Somewhere over America, there’s a problem – something to do with the Boeing’s fuel supply that I don’t want to know too much about – and we have to make an emergency landing in Montana, where we sit on a runway for about three hours. Not long before take-off, I begin to feel not-quite-with-it, consumed by a feeling of drift and dizziness, a breathlessness I can’t shake off. I’ve been a bit bronchial for a couple of weeks, but now I’m wheezing like an old accordion and coughing like a pit worker.
There’s a limo waiting for us at LAX and we pile in, enjoying the largesse of RCA, who are paying for all this, a bunch of us from the UK press flown out for what promises to be another highly entertaining jaunt around the US. In LA, we’re meant to be interviewing English singer-songwriter Al Stewart, who’s done very well for himself since moving to California, his “Year of the Cat” single topping charts around the world. After we’re done with Al, we’ll be off to Oregon to meet up with Dolly Parton, who’s playing a rodeo – a rodeo! – somewhere up there. From Oregon, we’ll be heading to Nashville and the annual Country Music Association Awards. After that, it’s off to New York for a couple of days with Hall & Oates.
While we’re in Los Angeles, we’ll be staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel – immortalised for rock fans by The Eagles’ “Hotel California”. It’s a swish old place, it must be said, and room 249, where I am even now unpacking, is roughly the size of a small tennis court. The plan for tonight is a few drinks at the bar and a quick trip down the freeway to Santa Monica, where Al Stewart is playing. I’m still feeling a bit washed out, but a couple of Dos Equis make me feel pretty chipper. Our RCA chaperone, Robin Eggar, has hired an open-topped Toyota jeep to drive us to Santa Monica. Needless to say, we all feel rather swanky on our way to the gig, the breeze in our hair and the sun going down over the Pacific. On the way back, however, it’s suddenly very cold. I start shivering and then can’t stop. I spend a restless night wracked by heavy-duty sweats and chills. The next morning I can barely stand and I’ve started coughing blood, to boot.
Robin Eggar takes one look at me and wonders if I’m in a fit state to drive up to Al Stewart’s place. I tell him I’ll be fine. He doesn’t believe me, but off we go, and when we get there the UK press posse are agog at the vertiginous beauty of Laurel Canyon, where Al lives in some splendour. I’m the first one to Al’s door, a big oak thing with wrought-iron inlays. It’s the kind of door you want to rap robustly. Sadly, all I can muster is a rather weak tap. The door opens, however, and there’s Al Stewart looking wealthy and tanned.
“Hi, I’m Al,” he says, beaming, holding out a hand. I reach out to take it and am vaguely aware of the look of surprise on Al’s face when I pitch forward, falling with a crash through his front door, like a tree keeling over after being cut in half by a chainsaw. I’m aware then of footsteps running up the steps behind me, people leaning over me and then a terrible hush, a graveyard quiet – the keen anticipation of people somewhat regrettably preparing to deal with an unexpected tragedy, a colleague snatched from them by a whim of feckless fate. I want to reassure them that I’m OK, but I can’t because I’m losing consciousness, going out, in fact, like a light.
The next thing I hear is birdsong and lapping water, which isn’t as reassuring as it sounds. Am I in some benevolent ante-room of heaven, surrounded by fountains, seraphim and much cooing in the afterlife’s verdant foliage? This seems rather unlikely, so I take a wild guess and figure I’m still alive – if only just – and probably in Al’s garden. Which is of course where I am, stretched out on a recliner by the side of his pool. It’s apparently been decided that I need to see a doctor and Al’s gone to the trouble of calling his man, who has a surgery on Rodeo Drive, where I am now whisked by a chauffeur named Stan, if memory serves. I’ve been stretched out on the back seat of Stan’s limo, where I lay for most of the drive. Somewhere along the way, I’m aware enough of Stan slowing down to wonder what’s going on. I lift my head and through the window see a tall handsome black man returning Stan’s wave from the sidewalk across the street. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him and ask Stan if it might be Jim Brown, the former pro-footballer turned actor, star of things like Rio Conchos and The Dirty Dozen. It’s not Jim, though. It’s another NFL legend who’s turned to movies after retiring from the game.
“That’s OJ,” Stan says. “OJ Simpson.”
I wish I could at this point say I felt some convenient premonition, a whiff of bloody ghastliness to come, nightmarish images of frenzied stabbings, throat-cuttings, a white Bronco on a Los Angeles freeway. But I don’t. The man waving from the sidewalk seems, in fact, like a decent enough cove, if somewhat overdressed.
At the doctor’s surgery, I have a ton of blood tests and X-rays before someone who looks like they should have their own TV show tells me I have viral pneumonia, which means I can’t travel until further notice and must take immediately to my bed at the Beverly Hills Hotel while my erstwhile travelling companions fly on without me to Oregon and Dolly Parton. The next few days are hell – a procession of room service meals and endless television. I can’t sleep, so the TV day starts early, at 6:30am and with a choice between New Zoo Revue on Channel 11, Jake Hess Gospel Time on Channel 30 and Captain Andy on Channel 40. Up next: Captain Kangaroo, Tennessee Tuxedo, Bull Markets, I Love Lucy and something called Hodgepodge Lodge. The afternoon is full of chat shows, where the guests all look like the undead in a George Romero gorefest, and the hosts have the stricken aspects of the recently embalmed. After the talk shows come the game shows – the completely surreal Liar’s Club, the incomprehensible 25,000 Dollar Pyramid and my own favourite, The Newlywed Game (“Cindy! Tell us – on your wedding night, was Brad here a spunky monkey or a limp chimp?”) where the contestants vie for spectacular prizes, including a year’s supply of Porkfest TV dinners.
After three days of this, I am on the brink of insanity, and start to prowl the hotel corridors, a degenerate in the halls of affluence. I hang around the legendary Polo Lounge, where Hollywood’s most fabled stars are reportedly wined and dined by fawning studio executives and deals are cut and plans are hatched. There are any number of well-dressed dudes sporting tans from suns none of us have ever seen and teeth that gleam like igloo walls, but the nearest I get to spotting someone you could describe as a star is hunky, square-jawed, barrel-chested Stuart Whitman, memorable opposite John Wayne as a rakish gambler in The Comancheros. I try to strike up some conversation with the Polo Lounge barmen, but they’re a suspicious lot. Some code of bartending omertà quickly asserts itself and an ominous silence prevails.
By the end of the week, I’ve had enough and head down Sunset Strip to the Rainbow Bar & Grill, where I have my first drink in what seems a lifetime. I follow it with a few more and a couple after that and by the time I leave, I’m cheerfully drunk. Out in the parking lot, there’s dust in the air, headlights sweeping through the night and someone I immediately recognise standing there looking baffled.
Before you know it, I’m walking towards him, hand outstretched.
“Harry Dean Stanton!” I shout in a bizarre hail-fellow-well-met bellow, startling myself in the process.
“Harry Dean Stanton?” he says, the grizzled screen veteran giving me a squinty little look, like he’s trying to get me into focus. “Hell of a coincidence, kid,” he says then. “That’s my name, too.”
And with that, a car pulls up beside him, he falls backwards into the passenger seat and roars off into the night, one arm waving out the window as the car disappears around a corner and he’s gone, gone, gone.