Heartbreaker (15 page)

Chapter 34

1976

It had been Tom’s idea. Andy was moping around because he was going to be away from home for his twenty-second birthday and he was missing Tiffany and the kids. ‘They’re growing up without me,’ he wailed. ‘They’re nearly two now and I’m just some bloke who turns up a couple of times a year and buys them stuff.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, you whinging lanky git.’ Colin crooked his arm round Andy’s neck, scrubbed his head with his knuckles. ‘We were home for easily half of last year.’

‘It makes no difference to you, though, does it?’ scowled Andy, leaping up from where he was sitting on the bed and grabbing Colin. ‘You don’t have any roots or stability.’ He yanked Colin’s head around harshly; his neck cracked audibly. ‘It doesn’t matter to you where you are.’

Colin turned out of the headlock and kicked Andy’s legs out from under him. ‘You’re just a big poof,’ he grunted as Andy hit the deck. He sat on Andy’s chest and pinned his arms above his head with one hand. ‘Look at the size of you. You whine like a girl and fight like an old woman.’ He slapped him round the head.

‘Oh, you fucking think so?’ Andy broke Colin’s hold on his arms and upended him onto the floor. He caught him a beauty to the side of the head with his left and was about to follow up with a right hook when Paul and Johnny separated them.

‘Ladies, ladies, break it up.’

‘I’ll fucking kill the cunt,’ spat Andy. He fought to be free of Paul.

‘You and whose fucking army?’ growled Colin, but he wasn’t trying too hard to get away from Johnny. It was always the same with Colin. He loved to get a rise out of people, and Andy in particular, he was normally so easy-going. Then when Colin did get him riled, Andy could kick the shit out of him. He had the height advantage and he was wiry and strong.

***

‘We fought a lot,’ Johnny told Alex. ‘Rough and tumble stuff mostly, the odd scrap was more serious. We had basic rules: leave guitarists’ hands and arms alone, don’t bust Andy’s nose or lip, and only punch Paul in the head or body, because he needed his arms and his legs to play his kit. I was always covered in bruises when I got home from touring. Still, at least our scrapping was mostly good-natured and amongst ourselves, not like some bands. We all kept our teeth and no one got arrested.’

***

Later on, Tom had taken Johnny to one side for a quiet word. ‘It is tough on Andy, you know; he’s a home bird at heart.’

‘Yeah, I know, but what do you do? We’re a band, we tour.’

Tom brightened. ‘I know: let’s organise a birthday surprise. We’ve got a couple of days. In fact, I reckon I know just the thing.’

Johnny grinned. Tom had come up with some cracking ideas in his time. A couple of years previously he had arranged a helicopter trip, the first time any of them had been in one, and another time they’d all got back to the hotel after the last gig on the US tour to find the place overrun with fire-eaters, acrobats and clowns. And girls. There were always girls, courtesy of Benny Rutherford and his contacts. ‘What have you got in mind?’

‘Wait and see.’ Tom tapped his nose and winked, then wandered off in search of Benny, his partner in crime.

A couple of days later it was Andy’s birthday. Early afternoon they had breakfast together, and gave Andy his cards and presents, then bummed around until it was time for the show.

‘Where’s this surprise?’ Johnny asked Tom.

‘All in good time. After the show.’

That night Andy got all sorts thrown on stage and even more handed in to the dressing room by fans. The show went like a dream. The band played brilliantly and they were each high on adrenaline as they sprinted out of the auditorium and scrambled into the limos that would take them back to the hotel. Once there, they took the lift straight up to their floor.

‘Hey, Andy.’ Andy was getting a light for a joint from Benny. ‘Put that shit down and come with me.’ Tom was grinning from ear to ear. It was infectious; they were all grinning like idiots as they followed Tom along the corridor to Andy’s room. Tom opened the door. ‘Happy birthday, mate.’

A stunning young woman with hair and legs as long as Andy’s stepped forward to greet him. ‘Happy birthday, Andy,’ she said as she took him by the hand and kissed his cheek. Andy’s grin got wider.

Tom said, ‘Wait; there’s more.’ Another blonde girl appeared.

‘Twins,’ exclaimed Andy. ‘My dreams have come true.’

‘Still more,’ said Tom. A third girl appeared, identical to the other two. ‘Check under the mattress, top left. There’s some gear there. Enjoy.’ Tom closed the door and turned back to the others. ‘If that doesn’t cheer the boy up, I don’t know what will. Come on, you lot, let’s sort out our own party.’

Colin was incredulous. ‘Triplets. Fucking hell, Tom, where did you find them? The lucky little fuck.’ Then he went quiet and stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Wait a minute, what’s he gonna do with the third one? Holy Jesus, he needs my help.’ He turned and was almost back to Andy’s room before Tom and Johnny caught him and dragged him away.

‘There’s enough to go round, Col, leave the lad alone. It’s his fucking birthday.’

Chapter 35

‘The whole deal with the Devil thing blew up again about then,’ said Johnny. ‘It was in the States that shit seemed to gather most momentum. I don’t know where it all came from, other than that we were blues-based and bloody good at what we did, but it was a pain in the arse. I hated it.’

Alex nodded. She knew that Heartbreaker weren’t the only band to be accused of having dabbled in the occult, but it pursued them for their entire career. Word was that the boys had sat it out at the crossroads in the dark of a moonless night, waited and waited until the man came along. The dream-seller offering … not chemical highs or herbal thrills, nothing so mundane. The man offering wealth and power, and not so much fame as infamy. It was said that the man took Johnny Burns’s guitar and tuned it for him, trimmed his fingernails until they bled, made him who he was. The word was always that the man had dealt with Johnny, that it was Johnny Burns who coveted what was on offer, Johnny Burns who sold his soul, but that it was his bandmates who paid the price.

‘Never mind that since I got my first guitar, there wasn’t a day went by that I didn’t practise. I even took my guitar on holiday, much to my parents’ irritation. Paul is a hell of a drummer, but nobody’s ever suggested that he sold his soul for his skill with the sticks.’ Johnny stood up and paced, ran a hand through his hair. ‘They were strange times, the ‘60s and ’70s. On the one hand, revolution, liberation and freedom; on the other, ritual and sorcery, pagan beliefs and candlelit vigils. Shamans and politicians … sex and magic … censorship and oppression, and yet frankness and a desire to experiment … straights and freaks.

‘What’s that quote from
Easy Rider
? “… they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.” Jack Nicholson’s character says it right before he’s beaten to death. A white man walked on the moon, a black man was murdered for his beliefs. It was like people existed in parallel worlds, each ricocheting along their own separate track. Sometimes they collided, and then bad things happened; riots, arrests, beatings, sometimes murder.

‘The world was younger, it’s so different now that it’s hard to believe some of the things that went on. You couldn’t openly sing about sex or drugs, but you could drive pissed out of your head, racially abuse people, and treat women like second-class citizens, and no one batted an eyelid.

‘As the ‘60s tripped into the ’70s, peace, love and understanding acquired a dollar value. Business took over and stifled a lot of the spontaneity. “Free” became a dirty word; “profit” was king.

‘The times were spooky to start with, but they got darker. A lightness of spirit was lost and a harder, scarier edge came in. Everything was a threat: war, the bomb, the Russians …

’For instance, in January 1967, twenty thousand people got together in Golden Gate Park for a “meeting”. It was advertised as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In”. The tribes gathered all right, but they had no interest in politicians or self-appointed so-called gurus. They ignored the speeches, danced to the music the bands were playing, and got high together. Twenty thousand people were watched over from a distance by two policemen on horseback. Two. And there wasn’t a pick of bother. They even cleared up after themselves and left the place as they found it.

‘In contrast, Altamont in December ’69 was perhaps a sign of things to come. The Hell’s Angels took care of security and it all went wrong. They scared the shit out of the bands, never mind the crowd, beat up one of the guys out of Jefferson Airplane, and a kid in the crowd got killed.’ Johnny stopped, sat down suddenly.

‘That makes it sound like it was all bad. It wasn’t. It was a time of immense change. The world could never go back to how it had been before and that was good, but it could also be scary. It was a time of innocence lost. Or maturity found, I’m not sure which.’ Johnny paused. ‘We were talking about the tour. I’m getting off the track.’ He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

‘That was also the tour when the death threats started. I suppose we’d been off the loony-radar before that, but with all the attention the press was giving us, we were sure to come to someone’s notice. We were scared at first, especially Andy, because he got the brunt of it. We couldn’t believe there were people who wanted to kill us just because we made music.

‘It affected the band and the crew in strange ways. We were watchful for ourselves and each other and we grew even closer as a unit. We were like a big extended family.

‘Some of the guys started to get obsessed with death. They wanted to see if they could find out when and where they’d cop for it; you know, try to work out if any of the threats posed real danger. Or more to the point, if they could cheat death.

’They started playing around with daft Ouija set-ups, supposedly asking the spirits what was going to happen to them. Naturally, if they made contact with anyone, it would be Jim, or Jimi, or Janis, and they’d have these painfully long, spelt-out-one-letter-at-a-time conversations with them. Nobody was talking to Pete the plumber or Carol the cleaner, nothing so mundane.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘And of course they were all magicians, high priestesses or royalty in their previous lives, which they were also just discovering. No doubt with an eye to something magnificent next time around, should this one suddenly go for a ball of chalk.’

Chapter 36

November 1976

Johnny wandered into Tom’s room to find him, Colin, a handful of the crew and a gaggle of girls engrossed in a session with a home-made Ouija board. Not everyone had a finger on the glass, there were too many of them for that. Some were just watching and one of the girls was writing everything down.

‘Spirits, pray tell me how I’m going to die,’ said Phil, one of the sound techs. After a short pause, the glass started moving.

‘What’s it say?’

‘Shhh, I’m concentrating.’

The glass came to a halt and the scribe read out the answer. ‘It says, “You will burn. Others will burn with you.”’

‘Jesus, shit. I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘Take no notice, Phil, it’s one of those silly sods winding you up,’ said Johnny.

‘No, I swear …’

Tom grinned. ‘Spirits,’ he intoned, ‘pray tell how Johnny Burns will die.’

‘No. Don’t you fucking dare.’

It was too late. After a brief pause, the glass was in motion and the answer given. For all he didn’t believe in such things, thought it was nonsense, Johnny’s mouth was dry and his hands cold.

‘It says—’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Go on, read it out.’ Tom again, grinning at Johnny, enjoying winding him up.

‘It’s really odd. It says, “First by poison then by disease”.’ The girl looked up. ‘Totally weird. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

‘Trust you,’ exclaimed Tom in mock disgust. ‘Can’t just die once like normal people.’

Chapter 37

‘Christ, Johnny, that’s bizarre,’ said Alex.

‘Yeah, I know. And you know what? Phil did burn. He left us to head up a small crew for the Space Cadets and they lost all their squeaks and squints — their sound and lighting techs — in a fire in a cheap hotel in Eastern Europe. The fire exits were locked and they couldn’t get out, so Phil burned, and others burned with him.’

Alex had chills. She was glad when Johnny continued. ‘We were well protected on that tour. We felt a bit vulnerable on stage, but there were barriers to keep the crowd back and security to watch them watching us. It was surreal.’

Johnny thought for a minute. ‘There was one concert, I remember it was in Miami, we played a sports stadium there. Because it was an open-air gig, security was even tighter and the guards were stressed out of their heads. We’d just had this mega-threat, we were all going to be wiped out, it was God’s will because we had long hair, took drugs and frequented loose women. You know the kind of shit. Anyway, with everybody so jumpy, things were getting out of hand. One guy reached into his jacket for his camera and security jumped him. Another had a programme rolled up in his inside pocket; security thought it looked like a weapon and kicked the shit out of him. We all went crazy about it. We were scared to start with and the people who were supposed to be protecting us were scaring us even more. Worst of all, people who’d paid their money to hear the band were getting hurt for no reason.

‘We were stuck with the level of security from that point on, but we insisted on some changes in personnel and approach. Things calmed down, then levelled off at a pitch we could all cope with. God, I don’t miss that aspect of touring with such a big band.’

‘How did you all cope with it as individuals?’

‘Not too well, at times. The drug and alcohol consumption went up, that’s for sure. We all thought we were fine, we were handling it, but in reality, we were high-functioning addicts, each to his own poison.’ He laughed. ‘Or poisons. Tom was into everything, usually all at the same time. Do you know, I don’t think he was offered a single thing that he didn’t try, and people gave us all sorts of shit. He was like a lab rat, sucked it all up to see what it would do to him. Ended up in hospital a couple of times as a result, mad sod. All of us drank colossal amounts of alcohol, sometimes in the middle of a performance. We never took bottles on stage, but when Paul would be thumping out a drum solo, the rest of us would be in the dressing room passing round a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a joint.’