Beggars Banquet

Glimmer

This is the way the sixties ends.

Someone told you Anita’s a witch. You can believe it. When you ask her: ‘Black or white?’ she says: ‘Black.’ So you don’t put any milk in her coffee. She tips some of it on to the carpet, leaving room for a measure of JD. Then she goes to find Keith or Brian. Or somebody.

You screw the top back on the bottle, stepping around the coffee patch. The floor accepts this latest insult, this new recruit to its wash of…

Wash of what? Come on, you’re the writer here. You need to describe that carpet, keep the metaphor going. ‘Recruit’ because the floor looks like a battlefield. Original carpet colour: raw liver. Not much of that on view beneath the layered effluvium of trodden crisps, sandwich crusts, paper bags, butt ends, spent matches, roaches, chocolate wrappings. The drinks cans, the bottles, the music papers and magazines, autographed photos, flash-bulbs, envelopes and tape reels.

(How much of this do you need?)

Look there: beside a cigarette packet – three crumpled balls of paper. Lyric sheets. Let’s pick up one of those, unravel it. A rough draft, just a few lines really, searching for an internal rhyme. At the top, the words ‘Tea and Sympathy’ underlined, followed by a double question mark: the song’s working title.

The band photo: might be worth something to the groupies outside. Except most of them have gone further: their bodies are their autograph books. They trade stories of scenes they’ve been part of, tales you’d have to tone down even for the Sunday scandal-sheets. It’s four in the morning now, but you can bet there’ll still be a huddle outside the studio. Sometimes someone takes pity, gives orders for hot tea to be dispensed, with or without the sympathy. Four o’clock and London feels like a backwater. There’s a man seated on the floor in the corner. He’s asleep. He was asleep twelve hours ago. Twice now you’ve checked he’s still breathing. Thin grey hair, curdled beard, clothes from California. He’s a writer too, only he’s more famous than you. His first novel made him rich. He’s been working eight years on a follow-up. When he was last awake, you interviewed him for your piece.

‘This’, he told you, ‘is the beginning of the negation of a generation. The cusp of devilment, my friend, seizing the day and wringing its neck. All God’s children got wings, but only acid has the flight schedule. You have the look of a smoker: give me a cigarette.’

You’d seen him described once as ‘a lost generation guru’. More than one meaning there, friend.

Where did they come from, these people? They seemed to attach themselves to the band for hours, days, weeks. They seemed to do so with ease. But the core of the band… you’ve yet to see anyone penetrate that. Like there’s some inner sanctum, someplace no one else is allowed. That’s what you want your piece to penetrate; yours would be the last word, the defining statement. This was the deal you’d made with yourself.

Biography: born working class; local secondary modern; art college and rhythm guitar in a couple of groups. Then you’d written your four angry plays and they’d become a quartet, a success on the London stage, now touring the provinces. Nobody got all the jokes; nobody got all the anger.

The thing is: you’re not angry now. But anger is what everyone wants from you. You’ve written five hundred words on the band, only another four and a half thousand to go. And there are girls outside who would sleep with you for your mere proximity to something they can’t have. And there’s a man asleep in the corner who earns more for a public lecture than you did for your first two plays. And as he told you, he lectures off the top of his head. The head you’re itching to kick, but not in an angry way…

And here’s Anita again, and she’s saying: ‘You’re my chauffeur, darling.’ Handing you some keys, she pecks your cheek, her eyes smeared black. You ask her what your name is, and she laughs.

‘Chauffeurs don’t have names, liebchen.’

Then she leads you out to the Bentley.

The girls outside, they don’t like Anita. They offer her dark glances. Does Anita have one of those metaphysical backstage passes, the kind marked ‘All Areas’? No, you don’t think so, and it seems to annoy her. For all her power, all her obvious allure, she lacks that final ticket of admission.

So you’re driving through the silent streets, getting further and further away from your story, and she’s spread across the back seat. The windows are open and her hair is flying across her face. She’s singing the same notes over and over.

‘Ooo-ooo; ooo-ooo.’

She asks you what they sound like.

‘A train,’ you yell into the wind. ‘You know, the whistle blowing.’

She smiles. ‘You’re a romantic.’

‘Well, if it’s not a train, what is it?’

She sits upright, slides forward so her head is just behind yours. ‘Banshees,’ she says quietly. ‘They’re banshees.’ Her mouth is close to your ear. ‘Ooo-ooo,’ she goes. Then she sits back.

You ask her where you’re supposed to be going, but she’s not listening. You end up driving along the Embankment, thinking maybe she wants dropping off at Cheyne Walk, but she doesn’t even recognise the place. A couple of taxis are pulling away from the Houses of Parliament: end of a late-night debate. There’s a police car parked at the entrance to Downing Street. You wrote a piece about the government for one of the Sunday papers. Nobody paid much attention. When the tramp back at the studio wrote about JFK’s assassination for Playboy, they paid him five thousand dollars. And he got to spend the day at Hefner’s mansion. You’re sure the band have been there, too. Anita probably wasn’t invited.

‘Christ!’ she shrieks, so that you flinch at the steering-wheel. ‘I’ve had the most amazing idea!’

She’s ordering you to turn the car round, cursing you for taking her so far from the studio. You don’t even know whose car it is. But you bend to her urgency, take the Bentley up on to a pavement as you swing back in the direction you’ve just come. Back to the studio, where Anita flies into the recording room.

And now she’s back again, gathering everyone together. Even the writer wakes to her spell. There’s a French director there, too – Godard, isn’t it? He has a film crew with him. He tried to talk to you about anarchy yesterday, but his English and your French conspired against the dialogue. A circle is forming around the microphone. You’ve all got headphones on, and finally, after instructions from Anita, the track begins to play. Anita leads you all in the dance. Percussion, then the lead vocal with piano accompaniment. On the periphery, you can see the band. They’re in the production suite with the engineer. They look tired, indulgent. Maybe just drunk. Then Anita raises her hand. It’s just about time.

‘Ooo-ooo! Ooo-ooo!’

‘Ooo-ooo! Ooo-ooo!’

And you’re the banshee in a rock and roll band…

Where is this party? The tall windows are draped with black velvet. Candles; red lightbulbs; batik scarves thrown over lampshades. Sweet herbal fug in the air. Drug cocktails a speciality de la maison. The host – you’ve barely spoken with him – is minor aristocracy according to one of your sources, dabbles in the stock market according to another. The food has mostly gone. Guests have been folding up multiple slices of smoked salmon and cramming them into already bloated cheeks.

It’s hard to tell because of the lighting, but nobody looks really well. Faces are pierrot white, or would be in daylight, in sunshine. Is there sunshine outside? Watches are being removed at the door, taken away and hidden by the host. No clocks. No telephones, radio, TV.

‘We’re out of time,’ he’d said, smiling. ‘This party does not exist in time. And we keep on partying till nineteen-seventy. ’

You’d felt like asking him how anyone would know when nineteen-seventy arrived, but then someone had passed you a joint and you hadn’t asked any questions after that for quite a while.

What was it? Not just hash: hash you can handle. Some altogether weightier matter: a touch of heroin in the mix? A well-toked speedball? There’s music playing, and bodies strewn over the floor and the sofas and the scatter-cushions. You were brought here by two of your subjects – you’ve begun to think of them as ‘subjects’, not that you’re their master, quite the reverse – but now you can’t see anyone you know. Jeff the Nose has been and gone. Klein was invited apparently, but no way would he show: rumours of contract difficulties, of money owed. A Beatle… did a blessed Beatle drift past your eyeline an hour or more ago? And did he look too mortal?

Kenneth Anger was in town, but declined your request for an interview. He had conversations with your subjects behind closed doors. Some people think Anger is a magus. You know who he wants to cast in his next film, Lucifer Rising. You know who he thinks would make the perfect Lucifer, the preterperfect Beelzebub.

Everyone knows.

You’ve been reading a book, The Master and Margarita. Marianne gave it to Mick. Bulgakov’s novel gave him notions; hardened up ‘Tea and Sympathy’, turned it into something stranger and more wonderful. You wonder if it’ll get airtime. You didn’t just sing backing vocals on that song, you became part of something bigger.

Something you’ve so far failed to put into words.

A woman is handing you a joint. Her eyelashes are thickened to spider legs. Her long straw-coloured hair has been braided and piled atop her head, looking like coiled snakes.

‘Medusa,’ you intone. ‘Will you turn me to stone?’

She ignores the question, asks you something about Clapton, and you’re shaking your head as you inhale.

‘Bailey?’ she tries. You shake your head again and she moves away, her snakes writhing, but that’s all right, because inside your head you can hear percussion and jungle vocals.

Primal: that’s the word you’ve been searching for… And now you have it, you don’t know what to do with it.

The party is carried along by its own momentum. Guests come and go, but the core group stays, becoming stronger. Then suddenly a decision is made and everyone’s groping for jackets and scarves, flouncing out of the flat and down the stairs. It’s evening, and the fresh air feels like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You suck it in, and listen to the traffic. Cars and taxi cabs, everyone’s heading somewhere and you’re part of the flow. A ten-minute ride, and you’re spilling out of the vehicles, scurrying back indoors. A nightclub this time, the Vesuvio. You’ve been here before, but never in such exalted company.

There’s someone tugging at your sleeve. You’re wearing the ruffled white shirt which you’ve been told makes you ‘ever so slightly Byronic’. An arm around your shoulder, lips pressed to your ear.

‘From now on, sweetcakes,’ you hear, ‘everything’s strictly off the record. Deal?’

Of course it’s a deal. And you’re in.

Is that McCartney over there? Gifts are being unwrapped: it’s Mick’s twenty-sixth. Hard to believe, all the history he’s made. Christ, anything’s possible. It’s 1968 and everything’s spinning, the world reaching out. Godard – you’re sure now it’s him – has his arms outstretched. A painted woman falls into them. Is she really naked, or does she just look that way? You’re seeing everything through a lens. You’re hearing everything in glorious stereophonic. You’re ceasing to see the world in terms of words, except when they’re lyrics.

The DJ announces something very special. That percussive opening again, really cranked up this time. Hairs begin to rise on your arms. People invade the dance floor. They writhe, they squirm. The wine is blood-red and warm. Your knees are refusing to lock. They send you down on to all fours, the glass tumbling and smashing.

‘Good dog,’ someone says, rubbing your hair. ‘Good and faithful servant.’

He’s wearing sandals and tight red trousers. You recognise the voice, of course. You force yourself to look up towards his face, but see only radiance.

And the record plays on.

A respectful amount of time later, when the album has finished and the crowd has finished its applause, McCartney hands the DJ something his own band have been working on. The crowd sway and sing along to the chorus. St Jude – patron saint of lost causes. The song seems to go on for ever. And it’s so sad, so personal, and emotional, you begin to cry.

A week later, you’re still crying.

The album isn’t going to be released. Both record companies – UK and US – want the sleeve changed. They don’t like toilet humour. You’d made your own humble suggestions about possible graffiti, and managed to feel snubbed when none were taken up.

‘Toilet wall,’ someone commented. ‘Brilliant idea, just perfect. ’Cos that’s where this decade’s headed: straight down the shitter.’

You wondered at the time what he was talking about. But the first single, released into a summer of street riots, has already been banned in some American cities. The band is never far from a news story, which is why your magazine has given you so much leeway. Not that they’ll give you any more money, but they’ll wait another month or so for the real commentary, the last word on the drenched hedonism of rock and roll.

Let them wait. The story no longer matters to you. What matters is a sense you have of where things are headed. Which is why you’re enraged when Mick makes his film and you’re not allowed on the set. He’s acting with Anita. There are tensions there to be exploited. Then Marianne loses the baby she’s been carrying, and you can’t help wondering about signs and portents.

You talk to Brian about it. He’s moved into A. A. Milne’s old house, and wants to show you around. He says you can feel free to take a dip in the pool, but you refuse. His voice, always a quiet lisp, seems already otherworldly. He has big ideas and a nice sense of betrayal. He tells you again that you can swim any time you like. You were never much of a swimmer, and now you feel like you’re sinking. More uppers, more downers, and more of everything in between. The magazine gives up on you, but another shows interest. Everyone thinks you have access. Only you know the truth. The access you want, the only access that matters, is the one you’ll always be denied. You’ve captured barely a glimmer of the story.

Your original employer hears about your new employer and decides to sue. Ugly bits of paper fly around your head, full of legalese and figures. Lawyers want your notes and tapes. They want everything you produced. You hand over a single sheet; five hundred words. You lie about everything else, and spend three weeks in your freezing flat, promising your agent (who has promised a West End producer) that you’re writing a new play. Another black comedy.

‘But angry, yes?’ your agent says.

You drop the receiver back into its cradle.

Then you get word of the filming. A TV special, to be recorded over two days. The audience will be in fancy dress. Top acts and circus sideshows. You go along, but are disappointed. On the studio set, you’re too obviously a spectator rather than a participant. There’s a distance there that you cannot bridge.

You pick up a girl, take her home. She sees your place and immediately becomes less impressed. You play her the record, but there’s no way of proving that you were there, that you’re part of it. You play her a section from one of your interviews, but the words seem to bore her. She only really perks up when you wheel out the drugs. You owe Jeff the Nose sixty quid for the goods, and only went to him because you owe the others so much they’ve stopped your supply. Friends aren’t as patient as they used to be. You were in a pub in Camden the other night, telling your story, and someone called out: ‘Change the fucking record. That one’s been played to death.’

Everyone laughed, until you swept your arm across the table, sending the glasses flying.

Your agent is discouraging. ‘No one’s going to hand over a single halfpenny on the strength of three first-act scenes.’

So you write a fourth.

And then it’s 1969. And Brian’s out of the group.

And Brian’s dead.

You’re there for the free concert: just another face in the crowd. The entourage – the powers – know you never finished your article. They think you never will. When the box of butterflies is opened, you’re close enough to the stage to see that many of them have already expired. It’s July: hotter than hell’s fire. Mick looks well. He’s heading for Australia to make another film. You didn’t even bother trying for permission to tag along.

But you have finished your play. It ended up being performed in Hampstead, didn’t transfer to the West End. The critics were scornful, but it got your name back into contention for a little while, and you’ve been offered some film work, script doctoring in Hollywood. You know a few writers out there, Brits who went for money over sensibility. One novelist who wrote the first two parts of what was going to be England’s great postwar trilogy, then legged it at the first sniff of dollars and a nicely tanned coastline. You spoke to him by telephone; he told you to jump at the chance.

You jumped.

Hated Los Angeles. Heard that Marianne had recovered from an overdose. Keith and Anita were in Cheyne Walk, and had created a new magic circle of friends, people who shared their habits. You almost allowed yourself a cruel smile when the money wars became public, Klein the chief suspect. You knew they’d tour: they’d have to. How else to dig themselves out of the financial hole? And you knew they’d hit the west coast. And you knew you’d be waiting.

The script doctors got together to tell stories about past Hollywood prisoners: Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chandler, all of whom had liked a drink. Alcohol hadn’t bothered the moguls. Drugs didn’t seem to bother them either – just as long as the work got done. That was your problem: hope and work just didn’t mix. You had an apartment in Studio City, but the walls were too close together and the view from your window was a concrete wall. You joked that there was more room in your car, a T-Bird you’d bought from a TV actor who was up on a DUI charge. He was hoping to persuade the court that he was shedding his old life. The consensus was, he’d win his case; he played pretty well to an audience, had some stage work behind him.

You liked to get out of the city, drive up the coast, even when it was hazy. Especially when it was hazy. You loved the feeling of driving into something you couldn’t see; loved when each curve in the road surprised you. It was like driving into the future. You told a girl about your feelings. She said the image wasn’t new, mentioned its use in a novel a few years back.

It was the first novel by the sleepy American. He still hadn’t produced a follow-up, and amazingly this had only increased his profile, the non-book taking on heroic status. All he had to do was claim he’d finished another chapter, and it was the talk of the coffee shops.

You saw him once in Haight-Ashbury, stumbling along at the roach-end of the hippy dream. San Francisco had the Airplane and the Dead, but LA had The Doors, and it seemed to you that LA was the true indicator of the way things were going. Nobody much cared when Lennon handed back his MBE. The much greater gesture belonged to Charles Manson and his ‘family’. Everyone in your circle was talking about that.

Then there was Vietnam, and the Panthers: violence no longer content to bubble beneath the haze. And then the band came to the Los Angeles Forum, riding on the back of hiked ticket prices and rising bad will. The underground press (no longer underground) had the knives out from the start, which didn’t stop you paying your $8.50. You made a half-hearted attempt at breaching the backstage defences, but didn’t recognise any of the faces.

‘Do you have any authority?’ one of the security goons asked, and you had to admit to yourself that you did not.

The show itself was okay. They were playing tracks from the new album – your moment of fame was already history. The band had moved on; the new songs seemed obsessed with downfall and mayhem. The last track seemed to you to be waving goodbye to everybody’s good times. You doubted the Panthers and the Angels would disagree.

It was typical of the band to want to replicate Wood-stock’s good feelings. Typical that they misjudged the way the world’s mood had travelled since then. Their own free concert was by way of an apology for ticket scams and all that ill-feeling. You knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

For a start, the drugs had moved on. Everything was bad: diluted, cut with poison, lethal. You were a pro; you could probably give Keith lessons on where to score. You had managed to pull yourself away from the siren call of heroin, but the acid seemed to be giving you more bad trips than good ones. Nevertheless, on the day, you took a proffered tab from a complete stranger.

And tripped.

In cold black light, explosions strafing the sky. The sound system consisted of alarm bells and artillery. The crowd was hungry, tired, concussed. They needed everything they weren’t getting. The medicos couldn’t cope with the trauma victims. Word went around: ‘Don’t touch any acid you’re not sure of.’ But you already had. And you’d handed over money for a single sheet of further trips, little purple stars: an ironic comment on the war in Vietnam? Who gave a shit – you were beyond irony by this point.

You had about a week to go before your employers threw you out. You’d added nothing of inspiration to a ‘modern western’ they’d asked you to pep up; had failed dismally to pitch them a black comedy about the drug scene in LA. You were not justifying their early faith in you. You were on the road out of Tinseltown.

Back to Blighty: a dismal prospect. You’d already traded the T-Bird to pay off a debt which had come with the promise of a switchblade attached. They’d threatened to cut off your eyelids. That was the way things were now. The most potent threat anyone could make was to stop you ceasing to see.

You’d hitched down here with a friend. The traffic had forced you out of the car five miles from the field, and you’d promptly lost your friend in the crowd. Not that he’d be your friend for long: you owed him money, too, and were planning to fly off without making good.

You were way past ‘making good’.

You noticed them early on, the Angels. They revved their engines, clearing a path for several dozen hogs, which they parked in front of the stage, creating a security cordon. And then the guest bands started coming on, and it got colder, and trouble flared. Pool cues and motorbike chains. Ugly cries and gashed heads. Pleas from the stage going unheeded, an Angel going up there to pick a fight with a stoned musician.

You were standing next to this black guy when the headliners – your old muckers – finally came on. Your whole body was numb, but your brain was alive with sparks. The air felt malign; the hairs once more rose on your arms. Violence broke out again.

‘This is heavy,’ the black guy said. You offered him a tab of your acid, showed him the little purple stars.

‘I sang backing on this,’ you shouted. The black guy nodded. ‘In the studio,’ you persisted. ‘I’m there on the album.’

He nodded again, but you knew he wasn’t listening. You were humming now; brimful of brimstone. And up there on the stage they were playing your tune.

‘This is it, man,’ you yelled at your new friend, slapping him on the back. ‘This is us! This is what it’s all about! Come on!’ And you gave him a push that sent him jogging down to the front, right into the phalanx of guards. You stayed back. You watched. You saw silver flash in the darkness. A gun? A knife? Your friend went down and was swallowed up by denim jackets and leathers. People started screaming, showing bloodied palms to the band on the stage. Over the microphone, a doctor was requested.

The cusp of devilment, my friend…

You nodded to yourself, jungle drums dying in your ears. The sacrifice had been made. The energy had been earthed. Anger’s Lucifer had been appeased.

Or whatever.

And the sky made a song of your cries…