One Train Later: A Memoir (48 page)

The Maracanazinho Gym in Rio de Janeiro is a huge concrete structure with nightmare acoustics. At the sound check we play in dismay as the sound reverberates around the walls to make a mocking mush of every note we play. "Who the fuck booked us in here?" we yell as we come offstage. This is our first gig in Brazil and we want it to be great, but this place is a disaster. Because of its great musical culture, Brazil holds a special place for most musicians; and we want to impress. Despite the Grand Canyon sound, the gig is an intoxicating riot in a way that only a gig in Brazil can be.

Backstage, smiling and being photographed, is Ronnie Biggs, the famous English train robber. Most visiting celebrities usually meet up with him when in Rio. He has been a resident of Brazil for quite a few years at this point and is basically a very cheery English Cockney bloke who seems completely out of place here. In a bizarre final twist of the Sex Pistols story, Biggs recorded two songs with Paul Cook and Steve Jones, "Belsen Was a Gas" and "A Punk Prayer," McClaren having flown down to Rio after his final bitter break up with John Lydon in the United States. A double-A-side single was released with "A Punk Prayer" and the Sid Vicious version of "My Way." This was all part of McClaren's plan to dupe Virgin: if they didn't accept Ronnie Biggs as the new lead singer of the Pistols, he could void the contract and take it elsewhere. Oddly enough, the single was a hit mostly because of Sid's version of the Sinatra song; unfortunately there was no future in Biggs becoming the Pistols' new lead singer-he was still on the most-wanted list in Britain-and McClaren moved on. Biggs seems relieved to see us, and I feel a twinge of sadness coming from him, a yearning for anything English.

After Rio we fly across the continent to Chile to appear at the Vina del Mar International Song Festival. Like Argentina, this country too is under the fist of the military junta. With the help of the CIA and a military coup, socialist president Allende, who many believed was leading the country toward communism and had already invited Castro for a visit, was disposed of in 1973. Henry Kissinger remarked that we don't need to stand idly by and watch a whole country go communist. Fueled by the ire of ITT, the U.S. telephone company that was furious over Allende's appropriation of the cop per companies and that paid the CIA to get Allende out, the most violent coup in Chilean history took place, leaving Allende dead in the Moneda Palace the next day.

General Pinochet now rules the country and has remarked that not a leaf stirs in the country without his knowing. As we touch down, the country is full of murder, brutality, and repression. We are so buried in our group cocoon that we are not really aware of everything that has taken place here, and in consequence we will have to defend ourselves to human-rights groups. I immediately sense that there is something wrong-you can almost smell it. But, hey, just another performance for another fascist dictatorship; after all, we too are the Police.

We check into the strangely named O'Higgins Hotel, wondering why it is not the Casa del Mar or something, but later find out that Bernardo O'Higgins, the illegitimate son of an Irishman from Sligo, had risen under the service of the Spanish crown to become captain-general of Chile and viceroy of Peru. We have a very difficult time checking into the hotel. There is a strictly observed protocol that we are not used to and these days tend to circumvent. As we are not greeted with golden smiles there is an altercation at the front desk with one of our minders, and by the time we get our room keys the knives are out. As we check in, a large group of fans surround the hotel, and the road crew take it upon themselves to pose in the large front window of the hotel, hands on nose and crotch, which means "Got any gak?"-in other words, "Got any cocaine?" This is misinterpreted as something like "your mother sucks dicks," and the press take pictures that appear in the papers the next day with large headlines proclaiming that THE POLICE ARE ANIMALS, although Sting, Stewart, and I were upstairs reading Jane Austen at the time of said incident.

The same day of these headlines we have a press conference scheduled. We are led into the conference room of the hotel at midday, and the press is already there wearing vulture outfits. In the center of the table is a long line of international flags. As we sit down I sweep the whole lot off the table. Why? I don't know, I just do it, but immediately all the cameras go off like a blast of white lightning and then the barrage of questions: "Why did you do that?" "What does this gesture mean?" "What do you think of international relations?" "What are you bringing to Chile?" All the questions are hos tile, and the media seem incensed by my mindless little action, an overreaction that maybe conceals something else, fear or gutless collusion with the powers above as a means of survival. In New York or L.A. they would just have laughed, and said "rock and roll," but here they seem uncomfortable, as if we are presenting them with something that they cannot have, cannot be. I believe they are experiencing shame.

Whatever it is, we come out of the press conference hating the country. I feel that I never want to come back. We play that night and it all goes well enough except for an incident that occurs when Sting refuses to use the same microphone as the singer before him, as apparently the man is sick and coughing. This again is an insult and causes another furor that has to be diplomatically calmed down by Miles, but this one puts the final nail in the coffin. We fly out the next day to return to Rio. I vow never to come back, but in fact I will return to Santiago in a few years and will fall in love with its soft Spanish streets, Indian faces, and empanadas, cazuelas, humitas.

We fly back to Rio to relax among the dental-floss bikinis of Ipanema. While sunning myself on the beach, I get the pleasing news that "Behind My Camel" has won a Grammy for best instrumental. "There is justice in this world after all," I mutter as a nearly naked copper-skinned beauty totters past me and my ice cream melts in my hand.

Miami, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Memphis, Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Austin, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Chicago, St. Louis, Charlotte, on and on we go like a hurricane ripping across the states until our songs fill every nook and cranny, are on every radio station, in every kid's bedroom, in tape players that repeat endlessly as hot mouths bruise up against each other in the backseats of parked cars, as the last days of vinyl spin out in orbit through the suburbs, as young single mothers feed sugar-coated corn puffs to the mouths of babies in high chairs. "Rehumanize yourself," we sing, for we are spirits in the material world, and one world is enough, there's too much information.... We blow out of the U.S. with three nights at the Meadowlands and cascades of female underwear falling from the stage rigging of Nassau Coliseum, the road crew in the wings sick with laughter as bras and panties fall on our heads.

In London there is no peace, no silence. I get sick of it and realize I need assistance. I hire a girl by the name of what else but ... Roxanne, who used to work for Pete Townshend. We are now in the celebrity portion of our sojourn, and it is de rigueur to invite us to everything. Doors open, restaurant tables become suddenly available, first-name basis is established with maitre d's around town, gifts arrive every day, and we get motorbikes, guitars, free travel, clothes, sporting-goods endorsements, invitations, free exclusive club memberships, and guitar strings for life. Everyone wants a slice of the Police cake, to be let in the door, to get behind bars with us. It is giddy and we have to watch out that we don't get swallowed by this new monster. There is no training for this. We have learned how to make records, perform, be rock stars, but there is a whole other side-it becomes easy to see how people end up with nothing a few years later as the fall from grace inevitably happens.

Our main financial adviser is Keith Moore. He has a charming bedside manner and a brain to go with it. We like him, listen attentively, and generally take his sage advice. But we watch in dismay as he begins to change in front of our eyes as he acquires a very sexy young Indian girlfriend who is obviously on the make, and we groan inwardly both over her very desirable body and the first signs of his getting caught up in the glitz. We have regarded him as a father/doctor figure, but he too is flawed: later, in a tragedy with all the hallmarks of a Dostoyevsky novel, he will fall and eventually be incarcerated.

It is as if the group itself sets some kind of high-water mark and people change to meet it. It tends to be a fiery embrace, and we become almost inured to seeing people self-immolate around us. Eventually we can only greet it with a raised eyebrow; another one bites the dust. I will pass through another three financial advisers before finally getting it right, one more of whom will also end up in prison. Having money, one realizes after a while, is very nice, but you need to develop a razor-edged awareness if you want to hang on to it. There is a large number of thieves disguised as angels out there who can't wait to relieve you of the burden. They slip under your door, confront you in dark hallways, slither through the letter box, whisper in tones of silk, infiltrate your life with the stealth of a cell quietly dividing. The water has fangs, and the only way to make it, to land is by keeping your head up and thinking about the next song.

One of my touchstones in the middle of this heady brew is Bob the plumber, who comes over to my house for the odd bit of pipe work, loose washer, a replumb. After his work is done we sit down and have a cup of tea together, and our conversations about lagging, washers, boilers, and Chelsea's chances in the upcoming season are laced with pithy remarks from Bob that bring me back to Earth, refocus the lens, blow out the sweet smell of gilded decay.

In terms of music, I am beginning to feel that even this group-despite everything-is becoming a cage and that I need to spread my wings for a moment, try playing with someone else to see if I can still function in the real world. I contact Robert Fripp to see if he might be interested in putting something together. Recently I have heard a solo he played on a Roches album, which strikes me as being quite soulful, and impresses me enough to think that we might find common ground. A few days later we meet in New York at the Cupping Room in SoHo, then go to an apartment nearby that belongs to a friend of his. We sit around for a couple of hours with guitars, finding areas to explore and figuring that we'll put it together in the studio. We meet two weeks later in Bournemouth, where an old friend of ours has a studio, and get to work. We emerge about ten days later with a quirky instrumental album that we call I Advance Masked. Initially A&M is not very interested in putting this out, but they wouldn't want to upset me at this point, so they duly release it with the result that our weird instrumental album makes it into the Top Sixty of the .Billboard charts. The suits don't get it but are pleased.

In September we begin to tour again. We arrive in the north of England to play at Gateshead with U2, who are just beginning their upward climb. We're still playing the songs from Ghost in the Machine, but there is an internal pressure building toward the next record. With each new album, we have to top the last one; it's a difficult trick to pull off because you can get caught between changing your sound or style and disappointing the fans who love you for what they know, or risk not moving on and becoming stale.

Before we return to Montserrat we work our way through another giant pastiche of American cities with stages, people, interviews, radio stations, rooms, carpets, walls, limos, contracts, meetings with lawyers, corridors, and darkened windows until it is a disorientating blur. I feel as if I open the same door to the same room every night, and the tour becomes like an outtake of Bill Murray's future film Groundhog Day. This is all I have ever known or will know, a Kafkaesques series of Chinese boxes and so many rooms that in their unfamiliarity, they become familiar. Unrelenting muted shades, Otis elevators, and restaurants with names like Feelings, Moments, or Memories. Each room is loaded with little bits of stand-up cardboard shit gushing about weekend specials, honeymoon rates, the Friday-night happy hour, and Dodies Hair Salon in the basement. I enter each room and toss all the crap in the trash; there is so much of this shit on every surface-I hate it. This is private space-you paid for it, it belongs to you, but still you get subjected to the relentless sell. Fuck 'em ... what to do? ... music-put on; clothesthrow on floor; books-read; guitar-play. I hang the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob with FUCKING written between NOT and DISTURB, pick up my guitar, and stare at the beige carpet. What? ... oh, yeah-fuck hotels. I was going to practice but I have a very strong urge to empty a bottle of vodka over the sheets and toss a match in it-fuck the Mexican maid-and piss in the corridor, but now I feel exhausted and instead order a bottle of Chilean red and, wondering why I feel lost, watch the news, barely making sense of it. I am very specific about my needs, I have several special room requirements, I am a pain in the ass. "Hey, man, don't put me in a room next to the fuckin' elevator shaft, or the goddamn maids' linen closet. I don't even wanna see a freeway, let alone hear it. No male fans within a ten-mile radius, and do not disturb me-ever-leave me the fuck alone until gig time, and no dairy creamer with the coffee or that half-and-half shit, and I'll rip the fucking phone wires out if I want to." I am a rock-and-roll asshole, an emaciated millionaire prick, and fuck everything.