One Train Later: A Memoir (34 page)

We travel on through a series of repeating scenes as we bounce from the adrenaline charge of the show to the struggle to refind our motel on the outskirts of town to the early-morning call to get back in the van for the next slogging drive. But even at this early stage people are waiting for us as we arrive to set up our gear. They extend their hands through the biting midwestern chill, holding out our LP or the "Roxanne" single or a small pink autograph book. They are polite and address each one of us as "sir." We are from England, and by most standards outside of New York or L.A., we-with our dyed blond hair, bomber suits, and narrow black pants-look as if we have arrived at the wrong party. The local bands, with their long hair, denims, and cowboy boots, give off a vibration of heavy boogie and blues and rockand-roll machismo. We appear as martian drag queens.

This second tour of the U.S. again ends back in New York at CBGB's. It is still black and depressing but, like an old coat, is beginning to have the comfort of the familiar. New York is a rush; the electricity of the city pushes into the music. We get animal in the performance and don't fuck around. It is 1979, and though we don't have America by the balls yet, we have the knife out.

Fifteen

I lie between the sheets next to Kate and baby Layla, my ears hissing, the sensation of a helicopter whirring through my head. The familiar bed, scent of females, breast milk, fragility and nurturing the soft end of the pendulum swing, the gentle opposer to the scrape of distance, stench of tarmac, phantom highway, tedium, and death at the end of a pool cue. Swaddled in the animal comfort of touch, the low murmer of endearments, luminous swell of dreams, and the comfort of our history, I'm home. Half asleep, I burrow into the sheets as Buffalo, Chicago, New York strobe across my brain, red in a field of black.

Now that we are back in England, A&M re-releases "Roxanne"-and this time it goes into the Top Twenty. It is a moment of triumph edged with grim satisfaction, and it is hard not to indulge in a slice of "I told you so." The BBC has graciously lifted the ban on our pop song, and we are allowed to appear on Top of the Pops. So we give it our best with a piss-taking sort of performance, Sting singing into the camera and casually waving the mike about two feet from his head.

We cap this brief two weeks back home with a performance at the Nashville in West Kensington. This time, unlike the hollow loneliness of the year before, the place is absolute pandemonium, with lines around the block and rabid fans desperately trying to stuff themselves through the window. Inside it is packed like an overheated jail, and I find it hard to wipe the grin off my face, as it seems only five minutes ago that we couldn't even get a gig here. Among the crowd are many fully paid-up punks who sing along with us. The barriers are down.

We leave for the U.S. once again. I am excited to get back onstage and continue our push in North America, but again I feel conflicted about leaving my family behind. It seems as if I am going off to have fun and adventure while Kate-going along with the situation in her own sweet and intelligent way-is being left alone to cope with a new baby and the poison of postnatal depression. The band and the family pull in opposite directions. It becomes like a Zen koan: "New baby, new band, where is the heart?" But I can hardly walk out of this situation; this is the shot; the arrow has finally penetrated the target; and now, with its double-edged aspect, it arrives quivering like Jekyll and Hyde. I feel like a man hanging over the edge of a cliff with a pistol at his head. In the surging maleness of it all, the band, the success, the money, power, is everything-and little thought is given to marriages, babies, or fragile situations. We have to conquer America, eat the world.

With this brew of emotion, I return to begin a tour in the southern states with Sting, Stewart, and Kim Turner, who is with us all the time now. Miles repeats the mantra that if we break the States, the rest of the world will follow. Grueling touring is still the process that works. Miles is right, but it will take three albums, three million miles, and three marriages.

After dates on the East Coast we arrive in Atlanta for a gig at the Agora Ballroom. One of the first things we are confronted with is a "Roxanne" contest. This has been organized without our knowledge by a local radio station, and when told about this event, we are mildly disturbed-as we are to be the judges. We feel that we have to take a stand about women being treated like cattle, but we are in a double bind because the radio station that has been promoting us heavily thinks we'll love it and so we have to zip our mouths shut. The girls, on the other hand, are loving it and there is no end of willing contestants. The idea is that each girl will try to become the very embodiment of Roxanne, an impoverished prostitute.

After we have ripped our way through the show and toweled off, we reappear on the stage, this time in a judging capacity, and the contest is announced. Our steely nonchauvinist resolve goes out the window as fifty scantily clad girls troop out onto the stage in front of a whistling and cheering audience. Dressed in all manner of sexy underwear and fetish garments, many of the girls are stunning, along with a few assorted insane ones whom only the demented would purchase from the flesh market. But even for these poor creatures this is a moment of glory; you have to admire their ingenuity at least as they imaginatively show their affinity with the strumpet, the tart, the trollop, the whore, the sister of mercy. "Okay, so we're sexist pigs," we say to one another as we stroll up and down in front of the line of giggling girls, our eyes roving over the Roxanne wannabe flesh. "Now look what you've started," I say, nudging Sting. "I didn't mean this to happen," says Sting, pausing in front of a pulchritudinous young beauty in stockings, garter belt, and a cute little pair of furlined fuck-me boots.

You make a song and if you are lucky, it lives, enters the world, is sting, whistled, purchased, memorized, becomes the soundtrack-the witness to the unfolding union, is remembered with joy or bitterness, a smile, a sighing stare into the mirror, and uninvited crawls between the sheets to stay with you forever. It seems only a blur since the three of us were in Paris, Stewart and I watching Star Wars, mouthing "May the force be with you" back at the screen, and Sting wandering around Pigalle and observing the demimondaines, the seeds of "Roxanne" sprouting in his mind.

On the stage of the Agora it is tempting to pick one of the short fat girls because she is courageous and beautiful on the inside, but in the end a sexy dark-haired girl in corsets is led to the front, and with Sting raising her handcuffed wrist above her head and the lust-filled drunken mob below slurring out the chorus of "Roxanne," with half-embarrassed, half-libidinous looks on our faces, we proclaim her-She.

We head out of Atlanta and into the Bible Belt, playing through Louisiana and Florida and then up into Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona. There is no time for sightseeing but just the hamburger, fries, and coffee grind, the I-90s, the I-65s, overpass, underpass, the turnoff for Baton Rouge, the de tour outside of Denver. But despite the grueling hours, the experience is like a torch to the blood. The arching skies of the West stretch over our heads like an infinite canopy, a powder-blue canvas as we barrel, a boatload of Vikings, toward the next town. Each night, despite the hours and the miles traveled, we work and push to galvanize the audience into heated response, beat them into submission, bend them to our will, seduce, collude, conspire, transform. We don't leave the stage until we have won.

"Roxanne" is now a hit, and the crowd sings it with us every night. We leave each town with a tinge of sadness because it was so good there. Why leave? you wonder, the traces of last night's adrenaline hanging off the side of your brain, until one of the others tells you to get over it, Phoenix tonight. We are like sailors constantly sailing off to the next port, leaving behind scattered fragments of promises: call me, write us, yeah next time, back in a few months, yeah you too-a dirt path of expectancy, the faint optimism of a future shared. We meet hip, savvy people who want to befriend us, talk to us, and take us to their homes. They give us books, paintings, thick joints of sinsemillia, red wine, and offers of beds, food, comfort, and succor. There always is a friendly fat guy with a beard who wants to carry our gear and hang with the band.

Every night there is also an offer to p-a-r-t-y. You pile into a Firebird or a Chevy with a bunch of kids, a tape goes into the deck, and "Roxanne" is played at high volume while a joint is passed around, followed by a bottle of tequila; everyone screams, "You don't have to put on the red light," and as we skid into an American suburb the stars in lush cluster against the deep dome of Colorado sky are broken only by the golden arches of McDonald's.

Across the lawn and into the house we go, trying not to trip on the sprinklers. "Don't piss off the neighbors," someone giggles. The TV in the front room is on with Reagan's withered mug moving silently in a blackand-white pantomime. More music goes on. "What are you into, man?" "I dunno-anything." "Yeah, cool-how about some Marley?" Outside someone retches violently into a bush and then begins laughing and says, "Fuck, man, my fuckin' shoes." A red guitar appears from nowhere. We look at the record collection: Zeppelin, Sabbath, Marley, Velvet Under ground, the Stooges, Bowie, the Police. We lean back into the couch, sprawling like live bait-we have been captured. We stare at fluffy animals on top of the TV set, and I think of James Mason as Humbert Humbert when he turns up at Lolita's house at the end of the film and asks her to leave with him. "This is America," I say to no one in particular, and I can't decide if I love it or hate it.

I begin going into the guitar stores in these towns, on the lookout for the odd vintage beauty that can sometimes be found at a bargain price, and I come up with a red '62 Stratocaster, a killer blond 1958 ES 175, a Martin D28. The George Gruhn store in Nashville sends an emissary at eight A.M. one morning as we are leaving the motel to drive to Arizona. With my breath freezing in the air, I climb into the van and hand over five hundred dollars for a tangerine-colored Gretsch Chet Atkins. Most of these guitars are paid for by Kim Turner, who makes a careful note of how much is paid out on my behalf. He always shakes his head in disapproval, asks me if I can afford it-wife and baby at home-then hands over the money. Despite our burgeoning success, we are still existing off the gig money; actual recording royalties will not turn up for another two years after going through the meat grinder of the record-company accounting department. But I am thrilled finally to have the finances to buy guitars, remembering when I was reduced to just one battered old nylon string a few years earlier.

Reinforced by the emphatic response each night, we reach a new confidence in our stage performance. The shows become a conduit to chance and we push out toward the edge. The instrumental break of "Roxanne" gets extended to epic proportions, and within it we find new licks, new territory, new grooves, so that the improvisation becomes a piece unto itself. "The Bed's Too Big Without You" gets a jazzy reverbed-out treatment full of iteration, repercussive snare, and springing bass lines: punk jazz. "Can't Stand Losing You," with its added high-drama key change (F major to B major) and interchange between us and the crowd, brings the set to a climactic ending every night and leaves them hanging from the rafters.

I get to know Ian Copeland, our agent and Stewart's other brother, a little better, as he is often at our gigs. I ask him about his agency-who else is on the roster, etc. He replies that his number two band after us is Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. My former wife. I pull another Bud Light out of the crate.

One night in Boston in a surreal out-of-body experience, I get it-our thing, whatever it is they like about us. We have been going so fast that about all we have time for is brief sweaty thanks that whatever it is we are doing is working and then we're gone. Halfway through "Can't Stand Losing You" at the Paradise, in what must be something like an endorphin high, my head zooms offstage and I see us from the audience viewpoint; for a second I see it-it's cool. But I don't want this information; it'll fuck me up; I stomp another box on the stage.

Now that we are achieving minor fame, a rotund smiling Hispanic man visits us from time to time. An executive at A&M, his name is Bob Garcia. He drops out of the sky like a visiting angel into the maelstrom. We are always glad to see him, for it is as if the cavalry or our fairy godmother has arrived and for a moment the shabby motel, the stinking van, lighten like a distant memory and we get the perfume of the real world again, the place that has been obliterated by the surge and grind of touring. Bob has a wit and an acid humor that key in nicely with ours, and for a few days it is like having a generous uncle around as he takes us out to eat, buys us VapoRub, and checks us in to the Bates Motel. With plenty of gossip and an encyclopedic knowledge of books and movies, he entertains and mothers us for a few gigs before getting back on the plane to Hollywood to make a report. He will stay the course with us.