‘Hi, Tina, we’re having quite a time here, we’re all higher than a kite and it would be just great if you could come over and join us because we have some great people here, all really good friends of mine, and we could do some great things here if we had a girl like you here, so please come over and bring some things over with you because I…’
This time his voice was just cut off without any explanation, and the tape stopped with a click. He hadn’t left an address for Tina to go and find him. Her door remained ominously shut.
*
Vincent was in a particularly cheerful mood when we arrived at the studio that morning. His favourite customers were using one of the rehearsal rooms: not us, of course, but an all-female band called The Vicious Circles. He was, I need hardly tell you, one of those typical music-business technicians who specialize in making the lives of female musicians a misery. When I arrived, one of The Vicious Circles was standing at his desk complaining that she couldn’t get her amplifier to work.
‘Do you think you could come and look at it?’ she was saying.
‘Look at it? I’ll do more than come and look at it for you, darling. I’ll bring my plug along and stick it in, if you like.’
He was wearing a T-shirt on which a picture of an enormous red rooster was accompanied by the words, ‘Nothing like a nice big cock to wake you up in the morning’.
‘Look, I’m only asking you to come and give me a hand.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind giving you a hand, darling. A hand’ll do nicely to start with. Har, har, har!’
‘I’ll go and do it myself,’ she said, turning.
‘Anything else wrong, is there, darling? You wouldn’t like me to have a look at your fuzz box, would you? Har, har, har!’
She was about to go back downstairs, when two small children suddenly appeared through the front door, wearing matching anoraks. Immediately, all Vincent’s joviality evaporated and he stared at them in horror and fury. For several seconds he was speechless; then he exploded.
‘Kids! What the fucking hell are two bloody kids doing in here? Get them out! Go on, piss off!’
The woman ran over to her children and gathered them in her arms reproachfully.
‘Look, I thought I told you to stay in the car.’
‘It’s boring,’ said the eldest.
‘Are these yours?’ Vincent asked.
‘Yes.’
‘This isn’t a fucking kindergarten, you know. Who said you could bring your kids here?’
‘Well what else am I supposed to do with them while we practise? I can’t afford a minder.’
‘Get those kids out of here and lock them in your fucking car, and don’t bring them in here again.’
‘Come on,’ she said, taking them both by the hand. ‘Back to the car. I’ll keep coming out and seeing you, and I’ll bring you some sweets.’
Vincent turned to me after they’d gone, apparently expecting to find me in sympathy with him.
‘Women with kids should stay at home and look after the little fuckers,’ he said. ‘They don’t know a tit from a tweeter anyway, this lot. Totally clueless.’
‘How’s Studio B coming along?’ I asked, anxious to change the subject.
‘Oh, you know, a bit of work still to do. You’ll be the first to know when it’s ready.’
‘How long’s it been out of action, now? Quite a few months, isn’t it?’
‘No, no, a few weeks, that’s all.’
‘That’s funny, because whenever I talk to the other bands who use this place, none of them have ever been in there, either. It seems to have been shut for as long as we can remember.’
He put his face uncomfortably near mine and looked me squarely in the eye.
‘Do you mind if I give you some advice, Bilbo?’ he said. ‘Don’t ask so many questions. All right?’
I nodded.
‘Come on then, we’ve got work to do.’
Jake and Harry were already waiting for us in the studio; Martin presumably knew that we wouldn’t be needing him until later. Once inside the studio Vincent became quiet and efficient and began checking the mikes set up around the drum kit. Jake was looking nervous: he knew that his part was the first to be recorded, and that he’d have to get it right early on in the session. It wasn’t a particularly complex drum part, though, and besides having a click track to keep him in time, I was going to provide a basic keyboard part so that he’d know where he was in the song.
As soon as he started playing, though, I could tell that he hadn’t learnt the song properly. He had no real idea where the transitions were meant to come, and he was far too tentative about putting in fills. And, in spite of my pleas to the contrary, the pattern he was playing was a none-too-distant cousin of:
After six or seven takes he was basically no better, just a little more polished and relaxed, so I thought we might as well cut our losses. As Jake sweated his way through the fade-out, I gave a thumbs-up to Vincent on the other side of the glass, and Harry was sent through to put down the bass line.
We got an excellent take from Harry on his second go, by which time Martin had arrived. There followed a prolonged interval for re-stringing and tuning. Vincent gave him a brief lecture about the folly of putting new strings on just before a recording session, and I felt, for once, slightly grateful to the bad-tempered old bastard. Martin scowled and dithered over whether to use a thick or a thin plectrum. At first when he started playing, his chords seemed to bear no relation to the bass line: it transpired that he was playing them three frets too high. There was a minor seven which he kept playing as a major until it practically drove me mad with frustration. He attempted impossibly ambitious arpeggios where the song called for simple power chords. His B string kept going out of tune. By the time we had even a half-way decent take, it was getting on for one o’clock.
‘We’ll have to finish this this afternoon,’ said Vincent, gleefully. ‘It’ll cost you double, of course.’
‘You’ll have to speak to Chester about that,’ I said. Chester paid all our rehearsal and recording bills.
We went to the pub across the road, a square, detached, concrete building calculated to depress the most flighty of spirits. Martin bought a round and we sat drinking it in morose silence, conscious that the morning had gone just as badly as we had all expected.
‘Catchy tune, that,’ said Jake eventually, having hummed a few bars of ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land’.
‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a nice one.’
I resented these limp attempts to cheer me up.
‘Perhaps we should have recorded something a bit simpler,’ I said.
‘No, this is a good one to do,’ said Harry. ‘It’s direct, it’s tuneful.’
‘Not exactly chart material, though, is it?’ said Martin, sipping his beer and glowering. ‘It’s not what you’d call commercial.’
‘That’s such a bloody old-fashioned thing to say,’ said Jake. ‘That distinction just doesn’t exist any more. Anything can get into the charts these days, absolutely anything, as long as it’s properly marketed. That’s why they’re so full of shit.’ He took a mouthful of Guinness and closed his eyes. ‘God, I wish we were back in seventy-six.’
‘Why, what happened in seventy-six?’ asked Martin.
Jake eyed him up to see if he was being serious.
‘You’ve heard of punk, have you?’
‘Punk? That was never twelve years ago, was it?’
‘It bloody was,’ said Harry. ‘Twelve years almost exactly. “Anarchy in the UK", released November the twenty-sixth, nineteen seventy-six. What a band, eh? What a band.’
‘The Damned, “New Rose". That came out then, too.’