One Train Later: A Memoir (43 page)

After Christmas-as if we never left-we return to North America for a show at the Forum in Montreal on January 7, 1981, as a warm-up for Madison Square Garden, which we will play three days later. Preceded by its own legend, the Garden is one of the premier venues in the world, a gig beyond our wildest dreams, but we sell it out in three hours. I am excited to be back in New York, as it always feels that we have returned to the dead center of the world. As we walk out onto the stage the energy of an already fever-pitch audience is galvanizing. Now they hold up pictures of us, placards with scrawled messages and our names, with sassy comments at the side, and it's difficult to feel anything other than thrilled by the energy.

Our best playing now is during the sound checks, when we can still cut loose and play all kinds of music with almost nothing from the show, and it's during these jams when we come up with ideas for new riffs and rhythmic concepts that are the lifeblood of our music. In the actual shows now as we move through the worked-out set list-the songs the audience expect-I feel frustrated. Although it is fun to do all the textural and harmonics stuff I have developed for the band, I actually want to let rip with some off-the-wall solos and feel as if we are really playing together, creating in the moment rather than performing verses and choruses in the correct order. When I do cut loose there is a strong audience reaction to the moment of release. But there is a problem. At this point Sting doesn't like to be overshadowed onstage; when I take a guitar solo, he wants it over with quickly-as it takes him out of the spotlight. The punk credo of "no solos" is held in place, but it diminishes the range of the group. I get it-I don't like it but, in the interest of keeping the status quo intact, reluctantly temper my own impulses; we have enough problems already. Sting says that he doesn't like guitar solos, and he will stand by this in the future. But in private I practice incessantly anyway, as if preparing for a different future, and listen to music that is markedly different from the Police. I travel down arcane alleys in search of little-known composers, hidden geniuses, music from Mali or southern India, the new jazz of ECM. I often get asked what I am listening to, and instead of being able to give some bright rock-and-roll response and list of a few rock groups, I mutter about Gavin Bryars or Ramon Montoya or Coltrane's Crescent, a. Bulgarian State women's choir, wishing that they hadn't asked me.

The show at the Garden is a euphoric success and is marred only by someone slinging a vodka bottle that goes through Stewart's bass drumhead, at which point we have to stop the show and ad-lib while it gets replaced. Most groups would leave the stage, but we just stand there and try to keep twenty-five thousand people giggling. Andy Warhol comes backstage afterward and we have our picture taken with him and he gives me a copy of Interview magazine with the inscription "To Andy, from Andy." The next day I turn up at the Factory, off Union Square, and he takes my picture. It takes about fifteen minutes from start to finish.

We land back in L. A. for two shows. The first is downtown at the Variety Arts Theatre, where we pull a stunt called Blondes over L.A.-the idea being that you cannot get into the show unless you have blond hair, or at least a blond wig. To his credit, Miles can still dream up the odd piece of rock-androll surrealism, and this is just another lark to make us something different. But backstage there is tension as Sting does not want to go onstage wearing a silly wig. He is pissed off about the whole thing; he is moving away from the band, and I see that from his point of view, this piece of silliness just pushes him back into the collective, subdues his personality, and goes against his grain. But eventually he relents and we hit the stage wearing big black wigs, but by the end of the first song Sting has tossed his onto the stage, joke over.

We play at the L.A. Sports Arena and before the show we hoover up some of Bolivia's finest and play a tight fast set brimming with powdered energy. Stevie Nicks stands at the side of the stage and watches the whole show. As I come offstage I get a note from her asking to meet her later at the Rainbow, a sleazy rock joint on the Strip that everyone fights to get into-unless you are a celeb, in which case you walk in with a cool swagger, superior and more important than the proles who hang around outside. L.A., Hollywood-it suddenly seems like a sewer and I miss New York.

This is the eighties., the era of money and excess. Reagan is king and will triple the national debt, support apartheid, back Saddam Hussein, fantasize about Star Wars, support Central American death squads, and trade arms for hostages. Cocaine use rages like a white blizzard, and to avoid it, you would need a Band-Aid over your mouth and nose. Wherever we are now, drug dealers leap like genies from the wallpaper. We have power now, fame; and like a magnet, it sucks in everyone from celebrities to pushers, all hoping to rub up against the illusion. Everyone does coke: lawyers, bankers, athletes, accountants, office workers, roadies, technicians, limo drivers, and hotel maids. From the straightest to the worst party animals, its use is epidemic, and all activities seemed to be accompanied by a line or two through the rolled-up dollar bill.

In a flash moment one night Kim Turner decides to use a hundred-dollar bill as the snorting funnel. There are several stray people in the party, and an attractive girl on the end of the line pockets Kim's bill and, having made her money for the night, disappears. A few years from now many of these people will have deviated septums and ruined lives. They crowd around us, imploring us to do drugs with them. They want to get stoned with the Police and later brag about it. Some are very smooth and insinuate themselves into the ranks without being seen. They smell money, power, the edge; they're hungry and come at us with drooling mouths.

Every time we are in L.A., a Latino guy with slicked-back hair and a sharp suit appears as if by magic, and his message is always the same: he can get us anything we want, he just wants to be our friend, he's just here to help, what do we need, he just loves the music. Yeah, right, we think, and sometimes I wonder if there is a breakdown in the mental processes of these people. Their assumption is that we are a band and therefore must be party monsters, fucked up twenty-four hours a day, and yet creating and making music without a care in the world. We have to be discreet and develop a sixth sense for those who might suck us into the vortex, realizing where too much powder can take you and watching out for one another. Most of the stuff seems cut with crap and dumps you in an ugly wasteland the next day.

The atmosphere around the band is becoming even more excessive, more hedonistic. The party never ends, and with a shrug we enjoy the festivities. Extraordinary demands are placed on us and we simply would not be able to deliver these intense shows without the occasional rocket fuel. In this moment it is as if we are passing through a danger zone full of tests and enemies before we get to the castle. We are on the threshold of even bigger success, the ultimate prize, and it would be very easy to blow it now. We are swimming with serpents, but the group is our raft-the music our life support.

Twenty-Two

On we go through Hawaii, Japan, and New Zealand to end the tour in Perth. I should return straight home to Kate and Layla, but dazed and confused, I stupidly decide to spend another three weeks photographing in Asia. This is poor judgment on my part, as Kate is suffering alone without help and I know that I should be there. Yet I am compelled to stay on the road, not wanting the illusion to stop for a minute. With this decision, I exchange my marriage for forty rolls of film.

Stewart and I have ourselves delivered to the Oberoi Hilton in Kura Beach, a fabulous setup where you stay in ultradeluxe Balinese thatched cottages. We spend a couple of days recovering from the rigors of touring by hanging around the pool, and we meet the actor/comedian John Belushi. John is a big star in the United States; his skits on Saturday Night Live, the movie The Blues Brothers, wild behavior and hard living have made him famous.

Drinks in hand, we meet at the pool and immediately hit it off; no doubt we find a camaraderie through having arrived in the spotlight at roughly the same time and our similar tastes for most things that are off the dial. In five minutes we mutually discover that nearby in Kuta village there is a cafe that sells magic mushroom omelets. The magic mushrooms weirdly enough are called Copelandia; they grow in cow shit and apparently are mighty powerful-in fact, they have the highest concentration of alkaloids found in hallucinogenic mushrooms anywhere in the world. We look at one another for a full nanosecond and, deciding that we have to get ourselves some of these dang things, head out to get lunch.

The restaurant is a small, rickety building constructed of bamboo poles and thatched palm fronds. At the entrance on a chalkboard is a menu on which is plainly written in English the dish of the day: "magic mushroom omelet." We order from the young Balinese serving girl. She disappears into the kitchen and we hear a lot of giggling. We look at one another. No doubt the Balinese are planning to fuck us up bad. John raises his left eyebrow in the way that he is famous for, and that says it all. The omelets arrive and are in fact delicious, and only a scientific palate would detect the chemical key to paradise. So we enjoy our lunch and then make plans to cross the island to see the famous sunken temple.

We decide to go in my rented jeep. It's an old banger, heavily rented and dented, but it's enough to get us around the island. One of the problems with the jeep is that the canvas convertible roof is broken on the right corner because the snap is missing. It's difficult to get into place, and the only way to secure it is with a rusty nail that is kindly supplied by the rental office with an enigmatic smile.

We climb into the rent-a-crock and start out, the first obstacle being the circumnavigation of downtown Denpasar, which is about twenty-five minutes away. We drive toward the city, waiting for the mushrooms to take effect, looking at one another every few minutes, and murmuring, "I'm not feeling anything yet"; meanwhile, down in the pancreas the mushrooms are setting up shop, chemistry is taking place, and little fungus wizards are waving their wands about. We arrive on the outskirts of Denpasar and realize that we have to get onto the one-way circular road before breaking off onto the road to the sunken temple, the objective of our trip. We pull up at the edge-it's total madness, an absolute roaring chaos of trucks and mad, grinning Balinese on scooters. This unstoppable swarm of people on scooters, which is everywhere, is one of the worst features of Asian city life. We are confronted with it just as the mushrooms take effect and we sit for several minutes in a trance, gazing at this spectacle because now it all seems so groovy, and then as if arriving together on another plane we all wake up.

"Okay, Ies go," says John, as if making the decision to go into battle. "Yeah," I drawl back, forgetting that I am the driver. "Well, go on," says Stewart. "Oh, right," I say, and pump the gas, and we slide out into the onslaught of a thousand Asian Vespas. Insane and exhilarating, it's like being in the middle of a race against time. The Balinese men on wheels thrive on this madness, and we laugh like hyenas as I weave and dodge and do everything I can to avoid ending up a red stain at the side of the road. The noise is horrendous, like being locked up in an aircraft hangar with a jet revving all its engines, but somehow-in a weird combination of total concentration and dreaminess as the mushrooms kick in even deeper-we hold our course through the storm.

We whip on for a few more miles until we see a large sign for the sunken temple and, yelling and screaming, swerve across the road to the exit. As we do this the sky, like a mouth emitting a giant belch, lets rip with a tropical downpour so thick and intense that you can barely see your hand in front of your eyes. It isn't rain, but Armageddon, an end-of-the-world apocalyptic number. The raindrops in Indonesia are not pretty little rainbow-filled things but rather, being about six inches long and three inches wide, lethal smart bombs of H,O capable of causing a nasty concussion.

"Get the roof up," we all yell together. We screech over into the dirt at the side of the road, and Belushi and I leap out to secure the roof. With Niagra Falls beating us into an early grave and 'shroomed out of our minds, we heave and tug at the recalcitrant canvas roof that is folded up at the back of the rear seat. Eventually we pull it free and, gasping hysterically, try to fit it in place. Of course, I have forgotten about the broken corner and the bloody rusty nail to fix it, which has gone missing, and suddenly the significance of the enigmatic smile conies to me-bastards! Somewhere in the middle of this mayhem, laughing like hyenas, we realize that we are trying to fix the roof to keep from getting wet when we're already like drowned rats. With this brilliant insight, we just fall down into the road and roll about in the newly formed puddles like deranged children. A couple of Balinese walk by with donkeys and carts and smile, probably recognizing the effects of their local vegetable.