Mercy Beat
The Poet entered the Archway Tavern through the main entrance facing the busy roundabout which connects Holloway Road, Highgate Hill and Archway Road. He had just returned from returning the Strat to a needy little guy who desperately wanted Jimmy’s Telecaster. But this time Jimmy actually thought before he acted and decided to keep the very lightweight guitar, and to try and hold on to it for a while. “Strange guy” Jimmy thought, “nice enough but didn’t really say anything, just waited for me to make a decision”. This seemed to be a recurring theme in Jimmy’s life, people who said nothing and waited for him to act. Little things like that reminded Jimmy of the very good idea of bringing someone like Tommy in to the new band who always spoke his mind, and often contradicted him. Not a yes-man at all.
The Archway Tavern was only “famous” for one thing; being on the cover of the Kinks Muswell Hillbillies album from 1971. The place looked pretty much the same, and Jimmy had been there once before when he started his “Ray Davies Walk” a few years earlier. Jimmy had always been a big Kinks fan, and had actually played support to the Kinks in Brighton in what seemed another lifetime. That was with an early incarnation of the Post-Moderns who played mostly sixties covers and who fitted the bill perfectly. The walk took the Poet to Fortis Green, past Clissold Arms (now a wine bar) and on down Muswell Hill only to end by Konk Studios. He often took these walks in the footsteps of rock’n’roll, art or poetry or history in general. They sometimes made him feel free, happy and part of the cultural tradition that had inspired him for so long, but every now and then they made him sad and depressed, like the City of London could do. ‘Like a big garden of beauty and sadness, this metropolis’ he thought as he gazed through the windows at the beginning drizzle outside. ‘This sort of blows my idea of spending a few hours in the cemetery’ he thought.
‘Is this James Buxton?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘My name is Sandy DeLorian’ the female voice said.
‘The Poet speaking’! Jimmy said. ‘James to my mother, Jimmy to my friends and poet to the world.’
‘I’m a friend of Nancy Lee’s. She’s missing since Saturday evening, and I think you were the last to see her.’
‘What makes you think that, and how did you get my number?’
‘Nancy called me very early Sunday morning, said she’d just left your place, and gave me your number in case anything should happen to her, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since. She sounded very scared, and she also said that someone was out to get you and that’s why she left so suddenly. She really cared about you, you know. Oh God, I’m already referring to hear in the past tense.’ The voice on the phone turned to sobbing.
‘Well hold on a tick, what do you mean out to get me? Who’s out to get me and why?’
‘She said it was something about old contracts and how you would be worth more dead than alive to some people.’
Some people could only mean the King organization Jimmy thought. ‘Well, I love to live and so does Nancy! Where are you? Can you meet me as soon as possible? We have to figure this one out and I can’t do it alone.’
‘I’m in a little wine bar at the foot of Tower Bridge, south side, can you get here?’
‘No, meet me in Little Venice. There’s a pub called Warwick Castle in Warwick Place.’
‘I’ll find it see you there in an hour, OK?’
‘Fine, tara for now, and stay safe, OK? This one’s for those who love to live.’
‘Right, cheers see you soon.’
Jimmy decided to take the Tube mostly because he was a complete Tube-maniac.
He had over the years read everything he could find about the world’s oldest underground railway system. He knew about disused stations, the Tube in the 1st and 2nd World Wars and how long it took to travel to all the stations in the system in one long run. It was a cumbersome journey though, and the world record is just under 24 hours. Today Jimmy boarded the Northern Line (Bank branch) at Archway towards Morden, changed at Euston Station for the Victoria line towards Brixton, and again two stops later, at Oxford Street for the Bakerloo Line towards Harrow & Wealdstone, finally alighting at Warwick Avenue some 35 minutes later. Crowded, yes, delays amazingly, no! He found what he believed to be Sandy DeLorian nervously smoking outside the pub. ‘Jimmy! Over here!’ she shouted from across the road. Jimmy waved and crossed over to where Sandy was waiting.
‘Wow, how could you get here so fast? Cab?’ Jimmy asked and commenced to give Sandy a hug. Sandy hesitated for a second then hugged him back and said: ‘no, Jubilee from London Bridge to Baker Street, then Bakerloo to here.’
‘Cool. Let’s get inside.’ They went inside the tiny local pub and Jimmy asked Sandy what she wanted. ‘Bourbon straight’, she replied. ‘Make it a triple!’
‘Even cooler! I’ll go for red wine’ Jimmy said, and they sat down at a table at the back of the mostly deserted room. The pub was classic Britannia, dark, racing green velvet seats, wood paneling, dart boards and mock Tudor exterior. Unusually, the barmaid seemed to be British as well. Jimmy was a man used to travelling and to meeting and working with people from different cultures but he still got somewhat annoyed with the influx of people from Eastern Europe, now working in most bars, boutiques and hotels. ‘At the end of the day, everyone’s got a right to make a living, but they shouldn’t come here and take our jobs’ as his old ex-skinhead mate Basher always said. Wonder where that name came from? No, Jimmy didn’t think like that, but he was a bit sick of all the PC-ness of the modern world. You couldn’t really speak your mind about things anymore. Jimmy was old school and used to saying exactly what he meant, even if it meant putting you foot in your mouth every now and then.
‘Tell me about Sunday morning’ Jimmy said.
‘Well, Nancy called around 4am saying she was somewhere in Shoreditch on her way from your flat, hoping to make it back to where her car was parked, in order to leave London.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘No, but she said something very strange. She said: tell Jimmy that for a pilgrim, he’ not all he’s cracked up to be. What did she mean by that, do you know?’
‘Ha, easy she’s gone to her mother in Liverpool!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because The Pilgrim and Ye Cracke are two pubs within 50 yards of each other in Liverpool, and her mother has a garage in Pilgrim Street, which has a little bedsit up top.’
‘How do you know all this? You had only just met her the previous evening.’
‘Well, Sandy, Nancy was a good talker and an even better listener. We’d better get up there right away.’
‘To Liverpool?’
‘Sure, where do you think European rock’n’roll started?’
The whole thing was getting stranger and stranger. Knowing that Nancy Lee had been to see Godfrey King on the Sunday following her supposed disappearance makes it even weirder. Or did she really visit King? And if so, why did she phone Sandy early on Sunday morning going on about pilgrims and cracked up poets? A line from a Dylan song appeared in Jimmy’s mind: ‘there must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief.’ And there must be an explanation to all this. ‘Should I call King after all these years’ Jimmy thought. No that will make things even worse. What if he’s behind it all? Let’s try and find Nancy Lee before we do anything else…
Love junkies, losers and libertines
Terminal cancer? What a scam! That stupid woman would swallow anything! Come to think of it… never mind, she’s gone and so will I be very, very soon. King was pacing back and forth in his living room thinking about the recent conversation with Lee. What was it that she said about Jimmy? He wanted to pick up where the Post-Moderns left off? Without King? Ha, what Jimmy didn’t know was that the original contracts between the Post-Moderns and Godfrey King still existed, hadn’t been lost in a poker game, had never been terminated, and what’s more extended to anything Jimmy or Terry did solo or together or as the Post-Moderns. This, to King’s annoyance, excluded Burning Desire, where Jimmy had performed “by courtesy” of the King organization and thus left King with very little profit from the Burning Desire catalog. This had irked King for a decade, but now he saw his fortunes change. If Jimmy actually had a bunch of songs that lived up to the standard of the Post-Moderns material, and he could find the original contracts, he may well become an even richer man than he already was!
Jimmy was playing a 1973 Fender Stratocaster that had been stripped of its original white finish, and was now a heavy relic natural. The neck had been re-fretted with nice jumbo frets and the whole thing oozed rock’n’roll. His collection kept changing and Jimmy had always had problems holding on to things, This sometimes applied to people as well, Jimmy got easily bored with situations that didn’t progress and was sometimes on such a creative mind-roll that most people just couldn’t keep up with him. This mostly resulted in band members not understanding what was going on or why things had to change all the time. Lyrics and chord progressions were living things to Jimmy and he knew that changing one word or one chord could change a song or a poem from OK to brilliant. The trick was to know when enough was enough, and this is where Jimmy lacked quality control.
Being a self proclaimed poet of sorts and being the one true motor behind the new project, tentatively named “20th Century Ghosts”, Jimmy decided to keep the line up floating. To avoid passengers! It’s a funny thing in any creative environment, how some people just seem to tag along, never say much and then suddenly move on to something else without having made any kind of notice. The various cover bands that Jimmy had played with for the last 15 years ago to help pay the rent had run their course, but he had in mind to ask Tommy Bell, the drummer from the Mercy Buckets, to join him in his new projects. He was very good if not the most technical drummer out there, and he was a reliable friend and a positive and carefree guy. He sometimes had a hard time following Jimmy’s train of thought but who hadn’t? The rest of the guys from the Mercy Buckets had already joined other bands where they now were sitting comfortably while other people made decisions for them. Thank you for the music, mates! Time to move on…
Meanwhile in a run-down bar somewhere south of the river sat Dave Smithers-Jones nursing a pint of London pride facing Terry Oliveri, who in turn was facing the mirrored wall, mourning his receding hairline and growing jowls. Dave had played with Jimmy in a couple of bands prior to Jimmy and Tommy forming the Mercy Buckets. And he was still around in one form or another. He was a good looking guy with a great Ron Wood haircut that was still raven black despite Dave approaching 50!
‘I really wish the Poet would tell us what’s going on’ said Dave, not necessarily to Terry as much as generally complaining about being “out of the loop”. In his own mind he could have been a star, a lead singer, and a great songwriter even though he had written one song in 20 years and had the stage moves of a drunken Pinocchio. He had a good voice and could certainly carry a tune, and the fans seemed to really like him. Also, he was a fantastic keyboard player, but he was too hung up on being a guitar player to realize this fact.
‘Yeah well, that was never the case with the Post-Moderns. Jimmy would always call for meetings and group discussions and always tried to get everyone involved. Even to the extent where I started to hate it. But we wouldn’t have gotten past the first EP if it hadn’t been for Jimmy pushing us’ Terry replied.
‘But he’s always changing things and refusing to have set lists, and telling us what to wear and what to play. He’s fucking holding us back’ Dave complained.
‘Well, to my recollection, this was what me him great to work with. He was always very dynamic, but not everyone can handle that, and rightly so. Most people need a certain structure and stability. I remember playing with the Post Moderns and Jimmy wanted to drag out the guitar solos as infinitum, leading us this way and that, and this was in the middle of punk, when guitar solos was tantamount to treason.’
‘I’m fucking done, man, can’t take it no more. We once had something, but now he’s gone all egomaniac on us.’
‘Why don’t you stick to your other band then, and leave Jimmy to do whatever he wants? Maybe he needs to get away from you as well? I actually hear that he is planning to go original again. Hear about that’ Terry asked.
‘No, well yeah, he’s been going on about doing his own songs again for a while now. But they are so conventional’ Dave said.
‘How do you mean’? Terry said
‘I mean intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge… and all about love’.
‘Sounds to me like he’s back in Power Pop territory. Lots of harmony vocals?’
‘Yeah, all over the place, man. I want to play harder stuff’.
‘Well, just do it then’!
‘You know, I just joined these guys, but they kind of lack direction and they have no natural songwriter. That was going to be me, lead singer and main songwriter’.
‘Better start writing then’!
‘But I don’t know where to start’.
‘From scratch dear boy, from scratch’!
Loser, Terry thought to himself. Doesn’t know a good thing when he has it. Fair enough, he wants to do harder stuff and be the lead singer. But why didn’t he speak to Jimmy about these things? Jimmy always was a good listener and would love nothing more than to have a great sparring partner like he had with the Rooster in Burning Desire. It will be interesting to see where this leads…
Jimmy was on his way to Highgate to return the Strat to the guy who wanted to trade it for his Telecaster ’63 reissue. Jimmy always wanted a Strat but could never play them properly. The sound was too thin and the volume control was too close to where his strumming hand was and he kept hitting it and knocking the volume off. On his way back he would stop by Highgate Cemetery and sit by the Rossetti family grave for a while and think about his options. This was a great place for reflection even though you had to be booked on one of the tours to get in. But Jimmy knew the tour guides through his long passion for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and they would always let him stay behind. He would later slip out through a gap in the fence at the back of the cemetery.
Having just read Uncut magazine’s special edition on the Clash, Jimmy couldn’t help but miss the old days when bands were gangs, and the music really meant something. Or at least, that was the idea, but of course it was never really true. Maybe one or two people in a group had the passion, obsession and desire to make something real. But most people were in it for the sex, the drugs and the money, or worse, for the 15 minute fame trip. These days it was mostly about just that, get famous for the sake of being famous, when this is actually the downside of fame. Being famous, Being infamous. You’re only as big as your latest hit! TV or what was left of it, in the 21st century was all about reality shows (fat this, plastic that, real housewives of Eastwick) or fame factories or Mongolian Idol or Botswana’s Next Top Model. When punk happened it was because the rock-stars of its day had become too rich and complacent and meant nothing to the kids anymore. And music was in need of a change, even if the change wasn’t really that big. The biggest thing was the do-it-yourself approach which is still with us today to an even bigger extent with the Internet and Facebook and the demise of record companies as we knew them. The Pre-Raphaelites were punk! They wanted to shake thing up by painting more realistic pictures than was the norm of the day. They formed a group, and did it their way, lived together (for a while), painted, partied and loved and went against the establishment. Initially ridiculed and derided, but later rising to the very top of British art and poetry. They all went their separate ways and some of them achieved great fortune while others ended up dying in tragic circumstances. Pretty much like a rock’n’roll band! Winners, losers, love junkies and libertines… An idea slowly formed in Jimmy’s mind…
Verisimilitude
The Poet woke up the following morning with a splitting headache, and a gnawing feeling that he’d been had. In more ways than one! Nancy Lee was gone, no trace of her ever having been to the flat. And had she? Jimmy clearly remembered walking back from the riverside pub, along Leman Street, quick Bourbon-and-Coke at the Zeppelin Shelter (which the Poet always thought had something to do with Led, but turned out to be on the location of an old bomb shelter from WW1), another one at The Ten Bells in Commercial Street, famous for being the watering hole of many of Jack the Ripper’s victims (still looks the same to this day), past the Vibe bar on Brick Lane and then… nothing. Blank. Erase and rewind.
Meanwhile, in the offices of Kings Road Productions, Nancine Leonard sat facing Godfrey King nursing a double espresso… and the rest of the headache she brought with her from Jimmy’s flat.
“Those knock-out pills were strong enough to kill a buffalo, let alone Jimmy the Poet,” she said.
“We’ll, did you get anything out of him before he passed out, and I mean information not body fluids”, King replied.
“Well, to be honest, he just seems sad and confused about the past as well as the future. All the bad decisions and failed opportunities seem to haunt him to this day, and he doesn’t seem to know who he is anymore, or how good he really is.”
“Yeah, yeah that’s very moving, but a rat doesn’t know who he is either. Did you find out what he’s up to?”
“Yes, I think he’s trying to start again from where the Post Moderns left off. I get the feeling that, in spite of the success of Burning Desire, he thinks that all the intervening years were wasted and that he should have taken a different route when PM broke up. He‘s also worried about the right to the old songs that he and Terry wrote, and the right to the band name. Who owns what seems to be shrouded in mystery.”
“I saw Terry a while ago. He asked me the same thing.”
“And the truth is?”
“I don’t know, I might have lost the rights in a poker game. They we’re co-owned by me and the band if I remember correctly, so whoever won them, has really no legal right to them.”
“So basically all we have to do is to find the original contracts, and buy you out?”
“Technically, yes.”
“Anything preventing it?”
“A few years ago, yes, I would’ve done anything to stop Jimmy and Terry from doing anything under that name again, or at least to get a big piece of the action. Today? No nothing at all. I would just be happy to see either of them doing something again, together or separately.”
“Wow, with all due respect, that doesn’t sound like the Godfrey King I know!”
“Yeah well, maybe things have changed around here…”
“How do you mean?”
“A while ago I was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and I have only a few months left to live.”
“Oh Jesus, Godfrey, I’m really sorry to hear that. But you never smoked did you?”
“Not cigarettes, no.”
Meanwhile in the East End Jimmy was slowly returning to life, or to what was standing in for life as he remembered it. He walked slowly towards Fika on Brick Lane, a little Swedish coffee bar that served, pancakes with whipped cream, “knäckebröd” and Gevalia coffee. The place looked like a thrift store and the furniture looked like it had been found on a dump. But the atmosphere was friendly and the food and coffee excellent. There was even a little outdoor terrace on the second floor which looked like it might fall down any second. Jimmy had once had a girlfriend from Sweden (Ursula who was actually German, but lived in Sweden) and knew a thing or two about the Swedish cuisine.
It had started to drizzle now and Fika was unusually crowded. Nevertheless Jimmy found his favorite table empty and sat down to think.
“Why is music always on my mind”, he thought, “Why can’t I have a normal hobby like everyone else, something like poker or tennis or day trading? It sometimes feels like a curse, like some broken down angels are waiting at my door, leaving their little signs to remind me what’s really important, and to steer me back on track every time I try to focus on something else.”
So who is Jimmy? A poet, a fake, a failed artist or just some loser with a very big ego? Bob Dylan once said that anyone who calls himself a poet isn’t one. That’s probably true for most poets, but in fact Jimmy had never called himself a poet in the first place. It was a tag applied to him by anyone who met him, or listened to his music or read his lyrics. The way Jimmy dressed and acted socially, always polite, respectful to women, kind to animals and the less fortunate of this world indicated a certain savoire-faire. That said, he didn’t suffer fools gladly and could sometimes come across as aloof or even a bit angry. And yes, he had a big ego and always that overwhelming sense of not belonging, not being one of the boys, always on the outside looking in.
Was Jimmy the real thing or just someone who pretended to be the real thing? True or verisimilitude? There is a song in there somewhere, or maybe a concept album or even a rock opera! “I better call Pete Townshend for advice”, Jimmy thought, “Or better still, my mate James Paul. He might be up for a bit of the old red wine-incense-song writing routine!
JP and Jimmy go back some 15 years and met just after Burning Desire had split. JP was about to record an album and desperately wanted Jimmy to play on it. It turned out to be a lasting project to this day. The project was called ‘The Project’ and still is. The Project has so far released a number of independent records with some songs written by Jimmy. JP is mostly busy with his import/export business which may well be called ‘The Project’ as well. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
Jimmy decided to try and get hold of Nancy Lee again… to find out if she was what she claimed she were, or verisimilitude all over again! Jimmy headed to the West End to see Adrian Gordon, his famous guitar tech. When Jimmy was troubled by something he did one of two things: go for a long run, or go down and see Adrian. Running and talking about guitars always seemed to make any clouds disappear. Especially after a long run, everything seemed so much easier. Adrian had taken care of five of jimmy’s guitars over the years, three of which he still owned. The good thing about Adrian was that he always very honest about what he was doing and never did anything he didn’t believe you should do to a guitar. This was good because Jimmy had some far out ideas…
Dancing Madly Backwards
Now, the question was; why was Terry looking for that scum bag King? The Poet clearly remembered how he and the rest of the Post Moderns had planned on getting rid of King in various graphic ways, most of them not suitable for print. Terry had even gone as far as to suggest that they’d get him high and trick him into doing a chicken race with the band. King’s car’s breaks would be tampered with of course. Never happened, but the question remains. Could he be planning some sort of comeback himself? The Poet always knew that Terry could sing lead and write good songs and hated to be in Jimmy’s shadow. He might even be a better singer technically, but he could never deliver the way Jimmy could, and he didn’t possess the imagination to write the kind of lyrics that Jimmy wrote. Even so…
The Poet left the Gopher Hole with a bitter taste in his mouth. Matt wasn’t much use and he could tell in an instant that reforming anything with that guy would be a total waste of time and space. Is there even a point in looking back at something that wasn’t even that great in the first place. Sure, the songs were great, but the chemistry was only there for the first few months, and Jimmy and Terry never could agree on style and presentation. And Matt and Pixie never really said anything. “A bit like dancing madly backwards” the Poet thought as he walked along a narrow side street leading down to the river. “Old Fish Street Hill, that’s a strange name” he said out loud to no one in particular. A hill full of old fish. Only two things smell of fish and one of them is this hill, ha ha! He could smell the river now, damp, rotten, muddy, but still strangely fresh. His mind brightened as he entered The Town Of Ramsgate for a quite drink before heading home.
Jimmy had been writing a lot in the past years living in the city. Some of these songs were among the best he’d ever written, or so he believed. “They need a great band, not a bunch of has-beens that never should have played together in the first place” he thought. While he was busy peeling off the label of his Bud, a girl in her mid 30’s comes over to his table and says: “aren’t you Jimmy Buxton of Burning Desire”?
“No, I’m Jimmy the Poet of here and now, and who might you be”?
“Nancy Lee, pleased to meet you, but why so hostile”?
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to be, it just came out that way. Why don’t you sit down”?. Jimmy gazed at the girl while she went back and got her bag and coat. “She looks really nice” he thought. Could this be my lucky day after all?
Nancy Lee sat down and Jimmy ordered her a drink, some hip thing consisting of Red Bull with a shot of Jaegermeister at the bottom, The name escaped him. “So what brings you down to The TofR at this time of night”?
“Well, I was meant to go out on a girl’s night out, but they wanted to go to some posh club, and I wanted to go the Gopher Hole, but I ended up here instead”.
“Alone, but not lonely” the Poet thought. “Well, I’m glad you did, cause I really need someone to cheer me up”.
“Why did you react that way when I mentioned Burning Desire? You were a great band and you should be proud of that”.
“I am, I am, but what gets me is that ever since that plane went down, all people ever talk about is the Rooster and how great he was and that it was his band, and his songs”. The reason for all this was that the Rooster, or Johnny James as his real name was, had a been the singer in a very political punk band prior to forming Burning Desire with Jimmy. He pretty much carried on that tradition as a duo with Maggi, a bit like an anarchist White Stripes if you like, up until the plane crash, and the rest is history. Jimmy, marginalized, even though he wrote and sang fifty percent of the songs, and for the Rooster: apotheosis! This generalization was probably not fair to the Rooster either, because he always made it very clear that he considered Jimmy to be the reason he was turned on to power pop and well written love songs, and to dressing up for the gig. And he was dead…
“I’ve been thinking about putting the Post Moderns back together”.
“Yeah? Really? Why would you do that?
“Well, I dunno really… I’m just so fed up with the cover circuit and I had this idea that the Post Moderns was unfinished business so…”
“And playing the old songs again? Wouldn’t that be just another tribute act? I don’t believe for a second that this is what you should be doing. I know you’ve been playing covers for years and do it well, but you should really get back to writing songs again. That’s what you are, a Poet, a songwriter, a style icon. You don’t need to reform an old band that no-one has heard of! It would be like dancing madly backwards instead of moving firmly forward”!
“Hey, thanks, and funny you should say that. I have been writing a lot lately and I have songs for at least two albums. They’re all a mixture of what I love, what i grew up listening and got me started in the first place, and also influenced by what I’ve done in the past. I have been thinking of singing them myself instead of getting a singer.”
“Yes, yes that’s it, but don’t shut other people out! You need a band of friends to lean on and…”
“Hey, stop, how come you know so much about me anyway and have all these opinions about my career?”
“Well, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ve been watching you from a distance for quite a while. To be brutally honest, I was in love with Terry Oliveri for a while and we dated, but he turned out to be totally messed up and full of himself, so that didn’t last. During that time he always talked about you and how you were his hero and how you got him into music, and how he couldn’t fathom why you didn’t write songs anymore. To be even more honest, he talked so much about you that I slowly started to develop an interest in you, maybe even have a little crush. I knew I had to meet you in real life and I have been waiting for this chance for a long time. I saw you leave the Gopher Hole and followed you down Old Fish Street Hill to this place.”
“You’re joking! You and Terry? I was just talking to Gopher Matt about the Post Moderns and about what happened to Terry”.
“He runs the Gopher Hole, doesn’t he”?
“Yes, and he’d heard that Terry was looking for Godfrey King”.
“As it happened, he didn’t disappear, he just stayed with me to get away from the divorce. After a while I realized why he was in a divorce and “divorced” him too”.
“Do you know why he was trying to get hold of King”?
“He wanted to make sure that the rights to the songs you two wrote together stayed with you guys and not King. Also he wanted to find out if the name “Post Moderns” was owned by the band or by King”
“Oh, was he thinking of reforming the band with himself as leader”?
“No, he wanted to make sure no one could reform the band with that name”?
“Why”?
“Because he wants you to make a comeback as yourself”!
“Wow, I’m gobsmacked! Why hasn’t he contacted me? We could have talked about doing something together”.
“No, you don’t get it! He doesn’t want to play. He’s happy doing advertising and writing jingles for radio and TV. He wants you to do it alone. Can’t you see? He wants you to make it again. He wants you to be the big star you were always meant to be. He remembered the first time he saw you, stepping on to a bus, where he was already sitting, and how the air stood still when you entered. You have always been his hero. What happened when you moved down to London all those years ago was just a youth thing. Insecurity. Kids stuff. He still loves you man, and so do I”. And with that Nancy Lee and the Poet left the Town of Ramsgate and headed for Jimmy’s flat in Hoxton.
What happened that night will not be described here, simply because that is not what this is about. Jimmy never really considered himself much of a lover anyway. He just accidentally rode along with whatever came his way. A desperate romantic maybe but no dancer!
Trailblazing
‘How the devil are you?’
‘Jimmy? My god, it’s been ages! You haven’t changed a bit. Still got all your hair, and still no beer gut. How the hell do you do it?’
The Poet had entered the Gopher Hole and had asked the bouncer for Matt, who by chance happened to be there that night. The light was dim and the music was loud. Gardenia by Kyuss, the Poet thought.
‘Still into Stoner rock, eh, Matt? I suppose that’s what broke the Post Moderns up in the end. We could never agree on what was great music could we?’
‘I know. All you wanted was to look elegantly wasted and play you fucking power pop. What kind of a genre is that anyway? These days pop is Lady Gaga and La Roux and back then pop was the Spice Girls and Rick Astley.’
The Poet realized Matt hadn’t changed much over the years when it came to tastes in music or rather opinions on music, and any subculture related to whatever was popular at the moment. Back in the 70s and 80s trends lasted a little longer than now.
‘Oh for crying out loud Matt, power pop was a phenomenon that started in the early 70s when American bands like the Raspberries and Big Star started to make catchy rock with a clear Beatle influence at a time when the Beatles were quite out of fashion. The bridge between the Beatles and power pop were the British band Badfinger. None of these bands were very successful when they existed but… oh for god’s sake, I didn’t drag my skinny ass down here to educate you in music you played in the Post Moderns 20 years ago!’
Kuyss ended and some horrible techno track came on. The Poet felt sick and regretted having come down here at all. ‘Matt, seriously have you heard from Terry? I had this idea of reforming the Post Moderns, but it can’t be done without him. Last I heard he was missing. AWOL’
Matt looked bemused as if the thought of reforming the band was absurd in itself, or maybe he was just shocked by the directness of the statement. Was he invited to join or was this something Jimmy had planned without him in mind?
‘Yeah, so I heard. He was down here looking for someone little over a year ago, but I wasn’t in at the time. Let me check with Melanie, she might have been here that night…’
The Poet went over to the bar and got himself, what he knew would be the first of many beers and waited. He had a nasty habit (OCD?) of checking his (still flat) gut every time he ate or drank anything. A couple in one of the booths regarded him suspiciously, and he sighed. He wasn’t fat or even slightly overweight and would never be. ‘Maybe I should seek help for this’ he thought to himself as Matt came sauntering over with a strange look on his face:
‘He was in here in June of 2010, on a Friday looking for Godfrey King!’
Godfrey King—the legendary tycoon and owner of Kings Road Management was without doubt one of the most infamous characters of the late twentieth century music industry. Both the Post Moderns and Burning Desire had at one point been a part of the Kings Road roster. It’s no understatement to say that both band’s relationships with Kings Road Mgmt ended in bitter tears, especially for the Poet, who has a history of falling out with people like King. ‘A trail to follow’, the Poet thought to himself as his mind started to drift down memory lane…
Alone, but not lonely
The Poet wasn’t always known as the Poet. In fact he still wasn’t outside of his own close circle of friends and among certain hangers on. He had always considered himself to be something of a wannabe poet, and decided at some point to use this moniker whenever he referred to himself in writing. Neither poetry nor writing was on his mind at this time though, when Jimmy Buxton, as he was known to his late mother, stood in the rain outside the Gopher Hole in SoHo unsure of whether to enter the club or not.
The Gopher Hole was an alternative rock venue owned by his former band mate Gopher Matt. Gopher Matt, or Matt Johansen, used to play drums in the Post Moderns back in the late 90s, a band formed by Jimmy in a vain attempt to put some style back in to rock’n’roll. The band broke up after a couple of singles (no hits) and one album (straight to the bargain bins) and only Jimmy continued writing and playing after that.
Jimmy was alone in the big city, just as he had been alone most of his life. “I’m alone but I’m not lonely” he said to no one in particular. Ever since the breakup of Burning Desire his immensely successful post- the Post Moderns band, Jimmy has tried to get a solo career going, but nothing ever came of it. Nothing wrong with the songs, it was just that whomever he played with they lacked the edge and the commitment and the passion, nay, the obsession to be on the same level as him. And a little bit of laziness on Jimmy’s part. Then he tried forming bands and the same pattern ensued. He even went as far as playing covers for a living, and that seemed to go OK, probably because anyone he played with had a strict formula to follow. The design had already been made, you just had to copy. No creativity, no originality, a bit like jazz really unless you were Miles, Coltrane or someone like that. And he hated it with a vengeance when he stopped to think about it, but not when he actually played. Then it was almost great. The feeling of playing music with other people, performing on stage, travelling from gig to gig, he loved all that. But he needed to play his own songs again, or at least songs he had been a part of writing.
So, should he get the Post Moderns back together? Burning Desire was truly a burnt-out desire as two of its three members were dead. Maggi and the Rooster were both on board a plane that crashed in Mammoth Lake, CA. Only Jimmy still walked this earth as a has-been, a beautiful loser. So revive the Post Moderns? What’s the point? They broke up for a reason, right? A reason Jimmy had forgotten by now. All he knew was that it was unfinished business. But still, there was one big problem: Terry Olivieri, the bands second guitarist and Jimmy’s co-writing partner was missing. He had gone AWOL about a year earlier, and left his wife (middle of a divorce) and two toddlers behind. Not at all like Terry! Always in control, always on top of things, and with a career in advertising to boost. And now, disappeared off the face of the earth! He had emptied one of two shared bank accounts, but left his passport behind. Strange, weird and curious! Back in the day it had always been Jimmy who had had the short fuse, the temper, who had exploded without warning, whereas Terry, in spite of his Latin American heritage, had been the calm, cool and collected one. And now he had apparently up and left in the middle of a divorce? To get the Post Moderns back together Jimmy actually only needed Terry. Gopher Matt and Pixie, the female bass, player were expendable. In fact, he hadn’t even heard from Pixie in over 10 years, since the break up. So what to do?
He entered the Gopher Hole with the intention of drinking less than four beers (bottles, never tap - lager, never ale) a little red wine and feeding off the stares from anyone who recognized him from his glory days with Burning Desire. And to get hold off Matt, whom he knew had been in close contact with Terry up until the day he disappeared.
I’m not like everybody else…
Back in the real world…
After six days of peace, love and rock’n’roll debauchery I am back in the so called real world of finance and IT. How do you combine these two extremes you may wonder? Well, there is no easy answer but I can tell you this; for me it’s all about honesty! Who are you, and why are you who you are? The following slice of life may give you an indication to how this works.
If you walk into a financial meeting in the City of London, and decide not to play according to the rules (and boy, these rules are harder than tennis or golf) you begin on the minus side. The first thing you have to do is to try to get back to the equilibrium. Try to figure out who of the attendees have the slightest interest in music or fashion, and focus on them. You are of course wearing a good, tight suit, tie or no tie, your turquoise rings, earrings and as usual you hair is a mess. A little soul patch on your lower lip is good because most of these guys (usually guys, with women the story is totally different) like Springsteen. Most of the time they ignore you until you actually speak, and when you do, make sure you have something really worthwhile to say. In my case it has mostly been presentations of some concept or other or a very visual demonstration. This is where the all those hours on stage comes in handy, because I know how to handle an audience, and this is for all intents and purposes nothing more than an audience, albeit not there to see you, but all the same an audience. As bankers and financial people usually like to talk about money and golf and cars, you can drop a line or two about when you met McCartney and his BMW, or when a friend of your got lost in Stockholm while driving Bruce Springsteen to a gig. Make it a natural part of your speech. Of course it’s essential that your presentation is good, and that the demo goes well. What happens next is usually that the CEO or CFO or whatever comes up to you during the break and tells you about the time that his company hired Huey Lewis & The News to play at their annual convention in Boca Raton! Here it is essential to listen to them talk and not talk too much about yourself. That comes later. You are now as close to mates with these guys as possible. You might even get asked to play their next convention.
This might sound simple and may not always work. I have been told over and over again that I could never make a career in financial London or financial anywhere for that matter, because I don’t fit in, but still I end up discussing Paul Weller with the MD, or vintage Gibson guitars with the Sales Director of equities. Go figure!
The moral of this story is: be who you are! Be honest and true to yourself. This is probably quite easy if you are like everybody else in the club (I’m mostly talking visually because what’s going on in people’s minds we don’t know), but if you, like me, stubbornly insists on being true to your rock’n’roll self ALL the time it’s a little harder. You have to work that extra bit. But it can be done.
“I’m not like everybody else” – Ray Davies circa 1965
An overwhelming feeling of not belonging
The Poet entered the room discretely from a back door, fully aware of the blank stares that would eventually hit him like a cold wind from the arctic. He was used to this after a lifetime in a sort of self-created parallel universe that mostly existed in his own mind. The great paradox was that as much as he wanted to be seen and loved, he also wanted to disappear into some kind of cosmic nothingness where everything would be ALRIGHT.
The room was occupied by executives in suits, carrying blackberries and iPads together with inflated egos and dreams about big bonuses and how they really belonged, and a few scattered musicians and couple of beautiful but cold-looking women of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. The whole scene could be lifted from a film noir, that is, if you photo-shopped out the 21-century gadgets.
The Poet had somehow managed to sneak in, in an attempt to “make connections” that he really didn’t want to make, but still so desperately needed. To him, the world consisted of mostly liars and sycophants, or more or less evil people that in a different setting could probably just as easily lead the battle of Stalingrad, and that he himself was always honest to the point of recklessness. More often than not he had been known to suffer from the foot-in-mouth disease.
“I always get this overwhelming feeling of not belonging”, the Poet said to himself as he helped himself to one of the multi colored free drinks that were being handed out by the dozen. “So, am I gonna get totally pissed and blow this, or should I at least make an effort to blend in” he thought, very aware that the former could send him to hell, suicide or worse, and that the latter would leave a bitter aftertaste later on, that not even Listerine would wash away. Wash your mouth with cheese, as the saying goes.
With these questions running around in his head, he almost fell over with surprise when one of the gorgeous looking women approached him and said: “I’ve been watching you play a few times, and tonight it’s you and me! These execs bore me to death. Sure they’ve got money, but you’ve got style. That sadness in your eyes is very attractive, and turns me on completely”.
Maybe the evening wasn’t a total failure? For a little while at least, he would belong somewhere…
“But hang on a minute the Poet thought, this isn’t why I came here! Nice as it sounds, and tempting as it is, it’s all fake anyway”. Thank God the booze hadn’t got to him yet, and that he was able to realize that this creature from Planet Terror was only out to annoy the shit out of her rich friends by shagging this elegantly wasted, going nowhere slowly, used to be rock star, before returning to money and comfort, somewhere in Richmond or Hampstead. Or in one of those river view flats near Canary Wharf. Canary Wolf more likely…
To be continued.
Round the corner….
I just learned that an old guitar hero of mine lives just around the corner from me in London! Ray Majors was the guitarist for Mott, the short lived band formed by ex-Mott The Hoople members Pete Overend Watts. Dale Griffin and Morgan Fisher after Ian Hunter left in early 1975. Together with new singer Nigel Benjamin, the band recorded two fine albums: Drive On (1975) and Shouting & Pointing (1976).
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