Flesh Guitar

LAST NIGHT I WRECKED A DJ’S LIFE

Jenny Slade could no longer remember which magazine had first referred to Jed Rhodes as a ‘drug-crazed bass player’. The epithet had stuck, but she’d always found it absurd. There was no denying that Jed had a lifelong appetite for, maybe even a lifelong love affair with drugs, but it seemed to her there was nothing even remotely crazed about him. He played bass, he took drugs and he remained an utterly sane, rational, ordinary individual. There were times when he became rather quiet and introspective, other times when he might see and talk to things or people or monsters that weren’t actually there, but these were small, forgivable eccentricities. The basic, down-to-earth personality always remained. His sense of rhythm never faltered and he never played a bum note.

Jenny sometimes thought Jed didn’t deserve to look so good, so healthy, shouldn’t be such a walking advertisement for the joys, or at least the essential harmlessness, of drug abuse, but it was an aesthetic judgement not a moral one.

‘Drug abuse!’ Jed would sneer. ‘That’s such a pathetic term. What can you do with drugs except abuse them? That’s what drugs are for.’ He’d spent a lifetime just saying yes and he’d done fine, but Jenny knew he was lucky. It wasn’t always like that. Few people in the world had the constitution, the inner or outer strength that Jed had, and she certainly did not include herself in that number.

So when she ran into Jed Rhodes in the car-park of a club that was being held in a converted pasta factory just outside the M25 and he offered her an untried and untested chemical, her first reaction was not necessarily to knock it back without hesitation. She also saw that Jed was not alone. He was with a curious young man: a wire-thin, jumpy, wasted-looking, top-of-the-class-in-science type.

‘This is Tubby Moran,’ Jed said. ‘We call him Tubby because he’s not. That’s drug humour for you. Tubby designs designer drugs, like this one.’

Jed held up a phial about the size of a chemistry lab test tube containing a baby-pink liquid. Tubby Moran looked at the tube and swelled with pride.

‘What drug is it?’ Jenny asked.

‘We call it “Bliss”,’ Jed replied.

‘That’s such a dodgy name for a drug,’ Jenny said, and she noticed that Tubby looked hurt.

‘What’s in a name,’ Jed insisted. ‘It’s good. I’ve taken gallons of the stuff.’

He waved the phial again. The contents certainly looked cute and harmless enough.

‘What does it do to you?’ she asked.

‘Better if I don’t tell you,’ Jed said. ‘That way it’s a surprise’.

‘Oh, come on!’ she protested.

‘I promise you it’s not harmful, it’s not going to make you believe you can fly or want to have sex with the first eighteen truck drivers you meet.’

‘I promise too,’ Tubby added reassuringly.

Jed put the phial to his lips and drained a good half of the pink liquid. ‘Last chance,’ he said, and made as though he was going to swig the rest.

‘Oh, all right, damn it,’ Jenny said. ‘But you’re sure I’ll like it?’

The two men nodded enthusiastically and Jenny drank half of the remaining dose. Keeping up with Jed’s intake was not a game she intended to play. She handed the phial back to him, expecting him to pass it on to Tubby, but he finished the rest himself and the designer-drug boy didn’t complain.

‘You feel OK?’ Jed asked.

‘I feel fine, no different.’

‘Good. Wait till we get into the club.’

Two bouncers, broad as air-raid shelters, waved them into the club. They looked dubiously at the tragically unhip Tubby Moran, but being with Jed Rhodes was passport enough. They made for the bar.

‘Is it OK to drink on top of this stuff?’ Jenny asked.

Tubby assured her that it was. As they stood in the crush trying to get served, Jenny became aware of the music. It was something she’d never heard before, a techno beat, a black woman warbling in a high register, not the sort of stuff she normally listened to or liked, yet tonight in the context of the club it sounded really good. And before long she couldn’t be bothered to fight her way to the bar; she just wanted to get on the dance floor and immerse herself in the music. Jed followed her and they danced together briefly, but she didn’t really notice him. She was dancing with and for herself.

The sound system was fantastic and Jenny took up position next to a speaker, felt the bass and drums ripple through her body. It was truly great. What was this music? It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. She wanted it to go on forever, she wanted to swim in it, drown in it. And then suddenly a guitar kicked in, digitally enhanced no doubt, sampled and sequenced probably, but it was so perfectly done, so fully on the money, that it hit her like a hammer. But maybe the hammer simile wasn’t quite right, maybe it was more like a landslide, an earthquake, a shifting of tectonic plates that cut the ground from under her and let her drop towards the centre of the earth. Jesus, this was a band she’d like to play in.

She didn’t know how long the track went on for, but suddenly it was over; it stopped and some other music started to play. Jenny was desolate, and furious as well. What was this crap they’d put on? Why did they take off the good stuff, the great stuff? How could they? She pushed her way through the crowd and found the DJ at his console.

‘What was that you were playing?’ she demanded.

He named a title and artist that meant nothing to her.

‘It was fantastic,’ she said. ‘Play it again.’

‘I just played it.’

‘Play it again.’

‘Later,’ he said.

‘Now,’ she corrected him. ‘Right now.’ And she grabbed him by the neck. Her fingers tightened around his windpipe; they were strong fingers — all those years of stretching and dexterity exercises hadn’t been wasted — and the DJ’s eyes started to pop and he was nodding, OK, OK, he’d play the music again.

Jenny was thrilled and relieved. She really felt something terrible might have happened to her if she’d been deprived of that music for another second, and then she said to herself, ‘Oh no. Oh fuck. So that’s what the drug does.’

Not that knowing made any difference. As the music returned it took possession of her again, just the way it had before, and the feeling was indeed blissful. Not bad; at last a drug that lived up to its name. She danced on, transported, transformed. Jed had disappeared, Tubby Moran too. No doubt they were blissing out somewhere just like her, but she didn’t really care. All that mattered was the music and her engagement with it and that totally amazing guitar sound.

Everything was fine until the music stopped again and the fury came back on her and she launched a second attack on the poor DJ. This time, however, he was prepared. Four bouncers were in place to protect him. It made little difference to Jenny in her present state. She was ready to fight all four of them simultaneously if that’s what it took to get the music back. And fight them she did, but it was inevitably a losing battle. Half a minute later she was carried out through the emergency exit and dumped on the tarmac of the car-park. The bouncers re-entered the club and the door slammed shut behind them. Jenny threw herself at the smooth, handleless door, clawed it with her nails, anything to get back to that music.

‘Hey kid, you seem to be having what I’d have to call an extreme reaction there.’

She turned to see Jed Rhodes and Tubby Moran trotting up beside her. She scarcely seemed to recognize them, but she did see that Jed was holding a CD.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, trying to calm her. ‘I’ve got the music right here. The DJ was happy to get rid of it. There’s a player in my car. You’re going to be fine.’

The promise of renewed Bliss was almost too much for her. She thought she might lose control of her mind or her sphincters, but between them Jed and Tubby succeeded in holding her down long enough to strap her into the passenger seat of the car and put the CD in the player and, once again, Jenny returned to her blissful state. Of course, it was only one track on the CD that had the required effect, so Jed pressed the endless replay button and reckoned Jenny was going to be stable, if out of action, for the next few hours.

‘Back to the drawing board, eh Tubby?’

‘A little redesigning may be required,’ Tubby admitted. ‘A few small tweaks in the chemical structure are probably all that’s needed.’

He left and Jed did his best with Jenny. He felt a sense of responsibility towards her, so he got in the car and drove her home with him. For a long time he sat with her but when she finally appeared to be asleep he decided it was safe to leave her while he went to his own bed. He turned off the music but pressed the CD into her hand so she’d have it if she woke up next morning with the need and the mania still on her.

Fortunately she didn’t. Tomorrow was another day. She woke, found herself in the passenger seat, couldn’t quite remember what she was doing there, why there was this CD in her hand. But she looked around, realized she was parked in Jed’s street, and gradually put two and two together. She made her way to Jed’s flat and over coffee and cigarettes she learned a little more about Tubby and Bliss.

‘It’s early days but I think he’s on to something,’ Jed insisted. ‘Each batch is slightly different, and of course the effects vary with different metabolisms. But basically it means that whatever music you happen to hear when you’re on the drug you think it’s the best music you’ve ever heard in your life. Usually you know it’s illusory because the music changes and with every change you still think it’s the best. Getting hooked on one piece like you did, I’ve never seen that before. I wonder what would happen if you heard it now.’

Before she could protest Jed had taken the CD from her and put it into a boogie box, and the music was playing again and Jenny steeled herself for the worst and the best. But nothing happened. All she heard was a rather ordinary piece of techno dance music. It moved along OK but it was nothing special, and when the sampled guitar started, well, it was a nice enough piece of sampled guitar, but that was all. She and Jed shared a sigh of relief.

Jenny sipped her coffee. In the cold light of day it all seemed pretty funny, absurd, and given how wonderfully good it had been at the time there were surprisingly few side effects. She felt a little tired and washed out but there was no hangover, no withdrawal symptoms. But that didn’t make it any less scary.

‘In the wrong hands it could be a killer,’ Jenny said.

‘Just as well it’s in the right hands,’ Jed said, at which point there was a ring at the door bell and Jed let in Tubby Moran. He was carrying a crate of bottles, each of them full of a pink liquid, though of a subtly different shade from the stuff Jenny had taken.

‘I was up all night,’ Tubby said, ‘ironing out faults. This stuff is much better.’

‘Great,’ said Jed, and he took the bottles and loaded them into his fridge. Even given Jed’s prodigious rate of drug consumption this huge dosage seemed in excess of requirements.

‘My band’s doing a gig next Thursday,’ he said confidentially. ‘Everyone in the audience is going to be given a taste of this stuff as we go on stage. I’ve got the feeling it could be a very good gig.’

Tubby billowed with pride again, the co-conspirator, the acid prince. Jenny was about to protest that they couldn’t do that, but she knew very well that they could and would.

Jenny was in the audience that Thursday to see the Jed Rhodes Band. She took her own supply of drinking water and refused to touch anything anybody offered her. She wanted to be there for this big occasion, but she didn’t want to participate in it. She felt someone ought to stay straight, to bear witness, to be ready to call the emergency services if and when necessary.

It occurred to her that if Tubby Moran was wrong, if he hadn’t ironed out the problems and everyone in the audience reacted the way she had at the club, then Jed and his band would be forced to play the same song, presumably the opening song of the set, over and over again until the drug wore off. Jed assured her this couldn’t happen and she hoped he was right. This new stuff was very cool, very mellow, he said.

As Jed and his band — bass, drums, keyboard player and lead guitarist — took to the stage, the bottles of pink liquid were passed from hand to hand throughout the audience. Some drank more eagerly than others but nobody seemed to be turning it down. Jenny continued to be amazed at the gullible nature of rock audiences.

The band started to play and the audience were appreciative enough. They paid attention, they listened, they cheered enthusiastically at the end of the first couple of songs, but it was all well within the bounds of normal audience response. Then, in the third number, the lead guitarist took a solo. Jenny didn’t know his work, didn’t even know his name. He was young and muscular and not bad-looking but it seemed to her that the solo was fairly run of the mill. The audience, however, thought differently. From the moment he played the first note of his solo they were bewitched. They hung on his every note, as if they were hearing the music of the spheres. They were truly exultant, truly blissed out. The solo ended and the audience settled down, became sane again, but they had obviously experienced something intense and exquisite and they wanted more.

And that was how it went for the rest of the gig, a perfectly attentive audience that became electrified every time the guitarist took a solo. Jenny watched and wasn’t sure what she thought. Should she disapprove? Was something deeply immoral going on here? The artistic objections were obvious enough, but it seemed mean-spirited to object when everyone in the place was having such a spectacularly good time. Jed Rhodes appeared to be having the best time of all. No doubt he’d taken twice as much of the drug as anyone in the audience and the look on his face was positively beatific.

As midnight came around the band tried to take a break, but the audience wouldn’t let them leave the stage. They played for another twenty minutes or so, then tried again. This time the audience threatened to turn ugly and demanded encores, dozens of them. The band was forced to play all through the night, to perform every song they knew, and the lead guitarist was forced to play solos until his hands almost bled. Only when the night sky began to lighten with the onset of dawn did the effects of the drug start to wear off. Only then did the audience quieten down and only then were the band allowed to finish.

Jenny left long before the end but she’d already seen more than enough. She didn’t get to speak to Jed that night and when she phoned him the next day she was told that he and his band had already left town and started a hastily arranged national tour. She feared the very worst.

Over the next few weeks she heard plenty of rumours, some were more reliable than others and a few were very strange indeed, but they all confirmed that Jed Rhodes was having one helluva tour. All over the country audiences were going crazy for Jed Rhodes, his band, his music, and particularly for his hot young lead guitarist. Jenny read reviews of the gigs, and sometimes the reviewers were mystified by Jed’s success with his audience, and she supposed these were reviewers who didn’t get to have any of the drug. But just as often the reviews showed every sign of participation in the drug experience, and were suitably agog in their appreciation. Tickets were selling fast.

The national tour became international. Jed and his band hit the road for America, Japan, the Pacific Rim. Jenny lost touch completely, lost track of his progress, but she did hear that a fifth member of the band had started to appear on stage, an enigmatic little character called Tubby Moran who didn’t appear to do much, didn’t play a musical instrument, and yet presided over the band as though he were their mascot and guiding genius.

Jenny wished Jed all the best, hoped he’d become rich and famous and able to buy all the drugs he wanted, and on those occasions when she was playing to dull, unresponsive audiences in cold empty halls she wished she could hand round a few draughts of the famous pink liquid. But on balance she never seriously envied Jed. She had a firm sense of impending disaster.

Six months later Jenny was buying some groceries in an all-night supermarket when she saw someone over by the pharmacy counter who looked a lot like Jed Rhodes. She thought it couldn’t be him because surely he was still on tour and also because Jed wouldn’t look so poor and hollowed out, wouldn’t be wearing that shabby old greatcoat, for instance. But she peered down into his shopping trolley, saw that it was full of vodka and cough medicine and she knew it had to be Jed. The face was older, the hair had turned a few shades greyer, the skin too, but it was him all right.

‘How’s it going, Jed?’ she asked.

Without lifting his head he said, ‘Don’t ask, Jenny,’ but she couldn’t stop herself asking, and later in an all-night coffee bar Jed couldn’t help himself telling her the whole sad story.

‘Right from the beginning there were problems,’ he admitted, ‘and I don’t deny they were largely caused by drugs. But you know, I’ve been on other tours where there were problems with drugs, and usually they were drugs a whole lot nastier than Bliss. I thought I could cope. I was stupid, right?’

Jenny didn’t reply, so he continued, ‘The major problem was getting all the Bliss that we needed. Tubby Moran was a great guy but he was a cottage industry and we needed industrial amounts of the stuff — we were playing to huge audiences remember.

‘If he’d stayed home in England and employed a few helpers it might have worked, but he insisted on coming with us and making the stuff while we were on tour. We had to use local ingredients, had to mix up the stuff in the dressing room during sound checks. There were quality control problems. It wasn’t that the drug didn’t work, just that it could be a little unpredictable.’

‘You don’t say,’ Jenny sniped.

‘One night I started the gig with an unaccompanied bass solo and the audience loved it. In fact they loved it so much I had keep on playing it for four hours. They wouldn’t let the rest of the band get on stage. Sometimes they loved us so much they wanted to take us home with them and adopt us. Sometimes they loved us so much they wanted to tear us limb from limb. It was weird.

‘You probably heard about Tubby demanding to appear on stage with us, and in one way I thought he had a point, because obviously he was vital to the act; it was just that he looked like such a prat on stage. I mean he was completely unmusical. He couldn’t dance, couldn’t even play a tambourine. He made us look stupid.

‘But he was a pussycat compared to my lead guitarist. I know you’ve got to have plenty of ego in this business and I know that being cheered ecstatically by thousands of people every night must do strange things to your head, but he was ridiculous. He really thought he was the best guitarist who’d ever lived. He really did think he was God and Eric Clapton all rolled into one. He never twigged that it had anything to do with the drug. The worst part of it was that if I happened to be on Bliss at the time I’d think he was right. When the drug wore off, I tried telling him that audiences would have reacted the same way if he’d been a well-trained monkey up there, but he just didn’t get it.

‘And the rest of the band weren’t much better. They got to the stage where they’d only play if the audience was drugged up. They were scared of playing to a straight audience, to anyone who might have their critical faculties intact. They forced me to cancel gigs when Tubby hadn’t managed to mix up enough Bliss to get the whole audience loaded.’

Jed shook his head at the terrible memory.

‘Still,’ said Jenny, ‘it can’t have been all bad, playing to such adoring audiences.’

‘Yeah, on balance I was happy enough but the record company weren’t.’

‘No?’

‘No, because none of the buggers who came to the gigs ever bought any recordings. Maybe they knew it was only a live experience, or maybe one or two had actually bought our records, listened to them and realized they were no good without the drug. I suggested we give away free samples of Bliss with every album, but the record company didn’t like that at all.

‘So an A&R man took Tubby aside and said to him, couldn’t he redesign this drug of his a little so that the effect lasted, either permanently or at least until the punters had bought the CD, taken it home and played it a few times. And couldn’t he maybe change the drug so that instead of reacting to raucous guitar noise, the audiences would react instead to strings or middle-of-the-road vocal harmonies. Tubby said he’d see what he could do, but then, of course, the penny dropped. The record company bosses realized they could do without me and the rest of the band. All they needed was Tubby and his drugs. If they could get the right drug to the audience they could put out any old crap and people would still love it and buy it.

‘So Tubby Moran, the quisling, got a ten-year “production” deal, and I understand he’s going to be working with some very exciting Vegas lounge acts. My lead guitarist decided to go solo and now he plays every night to completely indifferent audiences and wonders where he went wrong. And I’m left with a rhythm section that has lost its nerve. That’s how it’s going for me. How’s it going for you, Jenny?’

Jenny smiled sadly. It seemed she had no worries at all compared to Jed, but the things he’d said had started her thinking. The whole saga of Jed and Tubby and this drug called Bliss had scarcely lasted six months and yet it seemed to her that the drug, or at least something very much like it, had perhaps been around much, much longer than that. If the drug, or a precursor of the drug, had been around for a long time, then who was to say that she, along with millions of others, hadn’t already been unknowingly exposed to it.

Its existence explained so much — those albums that only had one listenable track on them, those albums you listened to once and never again, those albums you used to love and nearly wore out with playing that were now completely intolerable, those guitar solos that had once seemed so exciting and vital that now sounded so feeble and pallid.

It explained other things too. Jenny had never been able to understand how anybody could listen to Pat Metheny or John Scofield albums, but mind-altering drugs would certainly have been one way of doing it.

Then another thought struck her. That night in Phoenix when she saw Neil Young, that Free Kitten gig at the Garage in London, watching K. K. Null in Tokyo, they’d all seemed like wonderful, magnificent occasions, but how could she tell that her response had been genuine and not caused by exposure to doses of Bliss? It was a devastating idea.

The next night Jenny Slade and Jed Rhodes did a duo set at a working man’s club in Dagenham. It was not one of the great gigs. The audience was restless and halfway through the set a handful of drunks cut up nasty and started heckling and booing. Jed and Jenny smiled and lapped it up. Booing had never sounded so good.