Kill Your Friends
Authors: John Niven
John Niven
Kill Your Friends
2008, EN
It’s not dog-eat-dog around here…it’s
dog-gang-rapes-dog-then-tortures-him-for-five-days-before-burying-him-alive-and-taking-out-every-motherfucker-the-dog-has-ever-known.
Meet Steven Stelfox.
London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and
Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old
A
&
R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way
through the music industry, a world where ‘no one knows anything’
and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle
tastes of the general public—‘Yeah, those animals’.
Fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine
Stelfox blithely criss-crosses the globe (“New York, Cologne,
Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card
slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn”)
searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of
self-gratification.
But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to
change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business
practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage
his career.
Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical and
hysterically funny evisceration of the record business, a place
populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers, where ambition is a
higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be
achieved—as long as you want it badly enough.
Table of contents
OneThe Kula Shaker and Jamiroquai albums both go
double platinum. Warner Brothers have an 18.4% share of the albums
market. ‘Say What You Want’ by Texas is the biggest airplay record
in the country. The Pecadilloes and Embrace are hot new bands. Last
year the British music industry generated over a billion pounds in
revenue for the first time ever. The new Gene album is called
Drawn to the Deep End.
Polydor A
&
R
Director Paul Adam says, “I have big aspirations that this is their
crossover record
.”
“A
&
R (artist and repertoire):
The branch of the music industry concerned with finding and
nurturing new talent
.”
I
’m smoking and
looking out of my office window while I listen to some guy, some
manager, crapping away on the speakerphone. Five floors below me a
group of black guys—probably some band—are lounging in the car
park. The glass is bronzed, honey-coloured, and they can’t see me.
It’s icy winter out there and their breath rises with the smoke
from the spliff they’re passing around, shrouding them in a pewter
cloud. Beyond them, along the Thames at Hammersmith Bridge, is a
gigantic poster of the Labour guy, Tony Blair. A slash has been
ripped across his face where his eyes should have been and a pair
of red eyes—hellish, demonic eyes—burn out instead.
Back down in the car park and one of the kids is actually
leaning against my car now, his hands in his pockets and his back
arched against the silver Saab as though it were the counter of his
local KFC. I keep an eye on him as my mind wanders back to the
voice coming out of the speakerphone. It’s saying stuff like
this:
“And EMI, Virgin and Chrysalis. Warner Chappell are doing the
publishing and they’ve, well, I shouldn’t be saying this yet,
but…”
Don’t tell me, they’ve got a major TV advert confirmed?
“They’ve got a major TV advert as good as confirmed.”
“Wow,” I say, sounding like nothing.
“But you know we like you,” the cretin says.
“Yeah, great, send it over.”
“It’s a rough mix. Your ears only?”
“Sure.”
“Great. Bye, Steven.”
“Bye,” I think for a second. “Mate.”
I hang up as Rebecca comes in. It’s almost eleven, the crack of
dawn around here. “Good morning,” she says, placing a stack of mail
on the coffee table, next to a pile of demo tapes of new
bands—Cuff, Fling, Santa Cruz, Magic Drive, Montrose Avenue—which
Darren, one of the scouts, has left for me to go through.
“Rebecca,” I say, not turning from the window.
“Mmmm?”
“Could you please interrupt whatever you’re doing, run
downstairs and tell security to get that fucking great
darkie
off of my car?”
She shrieks, pretending to be horrified, and joins me at the
window.
“God, who on earth are that lot?” she says, chewing on a strand
of her fine, long blonde hair.
“Fuck knows. Probably some imminent signing of Schneider’s. The
Jew is using the black man as muscle. Against us.”
“You’re
terrible
!” She gives me a little elbow as she
heads for the door, pleased because I’m in a good mood. “There’s
your post. Don’t forget, you’ve got the business affairs meeting at
twelve.” Rebecca is tall with full gobbler’s lips. Great legs.
Decent rack. But the face is beginning to go—little crow’s feet
creep around the eyes, grooves deepening at the corners of the
mouth. She is a couple of years older than me—dangerously close to
thirty—and terrifyingly single. She needs to be sorting this out
and she knows it. Today she’s wearing a tartan miniskirt a foot
wide, trainers and a tight black T–shirt that has the word ‘WHORE’
picked out in little diamond studs. Like all the girls who work
here—apart from Nicky, our Head of International, who is so ugly it
actually makes me angry to have to be in the same room as
her—Rebecca dresses just the right side of prostitution.
“Rebecca,” I say as she reaches for the door handle.
“Mmmm?” she says, turning round.
“The hotel?” I am off to Cannes next week for MIDEM and so far,
depending on whom I choose to believe, either Rebecca or our
worthless travel agents have failed to get me into a suitable
hotel.
“I’m on it, Steven. Relax.” She turns to leave.
I believe her because Rebecca, like most girls, loves to
organise things for you. She’s never happier than when she’s got
the travel agent on one line, BA on another and copies of
The
World’s Great Hotels
and the Zagat and Harden’s guides
flattened out on the desk in front of her. It strikes me as very
odd that she enjoys planning these trips for me even though she
will take no part in them, will in no way benefit from them. I
cannot comprehend planning something from which I will not gain
anything. Something about the girl mind, I suppose—taking pleasure
from knowing that the flight will arrive in time to make the
restaurant reservation, that the hotel will be lavish and
unexpected.
“And, Rebecca?” She turns back again, trying not to sigh. “You
look nice today.” (Carrot and stick.)
“Thank you,” she replies, smiling coyly. Well, as coyly as a
girl who probably sucked a minimum of thirty cocks last year is
capable of smiling. “So do you.”
She’s not wrong. I’ve just spent a month on
holiday—Thailand—Vietnam—Australia—and I’m tanned to the fucking
eyeballs. I’m wearing a black cashmere V-neck sweater, black jeans
and black suede loafers, all of which are box-fresh.
She leaves and I flip through my post, mostly waxy Jiffy bags
containing demo tapes, feeling the usual reflexive anger at the
attempts at spelling my name—there’s ‘Stalefox’, ‘Stellfax’ and one
mongoloid has even gone for ‘Stellarfix’. It’s Stelfox. Steven
Stelfox—before settling down with the new issue of
Music
Week
. Some guy who works there has died. Heart attack at
thirty-two. Nasty. Very fucking nasty.
As I turn the pages I feel the floor shake, concentric rings
ripple in the black coffee, and I look up in time to see Waters
come lumbering past the glass wall that separates my office from
the rest of the floor. He’s really something, Waters. Six two, six
three, about eighteen stone. He’s clutching a piece of paper and
trying to look purposeful in a ludicrous attempt to mask a mammoth
hangover. He’s red-faced and pouch-eyed, with blips of sweat
dotting his forehead. (Doing anything, lifting a cassette, dialling
a telephone number, causes Waters to break into a filthy
rapist-sweat.) He wearily flashes me a devil sign, extending the
pinkie and forefinger of his giant left paw. He is trailing his
rat-dog, a little Jack Russell, behind him. He thinks bringing the
fucking thing into the office makes him eccentric and interesting.
It makes him look like a cunt. Like the brontosaurus, his colossal
frame is powered by a brain the size of a grape, and this
grape-brain itself, none too dynamic to begin with, has been
further buffoonerised by years of chronic chang abuse. I nod a
needlessly businesslike hello, just to rub his lateness in, and
pick up the TV remote.
I watch VH1 for a bit—Blur, Radiohead, Oasis and the Brand New
Heavies—and am about to turn it off when there’s a little preview
of the upcoming Brit Awards. We get Dodgy, the Chemical Brothers,
the Prodigy, Longpigs, Mansun. I light another cigarette and watch
as Ellie Crush is interviewed. “Yeah,” she says, “I know there’s
people out there that fink a woman can’t do all the stuff I’m
doing. That she’s a puppet? Yeah? But, y’know, I’m here, writing
the lyrics and checking on the arrangements and doing all of that
stuff. Yeah? My songs come from in
here
.” She flattens a
hand sincerely across her heart.
Crush, nominated for Best Newcomer, is a twenty-one-year-old
east Londoner who was signed by Parker-Hall over at EMI. Her
critically lauded debut LP was released last spring and charted at
N°63. And, mercifully, it looked like that was that. Game Over. See
you later, Sooty. Then, gradually, horribly, it started to sell.
Word of mouth. Suddenly they got a single playlisted at Radio 1 and
the album went gold. I do not want to contemplate what might happen
to the fucking thing, what might happen to Parker-Hall, if Crush
wins Best Newcomer. I make a note on my ‘to do’ list to put a matey
call in to the fucker.
“Cause that’s what it’s all about,” Crush says to the
interviewer, “
integritty
. Yeah?” I turn the sound down as
she goes on to discuss gun control or something.
It’s interesting, I remember being at her signing party a year
ago when someone used the phrase ‘artistic integrity’ in her
presence. Her brow knotted and she asked her manager—not
rhetorically—“Wot’s ‘integritty’?” I mean, here is a girl who can
barely read. A girl who, just twelve scant months ago, would have
sucked the curdled sweat from a tramp’s dimpled nutbag to obtain a
record deal, and yet here she is talking about ‘integrity’ and
Christ knows what other nonsense. When they sell no records, it’s a
nightmare. When they sell lots of records—it’s a whole other
nightmare. Because then these fools, these one-GCSE merchants,
these casualties with half a fucking thought to rub together, they
suddenly think that the fact that a few hundred thousand of the
Great British Public (yeah, those
animals
) enjoy their
ditties and respond on some primitive level to their doggerel,
means that they have something of value to say about anything from
the FTSE to the Middle East peace process. So, the next time you
see some Mercury Music Prize⁄Brit Award⁄Grammy-nominated diva up
there giving it the whole ‘I am a strong independent woman with
interesting ideas’ bit, remember this—it is only because of the
tiniest quirk of fate, a deranged quiver of serendipity, the most
unlikely of miracles, that her big speeches are not climaxing with
the words: “I’m sorry, sir, this checkout is closing,” or “Anal is
an extra twenty quid, mate.”
There is talk of the Ellie Crush record starting to take off in
America. Were this to happen it is conceivable it could sell
millions of copies rather than the few hundred thousand it takes to
constitute a reasonably big record over here. I know Parker-Hall
has two points on the record because I got his lawyer drunk at a
Christmas party. If the record properly took off in America
Parker-Hall might well become a millionaire. He’s twenty-five. Two
years younger than me. Admitting the possibility of his success
into my head makes me reel back. I feel faint. Sick. I take my mind
off the subject by smoking another cigarette and doing some
expenses, noticing with some surprise that I managed to spend
nearly two thousand pounds on ‘entertainment’ last December.