Crime Plus Music (3 page)

For now.

D
RUGS
IS
A
SUBJECT
THAT
comes up a lot when people talk about rock music. It's hardly surprising, given the number of musicians who have succumbed to excess over the years. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison had all died just a short time before Tony became famous. And the list goes on. Tony smoked a bit of dope occasionally, but that was all, as far as I knew. I was with him on that. I didn't mind the occasional joint, but I had seen far too many talented people fall afoul of the hard stuff, or end up with their brains short-circuited by hallucinogens. Perhaps more than anything, Tony became fond of wine, especially now that he could afford the really good stuff. When he let his hair down—which wasn't as often as the media made out—you'd more than likely find him drinking Château Latour or Château Margaux. But the hard stuff, never. Not coke or smack. Not even scotch or vodka.

Connie was a different story. Despite her inner calm and wisdom, a part of her was strongly attracted to the dark side. She read Thomas De Quincey, Coleridge, Huysmans, Gérard de Nerval, Rimbaud, Burroughs. She loved Bosch, Goya, and Dali. The whole idea of a rational derangement of all the senses fascinated her and, she believed, nurtured her art. If there is any truth in the media rumors about a conflict between Connie and me, this is where it has its origins.

In the early days of their life together, Connie would accompany Tony and the band on tour. She got to see the world that way: America, Australia, Japan, South Africa. But she didn't like touring, the hanging about waiting, lengthy sound checks, crowds, long hours in hotel rooms, then the constant rush to a new city every day, with little or no real chance to see anything or meet anyone. And her painting was suffering, too; she wanted to get back to her studio. Even her followers and group members were complaining of neglect. She began to stay home more often, but as the lonely days dragged on, she would become restless. She and Tony had recently moved into an Elizabethan mansion on a country estate, and the large empty rooms and grounds only seemed to emphasize her isolation. She painted a lot and had her artist friends over to visit her, but it just wasn't enough.

Mostly, as far as any of us knew, she kept her drug use under control, and when Tony came home, everything would appear as much as normal. Certainly there were no dawn police raids, no naked women wrapped in fur rugs and rumors of obscene acts with Mars bars. But we found out later that Connie was taking uppers and downers just to maintain the semblance of normality. When Tony was away, especially for lengthy periods of time, she began to drive down to London more often and fell in with some very shady characters on the fringes of the art world, with whom she delved deeper into the darkness, into the world of coke, hallucinogens, and the drug that became her favorite of all: heroin.

O
NE
DAY
, T
ONY
ARRIVED
HOME
late from the a long studio session and called Connie's name. Getting no answer, he went from room to room and finally found her in their bedroom. She was lying fully clothed on the king-size bed, pale and still, a needle and spoon on the bedspread beside her.

Tony felt frantically for a pulse on Connie's wrist, then her neck, but he could sense no signs of life. The muscles around her throat and jaw felt stiff. He grabbed for the telephone and dialed 999, then he picked Connie up from the bed. Her skin was cool to the touch, and he felt her dead weight in his arms. First he tried to get her on her feet walking around, but she was like a heavy rag doll in his hands and her feet just dragged along the carpet. He tried to perform CPR as best he could, imitating actions he had seen on television, but he found that he couldn't even get her mouth open to breathe air into her.

They weren't far from the county town, and soon he could hear the sound of an ambulance approaching. Laying Connie gently back on the bed, he dashed down and practically pushed the attendants up the stairs in front of him. They kept him well back as they got Connie on a stretcher and took her to the ambulance. He noticed one of the attendants shake his head and cover her face with the sheet before closing the doors.

A
S
T
ONY
HAD
SUSPECTED
,
HE
had been a few hours too late. There was nothing more he could have done, the doctors said. The heroin Connie had injected came from an unusually strong batch. She had hardly had time to get the needle out of her arm. The stuff had already killed two junkies in town, and warnings were out, but nobody listened. Needless to say, the police searched the house from top to bottom, took blood samples from Tony and then “interviewed” him for hours without pause—they had no Police and Criminal Evidence Act to hamper their style back then—but in the end they had to let him go. The media made much of Connie's death, of course—from the screaming headlines in the tabloids about the sick and immoral culture of rock music to more carefully written and thought out pieces in the quality press by establishment figures educated at Eton and Oxford.

So began a long dark period of grieving for Tony, a period he thought at times would never end. And perhaps it never really did. For over a year he wrote no songs, performed no concerts, did very little, in fact, except stay in his room or, when the mood took him, go for long walks around the estate. On one of these walks, he came across three women trespassing on his land. He said nothing, as he didn't really care about property rights, but as he passed, one of them threw something at him, and he heard another hiss, “Murderer!” He ran back to the house, and when he got to the bathroom he saw that he was covered in red paint.

After that, Tony hardly went out at all. He also never watched television, listened to the radio, or read the newspapers, so he could have no idea of the storm brewing, of Connie's followers and group members desecrating her grave with anti-Blackbird graffiti and insisting that Tony was responsible for Connie's death, that he had murdered a far more talented and important artist than he would ever be. According to them, he had introduced her to the drugs lifestyle, then abandoned her for his rock-and-roll life on the road with groupies after every gig. It wasn't true. Tony had always shied away from groupies every bit as much as he kept clear of hard drugs, but even if he had known what they were saying about him, any attempt he made to defend himself would have only dug him deeper in the hole.

I handled most of it by ignoring it, issuing the occasional blanket denial and keeping it from Tony, which wasn't difficult. I didn't take the matter seriously. I thought it would all blow over soon enough. During these months, I spent a lot of time at the mansion just keeping an eye out. Tony didn't always know I was there, but I was. For him. We rarely spoke on those occasions when we did see one another, but I will never forget the time he came running downstairs with his hair wild and his cheeks burning, dashing from room to room shouting my name.

I calmed him down and offered him a Mandrax. As usual, he wouldn't take anything but a glass of wine. He put his fists to his temples and shook his head, groaning. I asked him what the matter was, and he told me he'd had a dream, the most vivid terrifying dream he had ever had. It wasn't the first time. He'd had it about three times since Connie's death, but it was getting worse every time, feeling more real. I asked him if he wanted to tell me about it, and he was silent for so long that I assumed he didn't. Then he refilled his glass and mine and leaned back in his chair. His voice was a monotone, his eyes fixed on one of Connie's abstracts hanging on the wall behind the grand piano.

“I'
M
LOOKING
FOR
C
ONNIE
,”
HE
said. ”In the dream. Looking everywhere. She's not in the house, not under any of the beds, not in the stables or the guest house. Then I'm in a strange city at night where the buildings are all old, dark, and decaying. There are noises all around—rumblings, echoing voices, children crying—but I don't know where they're coming from. There's a river nearby, and a stinking mist seems to be rising from its surface, threading its way through the gloomy cobbled streets. I arrive at a big house made of black stone with gargoyles hanging out high up on the walls, some sort of dark viscous fluid—not water—spurting out of their mouths. I'm feeling nervous, in the dream, but I go inside. There's no furniture and very little light, just shadows, dust, dark corners and whispering voices. Every time I think I've got as far as I can go, there's another room beyond. Finally, I arrive at a big ornate door, and I go through it. There are people spread about on the floor. It's too dark to make out their features clearly, but I know that Connie is one of them. I can see the glow of opium pipes and matches heating spoons, and there's a smell, even in the dream, acrid but sweet somehow, like pears and ammonia. I think it's death.

“Connie is lying next to someone who is wearing strange clothes. Edwardian, or something like that. Mostly he's in the shadows. I have no idea who he is. Connie looks up at me, and I can see the pleading in her eyes. ‘Get me out of here!' She wants me to save her, to rescue her, take her away. When I reach out for her hand, a voice tells me I can't leave with her.

“There's a guitar propped against the wall. A Fender Stratocaster. I pick it up and strum a chord. It's out of tune and the volume is deafening. I can't see any leads or amps but it's definitely plugged in somewhere. I sing a song because I think that's what they want. The first song I ever wrote for Connie. It's all very hazy, but I get through it somehow, and then all the people lying around are clapping and saying how great I am and how Connie can go back with me now. I reach for her hands and pull her to her feet. She's a bit unsteady, but she can walk. The voice says, ‘Remember don't look back,' as we set off. I'm confused. I don't know why he's talking about the Dylan movie, what he means by that. I'm in a hurry to get out of there, and my feet seem to remember their way back through room after room, though there's a heaviness that slows us down, as if we're squelching through mud. You can never run fast enough in dreams. I see ghosts of people I've known long ago flitting through the shadows: my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fox, a blackbird with a damaged wing. A disembodied voice whispers, ‘It is always afternoon' and then echoes and echoes until all the words blur into one another. The journey seems to last forever. Connie is behind me now, and I can see a glimmer of light ahead. The outside world. Daylight.

“When I get to the door, the sunshine beyond is almost blinding. I turn to look back at Connie, to make sure she's still close behind, but when I do, it's as if the room and Connie are moving further and further away from me and becoming smaller and smaller. The more I reach out, the further away they get. The next thing I know, I'm out in the street and the heavy door has slammed behind me. I hammer on the wood calling out for Connie, but nobody comes.”

It sounded pretty terrifying to me, and Tony had worked himself up again in telling me about it. I poured him more wine and made soothing noises.

“I've lost her forever,” he said. “You know that, don't you? That's what it means. I've lost her forever.”

H
E
HAD
LOST
HER
FOREVER
, of course. There's no way you can get someone back from the other side, no matter how good a singer you are or how much you plead.

But the dream marked a kind of watershed for Tony. As the months passed, his condition slowly improved. I don't think he was ever quite himself again—he'd lost something too important for that to happen. Not just Connie, but a part of his soul, perhaps. What made him who he was. The Blackbird. The voice was still there, but it wasn't the same. He wrote sad songs, heartbreaking songs. The next album, a solo effort, sold millions, mostly to pale and lovesick youths eking out their existence in student bedsits.

But none of us had reckoned on the lengths to which Connie's supporters would go.

I wasn't with Tony at the time, but I pieced events together as best I could later.

On one of his latenight city rambles, he was walking across a patch of waste ground when three women started throwing stones at him and calling him a murderer, just like the three he'd found on his estate during his period of mourning. He stopped to talk to them, to try to tell them he had nothing to do with Connie's death, with her drug addiction, that he knew how they loved her, but he had loved her, too, and he wasn't the one responsible for destroying the life of their spokeswoman, their heroine, that it wasn't his neglect or infidelity that had killed her. But it was no use. One of the stones hit him on the head and blood started to flow down his cheek. He crumpled to his knees. More stones hit him, then the women, sensing victory, rushed forward as one and enveloped him.

T
HE
POLICE
COULDN
'
T
FIND
ALL
the pieces, but a courting couple walking by the river saw Tony's head floating downstream the following day.

The three killers were easily found, partly because they had been charged before with desecrating Connie's grave. They delighted in their confession. One of them, it turned out, had a history of violent mental disturbances, and other two were followers, weak and easily manipulated—or
inspired
, as they claimed in court. During the trial, they kept jumping to their feet and disrupting the proceedings, raising their fists in the air, shouting slogans and proclaiming victory, to the extent that one commentator said it was like the Manson trial without Manson.

Of course, most of Tony's fans were devastated. Record sales hit the stratosphere, and in death The Blackbird became, if anything, an even more potent figure than he had been in life. Tony Foster was just twenty-seven years old when he died.