Kill Your Friends (22 page)
Authors: John Niven
The girls’ harmonies…it’s hard to describe. Imagine you’d got
four fishwives together, filled them full of Special Brew, and told
them to scream random, primal abuse at each other. It sounds
absolutely satanic. Allan turns it down and looks at me sadly.
“I don’t see that we have any other option,” he says.
“Fine,” I say getting up and slipping into my suit jacket, “let
them fuck around a bit more, tell ‘em it’s great and send them
home. Then we’ll get some singers in and get it done properly
tonight.”
“Right,” he says with visible relief.
As soon as he kills the track shouting can be heard coming from
the live room, even through the phone-book-thick glass. I squint
through. Two of girls, maybe Annette and Debbie, are screaming and
pushing at each other. Allan hits the talkback and the sound of the
playground comes out of the speakers.
“FACK OFF, YOU FACKING SLAAAG!”
“YOU’RE THE FACKING SLAG, SLAG!”
“At least they’re taking it seriously,” I say to Allan as
microphone stands and sound baffles get knocked over.
“I’M WEARING THE FACKING GREEN ONES!”
“YOU LOOK LIKE A FACKING FAT COW!”
I realise as they really go for each other—nails flailing, feet
lashing out—that they are actually fighting over a consignment of
shoes a stylist has brought down for a photo shoot. I swivel round
in my chair to Rent who is stretched out on a sofa at the back of
the control room reading
Billboard
.
“For fuck’s sake, Dan,” I say wearily.
“All right, all right,” he says getting up and slouching off
towards the sliding glass door to go and break it up.
“And talk to them about the fucking cab accounts.”
“OK. Christ.”
Since the stupid whores got signed—sluts who had never seen the
inside of a taxi in their lives—they’ve been using company cabs for
everything
. Going to the corner shop for a pint of milk
seems to involve a people-carrier on wait-and-return. Fucking bands
always do this. Us too. Every few months a memo will go round
vetoing all cab use without the signature of a head of department.
Then, gradually, it slips back to the old ways. This climaxed a
couple of years ago when a secretary in the marketing department
used company cabs
for her fucking wedding
.
And then the cretins wonder why they don’t make any money. Let’s
see, your album sold eight copies and you spent fourteen thousand
quid a month on cabs.
Later that week, sitting at the traffic lights off Shepherd’s
Bush, staring at the blue water in the huge ornamental syringe
they’ve stuck in the middle of the roundabout, I hear the Lazies
single for the third time that day on Radio 1 and I come to a
painful conclusion about Parker-Hall. He’s actually very good at
his job and—unlike Schneider—is not going to simply destroy himself
through incompetence.
So, the following night, I drive across London to a seedy
Internet café in Whitechapel: filthy, slow, old computers and a few
Pakis scattered around scrolling through search results for cheap
flights.
Although the place is almost empty I still make a point of
choosing a screen in a far away corner. I log on and start doing
some research, prepaying for my user time with cash.
I do not want to leave any sort of paper trail.
TwelveEpic trumpets the launch of the new Echobelly
LP.
MD Rob Stringer says, “What a fine act they are. I was very
involved in the signing.” Andersen Consulting and Sun Microsystems
are to spend 50K hosting a Music Industry Trust dinner in honour of
Jonathan King. All the time you hear Will Smith singing ‘Men in
Black’ and you hear ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawumba
.
“
It’s a mean industry—especially when you’re on
the buts
.”Richard Dobbis, former Sony Music President
B
y the time the
Reading Festival and Carnival roll around the Lazies single is
shaping up be a proper hit—possibly top ten—and they’re getting
ready to record their debut album, which is already being freely
talked about around the office as being ‘a landmark’, “a classic’
(Parker-Hall) and, from a coked-up Derek, as ‘the best debut album
since
Nevermind
”. (And nevermind that the homo-fool doesn’t
know that
Nevermind
reception can hear us and everything
wasn’t a debut LP.) Meanwhile, over in the Songbirds camp, I’m onto
the second producer, third studio, and fourth or fifth lot of
songwriters—and well into six figures’ worth of recording costs—and
I still don’t have so much as a B-side.
It’s Sunday morning and everyone’s in the bar at the Ramada, a
few miles from the Reading site.
Cigarette smoke and hoarse laughter in the air and groups of
people buckle over their Bloody Marys. The place is packed with
scouts, journalists, press officers, managers, agents,
A
&
R guys, guys from bands—all talking about
bands they saw the previous day: Symposium, Kent, Pavement, Remy
Zero and Les Rhythms Digitales. They enthuse about Cha Cha Cohen,
Chicks, Space Raiders, Delgados, Smog, Seafood, the Webb Brothers
and Dawn of the Replicants. About Rosita, Seafruit, Cinerama,
Skinny and Indian Ropeman. We have opinions about Lit, Black Box
Recorder, Cornelius and SubCircus. Now, most of that lot will
probably end up going down the tubes for a small fortune, probably
taking a few people like me out along the way. This is why you have
to watch it with signing bands—they can literally cost you your
fucking job. One minute you’re nodding away at the back of some
indie gig. A rash wave of a recording contract later and you’re
down the dole office, shouldering your way between a couple of
stinking tolers and a bunch of teenage mothers.
I see Darren, Leamington and a couple of people at the bar. As I
make my way towards them Jon Carter passes me. “All right, mate,”
he croaks, his voice a shredded bark—a dog who has been in kennels
all night, howling and yelping along with his cell mates. I nod
hello.
“Large Bloody Mary,” I say to the bartender, who looks crippled
with exhaustion, like a soldier who’s been left too long on his own
to guard some remote outpost of the empire.
“Who are we seeing today?” I ask, lighting a Marlboro and taking
a swig of Leamington’s beer.
“Cornelius,” Darren says.
“Arab Strap,” someone else says.
“Buckcherry later,” Leamington says and he starts singing, “
I
love the cocaine, I love the cocaine
.”
My drink arrives and I gratefully sink a third of it in one go.
The guys are all talking about what Carnival parties will be worth
going to. Christ, Carnival. It’s Bank Holiday weekend and there’s
still another two days to go. I had two hours’ sleep last night,
none the night before. I pull myself up onto a bar stool. It’s
already hot and bright outside, the sun filtering through the
slatted blinds, smoky beams and bars falling across the sofas and
tables, trying to land on the vampires and the damned. In a room
full of people who’ve been up all night, it’s like the air itself
is sweating, grimy and tired.
I run a quick mental, feasibility study on just fucking off out
of there: concierge gets me a cab, back to London in about an hour,
hit the sack for a bit, shower, food, then over to Netting Hill for
Ross’s Carnival party. Doable. Very doable. Sensible shoes
option.
“Oi, Stelfox,” says Leamington, clapping a hand on my shoulder,
“do you want a fucking nose-up or what?”
“Yeah,” I say. And then I’m following him to the toilet, my
hands on his shoulders as I bounce up and down, both of us singing,
“
I love the cocaine, I love the cocaine
,” and the girls on
reception can hear us and everything but we don’t give a fuck. As
we barge into the toilets Brett Anderson from Suede and Justine
Frischmann from Elastica come staggering out looking fucked out of
their skulls. She gives Leamington a sloppy kiss and then follows
Anderson off towards the elevators.
The world is much brighter—sharper and clearer—as we jump out of
the taxi and crunch our way through a wasteland of plastic glasses
towards the backstage bar. It’s pretty much a freak show in there.
We say hellos and hit the bar and then a cubicle for another bump.
Darren and I split an E and then we bowl off across the site
towards the Evening Session stage because a couple of people want
to see Ultrasound again for some fucking reason. Why? They just
signed to Nude for fuck’s sake.
“Hey,” I say as we make our way there through a sea of broken
tolers, “I’ve got an idea…”
We root through a few stalls, people selling T–shirts, hash
pipes, Rizlas, soft drinks and crap like that, until we come to a
fifty-year-old hippy with a shameful tray tucked among his
flea-bitten merchandise—a few rows of tiny brown bottles with names
like ‘Bolt’ and ‘TNT’. (American poppers have far better names. In
direct acknowledgement of the huge faggot market for the popular
quasi-legal heart stimulant, they’re called things like ‘Locker
Room’, ‘Cruising’ and ‘Rectal Trauma’.) As I hand over the money I
notice that the guy has a little sign up advertising his amyl
nitrate. ‘Room Odorizer’ it says.
“Hey, cunt,” I say as the guy hands me two bottles of Liquid
Gold, “who do you know whose room smells
so fucking bad
that
drenching it in amyl is actually going to be an upgrade?”
♦
Early evening and it’s still hot and clear and sunny and I’m
stretched out in the back of a chauffeured company people carrier
with Leamington. Darren sits up front with the driver, the windows
down and the M4 sizzling by outside. The only other sound is the
soft hiss of the radio. We are all fucking destroyed. I tilt back
in the leather seat and look out of the back window, at the sun
sinking behind us as we speed towards London. The sun seems huge. I
mean it looks fucking enormous; a scarlet ball that’s about to
touch the ground. It looks like Armageddon falling over Bristol,
over Reading.
Energised by a knuckle of coke as the driver pretends not to
notice we pass a bottle of Maker’s Mark back and forth and talk
random industry gossip: Who’s going to win the Mercury? Beth Orton?
The Chemical Brothers? Are Nude going to have it away with
Ultrasound? Will Kylie’s new indie stuff work? Are the Prodigy
going to sell records in America? Money. Will London have a hit
with All Saints, this new girl band they’ve sighed? If they do will
it clear the pitch for Songbirds? (Unlikely. Remember—there is no
bottom to this crap.) It looks like Ray Cooper at Virgin is signing
this new band Catch, who are managed by Hall or Nothing. My head
starts swimming, that last pill kicking in. “Martin Hall reckons
the singer kid, Toby, is a star…” Darren says. “Yeah?” I say. Or
maybe I just say, “Yeah.” I don’t know. I feel funny. Leamington
craps on, he’s telling some story I already heard the night before,
about something that happened at Tracy Bennett’s wedding the other
week. (Subtext from Leamington: I went to Bennett’s wedding.) I nod
and just stare through my Aviators—we are all wearing sunglasses—at
the back of the driver’s head, at his cracked, seamy neck. I need
to make more money. It occurs to me—and the realisation is in no
way an epiphany, it just dawns on me in the same way you might idly
realise one day that you really prefer linguine to spaghetti—that,
were I forced to choose between Leamington’s life and my own career
success, then I would happily watch Leamington die. I am now
experiencing auditory hallucinations. I can hear feedback and the
beating of helicopter blades. Watch? I would kill him myself. And I
quite like Leamington. “They sound like the fucking Police,” Darren
says, talking about some band. The Police.
Woodham. Fuck. Money. Waters. I think I am going to be sick. A
helicopter chops right by my head. I flinch and whisper
something.
“What?” Leamington says, turning.
“What?” I reply.
“Did you just say,” he lowers his sunglasses, “kill them
all?”
“No.”
I feel this volume continue to build and swell behind me,
beneath me, the sound of chopper blades and feedback shimmering up
through the car, and I think I may be losing my mind. Then I see
that, in the front, Darren is dialling the volume way up on the
stereo, Leamington’s hands are shooting up into the air, he’s
flicking his fingers Mane style and they’re both laughing. I lean
forward and squint through the windscreen glare and I see a sign
appearing out of the dusk: the comforting forestry green with white
lettering which says ‘NOTTING HILL’ and now the Westway is opening
up in front of us and the driver floors it and the feedback and
helicopters resolve themselves into drums and guitars.
“
Turn it up!
” I yell at Darren. He cranks it all the way
and then the three of us are singing, screaming, “
All my people
right here right now…
” and I’ve ridden it out and everything is
OK again.
I fucking love the new Oasis album. Masterpiece. Three hundred
and sixty thousand over the counter sales on day one? You can’t be
arguing with that, can you?
We edge along the pavement. You can actually feel the heat of
the pavement through the soles of your Birkenstocks. All you can
move is your head, your arms are jammed down by your sides, your
legs crushed together as everyone sways from side to side, rotating
from the feet up, like one of those inflatable kiddies’ toys with a
weighted base. Like a Weeble. Looking up the hill, all the way
along Kensington Park Road, all you can see is bobbing heads. I’m
trying to keep my hand in my right pocket—the pocket with all the
drugs and cash in it—because we’re surrounded by greedy,
shifty-looking darkies. As the crowd moves, as the breeze changes
direction, you get hit by different smells—dope, beer, vomit,
frying chicken. The shrill
rakka-ta-takka-ta-tak
of calypso
drums meshes with the subsonic whumf of dozens of sound systems
cranking out dancehall, drum’n’bass, two-step and ragga, creating a
chesty slur of noise. All around us grinning, sunburned
middle–class losers—Rorys and Camillas—bop up and down cheering and
blowing their stupid fucking whistles while they clink Red Stripe
cans with the indulgently smiling brothers. (Who, in their turn,
are wondering if they can get Millie’s handbag away without being
caught.)
