I heard a distant sound of an audience applauding. R.D. appeared like a magician as he moved into the light and spoke down a microphone. His eyes looked mad, his voice was full of menace.
‘And now I give you my life. Would you like my life, or are the rights already acquired?’
I shot back in my seat. Had he been deceiving me all along? Perhaps it was something that he had slipped into my tea when I wasn’t looking. After all, R.D. had been around in the hippy era and hippies were fond of sprinkling substances into other people’s food. That was my only possible explanation. How else could he make me believe that I was experiencing his past in my body?
Raymond Douglas smiled and disappeared from view. I found myself transported to another time. His time. My reality had suddenly turned into R.D.’s experience. As I drift out and into the light, the spotlight, I try to get up but I am trapped. There is the sound of an audience coming through the speakers, and the room closes in. The audience comes closer and closer. Then I become Raymond Douglas and I am on stage in his place. The audience is cheering, teenage girls are screaming and I am bowing to their applause. Where am I? The audience seems like it is from another time: girls in miniskirts and bouffant hairstyles smiling at me. It’s noisy, so noisy … so much noise and adrenaline. I look at the band. There they are: Dave, Mick and Pete, all smiling at each other. They all look so young. They’ve obviously played something very exciting, because the audience is continuing to stand and applaud. I actually feel like I am alive and living in this place, with this audience. Is this my reality? Was it my past looking forward? Or is it the future looking back? Am I alive now? If this is my present? What a fantastic place to be. I am on a stage, in the spotlight, and everybody loves me. Just like Raymond Douglas must have felt at his family party, I am the centre of attraction. In the front row of the audience is a sexy-looking brunette, licking her lips as she stares at my groin. I shout out to a bouncer at the front of the stage: ‘Where am I?’
The bouncer shouts back: ‘The Pier Ballroom, Southsea.’
Why am I here, of all places? Why has he chosen to bring me here? The Pier Ballroom must have been magnificent in its heyday when the big bands came to play. Now it is a relic from another time, on its way out, along with the music halls and the end-of-the-pier variety shows. The Kinks have just played the last chords of ‘You Really Got Me’. Why isn’t it a more prestigious setting? The Blackpool Opera House, when the Kinks opened for the Beatles, would surely have been more appropriate, or even one of those famous Ready Steady Go! programmes. I would have loved to have met Cathy McGowan when she was young.
Now I am in the world of Then, sitting backstage after the show waiting for the crowd to leave so that we can go to the front and pack up our equipment. I look up and see Dave laughing and joking with Mick and Pete. They accept me as R.D without question. A pretty girl with red hair and a Mary Quant miniskirt runs into the dressing room and starts to hug Dave. He immediately puts his hand up her skirt and gives her a french kiss. Moments later I find myself in the room next door with the girl with dark hair who was standing in the front row. She is kissing me all over and is starting to undo the zipper of my hipster trousers.
The question, ‘Why Southsea?’, is still on my lips as I feel the brunette slide down on to her knees and kiss my groin. As I close my eyes, I feel the girl’s wet tongue swallow me up like a vacuum cleaner. My whole body seems to be drained down into that one area of sublime wetness and suction. I feel the brunette’s hair, which had been stiffened with lacquer, as her head rolls from side to side at my waist. I smell her lipstick and face make-up as it begins to rub off on my body.
The whole room starts to revolve when suddenly I hear the voice of Raymond Douglas boom down into my ear like the master of ceremonies: ‘Why Southsea lad? Because this was as good as it got.’
I find myself caught in the nowhere land of present and past, no-going-back. My body is about to explode with pleasure. I try to ignore R.D. but he keeps shouting in my ear.
‘Enjoying it, lad? Because this was great. Tonight, for the first time, you discovered something precious, vital to your existence. This was the thing that saved me and will save you from yourself. Tonight, as well as having the best blow-job of your life, you discovered your audience.’
By now his angry voice is almost shattering my eardrums, but the brunette is in full flow and my body is hers. Raymond Douglas turns up the volume and continues mercilessly; like a television evangelist.
‘Tonight you and your audience recognized each other, and that long – so long – lonely battle was nearly over for you both. The Gods had answered your prayers, and the confusion and gloom which had been yours since before puberty had finally been swept aside. Hallelujah!’
By now I am groaning uncontrollably. My head is banging against the door and the brunette is heaving back and forth, still with her head attached to my penis, her mouth slurping like a giant suction-pump. Still Raymond Douglas is shouting down the microphone. Even louder. The brunette growls. I make noises like a wild animal caught in a trap. Raymond Douglas shouts like a mad preacher.
‘Now you can conquer the world. Now … now … now!’
I find myself shouting with him. Suddenly the room turns dark and the brunette disappears.
Blackness.
I open my eyes.
I am back in the studio with Raymoond Douglas. He looks frozen in time, in the same position as when I first saw him.
I felt somewhat embarrassed. It was the same feeling I had when I discovered that two people had to make love in order for me to be born; and it left me with the same feeling of guilt. What made me feel more uncomfortable was that Raymond Douglas seemed to have manipulated the whole incident to prove a point. I was not sure how he had achieved this, I had given up trying to rationalize the absurdity of the situation long ago, but through it all I felt that something special was at the end of this experience. This strange old man was not just telling me about his life, he was making me experience it for myself, the same way he had done with his songs. He made people think that he was singing for them, and his experience was also theirs. Perhaps Raymond Douglas was opening doors in my memories that I had forced myself to close long ago. I was trying to regain my composure when R.D. started at me again.
‘The audience had not just been applauding and cheering, it was not just screams of excited teenage girls, it was a genuine appreciation of something new and something different. I felt uniqueness: we had our sound, and it was, to us and to our audience, totally original.’
I felt happy for Raymond Douglas, and honoured that he had shared that experience with me – even if I had been embarrassed by the incident with the brunette.
I wandered home aimlessly. The experience had indeed opened a door into myself. Why was I going through this experience? I only wanted to do my job, after all. They had given me what had seemed a relatively simple project, but now I was caught up in R.D.’s world and I was not doing my job properly.
At home the phone rang. I waited for the answering machine to click on so that I could screen the call. Paranoia was suddenly inside me. I heard my own voice say, ‘I’m not in at the moment. Please leave your name, number and the time of your call.’ It was Julie from the office. I picked up the telephone and she immediately fired off questions.
‘Where have you been? What have you been doing? How is the work going? When will I see you?’
There seemed to be an underlying series of questions beneath the obvious ones. Suddenly she had become an inquisitor. It made me uncomfortable.
‘I can’t see you tonight, I’m very tired, very confused,’ I explained.
‘What are you confused about?’
‘I can’t tell you right now. I don’t want to speak over the phone.’
‘Are you afraid that we’re being bugged?’ She laughed.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘bugged. I really feel I’m being followed and scrutinized. Every move I make is being monitored in some way.’
‘You’re paranoid,’ she said.
‘Perhaps, perhaps I am. Yes, paranoid.’
‘You must have the work completed soon, you know that.’
‘I know that,’ I replied. ‘I can do my job. Don’t worry about it. The book will be finished on time.’
I put the phone down without even saying goodbye. I realized that Julie could have been planted by the Corporation. Damn.
I thought of R.D.’s Julie Finkle and I felt as though I wanted to set off to find her. All R.D.’s clues were in my memory now. I promised myself that I would search and I would find her.
I went to bed. Before I could reach for my sleeping pills, I drifted off. I dreamt. The dream was like the present; as if it was the only thing that existed. My only reality.
Dave Davies and I were in the van outside a ballroom somewhere up north. We were shouting abuse at each other. Brian and Mick Avory tried to stop the fight but we were determined to destroy each other. We punched, scratched, spat and clawed. Skin started to come from our faces as our nails tore away flesh until blood was exposed. Dave bit my cheek. I kneed him in the groin.
Then I was in the back garden with my father. He looked at me and smiled as he held up a headless chicken. He threw the body down and the chicken attempted to run around without its head. Back in the van, there was blood. My head smashed against the side of the van. Some skin came away from my elbow as I retaliated and smashed Dave in the face.
Then, we were on stage singing ‘You Really Got Me’ as we were in the flashback to Southsea, only this time there was blood streaming down our faces. As the song reached a climax, I saw the van outside, with its doors open. There was blood, our blood, and chicken feathers smeared all over the inside, as if there had been some strange, ritualistic sacrifice. I woke up sweating, and after I took a long shower, I went to the bathroom mirror to see whether or not I still had skin on my face. I was relieved to see that it was intact. I took two sleeping pills and went back to bed.
The following day I decided to try to see Julie before going to meet R.D., but as I turned the corner I saw my boss talking to another executive outside the Corporation building. I called Julie’s office but there was no reply. I rang my extension to leave a message in case she should call me, and was amazed when it was engaged. I panicked and slammed down the phone. As I ran back to the Corporation building a limousine pulled up outside and my boss got in. The limousine drove straight in my direction, as if the driver was following me. Although I was still slightly hung-over from the sleeping pills, I remembered Julie saying that she thought I was becoming paranoid. To escape detection, I ran through the back streets of what was left of the old city and as soon as I was in the clear I jumped on a commuter car and made my way to Raymond Douglas Davies. As I turned the corner to approach the studio, I saw the same limousine pass by. I ducked into a small alleyway at the side of the building and watched the limo as it slowly cruised past. I strained to look inside, but the windows were tinted. This was a poor part of the city and it was obvious that there was not an abundance of limousines in the area. It was all too much to be a coincidence. When the coast was clear I ran towards the front door and pressed the entrance buzzer. R.D.’s voice immediately came down the intercom:
‘It’s OK. The door’s open. You’re late.’
I wondered why the door was open. Had my boss been in to see R.D.? Was I being set up by the Corporation? Was R.D. being blackmailed? As I entered the room where he was sitting, I suddenly had this dreadful suspicion that R.D. might even be the head of the Corporation. I looked at him sitting there: a pathetic old man. He was already pouring me out a mug of tea. As I sat down he leaned over and smiled in a benign way and pushed his Coronation mug in my direction as he spoke.
‘This is for you, my friend.’
‘You actually consider me to be a friend?’
‘Don’t question friendship. Friends are a rare commodity. Now, shall we start or perhaps you’d like to finish your tea first?’
As I drank my tea Raymond Douglas told me what he thought were vital snippets of information about himself. Who various tour managers were, the truth about different incidents at concerts – the usual facts and figures from an era gone by. I somehow got the feeling that he was trying to bore me deliberately, so that I would go away and leave him in his own private little world. He appeared to be happy in his own anonymity, but just the same I felt he needed to talk.
My mind was on other things. I kept thinking about that brunette backstage at the Pier Ballroom in Southsea, and I started to get the most peculiar feeling that I wanted to see her again. An absurd desire, particularly as she had only appeared to me as part of a remembrance on the part of Raymond Douglas. I decided to take the plunge.
‘Who was the brunette?’ I asked. ‘Was she, you know, the Girl? The one you sang about in your song?’
Raymond Douglas looked over at me with a mischievous grin on his face.
‘The girl?’ he inquired. ‘You mean the one who was giving you a blow-job? Oh no, she’s not the Girl. But she was part of the Girl.’
His vagueness was his one consistency. I pressed for an answer just the same.
‘Were there many, then?’
As he stroked away at his long chin which was beginning to show some stubble, I could see his keen eyes straining to recapture a distant memory. Again, I had forgotten that I was talking to a really old man whose lust for the pleasures of the flesh should have diminished long ago. He paused, and then a smile slowly opened the entire bottom third of his face. He had suddenly flashed on a recollection. But knowing Raymond Douglas, it was probably going to be a pack of lies.
‘The passage of time eliminates some of the more intimate details of one’s existence. The routine trivia like passing water and shitting and the amount of food and alcohol consumed in the course of daily survival. Sure, there were girls. Lots of ’em. It’s inevitable. I’m not a woman-in-every-port man, but as the trips around the country became more frequent it was obvious that acquaintances and friends would be picked up along the way. That’s what building up a following of fans is all about. For example, when we played Stoke, there was a brunette called Cindy. She was sort of the local Elizabeth Taylor, and wore black suspenders and underwear especially for me. I took a special pride in Cindy. When I first met her I could see her potential, and each time we played Stoke or anywhere in that area I suggested that she either do something with her hair or make-up. Time after time I returned to find her looking more beautiful. After about five or six visits she looked so beautiful and had such fine dress sense that she had two or three local lads after her. I felt like I had turned this pretty but ordinary girl into a complete goddess. The last time I saw her she was walking across a zebra crossing on the way to meet her boyfriend in Hanley. I felt a deep pride, like Frankenstein must have felt when his monster first stood up and walked round the room. Cindy was now so beautiful she didn’t need me anymore. I wonder how many kids she had?
Yes, Cindy was a part of the Girl, as you put it. Part of Julie Finkle, even. But not the whole.
Manchester, or should I say the Greater Manchester area, encompassing Stockport and Altringham, meant the formidable Wendy. Not such an obvious beauty. A rough type, even. But big-hearted and with her hair always neatly lacquered and back combed. She was probably only eighteen or nineteen, but her hairstyle made her look thirty. Wendy was a devoted follower and could always be relied on. During the concert she was always in the front row, then, towards the end of the show, she drifted to the side exit and came backstage. I always found northern girls – that is, born and bred northern girls – to be straightforward, no-nonsense creatures, and Wendy was no exception.
Her one obsession was that she insisted on jerking me off as soon as the gig was over. It could have been in the nearest bathroom for all it mattered to her. She just felt that it had to be as soon as possible after coming off stage. She said that it made her feel part of the energy that I had communicated to the audience. She wanted to be part of the performance somehow, and to her this was the final number. Sometimes she would take me out back into the car-park and hide behind the nearest clump of bushes so that she could watch the fans leaving while she was making me come. After a while I realized that she must have done the same with other bands who came to the vicinity. And as I came she turned me in a certain direction, to see how far it went. Perhaps she was comparing me with somebody else in another group. Wendy must have been some sort of factory worker or maybe a window-cleaner, because her hands were always dry and chapped, like they had been in boiling-hot water all day, or scrubbing floors. I always had a sore dick for days afterwards.
I didn’t feel like I was cheating on anybody. There wasn’t anybody. In fact I considered it to be part of the job at the time. Perhaps if I hadn’t, I would have been branded a queer. And anyway, with the possible exception of Cindy, I knew that all the girls would perform the same function for the next band that appeared.’
*
R.D. shook his head. ‘That Cindy, what a girl!’
In a way I understood R.D.’s attitude towards this period in his life. Even so, without seeming like a prude, I was a little shocked by these yarns. Something inside me wondered if R.D. was weaving fact together with fantasy. He was, after all, supposed to be a great story-teller: that is one of the functions of a songwriter.