One Train Later: A Memoir (24 page)

We spend a week or so with them, getting used to the idea of being in Britain. My first impression after California is that England is bleak, sunless, and drowning in the black-and-white reality of the tabloids. But after a couple of weeks of sitting around, I know that somehow I have to move forward, return to London and try to revive old connections. Maybe there is a destiny, maybe I have an intuition, maybe I just have missed my own country-but the fact is that I am here, and there is no turning back.

January 1974. Kate and I arrive in a dark, wintery London, a city that because of an electricians' strike has lights only three days a week. The country is also riven with a miners' strike, and it seems to rain twenty-five hours a day. I have a distant cousin living in Muswell Hill who agrees to let us stay with her for a couple of weeks while we get our bearings. She has a large Victorian flat and a couple of kids: a pouting seventeen-year-old girl and a funny but obnoxious boy of about twelve with an advanced sense of sarcasm.

I begin the arduous process of reentering the scene by calling my old bandmate Zoot Money to see if there are any bands I can get into, sessions, gigs-anything. He gives me a few numbers to call and wishes me luck. I start calling around and begin having conversations that involve a fair amount of silver-tongued lying on my part as I cough up stories about a glorious career in the United States, but here we are, back in London, might be nice to do something. But it's thin on the ground and difficult because musicians tend to be paranoid and protective of their turf; they're not really interested in other people's problems. In my corner it's best to exude an attitude of positive confidence, but the truth is that I have sold everything to pay for the flight home and don't even own a guitar amp, my Fender Twin now with some kid in the San Fernando Valley, sold for a rock-bottom price.

After a couple of weeks at my cousin's flat it feels as if we've outstayed our welcome, and with thanks we decide to move on. Kate has landed a job at the new Gap jeans store; between that and the pocketful of change I have left, we have just enough to rent a ground-floor flat in Shepherds Bush.

Eighteen Woodstok Grove is like a nightmare out of Macbeth or a hell' ish joke from the Outer Hebrides: the whole place is decorated in what appears to be a kilt. A garish plaid fitted carpet covers the floors, and drunken tartan wallpaper reels up the walls in every direction; but at four quid a week it's the only thing we can afford and we take it. It does, however, provide a nice line in Scottish jokes. Everything becomes "Mc" for a while-McBed, McPaper, McEgg, McPhone, McYou, McMe-and I begin answering the telephone with a soft Scottish burr and throwing "och ayes" into my everyday conversation. As I reconnect with a few old friends we describe our flat and ask them over to see our plaid. I think about wearing a kilt while we endure this Highlands nightmare but worry that if I do, I might disappearsucked into the vortex of tartan wallpaper.

In the basement flat, one floor down from us, there lives a very meanlooking skinhead replete with tattoos, chains, and a nasty habit of playing violent music at a decibel level that's enough to rearrange your internal organs. Since I'm someone who prefers his space inviolate, this repeated assault sends me into paroxysms of fury until finally I think, Right-or more probably, okay-you fucking asshole, it's payback time. One morning he starts up and I leap into action by putting my own speakers facedown on the floor, cranking the volume to eleven, and artfully covering them with every cushion and blanket available; this aims the sound like a bomb straight down through the ceiling and into his shaved skull. I put on Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" and let it rip for an hour or so and return to The Magus. Later I realize that I have probably risked a premature death with this mad act of retaliation, but oddly enough we never hear another whisper from him. The only time I ever see him again is in the Shepherds Bush market, where he is bending over and patting a small dog; he sees me and gives a shy smile.

A few blocks from Oxford Circus the Speakeasy is still throbbing and packed wall-to-wall every night with the London rock fraternity. Zoot advises me to hang out down there because that's where everybody congregates. "Put yourself about," he says. I begin leaving Kate at around eleven-thirty every night and drag myself to the Speakeasy for the grim task of networking. I don't enjoy this process very much, because at that moment I'm down and in the position of asking for a job, but it's what I have to do and I do it. Kate understands what I am going through, and is supportive. However, as I drift around in the twilight zone of this hell, trying to act cool and uninterested, I am surprised by how many people remember me.

Five years wasn't so long after all, but still it doesn't help with the employment situation. Behind the "yeah, mans" and "eh, where y bin, good to see yas," you witness them almost visibly back away if they think you might be about to steal their gig. It's depressing. The scene at the Speakeasy is a small-minded hierarchy: players from different groups act superior to one another, depending on who has a hit, who doesn't, who has played in the U.S., or who's hot or has appeared in the New Musical Express this week-and you seem to get allotted a good or shit table accordingly.

I have no table; I can barely afford the price of a beer and I wander through this crowd of rock snobs with a fake smile, hoping for the casual encounter that will lead to work. And I'm painfully aware of the currently successful pop stars slouching over tables that only they can get while I wander around in the club, the mantra "only connect" echoing in my head in time to the thumping din of the PA system. I return home night after night frustrated and empty-handed after fruitless time-wasting conversations and three hours of nursing half a pint of lager. Stinking of beer and secondhand smoke, I slide back into bed around three A.M. to give a brief whispered account of what happened tonight and tell whether there is anything promising.

My luck changes when I run into Robert Fripp, an old friend who is now very successful with his band, King Crimson. He's there at a table with some friends one night, and someone suggests that I go over and speak to him. I sit down and talk with him for a while. He's different. More intelligent and more aware than the average rocker or most people, he gets it. He suggests that I speak with the drummer Mike Giles, who is now touring with Neil Sedaka and is involved with many things on the London music scene. Mike and I had once been in the Boy Scouts together. Robert gives me his number and I walk the four miles home from the Speakeasy, a fingernail of hope illuminating the darkness.

I call Mike the next day and he tells me that it's unlikely he can get me the Sedaka gig but that he'll put a word in. But miraculously the phone rings one night later and it is Neil's wife, Lema, who says simply that Mike has recommended me as the guitarist for the upcoming tour but that they can pay me only thirty-five pounds a night. Thirty-five quid a night! I try to remain calm and avoid choking as this fabulous sum reverberates through my skull, and answer, "Well, s-u-u-u-re, I will probably have to cancel some other engagements, but it would be fun to play with Neil for a while, and when were you thinking of starting?" Lema asks me if I can come to the Inn on the Park to meet Neil, and I have to hold back from screaming, "I'll come right now!" so I tell her I am in the studio all day tomorrow and might I pop by the following day? We agree, and putting the phone down, I collapse into the red-and-purple plaid on the floor below me. Neil is a big star in the U.K.; he has a hit single with "Laughter in the Rain," is always on TV, and plays places like the Royal Festival Hall. I let go of my higher aesthetic ambitions and begin making a vicious curry.

Two days later I catch a bus from Shepherds Bush to Hyde Park Corner and walk over to the Inn on the Park to meet Neil. He has a large pastelshaded suite facing the park that matches his star status. When I arrive he's in the bedroom, writing something; he gives me a large smile and a hi as I enter and tells me to sit down on the bed next to him. "Mike tells me that you are a great guitarist." He smiles, and I smile back with a self-deprecating w-e-ell, thinking, Good old Mike, who hasn't heard me play in years. We chat for a while, and it appears that I have the job without actually playing a single note. I also get the idea that Neil rather likes me. Now comes the delicate part: I have an electric guitar but no amplifier, and smiling as casually as possible, I ask Neil if he might advance me three hundred pounds so that I can go out and get one-my gear is still on the way over from the U.S. and unfortunately hasn't reached the U.K. at the present time. No problem, and Neil-God bless 'im-giving me the hugest benefit of the doubt, throwing me a lifeline, giving me a cigarette and a brandy, reaches into his pocket and fishes out the three hundred. There is a slight twinkle in his eye as he does so, but I guess the universe is with me that day because he never asks for it back, doesn't call my bluff, only tells me that I have nice hair and that he looks forward to seeing me for the first rehearsal with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at London's Royal Festival Hall.

I depart his suite dazed and full of the warmest possible vibes; I love this man. I stagger out of the hotel, trying to appear insouciant but with a gulp and one more wave and one more ingratiating smile-at the hotel itself-I walk toward the underground in the pouring rain, laughing all the way, happy to be the living embodiment of the Sedaka hit "Laughter in the Rain." Hanging from the strap in the tube, I can't wait to burst into the tartan towers to tell Kate the news. We're going to eat, I have the rent, we can go to the movies-as long as I don't blow it on the first gig. We celebrate by going to the Standard, an Indian restaurant in Bayswater, and to hell with the expense. The next day I hit the nearest music store and buy a Fender Twin, get it home, and plug in the old Telecaster that I've managed to bring back with me from L.A.

The Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This is deep for a reentry shot, my first gig back in the U.K. I hope that my sight reading is up to it and that I can keep up with hard-core London pros. It's a start, but as I struggle across the wet pavement, step in dog shit, and grimace at the voice of pissed-off cabdrivers, the luminous reality of the Santa Monica Mountains, the hummingbirds, the sweet murmur of Spanish, and the scent of magnolia fade like a dream. I stare down at a small cream-colored bandstand and a pile of tricky orchestral arrangements with a surge of remorse.

We rehearse and I am filled with the tension of pretending that this is just a knockoff for me. But with only a small amount of faking, and returning a big smile to the glances in my direction, I get through it. The Royal Festival Hall gig comes, and although it's unnerving to play along with the Royal Philharmonic, I don't blow it and even manage a couple of saucy solos. I get to know the rest of the band. The bass player, Dave Winters, and I hit it off and there is a general appeal to everyone about having a Summers and a Winters in the ensemble-in any case, it doesn't hurt.

We begin the tour and I feel relief at having gotten at least a start back in the United Kingdom. Playing with Neil turns out to be a great time. He proves to be not only more popular than the queen of England but a very entertaining guy who likes to enjoy himself. He has had several hit records in his career, including the classic "Oh Carol," and we play around the country to sold-out shows. Most nights we have a massive banquet before the show at which we all eat and drink to the point of stupor-Sedaka often becoming the most inebriated-and by the time we manage to find the stage, we are in a very loose state. Backstage before the shows Neil slumps over the piano, rips through Chopin, and regales us with ribald stories about him and Carole King as teenagers; then, falling over one another, we carry him to the stage. But the truth is that behind all the merriment, Neil is a great pop song composer and a musician of real talent.

He takes a great liking to Kate, and the three of us go to the movies together. One night after dining together in Notting Hill, happily waving bye to us, he walks out into the road and would have been hit by an oncoming car if Kate hadn't seen it coming, made a near miraculous dive, and dragged him out of its path. We do two riotous tours, and then it comes to an end when he decides to take some time off.

Back in Shepherds Bush, Kate and I are in better shape. I now possess an actual bank account and we are able to buy a car-a Dyane 6-and move out of the plaid pad to a larger basement flat a little farther down the street. The new place is nicer by virtue of being slightly less depressing, the one drawback being the train line at the end of the garden. Each time a train passes, the flat rocks as if experiencing a mild earthquake-just like L.A. after all....

One afternoon in the summer of 1974 I go to a concert in Hyde Park. There are a number of performers on the bill, including a rotund teddy bear of a man by the name of Kevin Coyne. I'm amused by his acid wit, self-deprecating presentation, and edgy lyrics; he sounds like no one else. A couple of weeks later I hear that he is looking for a new guitarist. I find out where the audition is and go down with the Telecaster and the Fender Twin. We play through some of Kevin's songs-"Marjory Razorblade," "Eastbourne Ladies," "Mona, Where's My Trousers?" We hit it off, and I enter the realm of Coyne.

Kevin has a brilliant ability to freely improvise amazing lyrics with views of people and life that are poignant, funny, and painful. A gifted and original artist, he is the Brendan Behan of the rock world, and I'm happy to get onstage with him. Once we start rehearsing, one of the first things I learn is that in this band I will be required to drink large amounts of alcohol on account of Kev's heavy reliance on the brew to get him in the right frame of mind. The ability to suck up beer seems as important as the ability to play. As long as the pub is open, that is where we will be-the term pub rock takes on a very real meaning.

Originally from Derbyshire, Kevin is intense and passionate and wears a slight air of psychosis but is also very funny, and through a fog of lager and cigarette smoke, he entertains us with endless stories of inmates and madness at the asylum he used to work at. Through this blur I see a fusion between Coyne and his background, and it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. But in the Rose and Crown as we work our way through the brown stuff, the atmosphere of derangement grows and expands until these pub sessions often turn into bitter and rancorous diatribes, with Kevin pissed out of his mind and psychoanalyzing each one of us in turn. Any cherished notions we might have about ourselves are shredded, pissed on, and trampled underfoot; usually it boils down to a slurred "you're no fuckin' good-you can't play, you're fuckin' useless." After the first gig I ever do with him-in Oxford-he abuses me so much on the way back that, not yet realizing this is a Kevin ritual, I finally tell him to fuck off and find another guitarist. Slamming the van door, I huff off down my dark basement steps, guitar case banging against the mossy wall, brain full of fury and insults, and slip inside to peace and further unemployment.