chapter four “JUST ON THE BRINK, DARLING”
At seventeen, due to complete his secondary education and A levels, Nev Charles reached a crossroads. The two paths before him: push on with music despite his failure to attract sponsors besides his parents, or enter university, where he could tweak his talents—namely, writing—to fit a practical, paid trade. In front of his wife, Morris Charles said he’d be happy with whatever Nev decided, but frequently he pulled his son aside to lobby for university. Helen argued fiercely for the riskier path.
NEV CHARLES:
“You’re just on the brink, darling”—that was her mantra. She told me I was destined to be more special than university boys. But I wasn’t so confident. Well, I should clarify that: I had grown very confident—some might say unreasonably cocky—about my talent and my uniqueness. What I was iffy about was the ability of the wider world to get it. There was a lot coming out of the UK at the time, and you’d think the giant success stories would be encouraging, but for me it broke somewhat the opposite. I had no band of mates. I wasn’t cute like Paul [McCartney], I wasn’t sexy like Mick [Jagger]…. My guitar playing was improved but still not what one might call “good,” and offstage, in person, I wasn’t terribly witty or charming. Anyone would have been taking a risk, putting a camera in front of my face.
So I ended up choosing university, and it was an incredible botch. I was trying to cut it both ways—I figured I could do practical studies to please Dad, and do gigs on the side around London to please Mum. I chose to study journalism, but I realized very quickly a problem: [whispering] Real people aren’t as cooperative as the ones in our heads. Overall it made the writing much less fun and inspired. And it was dangerous, really, to have me attempting to capture fact! It’s shocking to say, but I often felt a strong urge to punch up the things people said and did—big journalism no-no, that. [Laughs] It was a disaster and I knew it, and in the face of that failure the balance of my time began to shift toward songwriting all day, and then playing whatever gigs I managed to get at night. There weren’t many—without Mum it was difficult to get myself booked.
And let’s not forget I was free in London for the first time in my life. The city distracted me to a massive degree. I don’t know how students there manage it, getting up early every morning when there’s the night before to contend with. The pubs and the excitement and oh, God, the girls! The beautiful, brilliant, enchanting girls…
SANDRA COKIE, NEV’S UNIVERSITY GIRLFRIEND:
We took a class together called Introduction to British Media. We never spoke then but I did take notice of him because of his red hair, very shaggy, and the way he’d arrive late and then fall asleep three-quarters through the lecture. Everything about him intrigued me. I wondered who he was, especially after he stopped coming to class at all.
A popular pub near campus—that’s where we first had a chat. He’d walked in with this guitar round his neck, and he was haggling with the man behind the bar about playing a few songs, but the man was firmly telling him that this was not a concert hall: “We have a jukebox for that.” I’d had a bit to drink with my mates but I recognized Nev straightaway, so I went up to him and I said, “You’re a naughty boy, skipping school.” I suppose that was cheeky enough—he stopped arguing with the man, and he turned toward me.
We dated on and off for about a year, during which time he was barely managing passing marks. At times it was lovely between us, especially in the beginning because I think he was… well, yes, he was a virgin. He was so sweet and appreciative the first few times, you know, and then for a while he was very attached. I was young, and obviously there were things I found irresistible about him. His talent, of course; he was quite clever for a Brummie boy. I’d make him a ham sandwich in the kitchenette at my hall of residence—he was scrawny, incredibly underfed—and by the time I was trimming off the crusts he’d have made up a funny ditty just to make me laugh, about the mustard being jealous of the mayo, or whatever.
Things began to change a few months in, when his parents came to visit and treated us to dinner at a posh restaurant. I dressed us like proper grown-ups—I trimmed his hair back and put a temporary curl in mine. Mr. Charles was kind and pleasant, a very modest and quiet man, but the entire meal nothing seemed to please Mrs. Charles. As pretty as she was, she couldn’t manage a single smile that night, neither for me nor for her son. I remember she ordered a steak, bloody, and as she cut into it she harangued Nev with a thousand questions while he stammered and actually apologized: Why wasn’t he playing more, writing more? Had he tried to get into the labels for auditions? Didn’t he know how lucky he was; didn’t he see the other English boys with lesser talent making a name? And couldn’t he see now, finally, that university was wasting his time? On that last one she paused and glanced over to me.
It was never the same with us after that. I don’t think Nev meant to be mean, but oh, I would cry and cry over the things he’d say. Any music I liked, he’d savage. Joking, or so he’d say, while flipping through my Beatles or my Righteous Brothers, about what a sheep I was turning out to be. But, funny thing: He’d sulk sometimes if I didn’t do what the other girls did. Miniskirts were popular then, but I felt self-conscious about my knees—they sat like onion bulbs in the middle of my legs—so I was more conservative and covered-up than the other girls, and he’d criticize me over that. I’m trying to remember exactly how he put it, but… The last time he broke up with me, he said something like we weren’t a fit because he wanted more than a boring life. Then I’d see him out gallivanting with one pretty, disposable bird after the next—they adored him, flocking and flitting about.
He’d figured it all out by then, but it would still take me a while. I’m not ashamed to admit I was heartbroken.
Near the end of his second year, nineteen-year-old Nev Charles received devastating news that abruptly stopped his hedging. On March 24, 1968, during a sudden storm in Birmingham, Helen Charles was struck by a hydroplaning motorist while crossing a road near her home. She died instantly.
NEV CHARLES:
Dad was in shock. He rang the school to tell me, and before I could finish packing a bag to come home he rang back, as if he hadn’t just, and broke the news to me all over again. This went on for some time with him, the amnesia of his grief, and I was very worried. On top of that, of course, I was suffering through my own sorrow and guilt. Total darkness.
The story about the accident made several of the papers, so all kinds of people turned up to the memorial—workers from the Charlie’s shops who tried to prop up Dad, and these amateur actors and singers and dancers I couldn’t recall, from Mum’s early life. They all approached me in the church, with their sad smiles and handshakes, to tell me how beautiful and talented Mum had been, to tell me how proud she would be. I’m looking at them, at these faces wobbling through my tears, and I’m thinking, Who are you people? How come you didn’t come visit when she was alive?
Dad had asked me to sing at the service because my making music had meant everything to her, had been the thing that could pull her out of her fog and bring her back to herself. I thought about writing something new as a tribute. But the idea of forever connecting her death, which was so bloody unfair and agonizing, with my own creative work, which had given us both such pleasure and pride… It just was not possible. And so I did “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” her old favorite, with my acoustic guitar. One of the only times in my life I’ve done a cover, and I barely made it through. I couldn’t steady my voice, couldn’t bear to look at Dad in the front pew. I did it with my eyes closed and thought of what Mum might say if she were standing right there behind me, if it were an audition for Decca instead of her bloody goddamned funeral.
I’m sorry—it still makes me so angry to think about. My mother was far from perfect but she was lovely, and for better or worse she was a force—pushed me to get where I am, and I still hear her voice in my ear every day.
I stayed in Birmingham awhile, to help my father regroup. I took some shifts at the Charlie’s in Hagley Road, and reminisced about the times I’d spent there as a boy. I think I even wrote a couple more installments about my old friend Thomas, just to see what it felt like. Then one day Dad and I were in the kitchen—he was flouring up the cod, and I was lining the baskets—and he said it was time for me to get back to London, to stop worrying about him and get on with my life. I told him on the spot that I didn’t plan to go back to school, that it only felt right to do what Mum would have wanted. I asked him for his support, and he wiped his gunky hands down the front of his apron and pulled me in for a hug. “You have it, lad,” he said.
Late in the summer of 1968, Morris Charles sold his interest in the Charlie’s outposts in Coventry, and gave a portion of the profits to his son. With enough money to cover living expenses for a year, Nev Charles left England bound for New York City.
NEV CHARLES:
America fascinated me, so full of potential and characters. It also had a progressive spirit that I found appealing. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and before them Woody Guthrie: I liked the idea of them, the image of the wandering observer, the songwriter as respected and important. Plus none of them was the most brilliant vocalist or instrumentalist, and that let me know there might be room for my talents.
I was deciding between New York and San Francisco, and New York won simply because the fare was cheaper out of London. I’m glad for that, because ultimately I needed the toughness and edge of New York. Had I been among the hippies in California, I strongly doubt that I would be on this jet chatting to you today; I’d be nodding off in a drum circle somewhere with a needle up the arm. Not saying there haven’t been times I found myself adjacent to that predicament [laughs], but it’s the New York inside you that helps you kick.
I didn’t know anything when I first came, so I took a flat on the Upper West Side, a tiny one-bedroom with a tub in the kitchen. Ninety-Sixth and Amsterdam. Today that area is Equinox and bloody Starbucks, but back then it was thieves and rent boys and worse, and at night it was an apocalypse, dodgy being an understatement. When I wasn’t watching my pocket, all my time was spent on the subway getting downtown.
The Village, that’s the New York I had pictured from England. At night I hit as many open mics down there as I could; during the day, I played in coffeehouses, if they’d have me, or around the benches in Washington Square. My mum had always stressed to me, “You have to perform as much as you can—grab any opportunity, no matter how small. You never know who’s got eyes on you, Nev.” So anytime I was in the Village, whether I was looking for another stage or chatting up buskers or just taking a stroll down Bleecker Street, I made sure everyone saw my guitar in my hands. I’m not sure what I was expecting, trying constantly to be seen, to have some talent inside me recognized by someone, by anyone. But I did sense that my shot could very well be improvised, and come at any given moment.
I was stuck in the lease uptown, but it wasn’t long before I hustled and found a few temporary living situations that were better suited to my new life. American women, nice, accommodating women—they were wild for the accent, and if I tossed off a tune incorporating their name I might have had a place to stay for weeks.
ROSEMARY SALDUCCI, RECEPTIONIST, RIVINGTON RECORDS, 1965–81:I
There were three of us girls on First Avenue between Eighth and Ninth. One of my roommates met Nev at this café on MacDougal where she was waitressing at the time. So she brings him home along with a couple bottles of wine she’d made off with, and she says to him, “Hey, you gotta play that funny song for my friends!” He picks up his guitar and does an early version of “Chemist Kismet,” right there in our living room.
He camped out on our couch for a month and a half. We were very modern girls, so I’m sure Nev got upgraded from that couch a few of those nights. But maybe I’m only speaking for myself.
NEV CHARLES:
“Chemist Kismet” I’d written during winter in London, probably when I was supposed to be in a lecture. I’d had this horrid head cold that I couldn’t put up with any longer, so I popped over to the chemist nearest my hall of residence, and in the back running the shop was one of the saddest-looking men I’d ever seen. Mid-sixties and jowly and completely overwhelmed by his customers come to pick up their prescriptions. But he soothed each one of them, answering their questions and wishing them to feel better. I went back to my room, downed my medicine, and wrote about him from what I imagined to be his perspective. I gave it a jangly sound, very up-tempo, for irony but also to please a crowd. In the verses I go through his customers and their ailments—[singing] “Mr. Trout / Has the gout / Vitamin C will knock it out”—and in the chorus it’s about how he can’t mend his own broken heart. I never say it expressly in the song, but I had imagined the chemist to be a widower. Later it made me think of Dad, obviously, but it was written before. Anyway, I always played that one for American women, because it’s probably the most stereotypically English thing in my repertoire, and they loved it.
ROSEMARY SALDUCCI:
My main job was at Rivington Records as a receptionist for Howie Kelly, who was such an asshole but paid me all right. Artistically, Howie had no clue what he was doing, no ear whatsoever—the company started as cheap rental studios, just these pay-by-the-hour holes that any hack with a guitar could use, as long as they paid up front. But Howie had family loot and a law degree, and he liked to believe he was this master dealmaker—he could see people coming in with big dreams and figured he could bully his way into whatever he wanted.
HOWIE KELLY, FOUNDER, RIVINGTON RECORDS, GESTURING AROUND RIVINGTON’S OFFICES:II
This place was my dream, and now it’s my legacy. Everybody wants a piece of the Rivington catalog, I’m telling you—in the nineties we made lots of money from rappers, these hippety-hop idiots looking for stuff to sample, and now more than ever we get requests from the TV and movie and advertising people. And that archive, that gold mine, it’s all ours—ironclad! It’s amazing to think how wide open things were back then and how somebody like me could sign a struggling talent off the street and give him a chance, and he’d actually be grateful and we’d work well together. Today you couldn’t think of starting a record label from scratch because, you know, first of all there are no records anymore—no more physical product to sell! Added to that, you’ve got a million Johnny Fucktards on the internet whining and giving everything away for free. It’s not a business model that makes sense to me, and I was glad to give it to my son to worry about. It’s his pain in the ass now.
When I started the company, Rivington was just half of this floor, including my office and a couple studios, but over the years I built it up. At the beginning we had a few bands and singers that I was managing. I kept my ear to the ground and went to shows to see who the kids liked. We had the How Now early on, and they did very well when they were under me. My memory is not the best, so I have a hard time recalling how I brought Nev in.
NEV CHARLES:
It happened so fast. I was sleeping on a couch one morning when lovely Rosemary, bless her, jostled me awake and ordered me to get dressed and come with her to Rivington. She was very bossy, that one—you’ve spoken to her? She still has that bray to her, yeah? The most alarming alarm clock ever designed! [Laughs] “Wake up, wake up, asshole, let’s go!”
ROSEMARY SALDUCCI, SHRUGGING:
I just thought he was interesting and different and deserved a chance. Plus my infatuation was over—I had a new boyfriend who was beginning to feel funny about Nev always being around. I needed him to get off our couch.
NEV CHARLES:
In half an hour, I was in Howie Kelly’s office, doing some of my best tunes. And a couple of hours after that, he’d put a contract in my hand. It turned out to be a crap contract… but sha, it was a contract!III Imagine: Somebody was going to give me money, finally, to do the one thing I was dying to do. The thing my mum had wanted for me.
I. As is the case with most support staffers, Salducci, now 70, was privy to the most top-secret shenanigans of her higher-ups. With her red-framed glasses, big barrel-rolled hair, and strong New York accent, she was the breakout star of Emergency on Line 1, a 2007 Sundance documentary about showbiz assistants, in which she described herself as a “tough bitch with a long memory.” When we met at her rent-controlled apartment in Astoria, Queens, and I congratulated her on the success of that film, she promised that she had “tons of other color” up her sleeve. To my delight, and occasionally my horror, she did not disappoint.
II. Kelly, 82, held court in the New York offices of the label, now run by his son Mark. Joining us was his attorney, Stephen Rowe of the firm Abbott & Deane, with whom Aural negotiated the terms of this interview. However, Kelly himself frequently violated those terms; over Rowe’s objections, he spoke freely about Opal Jewel despite their earlier legal spats over her contract and use of her image.
III. Early Rivington deals varied in the amount paid to artists upon signing, but all of them—including Nev’s and, later, his contract with Opal—had one thing in common: The label would manage and thus reap a percentage of everything the artist did, from albums to concert tours and other lucrative appearances. Today, such agreements, called 360 deals, are frowned upon by artists as overreaching and exploitative.