One Train Later: A Memoir (21 page)

Eventually Chet Helms arrives. He enters the room like Jesus, dressed in flowing white robes with a radiant smile on his face. There's a buzz around him, an energy field that may be self-importance or the expectation his followers project. I can't tell because at this point I'm out of my head on a substance called THC. I can no longer feel my feet on the floor, and as a fat girl near nie says, "M-a-a-a-n, you are glow-ing," I can't wipe the Buddha smile off my face. I am intensely happy and feel as if I have the universe in the palm of my hand. When I speak, my voice comes out like warm and oily sunshine.

We are introduced to Chet and he offers us a few words of beneficence as even we have our place in the scheme of things. A small thought passes through my mind along the lines of Oh yeah, and what do you know that I don't know, Mr. Guru?'T'his is known as a "negative vibe." I see it and drop it like a hot potato and carry on grinning like a Cheshire cat and eventually, after realizing that I am staring at an empty space where Chet once was, float off with the other groovers.

We pile into taxis and head across town to the Fillmore. Even the taxi ride seems cosmic: San Francisco! The Golden Gate Bridge! It's all such a groove! In the confines of the filthy taxi I remark on what a beautiful thing it is. "Beautiful cab," I say, and run my hands lovingly over a frayed Marlboro ad pasted on the back of the driver's seat, my voice fuzzy and sonorous with alkaloids and godpower--I am really gone.

We arrive at the Fillmore and it's packed wall-to-wall with heaving bodies. Maybe that's why it is called the Fillmore, I giggle to myself. We can't get to the dressing rooms or the stage from the back of the building because somebody has locked the backstage entrance, and despite heavy pounding and more giggling, no one hears us. This leaves us with the ominous prospect of making our way through the crowd to get to the stage. The girl at the entrance actually recognizes us and lets us through, staring at me-the supposed lead guitarist who is being pulled into the steaming crowd like a man with two broken legs. But with a person on either side of me I am shuffledragged across the floor, with me smiling beatifically at all, until we get to the dressing-room area and are told that we are due onstage in about fifteen minutes. The Chambers Brothers are already up there and doing a fine job of warming up the crowd for the big act-us.

Someone hands me a wooden thing with bits of wire attached to it and tells me it's a guitar, it's my guitar, a cream-colored Les Paul Junior. I stare at it, fascinated. Black coffee is poured down my throat and I am perambulated around the room like a helpless geriatric and then it's showtime. "Let's do it!" someone yells. What? I croak-smile through a haze of caffeine and cannabis residue and then fall on the floor in a giggling fit, amazed by my own deep humor. A few moments later we hit the stage-or in my case, crawl out from the wings-to a Fillmore roar. Miraculously, instinct and nineteen cups of coffee kick in and I get through the show, the whole thing flickering before me like a dream. A small voice somewhere tells me not to look at my fingers, because if I do, I will get hung up on them-so I don't, and the digits make the connections while my brain drifts over vast cosmic spaces.

BRIDGEHAMPTON, AUGUST 18, 1983

I get out of bed and lay my Telecaster against a chair. Holding my hand up to the light, I study the nails of any right hand. They look too long. Despite being in a rock band, I keep my nails in good shape-a habit left over from my years of obsessive classical guitar playing. I pull a diamond deb file and some fine sandpaper out of my travel bag and begin working on them, carefully holding them against a black T-shirt so that I can see the curve that I'm trying to get.

When Sting and I first began playing together, a point of contact between us was the classical guitar. It turned out that he was quite a fan, and as I could still play a lot of my repertoire, he would ask me to play certain pieces for him, usually Bach or Villa-Lobos. This was a pleasant discovery for me because it is unusual to find someone in the rock world who appreciates this kind of music, and it felt like a surprising but sure confirmation of where I had just landed, a mutual love of a music that despite being from another genre would find its way into our songs. I finish filing my nails into the perfect half-moons that make the thick, sweet sound on a nylon-string guitar and pick up the Fender, in the mood to play something from that time. I drop the bottom string down to a low D and begin playing a piece by the Mexican composer Ponce, "Scherzino Mexicana." I can just about remember it-the bridge with its pattern of changing harmonic movement is tricky, but it comes back, sweetly romantic, from another time, another place, Mexico....

We go to Mexico City and stay in a hotel in the Zona Rosa, an attractive tourist area in the center. I enjoy walking around and seeing a world I wouldn't have dreamed of a few years before. Our promoter is a very likable and crazy Mexican by the name of Mario Olmos. Many years later I play for him again, first with the Police but more notably on my own at the Teatra Angelo Peralta, where together we will enjoy a splendid riot with armed Mexican police and the night ending with Mario handing me a brown paper bag of pesos in payment as he slides dead drunk under the table.

One morning I drive down Laurel Canyon to our manager's office on Sunset Boulevard. I walk in and ask for David, manager of the Animals. A strange look passes across the secretary's face and she tells me that he will not be in that day because his best friend has been killed the night before, has in fact been murdered. His name was Jay Sebring.

This is the first time I hear about the Manson murders, although it isn't called that until later when the whole story begins to emerge. But gradually it takes over the news and the press, and there is a feeling of shock and disbelief. It feels as though a crack has appeared in the dream. How could this be? In the center of this grooving, loving scene, a grotesque distortion has surfaced; Manson, with his Christ-like appearance, hippie followers, and brutal acts of murder, has shattered all illusions.

In the days following as I talk to friends on the telephone, it's obvious that this horror has deeply shaken many people and some decide to get out of L.A. Wrapped in tie-dye and batik, they sit cross-legged and gaze out across Lookout Mountain while dipping their hand into a bag of Acapulco gold, rolling a joint, and saying, "Heavy trip, man-heavy trip." In Laurel Canyon the horror is palpable, a cold black shadow crawling across the hills. Hippies and flower children become figures of suspicion. It's hard to think in quite the same way about a bearded man buying a bag of lentils or a longhaired girl getting her short-grain rice at the country store halfway down the canyon. As the word spreads it's frightening how many people around the Strip have connections to Manson and his gang. David, our manager, might also have been there that night.

About this time we play a festival somewhere near L.A., and backstage I meet a very beautiful girl by the name of Cathy James. We eye each other up and soon get talking; within a week or so, I move in with her.

Cathy is eighteen and has been on the scene since she was fourteen. She has a baby by Denny Lame, who is now in Paul McCartney's Wings, but it hasn't worked out between them and she's returned to L.A. and a bevy of admirers. Often these Cathy fans turn up late at night, and I see a parade of famous people pass through her small apartment on Bronson Avenue. One of her most ardent fans is Tiny Tim, who arrives one night fluttering and quivering like a butterfly. It appears that the tremulous female personality isn't fake. All nerves and high-pitched voice, he sits at the end of the bed and sings to Cathy, accompanying himself on his ukulele. It's an extraordinary moment, but at the end of the song something freaks him out and he starts screaming and flapping his arms and says he has to run and literally bolts out the front door like a deer. We pursue him down the street for a while, trying to get him back as he vanishes into the night, screaming and waving his uke in the air.

But after about three weeks with Cathy it seems that despite the physical attraction, we don't really have any chemistry. We both recognize it and agree to split. I miss the riotous scene at Eric's house anyway. I call him up and move back in.

A tour of Japan has been on the books for a while, and finally we fly to Tokyo. This is a place I have fantasized about for a long time, and I am filled with excitement to investigate it firsthand. I indulge in vague thoughts about leaving the group to enter a monastery, take the Zen path to satori, and leave this mundane world behind-even if it means giving up the guitar-but it all turns out rather differently.

We arrive at Narita Airport and are greeted in the lounge by a large mob of screaming schoolgirls who wave, scream, laugh, and cover their mouths at precisely the same moment. It's strange but it's a positive reception, and anyway this is the Far East. But on the right-hand side a shadow appears in the form of an argument between David and the promoters, who have turned up to welcome us, or at least make sure we are there to honor the contract. David never says much--he's a pretty introverted type anyway-but there is a problem about contracts and money, and despite the continuous bowing and smiling, it appears we are in conflict.

We do the usual round of press interviews and stay at the Princess Hotel, where young girls gather in the lobby each day hoping for a glimpse of our pale English faces. I look high and low for signs of Zen or the odd stray koan but, to my disappointment, find nothing. The spiritual otherworldly Japan that I revere seems to have disappeared, to be replaced by a country obsessed with cameras, cars, American TV, and weird sex.

We always begin playing our shows at 6:30 P.M. sharp, a time that is set in stone for concerts in Japan. We're done by seven-thirty and then wonder what to do for the rest of the night. Apparently it's forbidden for young Japanese to get excited, stand up, or express enthusiasm, and the audiencemostly young girls-sit like statues and applaud politely as if on cue at the end of the songs. The clapping starts and stops with split-second timing, as if their hands are wired together or it has been repeatedly rehearsed-like a school of fish who all turn to the left together with an unseen telepathic communication. This is followed by a graveyard silence before we begin the next song. Announcing the songs is like reading an obituary. The whole thing is unnerving and the polar opposite of the raucous audiences in the United States. Here it's akin to lying in a coffin: eyes wide open, about to be buried, the scream locked in your throat.

It becomes obvious that the strain between David and the promoters is unresolved. Eric knows something about it, but he doesn't let on. But after a gig one night we are taken to a place in Shinjuku, the red-light district of Tokyo, a place that might be called a brothel/restaurant. We go down some steps into a basement room that is filled with yellow-blossom trees, running water, and a fake backdrop of Mount Fuji. Flitting through this ersatz Japan are several girls dressed as geishas. We plonk down in a row opposite our promoters, and they offer us all a whiskey. While the whiskeys are being delivered we get surrounded by a bevy of giggling faux geisha girls. They shove themselves into the table with us, giggling and making suggestive sounds. One of us gets his pants unzipped by a hostess and his penis is pulled out. This causes great hilarity, but right then the seven glasses of whiskey arrive on the table-six full and one empty except for a few cubes of ice. As we raise our glasses one of the henchmen leans over to David and whispers something to him with a leer on his face and then removes a pistol from inside his jacket and empties the chamber of 9mm bullets into the empty whiskey glass. At this point of samurai symbolism Eric gets up and storms out. Sitting at the table, the rest of us are frozen. "I'll be with you in cherry-blossom time," I whisper to the little mound of rice on my plate.

Above a seedy-looking joint located on a noisy street, a small sign with THE ANIMALS spelled out in dirty white plastic followed by a row of Japanese characters hangs in defeat. Our dismay at this booking is expressed in terse but poetic phrases like "what the fuck are we doing here?" and "fuck this for a sixpence." In truth it doesn't add up. We are the Animals-one of the world's most famous groups; this doesn't make sense and basically-reallywhat the fuck are we doing in this place?

The inside of the club is the usual small-time fare that can be found anywhere in the world. Dark and gloomy with an advertisement for Suntory on one wall and Asahi on the other. The clientele is mostly greasy-looking Japanese in suits who are already three sheets to the wind. As we enter, in an uncanny act of timing, so do our promoters. Several waiters bow extremely low in their direction, and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that beneath the veils of Eastern passivity lies Oriental duplicity. Terry McVey is with us, but David is nowhere to be seen. This is strange; normally he is with us at all times. We try to delay going onstage until our manager arrives, with Zoot in particular trying to hold us back as if he knows something we don't. But it gets later and later and eventually we haul out of the tiny dressing room and up onto the stage.

As we do the show feeling like a third-rate variety act, it's hard not to be suspicious of this audience. There are no teenyboppers in sight but mostly middle-aged men in suits and mouths full of gold teeth accompanied by sultry-looking women who look suspiciously like working girls. It comes to me that the whole setting is like something out of a forties film noir, with cliched Orientals, mysterious women, and either large amounts of opium or missing priceless artifacts. I may never be seen again, I think as I twang through the folksy chords of "The House of the Rising Sun": a minormysterious death in the Far East; C-out like a candle; D-the good die young; F-a brief intense flame; E7-may his spirit continue. The irony of playing a song with that title in this place suddenly cracks me up and I have a strong urge to pee. But we finish the show and there's still no sign of David, and we begin to feel like a baby without its mother. But we guess that he must be doing business or something, so after a few drinks we decide to head back to the hotel. We have to leave at nine A.M. the next morning for Hiroshima.