And where is he on his way to, Jakes asks Karl.
Oh, says Karl, also to Cape Town. He’s on his way to fetch his brother.
Where? asks Jakes.
Karl hesitates a moment before replying: He’s living on a farm in the city, a kind of artists’ colony. Against the mountain. Table Mountain.
Oh, says Jakes, he knows about it. He also lived there for a while. In a tent. At that stage he was not accountable for his own actions. He could hardly think straight — very much out of it, he says, with a little chuckle.
Does he know Josias Brandt? asks Karl.
Yes, says Jakes. Josias took him in when he was homeless. When he had nowhere to go.
‘Is he a decent kind of guy?’ Karl asks cautiously.
‘Yes,’ says Jakes, ‘he’s decent enough. He’s generous. He didn’t need to take me in. He’s probably got his faults. I can’t tell. I wasn’t in any state to assess anybody. I haven’t seen him for a long time. He’s always on the go with some project or other.’
‘Monstrous ego,’ says Ian. ‘But I don’t really know him.’
‘Does he have girlfriends?’ asks Karl.
‘Yep. I guess so,’ says Jakes. ‘He’s got kids in any case. His own, orphans, adopted kids. I don’t think he discriminates. He’s the type of guy who takes in anybody: widows and orphans; down-and-outs.’
‘He’s not … perverse or anything?’ Karl asks.
Ian laughs softly.
Jakes looks slightly surprised. ‘I don’t know. He may be. Define perverse. We’re probably all a bit perverse.’
‘Not so that he would … blackmail somebody emotionally,’ what is it that Iggy accuses the Headman of?), ‘you know … would mess about with him sexually or so?’
Ian laughs softly again.
‘No, I don’t know,’ says Jakes. ‘Perhaps he would. Perhaps he wouldn’t. As I say, I wasn’t in any condition to reach any conclusions about anybody. He often collaborates with strange people. Interesting people. They do installations, video work. He has quite a high profile as an artist. As I say, it’s a while since I’ve been on the farm. And I’ve long stopped trusting my judgement of people. Or rather, I’ve given up judging people. I’m only too glad’ — and he gives a wry chuckle — ‘to recognise my face in the mirror in the mornings.’
‘Nasty little trip that was, my bru,’ says Ian.
‘Fucking nasty,’ says Jakes. ‘I didn’t think I was going to make it.’
*
One fine day Jakes Oosthuizen was strolling along, minding his own business, down the street, or more precisely the Avenue, in the Gardens to be even more precise, squirrels and acorns and people chatting all over the show, tourists with cameras and school kids eating ice cream, when a Higher Hand grabbed him by the shoulder, shook him so his teeth rattled and said: Where the fuck do you think you’re going? And right there and then he went under and came up again only months later. Baptism by immersion. Divinely elected.
Received instruction to burn the book he was writing. Realised it was no use kicking against the pricks. Realised he’d come up against something much greater than himself. Meekly executed all orders: Write. Daily dictation from Above. A modern-day scribe. Page after page — gibberish he saw later. Describe the clouds, was the instruction. Describe the route of the ant. Describe the world through the composite eye of the fly. Kept eyes cast down. Tried to make himself as small as possible. Inconspicuous. Happy when he recognised himself in the mirror in the morning. And all the afternoon sky sometimes so filled with small, elliptical cirrus clouds.
*
What’s the matter with his leg, asks Stevie, why is he limping like that? Somebody potted him in the cemetery, says Karl. The three of them laugh incredulously. (Stevie in particular apparently finds it hilarious.) Where the hell does he hang out? Ian demands. Misunderstanding, says Karl. Bunch of guys took him for somebody else. He was a fool — reacted to a text message without checking properly who it came from. Thought it was from someone with information about his brother. Jake looks at him full of interest and sympathy, but asks no further questions.
They drink beer. They talk metal. Stevie is just as crazy about Motörhead as Karl. They once again talk about the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium. About other concerts. They talk about the evening in Colesberg. Stevie says the young guys must return to the roots. They must purge themselves of a lot of the current shit. They don’t know where metal comes from. They’re fascinated by the trimmings, but they have no fucking idea what the real thing is. He happens to have It Might Get Loud and Spinal Tap on his laptop. How about going to watch it right now? Yes, why not, says Karl. (He wasn’t reckoning on this. Things are looking better all the time.) He doesn’t know how keen the other two are, but they seem to have no objection to going along with the show. The combination of the beer and the painkillers induces a pleasant euphoria, he feels a bit out of it, not as stressed as in the last few days. What the hell, who knows, perhaps the situation with Iggy isn’t as bad as he’s imagining.
Jack White in a bow tie and little bowler hat with cows in the background, somewhere in the American countryside. On 23 January 2008 he, Jimmy Page and The Edge get together to talk about the electric guitar. In preparation and as a warming-up exercise The Edge does a form of yoga developed in Wales. Stevie slaps his leg, yoga in Wales, what do you know, he says. The Edge is wearing his customary cap and earring. Jimmy Page with long snow-white hair is wearing a white shirt and a long black jacket. Jack White is wearing braces and a hat. Karl is sitting pent up. Oh man, he thinks. I drive myself crazy to get the sound I hear in my head, says The Edge. That’s my voice, he says, what’s coming out of the speakers is my voice. Jimmy Page, in a car, driving through endless English country lanes, looks out of the window, talks about the early days of Led Zeppelin. Arrives at last at a large manor house, Hadley Grange. He goes in, the house seems deserted, but fully furnished. With his long arms and his flat face he gesticulates, points, shows where the drums were set up in the entrance hall. The recording truck was outside, wires rigged up from there along the banisters. He points out the high ceiling, explains how good the acoustics were. Fan-fucking-tastic, says Stevie. Fan-fuck-fucking-tastic. In Dublin in the mid-seventies The Edge thinks: There has to be more than this. The cityscape is drab and cold. Jack White listens somewhere to a blues song from the thirties: ‘Death don’t have no mercy in this land.’ From a suitcase, in the boot of his car, he takes out his alter ego, his younger self, a little boy with a little bowler hat. They jam together. You have to fight these man-made materials, Jack White tells the boy. He didn’t laugh when he saw the Spinal Tap movie, he says, he cried. I wept, he says. Sometimes Stevie plays air guitar along with Jimmy Page. Great, he says. Awesome. Of Jack White he says: The kid knows what he’s doing. Pity The Edge is with showman Bono, he says (who at that moment is on the screen running flat-out on a ramp across a humungous stage). Showman, says Stevie censoriously. But The Edge knows his stuff. Ian Bronkhorst and the Jakes guy offer little comment. There’s quite a bit of documentary footage of the youth of the three guitarists. Most of my days I spent listening to records, says Jimmy Page, with his wild seventies hairdo, and the curious epicanthic folds that make his eyes seem half-Oriental. As children they experimented with whatever was available, says The Edge. He and his brother built a guitar together, when his brother was sixteen and he fourteen. Jack White says that he is one of ten children. He started playing the drums by playing along with records. In his tiny bedroom there were two drum sets and no space for a bed. He slept on a piece of foam rubber by the doorway. Top of the Pops, says The Edge, was the only live music they knew: The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Ramones. The three guitarists jam together; Jimmy Page’s mouth in a grimace of concentration. Jakes leans forward in his chair. Stevie jams along on imaginary drums. When Page (on his Les Paul Gold Top by Gibson) lets rip with the first bars of ‘Whole Lotta Love’, both The Edge and Jack White lower their guitars in acknowledgement, both with a smile of admiration. Oh man, says Karl. Great song, classic, says Stevie. Jack White tells how they lived in a Mexican neighbourhood, in South-Western Detroit in the eighties. There were few white families left by then. His parents were too proud to move. In that neighbourhood it was uncool to play an instrument. There were no record or guitar shops. There were only DJs and rappers. I was seventeen, says Jack White, in the summer of ’92.