disappearing again. “Wow! You both look like shit! But,” he sobered suddenly, “that’s understandable, considering what you’ve been through. I cried for hours, I tell you, when I heard about Guy. But come in, lads, come in! Thanks, Trixie,” he said with a wink at the secretary and led them toward the back of the room. Ferris was considered important enough to have his own office beside those of the president and vice-president of marketing. Both of those doors were shut.
“Come in! Come in!” Ferris bellowed. “Try to find somewhere to sit, I dare you!” There were a desk and several chairs in the room, but all were covered in papers, LP sleeves, fast food bags, and pieces of swag. Posters adorned all of the wall space, including a huge one of The Spheres’ album cover for Astronomy: a photograph of the Crab Nebula. An expensive mini-computer (just introduced to the market) took up the whole desktop, part of the floor, and a whole shelving unit along one wall. Hastings settled himself down on top of a Wimpy’s bag. “I’m run off my feet, like everyone else here. The latest thing is to try to figure out whether we’ll get into this new ‘compact disk’ thing out of Asia, or just stick with good ’ol tapes, LPs, and eight-tracks.” Ferris plumped himself down in his chair. “So, lads, I guess you want to know what’s going on here, with your contract and all, mmm? And I’d like to know what happened to old Billy.”
“The thought had crossed our minds. As for Billy, he’s disappeared to somewhere in the western Virginias. So’s Electron Z.”
Marty pulled out his smokes and lit up. “You see, Franklin, we’ve decided to continue on with a clean slate, maybe not as The Spheres, but we’d like to know what interest the company may have in a new project involving myself and Simon.”
“Hmm, interesting, lads. You see, with Guy’s death, sales of Spheres albums have jumped about three hundred percent in a few days.”
“Nothing sells like death,” Marty said. It was a truly disgusting thought, getting rich off the corpse of their friend.
“Indeed, indeed,” Ferris said, looking momentarily down at his desk. “Terrible, but true. Good for your bank accounts, anyway. Now that I now where you’re at, I’ll see that your latest checks are expedited. Anyway, my professional opinion, no offense, is that The Spheres are dead as a band. Because of this terrible tragedy, the name is identified by the public almost solely with Guy. But I do think that the two of you on your own would be a successful act. We’d be interested in that, especially as you two wrote all the music, didn’t you?”
“Most of it,” Hastings said. “But what about the contract?”
Ferris stared blankly back. “What about it?”
“Well,” Hastings said, trying to speak gently, “the old contract is presumably null, now that the band is broken up. We’d like to renegotiate.”
“Renegotiate? Why? Isn’t the old contract good enough?”
Hastings shook his head. “Frankly, no. The royalty rate is insulting. We won’t want a higher advance, but we we’ll want a higher percentage of sales.”
Ferris’s eyes started to pop out even farther than normal. The morning sun made their bloodshot surfaces shine like diamonds, and his face had become deeply flushed within seconds. “I don’t understand. You’re already tied with the Beach Bums for the highest royalty rate we give out!”
Marty leaned forward and spoke persuasively. “Come on, Franklin, you know as well as we do that our royalty only amounts to a few pence per band member for each unit sold.”
“But that’s standard procedure!”
“Well, standard procedure is morally incorrect. I’m sorry.”
“What are you trying to do to me?” Ferris cradled his head in his hands. “You know I’ll never convince the bosses to give you a higher royalty. Maybe if the band was still together, but this is completely unreasonable. You’ll ruin me!”
Marty and Simon looked at each other and rolled their eyes at his histrionics. “I’m sorry, Franklin, but if you can’t arrange what we want, we’re going to leave your company. I doubt they’ll even miss us.”
“Wha–for who–after everything I’ve done for you…” Ferris had pulled a three-quarters-drained bottle of whiskey from a desk drawer. He took a long, gurgling pull, finishing the bottle. “Where will you go? We’re it, you know. The biggest and the best… Well, that’s that. You’re free then, you bastards. I told you, they’d never let me offer you more than you’re getting now. Get out of here.”
Sorrowfully, they rose to leave. Marty was already out the door and Hastings half out when Ferris suddenly rose.
“Oh, fuck it!” he shouted. “This is terrible. I can’t do this anymore.”
They stopped.
“Come back in, please. Sit. Sit. If I had any more spirits in here, I’d offer you a drink. Now, you say that Billy’s disappeared.”
“As far as we’re concerned. That’s right. He cracked up.”
“So he’s not your manager anymore?”
“Looks like.”
“Well, how would you like a new one?”
“You mean— ”
“That’s right.” Ferris beamed widely, and his teeth were lit up like bulbs by the sun. “I’ve made a decision, rather more quickly than I like to do things, but there, you’ve forced my hand. I’ve had it with these bastards. I’m quitting on the condition that you make me your manager.”
Hastings couldn’t believe his ears. “You’d give up your plum position to manage a new band, one that doesn’t even exist yet?”
“It’s not as cushy as you think, what with Sir Philip next door breathing down my neck all the time. I think I’ll be able to make a go of it if I can find a couple more clients. There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to choose a side. I’ve never been satisfied with the way things are done here. I will, however, need twenty percent commission on any bookings or contracts I get you, and a budget.”
“Done!” They stood up and solemnly shook his hand.
“That’s that, then! Smashing. I’ll get your checks on the way out. Just give me a minute to write my resignation letter. I hope I won’t have cause to regret this.”
“I sincerely hope so as well,” Hastings said.
sixteen
Hastings and Marty got down to work after that meeting. Their first item of business was to decide what sort of band they would like to form. They agreed that neither of them was willing to totally abandon the free-form, improvisatory style they had been developing at the time of Guy’s death. In fact, they both declared themselves ready to take matters a step further and, like The Wylde Flowers, abandon traditional songwriting forms altogether if need be. The restrictions imposed by keeping songs under five minutes in length limited, they felt, both their pleasure in playing them and an audience’s potential benefit from listening. Money would not be a problem for a while; they were expecting more very healthy royalty checks from the post-death sales of Musick of The Spheres and Astronomy, their two releases. They were content to let Aureola pursue and pay Electron Z and the Hammer. Guy’s royalties were to be paid to his family in Bushey.
They rented a house that day in Notting Hill, on Pembroke Crescent; the bottom floor to live in and the top floor for rehearsals and to have a place for their homeless friends to crash in. Steve Took moved in the first week, sleeping happily on the floor, and he showed no sign of leaving in the ensuing days. Over the course of the next two weeks, they managed to put out enough feelers on the scene to set up auditions with four drummers. A tall, scruffy red-haired young Scottish fella barely out of his teens named Basil Baker came immediately to the forefront. Although his style was the most unorthodox of the lot, and he sometimes seemed to lose control altogether (he occasionally even lost the beat), his frenetic enthusiasm was infectious and powered their jams to new heights. He only seemed to possess one set of clothes, a fact that Marty and Simon deemed to be none of their business.
The problem of keyboards was solved when Teresa announced that she had taken advanced piano lessons for several years as a young girl and had always nurtured a secret desire to play in a band. She had always been envious of Hastings and the fact that he had an outlet for his artistic expression. Though shocked to find out something so important that he hadn’t had an inkling of before, Hastings readily gave her an audition on a borrowed organ and was astounded by her abilities. Fortunately, Marty agreed wholeheartedly with her addition.
They immediately went out and spent some of their royalties on a full setup of organ, synthesizers, and Mellotron. A new band was born. Whether an internal romantic relationship might someday interfere with their rapport as bandmates remained to be seen. Teresa could be stubborn, to say the least, and Hastings was also used to having his way.
Naming the group was another issue. Since Guy and Hastings had come up with The Spheres, Marty felt it was his turn, but Hastings was also strong-willed about such issues, and they argued about it long into one night, almost losing their tempers until finally coming to a consensus. They liked the cosmic connotation of a name like The Spheres but racked their brains unsuccessfully for over an hour until Daevid Mallorn, who had come over to jam, suggested they name themselves after their own second album.
“Why the hell didn’t I think of that?” Hastings grumbled as he fell asleep in an old armchair they had found in front of a house on Ladbroke Road. Most of the furniture had been acquired that way.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mallorn said. “We can’t all be clever.”
The next day, they hel
d a meeting with Franklin Ferris to decide how Astronomy would present themselves to the scene. Rumors had already been circulating about the new band, and many people were looking forward to their debut. A full-page story had already appeared in the NMT, and Ron Peel’s show on the BBC wanted to set up a radio session. A week of solid jamming had led to a fine new set of seven numbers. Hastings had written the lyrics, but for the sake of democracy, the vocals were divided between himself, Marty, and Teresa. They all seemed to possess adequate voices, although none could provide the incandescent charisma that Guy had brought to The Spheres. The sound of the new group was harder-edged than that of the old band, mostly due to the drumming style of Basil Baker, who never seemed to let up.
Hastings’ lyrics were no longer idealistic, wistful, and tinged with fantasy; his experiences in the past month had shattered any illusions that a peaceful hippie revolution was underway or could ever really be successful. Most of the world was still dead-set against them, and a widespread movement was not forthcoming, especially since the supposedly mind-freeing drug culture had been controlled and subsumed by big business. They would forever be preaching to the converted or controlled and packaged as product by corporations.
A contract was signed with the proprietor of Groovy Melon Records, Ezekiel “Shorty” Mackintosh, for a forty percent royalty on gross revenues. His distribution was not the best, but even if they sold a quarter of the albums and singles they were used to selling, they would still make more money than they had with Aureola. An album would be due in no more than two months’ time.
Ferris started a postering campaign for the band’s first gig, to be at the UFO on Tottenham Court Road. The posters competed for space on Central London’s streetlamp poles with Mallorn’s “wanted” poster asking for information about Ramón Rosas. Mallorn had taken on a private investigator, but in typical fashion, he had actually hired a psychic medium who was apparently wandering the streets of the city, arms outstretched, trying to detect Rosas’ aura as he walked. Several people had spotted this bizarre figure on the Embankment by Blackfriars Bridge, seemingly involved in deep conversation with the Thames and making rude gestures at the infrequent passing trains. Hastings did not expect any results from that area, but his lust for revenge, once recently all-consuming, was fading fast in the glow of his excitement about the new band. He did, however, as a precaution, keep his weapon, the deadly hair dryer, on him at all times. In the back of his mind, he knew whoever had wanted him dead would not give up so easily after just one attempt.
The Music of the Spheres Page 15