Kill Your Friends (20 page)

“Shall we do one back to the hotel, boys and girls?” he says,
dialling calmly.

♦

Barely an hour later Ross and I are neck-deep in hot, bubbling
water, clinking brimming flutes of Bollinger. A few feet away,
Trellick, snugly wrapped in one of the hotel’s thick, white
towelling robes, chops out some lines and bellows at room service
for more, colder, champagne. Burt Bacharach purrs smoothly from the
Bang
&
Olufsen.

“Oh, I
love
Glastonbury,” Ross sighs contentedly.

Trellick’s phone rings. He picks it up and looks at the screen.
“Shit, fucking Derek.”

“What the fuck can he want at this time?” Ross says.

“An AIDS helpline?” I reply before slipping down under the
surface, my temples throbbing as the hot water loosens the grime of
the festival from my skin.

Trellick is gone for a while. When he comes back he looks
stunned. It takes a lot to stun Trellick.

“What’s happened?”

“Strap yourself in, matey boy,” he says, looking at me, allowing
a dramatic pause.

“For fuck’s sake, James…”

“Listen! It looks like we’ll be signing the Lazies after
all.”

“
Go on!
” I yell, leaping up in the tub and pumping my
fist. I am the King. I am the King of fucking Rock. Fuck
Parker-Hall.
Fuck him
. Ross starts clapping and
whooping.

“Hold your horses,” Trellick says, starting to laugh now,
“Parker-Hall is actually signing them.”

Eh? “What do you—”

“The band want to sign with Parker-Hall. No one else. It seems
Derek’s been talking to Parker-Hall for a while now and, well…he’s
our new Head of A
&
R.”

“I don’t under…” The words dribble off because my mouth isn’t
working properly. I am just standing there—literally up to my knees
in hot water.

“Derek, our Managing Director, has just hired Anthony
Parker-Hall,” Trellick says, speaking simply and clearly, as you
would to a child. “Parker-Hall is coming to work for us as Head of
A
&
R, effective immediately. He is bringing the
Lazies with him as his first signing.”

They both look at me, standing there in the middle of the hot
tub, my mouth hanging open.

“He’s your fucking boss,” Ross says.

They both start pissing themselves.

Parker-Hall—younger than me—chewing me out in meetings.
(“
Gawdnbennet, Steven, wot da fuck’s appening wiv dem poxy
remixes?
”)

Parker-Hall parking his car so much closer to the building than
me.

Parker-Hall questioning my expenses.

“How much?” I say in a strangled whisper. I’m trembling now too.
“How much are we paying him?”

Trellick: “I’ve been told not to discuss it and, trust me, you
don’t want to fucking know.”

I am Herve Villechaize.

It hurts.

I am dying now.

∨
Kill Your Friends
∧

Simon Cowell signs a boy band called Five. For
reasons I can’t quite workout there is a lot of interest in this
Paki band called Asian Dub Foundation. (Who the fuck is Satpal
Ram?) Sony are about to launch a pop singer called Jimmy Ray, who
is managed by Simon Fuller who manages the Spice Girls. Sony’s
marketing guy Mark Richardson says
, “
I dare anyone to listen
to the single ‘Are You Jimmy Ray?’ and tell me it’s not going to be
a hit. It’s both retro and contemporary
.”

∨
Kill Your Friends
∧

“
After you’ve finished being smart in the record
business you’ve also got to be lucky
.”

Dick Asher, MD of CBS Records

“As you all know,” Derek announces, standing up at
the head of the big conference table, his eyes—predatory eyes,
queer’s eyes—flickering around the boardroom, “it’s been a very
difficult year so far for the company, what with Roger’s tragic
death…” Everyone nods sadly. I look around the room. Pretty much
the whole company—about thirty people—are crammed in here, for this
miserable ‘celebration’. I catch Rebecca’s eye and she looks away.
“…and Paul Schneider’s decision to move on,” (‘Move on’? Yeah,
right), “we’ve been missing…” he searches for the right word, not
wanting to put the boot in on me and Hastings too directly, but
wanting to put it in a bit no doubt, “leadership in the
A
&
R department. Well, I’m very pleased to say
that’s all about to change.” He drops his hand onto Parker-Hall’s
shoulder, who has been sitting next to him throughout this, looking
embarrassed. “As I’m sure you all already know Anthony signed his
contract last week and is officially our new Head of
A
&
R.” Derek leads the applause as Parker-Hall
squirms in his chair, gesturing for people to stop. The applause
goes on for a while. In Stalinist Russia, if you were the first
person to stop clapping after one of old Joe’s speeches, they came
and got you in the night. A few weeks of solid dawn-to-dusk
beatings with a car battery permanently hooked up to your shaved
nuts, and then you were off to the salt mines for the next forty
years. Top lad, Stalin.

“I won’t embarrass Anthony any further by listing his resume
here but, as I’m sure you all know, he’s just had an incredibly
successful run over at EMI where he signed—among others—Ellie Crush
whose album has now gone double platinum in the UK and sold over a
million copies worldwide.”

But everybody knew this. Last week it was the front-page story
on
Music Week
. There was a big photo of Derek, Parker-Hall,
Trellick and Marcy from the Lazies and an accompanying story saying
how Parker-Hall’s contract had expired at EMI (he’d let it run
out), how he had been unable to agree new terms, how we’d come in
just at the right time, with the right offer—(
How much? How much
are we paying the little bastard?
)—how excited Parker-Hall was
to be able to make the Lazies his first signing…

The story went on to list Parker-Hall’s A
&
R
achievements, focusing on Ellie Crush’s continued US success, and
stressing the fact that he has just turned twenty-six. It concluded
with a horribly magnanimous and ominous quote from Parker-Hall:

“I’m really looking forward to the challenges of my new role.
The label already has a vibrant A
&
R culture, one
I’m aiming to take to the next level.” (“The next level’! One of
those spastic music-business phrases—like ‘does what it says on the
tin’ and ‘it’s not rocket science”—that spill from your mouth in
meetings. Meaning absolutely fuck all.)

After I read the story I spent forty-eight hours in bed.

Parker-Hall stands up and does a bit of awkward shuffling,
really laying on the ‘I’m not worthy’ crap. “Thanks, everyone. I’m
not much for big speeches, so I’ll just say how excited I am to be
here and how pleased I am to have a fantastic band like the Lazies
to bring to the table…”

More applause, led now by Dunn. The next Lazies single is
already recorded and Dunn is convinced that it’s going to stroll
onto the Radio 1 playlist. Consequently he’s been licking
Parker-Hall’s Ronson like it’s going out of fashion.

“Obviously I already know Steven and Rob,” he indicates me and
Hastings, the broken men, “and I’m looking forward to getting us
all pulling in the same direction so we can get stuck in and sign a
few more great bands for you all to work on. Thanks very much.”

Cue applause and cheers and Derek nodding as though he’s just
negotiated world fucking peace.

I’m walking in a forest. I’m walking in a forest
.

Later, on the stairs, I pass Nicky. Normally the most I ever get
from the monstrous diesel is a tight little smile but today she’s
beaming, I mean fucking
beaming
at me. Her smile says: “End
of the line for you and your turkey acts, loser. There’s a real
A
&
R guy in town now. How can you even stand to
come into work?” The urge to kick her down the stairs, to jump on
her head, to pummel her gloating dyke-face into an unrecognisable
porridge of blood and bone, is tremendous. But, using incredible
reserves of will-power, I manage to ignore her and continue on
towards marketing.

♦

Rebecca comes in. Today she’s wearing leather trousers. I’m not
kidding. Leather. Fucking. Trousers. If I had any self-respect left
I’d fire her.

“That policeman’s here to see you again,” she says in what she
imagines is a meaningful tone of voice. I just yawn and click the
mouse to close the window on my laptop. A graphic close-up—too
close in fact, I’d zoomed in until the image was just a smear of
pixels—of a bull ejaculating a ludicrous payload of glutinous semen
into a Latino girl’s grateful face vanishes. A Mexican website
Trellick turned me onto.

“Send him up,” I say, pushing the screen down, the laptop
closing with a snick.

I knew Woodham was coming. I’ve finally agreed to see him to
talk about the tracks he recorded for us a few weeks ago. I’d been
dodging his calls.

Basically, figuring there was no downside to keeping him sweet,
I sprang five hundred quid from the demo fund and he went into the
Stoneroom in Acton with his band where the mad cunt managed to bang
down something like fourteen songs in two days. I’ve managed to
listen to two or three tracks and they are
appalling
. You
couldn’t have got arrested with them even last year, when any
scavenger from north of Watford with a fucking giro in one hand and
a semi-acoustic guitar in the other was getting on the cover of the
NME
. Woodham’s demo is so bad that there can be no
prevaricating, none of the ‘lots of potential’ crap. I’ll just have
to be honest and tell him straight out to forget it.

He comes in and we do the hey-how-are-you-can-I-get-you-anything
stuff before I say, “Look, Alan, about your demos.”

“Actually, before we get onto that, I need to talk to you in
connection with Mr Waters.” His tone is different. Formal. Less
matey.

“Roger?” I say.

He takes out his notebook and flips to a page. What the fuck is
going on here? “There’s something that’s been puzzling me. You said
that the last time you saw him alive was when you dropped him off
in Notting Hill around 11
PM
before you took the cab
onto Maida Vale.”

“That’s right.”

He consults his notebook and taps his pen against his leg. “You
were at the Dublin Castle on Parkway, weren’t you?”

He looks up at me. He looks like a different guy now. He’s
suddenly older, more serious. He’s suddenly very fucking
serious.

“Yeah…”

“And you caught a cab on Parkway?”

“Urn, yeah. I think that’s right.”

“It seems a long way round, doesn’t it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Parkway’s one-way. You’d have had to head up further into
Camden and then up towards Chalk Farm.”

“Sorry, Alan, I’m not quite following you.” But I’m beginning
to.

“Well, you said you dropped him off. But you live in Maida Vale.
To Maida Vale from Chalk Farm via Notting Hill? You pretty much
have to go through Maida Vale to get to Netting Hill from there,
don’t you? Why didn’t you get dropped off first?”

“Ah…” I am dying here. My head is pounding. Think. “Why didn’t I
get dropped off first?” I repeat while, in my head, Def Con 3 goes
on. A long time passes. Woodham says nothing, looks straight at me.
The silent close.

“Ah!” I say, and I actually snap my fingers together. Jesus
Christ, this is like a fucking masterclass in bad acting. “Sorry,
we were going to drop me off first but neither of us had any cash,”
this is so
lame
, “and I’d left my wallet in the office, so
we went onto Roger’s place, he had some cash in the house and,
yeah…” he continues to look at me evenly, “that was it. Sorry, I’d
had a few.” I laugh. He doesn’t.

“So—you dropped him first and then went back to Maida Vale?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Sorry.”

He writes something down. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking
Christ.

“OK,” he says, snapping the notebook shut, “so what were you
going to say about the demos?”

I clear my throat. “I have to be honest with you…I think the
songs are incredible. Some of the best material I’ve heard in a
long, long time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. What we should do, what I think we can do, is we should
look at trying to get you a publishing deal.”

“Seriously?” he says, smiling now for the first time since he
came in. “Well, that’d be great, Steven,” he says getting up.

“Yeah, let me look into that. Make a few calls. And, sorry about
the confusion there, with the Roger stuff.”

We shake hands. “Don’t worry about it,” he says and he
leaves.

I close the blinds, avoiding Rebecca’s concerned gaze on the
other side of the glass. I cross the room to my little fridge, chug
a bottle of Beck’s in one go, and open a second one. I sit down and
torch a Marlboro Light with a trembling hand and I try to work out
if what I think was just happening was actually happening.

So, on top of everything else, on top of Parker-Hall, on top of
the hundred-grand dance single that stiffed at 68, on top of the
bridging loan for a ruined house that a gang of speed-fuelled
Albanians are busy dismantling, on top of the American Express and
Visa bills totalling six and a half grand I received this month, I
now looks like I’ll have to find a publishing deal for a copper who
thinks he’s Noel fucking Gallagher.

Cheers.

♦

Meet the new boss.

Parker-Hall takes me and Hastings to the River Cafe for lunch. A
sort of getting-to-know-you combined with ‘here’s my vision’ deal.
We have pasta and Hastings fidgets and looks uncomfortable the
whole time, probably wondering why there’s no chicken fucking tikka
on the menu. We’re all drinking Evian. “Bottle of still water,
mate,” Parker-Hall had said when the waiter rocked up and I looked
up from the wine list I was examining and said, “Same.” If they
drink…