One Train Later: A Memoir (35 page)

Toward the end of the tour we play in Cleveland again. We are interviewed on local TV before we get to the hotel. We mention having been in Cleveland before and our good mates RavenSlaughter-good eggs, those boys-and then go on to the local legendary rock-and-roll hotel Swingos. When we get there RavenSlaughter are all waiting in the lobby for us and want to have a drink, go to the bar, chat about old times. They saw our interview and are very grateful for the mention, so we have drinks.

The after-show scenes at the gigs begin to take on a sycophantic quality. There is a subtle undertow to the dialogue now; need, desire, possession, flow beneath the surface, the dolorous chord that is not about music but about power, heat, control. And with glossy words and eyes fizzing like carbonated water, they try to fold us in meshes of silk. "Hi ... I'm Julie, why don't you let me show you around? I have some excellent grass; do you like champagne?" You realize what is happening and erect a psychic shield that will stay in place for the next several years if not forever.

Sixteen

After the exotic climate of the Deep South and the wide skies of the western states, London 1979 is like a pie in the face, and for a minute we experience culture shock in our own home. We have a week off before we begin a tour of the U.K., for the first time as headliners, but we are too wiped out even to speak to one another, knowing that before we've even rolled over in bed we will be thrashing it out onstage again.

I stare out the window in Putney at dark rain and rivulets of water streaming into the drains with LCC embossed on their iron grids. Befuddled and jet-lagged, I'm confused by the way England seems to have shrunk in size while I was away. Kate and I go to the local Chinese restaurant with the baby, who sits in a high chair in front of the lazy Susan, throws rice on the floor, and then begins crying inconsolably. The TV drones in the living room with the sound of BBC voices while we make pasta, open a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau, and try to get back to where we were.

We walk across Putney Green to the river, where we push Layla in a baby stroller along the path at the side of the Thames. Kate wears a bright red coat, and the streaming gold of her hair floats out in the wind as we talk and make cooing sounds to our daughter. I stare at my wife as if seeing her for the first time, the slender form, the Botticelli face, the grey-green eyes, the soul. "I'm lucky," I croak into the wind, and put my arm around her. A young couple come toward us on the path. "My God," says the man, "aren't you"-he says my name-"love your band. Do you mind?" Paper and pen are struggled for, found, and proffered in the freezing wind that comes off the river. I take off a glove and scrawl my name, our moment gone.

Our popularity in Britain having now reached a point where we can be deemed headliners, we finally have the pulling power and are to begin in Scotland.

The stage at the Glasgow Apollo slopes downward to a drop of about twelve feet. The edge disappears into blackness, and in the heat of the moment it would he easy to dance off it. We pogo about on this incline, with the Scottish audience chanting and screaming. The balcony sways, bending up and down as if it is about to shatter, but oblivious to the fragility beneath, the fans jump up and down as if tempting fate. This is our first gig as headliners in the U.K., and with a crowd surrounding the hotel and waiting outside the Apollo, it's already out of control. I hit my pedals, leap in the air, run around the stage, and pray that we are not about to witness a tragedy. Toward the end of the show we do a song called "Be My Girl-Sally" which after the initial chorus has a monologue from me about a hapless individual's love affair with a blow-up doll. I always deliver this ditty in a Yorkshire accent, as it seems to give it the right tone, and even this unlikely piece gets chanted along with, and we all rise to a crescendo with "And I only have to worry in case my girl wears thin."

Back in the dressing room, drenched in sweat and sitting among piles of little tartan-wrapped presents, we remark about the bouncing balcony, amazed that the whole thing didn't collapse. Later we find out that the Apollo has been condemned.

We leave the Apollo thinking we are going to walk to a nearby club, but there is a mob of teenage girls yelling our names and coloring them with their sweet Scottish brogue and we have to run, with the girls in hot pursuit. We run past redbrick walls, off licenses, pubs, a couple of people passed out in the gutter. As we run I hum the melody of "I Belong to Glasgow" and think of Hank Marvin. We end up in front of Charlie Parker's, the local hip nightclub where we are expecting a warm welcome and a bit of special treatment, having just played the Apollo, but typically the bruiser on the door won't let us in because, as he grimly points out, we are too casually dressed. "Yeer tuee cazshally driised," he slurs, leaning his gorilla-size torso against the lintel as if to say "go on, fuck with me, why doncha." "Let's go," I say, "Planet of the Apes is on the telly." We get into the limo, which has finally caught up with us. I go off into paroxysms about Scottish peasants, Charlie Parker jazz, and the fucking Apollo. Back in the hotel bedroom I open the minibar and end the night with a Schweppes Bitter Lemon and a packet of shortbread biscuits.

An American group called the Cramps is on tour with us. They are on Miles's label, Illegal, and by conventional standards they are weird. Their guitarist is intentionally nasty to look at, with one side of his head shaved, a pockmarked face, and half of his hair bleached white; the singer is Lux Interior, who creeps about the stage, chanting and moaning, while his pretty girlfriend, Poison Ivy Rorschach, stands there as if catatonic. They call their music psychobilly. The audience hates them, but I like them, for at least they are attempting to do something different. But after a while their act palls. What they are selling is an attitude; what you are supposed to come away with is uncertain. It is like watching or listening to a B horror movie (which is probably the intended effect), but is that what you want from music? Compared with them we are normal, and a number of the British rock press try to make a meal out of this, preferring to cast their lot with no-chance weirdness than with anyone who tries to put an honest song across-and we are criticized for playing too well.

We are on a fast upward swing, and you can hear the knives being sharpened. Our presence appears to be a challenge to some of the press, who attempt to deride us because we have good songs, can play our instruments, and have a flash and bravado that have already engendered a fanatical following. One critic attempts to put us down as old-fashioned rock; I wonder, then, if our music with its unique sound and diverse sources is old-fashioned, what, then, is the new fashion? Is it punk? That lasted for all of five minutes.

Despite all of this, !Melody Maker has sent a journalist to Glasgow to write a big story on us. He has us in convulsions when he tells us that a few nights back he looked down the sheets and noticed the size of the feet of the woman with whom he was sleeping, realizing with a shock that he has been in love with a transsexual and on inquiry the next morning finds out that she had once been a he. And what was that you were saying about the Cramps being weird? The truth is that the Cramps, once you get past the mask, turn out to be rather nice, normal people.

We finish the tour in London at the Lyceum Ballroom, with fans in the front whom we now see at every show, their white arms stretching up toward us like the necks of hungry swans.

In Holland we play the Pink Pop Festival, a gigantic open-air festival that takes place every June. We hit the stage in the early afternoon to play to a crowd of several thousand Dutch rock fans. We start the set at a frantic pace and I look over at Stewart with a snarl, telling him to fucking slow down, but we roar on in the heat of the afternoon and I feel as if I am swimming through the air as the sun beats down, the music wails, the crowd surges, and blistering white light erases the little red signals on my pedal board. When I hit the buttons I can't tell if they are on or off. I don't know what I am doing; I feel blind and deaf but by instinct make it through to the end of the set. The crowd howls and John Peel, the British deejay par excellence, intones something salutary over the PA, and in a moment of sweaty inspiration we leap fully clothed from the high backstage edge into a swimming pool below as a phalanx of press cameras snap like guns. The next day we are all over the papers, grinning, triumphant, arrogant, and wet. John Peel has endorsed us, and in our mind this is as good as winning an award. In the U.K., once you raise your head above the crowd, the media is a beast that you either ignore or slay. With John Peel's stamp, we feel we have at least slipped some poison into its throat. The tour continues with twelve more shows in the England and then back into Europe. We arrive in Amsterdam to play at the Paradiso. We are there a day ahead, and what better to do than go shopping for things we don't need? I go looking for something nice for Kate and a toy for Layla but end up buying a pair of fancy-looking red ankle boots with big studded soles. I think they look supercool and decide to wear them onstage that night. As we begin the show and I stomp on my pedal board to make a tricky but required effects change, nothing happens and I think, Oar fuck, now what? then realize that the studs on my showoff boots are hitting the flat surface of the hoard and still leaving a gap, which stops me from being able to press the switch down. I keep missing things and my sparkling guitar sound is reduced to a flat buzz. This isn't good, and cursing and sweating, I begin a peculiar crouching motion, trying to smack the fucking switches down with the side of my foot. These antics are definitely not those of a guitar hero; Sting and Stewart look over at me with bemused looks as I curse the bastard who made these nasty red things that are now crippling me. After the show I toss the boots into a trash can and write a new rule for guitarists: never wear new shoes onstage, especially if they are red with spiked soles.

Sting is fast becoming a media star. With his Slavic good looks, tenor voice, and moody arrogance, he is perfect fodder for the starmaker machinery. Stewart makes comments to the press about how he created Sting, realizing at even this early date that this is how it's going to be, but he also makes some more PC comments about how the singer always gets singled out and how lucky that the face of the band-our face-is Sting's. We have a publicist by the name of Keith Altham, a cheery bloke who carries the atmosphere of fifties London, skulking Soho, and glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Yet he is the publicist for many stars, including the Who, and is used to wheeling and dealing with the press. He has quickly seen Sting's potential and has fed him to the press like goldfish food. When he bursts into the dressing room of the Brighton Dome one night to tell us gleefully about some publicity stunt for Sting, the writing is on the wall. Although at the time Stewart and I try to raise a "What about us?" argument, Keithlooking hurt and pained-explains that not just Sting but all of us, all three of us, are going to be stars, megastars, not one but the whole group. In the end we all get more than our fair share of press, almost to the point of nausea. Sting also realizes he is perfect fantasy material for the hungry maw of the tabloids, and he doesn't deny them. The truth is that this attention to our singer rather than causing friction only powers us further, although underneath there is the lingering shadow that maybe he will, in the timehonored phrase, "go solo," that Sting will become STING, with the band having been a fantastically successful launching pad for him, the rock from which he will push off into his own career. He'll make comments to the effect that ambition is stronger than friendship-"I'm out for myself and they know it"-but right now, in the summer of '79, there's no sign of that. Only a fool would walk away from this kind of success.

As the summer approaches things heat up even more with all the noise surrounding the film Quadrophenia, in which Sting has a small part playing one of the mods, the Ace Face. But the media play it up as if he has the starring role and he overshadows little Phil Daniels, the central character of the movie. Pictures of our singer now appear in the British tabloids with frequency, and it appears that the band is moving into the center of British life.

The film premiers at the Gaumont in Leicester Square, and we arrive in black limos to walk up a red carpet in a hail of light. Dazed and smiling, you walk up the crimson strip like a grinning zombie, all eyes on you as cameras flash like white lightning. You have seen it on the telly, and here you are, a wave of vertigo creasing your brain as somewhere far below a crowd waves at you and you float like a moth into the soft twilight of the foyer. This glittering ball-gowny parade seems a long way from standing on a small, sweaty stage in Des Moines or Buffalo, another reality that is like an end result too early in the game. As we trip down the aisle among the buzz of glittering conversation, I remember that at the back of the Gaumont there is a spot of redbrick wall where we graffitied our name less than two years ago. It's probably still there, unless the rain has washed it off.

With Quadrophenia our name is everywhere and we surge forward like a Viking ship, with Sting as the bowsprit. This tide of energy now seems unstoppable, and we bring it to a peak by topping the bill at the Reading Festival on August 24, 1979.

Held at the height of summer each year, Reading is the number one rock festival in Britain, and to headline it is a clear stamp of success. We arrive in the late afternoon to the sprawling festival site. There is a crowd of thirty thousand out in the muddy field beyond the stage. Backstage we sit in a tent with our feet on planks of wood because of the mud. The smell of mud and canvas mixes with the crowd's buzzing noise in the field, and I remember sitting on a hard wooden bench beneath the big top of Billy Smart's Circus between my parents, terrified as they laughed out loud at lurid clown antics, ice cream dripping down my woolly sweater and pee running down my legs.

We can't sound check because of the vast army of fans out front, but smiling faces keep appearing around the tent flap to wish us well and check on our well-being. Various luminaries from A&M drop in to see us. "Alright, boys? Good show," they say. Miles and Kim poke their head through the canvas flap and give appraising professional stares.