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…
