Nico was listening to Chopin and eating chocolate. Candle burning in a saucer, coloured scarf draped over bedside lamp. Smell of paraffin wax, Marlboro smoke and cooked heroin.
‘You want some chocolate?’ she asked.
‘No thanks … it gives me spots.’
‘Good … then I can squeeze them for you.’
She tutted away to herself: ‘Look, he keeps giving me poems.’ She nodded in the direction of the next room. Demetrius’s room. ‘Look …’ She handed me a piece of hotel stationery; on it was written in manic, spiky handwriting:
Museum Hotel, Amsterdam
Omega
I, who, neurasthenic, trembling,
Yarmulka atop my prematurely bald adolescent crown,
Convey Mrs Rabinowitz and Aunty Rene
In auto-erotic Escortina
To Cousin Naomi for tea,
Am the same He
Who stands before thee, erect,
Upon this wild and foaming shore,
Where spermatozoic dolphins crest the libidinous waves
That repeat and repeat evermore:
Omega. Omega.
I gave it back to her.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘From a literary point of view?’
‘No, no, no,’ she tutted again, ‘What do you think, that he should do such a thing? That he puts this stuff under the door?’ She threw the sheet of paper contemptuously across the bed. ‘You know he calls to me like a wiiild aanimal from his bedroom.’ She imitated him, her voice booming even lower: ‘Neee-co! Neee-co! I don’t answer him. He asks me what I think of his poems, but I know what he reeeally wants … it drives me craaaazy! Pestering me like some teenager.’
‘I think he’s got a crush on you,’ I said.
‘Jesus, you’re not kidding. D’you know what he does? In the middle of the night?’
‘No.’ But I could guess.
‘Slap. Slap. Slap … I can hear everything, these walls are like paper.’ She turned up the Chopin.
I noticed a pile of used disposable hypodermics on the bedside cabinet. She went through them fast. It’s hard to imagine that sharp metal bursting through the thin walls of a vein could become blunt so quickly. She didn’t have many accessible veins left. They were becoming harder to find, collapsing (or cowering) beneath the surface of the skin. Now she was injecting into her hands – a very conspicuous act for a celebrity junkie. She would cover up her scars with bits of rag, especially if the audience was close to the stage. When you’re the wrong side of forty you want to be left alone to get on with it, your habits are your own. They pay to hear the songs, that’s enough, surely?
‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’ I asked her suddenly. She didn’t seem disconcerted, but thought for a moment.
‘Sometimes, when there’s not enough youknowwhat,’ she laughed. ‘But even before that things start coming back at you.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh … all the bad things you’ve done, all the bad things that happened to you. It comes back … like a riot … the heroin calms me down.’
‘Maybe if you had someone, someone special? Perhaps you wouldn’t need it so much?’
‘I’m OK.’ She stopped, thought about it. ‘We-ell, maybe a rich doctor who could get me the hundred per cent pure stuff.’ She turned over the tape. ‘Have you ever been to the desert?’ she asked. ‘Oh, sure, I forgot, you were in Death Valley. I wish I’d been there with you.’
‘You say that now …’
‘I was in the Sa-haaara, making a film. Loneliness is not so bad when you expect it … but when there’s lots of people around you don’t want, that’s lo-onely.’
‘I know, there’s nothing more depressing than watching other people having fun.’
‘And the silence … You could shout and shout and no one would bother you, because no one could hear you … woooonderful! D’you know how good it feels just to shout?’
‘You do that on stage, every night.’
‘I guess so … but the desert… shouting to the emptiness … singing the void …’
Transmission was fading. ‘Don’t s’pose you fancy a beer with me and Echo?’ I was dry with all that sand. She didn’t … too tired … not so young any more.
I left her to the candlelight, the Chopin and the slap-slap of the ‘libidinous waves’.
We had Gregory Corso along for the ride. Somehow the good Doctor had lassooed him into his care. And Jackie Genova, the Black Crow, Cockney trouble-shooter, who always kept two loaded syringes at the ready in his jacket pocket while driving, so he could shoot at the wheel, eat on the hoof, had come along as Nico’s personal dealer. (In the eighties it was the hip thing to bring your own macrobiotic chef on tour with you – Nico always did things differently.)
Jackie made his living by secreting small torpedoes of heroin sealed in condoms in his rectum. He performed a flying doctor service for stricken junkies, forced to make a crash landing in alien territory. When he was a kid, Jackie had worked down the London sewers. Maybe that’s why he’d never grown above five foot … tender young shoots need plenty of light.
‘Awwroyt cocker?’ He pulled on the butt end of a Capstan and slapped me on the back. ‘Oym your original cheeky Cockney chappie.’ He laughed: ‘Eeeugh.’ It was a kind of reverse laugh, achieved by an inhalation at the back of the throat. It sounded like the dry hinge on a Borstal gate. ‘Yore Jim aarncha? Where’s the pyshunt?’
He looked like a crow, long beak, black eyes, slicked-back hair. He took me to one side. ‘Watch yerself, mate. Ev’ryone of ’em’s a cant. Don’t let ’em give it and don’t you take it. Knowwhamean? Eeeugh.’ He creaked his hideous laugh again.
The first thing Corso did was try and get Jackie to take a bag through customs for him: ‘Shay,’ he lisped through his broken dentures, ‘wanchadado me a favour, son, and carry this fer me … Bad arthritish … Okay?’
Jackie, immediately passed the bag on to Raincoat, who just put it down on the floor.
‘Is this someone’s bag?’ shouted Demetrius. Everyone shrugged.
‘So you carry Gregory’s bags now,’ said Nico, affronted, as they ran the usual gauntlet of customs men.
We played the Lukewarmia type of clubs. The Dutch are the most rock’n’roll-saturated people in Europe. Amsterdam is one big shopping mall on water for druggists and porno-junkies. Groups can’t get enough of the brain-scrambling, eye-popping treats on offer. So everyone plays Holland, all the time.
The guys munch gum. The girls zip and unzip their designer flying jackets … vampettes with blonde hair and red lips, bored to the back teeth with life at twenty. Their entire aesthetic was built upon a thumb-flick through some style magazine and the first Joy Division album. Only if you set yourself on fire, naked, could you expect even an arched eyebrow. The guys would carry on chewing, occasionally mentioning who they’d seen the night before that was better, who they were going to see at the Milkweig on Saturday that would be better still. We were just Tuesday night at the Paradiso.
Corso came on first. He decided he was going to out-bore them. He half-recited and half-improvised insults, spraying them with spittle. He’d look over his pince-nez to see if they were wondering who the weird fucker was Jackson-Pollocking them with splatter-verse. I played a bit of free ‘plinkety-plonk’, as Echo called it, on the piano, which pissed them off even more.
The club in Rotterdam was a true eighties Neo-Constructivist experience, lots of flat colour planes, grey upon grey, with few functional details like people. It was an art-house as doll’s house view of culture. Upstairs was an exhibition area. There were lots of things to touch. (As in ‘touching is a necessary precondition to cognitive awareness’.) We were going to be taken back to our aquatic foetal past. Art-house as uterus.
Jackie Genova was ahead of me up the stairs. A disembodied voice at the top told him to stop and turn round. He did so. In front of him was a door. ‘Come closer,’ the anonymous voice said. There were two peep-holes in the door. Jackie hopped forward, the way crows do. ‘A little closer,’ insisted the voice. He hopped another step. A squirt of yellow piss-coloured liquid shot out at what would ordinarily have been crotch-level but in Jackie’s case streaked right across his brand-new La Rocka shirt. A present from his girl.
‘Fackin’ cant!’ he screamed. ‘Nadine’ll go maaaad!’ He lunged forward with his two index fingers at the peepholes. A pathetic yelping scream came from behind the door, then some crashing and banging as arty Oedipus on the other side was subjected to the severest aesthetic criticism. Exit minus eyes.
Down in the dressing-room it was a veritable symposium. Nico, Corso and Demetrius were comparing ego sizes. Demetrius was quoting Yeats, the poet as Hero. Neither Nico nor Corso seemed in the least bit interested. At the same time the two of them were having problems communicating. Corso was fast, he talked like a Charlie Parker solo, in a nervous flurry of increasingly complex phrases. Nico, on the other hand, preferred the cryptic monosyllable with which she might preoccupy herself for hours. He was nice and polite to her, though, as they did share a certain predilection, and he’d entertained us all with a wonderful Nico parody in the sound check, a rendition of ‘When ze Rett Rett Robin/Goes Bawb Bawb Bawb-ing alongk.’
She didn’t take offence, and laughed along with us, so he must have had some charm. He was always a true gentleman with her, in his own decrepit way, and it was good that he was playing scummy clubs as well as the more tasteful POETRY READING TONIGHT snores. He was still a naughty boy. Like Nico, he seemed to be a hotel creature. One canvas holdall, full of personal chaos.
‘Demetrius writes poetry too, Gregory,’ said Nico.
At the words ‘Demetrius/poetry’ Echo’s ears pricked up like a sleeping pooch. He looked over at me with the dread anticipation of imminent embarrassment in his eyes. Demetrius stood up, placed his Bullworker on the chair:
‘Yes, Gregory, I do sometimes indulge in the Homeric art, but perhaps Nico is referring to a particular Elysian elegy of mine concerning a subject of a somewhat more intimate nature.’ He took a sniff of Vick and tried to sidetrack Nico. ‘The downright impertinence of people who inflict their vile cigarette smoke on others appals me, one fears for democracy quite frankly.’
Nico blew her Marlboro smoke in his face. ‘Aren’t you going to show it to Gregory?’
‘No need for that! Poetry should be composed on the wing, off the cuff, is that not so, Grégoire, mon frère?’ He took off his hat, held it against his chest like a Neopolitan tenor, and gave us a telephone voice recitation of Omega.
But when he got to the last line he seemed to go into a strange body-swerve and free-formed a brand-new verse:
… I ejaculate upon
Your seaweed shore
I emit my silver testament
Upon your golden pagan sands
My Omega!
He synched back into Earth orbit. ‘I think you’ll agree that in its central use of the female goddess archetype it resembles somewhat the metaphysical poets, the omnipotent metaphor in particular.’ He looked over at Corso.
‘Well … if you ashk moy opinion … at leasht I ashume that’sh what you’re doing … In moy opinion it, ah … shucks.’
‘Oh … really?’ Demetrius was taken aback. It was the first time in a long while he’d been contradicted by anyone, especially someone who genuinely didn’t give a fuck. ‘Well at least I try to confront the nature of the immortal, the eternal, while you and your kind merely wish to address the squalid and the unimportant, to rub our noses in the heathen slurry.’
‘Don’t lay that Devil shit on me, man!’ screamed Corso, jumping to his feet and squaring up to Demetrius.
‘How undignified!’ Demetrius loomed down at him, Big Telephono. ‘Sit down at once, and don’t be silly!’
Corso took a swing at him. He missed by a mile. They both swayed around each other like a couple of hopeless street-corner drunks … a few more shoves and insults. Then they calmed down. Demetrius was the first to offer his hand.
‘Come on, Greg … Give me a hug and let’s make up like brothers.’
‘Lemmealone, you goddam faggot!’ Corso pushed him away and went aloft to do his routine. After he’d finished, to the usual patter of tiny palms, Demetrius took the stage. With his overcoat buttoned up tight, his trilby and his beard, he looked like a Hassidic Rabbi at a chic Nazi revival meeting:
‘… And that was my good friend Mr G-r-e-g-o-r-y C-o-r-s-o-o-o doing some of his bebop poetry for your delectation and amusement … Yes, tonight we have a real Happening for you, boys and girls. In a few moments all the way from Valhalla, Nico and her Magic Trolls (who’ve just popped in from another Nordic saga). T-shirts and posters are of course available in the foyer … and may I add, at a most reasonable discount for you good people of Amster … er, Rotterdam.’
‘Get off, you dirty Jew!’ shouted a heckler. Demetrius stopped dead in his tracks. He surveyed the audience.
‘OK, which one of you said that? At least have the guts to show yourself.’
‘I shaid it, O Fat One.’
There was a faintly familiar voice at the back of the crowd … Demetrius peered into the darkness but couldn’t discern a face, so he decided to take on the whole audience. Give them a real lamming:
‘I’ve seen sheep in fields with shit stuck to their arses that possess more individuality than any of you dumbfuckers.’
A member of the audience applauded him.
‘I’ve seen rollmop herrings that show more signs of joie de vivre.’
The audience cheered and whistled with delight. It was the first time they’d found a laugh at a Nico gig … but then they hadn’t seen her with the Jolly Boys in tow.
Demetrius stepped into the wings, wiping his bald pate with a semen-stained handkerchief. A mixture of anger and triumph: ‘My God, did you catch all that?’
‘I certainly did,’ I replied, not knowing whether to congratulate or commiserate.
‘Really outrageous. They’re so far beyond any norms of decency yet,’ he paused to catch his breath, ‘they’re such breakneck conformists.’
I gave him a sip of my Tizer.
‘I mean …’ He foraged inside his overcoat pocket for the bottle of valium and the tube of Vick ‘… it’s not as if…’ gulp, gulp, sniff, sniff … ‘I even look Jewish.’
Since his previous spell of action with Nico’s unit, Toby had seen a tour of duty with a Grunge Metal outfit from Wigan and he now sported a wild bush of curly hair. Echo couldn’t bear it any longer:
‘Is that what yer might call an Afro ’airdo, Toby?’
‘Give us a break, mate,’ said Toby, stubbing out his Benson butt with his heel.
‘A’m not goin’ on stage with an extra from Superfly. An’ ’e’s’ – pointing to me – ‘never out of the fookin’ mirror. It’s like bein’ stuck with a pair of powder-room tarts.’
Really he was looking for any excuse not to have to do the dreaded deed. The bridegroom’s fear of the bride.
Toby threw a bottle of Tizer across the room. A fizzy brown Molotov burst against the wall. ‘I’m sick of drinkin’ fookin’ pop.’
‘I’m sick of playing fuckin’ pop,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t know ’ow,’ hissed Echo. Nico came in and saw the smashed bottle of Tizer.
‘Have the poets been fighting again?’
We persuaded Echo to at least come upstairs and play from behind the wing curtain. Raincoat took one look at him: fedora, wrap-round shades, jacket buttoned up collar-high.
‘Dearie me, Mister Misterioso, mucho tremuloso.’
Toby counted us in, but it was pointless, since Echo could neither see nor hear him properly. We usually played a short intro – cabaret-style – then Nico would stride on. This time she waltzed right into Echo, hiding in the wings. There was a ‘boom’ but no ‘woosh, woosh’. They were both freaking at each other. It was just Toby and me up there. One thin organ note and Manchester’s loudest drummer.
Then they both came on, Echo still buttoned up, and Nico cursing him under her breath as she took up the mike. She kept turning round to find Echo hiding directly behind me. Whenever I moved, he moved in the same direction, like a shadow dancer.
Echo was supposed to come in on the chorus of ‘Femme Fatale’. It had to be semi-sung, in that blank putdown Factory style. We hobbled up to the mike, like some bizarre pantomime horse, I sidestepped at the appropriate moment, Echo closed his eyes, so as not to see the audience. ‘She’s a …’ There was only a second’s pause, but it seemed to balloon into infinity. ‘… F … F … OH, FUCK IT.’
‘Another proud moment in a distinguished career,’ smirked Demetrius later in the dressing-room post-mortem.
Between the two of them, Nico and Corso had blown all the gear. Corso wanted Jackie to do a run for him, and gave him $200 to get a couple of grams of ‘the shame shtuff as you guysh’.
Now there could have been room for misunderstanding here, since at any given moment there was likely to be a bewildering array of substances being snorted, smoked, popped, cooked or cranked. But it was obvious what he was after. When Jackie handed him two grams of coke, Corso was none too happy.
‘You goddam little runt… I wanted shmack … whaddya gimme this shit for?’
Jackie wiped the spittle from his face. ‘It’s the same gear as wot they ’ave – they’re into coke at the minute, squire.’
‘What fuckin’ good ish coke t’me? You short-assed, pin-brained lil pimp!’
Raincoat had a solution. ‘Maybe we could take it off yer ’ands, Gregory – though I don’t think we can quite muster the full monte.’ He offered him $100 for the lot.
‘Jeshus Chrisht, it’sh like being in shome Cairo bazaar with you hustlers.’ Corso grabbed the money and flicked the wrap of coke contemptuously across the table.
Raincoat patted his waistcoat pocket. ‘Mercy beaucoop notra amigo de Penguin Modern Poets.’
Corso shook his head. You wondered why he bothered. The hustle never stopped. He hung on for a few more days, pestering Demetrius for some sort of fee … but the Nico T-shirts weren’t selling, nor were the bootleg cassettes and the ‘signed’ (by Demetrius) albums. Eventually, exasperated by his demands, Demetrius found Corso a refuge with a literary type. ‘One junkie’s enough,’ said Demetrius, firing a warning shot across Echo’s bows. Demetrius couldn’t quite cross Corso’s name from his address book, but future projects were unlikely. Later, he got a postcard from the Master Beat; it simply read: ‘Watch your ass!’
Echo had it narrowed down. There was his way of seeing things. All else was ‘Ka-ka’.
Nico was Ka-ka, as were her satellites and acolytes.
We were back in Amsterdam, sharing a room that overlooked the Rijksmuseum, which houses the Rembrandts.
‘They’re all like mud,’ he said. ‘Walls of Ka-ka … I went with Faith …’
‘But came out disillusioned?’ I quipped.
‘No … with Faith.’ (He had a horror of puns – they encoded a kind of middle-class unease and college-boy competitiveness.)
Sharing a hotel room with Echo was like doing time in a penitential cell. God knows, there were enough distractions in Amsterdam. We could gawk and gape around the red-light area, or dare to sample the fleeting joys therein? The beautiful, willowy Indonesian girls, maybe that special Professionelle of sterner stuff for him? Hmm? … Hmm?
‘Ka-ka,’ said Echo.
Next night Echo came downstairs with a reel of cable slung over his shoulder. He plugged the jack into his guitar. The other end was attached to his amp on stage. He intended to play the gig from the dressing-room. Toby and I reasoned, Demetrius threatened – to no avail.
Echo resembled the only thing we had that was close to ‘cool’. And he’d just fired himself.
The fish had eaten the snails and died. Now there was just a lifeless tank with a snowstorm of Milan Cathedral in the middle of it.
I suggested to Echo that he might have curbed his heroin abuse and kept a tighter grip on things musically.
‘What d’you fookin’ know?’
‘I know when to keep my head down.’
‘Yeh, you fuckers always do – comes natural to the spineless.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘No yer not… but yer fookin’ well will be, playin’ that bag of bollocks … spineless … yer ’aven’t the guts ter drop it.’
‘Hold on a second … why should I do myself out of the only gainful employment I’ve got just because you choose to put down your guitar and take up the needle instead?’
‘Yer could always give piano lessons. A Tune a Day. I guarantee results.’
As I left I heard the children singing their weird little rhyme again:
Hark! Hark!
The dogs do bark!
The beggars are coming to town.
One in rags,
One in jags.
And one …
‘… in the Velvet Underground,’ I muttered to myself, closing the gate behind me.