Authors: John Niven
When one of Rudi’s kids has a track they are particularly
enthused about they will charge downstairs to Technotron on a
Friday or Saturday night—when the place is rammed with two thousand
gurning, pilled-up Krauts—and get the DJ to give it a spin. If the
crowd go uber-ballistic then they know they’ve got something and
the tune will be pressed onto white labels, whacked up to the third
floor, and mailed to key club DJs. It is as sure-fire a way to
road-test pop-dance records as has ever been invented and has made
Rudi one of the most successful producers in Europe and a
millionaire many times over. I have licensed several of his tracks
for the UK, earning Rudi’s undying love by scoring top-five hits
with the last two ‘My Baby Wants to Come’ and ‘Doof! Doof! (This Is
House)’. (Those titles. Again, fucking Germans.)
“Anyway,” Rudi is saying, “let me make you happy, Schteeven.
Günter.” He nods to his muppet who hits ‘play’ on the DAT machine.
The room fucking
explodes
as a bass drum louder than the
march of a thousand Waffen SS crunches out of the speakers. Rudi
and Günter nod along. My fillings thrum. After a moment a
flummoxing bass line kicks in and then a female voice joins it. It
rumbles along like this for maybe a minute as a second, male, voice
creeps in, insistently repeating the words “
Why don’t you, why
don’t you, why don’t you, why don’t you…
” before the chorus
drops: “WHY DON’T YOU SUCK MY FUCKING DICK!”
I look up; Rudi and Günter have their eyes shut, completely lost
in music. I glance left towards Darren but he won’t meet my gaze,
clearly too terrified of collapsing in hysterics. Or perhaps just
plain terrified. The chorus is continuing to build, tribal drums
pounding and a pack of guys yelling “WHY DON’T YOU SUCK MY FUCKING
DICK!” Except…they’re not just yelling, the fucking thing is
actually incredibly tuneful; a nagging keyboard riff twines around
the vocal line, sweetening it.
There’s a breakdown about halfway through where the inevitable
rapper tells the girl to do stuff like lick his balls and stick her
tongue up his ass and stuff, and then the chorus comes back in and
it all builds to a deranged crescendo before the track stops
abruptly and a single, passionate, soulful voice cries out,
“
SUCK IT!
” Then it’s over.
Rudi sits there for a moment breathing heavily, his nostrils
flaring, his eyes closed in rapt silence. Before I can say anything
he leaps to his feet and thrusts his arms in the air as though he’s
scored the winner in the World Cup final. “DIDN’T I TELL YOU!” he
screams. “A SMASH! OUR BIGGEST HIT YET!”
A few things are instantly apparent: 1) Rudi is off his fucking
chanks (but we knew this already), 2) obviously no radio station in
the civilised world will go anywhere near the record, and 3) the
tune is insanely catchy.
“Wow,” I say, “have you played it at the club yet?”
“Last Friday we dropped it for the first time. Schteeven, I
cannot tell you. You have been to Technotron,
ja?
You know
what they are like in there, they know their music. Well, they went
FUCKING INSANE!” He always says this.
“Wow,” I repeat.
“Who’s the singer?” asks Darren redundantly, for something to
say.
“Michelle. She is, what do you call them, Schteeven, a moose?”
He waves a hand dismissively, “Ha ha! But this is not a problem. We
will find someone else to front it.”
“It’s fantastic, Rudi. It’s just…” I spread my palms.
“The lyrics?”
“Exactly, Rudi.”
“Ach, you English! So schquare! It is no problem, we have a
radio edit almost finished.”
“Yeah? Wow. Really? How, er, what did you do?”
“We have changed the chorus to ‘
Why don’t you slap me on the
ass!
’”
Holy shit. If this isn’t the tackiest, stupidest, most
unworkable idea I ever fucking heard then it’s definitely in the
top five. “Great!” I say. “That could work.”
“So, what do you think, my friend? You know I will offer this to
you for the UK.”
What do I think? The record is absolutely, off-the-scale,
demented, tacky, cheesy, single-entendre garbage. But, and never
forget this, this is exactly what 99 per cent of the Great British
Public enjoy. It is also properly infectious and stranger things
have happened. However, I must also be mindful that while Rudi has
as good a track record as you can have with this type of crap, he
has also shafted a few labels for hundreds of thousands of pounds
for records that have charted at 41 before disappearing without
trace. (Last year Virgin paid a fortune for a record of Rudi’s
called ‘Happy Song!’. I remember being in Trellick’s office when
the midweeks came in showing it at N°46, with a strontium fucking
anchor. Laugh? We nearly needed oxygen masks.)
“How much, Rudi?”
“Ach, Schteeven, I do not know. You paid us, what, twenty-five
for the last one?”
“Twenty.”
“Whatever. I could not take less than thirty and eighteen
points.” (Percentage points—his royalty rate from us.)
I nod. “That doesn’t sound unreasonable.” Like fuck it doesn’t.
By the time we pay this Nazi paedo thirty grand for the record,
commission some remixes, do artwork, promo the record to club and
radio, manufacture the stock, take out print and street advertising
and make a video, it will cost us maybe a hundred grand to try and
have a hit with this piece of shit. This is what is involved every
time you say ‘yes’.
“Schteeven, it is a fucking bargain. Where are your ears? It’s a
smash.”
“Tell you what, let me talk to business affairs, crunch some
numbers and I’ll come back to you tomorrow. OK?”
“OK,” he shrugs, “but don’t hang around, my friend. I want you
to have this, I am playing it to you first, but you know what this
place is like!” He gestures out the open window towards Cannes.
Several floors below throngs of industry people are heading out for
the evening, their laughter and chatter drifting up towards us.
“I’ll call you,” I say as I get up.
“Good! Good! Will I see you tonight? Where are you eating?”
“I’m not sure yet. What are you guys up to?”
“I will be in the Barracuda! Getting my
FUCKING DICK
SCHUCKED
!” he roars, punching me playfully on the arm.
As soon as the lift doors close Darren bursts out laughing.
“Christ, he’s off his tits.”
“No shit. But what did you think?”
“It’s a fucking tune, mate, no question, but those lyrics, man.”
He shakes his head. “Would this edit work? I don’t know. What are
you thinking?”
What am I thinking? I don’t know. It’s my job to know, but I
don’t. “I’m thinking…two world wars and one World Cup,” I say.
He cracks up. His laughter contains just the right amount of
hysteria and reverence due to a superior and benefactor.
♦
Later, looking through some crap in my hotel room (a decent
enough, sea-facing room at the Majestic—Rebecca came through), I
noticed that there were delegates from no fewer than ninety-one
countries attending this year’s convention. Apart from the
obvious—the Krauts, Frogs, Shermans, Japs and Brits—there’s a raft
of the less obvious—New Zealanders, Mexicans, Russians—and a clutch
of the downright crazy—Ugandans, Romanians, fucking
Tanzanians
. I mean, I don’t know much about the domestic
affairs of Tanzania, granted, but I’d have imagined they had more
pressing concerns back there—and better uses for their cash—than
sending some witch doctor to Cannes at incredible expense so he can
watch a load of drunk, chang’d-up fools shout abuse at each other
and vomit hundred-quid dinners down the toilets of nightclubs. How
high can music be on their agenda?
But everyone gets along. Oh yes. Background and ethnic origin
form no barrier to trade here. If there’s a deal to be struck, if
there’s dollar, yen, rouble or franc to be made then differences
will be put aside. Diversity tolerated. Look over there—the Arab
contingent is uncorking the Cristal to celebrate a potentially
lucrative licensing deal for
Ultimate Bar Mitzvah Classics
!
In another corner the staunchly Catholic label boss is snapping up
the exclusive distribution rights for an exciting new label called
Red Hand: Kill All Fenian Bastards. Music really does cross all
barriers. Greed is so incredibly inclusive.
♦
The following afternoon, and Schneider and I have a table on the
glass-encased veranda of an insanely expensive restaurant at the
far end of the Croissette, overlooking the harbour. There’s lead
crystal, thick, starched table linnen and heavy silver cutlery.
Personally I think it’s an own goal bringing Rage into a place like
this, but Schneider, anticipating a disagreement (because, with
someone like Rage, there is only ever disagreement), wanted
somewhere off the beaten track, somewhere that wasn’t going to be
rammed with industry. Which this place isn’t—there’s just lots of
chic lunching Frogs, cracking open the rust-red exoskeletons of big
lobsters and scraping the creamy flesh from the softer,
mottled-white shells of the langoustines. Rage and Fisher, his
manager, are so late that we’ve ordered: huge tureens of
thirty-quid bouillabaisse sit steaming in front of us. We spoon and
sip Sauvignon and make small talk about deals and rumours.
Schneider is nervous, his foot tapping away beneath the table. He
knows he is on ultra-thin ice with this record. Below the ice,
waiting to tear him to pieces, are the sharks. Terrible, ravenous
sharks with rusted hypodermics for teeth, the chambers of the
syringes filled with plague, anthrax and AIDS. They swim in fast
circles, coming nearer and nearer to the surface as the ice begins
to creak and splinter beneath Schneider’s gleaming Patrick Cox
loafers.
Suddenly we sense the pulse, the heartbeat of the place, change
and we look up to see Rage and Fisher come swaggering in.
Fisher is impressive enough in here—a bald, twenty-stone East
End hooligan with a heavy, gold cord around his neck, dressed in
billowing, baggy sportswear topped off with dodgem-sized
paper-white trainers—but Rage…fuck me.
Forget the fact that he’s wearing shades, a baseball cap and a
T–shirt that says ‘NIGGER’, it’s
the jewellery
. Half a dozen
gold studs are punched into each earlobe. Three thick cables of
gold hang around his neck. On every finger of each hand is at least
one, often two, huge gold rings, all studded with rocks—diamonds,
rubies, emeralds. On his right wrist is a custom-made gold Rolex so
encrusted with gems that to try and read the time on it might
induce a brain haemorrhage. From his left wrist dangles a half-kilo
platinum-gold bracelet. Just to take a step must be like a
half-hour workout. He looks like he’s covered himself in glue and
charged headlong through an outlet called Rich Black Bastard.
“All right, boys?” he says, simultaneously slapping my shoulder,
pumping Schneider’s hand, aggressively tugging a chair out and
casting an imperious glance around the place. The rest of the
clientele suddenly find things of great interest in their soup
bowls and among the dismembered sea creatures on their plates.
Rage’s success is recent and he’s not used to being in places
like this. Consequently he’s on red alert, Defcon 3, ferociously on
the lookout for any sign of being patronised, any flicker of
condescension. He doesn’t even look at the menu proffered by the
swallowing waiter. “Burger and chips, mate, yeah?” he says.
Burger and chips. Steak and chips. Always ordered ‘well done’.
These are the staple restaurant foods that will be ordered by every
filthy working-class toerag you will ever sign. (Until they get
saddled with some Hampstead girlfriend—some Millie, some Sophie—who
starts civilising them, teaching them about wine and telling them
what a fish is. Then you’ve got to put up with the bastards
ordering Rioja with Dover sole and talking about fucking
restaurants.) The waiter backs away, looking sick and uncertain,
and, after the briefest of “How’s tricks?”, Fisher gets straight to
making his point. It’s basically the same point he makes in every
meeting: how we should be paying them more money.
“We gotta go out on this fucking tour, right?” he says.
“I don’t wanna do it in the first fucking place,” says Rage.
“Easy,” says Fisher, placing one of his massive wanking paddles
reassuringly on his client’s arm but not taking his eyes from
Schneider, “we’re gonna do the fucking tour…” he says benevolently.
I wonder how thoroughly they’ve rehearsed this.
“Great,” says Schneider.
“But we ain’t gonna dismantle the studio to take it on the
road…”
“No way, man,” says Rage, shaking his head solemnly, as if we’re
asking him to sell one of his—surely many and illegitimate—children
into sex slavery.
“So we need to rep, repli…” Fisher has a quick pop at
pronouncing ‘replicate’, then changes his mind, “buy all the gear
again, you know? To have a touring rig.”
“How much are we talking about?” Schneider asks.
“Sixty,” says Fisher with a straight face, but his left hand
goes automatically to his lobe to finger a big gold stud. This
tour—with backing musicians, lighting, transport, hotels, crew,
catering, sound, etc.—is already costing us something like eight
grand a show in tour support.
“Mmmm,” says Schneider.
“Excuse me, sir?” The manager is standing there, our waiter
hiding behind him. Rage swivels around, already, always, angry.
“Yeah?”
“I’m afraid, with your order, we are a zeefood restron and—”
“For fuck’s sake,” Rage says.
“Peraps sir would like to shoes another dish?” The guy offers
him the menu again. Rage doesn’t even look at it.
“Look, you can make me some fucking chips, man. You got potatoes
in the back, ain’t you? All you do is fry ‘em up in…” Rage thinks,
“stuff.”
“There are potatoes on the menu, sir, oven-roasted in oleeve
oil, thyme and zee salt?”