One Train Later: A Memoir (18 page)

We do play, but it's a case of colliding worlds. The gig is in a small hall overlooking the village green. All rather lovely in a way, but not suitable for droning drug-based rock; it's more of a kilts-and-reels scene. Shattered as we are, we haul our gear out of the van and set up. The village hall is an allpurpose affair that serves as a school, a place for the village council, and a shelter in case the Germans ever get this far north or the Vikings make an unscheduled return. As we set up, a small crowd of interested parties stands around us, some actually in kilts and several small children with lollipops. "Whas that, mister?" "That's a wah wah pedal, son." "Wass a wah wah?" "It's something that scares small children." "Wassat, then?" "That's a banana." "Looks like a guitar." "You made a mistake, didn't you, Rob Roy." "Wass yr ban could?" "Max and the Bruisers from Hell." "Up yr kilt, yr no could tha." "Yes, we are."

Setting up the light show, Phil and Mick have their own group of admirers, especially when they start running images to test the equipment, which is greeted by "och aye the noo" and many other varieties of guttural sounds. The whole procedure has the faint ring of showing a Kalahari Bushman a Polaroid or his own face in a mirror. I am sure that booking us has been a mistake or a perverse joke on the agent's part. They had probably asked for Dan McChallon and his Jiggerty Reelers, or Glen Fiddich and his Tartan Trombones. By the time we have completed the sound check, it feels as if we've done the show.

About an hour later we hit the stage, or rather we wander out of the tea room and climb up the full six inches of scaffolding that is covered with old planks, and off we go. To say that the good people of Craigellachie are gobsmacked would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. It's as if we are visiting aliens, delivering a strange intergalactic message to a new planet. There is very little applause, mostly just a low Scottish moaning interspersed with a few "och ayes" and grim headshaking. At one point I hear a bleating sound and look over at Zoot, thinking that he might have some new effects pedal that he hasn't told me about, and then a sheep on a leash wanders by the stage, held by a very old lady who looks about ready to croak. This is surreal enough to send me into hysterics, and they think we're strange. To put the icing on the cake, a bearded gentleman with what looks like a stomach full of haggis sidles up to me and says out of the corner of his mouth, "Can ye no play the `Campbells 'rrr Comin' or sum mat? Yrrr people rrrr getting a wee bit frustrated the noo." So throwing any last thread of musical integrity down the drain, I nod vigorously, look over at Zoot, say, "The `Campbells are Comin'," and hear back something like "fuckin right" and launch off into the stirring melody. Zoot, with a look of ahh, what the fuck, shrugs his shoulders and joins along with Colin and Pat. There's a loud cheer from the tartan clan in front of us, and to a man they lock arms and begin reelin' and jiggin' around the hall. It's a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"; we do about ten minutes of "Campbells" and finish to wild applause. This is good, so we carry on with "Loch Lomond," again greeted with wild enthusiasm, then "I Belong to Glasgow" and on and on until we have played everything faintly Scottish we can remember. Eventually we run out of material, but it doesn't matter; everyone is in need of a wee drinkie anyway. The hall manager comes up and thanks us vociferously. "Greet show, lads, ahmm gonny buck yoo wee yungsters agin, ye kan riily play ah meelody, but ah thynk we can do away wi those silly lights the noo-jes tek a luuk out sie wil ye." We don't know what he is on about but we climb down from the six-inch stage and follow him outside. Out on the green the entire village is standing together and staring up at the sky in awe, where a magnificent display of the Northern Lights is taking place. The Aurora Borealis, more beautiful and psychedelic than anything we have played all night.

Maybe this is where we should have ended our time together as Dantalian's Chariot-under a sky full of light. But as if grinning into the face of the devil, we play on for about another six months; and then as if Dantalian himself has put a curse on us, it all comes to an end one stormy night....

We are driving back from Newcastle, and it's snowing and we have to cross the Yorkshire moors on B roads. There are four of us in the car-me, Phil, Pat Donaldson, and Colin Allen-Zoot having taken alternative transport. We aren't driving fast, as the snow is coming down steadily and headon, but we are passing around a joint and I do have some apprehension about Colin taking a hit because I think he might get mesmerized by the snow. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but we suddenly go into a slow skid right off the road. The car hits the left-hand ditch and goes into what feels like an eternity of somersaults. As if in a dream, I bounce in slow motion from the roof to the floor to the window and back again, until with a final grind of metal the car crashes to a standstill in the ditch. All is quiet; the snow gently pattering down from the sky seems beneficent and peaceful as if gently whispering, Fuck you, fuck you.

The silence is broken by groaning, profanities, and gasps. And then, "Are you alright?" "Yeah-fuck." "I think so." "Fuck." I feel broken in half, smashed and in deep, swamplike pain. Somehow I get out through the trunk of the car into snow and crawl up the embankment to the road. My face feels pummeled, my back broken, and I can't stand up straight. But Colin, Phil, and Pat eventually emerge and, apart from the groans, seem okay. But I don't feel good. I am experiencing some kind of trauma, it's below freezing, and we're in the middle of nowhere in the eye of a blizzard. There's nothing to do except stand there--or in my case, bend-and wait for a car to come along this freezing strip of road and take us to warmth and safety. After twenty minutes I feel the onset of death and mentally begin to compose my own obituary.

But just as I begin making a list of superlatives, lights appear. Thanking God or whoever that we are going to make it, we start imagining warm Yorkshire hospitality, steaming mugs of tea, brandy, warm beds, etc. As our car is upside down in the ditch with its headlight brilliantly lighting the night sky, it's a sure thing that whoever comes by must stop. But with growing anxiety we realize as a car approaches that this fool is not slowing down; we stand there in deep shock as this heartless Yorkshire person simply drives right by us. We warm our shivering bodies for a few paltry moments by hurling nasty epithets after the retreating auto (some of which involve his mother in a rather sordid way) and wait again. The snow continues peacefully, freezing and killing, until about three minutes before my release from the earthly plane, at which time salvation arrives.

Wheezing and coughing with one windscreen wiper not working, our chariot of mercy slides to a halt. A cheery face appears as the window rolls down. "Eh, lads, what y doin out there? Trouble like-berra gerrin." Numb and relieved, we squash into the back of his tiny car, someone croaks out that we need a hospital fast, and we do a greasy U-turn on the icy road and head in the opposite direction. The hospital is in a small town-or village, actually-about twenty miles down the road. When we get there I am in fact dead, but by a miracle I am returned to this life with an incredible, lingering kiss from a ravishing young nurse and then carried into a semiprivate ward in the dark.

The night nurse tells me to wait-and I wonder where she thinks I might be going in this condition-a doctor will come. I'm floating in a vast Sargasso of pain, and the examining doctor tells me I have a badly lacerated back and a broken nose. "Now get some sleep; we'll fix you tomorrow," and then he sticks a foot-long syringe into my arm. As I am about to black out with a quiet version of the "DamBusters March" playing through my head, I remember that I have my contact lenses in and probably should get them out unless I want to add deeply scarred eyeballs to my problems. I feebly ring for the night nurse and explain my predicament. It's difficult to move and get into the correct position to remove the bloody things, but by some Houdini-like contortions we manage the removal with only two or three bloodcurdling screams, and then a blanket of black.

I wake up the next morning hurting all over. Where am I.? Oh yeahnowhere. It turns out that the others have all fucked off back to London and left me to tough it out with the Yorkies on my own. Thanks, boys.

The medical authorities inform me that I am to be kept in the hospital for about a week to recuperate and that I will never have children, walk, or play the guitar again. Fuck it, I think, back to the dole. But then my spirit kicks in and I decide to fight this thing, to rise, to be twice the man I was ... which is not saying a lot.

Three days later I am told that they are going to break my nose. I wonder if I have upset them with my nasty London ways or by ogling the young nurse, but in fact my nose is knitting back together in a way that resembles a gargoyle. They hold a mirror in front of my face and I'm vain enough to agree. "Okay, smash me," I moan.

I am wheeled into an icy operating room and given an armful of viciouslooking black stuff while a gnomelike doctor with an evil grin and a silver hammer stands at the side of the bed ready to bludgeon my face. "Count," he says. "Pardon?" I say, thinking I misheard him "oh, ten ... niiiiiine," and the last thing I see is the silver weapon of nose destruction raising into the air. An hour later I am rolled back to the ward with a thick wad of plaster of paris circling my head and down my freshly minted proboscis.

I get two inches in the local paper. LONDON POP STAR IN NEAR FATAL CAR CRASH, FAN CONCERNED. I feel like a hero for a full three minutes and then with a sneering attitude reality sets in.

I return to London on the train a few days later with the ghastly mask giving me 200 percent in the humiliation stakes. As we rattle down to London I notice other passengers staring at me, pursing their lips and making comments to their fellow travelers with a strange mix of revulsion and pity on their faces. I try to smile, but it makes me look even more bizarre, so I resort to a stoic stone-faced attitude that doesn't invite comment, at least not directly. I feel like a freak; it's impossible to feel cool with this monstrosity wrapped around my mug-no amount of rainbow clothing and jangling bracelets can disguise the fact that I look like a visitor from Star Trek-and everywhere I feel the snickering schadenfreude. I try to turn it into a Buddhist life lesson in humility, but it doesn't really suit me. I Advance Masked, a tragedy starring Andy Summers. Hmmm. In the future I will record an album with Robert Fripp with this title; maybe its genesis was in this experience.

Eventually we have to go onstage together, my huge quotient of vanity humbled to the size of a farthing. Naturally I bear the brunt of many pointed remarks: "Zorro" becomes a commonplace; "the Phantom," spoken with a lisp; "the Lone Ranger." I try to bear up but wish that I wasn't so fucking ugly. Sex, of course, is completely out the window unless it is to be with some perv who gets off on plaster of Paris.

We appear once again at the Middle Earth with me resembling one of Picasso's early cubist African ripoffs. I stare over the heads of the audience, hoping I look mysterious and threatening rather than merely stupid. What makes matters worse is that by now, in the time-honored fashion, everyone has taken to autographing my mask, so my face more or less resembles the crayon scribblings on a three-year-old, hardly the stuff of rock legend. Robert Wyatt alone remarks on how cool he thinks it is and that he would like to have one too, and then scribbles R Wyatt across my forehead.

Somehow the car crash rings the death knell for Dantalian's Chariot. Zoot is shocked at what has happened; by a pure fluke he was not in the car with us. The crash, the lukewarm reception outside of London, and the diminishing list of gigs seem to indicate that we are not on a winning streakmaybe the Dantalian spirit is a bringer of bad luck. Johnny Mac, Ronni's Scottish cousin who has looked after us during this period, remarks that he thought something like a specter was dogging us-a hellhound-on-mytail job.

We have come to the end of something; we are lost and don't know where to turn. There seems nothing left to do but split up. I have been having conversations with Robert Wyatt, and I get an offer to join the Soft Machine. I take it, leave Gunterstone Road forever, and move out to West Dulwich.

Seven

I move into the home of Honor Wyatt-Robert's mother-where live not only Robert, his girlfriend, Pam, and their baby, Sam, but also Mike Ratledge, the keyboard player of the Soft Machine, and several other clan members. All seem to be related in a mildly incestuous way, but who they all are is so confusing that I can never quite get a handle on the whole thing. The front of the house is painted with a large multicolored spiral which immediately announces the occupants as being of a different disposition than their neighbors.

In the tenor of the times, the household might be described as a commune, as it seems able to accommodate innumerable people who drift in and out at all hours of the day and night. Honor is a slightly eccentric but a sweet, charming, and cultured person who gives talks on the BBC and presides over all. When in the mood, she makes a table full of elaborate dishes, amazing quiches, pies, and savory foods that have little labels describing their contents. The atmosphere in the house is a mix of cultured bohemianism and tribal village. Eating, shagging, smoking, and drinking, and making music are all laced with scathing remarks to one another about diminished intellect.

I have arrived not only in an alien part of London but in a setting that has its own established genealogy, codes, and rites. This crowd has been together for a while and through a lot of different scenes, but they welcome me into the house and make me feel like one of the family. Gradually I get used to it and shake off the feeling of being an interloper. It had been a bold move to uproot myself from the familiarity of West London and the group of people I had been with for the past five years. But here I am in the Soft Machine, where I have essentially replaced Daevid Allen, the original guitarist, an Australian who got stuck in France and was not allowed to return to the United Kingdom for visa reasons.