‘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.