One Train Later: A Memoir (22 page)

Everyone leaves except me. Typically, I have met a girl in the club, a nicelooking American girl from L.A., and am hoping to spend some extracurricular time with her. The boys return to the hotel and I go off to spend the night discussing Proust with this girl at her hotel. By a small miracle I manage to wake up early enough to make it back by taxi to the Princess Hotel in time to leave with everyone else. As I get ready to slouch out of the room, my new friend lifts her raven locks from the pillow to ask, "Where are you going?" to which I reply, "Hiroshima, mon amour."

I arrive at the hotel to find my room vacated and my bags gone. I start knocking on other doors, only to find that there is no one around-they have left without me. I go into a cowardly funk, and the word mummy silently crosses my lips. I am alone in the Far East: no money, no credit card, no passport, and no courage.

I run down to the lobby to inquire in fluent Japanese as to the whereabouts of my distinguished colleagues, the scumbags. As I enter the lobby Mick Watts, our erstwhile roadie, comes bursting through the entrance to the foyer. "Quick," he says breathlessly, "get airpor nah." "Whaaa the-," I reply suavely, not thinking that anything is really amiss but that I have just fucked up. On the way to the airport Mick gasps out the story.

Apparently our promoters are part of the Yakuza-the Japanese mafia. They had captured David last night and taken him at gunpoint to a filthy hole somewhere in the bowels of Tokyo. In this dark spot they threatened to cut off one of his fingers unless he signed security notes to the tune of $250,000 and added that they also might kill one of the band, probably the lead guitarist; in fact, they have actually named me as the demisee. Davidcool as a cucumber on a December day and flipping my paltry life in the air like a dime-cleverly surmises that they don't understand the queen's English and writes out the checks and a note stating that at the moment of writing he is being threatened at gunpoint by knaves of the Orient and that if he ever gets out of here, he will see them in the international courts. Luckily for David, none of the villains can read English (or Japanese, for that matter) and they seem satisfied, but they say we all have to leave Japan the next day and add that they have lost a lot of money because the original tour has been canceled and rebooked too many times.

I lean back in the cab in disbelief. This is bloody impossible and very disappointing-it just feels like more shit, and life-threatening at that. Do I really want this anymore? There must be another way. Meanwhile, our equipment-including my guitars and particularly a little cream-colored Les Paul Junior that I am starting to befriend-are en route to Hiroshima. I never get them back. The loss of my guitars cuts deep, and if I resent our "promoters" for anything, it's this even more than the threat of death at a young age.

At the airport, as Mick has warned me, our former thug employers are present, sitting in a row together and watching the band like predators; they are going to make sure that we leave and never return.

The good news is that David has made a decision that we should go stay in Honolulu for a few days to get over this nasty experience. It will also give him an opportunity to go to the bank and cancel all the checks he wrote. A week later an article is written in the International Herald Tribune giving details of the incident.

We stay in a hotel right on Waikiki Beach and sink with relief into the thick-scented air of Hawaii. For a moment it is seductive, as if this island paradise is the final reward for all the dreaming and striving. But I lift a cup of tea from the tray and stare out of the window at the white surf and the happy people below and feel a wave of sadness. With this failure in Japan, it feels as if something has just broken. I pick up my new guitar and strum a few chords while my bare feet make circles in the blue shag. I will be twenty-three on my next birthday, and then what? Everything feels like a great self-conscious effort; I feel as if I am peeling out of a skin, losing something; the years stretch on ahead like an endless maze-how am I supposed to fill them up? I suddenly experience fragility: I want something to hold on to, something to shore up this feeling of pointlessness. A sadness fills me-Eric is going to break up the band, I can feel it coming. What a drag. Maybe Zoot and I have been overpowering him onstage and it's put him off. That plus the squalid little drama we've just been through-he's tired of this scene. I run a few chords and stare at my guitar, a little plywood thing from downtown Honolulu with a palm tree silhouetted against a red sunset and the words Waikiki dreams just above the sound hole. Music-yeah, music. Just as I am about to become the victim of my own melodrama, I hear Mick's voice through the walls, shouting out in a flat East London voice, "'Ere, John, this 'Ead and Shouldersbeautiful shampoo, inn it?" I laugh out loud, and with Mick's Zen master proclamation, everything clears. I hit the beach and then fuck around for two weeks in Hawaii on my own.

Nine

I return to L.A. and the house in Laurel Canyon, where Zoot gives me the news that Eric is ending the Animals or the New Animals, as it's sometimes known. In the time-honored tradition of all who arrive in Hollywood, he now wants to be a film director. So that's it, my intuition was right, but I'm not ready to leave California. Having finally made it this far, I am intent on staying, but it's close to December and in a somewhat confused state I return to England for Christmas, with the vague idea of coming back.

In early January, not quite sure what to do, I go up to London. I have nowhere to stay but after a couple of calls get invited to crash at the Blossom Toes house in Lots Road, Chelsea.

I turn up in a night of pouring rain like a waif in a Dickens story. The group is away on tour, but I have been told that I can stay there until they come back. I am greeted at the door by a tall American girl who says I can share a bed with Rene. Well, as it turns out, Rene is not half bad and I slip into bed with a total stranger. Naturally, we become a humpbacked beast within-what?-five minutes. Small, dark-haired, with a pretty face, she shags like a minx, and between the sheets I bless the Blossom Toes and wish them a top ten hit. In fact, it turns out that there are a few girls in the house and I become-how should one put it?-wanted by all, a household sex pet. I enjoy this situation for a while but I have the light of the blue Pacific in my eyes and want to return. So, at the end of a cold and bitter January I turn my back on the sobs of women in distress and board a plane back to L.A.

I have some reasons for returning. David has told me that he will manage me, that he will put a. group around me, that I will be financed, and that maybe I can make a solo album; in other words, stardom is but a breath away. Los Angeles is still lingering in my head like a perfume, and these tenuous but thrilling possibilities are enough to lure me back. For a few months I carry on, intoxicated with the L.A. scene and living in a big house at the top of the canyon. I spend weeks at Sunset Sound, making a solo record, and people are interested in me. For a while I am able to maintain the illusion that returning to L.A. was the right move. But David's interest is now elsewhere. His heart is not really in management-it was fun to manage the Animals, but faced with the real job of building a career, his enthusiasm dies.

I spiral down, money runs out, David's enthusiasm fades away, and after a few short months of being on the West Coast, I start to worry about money. I start counting change, figuring out how long I can make a bag of brown rice last, and begin using a set of guitar strings a lot longer than I used to. I am about to hit bottom, and as I do, it opens like the mouth of a whale to become an abyss.

Before my little Fiat Spider gets repo'd I decide to take a trip with my girlfriend, Della, to Palm Desert to see Henry, a friend I made while in the Animals. We leave around nine P.m. and I drive the whole way with the top down, enjoying the beautiful California evening. When we get to Palm Desert I have to locate Henry's house, which is somewhere off the main road. I have to find it by the number painted along the curbside, so I start swinging the car from one side of the road to the other. Suddenly-and practically scaring me through the roof of the car-a loud amplified voice cracks through the air, commanding me to stop right where I am. I turn around and there's a cap car right behind me, its headlights scorching my little convertible with a blaze of white light. I pull over, feeling scared because sitting between me and Della on the floor is a bag of marijuana. I lean down, pick it up, and stuff it into my pocket. This is a mistake. The cop walks up to the car with a gun aimed in our direction and tells us to get out of the car.

We climb out and he asks me why I leaned down, and after I mumble some incoherent answer, with his gun aimed at my head, he pats my left pocket and pulls out the dope-which is his big mistake. "You are under arrest for a federal offense," he barks like a rottweiler, then handcuffs me and tells me to get in the back of his car. In the middle of all of this, poor old Henry has come out into the street and watches dumbfounded as the arrest takes place. The cop, excited that he has hippie scum in his grasp, forgets about Della, slams the door, and takes off with me in the back as Henry and Della stare in disbelief at the disappearing taillight. In the backseat, handcuffed and seated behind the barred screen between us, I feel my heart beat like an exhausted rabbit. I ask the cop why he's arresting me-"Can't you let me go?" I plead. "You have commited a federal offense," he snaps back. Outside, the sky is refulgent with starlight, the air filled with the aroma of date palms, desert flowers, and sage brush. Behind a thick meshed window I slump against the backseat with anguish flooding through me like a black river.

We arrive at the Indio county jail ten minutes later. Towering in the front office like something out of a Dickens tale is an oversize pulpitlike desk that might have come from a film set. Its monstrous girth is like a surreal hallucination and adds to my state of confusion as I stand below it-a skinny, frightened white kid with blue eyes, long blond hair, and silver handcuffs. My details are entered with icy cold detachment by the night sergeant, and then I'm hustled into the drunk tank.

This part of California-near the Salton Sea-is rough and weird, a magnet for those who live on the fringe. I have entered an alien world and I sit on the cold iron bench of the cell, shaking and staring at the iron bars between me and what already seems like my former life. I feel as though I am disappearing down the gullet of a large black beast, Jonah in the whale; I feel sick inside and a very long way from home. I am in possession of marijuana-fn7b5-a federal offense-B09-I could be here for years- 6m9....

At five A.m. a silent cop takes me to what they call the day cell, where they keep the real cons. Men who are in for rape, violence, murder, or crimes committed at gunpoint. As I am marched along the corridor toward the cell I hear a chorus of wolf whistles. I have a somewhat androgynous face, and no doubt to those who have been missing female company for a while, I look tasty. My heart sinks as I imagine all the worst jail-movie cliches. The door to the steel cage is unlocked and they push me, now a common criminal, inside.

Various brutes are sitting around and they look at me with interest, like vultures circling over a fresh piece of carrion. In an effort to become invisible I move into a corner, a place from which I don't intend to move. I have made the one allowed call-to David, who groans as I desperately explain the situation. Luckily for me he has a house in Palm Springs and is there this weekend. He promises to bail me out, but it sounds as though he doesn't really want the bother. I offer up a prayer to make it a reality. I notice another kid who is about my age. We start up a conversation: like me, he's in for pot, but it's been months and he hasn't been able to get out. I panic. Is this to be my fate? How will I explain this to my mum? Letter from jail: Dear Mum, Having a lovely time--behind bars in America, food so-so.... I stare at the wall, and a wave of nausea passes through me-I long for my guitar, the sweet open air, girls, the life that was out there, anything but this nightmare.

At nine A.M. another humiliation is delivered as we are marched at gunpoint out into the prison yard for an inspection. This consists of standing in line naked while a prison doctor passes in front of us and feels our testicles with his rubber-gloved hand, at which time we are supposed to cough. Personally I feel like choking at this outrage, want to call the British embassy. What a pathetic cliche, but here I am-naked, vulnerable, with someone's nasty mitt on my balls. manhood stripped. Eventually we are passed fit and miserably troop back to our steel cage.

The longest day of my life passes in torturous increments, and I feel as if I should be on my knees, praying, but then I probably would be the recipient of a rearguard action. My imagination goes into overtime as I contemplate a life inside. I wonder if it would be possible to escape; I imagine trying to saw through several tons of concrete with a nail file (probably be dead of old age before the task is completed), starting a riot but then going down in a hail of bullets or becoming impaled on barbed wire, finding the sewer tunnel and getting flushed out into the desert covered in shit and piss to die of a disease in the baking sand.

As I am thinking up these fantastic scenarios David finally shows up to bail me out, and it's almost with a sobbing relief that a few minutes later I pass through the gate to freedom. As we walk toward the car, the smell of hot tarmac fills my head like perfume, the key turning in the car door lock sings a sweet melody of freedom in my ear, the engine hums a Bach chorale, and as we pull out onto the road for Palm Springs, the sweet air and high desert sky combine in a moment of blessed reprieve. Driving back to David's place, I look out across the desert at the late-afternoon shadows and think, Yeah, whatever doesn't kill you ... Sixteen gut-wrenching hours. I wind down the window and spit in the sand.

Back in L.A. I try to stay out of trouble while my circumstances crumble. A few weeks after the arrest the case gets dismissed for illegal search and seizure-stupid cop-and I can breathe again. I stare out across Laurel Canyon and begin to feel isolated. I'm not in a band, David has disappeared, and within a week I will be in a foreign country with nowhere to live.