Slightly less than one week later, I stood in a leafy country track, the tangs of overlaying manures on the air. A neatly painted sign poked out of the hedge before me:
Old Wallow Farm : Organic Fruit & Veg : Rare Breeds
please don’t feed the geese
A lifelong townie, I’d been half-expecting a mud hole with a couple of wooden barns and a tractor parked next to a cattle grid, or at least something vaguely redolent of a Stella Gibbons novel. Instead, as I walked into the tarmac and concrete arrivals yard, I saw a long, low, grey stone building to one side, flanked by a small timbered structure too big to really be called a shed and, to the other side of the yard, the corner of a larger building in the same clean-lined, grey masonry. I guessed it must be the farmhouse, though from what I could see it looked tall and square, more like a Georgian parsonage than one of those higgledy-piggledy homesteads that grows out of the land. I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear, and my fingers brushed against Mum’s sapphire stud. It seemed very quiet. I couldn’t hear any of the sounds I associated with farms. Nothing was going ‘moo’ or ‘oink’ or even making any of those drawn-out, strangulated ‘rrrrrgggrrrrgggghhh’ noises that always so surprise young children brought up on Old MacDonald and fuzzy picture books.
Starlings perched on the roof of the house; unlike the ones that frequented my building, they weren’t impersonating crying babies or mobile phones or anything except, perhaps, other starlings.
I looked around for some kind of sign or indication of where I should go. A young woman with a smart ponytail and a gilet apparently made from recycled mattress quilting appeared at the door of the long, low building, and waved to me.
“Miss Ross? Hello! Taxi found us all right, then? Lovely. Do come in.”
I did so and found a cosy, comfortable office that held a large L-shaped desk covered with paperwork and supporting an elderly PC and printer. Underneath it, an equally elderly tricolour collie overflowed from a well-chewed wicker basket. The dog looked up, turning extremely intelligent liquid brown eyes on me, and then it thumped its tail half-heartedly on the faded blue carpet. Corkboards covered two of the walls, peppered with coloured pins and patches of paper. A scattering of ribbons and rosettes—red, blue, white, and green—with gold lettering on them, and photographs, had all been pinned up at eye level. Dogs, but also horses, sheep, and cows. I had no idea how you told the breeds apart, but I assumed that they were all excellent examples of what they were supposed to be.
I had spoken to Christy Brooks, the owner of the smart ponytail and squashed-mattress gilet, on the phone. In person, she seemed just as cheerful and clean-scrubbed as I’d imagined her.
She offered me a seat in a comfortable office chair and brought me a cup of tea from the little staff kitchenette. Then she picked up a radio and paged my arrival through to Joss Napier, explaining that they couldn’t use mobile phones because the farm nestled neatly in a black spot with utterly dreadful reception. A voice crackled through over the radio, telling her to take me into the morning room. I hadn’t been intimidated up until that point.
“Righto, will do. Come along,” she said to me, all bright and chipper, and I headed meekly after her, out of the farm office by a back door.
The collie got up arthritically and followed us out onto a patch of beautifully manicured green lawn, where the dog squatted to relieve—ah—herself. The lawn, frilled with lavender beds and speckled with the browning leaves of daffodils and glossy blooms of tulips, hugged a brick paved path that led down to a set of french doors. Ms. Brooks took a key from her pocket, opened the doors, and led me into a small room with a tiled floor. Modern panelled doors led off to the left and right, while a rack of boots and wellies lay straight ahead of me, a knobbly, extremely muddy rug and a coir mat on the floor, and a washer-dryer rumbled to itself in the corner. The collie waddled over to a metal dish full of water and took a few gulps as Ms. Brooks opened the door on the left.
“This way.”
After the muddy utility of the boot room and the well-organised informality of the office, I wasn’t expecting such an impressive hallway. We’d come into the main house from the side—what would have been the servants’ quarters—and entered the hall from the back. The floor was waxed pine, the walls a pale blue with soft cream paintwork, and tall, beautifully proportioned windows let in streaming yellow light. To our right, a panelled staircase with ornate spindles rose, a cupboard underneath it marked with wrought iron latch and hinges. A pair of dark wood occasional tables straddled the front door—a large, well polished affair with stained glass panels—and each held a big china vase full of fresh flowers, welcome profusions of colour, albeit still impeccably tasteful. It felt like walking through a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle made from old copies of Country Life.
Ms. Brooks ushered me into the morning room, which was fairly small, but beautifully formed. Picture windows pierced the pale green walls to, I supposed, the south and east, because that way you would get the most early daylight. They overlooked, to one side, another well-kept garden and, to the other, the arrivals yard I’d first entered. Long curtains and deep windowsills framed a large, attractive fireplace. One or two oil paintings—farmyard scenes and studies of yet more flowers—graced the walls, but not in any way that might clash with the paintwork. The furniture was of the big, heavy variety, the chairs and sofas thickly upholstered with damask fabric, strewn with needlepoint cushions far better executed than my gran’s efforts. At Ms. Brooks’ invitation, I sat down in a chair between the fireplace and a sideboard laden with another vase of fresh flowers and a set of crystal decanters.
“Right, I’ll leave you then,” said Ms. Brooks, beaming at me. “He won’t be a minute.”
“Er. Thanks,” I said.
The elderly collie bitch watched her go, then shuffled around, sniffing at things imperceptible to the human eye before coming and sitting heavily next to my feet. She tipped her head back and looked at me expectantly, her ears flopping out like wings, so I reached out and stroked her. After a few moments, I heard a car pull up outside, then the crunch of feet on gravel and the sound of the front door opening and closing. The collie got up and shambled to the door, wagging her tail expectantly.
Joss Napier came into the morning room tracking mud, one dark green welly already in his hand. He wore a pair of grubby jeans and a thick, navy blue cable-knit jumper of the bulletproof variety favoured by trawlermen, from under which came the suggestion of a checked twill shirt. A gold wedding band glinted on his left hand. He still stood on the tall side of average, not too generously padded, but if it hadn’t been for the long, thin nose with the slightly crooked tip and the pale blue eyes, I wouldn’t have recognised him. His hair was short, almost entirely grey, and his face had thickened and dropped considerably since all those photos I’d seen. He smiled at me as he toed off his other welly and bent to pat the collie bitch firmly on the flank.
“Good girl, Francie…. Hello. Miss Ross, right? Joss Napier. Pleased to meet you.”
He shook my hand and flung himself into the other armchair. The big toe of his left foot had started to poke through his thick black sock.
“Do hope you don’t mind,” he said, “bit of a rush job, I know, and I’m afraid we are pretty informal. Someone ought to be along with some coffee and tea and that in a minute, and there’ll be lunch in the kitchen for, oh, about half one. I do hope you’ll join me.”
“Of course. Um. Thank you,” I said, trying to get my footing.
He seemed very pleasant—broad of smile and warm of tone—but I had the feeling that he held the conversation firmly in his grasp. I supposed I could expect nothing less; I’d come here posing as only one up from a journalist, after all. Not usually the object of much unguarded trust. Before I could blink, he’d started to tell me all about the farm, about the extremely rare chickens, and the cattle, and the sheep, and about how important the organic ethos and the preservation of heritage stock were in the age of intensive farming and, of course, in the wake of foot and mouth, not to mention the fresh threat of bluetongue disease. So few people really understood how their food got from field to table, he said, and the statistics regarding organophosphates and cancer incidence were truly terrifying; something of which, as a woman, he felt sure I was aware. I had barely formulated a cogent reply when, abruptly, he switched it all around.
“So, you’re writing a biography of Damon Brent? I was amazed, I must say. It’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time.”
Clever, I thought. Not quite asking me why, but raising the issue. Letting me know he’s thought about it.
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s important that heritage isn’t forgotten, isn’t it, Mr. Napier?”
“Oh, very good.” He chuckled. “And, please… Joss. Just Joss.”
I nodded. The ever-efficient Ms. Brooks brought in tea and coffee and exchanged a few words with Just-Joss about a phone call that had come through regarding two hundred day weight prices. It went over my head.
“Sorry,” he said after she retreated. “You know, I only bought this place eight years ago, though I saw it for the first time back in, oh, it would have been about ’79. When I was still on the road, with Kaleidoscope Green… no one remembers them, of course. With good reason; we didn’t last very long.”
I wasn’t sure how tactful it would be to agree with him at this point; we’d Googled and YouTubed his brief stint in that ill-fated prog outfit to within an inch of its life and it had been painful. Poe-faced, pretentiously painful. It didn’t seem right to say that, of course, and it would hardly be the way to stroke the ego of my interviewee, so I grappled for something polite to contribute. Luckily for me, Joss had glanced out of the window rather than wait for my response, allowing me to get away with a non-committal but sympathetic noise.
“Back then,” he said, “if you came up on the A-road, to the west, you could see all over the fields. There’s a housing estate in the way now, but I remember noticing this, just, incredible place. Growing out of the ground, almost. Really… not just tumble-down. Actually already tumbled, you know?” He paused, one arm still half-outstretched, outlining the pattern of since-changed roads. “The same family farmed here for nearly two hundred years. The last owner was the only one left, and of course as he got older he couldn’t manage, so it all just decayed around him. Poor old chap. All that heritage,” he added with a smile. “Just waiting for someone to come along and save it. I was very lucky it was me… very lucky I was in the position to do so. Well, we were. My wife’s at least half responsible,” he explained. “A lot of this is her work.”
His gesture to the wall behind me encompassed the fresh flowers, the carefully chosen artwork, and the tasteful paint job. I wasn’t entirely surprised.
“It’s lovely,” I said. “And so full of character.”
“Oh, it’s definitely got that. Far too much character for Jessie’s original plan, actually.” He smiled. “She wanted to run a riding school. You know, she thought it would be nice…finally move out of London and get ourselves one of those rural idylls. Good for the girls. We have two daughters,” he added with the beaming digression of a proud dad. “Lesley and Antonia. Both grown up now, or as good as. Lesley’s at uni, reading law, and Toni’s been working in London, at the Oxfam offices. I’m sure they’d both have loved to grow up with horses, but I’m afraid it never really got off the ground. This has always been a farm, and that’s what it was crying out to be again. I thought I’d install a farm manager and not get my hands dirty. As it is, I seem to get more hands-on every year.”
He grinned, and I could see that he didn’t regret a minute of it.
“But, you’re here to talk about the good old days. God, it’s,” he widened his eyes, “more than thirty years ago now. Frightening. Of course, we were all so young.”
“Hm? Ah, yes.” I checked my notepad, briefly wrong-footed by the fluid ease with which he directed things… made it easy for me. “You joined the band in ’72, is that right? So, you were how old?”
“Oh, don’t…. I was barely twenty-three. I’d been getting a bit of session work up ’til then, and I’d played with a few guys I knew from the Marquee fairly regularly, but we didn’t do anything really fixed. I’d met Cris McIlroy at The Nottingham Boat Club… I suppose it would have been in the spring of that year. Probably about May, I’d think. He said he had these chaps who were going to be very big, but they needed a good, solid backbeat. Bit more of an… well, an edge, I suppose. So he invited me along to play, and it was decided, after we’d all messed around for a while, that I ought to come in full-time and see how it went. Of course, it went very well, and then Saturday Loving hit the charts… that was my fate sealed, as it were.”
Joss took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat. He avoided my eye for a moment, as if wondering whether he’d just made himself sound like an egotistical arse or not. I smiled encouragingly.
“So that was first time you met them? The others?”
“Oh. Oh, yes.” He nodded. “Well, I’d seen Charlie at Studio 51 and the Crawdaddy Club… the other two were more of an unknown quantity, though I had seen them about.” Joss cleared his throat again, like he had some kind of irritable tickle. “You have to remember, Ellis, there was a thriving circuit in those days. It seemed like you rubbed up against everyone eventually, because everyone seemed to end up in the same places. It wasn’t until a year or so later I actually realised I’d met Damon before, too, up at Eel Pie Island. Must have been, oh, ’67, I suppose, just before it closed and the squatters moved in. I’d gone to see the Bluesbreakers. Incredible day.”
He set his cup down and craned over in the chair, just enough to scratch Francie’s belly while he continued to talk. Reluctant though I was to admit it, I thought Damon might have had a point about cleavage. At his suggestion, I’d gone with a pale green V-neck jumper and the only padded bra I owned. As I leaned forward to put my empty cup on the low table, I noticed the very subtle, very brief peek that Joss took down my top.
“So I suppose Leon was the only one who was really an entirely unknown quantity for me. It was funny, ’cos we were all introduced for the first time at about two o’clock in the morning at a motorway services on the way to Leeds.”
The collie thumped her tail and made a small noise in her throat as he rubbed her ears. Then she lumbered to the door and looked back at him with a little whine. As Joss got up to let the dog out for a wee, he explained that she was nearly fifteen and had a very weak bladder these days, though he’d had her from eight weeks old and couldn’t bear the thought of being without her. He veered off into the day-to-day minutiae of running the farm, and every utterance made it so obvious how much he loved this place. This life.
Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable. Though it had been easy to make the idea of suspects and motives an abstract one, it quickly grew real. Where, with Fielding, I’d felt like I was walking on private memories, it seemed clear that, for Joss, it was his life now that was sacrosanct. The work he’d done to get here, and the future that followed.
And yet, even if I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable thinking about it, I’d come here with the thought, somehow, that this man could—just maybe—have done something terrible. I thought of Damon on the prom, talking about his own death. The bleeding, the pain. I thought of all the cuttings in Mum’s book, all the repeated tragedy and disbelief. Someone had been responsible. If he’d fallen, been lying there on that floor, someone had taken that moment of opportunity and… as the thoughts twisted around in my head, evading capture and control, I couldn’t help but think that even Bill Sykes had adored his dog.
Francie’s ablutions finished, Joss invited me through to the kitchen for lunch, pointing out an interesting original feature here, or a framed photo of one of his prize-winning bulls there. British White Cattle, he said, had been on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s lists for years, though things were slowly improving. I looked at the picture of him in a white show coat, standing next to an enormously muscular walking lump of beef with huge, dark eyes, a wide, black nose and an immense expanse of beautiful, creamy-pale coat. An utterly thrilled Joss was holding up a ribbon for the camera, the bull’s halter in his other hand. The bull, its hide gleaming in the light, appeared ambivalent.
The kitchen was large, blessed with an abundance of waxed pine, soft red quarry tiles, and original diamond leaded windows. The table had been laid with a glamorously informal repast of fresh bread, farmhouse cheeses, herb and Niçoise salads, fresh fruit, and a bottle of Bruno Paillard Brut Première Cuvée. As we ate, Joss told me—with just enough detail to make the comparison gently self-deprecating—about how he’d grown up in Kennington.
“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” I put in, “but didn’t all the promo material say that the entire band came from Bermondsey?”
“Ah. It was a bit like the old Hollywood studios, I’m afraid,” Joss said with a smile. “The minute you sign, you find yourself reshaped, refigured, and repackaged, just like poor old Norma Jean. Who you were before didn’t matter, you see. Kennington, Walworth… it’s all South London so, for the press boys, suddenly all four of us came from Bermondsey. It wasn’t true—only Damon did, really. He grew up in one of those Guinness Trust houses, I think… you know, like the Peabody Estates? Social housing,” he added, with something that sounded—just for a second—like a sneer. “Very grim, I expect.”
I said nothing and tried not to let my encouraging smile waver.
“Leon’s people were from a little bit further west, Elephant and Castle sort of way, though of course he’d grown up in the States, and Charlie was a Walworth boy. But, as I said, that wasn’t really relevant for the press chaps. And you quickly learn how important spin is. As true then as it is now.”
He went on to talk about his own youth. The family had lived within a stone’s throw of the Oval, he said, and for a long time he had wanted to be a cricketer. He still played, he was keen to tell me. He could often to be found at the Failand ground, with the cream of the sporting elite gleaned from the regulars at The Fox and Hounds, or donating a few hours to coaching for the youth league. There was a thriving set of knock-out cups, he said, and he wished there had been so many opportunities available when he was a boy. I heard, watching the slightly grim light of memory in his eyes, how Kennington had been in the late Fifties and Sixties. How, as a child, he’d been sent up to Bob White’s for a pint of cockles or prawns, or for the Friday night fish supper from Ruby’s. How, when he was a little older, errands gave way to weekends spent trying to convince girls to go to the Odeon with him, and how he’d seen A Hard Day’s Night on that very silver screen and found it a revelation.
“I went back, not long ago,” he said as Francie laid her head on his knee, hoping for an olive. “I was up in London and I had the car, so I thought, why not? Just to see it. My parents retired to Eastbourne in the Eighties, you see, so I hadn’t…. Nostalgia, I suppose. It was very strange. It’s… smaller. Definitely smaller than I remember. I parked up in Kennington Cross and went walkabout. They were knocking down the old Odeon.” Joss tickled the dog’s ears absently and slipped her a titbit of buttered bread. “And of course Bob White’s hasn’t been there for years,” he said glumly. “I went right off the idea of cockles. You know, I’d sort of fancied picking some up, for old times’ sake, but they wouldn’t have tasted the same from anywhere else. And when I got back from my little stroll down memory lane, some bugger’d pinched my hub caps.” He gave Francie a final pat and reached for his wine. “Things change, I suppose. Don’t they?”
The kitchen windows faced out to the front and the gravel drive that approached the house. Through the leaded glass I saw another Land Rover pull up, tyres crunching on the stones. Joss’ attention flicked to the window, but only briefly, identifying the vehicle and classifying its importance.
“So… what else is there you’d like to know? I mean, I don’t know who else you’ve spoken to. Probably infra dig to ask, isn’t it? Not sure, I haven’t really done this before.”
Another self-mocking chuckle, another sip of wine. I smiled.
“I’ve, um, been trying to get in touch with a lot of people. I’ve spoken to Leon Fielding, though.”
“Leon? My God.”
Joss rocked back in his chair, glass of champagne still in his hand. I wasn’t sure if that could be genuine surprise. Did it shock him that Leon had consented to see me? Or maybe that I seemed further along in this enterprise than he’d expected. Outside, footsteps crunched on the gravel. A moment later, a gate slammed. Francie looked up expectantly at the door and wagged her tail, but no one came in. Joss cleared his throat.
“So how’s he doing these days? Touring again, I know that. Hah… wouldn’t catch me doing that. Younger man’s game, I can tell you, Ellis. The, er, the albums have been very good, I must admit. Very… different to what he used to write.”
I inclined my head—not quite a nod, not quite an admission of or agreement with anything—and chased the last olive around my plate.
“Yes. They worked pretty closely together, didn’t they? Leon and Damon?”
“Well, they went way back, of course. But yes, they did. Though a lot of our earliest material was written independently.” Joss smiled. “I’m sure you know how it goes. The label’s interested in maintaining a consistent product, wanted us to sound just so. You know. I mean, that had to change in relation to the market, not what we wanted to record, but….”
“There was a bit of resistance to that?” I prompted. I knew damn well there had been. That all four of them had clamoured to get their own songs used, and that Saturday Loving, the band’s first big hit, had been co-written by Leon and Day. I waited with interest to see Joss’ take on that.
He drained his glass, paused with an inward-focused expression that suggested the bubbles had gone up the back of his nose, and then threw me a disarmingly artless grin.
“Hell, yes. You have no idea how frustrating that can be. We didn’t want to be bubblegum, y’know? And when you think of some of the utter crap that gets pushed through…. I mean, of the releases in ’72, Angela and Lonely Evening were both independents. Staff writers. So when Damon and Leon co-wrote Saturday Loving and it smashed into the charts, I was delighted. We all were. At the success, of course, but also to see a few noses out of joint. Prove that we could do it ourselves.” He chuckled. “Obviously, then Damon got cocky. Pushed for his first royalty renegotiation in ’73, which raised a few hackles.”
“With the label?” I asked innocently. I found it difficult to believe either Joss or Charlie would have been entirely insouciant.
He shrugged.
“Thing is, Ellis, back then, writing his own material if really helped an artist see a profit.”
I frowned. “Sorry… how do you mean?”
Joss leaned forward in his chair, arms propped on his knees, and fingers interlinked, as if patiently explaining something to a small child.
“Well, let’s say you record an album full of songs you’ve written yourself. Legally, you’re entitled to two types of royalties. Firstly, there’s artist royalties, which can be anywhere from ten to twenty percent, depending on a number of things. You know… credibility, your contract, how good previous sales have been. Let’s say you only get twelve points. It’s not really that much, right?”
I shook my head.
“Well, then you’ve got mechanical royalties, which you’re entitled to as the songwriter. Now, these don’t add up to much either, but you still see around eight percent on the dealer price. So, if you’ve written, say, twelve songs to the album, you can vastly increase your royalty income, compared to the position you’d be in if you were just getting artist royalties. D’you see?”
I did. It was a giant game of double your money. And, as such, very probably rigged.
“Ah,” I said. “So it’s not just about artistic freedom and integrity?”
Joss curled his lip sheepishly.
“Not entirely. It’s survival… I mean, signing the contract in the first place is only half, or less, of the battle. A very small number of signed acts will go on to actually see a reasonable outcome of all that work, especially given the recoupment obligations you’re lumbered with.”
He smiled, seeing my ignorance, and I wished I’d got Damon to explain this stuff to me more clearly. I felt like a complete idiot, so wrapped up in trying to work out all the motives-and-alibis stuff I’d picked up from Agatha Christie novels, I’d forgotten I was supposed to be posing as a music biographer. At least I’d said it was the thesis to a creative writing course; no one would expect me to be word-perfect.
“A lot of people think it’s easy to make money in music, once you have a deal,” Joss said. “It isn’t. You see, the label acts sort of like a bank. Signing a record contract is rather like taking out an enormous loan on your future. You’re expected to recompense the label for everything they invest in you, and usually you pay that back through royalties. Of course, if you’re seeing less than twenty percent of the gross sales in the first place, that tends to take a while.”
He paused to refill his glass, and mine, and I could sense the bitter rant begging to emerge from beneath the surface. I poked and prodded a little bit to see if I could help it along but, to his credit, Joss kept everything calm and professional. I relented.
“So, you’d find yourself in debt to the label, and obligated to—what?—produce more material? Or a certain kind of material?”
“It would depend on your contract,” he said, a touch evasively.
“But is that what happened with Brother Rush? You had a pretty high output. There were….” I checked my notepad, the details of Damon’s careful dictation a few nights before. “Twelve Top Forty singles between ’72 and ’76, and five studio albums. Plus touring.”
“We were worked hard,” Joss conceded. “And, yes, we were inexperienced to begin with. If I was shown today the contract we all signed back in ’72…! But, at that point, we had a manager and a solicitor, and we thought we were already rich. And that it would last forever.” He smiled wistfully. “We signed for six albums. By the middle of ’73, I think we were already something like nine grand in the hole, on paper. Oh, there are other ways to get money, of course.” His gaze flicked to the recorder I’d set, with his permission, on the tabletop. If it worried him, he covered it well. “But that obligation still remains,” Joss finished smoothly. He gestured with his fork. “With The Mamas and The Papas, for example… they had to get back together in ’71 to record People Like Us, even after breaking up in ’68, because Dunhill Records wouldn’t let them opt out of their deal. They owed one more album, so they had to do it. It was pretty much the same thing for us… we were contracted for six albums. That’s why Damon’s death coming when it did was such a blow. We’d started work on what would have been the sixth—never named it—late spring and summer of ’76, but without him….”
He tore at a hunk of bread, not meeting my eye. A half-frown crossed his forehead as if, though he knew we would have to talk about Damon, he really didn’t want to… as if any preparation he’d done for this part of the conversation hadn’t been enough.
“That must have been very difficult,” I prompted gently.
“It was. I mean, it was tragic, of course. And so utterly bloody stupid. Ridiculous. He never deserved it. And it was a very distressing time for all of us. Obviously, it could never have been the same without him. He was—I mean, of course he was extremely talented—but he had a great drive, as well. Very ambitious, you know. We fell apart, without him… all agreed to go our separate ways that November. Cris, our manager, he was very good. We got away with bringing out the Live at the Carousel LP in time for Christmas, with some tribute notes on it, then a greatest hits collection early in ’77. Probably better for everyone that way. Commitments fulfilled, and no more expectations.”
“I see.” I nodded sympathetically. “So—and I hope you don’t mind my asking—but would you say Damon Brent was a driving creative presence? It seems a lot of material was written by various members of the band, and—”
“Oh, yes.” Joss smiled, but it wasn’t an entirely happy face. “Yes, he was. Of course. And I think he was always very determined to do things, you know, right up to the nth degree of his ability.”
He glanced at the recorder again. Only very briefly, but I saw it.
“I think that’s why he found the market we were in so frustrating. I mean, to be honest, it was hardly challenging, musically speaking. You’d really only see Damon light up when we played live. He didn’t have the, um, the discipline or the patience for sustained creativity in the studio. Not to suggest that he really lacked….” Joss curled his fingers in the air. A half-smile lingered diffidently on his face. “He got bored easily, you know? Didn’t like going over and over the same material… and he really didn’t like being told he couldn’t use something because it wasn’t commercial, or the label didn’t think it was suitable.” He chuckled. “If he could see the way things are now!”
I bit my tongue. My mind had already been wandering too much, trying to picture Damon in middle age, saggy and greying. Would he have put on weight or stayed trim? Looked back at the past fondly or moved forward with hope and optimism? And would he have cut his hair? I blamed the warm, full flavours of the champagne and the way the bubbles went to my head. While they were there, they bumped up against other, harder thoughts. I was talkin’ to people at Decca, Universal… they were gonna offer me blind terms, more cash….
Damon had protested, when I pushed him, that he hadn’t really meant to leave the band in the lurch. He wouldn’t have done it, he swore. They hadn’t known, he said. But what if someone had? I dragged myself back to the here and now, not quite ready to put those questions to Napier. Not yet. Not and reveal my hand.
“It must,” I said diplomatically, that sense of the surreal creeping back upon me like a panic attack, “have been very difficult for all of you. I mean, it’s a very intense environment, and there must have been a lot of pressure, especially at the beginning.”
“Yes. Yes, there was,” he agreed. “This… um. This is a drugs question, isn’t it?”
I laughed and nodded. If only I could ask him straight out. I have it on excellent authority that it was, in fact, murder. Whose authority, you ask? Well now, that’s the funny thing….
“As I understand it,” I said instead, “there was a certain degree of—”
“Ah.” He patted Francie thoughtfully. “Yes, well, no point denying it. A certain degree. I take it you’ve read all those interviews Charlie gave a few years back?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Hm.” Joss nodded. “Then you realise that he’d be the one to talk to about that side of things. I can’t speak for the others, though a fair amount of that stuff went on, that’s true. And Damon definitely…. Well, I know he smoked grass. Popped a few pills—mostly amphetamines, I suppose—did some coke, a few hallucinogenics, and of course there was the booze. That, more than anything. I’d certainly never have called him an addict. Not at all. I mean, I don’t think he ever really over-indulged or did anything too spectacular. There was that one time, when we were in Amsterdam…. You get very bored,” he added in a tone of gentle self-justification, “what with all that travelling and, when you come off after a show, the last thing you wanna do is get back on the bus. It was one of the first tours we did, back in ’74, I think. We partied, after the gig. Heavily, I’ll admit. Poor old Charlie was heading up to his worst point around then. I remember Damon—completely off his face—trying to buy drinks for an entire, um, private club. Y’know, a, er….”
“Brothel?” I supplemented.
Joss turned ever so slightly pink and tried manfully to change the subject.
“Um. Well, as I said, we were all young guys. You know. First time abroad, practically. Of course, when we got back—”
“Amsterdam was a sort of safe haven, though, would you say?” I prompted, pushing gently. I was in charge, I told myself. “Out of sight of the British press… almost.” I did my very best smile. “Do tell.”
Joss looked shifty.
“We-ell… as I said, we partied quite heavily over there. And no one was going to forego de Wallen, or the head shops. In ’74, I think we were still new enough to the whole thing to take it as an opportunity to… well, to misbehave a bit, to be honest. Maybe a bit too much. I mean, we only stayed two and a half days but, between us, I think we got into just about everything. There were some very… interesting places.”
I watched the battle of the blush wage around Joss’ face. Retrospective embarrassment fought cat and mouse with enjoyable memories, under the sniper fire of a now-married man’s randomised guilt, and the guerrilla attacks of panic at whether or not he wanted to see this in print.
“Mm?” I said, leaning forward a little in my chair.
“It was… something that could be immensely relaxing.” A tide of pink washed about his jawline. “Y’know. Not… not just the, er, ladies, but… the whole nature of the place. The freedom. And—you’re right—kind of a discreet environment. Or, at least, it seemed so at the time. You had to be careful, naturally. Getting snapped going into a brothel wasn’t considered quite de rigueur in publicity terms… but we were young, so we did it anyway. I remember,” he smiled into the mid-distance, “Damon buying drinks for the whole club, running up this enormous tab… just this… huge party. Major all-nighter, you know. Women, wine, song… a lot of grass. And stuff. It was great. Of course, he got carried away. He always did. Disappeared with a magnum of champagne and the blonde and the brunette he couldn’t decide between, as I recall.” Joss used his fork to fiddle with a piece of rocket. “We gave him a lot of stick afterwards, but it was, you know, sort of expected… in those days. Condemned man’s last fling and all that, right? You know, with the wedding.”
He gave an embarrassed little chuckle.
“Of course.” I glanced at my notepad. “So, he and Inez… they met in ’73?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think I ever really knew the details. He introduced her, brought her along to a few studio sessions. I think we all thought he was going to pull that unforgivable betrayal, you know?”
Joss winked at me, grinning encouragingly, like I should know the joke. I must have looked as blank as clean paper. He cleared his throat.
“‘My girlfriend does great backing vocals’. Y’know. About number three in the list of things you never want to hear in a studio. She wasn’t really musical, though, Inez. Actually, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t realise she was a tennis player at first. Of course, she didn’t really look like one. Not off court. Very glamorous. They were a great match, really. Set a date for a summer wedding in ’74, though I’m afraid I don’t remember when. Must have been July, or maybe June… we definitely gave Day one hell of a stag do. Lasted most of that tour and, of course, um, there was Amsterdam.”
Unspoken references to that sort of thing not being at all on these days, of course, wouldn’t dream of it, total respect for women et cetera, hung in the air.
I smiled.
“Utter profligacy, of course,” Joss added. “And it came back to haunt us. I swear I was hungover for a week. We lost Leon somewhere around the canal, complete panic ’til we found him again. Charlie got crabs. And we were in serious shit with management. I think it was really the last time we ever did anything like that, where we were culpable as a group, kind of thing.”
I arched an eyebrow. How disappointing.
“What about separately?”
Joss flashed me a grin. “Miss Ross… you’re not muckraking, are you?”
I tried to look innocent, and probably failed.
“No, not as such,” I said, guessing that apparent honesty might be the best way to go. “But… there seems to have been something of a consensus that drugs and alcohol played a role in Damon’s death. I suppose what I’m asking is how much of a role those patterns played in his life.”
I swallowed, surprised to find myself nervous. I kept thinking of Day on the prom… and I kept thinking that, in taking this road, I was asking for trouble. Like, somehow, someone would find out what I was looking for. And then where would I be?
“In the life of the band,” I added, trying to soften the question.
Joss nodded slowly. “Mm. Yeah, he… well, like I said, Day drank, more than anything. Me too. I was never that much into the harder side of things. It’s—well, it’s frankly scary, seeing how out of it you can get. And I don’t like to lose control. Not that much. I drank… admittedly more than I should have, for a while. I think we all did.”
I looked at the glass of Paillard beside his plate. We all did. The justification of the mob again. Still, if Joss had drunk, it wasn’t as much as he could have done. He could still afford to have one drink, and that’s one drink more than the seriously rehabilitated boozer.
“Of course,” he added brightly, “no one had introduced any guidelines for alcohol consumption back then. Units per week and so on. Would’ve been laughed out of court if they’d tried, of course… but it does catch up with you, I’ll admit. Personally speaking, I cut back a lot after Jess and I got married, and kicked the fags. Like the majority of my generation, I suppose.” He smiled dryly. “You put in all those years of rebellion against postwar conformity, and you still end up packing in the booze and the fags and taking up jogging because you’re terrified of your family losing you to a heart attack at fifty. We got middle-aged,” he said with more than a touch of irony to his sadness. “They were good times, though.”
He sliced a piece of farmhouse cheddar onto a cracker. After a pause to let Francie out for another loo break, we talked some more about the band’s salad days, about the personalities and the egos and the anecdotes. I got the distinct impression that—although Joss had loosened up considerably—most of what he said had been cleaned up for his, rather than my, benefit. Still, plenty of interest there. I took notes and started to fill in more of the gaps my conventional education had left me with; what it felt like to skinny dip in the Thames off Grove Park and why it had never been a good idea; the many uses of toupee tape even before the phrase ‘wardrobe malfunction’ had been coined; smart-aleck responses to most musicians’ top five favourite drummer jokes. Eventually, I succeeded in nudging him towards that night.
We were drinking coffee now. Joss dumped a teaspoon of sugar into his cup (proper cups. With saucers. Not like my odd collection of chipped builder’s mugs and mismatched three for two IKEA specials), stirring far longer than could be necessary to get it to dissolve. He frowned at the little bubbles that bobbed and eddied on the surface of the liquid and tapped his spoon on the rim of the cup.
“Damon did throw parties a lot. He liked the attention, of course, and, to be honest, I think he needed to feel important. They were good parties, don’t get me wrong,” Joss added quickly. “And the right people were always there, but it never felt too staged, you know? Even that night, when the place was full of—well, there were actors, models, a lot of influential people from the industry.”
He reeled off a list of names, some familiar to me, most totally unknown. However, the experience of talking to Leon already had provided me with a lot of background, so I managed to cover fairly well. Once Joss explained the connections—business, personal, and strictly under the table—between people, I began to see how it worked. Like a living flow diagram and, I supposed, rather like he’d described Amsterdam. Damon’s place had been out in the country; not London, not town. Somewhere that rules could be suspended, pressure released. A weekend out of time, Joss called it.
“I-I have to admit that there are parts of that night I don’t remember.” He sipped his coffee. “I mean, I remember thinking there was something going on, because Damon was absolutely hyper. I thought either coke or amphetamines, but I remember he was drinking very heavily as well. Of course, pretty much everybody was. I saw him—can’t remember what time, I’m afraid—arguing, I thought, with Cris. Vince Dexler was there too; all looked a bit animated.”
“D’you know what it could have been about?”
I suspected I knew all too well. Blind terms, more cash—Vince had it all lined up…. Day hadn’t mentioned it all coming out that night, or a fight with Cris. I wondered why.
Joss shrugged. “No idea. Whatever it was, they sorted it out amicably enough, I think. Damon seemed fine. Hyper, like I said, but fine. I saw him on and off throughout the party, playing the good host. You know. Plying everybody with booze and… whatever else. At one point, I think he was trying to make a wax sculpture in the pool. The, um, the last time I remember seeing him was about three a.m., probably. Again, he was fine… he said he wanted to take a nightcap, then get some sleep. He, um, he gave me a key to one of the bedrooms. Winked at me, and that was it. I went upstairs with my girlfriend and the next time I saw him, he was….”
Joss trailed off, the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. There was something surreal about the image; cup and saucer poised delicately against the coarse blue sweater, the farmer’s trousers and the house party memories. For a moment, his expression seemed indescribably sad. Then, just as quickly, he recovered himself. Coffee sipped, cup and saucer replaced on the table. He cleared his throat, reached out to nudge the cup with his thumb and straighten the handle.
“I, uh, I was still in bed when Leon found him, so the first I heard was the yelling. Got up, pulled on some clothes. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something had happened. Went downstairs, and there were just people all over the place, it had just kicked off, you know? Girls screaming, and… then there was the ambulance, and the police arrived. No one knew exactly what had happened and, of course, as soon as they heard a siren people were trying to leg it… with very good reason, as it turned out,” he added with a slightly bitter tone. “I should have taken the opportunity.”
“I understand that a lot of drug charges were brought,” I said, feeling about as subtle as a half-brick in a wet sock.
Joss seemed either not to notice or not to mind, because he just nodded.
“Yeah. I was charged with possession… it didn’t stick, because all I was wearing at the time was a pair of jeans, and there was nothing in the pockets. There was hash in the bedroom, with the rest of my stuff, but…. Of course, worrying about that wasn’t my first thought. I just remember seeing Leon. He was coming out of the lobby—that was this big split-level hallway, you know, connected the east and west wings. Damon had put in this great big partition, all glass blocks, glass door…. The door was open, and I could see Leon had come down the stairs in the west wing.” He exhaled, long and low, through his teeth. “I’d never seen anything like it. His face…. He was white, you know? Not just pale. White. And shaking. There was blood on his shirt, on his face…. It was terrible.”
I pricked up my ears. Joss stared at the tabletop and rubbed one thumb along its varnished edge.
“I’ve never seen anyone in a state like that. He just kept saying ‘he’s dead’, then he started freaking out. I went to him, hugged him, tried to calm him down, get him to tell me what was going on. He just crumbled. It was awful. Seemed like just minutes after that, the place started crawling with police. Complete bloody mess. The whole day, just taken up with all this bullshit, you know… piss tests and questioning and statements. After all that, when we finally found out what had happened, and they said he’d fallen, hit his head. Terrible. I mean, he could have been up there for hours and no one knew. It was just so, so wrong.”
Joss lapsed into silence, sudden and abrupt. My mouth felt dry, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to. His silence was as brief as it had been intense. He cleared his throat again.
“Of course, it all descended into farce after that. A complete circus. We were all shuttled off to the local nick to get… well, processed, I suppose they’d say. The whole place was absolutely chocka with people’s managers and PR teams, trying to sort out the mess. Of course, it would have been handled completely differently in London. You know. These were a load of country coppers, sticking their size twelves in and really not knowing what on earth to do with all these long-haired, half-naked people.” He smiled. “If Damon could have seen it, he’d have loved that. I mean, it was complete chaos. And the press started circling… the weeks after that were fairly horrible, I can tell you. Not just the funeral, though that was dreadful. Made it all real, somehow. But… what they did to him, in the papers. I hope that’s not something you’re not going to focus on.”
“No,” I said, my mouth operating without the rest of me, which was still some thirty years away. “No. I’m, um, I’m really much more interested in… before. Before that. It’s so sad, so much potential—the potential you had as a group—to be cut short like that. As you said, it must have been virtually impossible to carry on in the same way, afterwards.”
I thought I saw a look of… something in his face when I said that. Anger? Distaste? Whatever it was, it faded, replaced with a solemn nod. Yes, he said, it had been difficult, and they had all felt there was really no way they could continue, especially when the press started to drag out sordid details.
“And, of course, it was hard on Inez. There was a period, up to the funeral, when some of the hacks were very unkind.”
I remembered Fielding’s words: I… may have said things I later regretted. The press hadn’t been the only ones to blame Inez.
“She, uh, she wasn’t there at the party, was she?”
“No. No, they kept a flat in London. Used to stay there when she went down to shop… to be totally honest, I think she needed the occasional break from the whole scene. Though it was odd she wasn’t there, when that party was such a big do…. I guess they must have had some kind of tiff.”
I studied Joss’ face carefully. If he’d intentionally lied, he’d done it well. Totally artless, as if he’d had no suspicion Inez had been playing away. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe the skewed dynamic had only ever been between Day, Inez and… Leon? It still didn’t seem right.
“What would you say their relationship was like?” I popped back, hoping to strike while the proverbial iron was hot.
I wasn’t quite quick enough.
“Really not for me to say.” Joss smiled. “I know he did love her. She certainly wasn’t his Yoko, though. Inez was more interested in the celebrity cachet than the music. I don’t mean that nastily, just that that’s the part of it she was used to. I suppose losing that, with the injury and everything, then losing Damon… must have been hard.”
He moved on quickly, and I had to admire the way he’d sneaked out of it. I wanted to ask him more about Inez, but Joss was busy getting in references to the two decades he’d spent, since the demise both of Damon and of Brother Rush, producing a string of moderately successful bands and writing a raft of almost-classic songs.
He seemed to want to close by leaving me in no doubt whatsoever that not all the band’s talent had died with Damon. I played along, taking details and feigning a more intimate knowledge of his pet projects than I’d really bothered with. I assured him that I would include the info where I could, and he seemed happy.
“And do pass on my regards to the others. You know, when you speak to them.” He smiled sadly. “We’ve really lost touch over the years. It’s a shame.”
“I will,” I promised, packing up my stuff. “And thanks so much for your time. It’s been a real pleasure, and a great help.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, my dear,” he smarmed.
We stood and shook hands. I thanked him once more for his time, and he said I wasn’t to hesitate to get in touch again, and he’d look forward to reading the book sometime soon. I smiled and said, of course, and he insisted on having Ms. Brooks drive me back to the station. He wouldn’t let me wriggle out of it, so we went out of the beautifully proportioned Georgian front door, through the side gate, and into the arrival yard and—after he’d summoned her from the office—I obediently slipped into Ms. Brooks’ Land Rover.
He waited to wave us off and, just before the car pulled out onto the road, a woman came out of the long, low farm office. Her long bob of strawberry blonde hair framed her face, her figure flattered by a pale blue sweater, battered but well-cut jeans, and dark green Hunters. Yet, in that fleeting moment, I could only think of her expression as anxious. She slid snugly up to Joss, one hand on his chest, and his arm dropped around her shoulders. She said something to him, and he looked at her and smiled. Then we turned the corner, and I saw no more in the rearview mirror except hedges and the occasional squashed badger.