The Man Who Lived by Night (18 page)

At the far end of the room was a pulpit, where Father Bob presided. Father Bob had eaten fried eggs for breakfast that morning. Some of the yolk was still in his beard, which was black and bushy. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a paint-splattered gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut crudely off at the elbows, and rumpled black corduroy trousers. Thick black hair sprouted on his arms and up from under the neck of his sweatshirt, nearly meeting his beard.

The urn holding Tulip’s ashes was on the table next to him.

The funeral service was short and casual. Just a few comments from Father Bob on how we all touch each other in life and in death. Then he presented Vi with the urn, and kissed her on the forehead.

T. S. exchanged a few words and a hug with Derek—and, after a hesitation, one with Marco, who was weeping openly. Then he headed back out to the car. Jack also hugged Derek. But the former Rough Boys drummer steered carefully around Marco. Marco noticed. I noticed. Marco noticed I noticed.

“Awful business, Mr. Hoag,” Marco said, coming over to me. “Awful.”

“Indeed,” I said. “Had you seen her recently? Spoken to her?”

Marco frowned. “Why, no. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondered if the two of your were close.”

“One needn’t be in regular touch to be close. She was the loveliest of them all, Mr. Hoag. She was so lovely she could break your heart-without even trying.” Marco ducked his head and swiped at his nose. Then he waddled out.

I watched him go, wondering just how long he had carried the torch for Tulip, and if he had ever tried doing anything about it, the poor, greasy little crook.

Tris was slouched in the back seat of the Silver Cloud, staring out the window. He stayed that way as we worked our way out of London. Then he sat up abruptly, opened the portable bar, and poured himself a brandy. His hands shook so badly he dribbled most of it onto the carpet. I grabbed the decanter from him and filled his glass. He took it all down in one gulp, then fell back against the seat, a hint of color in his cheeks now.

“All dead,” he said hoarsely. “All dead.”

I poured a brandy for myself.

“I’m the only one left, Hogarth. I’m next. Don’t you see? I go next.”

“You’re right. You do.”

He glared at me. “That’s bloody reassuring of you, mate,” he snarled.

“We all go next, Tristam. We’re all headed in the same direction. No getting around it. Just do me one favor.”

“What’s that, Hogarth?”

“Hang out for a little while longer—I’m not done with you yet.”

He let out a short harsh laugh and held out his empty glass.

I filled it for him. We killed the brandy together. By the time we rolled into Gadpole we were singing the refrain of “More for Me” together. He sounded a lot better on the album. I sounded great.

(Tape #7 with Tristam Scarr recorded in his chamber Dec. 7.)

H
OAG
: TULIP MENTIONED THAT
something was bothering you when you lived in Los Angeles.

Scarr:
What did she say about it?

Hoag:
That you were restless, angry self-destructive. And that when she tried to get you to open up to her you—

Scarr:
Beat the living shit out of her one night. Broke her nose and a couple of her front teeth. Next morning I didn’t even remember it happening. That’s how bombed I was getting, Hogarth. She kept getting real on me. Hassling me about Lord Harry. Hassling me about trashing m’life. All for m’own good, of course, but no one could tell me nothing then. She left me after that night. Went back to London. We got back together again when I got straight. She was eight months preggers at the time. Hadn’t told me about that. A bit of a shock. We stayed together for another year or so, until it was over for good … To answer your question, a lot was bothering me in L.A. I was thirty years old and I was still acting sixteen. The whole T. S. bit was stale. I was tired of the music, the image, the road, Rory. I wanted to grow up. But I didn’t know
how.

Hoag:
Who does? We’re all faking it.

Scarr:
I realize that now, but I didn’t then. I just knew I didn’t want to be T. S. anymore, and didn’t know who I wanted to be instead. So I got angry. I got high. I copped out—blamed the fans for locking me into that image. Blamed the record company. Blamed Rory. Blamed everybody but m’self.

Hoag:
You were still on top, weren’t you?

Scarr:
Yes, but our time was passing. The sixties were over. New bands with new sounds were coming along—Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, Yes, Bowie, Roxy Music. We weren’t on the cutting edge anymore. None of us were, really. Christ, McCartney was scoring a bleedin’ James Bond movie. I thought Rory was holding me back. Rory thought I was holding him back. We stopped communicating. Started saying things about each other in the papers we didn’t mean. And sometimes didn’t even say, actually—you know how they are. He called me a manipulative swine. I called him a cockney lout. We were hurting inside, both of us. But we couldn’t deal with it maturely, like brothers. So we split up. He went off to Italy. Did his solo album,
Bad Boy.

Hoag:
How did you feel when it became a hit?

Scarr:
I was happy for him. Don’t you see, Hogarth? There was no rivalry between us. The press made out that there was, so they could sell their papers. But there wasn’t. Each of us needed to grow a bit. To do that, we needed to be apart. I needed to be
me.
The problem was that
me
was shards of broken glass.

Hoag:
How much did the drugs have to do with that?

Scarr: (pause)
I did a lot of ’em, and had a lot of good times doing ’em. Acid opened up my mind. I’ve no regrets about taking it, or smoking what I smoked. Coke and Lord Harry are another matter. They can take you over, especially if your life happens to be fucked up at that particular time. I got plain strung out on Lord Harry in L.A. And then it became the problem.

Hoag:
Tulip said you were running with a pretty wild set of mates—Keith Moon, Dennis Wilson …

Scarr:
Dennis who?

Hoag:
Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.

Scarr: (pause)
Oh, him. Yes, I recall him now. But we were never mates. She is … was mistaken about that. Just a bloke I got bombed with a few times. I was bombed all of the time, you see. I didn’t want to be conscious. Things looked too much like shit when I was. So I basically tried to obliterate m’self on Lord Harry and women who’d let me do astonishingly cruel things to them. There were a number of them after Tulip left me, mostly would-be actresses who looked magnificent in bikinis, and out of them as well. I used them. They used me. Got their pictures in the paper when I was getting thrown out of Gazzarri’s or Ciro’s for being an abusive swine. Moon lived down the beach from me. Lennon was around for a bit as well. I believe Yoko had thrown him out. We three used to go out and raise decadent, drugged-out hell together.

Hoag:
Were you doing anything musically—growing as you wanted to?

Scarr:
I did a few country blues things in the studio with Phil Spector that I rather liked. Ry Cooder played guitar. I played m’harp. Whoever was around sat in—Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Stills, Lennon, Moon. Like a party, it was. But I had to be put in the hospital before I could get an album together, which I regretted. Only the one single, “Lucy Goosey,” ever got released.

Hoag:
Why were you hospitalized?

Scarr:
Ulcers, the bleedin’ sort. M’body was telling me to slow down, or I’d crash. Derek and Jack came out and took charge of me. Got me out of L.A. to the desert somewhere. Rented me a house with a pool and a full-time doctor. Saved m’life.

Hoag:
You kicked?

Scarr:
I did. Started eating proper. Swimming twice a day. Took nothing stronger than a glass of wine. And they got me talking to Rory again on the telephone. He’d cleaned up his own act as well. Was a sort of bleedin’ jet-setter now—summers on the Riviera, winters skiing in Gstaad. Even had a live-in steady, a teenage Italian actress named Monica, who didn’t shave under her arms … Christ, it was fantastic talking to Rory again. He was my
brother,
y’know? I think that was one of my biggest problems in L.A., my being away from Rory. We rang each other every night. Talked and talked about what had been going on between us. And when I was fit enough, I went and stayed with him at his place on the Riviera. We both broke down and cried like babies when I got out of the taxi … We wanted to play together again. We were ready. But only if it could be like it used to be, before the star-tripping and the bullshit.

Hoag:
This is how the Johnny Thunder thing came about.

Scarr:
That’s right. It started as a sort of goof, y’know? The idea of being sixteen again, going back to the Sun Records rockabilly sound of Elvis and Buddy Holly. Playing old equipment—a hollow-body Rickenbacker, a stand-up bass. Our musical roots, really. The more we talked about it, the more we kept saying why not? So we got together with Derek and the drummer we’d been using, Corky Carroll, and found a fantastic sax player, Johnny Almond. We five formed Johnny Thunder and the Lightnings. We did everything as if it was still ’57. We dressed in plaid jackets, bowties, and drainies. Greased back our hair. Jack found us a vintage motor coach and we toured the provinces in it, playing only small clubs, drinking scotch and Coke, smoking Woodies. No drugs. No Us songs. We pretended Us didn’t even exist. Some people dismissed it all as a bleedin’ stunt, but it was a gas for us. We even recorded the album live in the studio.
(laughs)
Never occurred to us it would be a smash.

Hoag:
Its success set off the fifties nostalgia craze. You were also credited with making a statement—that rock music is theater.

Scarr:
The most important thing it did was help us deal with the madness of the past few years. Rory and I began to turn those feelings into songs as we rode in the motor coach, like we had in the early days. That’s where we wrote
New Age.

Hoag:
“Now is the time to turn the page/To stop looking back/To put away the rage/No more lonely nights/We’re living in the new age.” Were you?

Scarr:
In a manner of speaking, yes. Tulip and I were back together, and happy. Musically, Rory and I were excited again. Excited by the new dance music sounds, like reggae and disco. Excited by the new technology in the studio. We couldn’t wait to get in there. In many ways,
New Age
was our most satisfying album. It was an
up
album. We were up. Didn’t last long, of course.

Hoag:
What happened with Tulip?

Scarr:
Violet happened. Tu just got incredibly protective after she had her. Wanted an entirely different life from the one we were leading, away from musicians and dirtiness. She put it to me just as the band was getting ready to tour America in support of
New Age:
Give it up, she said. Give it up or lose us. It wasn’t a choice I wished to make, but she left me no alternative. She wouldn’t budge. I-I simply couldn’t give up the music. It was my life. So I lost her. Lost them. Greatest sacrifice I ever had to make for my music, but I made it. Never did live with anyone again. Couldn’t. Tu got stranger and stranger after that. Discovered Himself. Got involved with that Reverend Bob and his pathetic little church.

Hoag:
He used to deal drugs, the police found out.

Scarr:
You don’t say. Do they suspect him of killing her?

Hoag:
I don’t believe so.

Scarr:
Have you heard anything from that Root person?

Hoag:
No. It’s my move now.

Scarr:
Have you chosen it yet?

Hoag:
I think so.

Scarr: (pause)
I keep wondering if she suffered.

Hoag:
It wasn’t a pretty way to die, but I don’t suppose there is one. I understand Jack buried her urn in the center of the maze.

Scarr:
Yes. Violet planted tulip bulbs as a marker.

Hoag:
That’s nice … Let’s talk about that last tour. I got a chance to watch the Kubrick movie.

Scarr:
I never have, m’self. For obvious reasons.

Hoag:
How did that come about?

Scarr:
He approached us. Why not, we said—the more the merrier. Christ, it was already a monster production. Our own bleedin’ plane. Truckloads of sound and lighting equipment. Wasn’t long before we were all saying how sorry we were we’d given up on Johnny Thunder. Especially after Rory slipped.

Hoag:
Slipped?

Scarr:
He’d asked his Italian actress, Monica, to come with him. Instead of which she dumped him for Roman Polanski, who immediately put her in some movie he was making. Rory never did understand that people use each other, that people using each other is the entire basis of most human relationships.

Hoag:
Including you and Tulip?

Scarr:
I said
most,
mate. Rory didn’t take it well. Got back into a bad-ass-rocker-on-the-road thing. Did coke and teenage girls by the ton. Snorted and performed. Snorted and fucked. Snorted and crashed. Snorted and started all over again. Never ate. I didn’t know how he could do it. It would have broken me. And it broke him, actually. He collapsed backstage after the Denver show and had to be put in hospital. We put out a statement saying the thin air had gotten to him.

Hoag:
What were you doing while Rory was being a bad-ass rocker?

Scarr: (laughs)
The truth? I wasn’t a lad anymore. If I didn’t follow a strict physical regimen I couldn’t keep my wind up while I boogied around on those football arena stages. I had to jog two miles every morning. Get my rest. And as for the girls, I wasn’t that interested in ’em anymore. They bored me. Had no minds of their own. No style. They were just shapely, empty receptacles, waiting to be filled. The fact is, Tulip had spoiled me for other women. She knew what she wanted. She had taste. Ideas. There’ll never be another like her.