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…
