Kill Your Friends (21 page)

“The way I see it,” Parker-Hall is saying, “there are two
categories of acts; there are entertainers—Robbie Williams, Spice
Girls, what have you—and there are artists—Radiohead,
Weller…Ellie…”
You pompous little cunt
. “Now—”

“What about the Beatles?” I interrupt. “Weren’t they both?”

“Well, if you wanna split hairs, Steven, they were entertainers
who later became artists. Anyway,” he waves it away,
you pompous
smart-arsed little cunt
, “a label needs both. You need the
entertainers in the short term so you can develop the artists for
the long term. Now you guys both have different strengths; Rob,
you’re coming from an indie guitar-band area,” Hastings nods
enthusiastically, “and, Steven,” he indicates me, “your roots are
more in the pop-dance area of the marketplace. So…”

He goes on, but I don’t hear much more of it. I get lost in a
rapturous fantasy vision where I’m grabbing the steak knife from
the table in front of me, I’m vaulting across and burying it in
Parker-Hall’s jugular vein and throwing him to the floor, then I’m
jumping up and down on his head, slipping and sliding in his blood
as I pound his stubbly, shaven little elfin head into fucking
jelly, the other diners looking on in horror as I scream, “
Shut
the fuck up! What the fuck do you know about anything, you jammy,
fluky chancing little prick? Ellie Crush? You won the fucking
lottery with that cow. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you
.”

“Do you know what I mean, Steven?”

“Umm, yeah. Definitely,” I say, tuning back in, having no idea
what I’m replying to.

“Good. Because there’s rumours doing the rounds that I’m going
to poach so-and-so from Island, that so-and-so from EMI is going to
come over with me. All the usual bollocks. I just want you two to
know that your jobs are safe. I’m gonna have complete faith in you
until you give me a reason not to. Right?”

“Yeah,” Hastings says, “thanks, Tony.”

“No problem, Rob. Steven, I hear you’ve been looking at signing
Songbirds, them girls Danny Rent’s managing?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. What do you reckon?”

“I didn’t reckon much to any of the songs on the demos.”

“Me neither, but—”

“But that ain’t necessarily a problem with that type of band, is
it? And they’re lookers, the girls. Trashy, but lookers.”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of advance is he looking for?”

“Fuck all really.”

“So, do we wanna be doing the deal or what?”

“What do you think?”

He laughs. “I’m asking you, mate. It’s your call,” he says,
signalling for the bill.

Do I want to sign them?

I really don’t know. It’s so much easier not to sign bands.
Signing bands can cost you your fucking job. Also, I must be
mindful of Parker-Hall’s intentions here. He could be privately
convinced that Songbirds are grade A, oven-ready turkeys with lead
wings and hobnailed boots on. He could be cheerfully doling me out
enough rope here to hang myself properly once and for all. What
does he care about the advance? It’s not his fucking money. Having
me sign a pop act also makes practical and political sense for
him.

Practical sense because he’s just signed a three-year contract
and you can break a pop act in six months to a year. As for
breaking a ‘proper’ band…the Manic Street Preachers were signed in
1991 and only started properly selling records last year. Same kind
of time frame with Radiohead. Do you really want to be fannying
about for five fucking years trying to break something like that?
Chances are they’ll be a billion quid unrecouped and you’ll be
clearing out your desk before they sell one record.

Political sense because, if Songbirds are huge, he looks the
King of Rock because he authorised the deal and supervised the
project. If they go down like the
Titanic
with boulders
strapped to it he’ll say something about how he had to allow me the
autonomy to make my own mistakes, how he always had his
reservations, etc., etc.

However, on the other hand, I’ve got fuck all else going on at
the moment. If I don’t sign Songbirds and some other fucker does
and then they’re huge, then I’m dead anyway. You’re the guy who
passed on the Beatles. It’s a fucking nightmare. Poisoned chalices
and loaded dice all over the shop. My call. What do I want to
do?

“Yeah,” I hear myself saying, “I think we should sign them.”

“All right then. Get Trellick to put an offer in.”

The bill arrives and Parker-Hall nimbly presses his plutonium
credit card down on top of it. His card is from Coutts and I am
raped by envy.

♦

The last one of the girls puts her childish uncertain signature
on the contract (the ‘i’ in ‘Debbie’ is a little balloon), “That’s
your career over then,” says Trellick, cracking his usual gag and
the cork cracks out of another bottle and goes flying across the
boardroom as the other girls—Annette, Kelly and Jo—shriek
piercingly for the umpteenth time.

I hate signing celebrations. You get drunk and do coke and have
to listen to some manager, some singer, some
drummer
even,
crapping on about how great you both are and how you’re going to
rule the world. I often think back to these moments when we’re
dropping the cunts a year later.

Crammed into the boardroom along with the girls and Danny Rent
are Trellick, Derek (who, perhaps thinking⁄hoping that this bunch
of dogs are doomed from the off, kept his ludicrous ‘we’re going to
rule the world’ speech mercifully short), Ross, Darren, Rebecca, a
couple of junior muppets from press and radio and Parker-Hall. Dunn
isn’t here but should be. Where is the Geordie cunt?

Everyone is smiling and laughing, but, to the trained eye, to
the practised ear, there is a marked difference in the quality of
the happiness: that of the band and the manager is of a genuine,
top-of-the-world, time-of-your-life quality. They’re thinking that
they’ve won the lottery. The laughter and smiles of the executives
is brittle and plastic; we’ve done this so many times, often for
bands and singers who turned out to be about as commercial as
tooth-kind drinkable HIV for children. Ours is the forced jollity
of the whore, cracking a joke as she tiredly addresses herself to
the fifth or sixth cock of the evening. Everyone is thinking
something like ‘What are the chances of this piece-of-shit band
actually happening? How can I position myself so that if—when—they
go down screaming in flames I don’t get burned,
but
, at the
same time, if by some miracle, some unforeseen quirk of taste and
radio play they actually sell a few fucking records, then how can I
have some of the glory spatter onto me?’

Parker-Hall gives me a wink from across the room and raises his
glass. Congratulating me? Or congratulating himself on letting me
trowel a few more bricks onto my DIY mausoleum? I smile back at the
lowlife and take a seat next to one of the girls. Jo, I think.
“Congratulations,” I say clinking her glass.

“Oh fank you, Steven,” she says all breathy, her eyelashes
fluttering and her hard little peasant’s eyes glittering, “we won’t
let ya down, mate.” She smiles at me from under her fringe, tracing
her finger around the rim of her champagne flute. I suppose she’s
being as subtly and classily flirtatious as she can be, given that
her teenage sexual ‘awakenings’ probably consisted of hiking her
jeans down in a car park under some tower block and bending over
while a trio of thugs lined up behind her.

The door bursts open and Dunn strides into the room looking
incredibly pleased with himself. “Hi there!” he brays, shaking a
few hands. “Sorry I’m late, just got back from Radio 1.” There’s a
hush of anticipation.

“The Lazies single?” Dunn continues, looking around the room,
savouring the moment. “Straight on the fucking B-list,
six weeks
upfront
!” he says, punching the air. The room explodes—Nicky
shrieks, literally
shrieks
with joy—and Derek is immediately
by Parker-Hall’s side, clapping him frantically on the back as
everyone whoops and cheers.

Fucking. Shit.

♦

“Nah,” Parker-Hall says, stretching back in his chair, “that’s
pony. Take it off, Darren.” Darren, manning the stereo, takes
whatever demo is playing off and slips something else in. I’m
sitting on one of the sofas in Parker-Hall’s office (Schneider’s
old office), Hastings is on the other sofa, Parker-Hall sits at his
desk reading emails, and Darren and Stan are on the floor with a
pile of demos and records.

“This is Coco and the Bean,” Stan says, getting up, “Edinburgh
band, a few people are talking about this.”

A
&
R meetings are now weekly under
Parker-Hall, rather than whenever we felt like it under Schneider.
They are also driven by a new focus and clarity: he’s right up
every lawyer, agent and manager in town. He’s on everything early
and he has a sharp idea of what he likes and what he doesn’t like.
What he thinks will work in the marketplace and what won’t. One and
a half songs into the Coco and the Bean demo he says, “Next,” and
we listen to Polar Bear, Earl Brutus, Catch, the Low Fidelity
All-Stars and many more. Parker-Hall tells us why none of them will
sell records.

In the last couple of weeks I have sent Woodham’s demo over to a
few of the big publishers; Island Music, Sony, BMG,
Warner-Chappell. I struck out everywhere. I put a call in to
Woodham and told him I’ve been getting some good reactions, people
like the songs, but it’ll take some time. I’ll get back to him.
He’s perfectly pleasant.

Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe he doesn’t…

A further indignity. The Lazies signed their deal and we had a
party at the Halcyon in Holland Park. The night before the party
Parker-Hall shuffled into my office and said he thought it’d be a
good idea if I didn’t come. “I can’t come anyway,” I lied, “I’ve
got a gig to go to. But, just out of interest, why the fuck
not?”

“No offence, mate,” he said, “and I don’t know what happened,
but Marcy says she gets a bad vibe off ya…”

“Right,” Parker-Hall says after we’ve listened to all the new
music kicking around this week. “I’ve been thinking about producers
for the Lazies album and wondered if any of you lot had any bright
ideas…”

Fortunately this week’s
Music Week
is open on the floor
next to me at the top hundred albums and I hastily run my eye down
the page, over the names of producers, which are listed in brackets
after the albums themselves, while Hastings craps on.

“Steven?” Parker-Hall says, swivelling in his chair to face
me.

“Bird and Bush? Bacon and Quarmby? Gil Norton? Dave Bascombe?
Langer and Winstanley?” I say, reeling them off.

“Why?” Parker-Hall says, looking blank.

“Why what?”

“Steven, mate,” he sighs, “it sounds like you’ve just stuck a
fucking pin in the
Music Week
directory and come up with a
list of people who’ve produced a few records that are in the charts
this week.”

“No, I…” My face is colouring. This answer would have worked
fine under the old regime. “Well, who are you thinking of?” I
say.

“Steve Albini,” Parker-Hall says.

Hastings nods solemnly, I do too, while thinking, “Who the fuck
is Steve Albini?”

“He produced
In Utero
, the last Nirvana record. He rocks
up with a box of microphones and records the band live. Don’t take
points either.” Eh? This guy Albini must be out of his fucking
mind. “The way I see it,” Parker-Hall continues, “we’re gonna have
enough of a buzz on the band to have a gold record with this one
whatever it sounds like. Let’s make an extreme record, establish
credibility, and then we can look to make something more commercial
with the second one. Yeah?”

He’s thought all this through. He isn’t really asking our
opinions on anything.

It is just some horrible test.

♦

I go into the studio with Songbirds.

Now, I hate going to the studio. (Unlike Parker-Hall who seems
to love it. Also—and check this out, you won’t believe it—he goes
away for the weekend
with his artists
. Honestly. Picture it,
if you will. They sit around and get stoned and talk about…I don’t
know. I guess they talk about chords and middle eights and B-sides
and stuff. I’ve tried to imagine doing this myself but, come on.
There’s a limit.) In the studio nothing happens for four days and
then they play you something and ask for your opinion and you
pretty much tell them to make it shorter and make the vocals
louder. I mean, there’s not a lot to it. But I need to fill the
days somehow, so here I am. (“
How do you write a song? Well, you
get some kids in a room, you get a beat going
…”)

On the other side of the glass the girls have been trying to
record some harmonies for the past four hours. I’m reading the
FT
while Allan, the producer, fucks around with the
Autotune—a studio device that, in theory, should allow a tramp
gargling with razor blades and spunk to sound like Pavarotti.

The Dow hit a record high the other week. People I know are
making money and I’m sinking in a quagmire of delays and debt. I
had another heart-caving conference with Murdoch at the new house
last week. Another wall may have to come down. I am haemorrhaging
cash I do not have and if I do not turn this bunch of whores around
soon it is possible I will be finished before the building work is.
I take some comfort from the fact that Trellick bought a load of
EMI shares recently, thinking they’d hit the floor. He was wrong.
They’re still going down. Every morning he’s waking up to find his
dough has been gang-banged over night.
Schadenfreudes
all
round.

“Shall we see if that’s any better, Steven?” Allan says after a
while. “Yeah,” I say sullenly, swapping the
FT
for
FHM
. He hits a button somewhere on the huge desk and music
fills the room.