One Train Later: A Memoir (28 page)

London is now a maelstrom of Mohawks, Union Jacks, bower boots, latex, fetish gear, and amphetamine-driven music. Street credibility is the PC watchword, and the Police have none. Because so much of punk is about throwing over the old guard, it is better in this moment-if you want to survive-to have no background in music. As Martin Amis puts it, "punk is the celebration of the talentless," and maybe that is the point. By this standard we are fake, transparently so. But so is a lot of this mad, churning scene, with some of its leading lights being people whose background is something more than the gritty stations that punk is supposed to come from. But none of this matters, because it is fabulous anyway. This is what is supposed to happen, and it's happening in a fantastic way that only Britain could produce. As well as being a nation with a long history of readiness to go to war, Britain also has a lengthy charter of protest movements: it's in the blood. Put simply, we like a bit of aggro. The youth of Britain who see the country as being nothing more than a dystopia controlled by an oligarchy produce Sturm and Drang on a regular basis: the Fabians, the Suffragettes, trade unions, teddy boys, mods, rockers, Aldermaston marchers, hippies, and punk. The British also have a knack of translating this into music, often taking American music and reproducing it in an even gutsier way than the original, e.g., the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Cream, Led Zeppelin. What is rock if not a howl? In this lateseventies moment-though I don't identify with the current outer manifestation of English rage, punk-I love the energy and aggression and the fact that punk is a dynamite blast through a music industry that has gotten fat and complacent. Overnight it creates havoc and puts a lot of fat slobs out of business.

I have thrown my lot in with Sting and Stewart, but now, having to face the hard-core scene, the moment of truth is upon us. With the music we have in hand and the way we play, I feel as if I am smiling into a severe hailstorm with my aggression in place but my musical values at the bottom of a deep black ocean. The songs that make up our set are terrible. Stewart has knocked out tunes in a valiant but rapid attempt to give the band a punk edge, but there's nothing original-sounding, no true songwriting voice that is genuine enough to capture an audience. What we have is a fast, furious row more like three brats misbehaving, more the sound of a fashion statement than a musical message-and it's worthless. In a nutshell, we suck.

On the day Elvis dies we do a gig at Rebecca's in Birmingham. The prevailing style is easily described. It's very fast, very loud, and features heavily garbled shouting noises usually accompanied by large mouthfuls of spit. We go onstage in the small, dark club and whip through our entire set, accomplishing all the above values, and are done in about twelve minutes. We are supposed to play for an hour. I look over at Sting and Stewart in near disbelief: we have just played fifteen songs in twelve minutes as if going for a new land-speed record. Maybe this is the way Dizzy and Charlie Parker felt back in the forties when they started playing bebop tunes at breakneck speed so that the whites couldn't dance to it. I would laugh, but it's pitiful; even the audience is looking at us drop-jawed. If nothing else, at least we're the fastest band around. We are so intent on being viewed as punk that we miss the music entirely; the idea seems to be that if you are seen as authentic, then you will be successful-content is secondary. It's a suspect stance, and it can't be sustained for long. We are a band, but to me it feels like one in name only. Even Miles, Stewart's brother who is heavily involved in the new scene, doesn't think much of us at this point because he too thinks we are fake. Stewart calls it reverse nepotism. Miles has a problem with me in particular because I have gone onstage at the Music Machine wearing trousers that are half an inch wider than regulation punk.

We play the Marquee at the height of the gobbing syndrome, and it is ugly. Gobbing on the band has become de rigueur at punk gigs and probably represents an all-time low in the British music scene. One of the reasons that gobbing becomes so rampant is possibly that amphetamine sulfate causes a large amount of saliva in the mouth-and where better to get rid of it than on the band you have just paid to see? As we attempt to get through our set, phlegm flies at us like evil rain from the mob below. It lands on the neck of my Telecaster, splatters on my face and hair, and drips down my shirt. This is a moment when I feel an intense loathing for those we are playing to. Feelings of violence well up in me that make me feel sick and I can only think, Fuck it, it's not worth it,

Now I am in the middle of the inferno, but it's like being hurled about at a party you haven't been invited to and I hang on to my guitar like a cork raft. Once again youth is revolting, another generation countering the established order; but like the hippie scene, it too will pass, leaving a residue in the world, its trappings becoming those of the museum with punks with Mohawks and Union Jacks posing for tourists in the Kings Road. Steve Jones's comment-we aren't into music, we're into chaos-sounds remarkably like Jim Morrison's remark ten years earlier when he said he was interested in revolt, disorder, chaos, and any activity that has no meaning. But with punk's fashion and aggression. it's easy to see how kids become caught up in it, although the truth is that most of them are unaware of the politics and the fact that in London the scene has been at least partially engineered by a fashion entrepreneur with a view to selling clothes. I am forced to fall back on my defense-the guitar, the axe-with a basic attitude of "fuck it, I can play any of these wankers under the table."

Somewhere in the middle of our first few weeks as a trio, Stewart turns up at Sting's flat in Bayswater with a big grin on his face and his hair dyed a shocking platinum blond. Sting and I stagger back at this flamboyant move, thinking that Stewart has lost his marbles. But as serendipity will have it, a few days later Sting gets a call to do a Wrigley's chewing gum commercial. They want him to appear with a punk band, all of whom have to have blond hair. It's a chance to make a little bit of side money, which we desperately need, so in short order Sting and I also become blond or blonder. Maybe this is the original message in a bottle, because once the dye is set, so is our future.

In a sea of sarcasm about old tarts and with my head stuck in a bowl, Kate helps me dye mine on Wednesday night, but instead of a Marilyn-like platinum, it comes out a shade of ghastly orange more like Coco the Clown. The next morning I look in the bathroom mirror and a haggard streetwalker stares back. With horror I realize that this apparition is me, and whispering the words "Faustian pact" into the mirror, I get back into bed, hoping that I am just having a bad dream. I get up again, I am still orange, and I decide to wear a beret for a while until my head stops looking as if a UFO has just landed on it.

But I get it blonder, and it turns out that our three blond heads work like a charm. It unifies us and gives us a strong identity-the bleach boys-and we begin noticing more blond heads in our pitiful little gatherings. We have a short list of fast, aggressive songs-"Landlord," "Nothing Achieving," "Truth Hits Everybody," "Dead End Job," "Fallout"-all reflecting the current flavor of angst. They're enough to get us through a gig but will not turn a record company's head or give us a career. We continue to play gigs around London, trying to hold it together, but are always mired in difficulties like hiring a cheap PA and a crappy van to get to the gig. Usually the bloody van breaks down and the PA costs so much that we end the night dividing up five quid between us and then start into the task of pushing the van back through the West End, where the lights of restaurants glow like an invitation from the other side.

We get a gig at the Hope and Anchor; it's supposed to be important, a step up. We are excited and revved-up for it, desperately thinking that this pub gig will change our fortunes. We have a small coterie of fans and our wivesKate, Sonja, and Frances-so we are never entirely alone. Between us and the audience we can count on a good solid crowd of about fifteen or so. The big night arrives; the audience is in place. We crouch in a very small dressing room at the side of the stage. It's time to start and we are ready to go on, but as we walk through the door and directly out onto the stage, the headstock of my guitar bangs against the door frame-"Oh fuck," I say, but don't check the tuning. We get a tiny cheer like a mouse fart from the audience, which is still mostly our wives, babies, and a few drunks, and then launch into a fast and furious version of "Truth Hits Everybody." My guitar is so far out of tune that I want to scream, but we can't stop because (as usual) we are going like a fucking express train. I'm somewhere between c# minor and E major-although you could hardly call the sound I am making those sweetly harmonic appellations, more like Arnold Schoenberg on acid or a cat being stabbed to death-and I try within the confines of a nanosecond to reach for the machine heads, but no such luck. The 9:02 is out of the station and shooting down the track like a bat out of hell, and when I attempt to move my hand from the chord toward the tuning peg, it merely looks as if I am creating a new style of guitar playing or possibly having an epileptic seizure. We roar through the whole song while I have the experience of a drowning man, reviewing the entirety of my life in about two and a half minutes flat, making the most horrendous atonal din, and deciding that it really is time for me to get out of the music business. We finish and Sting looks over at me with an arched eyebrow that says it all. I look back sheepishly and say, "Mind if I tune up?"

On nights off, which are most nights, we are in the habit of going out and spraying our name on the walls of various buildings around the West End, which is what all the best people do. It's called spraying your way to the top, but in its own criminal way it's thrilling because you're out there with your spray guns and paint, daubing THE POLICE on a wall, watching out for the real thing in case you have to make a fast getaway. POLICE GET ARRESTED would be an interesting headline. But we are scrabbling, trying to stay alive, and graffitiing our own name on various walls around London seems like just another fingernail hanging on to the ledge of survival. My bridges are charred beyond recognition, and I stare through a veil of angst as I spray our band name across a nice stretch of unsullied wall. It's not looking good, the road ahead; it isn't even the luxury of selling out, as there's no money on the horizon, not even a faint whiff. At that moment the Police are not even a real p-k band, and in the eyes of the old guard, I have jumped on the bandwagon, faintly disguised as some rare breed of orangutan, orange hair blowing in the roar of Iny Marshall stacks. I have a number of friends who think that I have finally lost my marbles by joining a band called the Police and it begins to feel lonely, but I have to hold on to my original instinct about Sting and Stewart, the music I think we will make.

Through an accountant by the name of Keith Moore, whom Stewart was involved with during his days with Curved Air, we are approached by a couple of Iranian gentlemen with huge ambitions in the entertainment industry, Alex Riahi and his sidekick, the long-suffering Tony. Alex thinks we might have something, and there is talk of his paying us a retainer of sixty pounds a week if we sign up with him as a manager for five years but give him the publishing rights to all the songs. We are in a vulnerable position; it's tempting; we couldn't get much lower and we sure could use the money. But we agree to rehearse over at his studio in Pimlico and see how it goes for a while before we make a heavy commitment. This is probably the sanest decision we ever make. Maybe we are invoking our own future or acting on intuition, but to a man we are fiercely protective about not giving up our publishing rights for sixty pounds a week.

We start practicing in Pimlico and quickly find out that Alex is intense, to the point of being obnoxious. Most days he roars into the garage of the studio in his Mercedes convertible, leaps out, and start haranguing us. These diatribes usually take the form of "Why can't you be more like the News?" another group he's managing who have a minor hit at the time. He holds them up to us as a shining example and tells us that they are going to be the biggest group in the world within two years. We hate them, their stupid music, and their bald-headed singer, but Alex says, "The News, the News." "Bad fucking news," we mutter behind his back.

Tony, his partner, is a gentle soul who comes down when we are rehearsing to ask how we were getting on. But if Alex turns up when Tony is present, he storms into the room, gold chains swinging around his neck, turns, and barks, "Tony-coffee, now," and poor old Tony slinks away like a beaten dog to get the filthy brew. And then in another flurry of gilt medallion, Alex spins back to tell us how it's going to be, what we should do, and do we want to have Rolls- Royces, Lear jets, expensive women, and marble floors, or what? It all sounds like an Iranian nightmare, and our only response is to stare at the floor in a silent embarrassment while he raves on until he leaps back into the Mercedes, guns the engine, and roars out of there at warp speed. The best thing about all of this is that for a while we have a free place to rehearse. It's a strange moment when we seem to stand still: we have made a slightly false move and maybe we know it, but at least we haven't signed anything; there's still a way out.