Dreamworld E-Book

Benjamin Berton

• Herausgeber: Ventil Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 381

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

London 1977: Daniel Treacy drops out of school, bored to death. With friends, he records a few songs thanks to a few pounds sterling lent to him by his parents and sends the finished single to the legendary radio DJ John Peel, who is immediately thrilled —the Television Personalities are born ... In the turbulent life of Daniel Treacy we meet Jimmy Page, Bob Marley, Alan McGee, David Gilmour, Wham!, Nico and Kurt Cobain. "Dreamworld" is the very real, very crazy story of a genius in music history. Enriched with plenty of scene and period color from British pop from the 1960s to the present, »Dreamworld« tells of all the ups and downs of a legend who was once called the »Godfather of Indie Pop«. The translation by David Marshall appears with a fully revised color picture section and numerous illustrations.

Leseprobe

BenjaminBerton

Dreamworld.The fabulouslife ofDaniel Treacyand his bandTelevisionPersonalities

Translated by David Marshall

Benjamin Berton, born in 1974 in northern France. He received the prix Goncourt du premier roman in 2000 for his debut novel “Sauvageons”. He has written a ten novels, which have been translated into various languages. He lives and works in Le Mans and writes for the French-language music press.

The original French edition was published in 2020 under the title »Dreamworld: Ou la vie fabuleuse de Daniel Treacy«.

© Platinum Books 2020

© Ventil Verlag UG (haftungsbeschränkt) & Co. KG, Mainz, 2022

Use of this material, in full or in part, is only permitted with expressly agreement of the publisher. All rights reserved.

In Cooperation with Tapete Records

ISBN print 978-3-95575-178-4

ISBN epub 978-3-95575-621-5

Design & layout: Oliver Schmitt

Layout picture gallery: Kai Becker

Ventil Verlag, Boppstr. 25, D-55118 Mainz

www.ventil-verlag.de

INHALT

The King’s Road 1977

The kidnapping of Paul McCartney

Geoffrey Ingram (1)

Part Time Punks

Clarendon Hotel Ballroom

…And Don’t The Kids Just Love It

Seven years

Nico

Bright Sunny Smiles

Picture gallery

Geoffrey Ingram (2)

With Emilee

Opening the show

Alison Wonderland

Happy ending

Black hole

Butterfly

Millennium Dome

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Chronological markers

Acknowledgements

Photo credits

To Ian and Daniel, who is named after the hero of this book.

THE KING’S ROAD 1977

The King’s Road is the epicentre, the snake and the ladder, a fragment of DNA that has encrypted modern life. There would have been no story to tell at all if this ancient royal thoroughfare along which, until 1830, only the King of England could travel, had not seen the coming together, the establishment and the encounter of people and places altogether weightier and more significant than wars or epidemics. The King’s Road is the epicentre, the tale, and the refuge.

At the outset, the King’s Road is merely a private lane used by King Charles II to go to Kew gardens, one of the most wonderful, verdant spaces in London. In the course of time (things change) the upper classes obtain the right of way and houses spring up, so that by the beginning of the 19th century, the road has become a veritable walk of fame. The King’s Road stretches along a little less than two miles, from Sloane Square in the East, on the fringes of Belgravia and Knightsbridge. Then, running through Moore Park, touching on Chelsea and Fulham, the King’s Road crosses Stanley Bridge and joins Waterford Road, to give rise to New King’s Road. In fact, the same road has several names and stretches even further, to become Fulham High Street and Putney Bridge, before ending its course due West in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The King’s Road is an upper-middle-class road, an opulent road, a road in which for a very long time now not just anybody can buy a flat. You either need to work in a bank, or have well-born parents to take up residence there. But we’re talking of a time when Chelsea was not yet quite the Chelsea of today. Four decades ago, just a handful of years, but more than enough for things to change, it was a very different place.

At the time we’re speaking of, the King’s Road is truly the centre of London, and in its own way, the centre of the world. It is 1977 and Daniel Treacy has just walked past the boutique which, a few months earlier, Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, renamed for the umpteenth time. Daniel Treacy just turned 18 in May. He’s wearing a pair of cheap jeans and a checked blue on blue shirt. His only touch of originality, as far as his clothing is concerned, is a leather cap, pierced with small metal studs, covering his hair which is fairly short for the time, but which falls in untidy locks over his neck. The summer has been lousy. Just the opposite of the previous year’s scorching weather. It has rained a lot and the streets have never really dried out. Treacy walks past the window and looks at the changes which have been made to this punk hangout since the beginning of the year. The cheap clothes shop has radically changed: from a temple of trash clothes to a trendy boutique, it’s now a high-tech zone with ridiculous little lights and screens on the side walls. The punk movement is really weird. Daniel doesn’t really know what to make of it all. There are interesting things, but he is suspicious of the people pulling the strings behind the scenes. Too many movements which originate within these walls smell of opportunism and social climbing. People come from all over to buy Westwood’s rags and wear them as if they were in disguise. Some of this gear costs a fortune, but that doesn’t discourage the customers. How do they do it? How can they be so young and yet so well-off? Daniel doesn’t understand, so he’s on his guard. They are the same ones that you find these days at the concerts, in the pubs: they go out at weekends then scarper back home to their parents, or to their university. You’d think they were part-time punks.

Originally, 430 King’s Road was home to a boutique equipped with a juke-box, called the Paradise Garage. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood changed the name to Let It Rock, then Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die. It became SEX in huge capital letters, between 1974 and 1976, but now it’s called Seditionaries, partly because McLaren’s status has changed enormously over the last few months. During the winter, the Sex Pistols had hit the headlines by signing with EMI and taking the piss out of presenter Bill Grundy who had interviewed them on the BBC in December. Bill Grundy had been particularly inept in suggesting to Siouxsie Sioux, one of the leading lights of the Bromley Contingent, to have it off with her after the show.

— I’ve been just dying to meet you, she said ironically on the set.

— Filthy sod.

— Dirty fucker.

Bill Grundy’s career was ruined. And the Bromley Contingent more or less deserted the Pistols’ concerts in the months that followed. You just can’t say things like that during a live broadcast. The punk movement has really taken off over the last few months and now has a considerable following. Daniel doesn’t quite know where all that might lead. There isn’t enough music in there, not enough songs, not enough lyrics. On top of all that, he doesn’t like their repudiation of the 60’s. You can’t just cross out the Kinks. The Seditionaries window is sparsely furnished as always. It’s one of the few shops where the proprietors have deliberately stopped anyone from seeing inside. Jordan doesn’t seem to be there today. She’s by far the coolest girl that Daniel knows. Jordan comes from Seaford. She’s the best dressed punk around and not only because she can now borrow McLaren and Westwood’s clothes whenever she likes, in order to promote them. Jordan’s real name is Pamela Rooke and she has just recorded a song with Adam and The Ants. Daniel hasn’t listened to it yet, but she told him about it the other day. They are more or less friends with each other.

At present, his mum has told him to deliver this bundle of laundry to number 42, Oakley Road. Daniel carries it on his shoulder. It weighs no more than three pounds. It’s practically nothing. It’s already been paid for by Marley’s assistant. Once he’s delivered his package, Daniel will walk up the King’s Road to go to work. It’s been several months since he gave up school. His mum had insisted that Peter Grant, the boss of Swan Song Records, take him on for a trial period, and he does odd jobs for them. There’s no need to hurry: there’s rarely anyone who turns up before 11 o’clock, and even then, only on a good day. So, Daniel takes his time. Why does he get up so early? When he’s older, he’s convinced that he’ll sleep as long as possible under a thick eiderdown from which he will only emerge to write songs and make love. Daniel isn’t quite sure whether it’s better to make love under the eiderdown or on top of it. He arrives at Bob Marley’s house. It’s a really big place, but nobody answers, as if the assistants have taken the day off, or haven’t arrived themselves yet. Marley lives there with his group, The Wailers, so it’s really surprising that there’s not a soul around. Daniel rings again, his bundle of laundry on his shoulder, full of freshly starched fashionable clothes. He doesn’t usually just leave a delivery on the doorstep. Mum is one of the best laundresses in West London. She has a good reputation and the important people in the area have no hesitation in sending her their dirty washing. The laundry is always impeccable, which speaks for itself. The firm never lets you down. Marley knows the address. He used to deal there even before he was famous. Now that he seems to have settled permanently in London, his assistants are constantly bringing every soiled item he has to the laundry, as if he had undertaken a major cleaning-up operation upon arriving from his home country. From what Daniel could gather, the singer had had a lucky escape from an assassination attempt. That’s why he’s left Jamaica and prefers to live here like a Mogul, along with his band, his cook, and his friends.

Daniel is still waiting when the door finally swings open. He’s stunned by the vision before him. The most gorgeous girl he has ever seen in all his life is standing in front of him, wearing only a tee-shirt and what looks like pyjama shorts. He blushes instantly and grabs his bundle as if to protect himself.

— Hi there, she says. I’m sorry, but I didn’t hear the bell.

— I’ve come to deliver Mr Marley’s laundry.

— Great. Come in for a moment and leave that in the hall. I’ll be back in a tick.

The girl turns to go and Daniel can’t keep his eyes off her buttocks, thrusting up between the shorts and the raised tee-shirt. She’s quite simply perfect, so dark-haired, so young, so white-skinned. Her hair is long and free as the wind. She’s bare-foot and gives the impression of gliding over the tiled floor like an angel. When she comes back, Daniel is in the hall. Before him sweeps a wide Victorian staircase, a bit grubby, but quite majestic. The house is full of plants, packing cases, musical instruments. One of the doors off the entrance-hall leads into a sort of living-room furnished with pouffes and sofas. On the coffee table lie the remnants of a party, and ash-trays, and a pungent smell of weed sticks in your throat when you go into the house. You’d only need to breathe the air of this place for ten minutes to be completely stoned, he thinks. The girl comes back. She’s been to get a purse, but Daniel would have preferred her to have put on a dressing-gown.

— My name’s Cindy. You English?

— Ye..yes, he stammers. Are you the only one here?

— Of course not. But I don’t know where the cook is. And the others are still at the studio.

— They start early.

— They didn’t come home last night. Are you interested in music?

— A bit. I play in a band.

— Really?

Cindy Breakspeare realises that she is talking to a young guy and that she shouldn’t encourage him. Bob has warned her about this. She is far too naïve. In Jamaica, she couldn’t easily have this sort of conversation, but abroad, she’s not so much on her guard and always on the lookout for distraction.

— I hope your band works out. Here, this is for you.

She hands him a five-pound note.

— It’s already paid for.

— Keep it as your tip.

— It’s far too much. It’s more than the price of the laundry.

— Doesn’t matter. That’s all I’ve got.

He tries to give her the note back in order to have the opportunity to brush her fingers again, but she moves away. He looks at the bundle of washing lying at his feet for the last time and takes a step backwards. The girl’s eyes make him feel giddy.

— Thanks, he says again as she walks him to the door. Very nice of you.

— See you again.

Her lips are red, just as lips should be, and slightly shiny. Her cheeks are still flushed from the night and her look is so clear that it sparkles like a Coke. Daniel is convinced that he has seen the most beautiful girl on the planet. He doesn’t realise how right he is. Cindy Breakspeare had been elected Miss World the previous year. She’s Canadian, but has lived most of her life in Jamaica.

Just as she’s about to close the door behind him, she hesitates and takes a step forward. Daniel almost shudders. For a fraction of a second, he thinks that she’s going to come up and kiss him. He doesn’t know why, but this thought flashes through his mind and his heart almost skips a beat. And then he hears the sound of car doors sliding open, and men laughing, as they approach the doorway.

— What’s up, Cin? You got company?

They laugh. Two, then four guys come down the steps. Black, tall, dressed in bizarre clothes, well, like reggae musicians. Some have short hair, others an afro style piled up like a wedding cake. Daniel steps aside and the Wailers file past him and go inside, laughing and determined, like a phalanx of legionaries.

At the back, last to get out of the car, Bob Marley closes the ranks. He’s tall and walks with a slightly solemn gait, supple and elegant. He’s wearing a sandal and a bandage on his left foot instead of a sports shoe. Daniel looks at his face, worn out by a night of recording. His hair is dishevelled and his shirt gapes open over his chest. He’s got a guitar in his hand. He walks past Daniel without so much as a glance and goes down two steps to throw himself into Miss World’s arms. He kisses her greedily, a hand low on her hips, sliding between her fantastic buttocks, then he pulls away from her with an ease which surprises Daniel. The Wailers have disappeared and Marley takes the big staircase which leads to the living quarters. The door closes and it’s over. He’s the invisible man. Daniel thinks to himself that there is a huge difference of appearance between the leader of a band and his musicians. He’s not sure that that is a good thing. What is it that makes some people superior to others? He thinks of his own band. It seems to him that Ed and he work more or less on equal terms, even if he has the last word because he is the best composer, the coolest and the most motivated. Ed has his own priorities, a band of his own, so it’s not quite the same thing.

It only takes him a few minutes to reach the offices of Swan Song Records. The King’s Road is filling up with people. Cars, pretty girls, people coming and going. There are office workers and punks, students and bankers, a whole world coming to life and drifting by, in an ordered ritual. The record label created by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in 1974 is still in its early days, but has already mounted several hugely successful operations. In 1975, four of the albums produced by the label had reached the Billboard 200, the weekly chart of the 200 best-selling albums in the United States, and remained there for significant periods. Swan Song Records has signed up Bad Company, Maggie Bell, and obviously releases Led Zeppelin’s recordings under their label. Page and Plant dream of providing all sorts of artistes with an environment where production and marketing aren’t a substitute for inspiration, and artistry is in the making. Swan Songs will perhaps be the long-awaited El Dorado. The god Apollo, borrowed from William Rimmer’s painting, The End of the Day, which is the label’s logo, can well brandish his fists in the air: In London, and soon in New York, Swan Song Records is a long way from singing its own swan song. Behind the scenes, parties and orgies are legion as, so rumour has it, is the practice of black magic, urged on by Jimmy Page. He now lives a good part of the year on the shores of Loch Ness, in Aleister Crowley’s old place, the accursed manor of Boleskine House. His drug consumption is worrying and, according to what the staff at the King’s Road says, he rarely makes an appearance at the office. Nobody complains. Most of the employees are afraid of Jimmy Page. They say that when he comes into a room, the temperature immediately drops by several degrees.

When his mother had announced that she had managed to get him this first job by threatening Peter Grant, the label’s boss, not to return Robert Plant’s trousers and briefs, the whole family had had a good laugh. Daniel doesn’t know himself how much of this story is really true, but nothing surprises him when it comes to his mother. He knows that she would do anything in her power to help him achieve his aims in life. Music has become a sort of obsession. He thinks about it all the time. He would have liked to paint, but music is the in thing at this time. You can’t get away from it. At present, he has enough money to think about recording something. His father has loaned him the extra eighteen pounds he needs. It’s only a question of weeks now. But all the same, he thinks, is it wise to work for Led Zeppelin given everything they say about them?

— Mister Grant is charming, his mother replied. And I’ve been laundering Jimmy Page’s jeans for more than ten years. I’ve never seen the devil jump out of his underpants! It’s perhaps the only thing that ain’t jumped out of them, if you ask me, she said, bursting out with laughter.

— I don’t think I want to hear the rest, his father sniggered.

The young man’s first days had been easy going. He had spent most of the day chatting with the assistants, drinking tea, and practising the guitar on the sofa. A few people had crossed the main office from time to time to discuss things with Grant. Daniel had talked a bit with Maggie Bell, whose music he knew, and whom he found very pleasant.

Once or twice, Grant had come out of his office and had asked him to deliver a parcel to Maida Vale, to the BBC studios or to two or three other places of his choosing. The packets were carefully wrapped in brown paper and tied tightly with string. Daniel had assumed that they contained cassettes or tapes. On the second day, Grant had asked him to withdraw a little money for him, and then the following day to do just the opposite by depositing an envelope of cash at the bank. The work was as easy as that. He had crossed Robert Plant’s path before the band’s departure on tour, but the singer had not spoken to him directly. And then there had been that period of particular upheaval: Grant had joined the band and the label’s centre of attraction had shifted to the United States. Led Zeppelin was in the process of touring America. The label was devoid of its managers, nearly all of whom had made the journey to support the four musicians who were its driving force. This period had been even quieter than the previous one for Daniel, whilst thousands of miles away, Led Zeppelin were about to enter a dark stretch, accumulating difficulties and slowly sinking into the blackest time in their history.

It was usually one of the female employees of Swan Song Records who passed on to Daniel the main news from the other side of the Atlantic, and it was almost invariably bad. The band had been very ill prepared to embark on this tour. They were surrounded by a large number of disreputable friends, who trailed violence and many other esoteric incidents in their wake. Peter Grant and John Bonham themselves were interviewed by the police about a racist attack during a concert at Oakland in California. The concerts generally lacked inspiration and the road team was permanently under tension. Going on tour in the United States can quickly turn into a nightmare when you lose control of things. And that was exactly what was happing to Led Zeppelin.

The news that was to bring this inevitably disastrous tour to a tragic end did not, paradoxically, come from over there, but from England. Just before a concert in New Orleans, Robert Plant got a call from a member of his family telling him that his son Karac was ill, followed several hours later by the news that he had died. His world crashed about his ears. Minutes later, Plant wrote a communiqué which he got Associated Press to publish, putting an official end to the tour. He returned home on the first flight out, devastated. His son had died of an infection due to a stomach virus.

When the news reached the London offices of Swan Song which, of course, didn’t take long, all of the three or four employees still present were shaken with sincere grief and an understandable anxiety. What would become of the label if Robert Plant were not to get over this stroke of fate?

Daniel exchanged one or two words of reassurance with the other employees. And then Peter Grant and the others turned up, exhausted and haggard, worn out as much by grief as by the life they had been leading over the last three months or so. You could see the terror in their eyes. Plant obviously had gone home. Some joined him a few days later to attend the funeral. And it was then that Page turned up again. It was the first time that Daniel had come across him in the label’s offices. Whether it was before or after the funeral, he didn’t recall, but he remembered his first impression when setting eyes on the best guitarist in the world. He had said to himself that he didn’t look human. Page had turned to Unity McLean, who was drinking her coffee in the staff room while reading the newspapers, and had just asked, while hardly giving him a glance:

— Is he the new odd-job boy?

The young woman had said yes and added nothing more.

Page had gone into Grant’s office and come out a good hour later, accompanied by the boss of the label. They had crossed the main office, and then gone up the spiral staircase which led to what Daniel had taken to calling the forbidden room. It was a room which was double locked and to which only certain people had the key. It was evident to everybody that this room hid something fishy and was used for some clandestine activity linked to Swan Song Records. Nobody really thought that it involved fraud or any criminal activity. No, it was more a case of some sort of occult business, in association with the Devil.

Daniel had tried to question Unity who, of all the girls, mainly secretaries, working for the label, was the one with whom he got on best. But the young woman had pretended not to know anything, or perhaps she really didn’t know what went on there. But that day, Daniel was surprised that Unity McLean was not only already at work, but that she asked him almost straightaway to go upstairs with her to help clean the room.

— Just the lad I need, she greeted him. I thought you were never going to get here. There’s work for you to do.

Daniel just smiled at her.

— Guess who I saw this morning?

— I don’t know.

— Bob Marley.

— Oh yeah? Cool.

Unity was the daughter of a former English cricket star. Her father had got her into a job as a secretary at CBS where she had worked until 1975, forging friendly links with several celebrities who regularly haunted the studios. She had notably been very close to Johnny Nash, one of the Jamaican’s protégés, whose cover of Stir It Up, one of Marley’s titles, had ensured his fame. Unity wasn’t just your common or garden secretary. She knew people and had even invited Keith Moon to her wedding. Daniel liked her ability to mix with people, her conversation, and her slim legs. Unity was exactly the type of girl he would have liked to marry, sparkling and full of energy. To him, she was the incarnation of the best that swinging London had to offer. But she paid him no attention. No attention of that sort, at any rate.

— Stop daydreaming, and come with me.

She led him upstairs and took him to the reception room which was open and devastated. The furniture was overturned, pushed back against the walls. The floor was covered with rubbish, glasses, paper and what looked like hair cuttings. In the middle, was an eiderdown with a red and brown blood stain of twelve inches or so in diameter. Daniel was taken aback.

— What’s been going on here?

— Nothing serious, don’t worry. There are things that it’s best not to know about.

Daniel moved forward to have a closer view of the blood stain which, having dried, was no doubt less impressive than it must have been a few hours before. The sheet was stained by what appeared to be a mixture of faeces and semen. A little further off, he discovered the head of a chicken and on the other side of the room the corresponding body stuffed with hmmm…. On one side of the room the place was littered with condoms, some full and others half emptied onto the floor, on the other side there were little bits of aluminium foil, blackened spoons, and fag ends. On the wall, somebody had drawn esoteric symbols, a stylised he-goat busily sodomising what looked like a sort of giant snail with pear-shaped tits.

Daniel didn’t utter a word. Unity opened a big bin liner and began filling it with everything that was lying around. She rolled the sheet and the eiderdown into a ball, stuffed them into another bin liner and told Daniel that he should take them to his mother’s. He nodded and helped her to get rid of everything that was more or less compromising, and would have prevented the char ladies from cleaning the room.

— You wanna take the chicken home with you? He laughed, waving the headless animal about.

Cleaning up took a good half hour. Daniel used soapy water to erase the sodomite goat from the wall. It had been drawn with a mixture of shit and lipstick and actually stunk like a real goat. Daniel asked Unity why there were just the two of them this morning and why there was nobody else around.

— I don’t think anyone has the heart to work at the moment. You know that Jimmy didn’t go to the kid’s funeral. He just didn’t go. You know what that means?

— For the band?

— We don’t know the ins and outs of it all, but if you were someone’s best friend, don’t you think that you’d go to his son’s funeral, if he died?

— Suppose so.

— Well, only John went. And Peter and the others of course. But not Jim. That says a lot about their relationship.

When they had more or less finished, Unity made sure the door was closed, while Daniel took the bags of rubbish downstairs. They both came back to the main office to make themselves some tea. The kettle had hardly started whistling than the door opened. It was Jimmy Page. He looked terrible. He was livid and carrying a guitar in a dark case.

— Is Peter here? he asked, without so much as a hello or anything else.

— No, there’s nobody here today, Mr Page, replied Unity politely. Daniel pretended to busy himself with brewing the tea. He secretly hoped that Page would not even notice his presence.

— Make me a cup of tea.

Page didn’t even bother to take off his leather jacket. He sat down on the sofa and pulled the guitar from its case. He began to strum on it quietly as you do when you just want to pass the time. He played a traditional series of chords which he often altered after the second or third time by inserting a note which shouldn’t have been there. As if he were looking for something. And evidently, he was looking for something.

— You can sit down, you know. I don’t bite.

Daniel and Unity settled into an armchair next to him and sat back to wait patiently for the tea to brew. After maybe three minutes, Unity poured the brown liquid into the cups. Page was still playing. They listened in awe. Daniel had made huge progress on the guitar and watched Page’s fingers running over the neck of the instrument. He played with a delicacy and an agility that Daniel was far from capable of. His own movements were clumsy and sometimes he missed the strings with his fingers or didn’t manage to hold them down completely. Page allowed the tea to cool for a few minutes before setting aside the guitar and sipping it slowly without a word.

Daniel thought that it was almost impossible to be surrounded by people for so long without saying anything. It was something that he’d never managed to do. He thought of breaking the silence, but didn’t dare. Unity got up to go to the toilet. Page took up his guitar again and then he stood up and left the offices of Swan Song Records.

Later, Daniel would pretend that they had discussed things together and that the two of them had had a jam session. He would tell this story in the course of two or three interviews, but with nobody there to check it out. On another occasion they were even supposed to have spent the evening together and had a few drinks. What would Jimmy Page have thought about 14th Floor, the first song that Daniel had written? Would he have seen some merit in it? Nothing is less sure.

In one single day, he had encountered Bob Marley and Jimmy Page. And there was no getting away from that.

THE KIDNAPPING OF PAUL MCCARTNEY

— You all sure you wanna go? It’s gonna take us ages.

— We don’t even know if he’ll be there.

In the gang, nobody really remembers who thought up the idea. Daniel knew that it was him, and that he had managed to get the others to accept it without seeming to be interested. That was his technique. He would suggest things and go off somewhere after having said enough for the others to take the idea on board and then be persuaded in the end that it was their idea. That day, there were John, Gerard, Joe, Edward and finally Daniel. You might say it was the Oratory gang as they had all gone, or still went, to the Oratory School situated a little way off. But it would have been an exaggeration to consider them as forming a gang. They indulged in no illicit activities, apart from smoking cigarettes and drinking the occasional beer, playing music, and talking about girls in a great conspiratorial fashion. They were at most a group of friends, just boys, not quite yet men, but nevertheless with ambitions in life, dreams and everything which goes along with them.

— Quite honestly, remarked Gerard, I don’t see how we’re gonna manage it. There will obviously be folk around and we don’t have no plan to speak of.

— Gerard is right, went on John, in the same tone as his brother. It’s obvious that it’s not gonna work. You tell ’em, Joe, they’ll listen to you.

Joe said nothing. He was the most intelligent boy in the gang, the brainiest one, the one who was a good scholar and the most reasonable. The future would prove it in a certain way. But Joe often reacted slowly, as if the problems submitted to him were not of sufficient substance for him to resolve them straightaway.

— That’s why we gotta do it, explained Edward. Do you wanna write songs or not? McCartney must ’ave a secret.

— Yeah, let’s stop talkin’ about it and let’s go.

— I ain’t even got a bike.

John and Gerard had one bike between them and Daniel and Ed the same. Joe trotted along behind them. Their plan was simple. They would ride to Saint John’s Wood, hang about outside 7 Cavendish Avenue, wait for Paul McCartney to come out and, when he turned the corner, they would surround him and take him to some waste ground on the corner of Wellington Road and Circus Road, to interrogate him.

— You got the masks Daniel?

— What masks?

— The masks for God’s sake. Don’t tell me that you ’adn’t thought about that. D’you want us to be recognized?

— Sorry.

— Stop looking for excuses not to go. It’s the middle of August. There won’t be nobody around the Hospital, interrupted Edward. Get pedallin’ instead.

Joe was having trouble keeping up. He was already trailing more than a hundred yards behind when he waved to indicate that he was giving up. He thought a moment about taking the bus to Regent’s Park, but he preferred to go back home. His instinct told him that this escapade would lead to nothing. He didn’t want to ruin everything now that they had just passed their final exams a few weeks earlier and were about to start earning their living. The Bennett brothers had been taken on in an armoury. He was still looking for a job. Daniel had not turned up to take the exams. He had left school a few months earlier with the blessing of his parents. He had done odd jobs, worked for charitable associations and other businesses. None of them had any idea what to do with their lives. They all liked to play music and laze about. Daniel and Ed wrote songs but they didn’t know what to do with them at that point. They liked sitting there at the corner of the street, watching the world go by. You have to admit that they were well placed to witness the changes taking place in Britain. Cavendish Avenue was at the other end of the world, a couple of steps away from the Abbey Road studios. Their universe was populated by stars and personalities. They had already come across Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards, Brian Jones, and a few others. Ed’s aunt was friends with the daughter of Mervyn Peake, the writer, and everybody knew exactly where Syd Barrett lived when he came up to London.

Getting to Paul McCartney’s house was another matter. You had to cross Hyde Park from south to north, skirt around Paddington Station, via Little Venice and then head in the direction of Saint John’s Wood. It took about an hour and a half, and was a journey with which they were not very familiar. Despite their bravado, the five friends, now reduced to four given that Joe had let them down, were a bit diffident this far away from their stamping ground. They were exploring unknown territory. The cars seemed more aggressive than on the King’s Road, where people drove slowly in order to admire the mannequins and the shop windows. Around Paddington, the streets were narrower and the whole world seemed to be closing in. The people themselves were not as flamboyant. Everything seemed dirtier and damp. It was not a question of social class. The people were just not as cool. They were normal, workaday, and not so good looking.

They stopped several times to get their breath back, smoke a cigarette and have a drink of water. It was a fine August day. There was no rain and the sun made a few shy appearances from behind the lofty clouds.

— And what if ’e ain’t there?

— Well, we’ll leave it at that.

— And what if ’e comes out wiv a friend?

They had no means of knowing whether Paul McCartney was even in London or away on holiday. The former Beatle had bought the house at 7, Cavendish Avenue in 1965. He had moved in in 1966, taking an opposite stand to the other Beatles who had deserted the centre of London in order to isolate themselves and live far from the madding crowd. McCartney had chosen to do the reverse, as he had fallen in love with this three-storey Regency style building, which wasn’t up to much on the outside, but which he had adapted to his tastes over the years. Evidently, the first stage had been to enclose the house by a wall and to equip it with a security system which sheltered the musician from the persistent solicitations of the public. He’d had a few changes made later on, some fittings, a small extension to the rear, but nothing which made it very different from what it was when he’d bought it. Cavendish Avenue had never been turned into a bunker. McCartney had regularly allowed photographers in and you could see him in the garden with his family, if you stood at a spot slightly overlooking the wall.

Daniel and Edward had had long discussions about what they’d do with McCartney once they’d got their hands on him. They had thought of several ways of getting him to reveal his secrets of composition, the most efficient of which was to remove his heart and brain, to render them down in a liquidiser and then drink the juice. They’d thought at one point of cutting off his hands and having them grafted in place of their own, on the basis that it was the hands that composed the melodies and that it was quite probable that even grafted onto another body, they would still remember how to write songs. The memory of hands. Transubstantiation. According to their research, it sounded like a workable plan. They didn’t have a car in order to take McCartney out into the country and interrogate him. They didn’t think that coercing him into composing masterpieces was a viable method. To tell the truth, they weren’t at all sure that their plan had any chance of success, and so they were relieved when, approaching 7 Cavendish Avenue, they saw that the street was crowded with people, cars and journalists mounting the guard.

— Oh shit, exclaimed John. Looks like it’s gonna be complicated. The four boys dismounted and leant their two bikes against a wall. They got their bottles of water out of their rucksacks and took a swig sitting on the pavement.

— Sod it. Looks like we ain’t chosen the right day.

They looked at each other in disbelief, their eyes bulging with the effort of getting there. Something must have escaped them. The street was crowded with people. There were vans from the BBC and other major Northern networks, one from an American network and journalists with perches and muffed microphones waiting impatiently, their eyes fixed on the front door of number 7.

— Do you think he’s dead?

— Nah, said Daniel. There’d be undertakers. Something else must be up. In any case, the kidnapping idea is done for.

— Just as well.

— Defeatists.

Ed plucked up his courage and moved towards the house, clearly determined to know what was going on. The three others followed him. Their hair was awry and stuck to their heads with sweat. Their shirts were open and the bottom of their trousers still rolled up to prevent them catching in the bicycle spokes. Ed went up to one of the journalists and asked her what was going on.

— Elvis, she replied. Elvis is dead.

The four boys looked at each other while moving towards the house, weaving in and out of the groups of avid journalists.

— They’re waitin’ for a declaration from McCartney. That’s all.

— Elvis, for God’s sake

As they made their way, a journalist held up a microphone to George to interview him.

— Are you a fan of the Beatles?

— Yeah, replied George, slightly dazed.

— What does the death of Elvis Presley mean to you?

— ’e was fat ’n flatulent. Partic’ly towards the end. But ’e was Elvis Presley all the same.

They burst out laughing. Fat and flatulent. That was it all right. What did they care about the death of Elvis? And what would happen, now that he was dead? Everyone could play rock music. Daniel had known for some time now that you only needed a few quid to release a record, and that for little more you could record for hours in a studio, and you could do all that even if you hardly knew how to play. That would be the aim now. He’d had a guitar now for what? Six or eight months, not much more. That was no handicap. Elvis couldn’t play anything either after all. All the same, it was a pity he was dead. Daniel’s father did a good imitation of Elvis Presley. His mother enjoyed his records and he was convinced that she had fallen in love with his father partly because one day he had done his imitation of Elvis for her. Just for her. It was true that his voice was irresistible. Elvis’s that is, not his father’s, even if his imitation, which he sometimes did at a few well-oiled family meals, was a pretty good one. Perhaps there was an idea for a song in all that. The day Elvis had died, she had cried her eyes out, because it reminded her of when she was young and when her lover had sung just for her like Elvis Presley. Her love had died now, and Elvis had taken his leave too. Life’s a bitch.

They waited for more than half an hour to see how things would turn out. Whenever journalists stopped them for an interview, they all said the same thing. “’E was fat ’n flatulent. Partic’ly towards the end. But ’e was Elvis Presley, all the same”. They all thought that it was the most brilliant analysis of the subject.

Just after four o’clock, Paul McCartney came out of the gate to his house and went up to the journalists to say a few words. He was wearing casual clothes, a white short-sleeved summer shirt and a pair of cream canvas trousers. They moved closer to get a better view of him, but he was surrounded by the crowd of journalists. McCartney related one or two anecdotes about the day that Elvis had invited the Beatles to his house in Hollywood. It was twelve years ago, day for day. The Beatles had been on a promotion tour of their film Help! which was about as bad as the junk which Elvis had been appearing in for years. Elvis had welcomed them in person. He had just said “Hi guys” and they had drunk whisky and Seven up (Elvis loved Seven up) on the biggest sofa they had ever seen, a sofa as long as a freight train. Then Elvis had played I Feel Fine on the guitar and had more or less forced them to play along with him. They had played each other’s songs out of respect. The ones who knew how to play the guitar at least, and that had lasted all evening and a part of the night, playing, and drinking Seven up, talking among equals. At that time, the Beatles were more fashionable than Elvis, who no longer produced anything noteworthy and had decided to put an end to his public appearances. This meeting was more than just handing over to a successor. Some have said that Elvis dreamt of working with the Beatles on a whole album, but that Lennon had told him where to get off. Fat and flatulent towards the end.

Elvis is dead. Long live Ringo!

You could see such placards at the time and laugh at them. It wasn’t so funny now that Elvis was really dead. But there was a place to be filled.

So, it was time to go home and start working on it seriously. They got on their bikes and told themselves that perhaps the idea wasn’t such a good one after all. The kidnapping of Paul McCartney had been a fiasco, even if it had taught them a thing or two all the same.

— I know where Syd Barrett lives, laughed Daniel on the way home.

— And David Bowie.

— And Malcolm McDowell.