The Singer (33 page)

‘Ah, well,’ Gavin finally
said as he placed his empty cup back down on the coffee table. ‘Not the best brew I’ve ever had. But not the worst either.’

I still couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Now mate,’ he said, gentle but firm. ‘There’s only two ways you can go on this. You can either go back down the bottle until you never come back up, or you can haul yourself out through that little bastard there.’ He nodded towards
my computer.

I followed his gaze. The tape recorder looked back at me from beside the keyboard. The next tapes to transcribe, with Lynton Powell’s interview on them, sat in a neat pile beside it, wearing a thin layer of dust.

‘See, we’ve still got a mission, you and me,’ Gavin went on. ‘We’ve made a bloody good start on it already, but we’re still only part the way there. We’ve gotta get you
shipshape and start you moving again. It’s the only way, mate. The only way.’

I dropped my gaze to the floor. ‘I know,’ I finally whispered.

That disappeared singer and what was left of his band were my one hope left. Without them I was nothing but a failure. The drinks were lined up on the bar of the Last Chance Saloon all right.

‘Good bloke.’ Gavin put his hand briefly on my shoulder. ‘Now,
what I suggest is a trip to the supermarket. In order to do what’s required of you, you’re gonna need some decent coffee…’

Mother would have been proud of the way Gavin took charge of the provisions that day, making sure I had everything I needed in my fridge and my cupboards.

‘Bush Tucker Man!’
he said proudly as we stacked the last of it away. ‘Bringing the hard world of Outback survival into
your home.’ He swung the door of the fridge shut in triumph.

As he did so, he dislodged the Polaroid of Louise and me, and it dropped to the floor like a stone. I swooped down to pick it up, held it for a moment in my palm.

‘You want my advice?’ said Gavin, looking over my shoulder. ‘Put it away, mate. Hide it somewhere.’

‘No,’ I said, suddenly filled with a sense of resolution. ‘No, I’m gonna
keep it there. To prove to her what I am capable of doing.’

‘That’s my man!’ Gavin laughed and I joined him.

I had to hand it to him. He fired me up. ‘Thanks, Gavin,’ I said. ‘I won’t forget this.’

Although after he was gone, it was hard to keep hold of that sudden moment of calm and purpose I’d had there in the kitchen. I could feel the holes opening up again inside me as the day dissolved
into dusk and the streetlights blinked on outside. Hard not to look at the spaces where her things had been for so long, in these rooms.

Music. That was what I needed to keep me straight.

Only I didn’t turn to any of the men-in-black for solace this time. Instead I picked up that Mood Violet record I’d found in the bargain bins of Inverness Street. I’d dismissed it as ethereal bollocks before,
but something about the colours on the front cover, those twilight pinks and blues and the arc of gold light, like the edge of a lens caught by the sun, seemed to chime with the way I was feeling inside.

I flipped it over and looked at her again. Sylvana Goldberg, with her heart-shaped face and long red hair. She was even more beautiful than Louise. Or at least, she had been. Poor, dead Sylvana.
At that moment, I really wanted to hear her story. Wanted to feel it was vastly more tragic than my own.

The sound washed into the room in deep, comforting waves. Moody synths and that echo-driven guitar that was such a big deal in those days. Compared to a modern production, it actually all sounded a bit weedy, but for the first time I could sort of tell what they were getting at; trying to
put a mood in your mind through sound. And, despite the crackles on the worn old vinyl, the occasional jump and hiss, age could not diminish the stark sensuality of her voice.

I stood there, transfixed, staring out of the window, over the misshapen hunch of the city, the rooftops, spires and domes that sprawled far into the distance, at the Dog Star high above. Something about this music went
so perfectly with the melancholy afterburn of sunset, the fading of all colours into black. Something about it kept me calm.

‘Vince said she was a genius.’ I heard Steve Mullin’s words in my head again. When the first side was finished, before I flipped it over, I turned my computer on for the first time in a month. It was time to knock those words of Mr Mullin’s into shape. With a little background
help from the woman he’d so despised.

It was funny, really. For a bloke I had found so obnoxious on first meeting, Steve really did keep me sane for the next couple of days. His big, foul-mouthed Yorkshire presence filled the room as if he was really there with me, and I was quite reluctant to let him go and turn my attention to those Lynton tapes that had been gathering even more dust.

So to
spin it out a bit longer, I started trawling the Net and those old magazines of Christophe’s for more information on Mood Violet.

I had been somewhat spooked about doing this before, superstitious even, that calling them up would bring that wanker Leith back to my door. Now I truly didn’t care. There wasn’t anyone here for him to terrorise any more, was there? The fear I’d felt about him was
all for Louise, not for myself. Stupid, smack-addled toerag couldn’t hurt me now.

Besides, I’d started to become rather addicted to his former lover’s tonsils by now. If this story was going to work, I needed to know a lot more about her than anyone else had been so far willing to tell me.

A familiar name popped up again from my web searches: Ray Spencer.

He’d been an early champion of the
band, had interviewed
them several times. So here was a link between the two factions who seemingly had only had good words to say about them both.

He appeared to have been a pretty big name in his day, did Spencer. Yet unlike his more famous peers, the Burchills, Parsons and Morleys, he didn’t seem to have had much of a public life after about 1984. I’d never seen his byline in any of the Sunday
supplements or on the bestseller lists, never caught him lounging around in a swivel chair, pontificating at length on
The Late Review
. I wondered what had happened to him.

There was a photo of him in one of the magazines Christophe had given me.
Noise!
it was called. It had come out as a glossy sister magazine to
Sounds
in the early eighties, and had categories for Punk, Electrobop, Psychedelix
and Heavy Metal. It hadn’t lasted very long. Maybe because of the terrifying photo of Garry Bushell’s gurning mush leering out of the Punk section.

Spencer’s picture was alongside this monstrosity. By comparison, he looked very cool, very youthful, with spiked-up peroxide hair, a line of sleepers down his left ear and a black-and-white stripey mohair jumper. While Bushell waxed lecherous about
Becki Bondage, he was enthusing about GBH.

I asked Gavin about him, but he was pretty dismissive.
‘Sounds
were the enemy, mate,’ he told me. ‘Particularly him. He went after all the same stories as me and Mick. Got there first a few times too. He was a nice enough bloke, I guess, but we didn’t really hang out a lot. I haven’t seen his name around for years.’

I finally found an email address
for someone called Ray Spencer not on any of the punk sites, but on the Fulham FC Supporters web page. This Ray Spencer was one of the organisers of the Save Our Cottage campaign – whatever that meant. It possibly wasn’t the same person at all, but I didn’t see the harm in dropping him a line. He could only laugh at me, after all.

After that, it was time to start on Lynton’s transcription. Compared
to Steve, he was a bit of a damp squib.

It was funny. I had memories of that day going so well, and
him being so open with me. That’s one of those things that sometimes happens with interviews – gremlins get inside the tape recorder while it spins and turn all your fantastic quotes into banal rubbish. Plus, you get to hear yourself sitting back and letting them do it, only occasionally throwing
a fatuous platitude into the mix when you could have actually asked a question.

It was because Lynton was so smooth. He had politely and graciously talked about every subject put to him – but he hadn’t really answered with anything of substance. No bad things to say about anyone, nothing controversial; if shit had happened, well, that was down to his youth and inexperience. Which was essentially
all he had said about heroin. I had obviously just been so pleased he didn’t slap me upside the head for asking about it I’d deluded myself that I’d got a Pulitzer-winning quote from him.

By the time I’d got through all of the tapes I was staring out into another starless Camden midnight, realising just how gracefully I had been conned.

Sure, I could use bits of detail about music and tours,
but for deep insight into how these people interacted with each other, I was going to have to look elsewhere. It was impossible to harbour a grudge against Lynton, mind you. If I had lived through what he had, I probably wouldn’t want to give any more of myself away either.

So now it was the end of April, and I was supposed to show the book’s editor at least a third, preferably half of this book
in a month’s time.

Who was I going to turn to?

I clicked onto the Internet to check my Hotmail, not really holding out too much hope. It was two days since I’d sent off that email to Ray Spencer and if there was a reply, I expected it to be from some meathead football fan calling me a poof.

But I was wrong. There was an email from Ray Spencer, sent the day before. It read:

Dear Eddie,

I’m
quite shocked that anyone remembers, but I am the same Ray Spencer who used to write for
Sounds
.
I’m intrigued that you are writing about Blood Truth and Mood Violet, of course I remember them and the sad ends that they came to. I suppose it would be quite a good time to reappraise them now that everyone seems to be living back in the early 80’s again!

I would be happy to meet you and perhaps
do an interview for the book. Where are you based? I’m still in London, I presume you are but I could be wrong. I work in Camden five days a week, so if that’s any good maybe we could meet up one evening? It would be interesting to take a trip down memory lane…

He gave me a daytime phone number and signed off with a matey,
Cheers!

Wow. Who would have thought it? The illustrious punk scribe was
here, right under my nose. I wrote back:

Dear Ray,

Thank you for replying so quickly – and for being the same Ray Spencer I was looking for! By strange coincidence, I live in Camden, so meeting up couldn’t be easier. Name a date and a place and I’ll be there. So long as it isn’t the Devonshire Arms.

I put both my numbers down for him, resolving to give him a call anyway the first thing tomorrow.
After everything that had happened over the past couple of months, it was about time something went right.

It turned out Ray was working on a women’s magazine up on Oval Road – there was a big publishing house up there I didn’t even know existed. He was a sub-editor these days, having turned to a more reliable way of making money when he got married and started having children. Though he still
seemed to have kept his hand in a little, reeling off a list of new bands he was keen
on that I’d only vaguely ever heard of, and telling me about an anarcho-punk shop on Plender Street of which I was blissfully ignorant. All in all, he seemed a really nice guy. He liked my comment about the Dev too.

‘Cor blimey,’ he said. ‘You want to keep away from a place like that. You get vampires going
in there.’

Didn’t I know it.

Seeing as most of the bars in Camden were pretty noisy and anti-social, we decided I’d meet him from his work and we’d go for a pizza on Parkway instead. Because Gavin had given me the impression he wasn’t that keen on his old rival, I didn’t bother to tell him about it.

It would be nice to hear this story from a different angle.

Ray’s office was a hideous old
sixties block that sprawled like a grey behemoth across the corner of Jamestown and Oval roads. A flurry of people was spewing out of it as I arrived at six o’clock, most of them women and none of them the trendy, youthful types you’d get in the world of men’s magazines. Not an iPod nor a Hoxton Pyramid in sight. This lot looked more like they were hurrying back to the kids in suburbia, eager to be
away from the squalid environs of Camden.

Ray was easy to spot. He’d shaved his hair to about a number three, and only had one sleeper left in his left ear, but apart from that, he really wasn’t so different from that photograph in
Noise!
He was tall and slender, and like Steve Mullin, still was fashioned indelibly out of punk. Only Ray’s choice of black StaPrest, black Harrington jacket and
vintage Robot creepers looked so sharp as to be almost cutting-edge contemporary. With his high cheekbones and cool blue eyes, he could still teach the kids a thing or two about style.

He greeted me with a warm smile and a steady handshake. He had a nice voice too, full of good humour. We walked amiably up Oval Road towards Parkway with him asking most of the questions.

‘Blood Truth, eh? What
made you want to write a book about them? Brilliant band and all that, but not one that ever gets mentioned. It’s Gang of Four the kids all seem to be going after these days.’

‘That’s it really,’ I explained. ‘The mystery of them. The fact that they did disappear at the peak of their powers and haven’t been slogging it round the reunion circuit ever since.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, there is that, isn’t
there? It’s strange how they got overlooked, but I suppose there were so many bands that came after them which sounded more or less like them that they just got lost in the ether. It wouldn’t be like that nowadays. Imagine if no one remembered Kurt Cobain but there were a load of new bands banging on about the glory of Counting Crows.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe there will be in ten years’ time.’

‘Maybe.
It was a different world then, that’s for sure. So many scenes coming up, one after the other, so many brilliant new bands. I suppose it’s not surprising that some of them got lost. So how did you find out about them?’