Stories We Could Tell (15 page)

Again and again, he made sure the red
record
light flicked on as it should, ensuring that it would capture Lennon’s words when the time came. If it ever did. And he tried to batten down the mounting dread inside him, knowing it was only the other side of the drug. Speed always did this to him – showed him a great time and then threw him out the window.

When the three of them had been looking up at the lights and the drama of the storm, the amphetamine sulphate had felt like molten joy running in Ray’s veins. But the euphoria wore off as time wore on, and now it had been replaced by a nagging, unnameable anxiety. He felt like crying. Everything seemed washed out and fucked up. Including him. Especially him.

The tube train thundered west, crammed with office workers with loud voices, all Take Six suits and Glitter Band hair, still stinking of the Rat & Trumpet, and the noise and the smell and nearness of all those other lives made Ray’s head throb like a fresh bruise.

The office workers were rolling to their mainline railway stations and the last train home. Ray still had a job to do. Concentrate, concentrate. What’s the plan, Ray? There was no plan. Licking lips as dry as the Gobi Desert, he suddenly knew he couldn’t interview John Lennon feeling as bad as this. Interview him? He couldn’t even find him.

He had got on the tube with the vague notion of staking out the lobby of the Hotel Blanc and waiting for John to show. The Hotel Blanc, tucked just behind Marble Arch, was the obvious choice – visiting American musicians almost always stayed at the Blanc when they were in London. A thousand cowboy boots had ambled past the palm trees in its lobby, a hundred bands had enjoyed its aura of slightly decadent affluence, dozens of music writers from the
NME, Sounds, Melody Maker
and
The Paper
had turned up with their notepads, dreaming of good quotes and free cocaine. By the time he was seventeen, Ray knew the lobby of the Blanc better than he knew the sixth-form college that he was still technically attending. Yes, he liked the idea of going to the Blanc. It calmed him down. It felt almost cosy.

But in his heart Ray already knew that going to the Blanc was hopeless. Just because Nils Lofgren and Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles stayed at the Blanc when they were in town, that didn’t mean John Lennon would be there. In fact, it almost certainly meant that John would be somewhere else. John went his own way. I have to be like John, Ray thought. I have to go my own way. This is a lesson I must learn…

The tube train stuttered to a halt between stations, and the office workers jeered as an Asian voice came on the intercom to apologise for the delay. Stopping between stations when you were coming down – this was not good. This was the pits.

In response to the Asian voice, some of the office workers started singing some Peter Sellers hit – ‘Oh,
doctor, I’m in trouble.’ – Well, goodness gracious me.’
– while Ray fought to control his breathing,
battling down feelings of panic. His left arm began to tingle and he felt his heart hammering like it would burst. A heart attack? Death was so close, it was always so close. They didn’t realise that – Terry and Leon and the rest of them at
The Paper
. Everything you love will die and rot. All of it. Maybe very soon. Ray thought he might die tonight and that threatened to tip the panic over to hysteria. But he couldn’t lose it. Not down here, stuck between stations. Not here.

He needed something to take the edge off the speed. He needed a different kind of drug. If he got off this train alive, the first thing he would do was score a nice mellow smoke. But he fumbled in his pockets and came out with only loose change and a Polo mint. Not enough to score. He fiddled with the tape recorder again, still enough speed in his veins to get caught up in the action, to become obsessed with it. That was the thing about speed, he thought. You lost yourself.

‘Testing, testing,’ he said as quietly as he could, pulling the tape recorder as close as a lover’s face, and the office workers saw him and mocked and scoffed, saying things like, ‘Do you read me?’ and ‘Come in, Houston,’ and ‘Beam me up, Scottie,’ and ‘Exterminate, exterminate.’ Ray saw the little red light responding to his voice, and he tried to concentrate on that, aware that he was panting like an exhausted dog.

Then, as he watched the red light and tried to shut out the office workers, he suddenly knew what he wanted to do before he could talk to John.

He wanted to go home. He wanted to get straight. He wanted to soften the come-down with what he had hidden in his old Doctor Who lunchbox.

And most of all Ray wanted to see his brother, and to make sure that he was okay.

It was easier to sneer on the outside.

Down in the Goldmine, Leon was on their territory, and it made
him pause, check himself, feel painfully aware that he was carrying a shoulder bag full of fanzines and wearing a funny hat. As he moved along the crowded bar he got a twinge of that old crippling self-consciousness that he’d had in front of mirrors when he was young, when you were just so burdened by how different you were to everyone else that you thought maybe you would never move again. He thought it was lucky that he was out of his mind on drugs.

Everything in here was strange, new, different.

The dancing. The moves that Leon was used to seeing hardly qualified as dancing at all. Just this piston-like movement, up and down for ever, letting off steam. But here in the Goldmine they had these intricate steps and secret, hard-earned moves – they could really dance, the way Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse could really dance. They made it look as though it was as natural as breathing. And Leon thought – why can’t I move like that?

And the clothes. In the Western World they dressed as if they had salvaged some rags from the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. In the Goldmine they dressed as if they were going to a wedding. In the Western World the clothes were shades of black. Here in the Goldmine their clothes were tight and white, their hair permed and teased, and everyone looked as though they had just had their weekly bath. And then there were the lights.

The Western World was always in almost complete darkness apart from the bare bulbs above the upstairs bar and the downstairs stage. The Goldmine was constantly alive with streams of piercing sci-fi lasers and twirling disco balls and pulsating strobes. Leon shyly bought a screwdriver and tossed it down, tasting the orange juice at the back of his throat, feeling the kick of the Smirnoff, fascinated by the intricate swirls of colour of the lights above the heaving dance floor, trying to work out when blue would change to red, positive he could work it out if only he watched carefully enough. There was so much colour in here. He had never known there could be so much colour.

And then there was the music. No bands here. No lads in Lewis Leathers slouching on stage and saying something like, This one’s about pensions. One! Two! Three! Four!’ Here there were records and records only, with the DJ up in his booth, but nothing like the impassive natty dread at the Western World, there to provide mood music between the main events. Here the DJ bossed the night. And the music!

For some reason Leon had expected the Goldmine to be full of sappy romance and chart pap – but it was more narcissistic than that, more esoteric – all these exhortations to move it, get down on it, make it funky now. It wasn’t like any mainstream music Leon had ever heard. It was harder, tougher, funkier – the DJ proudly boasted of white labels, imports, rare grooves. They were as elitist as any kid at the Western World.

This wasn’t his kind of place. Not at all. What was the point of the fanzine in his bag? Why was he alive? He dreamed of fighting racism, defeating injustice, changing the world. And in the Goldmine they dreamed only of leaving the world behind. Yet he ordered a second screwdriver, and didn’t want to go.

Because there was something about the scene – the lack of pretentious bastards on stage, the ever-changing colours of those epileptic Christmas lights, and above all the seamless, endless beat – the sheer mindless joy of the music, the way the records just flowed into each other, like a river of music – that he found hypnotic, and thrilling, and oddly comforting.

Leon began to sway at the bar, watching the dance floor, wishing he was brave enough to do that. Brave enough to get out there with the well-scrubbed kids in their tight white clothes. Brave enough to dance.

And then he saw her.

She was in the middle of the dance floor.

The most beautiful girl in the world.

Surrounded by a group of her friends, all of them responding
to some new record as if it was the news they had been waiting for. They whooped, they raised their arms above their heads, their dancing stepped up a gear. Someone blew a whistle and it made Leon jump.

At first the record they were responding to seemed like any other record in the Goldmine. This rolling, tumbling funk punctuated by a waterfall of piano and then a burst of lonely brass started wailing and then, finally, after an age, the voices came in.

‘Shame!’
cried the back-up singers, and then this woman with a perfect voice sang,
‘Burning – keep my whole body yearning!’
and then she muttered something that Leon couldn’t quite catch, and then the chorus girls shouted,
‘Shame!’
again and then the singer was saying that her mama just didn’t understand, and the chorus was moaning like love-sick angels –
‘Back in your arms is where I want to be…want to be…’

Leon had never heard anything quite like it.

Never heard anything so full of life.

It made wanting someone, and not getting them, seem like the most important thing in the world. More important than…anything. The real reason we are alive. Leon’s head was spinning.

He wanted to push through the crowds and talk to the most beautiful girl in the world and say – I get it, I understand, I feel the same way. But his tongue was a hopeless knot, his feet felt like they were in concrete. He knew he could never talk to a girl like that. And Leon dancing seemed about as likely as Leon levitating.

‘Oh yeah, baby,’ said the DJ, before this perfect record was even over, ‘Evelyn “Champagne” King there with a little thing called “Shame”…and before we get down and dirty with Heatwave, we have some breaking news…’

Heads on the dance floor were turning towards the DJ in his booth. Leon kept looking at the most beautiful girl in the world.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ the DJ said, uncertain of
the tone he should adopt, and sounding both solemn and facetious. ‘The King is dead.’ No reaction on the dance floor. ‘That’s right – we just heard that Elvis Presley died tonight.’ The DJ slapped down a record.

‘Thought you would like to know,’ said the DJ. ‘That’s the end of this newsflash.’

They cheered. Leon stared at them in amazement. They were fucking cheering.

Not all of them. The most beautiful girl in the world and her friends looked puzzled, briefly conferred, as if they were not quite sure who this Elvis Presley person was, as if they had heard the name somewhere but couldn’t quite place him.

But most of the dancers seemed to think that they owed the news some sort of reaction. And many of them whooped as if their side had scored, or as if one kind of music had just triumphed over another. And all of them started dancing again.

But by then Leon, emboldened by the speed and a sense of outrage that came naturally to him, was pushing his way across the dance floor and climbing into the DJ’s booth, snatching up the microphone – the DJ took a step back, raising his hands in compliance, letting the madman in the funny hat have it – and then Leon was staring out across the dance floor, trying to find the words. He knew that this was important.

‘No – wait – listen,’ Leon said, and the DJ helpfully turned off ‘Boogie Nights’. ‘Testing, testing. Hello? Elvis – right? Respect to Elvis Presley. Elvis is – was – more than the ultimate rock star, right? Elvis is – was – where it all begins.’ His voice was rising, it was coming to him now. ‘Elvis broke down more barriers than anyone in history. Racial barriers, sexual barriers, musical barriers. I mean, the personal is political, right? Elvis – what Elvis Presley did – he dared to see the world in a new way…’

‘Right on, baby,’ said the DJ, leaning into the microphone. He smiled at Leon and nodded encouragement. ‘Carry on.’

‘Thank you,’ said Leon. ‘Black and white music – it was like apartheid before Elvis.’ He was warming to his theme. ‘Music was like one big fucking South Africa. White radio stations. Black radio stations. Music, all types of music, it was kept in a ghetto. Elvis made all of this possible.’ Leon stared at them helplessly. They were all watching him. Maybe he had gone on too long. Maybe he could have expressed it better. ‘I’m just saying,’ he said, and there was a pleading in his voice now. ‘Don’t cheer his death. Please don’t do that.’ He tugged nervously at the brim of his hat. ‘Forget about cheeseburgers and Las Vegas and, you know, white jump suits, B movies in Hawaii or dressed up as a soldier. Whatever. That’s not it. You have to look at the way things were, and everything he changed. He was a great man. Flawed – yeah. Corny at times – well, all right. But Elvis Presley…he fucking set us free, man.’

There was a moment of complete stillness and silence. The crowd stared up at Leon, and Leon stared back at them, and nobody knew what to do. Then the DJ snatched his microphone back and Leon felt the air move as he slammed down a 45 like a short-order cook slapping a raw meat patty on a grill.

‘Yeah, respect to the King, baby,’ said the DJ, ‘and respect to…’ his voice dropped to a sultry baritone, ‘…the Commodores!’

Leon thought they would throw him out. There were bouncers at the Goldmine who were far meaner looking than any security at the places he was used to, these bouncers who looked like they treated violence as a profession, a calling, but he felt oddly calm about the prospect.

Leon wasn’t a coward, not where physical violence was concerned. He could never be as afraid of bouncers or the Dagenham Dogs as he was of dancing. Or of talking to a girl he really liked, such as the most beautiful girl in the world. A quick, impersonal beating didn’t scare him as much as the prospect of that incredible girl looking at him with pity.