The Living Years (30 page)

The videos for ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Land of Confusion’, the fourth single from
Invisible Touch
, were both nominated for MTV Music Video of the Year. We lost to Pete and I do think he deserved it, but it always amused me that our video, which was by far our best, didn’t feature us at all. It didn’t seem like a coincidence.

‘Land of Confusion’ was the nearest I’ve ever come to writing a protest song: ‘There’s too many men / making too many problems / and not much love to go round.’ It was intended to be slightly tongue-in-cheek; it was also the last song on
Invisible Touch
to be written and just as I was about to write the lyrics I’d got a flu bug. I was lying at home delirious, covered in sweat, but was running out of time. Eventually Phil came over and sat on the end of my sick bed – being careful not to get too close – and stayed there until I’d written them.

The video featured Spitting Image puppets of the three of us: in the nineties my puppet was then recycled as Jesus – big nose, long hair – which delighted my mum (especially after Egypt) but it upset Mary Whitehouse. I don’t think Phil and Tony were very impressed either. They rapidly brought me back down to earth if I started claiming any divine rights. The video was taking a satirical look at President Reagan and I have to admit they portrayed him as a rather useless president. The final scene showed him in bed, suffering from dementia, and accidentally pressing the red button to start a nuclear war instead of the nurse’s call button.

The President himself obviously never saw the ‘Land of Confusion’: while the
Invisible Touch
tour was in Washington we were all invited to meet him at the White House. Seeing it properly for the first time – i.e. in daylight, not stoned and with a clean conscience – it was actually quite impressive.

As a band we were now so big and flying so high that it was impossible not to get caught up in it all. It had been a terrible year for me personally with death my father, but it was hard to avoid the elation. America was like a big touring machine – we just got on it and worked. We were such a well-oiled touring outfit that Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and their manager Steve O’Rourke, who was great friends with Tony Smith, even joined us for a few weeks to relearn the ropes ahead of their
Momentary Lapse of Reason
tour (the Floyd had not toured since 1981).

At the end of our tours our road crew would disappear and tour with another big band for a year, and then come back to us. This meant that we would often end up knowing people well by sight, but we would very rarely know anything about their lives and sometimes wouldn’t even know their names. One truck driver on the
Invisible Touch
tour particularly stood out – he always wore a cowboy hat and had a big, long beard – but when we were in France one morning he didn’t turn up. It was Andy Mackrill, our tour manager, who found him: he’d had a heart attack and died in his hotel room.

It was such a lonely death and it made me realize how, in many ways, it was such a lonely way of life too. Only a few of the guys on tour had families back at home and when we tried to get hold of the dead driver’s next of kin we drew a blank. We eventually found a cousin somewhere in the Deep South who wasn’t sure what we should do with him, so we had him cremated in Montpellier. We put his urn in a black box, which flew around with us on our plane until we could find a relative who would come and collect his ashes.

It seemed the right thing to do, to keep him with us, and whenever we played we’d always place his little black box at the side of the stage. However, when Kate and Tom next flew out with Angie, we decided it was probably best not to tell them what was in it. Unfortunately that meant they ended up falling asleep on the plane one night with it between them, using it as a pillow. I think it was Jolie Collins, Phil’s daughter, who told them what was inside. I’ve never heard shrieking like it.

* * *

In April 1987, we had a month off. Because I still couldn’t go home, Angie and I rented an apartment in Verbier, Switzerland, for the Easter holidays so that we could take Kate and Tom skiing. Tony and Margaret came too and it seemed like Angie and I were finally going to get some rest and relaxation when, one week in, Angie was struck by what seemed to be terrible altitude sickness. It turned out to be morning sickness and she was soon feeling so ill that we had to abandon the holiday all together. Worse was to come.

Angie decided to meet me in Malaga for a few days. She was now four months pregnant and hadn’t wanted to travel much. As soon as she arrived she knew something was wrong, so we called the doctor, who informed us that she had miscarried and called an ambulance. It seems strange now but I couldn’t go with her as I had to do a morning show with the band. When I arrived at the hospital Angie was already sedated, ready for an operation. I asked what the scan had showed. By the look on the doctors’ faces it was obvious one hadn’t been done. The scan showed a heartbeat and that the baby was hanging on for dear life. For the following three months Angie lay in bed, either in hospital or at home, with the baby still hanging on, while I had to continue the tour and the tax year. Life had become very strained and difficult, especially when I was on the other side of the world.

I then took up residence in a Sofitel hotel at Paris airport. It seemed easiest to base myself there so that I could fly to England whenever we weren’t playing. Over the next few weeks I got to know that Sofitel pretty bloody well.

There was a set of double tables in the restaurant, and the same four businessmen would always be seated there, all wearing pinstripe suits. I’d always wonder what their stories were – why they were also doomed to spend so much time in this Sofitel – and was beginning to think that maybe they were tax exiles too. By this time I was more than ready to forget the tax plan completely. The decision had already affected our ability to be close at hand following the deaths of both our fathers, and now I was trapped in a hotel, starring at four businessmen, when I just wanted to be by my wife’s side. But then I would realize that I couldn’t just go home and be with Angie anyway, because I was still committed to another two months of European shows.

The Sofitel plan worked quite well but it wasn’t foolproof. I had needed to fly back to London to make a video for ‘Anything She Does’. We had got Benny Hill to star in it and, as always with Benny Hill, numerous busty blondes were also involved. My plan was to go on and visit Angie afterwards but the shoot overran, and as I had to be out of the country by midnight in order to comply with the conditions of my tax break, I wasn’t allowed to stay the night. I rang Angie from the set to tell her: ‘I’m sorry, babe, but I’m not going to be able to make it: we’re running behind and I’ve got a Page 3 girl sitting on my knee.’ I find that funny now, but life was beginning to get very strained for both of us. It was horrible to know what she was going through and not be able to be there for her.

* * *

By the time the
Invisible Touch
tour got to the UK in June 1987 my tax year was finally up. We were now about to play the biggest shows of our career: four sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium playing to over 300,000 people. It was a record at the time, although sadly not a very long-standing one: we were beaten the very next year by Michael Jackson, who sold out five nights.

Over the years, I’d got to know how to prepare for big shows. Watching a film was always a bad idea – it would take you too far away mentally and you’d struggle to get your focus back afterwards. The best thing was simply to footle around. (‘Footle’ was one of my dad’s words, like ‘squiffed’: I can hear that word today and picture him instantly at our Christmas dinner table pretending to be a bit tipsy and pulling his paper hat down over one ear.)

I’d got my footling skills down to a fine art over the course of the
Invisible Touch
tour. I’d discovered that you could make going to buy some more shampoo or razorblades last an awfully long time if you wanted to – but on the second of our Wembley dates I footled a bit too much and was late leaving home. Coming off the North Circular I hit traffic and ended up in the middle of a solid jam stretching as far as I could see.

It could have been a disaster but fortunately I had a strange new gadget with me in the car: a mobile phone. It was the size of a brick but it got me through to Andy Mackrill who arranged for a police escort to come and rescue me. I followed them out into the fast lane and we flew towards the venue, although it was one of the hairiest drives of my life. When I got to Wembley my shirt was glued to my back with sweat.

One of the great things about those Wembley shows was the weather: four beautiful sunny days. Even at the time I thought, ‘How lucky is that?’ And I knew we were probably at the peak of our career, too, as I looked out at all those people waving. But after the year I’d had, it wasn’t something I could really savour as much as I should have done.

* * *

Not long after Harry was born I met Chris Neil for lunch in the West End to tell him that there wouldn’t be another Mechanics album. ‘I really can’t do it, Chris,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing left.’

At the time I was exhausted. I’d had enough. My father had died, Angie’s father had died, we’d nearly lost a child, Angie had been bed-ridden for months and I’d been on the road for nearly a year. I was spent. Naturally Chris looked a bit appalled that I was calling it a day but, just as he’d waited for the right moment to suggest recording in Montserrat, he was happy to bide his time.

‘OK, fine, whatever you want to do. If you change your mind, let’s talk about it.’

I think he always knew I’d call.

* * *

At the time we wrote ‘The Living Years’, B. A. Robertson had also recently lost his father and had a new baby. The song was very much his idea and his lyric but it tied into both our experiences. And both of us had our doubts about it. Writing a song about death and bereavement seemed crazy when you stop to think about. If you try for something that’s strong and emotionally touching and you get it wrong, it’s not just bad, it’s horrendous. But ‘The Living Years’ came directly from the heart and that’s why it worked.

We wrote the song in a cottage situated on the way down to the stables at Drungewick. It had a lovely view looking out over the lake and the music also made for a certain type of reflective atmosphere, a different way of experiencing emotions. I hadn’t cried at my father’s funeral – it had all been so unreal and I’d been too numb – but there was one moment when B. A. and I were working on ‘The Living Years’ together that we both had to leave the room. Separately, of course. He went one way and I went the other.

Nor were we the only ones on whom that song had an effect. Paul Carrack’s father had died in a pit accident when he was young, something that I half knew but, selfishly, didn’t really think about enough at the time. It was Chris who reminded me about Paul’s father. (Paul was a typical northerner and as emotionally hidden as the rest of us, but the theatre-world luvvie bit of Chris meant he was a much better communicator.) It seemed to me that something of that experience came out in Paul’s singing, making his vocal all the more poignant. He sang it like only Carrack could sing it.

When we’d finished recording ‘The Living Years’, Chris came up to me, shook my hand, and told me that working on it had been one of the highlights of his recording career. I wasn’t at all sure how well it had worked, though. I was too close to it.

Then Andrea Ganis from Atlantic heard it and rang me: ‘That’s a number 1,’ she said. And it was: in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland, and a number 2 in the UK. It also won an Ivor Novello award in 1989 and was nominated for a Grammy in 1990.

It’s funny: when I write a song, I never really think anyone’s ever going to hear it. Occasionally I will walk into my studio, look out of the window at the orchard and be amazed by the thought that what I’m writing on a spring day at home will be heard by guys in Argentina or the suburbs of Detroit. It’s not something I ever quite believe.

Songs do touch people but to have a song that changes people’s lives as ‘The Living Years’ did is something else. I’m very aware that I’m lucky. The number of people that I’ve met or who have written to B.A. and me over the years telling us how it’s affected them continues to amaze me. I’ve heard from people who have picked up the phone to their father after years of silence, or people who have managed finally to get close to their father as he is dying.

I had so many regrets after Dad died. I wished he’d have been younger so that he and Mum could have enjoyed their retirement more; I wished I’d seen them more often; I wished I had done more for them both. It wasn’t until I found Dad’s notebooks in his trunk that I realized they’d had money worries. If only I’d known, I could have given them an allowance instead of just sending them off on a cruise. But perhaps my biggest regret was that my dad and I hadn’t just chatted more.

It was only really after I found my father’s memoir that I became aware of all the conversations we could have had and all the questions I could have asked him. I also began to get a sense of what he had done in the war, including the role he’d had in sinking the
Bismarck
in May 1941:

. . .
as a gunnery specialist I had probably the best ringside seat of the day.

First came the spine tingling order ‘enemy in sight!’ followed by shouted orders and the clash of machinery as the turret’s crew made the final drill movements. Then a nagging silent wait until the ‘ting ting’ of the fire gong and the jar and shudder of the first salvos.

There she was in my periscope – a bit indistinct but large and menacing.

As I looked, large shell splashes went up in the vicinity and, as it was too early for them to be ours, ‘Rodney’ had clearly fired first.

Then ‘Bismarck’ herself erupted in a flicker of reddish flashes and I recalled that this was not a target practice and that we were under fire ourselves.