My Booky Wook 2 (12 page)

Surely this sweat-palmed Shangri-la had been designed by a genius, a great intellect who really understood how male sexuality works at its worst, at its most primal, the same cosmic mind that gave us Babe Station, that god-awful network where men “Call 0898 Babe Station”, or Midnight Sluts or whatever, where a woman will cavort about on a bed and you can masturbate down the phone at her as she talks. Imagine that as a use for television. Some people are shocked at Big Brother and reality TV, but when John Logie Baird invented TV he couldn’t have thought, “One day people will be able to phone up and wank into this little box.” Alexander Graham Bell and John Logie Baird were fine Scottish inventors with great minds, but what ultimately drives the world forward is male onanism. Why bother to pick up a screwdriver or a pencil and paper, just put your cock in your hand and have a wank, because that’s all any invention is going to lead to. I bet someone somewhere is trying to find a way of using Stephen Hawking’s Wormhole Theory as a way to enhance wanking. If not they’ll probably just smudge some marge on to his worm-hole and use a more direct route to prickle-bliss. “Stephen, if we were to put these worms up our arses,” “They’re not that kind of worm,” “Come on, I’m sure there must be a way.”

The phenomenon of those channels is the distillation of the worst aspects of humanity; despair and the necessity of females to use their sexuality as a commodity, the need for men to have sexual release at all costs with the removal of any ritual or interaction or grace. Anyway I phoned one once. For science.

Delightfully one has the option to either be in direct interaction with the writhing dead-eyed girl on the bed and offer her instructions to do something alluring and sexual, yes. Or you can phone up and say anything. Like “Just sit there quietly and stop worrying, you look nice, comb your hair. Why don’t you leaf through a copy of Jane Eyre? Why don’t you put on Mrs Mills and do a jitterbug? Do some sums? Stare into your terrifying future while I wank.” Or, if you don’t want to interact with them you can furtively eavesdrop on some other poor sod’s excuse for a hobby. Now that’s what I call voyeurism; you’re a voyeur of someone else’s voyeurism, you’re watching someone else watching and masturbating. What if someone else starts watching, that’s Wormhole Theory for you right there, burrowing through layer after layer of sweat-palmed reality.

After landing in Cologne, Matt and I took a cab. “Are you in a band?” enquired our driver. I’ve long ago learned not to be flattered by that inquiry, as it’s usually pursued by a request for me to sign a photograph of Justin Hawkins from the Darkness. “No,” I hastily responded, “we’re here to review the Stones.”

“We’re journalists!” chirped Matt.

The taxi dispatched us at the door of the Hotel Crystal. I saw the backpackers queuing at the desk and the woefully cramped lobby and snootily declared I wouldn’t stay.

“Don’t make a fuss, you stuck-up cunt,” said Matt as I asked the receptionist to book us a taxi to the Hilton. “It’s only a night,” he continued.

“We might pull,” I reasoned. He relented.

I’d hoped the band might be staying at the Hilton and asked if so when we arrived.

“No, but the England team were here,” said Melanie at the desk. England’s World Cup game against Sweden had been at the RheinEnergie Stadium where the gig would take place.

“I should like Mr Beckham’s suite,” I requested.

“He had a standard room.”

I paused. “I shall take the suite regardless.”

And so to bed to rest our weary bodies and my exhausted ego. After a quick hour’s sleep, the publicist and photographer arrived, sans luggage, to take us to the concert. The photographer presented us with a disposable camera to take snaps of us inside, having been informed, belatedly, that unauthorised photography is forbidden inside the venue. It seems the band’s management are sensitive about their fans being photographed. As the band’s age increases, so does that of their fans and the brand association is not a positive one. I must confess to being surprised by the control and neurosis present in these matters. It’s the Rolling Stones, for Christ’s sake. As omnipresent as the sky, worshipped across the globe for almost half a century. Surely they can afford to relax about their image? They are what they are, one would think. The objective truth, their continued brilliance, their catalogue of work, their longevity all suggest an established immovable force, above harmful critique.

As I upward sprung I saw I’d missed a bunch of nag-texts and whine-calls from the publicist and Matt. The meeting with Keith was at 6pm sharp and, obviously, you can’t keep a Stone waiting. I flitted about the suite applying mascara, chain-belts and all manner of cute appurtenances until I resembled a queasy, Goth tinker en route to a marriage proposal.

It makes me feel uneasy when I am unwittingly subjugated by great fame. When preparing to meet Tom Cruise I ruefully read the litany of caveats and conditions required to assure the “un-terview” passed without incident.

The photographer wanted to arrive early to photograph me with Stones fans. What struck me first was the distinctly familial feel to the environs. This was no Altamont, it was unlikely there’d be a stabbing here – I’d be shocked if anyone dropped litter. The stadium was ringed by stalls selling grub and the ubiquitous “Mick lip” logo, which adorned everything from T-shirts to plastic cups and gave the event the ambience of a trip to Thorpe Park or a Monster Truck rally. The publicist appeared all flustered efficiency and announced it was “quarter to Keef ” and, after she’d swaddled me in wristbands and lacquered me with passes, the three of us set off, leaving Matt to merrily scoff Teutonic yob nosh. Reaching Keith, it transpires, is like attaining enlightenment: you must pass through many levels and exercise great patience and detachment.

The hospitality area had been charmingly named Voodoo Lounge or the Snake-Eyed Buffet or something, and there I met Charlie Watts’s niece, Nikki, who served me banana yoghurt as the publicist went off to finalise the actual meet.

I’d become a little nervous now the meet was upon me. “He’s lovely,” Nikki assured me. The presence of Nikki and her pal Susie was a comfort. Both Essex girls, their bawdy humour and glottal stops gave me familiarity in this peculiar peripatetic rock mall. Noticing my pleb ticket, they said they’d arrange raised seats by the mixing desk, the gig’s Camelot. As I thanked them, the publicist returned with Jane Rose, Keith’s manager and a member of the Stones’ entourage for thirty years. An attractive American matriarch, she initially exhibited the prerequisite austerity that all powerful women in show business seem to have – necessary, I suspect, to protect their charges and their position. Also, a dedication beyond professional loyalty was evident in her and most of those I spoke with backstage. I hope it doesn’t seem grandiose to say it bordered on religious devotion, oddly discordant with the franchise feel surrounding the stadium. I was led through corridors and down stairs, like the bit in Spinal Tap, passing various refugees from the Sixties and exchanging a friendly nod with Ronnie Wood till we reached a vestibule where we were to wait.

“Keith is coming,” someone said. I then realised I simply had to go to the toilet. Before every exhilarating encounter, I ritually evacuate. Again, it makes me feel cleansed, light, literally unblocked; the thought, the very idea, of meeting him with full bowels seemed absurd, and someone took me, like a toddler, to the lavvy. It’s not just the defecation, some faecal fetishism; I like to have a moment alone to gather my thoughts, to focus. It’s the pertinent legacy from my time as a junky, when no appointment could be countenanced without a trip to a cubicle to heighten, or numb, my unreliable senses. Once solitary I began the rigmarole of unbuckling my numerous belts and peeling off my preposterously tight jeans, and then, at the least convenient juncture, came the cry, “Russell, Keith’s waiting for you!” Oh God.

I hastily completed, cleansed, and buckled my belts. I think there were four and one has to be twice wrapped around your waist. It was like applying lights to a Christmas tree under the glare of an atheist with a grudge.

“Hurry up!” Oh no. I dashed out. A fidgety minion held the door ajar. I made to leave but then remembered I was about to shake the hand of Keith Richards without due hygienic procedure. “I’ve got to wash my hands,” I said, darting to the sink. The forlorn lackey shook his head despairingly and I scrambled out the door after him while drying between my fingers with a paper towel. I still had the screwed-up towel in my wet hand as I blustered into the room where the photo that adorns the cover of that month’s OMM was to be shot.

And there he was. Actual Keith Richards. The Keith Richards. A man called Keith Richards. Cool and chuckling, twinkling and serene, devoid of the irritation apparent among the management and flunkies provoked by my toilet trip.

“Alright mate, I’m Russell.”

“Hey, man, I’m Keith.”

Sometimes listening to old Hancock tapes I think, that’s an old joke, before realising this was recorded in the Fifties and probably the first time anyone had commented on lumpy gravy. When Keith said “Hey, man,” it seared right through three decades of cliché, a comet of authenticity, from a time when everything seemed original.

What do you say to him that he’s not already heard? I resorted to pleasantries.

“You look ever so well, particularly after what happened.”

“That was nothing.”

I became friends once with this swami who looked at me with timeless eyes, a man uncluttered by hypocrisy, who knew that life had no meaning but to be beautiful and lived, with each breath, that ethos. This man came to mind in the company of Keith. I sense the reason he’s become an icon is because of an essential quality. Rock’n’roll, it seems, is not borrowed or learned or slung about his shoulders like his guitar, but emanating from his core.

“You’re a DJ?” he inquired.

“I’m a comedian, Keith.”

“Hey, me too.”

The photographer asked us to move closer together. Keith moved towards me, all warm.

“Can I photograph you with the guitars?” asked the photographer.

“Be easier with a camera,” joked Keith, taking one guitar from a stand and handing me another. A few more flashes and clicks before we were told, “OK! That’s enough!” And someone appeared to usher Keith off.

“See you later, man. Gotta go press some flesh. Enjoy the show.”

“Bye, Keith. Good luck with the gig. And the flesh-pressing,” I said, trying to lasso him with sycophancy as he ambled out the door.

It was dead brief, but it felt good. A hurried copulation. I felt elated. So off we went to rejoin Matt, who I knew would have spent the interim period getting drunk, and to see the Rolling Stones live in Cologne.

When they emerged with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, it was not with a roar but, rather, an echo that has perennially rung out since their birth in a crossfire hurricane. It seems churlish to chide them for not defying the passage of time. They are magnificent enough to suggest that some awful portraits must be lurking in their attics, and if they’re not as good as they were in the Sixties, neither is anyone else. They have not been replaced.

The final twenty-five minutes of hits constituted the best live performance I’ve ever seen and called to mind Lester Bangs’s famous review of Vegas Elvis when, although bloated, bejewelled and barbiturated, the King still had that voice and the power to make cocks harden and thighs tingle. Similarly, the Stones are the greatest rock’n’roll band there has ever been, and they’re still without equal.

After the gig we drove around Cologne and went to a few bars and asked people where we should hang out and inevitably found a brothel. The name has long left my memory but the inspirational concept will haunt me till my dying day: on the bottom floor was a lap-dancing club. Lap-dancing is a stupid idea, because it gets you as close to sex as is possible to imagine and then denies you it at all costs, so it’s actually the last thing that you should do. Women come and sit on your lap, they flirt with you, pretend the best they can that they are attracted to you, you give them some money, then they slide off and do that again with someone else, tease you to the precipice of something wonderful, then deny you it. It’s like going and watching other people taking drugs and then not using drugs yourself if you are a drug addict. Like me. Did I mention that?

Where this lap-dancing club differed was that once you’d been aroused beyond the junction at which you could legitimately hope to return, there was a brothel upstairs; the ravishing denizens of the lower floor led you up the wooden hill to Fuckfordshire like filthy Oompa-Loompas dragging away Willy Wonka’s failed candidates. One moment you’re being simmered to the point of ejaculation by a gorgeous transsexual, then, just when that desire is about to make you either publicly masturbate or become an avenging Whitechapel misogynist, the club’s staff lead you to the promised land, one flight up – literally a stairway to heaven. As Matt procrastinated and examined a dusty Bible in his brain my unblinking Shaggy sex-force cajoled him up the steps like Scooby Doo yanked onto a kinky ghost train.

Once ascended, you peruse the Lewis Carroll corridors eyeing the treats that lurk behind the doors – an advent calendar for pervs. Three different girls visited, it was a most indulgent night. There was a period when our heterosexuality became curiously entwined without breaching the conditions of that word, escapades conducted with the nimble fingers of a bomb disposal expert, avoiding homo-combustion in the carnal hurt locker; which to me is a disconcertingly appropriate name for a gay sauna. Not that Matt and I would ever go to a gay sauna as we are not gay, our three-somes were all conducted in a manly bonding way, like a fishing trip – but a fishing trip where two pals simultaneously have sex with their catch. I believe the term is spit-roasting which is actually a good way to cook a fish al fresco. If that sounds a bit misogynistic please consider that the metaphorical fish was fully consenting and happy, and we threw it back after and she swam off all content. Anyway, back in the German brothel. Naturally there were the ol’ tragic undertones, for example the last girl was really fatigued looking, and Matt was convinced she was a post-op transsexual. “I don’t think it is, Matt,” I said. He kept enquiring about it like Columbo badgering a suspect. “When did you have the operation?” There was a window and you could see a train track, there’s always some abject urban landscape to Nalls up my hedonism, due to the city setting. Suddenly the view from the window is pathos laden and begging for Morrissey to stick his oar in – “And when a train goes by it’s such a sad sound.”