Flesh Guitar (17 page)

‘The Hormone Twins,' Scorn said. ‘They're real twins.'

‘And is that their real name?'

‘Sure. Bobby and Walter Hormone. I think maybe it's French.'

‘Are they new?'

‘Very. I was hoping you'd play on their debut album. I'm producing it. I thought your presence would give them a bit of stature, and help you keep in touch with the younger audience.'

‘I'm in touch with all sorts of audiences,' Jenny assured him.

‘But you'll do it, yes?'

‘OK.'

‘Promise you won't change your mind?'

‘Why would I do that?'

‘Because Walter and Bobby are only eight years old.'

‘Jesus.'

‘You promised.'

‘OK, I promised.'

Jenny believed in keeping her promises.

The recording studio, in a converted garden centre in Telford, was retro to the point of antiquity. The microphone stands were rusty, the baffle boards were marked with many generations of muso graffiti, the control room was inside a greenhouse that had once been used for growing orchids.

Jenny's own
equipment was set up neatly in a corner, while that belonging to the Hormone Twins was laid out haphazardly all over the rest of the studio. There was a drum kit, tubular bells, a glockenspiel, a piano, Hammond organ, some cheesy early synthesizers, an array of trumpets and flutes, a siren, a vast Chinese gong, plus huge baskets full of miniature percussion instruments, penny whistles, Jews harps and kazoos. The place looked like a musical playroom.

There was no sign of the twins but Jenny could hear boys' voices coming from outside the studio, from the area where the fruit trees and garden statuary had once been kept. The trees were now blackened and denuded and the statuary was in ruins but the twins were finding it a great place to play. They were grunting and screaming and throwing stones and chunks of broken statue at each other.

Jenny was no great lover of children, and these were less lovable than most. There was something stunted and porcine about them, something lumpen yet violent. Scorn rounded them up and dragged them into the studio. Once indoors their exuberance disappeared and they stood awkwardly saying nothing and sniggering like imbeciles. Jenny said hello and the twins' replies were inaudible.

Scorn shrugged. ‘Hey, they're kids. They're musicians. They speak through their music.' And with that he went into the booth.

The twins were wearing an approximation of school uniform, but from a very weird school. They wore short trousers, very Angus Young, blazers and school caps; but the uniforms were made of some weird metallic material and edged with hide. The boys wore motorcycle boots, five or six sizes too large, and instead of school ties they had nooses hanging round their necks.

‘So what would
you like me to play?' Jenny asked.

She hadn't been foolish enough to believe that there'd be songs, or even loose compositions, but she was hoping for some sort of guidance. All Scorn said was, ‘Start playing and we'll see what happens.' That was OK with Jenny too. She made sure her guitar was in tune, strapped it around her and waited for the twins to take up position with one of the instruments, but they showed no sign of doing that, just stood at the centre of the studio muttering aggressively at each other. What the hell? Scorn displayed no concern and let the tape run. So Jenny began improvising some tricky chord progressions and hoped the kids would eventually join in.

They didn't. They continued to mutter and although their words never became audible, the boys became much more animated. The conversation was turning into a loud, fierce argument, which in turn became physical. They started to push each other, shoulder to shoulder, and when push came to shove, one of them, Jenny had no idea which since she couldn't tell them apart, was sent reeling backwards so that he fell on to the drum kit.

Jenny was about to stop playing and help the kid up, but Scorn was gesturing at her from the control room, telling her to keep playing, to act as though nothing was wrong. It was easier said than done but Jenny continued the improvisation she'd started as the boys continued to fight, their fury increasing into an all-out flurry of flying fists and motorcycle boots. At first Jenny had the feeling she was providing the soundtrack for a violent, silent, slapstick comedy, however the twins were anything but silent. They squealed and yelled, and once in a while one of them crashed into the stand holding the tubular bells or had his head banged against the keyboard of the Hammond organ.

It only gradually dawned
on Jenny that these violent noises and occasional rhythmical outbursts were strangely familiar. Although they didn't reproduce exactly the music from the demo tape, the sounds were precisely similar in kind. She saw that this was the ‘extended technique' Scorn had spoken of, a method of beating each other up with a quasi-musical racket produced as a side effect.

She felt like a childminder who'd abandoned her charges, fiddling while Rome burned, a boxing referee who was allowing a free-for-all. Surely adults had some obligation to prevent children damaging themselves, even if it was for the sake of art. Yet Scorn showed no signs of stepping in, and to be fair, the twins seemed to be having the time of their lives.

Unsure exactly what kind of guitar noise best suited these circumstances Jenny cranked up her echo unit and made a lot of spacy noise. The twins took no notice, but Scorn smiled approvingly.

Jenny could not see how or when this session would end; whether the twins would stop because of boredom or exhaustion, or whether they'd carry on until one or other was bludgeoned into unconsciousness. After half an hour one of them had a nose bleed, and after forty-five minutes or so one of them hoisted up the other, using the rope around his neck, and shoved his head into the innards of the grand piano (‘very John Cage,' cooed Scorn) before running from the studio.

Even Jenny had to admit
that the piano strings made a lovely raw, loose, opulent sound, but the boy remained quite motionless. She pulled him from the guts of the instrument and sat him on the piano stool. Still stunned, and quite oblivious to Jenny's presence, Walter turned round, addressed the keyboard and began a long improvisation, all diminished sevenths and suspended fourths. It was rather wonderful and when she joined in, Jenny was stretched to keep up. She was keen to hear the playback but to her dismay she learned that Scorn hadn't bothered to record this part of the proceedings. He said it was tame and old hat. All he wanted were the bangs and crashes and scrapes. And just one hour into the session he announced that it was over. He'd have to do a bit of serious remixing, maybe add a few musical touches of his own, but he had enough material for an album.

He appeared to be right.
Siam: The Hormone Twins Play The Music Of Tom Scorn
was rush released and in the shops a month or so later. Reviews were mixed. Jenny Slade, credited only as a session player, was always singled out by the critics. Some said she was the glue holding the whole thing together. Others said she sounded constrained and inhibited compared to the ‘free-spirited playing' of the twins. Jenny was just about able to laugh it off. What did critics know? What difference did their opinion make? She was sort of glad she'd worked with the twins. It had been an experience, if not a very edifying one.

She never played with
them again but she watched their careers with interest. Being a prodigy is a difficult and dangerous business. For one thing, prodigies grow up and have to prove themselves all over again. For the Hormone Twins there was another danger. As small boys they'd lacked the ability to do each other much physical damage. As they became adolescents they developed bulk and strength, and their fights became much more violent. Cuts, abrasions, black eyes became commonplace, an essential part of their act, and it seemed only a matter of time before one of them seriously injured the other.

The moment of crisis came when Bobby slammed the body of a double-bass down on Walter's right hand and broke two of his fingers. In one way it might appear not to matter. The twins could ‘play' just as well with broken hands as without. They could play with broken arms, legs, skulls, as far as that went. But this injury was a watershed. After Walter's fingers had healed he announced he was now a pacifist and wasn't going to fight with Bobby any more, wasn't even going to defend himself against his attacks.

The first gig after Walter's return was a wild one. Bobby tore into his brother, kicking and punching him for all he was worth. But when Walter stood silent and inert, just getting hit and soaking up the punishment, Bobby soon tired of the procedure. After all, Bobby was a boy who liked to fight, not an outright sadist. He wanted an opponent not a human punchbag. He stopped hitting his brother and the gig ended prematurely in silent confusion.

Jenny was called in,
not to pour oil on troubled waters, but rather the reverse, to see if she couldn't stir up a bit of the old sibling rivalry. She talked to them, suggested they might wear protective clothing or use some safer martial arts techniques, but it was useless. Walter said he was going to pursue a career as a solo pianist; a bit of Liberace and a lot of Thelonius Monk. Jenny didn't try to argue with him. She still thought his piano playing was pretty good.

Bobby was left with a far greater dilemma. He wanted to remain a Hormone Twin and play the way he always had, and for a while he did. He would arrive in the studio or on stage and proceed to throw himself around as though he were being beaten up by a squad of invisible men. He'd launch himself over the drums or the vibraphone, slam the piano lid down on his own hand, hit himself over the head with a saxophone. It was heart-felt but somehow it never quite worked. It seemed too forced, too premeditated. It wasn't the same without Walter.

Both of the boys individually asked Jenny to play with them, but she declined. It seemed to her that the moment and the magic had gone. Things got worse for the twins. Walter found himself playing cocktail piano in a Chinese restaurant in Carlisle, where ‘Chopsticks' was requested a dozen times a night, and Bobby became a comedy mime act. Audiences spurned them both. Tom Scorn now described them as ‘shallow and revisionist' and said he regretted having produced their first record. Before long they disappeared completely and the more macabre fans talked of fights to the death and bizarre suicide pacts.

Jenny didn't know what she believed, wasn't really sure whether the boys were alive or dead. She hoped the former, although she could see why they might have chosen the latter. However, regardless of their actual fates, from then on whenever Jenny was in the studio and a cymbal toppled over or a microphone fell off its stand, apparently for no reason, she'd cross herself and say, ‘There go the ghosts of poor Walter and Bobby.'

Number two: the boobs

Jenny
Slade says, ‘You
know, if there's one thing I get asked more than any other, it's this: “Jenny,” girls will say, “is my chest too heavily built for me ever to become a truly good guitarist?”

‘I always try to be sympathetic. But first I say, is it really that big a problem? Unless you're colossally stacked there are probably ways of getting round it.

‘Let's face it, lots of guys who have massive beer bellies are still able to play guitar, and the truth is, most beer bellies are bigger than most breasts.

‘But if you genuinely find it a problem, if you're really built like a pre-op Amazon, and if you're really serious about the guitar, then a breast reduction operation has got to be worth considering. Either that or you're going to have to change to playing pedal steel.'

Reprinted from the
Journal of Sladean Studies

Volume 4 Issue 1

In the Havoc Bar and Grill
Kate and Bob have settled down to a boozy quietness. There's lots more Kate wants to know about Jenny Slade, and she has no doubt that Bob has oceans more to tell, but for a while it's enough to keep all that stuff on hold, to savour the whisky, to savour the night.

This quietness lasts no time at all, as the sleeping drunk on the other side of the bar wakes up, is reborn into flustered, disorientated life. He gets to his feet, jinks across to the jukebox and shovels some coins into the slot. Kate knows there's no Jenny Slade on the machine and there's no other music she could bear to listen to right now, so she flips the switch behind the bar that turns it off. The drunk is thrown into lumbering confusion. Unable to understand what's happened to his selection, he approaches the bar and orders another drink.

‘I heard you talking about girls and guitars,' he says. ‘And they just happen to be two of my special interests. Here's to 'em.'

He drinks a toast in honour of girls and guitars.

‘Here's to all those nude guitar girls,' he says. ‘You know who they are, though you don't necessarily know their names. They appear in ads. They appear on album covers, on posters, in magazines. They appear on bedroom walls. They get their images stuck on guitar cases, on the insides of lockers, in the windows of guitar shops; you know the type.

‘Sometimes they're hugging
the guitar as though it's a mighty phallus, or at least a phallic substitute; not as a dildo exactly, since the guitar has too many hard, sharp edges for most tastes, and God knows it's a little large for most anatomical configurations, but you get the point, nevertheless. Here's to ‘em.'

He drinks again.

‘Hey, am I drinking alone here?' he demands of Kate and Bob. ‘Next time I propose a toast I want you both to join in.'

Kate eyes him suspiciously, just another sucker, but she knows that talk of women and ‘girls' can lead to bad, unpredictable behaviour in the Havoc clientele.

The drunk continues, ‘Here's to the nude guitar girl who's an adornment for the guitar player. He stands fondling the guitar while she stands fondling him. She's impressed, thrilled, attracted to and turned on by his chunky yet streamlined axe. She admires his poise, his dexterity, his ability to wield that huge thing with authority yet delicacy. If she's wearing clothes at all they'll be skimpy and few and they'll soon be shed.