Death in Venice

I hear there’s a couple of versions of that song from my first album, ‘Death in Venice,’ going the rounds back home. I called it that after the Dirk Bogarde film to make it sound kinda classy, but folk also call it ‘Rose Tattoo’ these days. If they call it anything. 

It’s nothing to do with the movie, of course. It was based on a real life killing that happened in Venice, California around the same time that film came out, but the L A Times picked up on the headline ahead of me. Most of the lyrics are just straight lifts from the report of the girl’s trial: she really was a hippy chick whose old man beat her up, and turned on him with a knife. Got off on self defence, like the song says.

I met her a couple of years later when she came backstage after one of my gigs. Well, she might’ve had flowers in her hair, but she was one tough broad. That’s all I’m saying on the subject.

The Marry Rosie

1982: The Marry Rosie

Stupid old bugger. Stupid, stubborn old bugger. He’d retired, two years before; given up the sea as a bad job.

I can just picture him there, standing at the bar in one of the pubs down at the harbour, flat cap pulled over his head, jeans, boots and gansey, the proper fisherman’s jersey Mum still couldn’t get off him; the one that stank of seawater, cigarettes and fish. Hands knotted by arthritis, features carved nut-brown by the wind and weather.

And Peter Thom coming up to him and saying, Davy was laid low, and they were a man short, could he - ?

Well, of course he said yes – this was my Dad, remember. Finished his pint and got straight on the boat, where it just so happened there would be a change of clothes for him. That way, he didn’t need to go home and tell Mum – not that she’d have changed his mind: but he avoided the aggravation, as usual.

It was left to Davy Thom, sick with a hangover, to go up to the house and tell her Sandy was away on the Marry Rosie till Saturday. To his credit it was Davy, sick with grief this time, that went back to see her that Sunday morning with the news.

The Marry Rosie. I’d grown up with the Thom brothers, but I’d never had a straight answer out of them about that boat’s name. Sometimes it was after Rosie Cassells, the year below me in school, who was handed down from Peter to Davy without either of them showing any inclination to make an honest woman of her.

Or Davy would tell me it was after Cider with Rosie, the book we’d had to do at school: I think that was to impress me with his literary taste. This was on visits home after I’d left Arbroath for good in 1969, when the Thom brothers were getting set up in the family business of a fishing boat. By 1982, of course, they’d bought the older generation’s shares of it, and they could call it what they liked.

The worst of it was, I didn’t hear about the boat going down for a week. I had been on my travels around the Midwest, lost, lost in the Midwest, where the folks stick to their own and kinda look at you funny when you roll up in their town, but there’s still enough of them to turn out and fill a bar to hear that hippy chick from outta town play.

Sometimes weeks went by without my checking in on anyone, but something – intuition maybe, a feeling? – made me phone my kid sister.

‘We’ve been trying to reach you,’ she said. ‘Dad was on that boat…’

Places are so self-contained, aren’t they? I had drifted back east by then, and there was no more reason for the folks in Arbroath to know about a boating accident off the Maine coast that took two lives there, than for the Portland local news to carry a story about a fishing boat going down in the North Sea. Even if I’d been watching the news.

I only just made the funeral. The media came down like a flock of seagulls, feeding on the coincidence between the Marie Rose, some old mediaeval ship, being raised out of the water, while a fishing boat with a similar name went down. Throw in an ‘ex-pop star’ as the daughter of one of the men drowned, and you had a story. As if I didn’t feel guilty enough, it felt like I’d brought the whole media cavalcade down on Arbroath with me.

That night, after I’d spoken to my sister, I drove the Dormobile down to one of the beaches near Cape Elizabeth, and watched the waves surge in from the Atlantic, and thought of my Dad, somewhere out there, in another sea, the waves rolling above him, shrouding him in the dark. When dawn broke I was still there, the salt drying on my skin, the gulls wheeling and calling above me, shivering in the cold that had crept into every part of me.

Spain, Second Time

The second time I lived in Spain was at the other end of the country, in La Coruňa. I’d been recommended to someone who was running a Celtic folk festival there, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I didn’t see myself as a folkie, or even Celtic, particularly. 

Still, they paid me the cost of my travel and a small fee, and I was in the south of France at the time, so off I went. The Pyrenees just about killed the VW’s engine; and when we got to Galicia in early June, it started raining and just kept right on. It was wet summer, in 2001; at least in La Coruňa.

La Coruňa’s quite something, though. Much bigger than I expected – the Spanish call anything bigger than a village a city, but this place stretches itself tight around miles of the headland, like it’s trying to swallow the Atlantic whole. 

I gave up trying to be a good vegetarian in Spain. There was so much seafood – octopus, of course, but I preferred the fried squid, or the cangrejos, the crabs you could see in the market, their claws tied as they tried to fight each other in the holding tanks.

I was meant to be there for a week, but ended up staying four months. Most of the time I was in a flat on Rúa Cantábrico  that belonged to a friend’s cousin. After things got complicated with the friend’s cousin, I lived in the V for a while, parked up round the headland near the tower they claimed had been built by Hercules.

I really liked that place, especially walking along the beach in the twilight on my own, watching the Atlantic throw clouds at the city as its surf broke on the rocks below. I had lots of time to think things through, and no access to the harmful stuff.

Then, one day, I was sitting in a cafe, reading the local paper over a pitch-thick cafe solo, and the woman behind the counter cried out. I looked up in time to see a plane fly into a building. Then people falling out of the plane, jumping out of the building, leaping for their lives: real human beings, lost souls in a brand new hell that some mad god created for reasons of his own.

I don’t know why that made me want to go back to the States, but it did. I left as soon as they started flying again, heading out of Madrid on a half-empty plane. It was three more years before I got the V back. It was exactly where I'd left it.

Highway Tonight

I wrote that song travelling through the Midwest. After I got clean for the second time, I just lit out on my own for a while. Rescued the Dormobile from a friend's parking lot, fixed her up, and set out from L.A., up through Las Vegas without stopping, then across east, not really knowing where I'd fetch up.

I needed some peace, some space to work out what to do next. I needed away from the big cities, where I could get my hands on junk too easily. And the Midwest has lots of space. Mile after mile, hundreds of miles sometimes, between towns of any size; just cornfields to feed the world, so they say. I still had a bit of money from the first two albums, so I thought hey, why not? I could probably pick up some gigs on the way.

What I did pick up, mid way through Utah, was a bad case of Josie. Scrap of a girl, standing at the roadside, guitar case in hand. That clinched it. 

"Where are you going?"

"Wherever the wind blows me. Away from here, at least." Long, dark hair; ten years younger than me. Running away from home, she said.

"Your folks know you've gone?"

"Like they care." She had a certain attitude. I insisted she phone home at the next truck stop: I gave her the change, and, well, she phoned someone. 

We had a good couple of nights under the stars, Josie and me. Smell of the gas stove guttering in the breeze, a simple meal cleared away, blue smoke of a joint back and forth, just two girls with guitars. She knew my first record, and strummed along. Then she'd do one of her own, although some of them sounded strangely familiar. World-weary, she was. There was one song - but no, that would give it away.

Soon as we reached a bigger town with a Greyhound bus station, Josie disappeared, along with my stash and a roll of bills I kept under my mattress. It could have been my only money.

The next time I saw her face, it was on the cover of a double album. She was the Next Big Thing, for a while. New Wave, that was what she rode in on.

The car mechanic and the waitress, they came later on, in Kansas. A long way from the Yellow Brick Road.

.

The Prediction

My Aberdeenshire grandmother was fey, my Mum used to say. Read people’s tea leaves, in the village she came from; until one day she saw a neighbour’s death in them.

By the time I was old enough to remember anything she said, she restricted herself to a stock of weird catch phrases that seemed to be all her own. One that stuck in my mind was when she used to walk on the beach with us sometimes, screw her face into the wind, and say, ‘We’re a’ naebody’s children, hen.’ Then she’d look down at me and smile, and say, ‘You’ve to find your own song, ye ken? The one only you can sing.’

 When she died, a whole lot of her old tea-reading clients came out of the woodwork to tell me all about what she’d forseen for them. She had healing hands, too, apparently.

 I ran into a lot of New Age types in L.A., of course. Sat cross legged on on floors till my knees ached, and breathed in more incense than the pope. All that chanting! Well, I maybe didn’t inherit Granny’s second sight, but there were a few things I could see coming. Like all those male gurus, who were after something a bit more basic than spiritual enlightenment. Which, depending on the guru, might be just fine by me.

That time in Toronto, though, coming back from backing the boys in ‘75. The airport was open, but only just. There had been a heavy snowfall overnight, and you could smell more was coming. The flight took off, then turned south in a long curve, and half an hour in we were flying through ice clouds. Put down in Newark, which was like the seventh circle of hell, with people sneezing, babies projectile vomiting, and that anxious, sweaty scent you get off too many nervous fliers pressed up too close together.

Cut a long story short, I got another flight late afternoon. It flew direct into another snowstorm, and had to put down in Cleveland, of all places. Took the most expensive taxi ever trying to get a decent hotel for the night, and ended up in a Rodeway Inn that stank of cigarettes and floor polish. I decided I needed a drink, and lit out to see what was on offer.

Down the street there was a disco bar nearest me, and a rough and ready place on the other side of the freeway advertising live music. I crossed the road and went in. Everyone had dragged the slush in on their shoes: there was a steamy, wet clothesy fug of an atmosphere, foaming pitchers of beer, and a band of some sort tuning up in the corner. I got myself a drink, and a vantage point.

The band were kids, really: probably why they’d called themselves Nobody’s Children. The lead singer looked about sixteen. He had a ripped t-shirt, oily jeans, and a Fender Telecaster with a big gouge out of the top. He muttered something to the others, the drummer counted off a breakneck beat, and they were off.

It took me a minute to recognise the tune: they’d thrown a lot of the major chords into minor, it was all at different time signature from the original, and the kid snarled the words rather than sang them. There was no missing the chorus though.

That was the first time I’d really heard punk – I mean, I’d read the reviews of bands like the Ramones, but I’d never listened to them. And here was this band of young punks, ripping So Said the Clown to shreds. The song that gave me my big break, and then hung like a millstone round my neck as I tried to make my own way. I swear the lead singer looked me right in the eye when he hit the final chord.

You had to admit they had energy. The West Coast sound had got flabby, self indulgent by then. You could see the new wave coming, out of the East Coast mainly, but even in places like Cleveland, Ohio. You could smell it, like the snow. You could predict it.

 What could I do though? I didn’t have a band, just borrowed session guys, or friends, for my albums. Just me and my songs and an acoustic Gibson.

So I hit the road, and headed for Europe.

Wheels Come Off

Cocaine. Lots and lots of it.

Mixed in with the smell of what the sports jocks use on their muscles – what’s it called, Wintergreen? That’s what I remember most about supporting the boys on their stadium tour in 1975.

Backstage in the football changing rooms, there were roadies with razor blades, chopping out lines for the guys, before, during and after. Sumner kept his in a little dark wood Peruvian box, like it was snuff or something. In Chicago, someone dropped a mirror, and they all laughed.

We worked our way up the States from L.A. The format was, I went on first, just me and my Gibson, as the warm up. Then the guys would come on and be my backing band – a couple of numbers, then I was done, and they were into their set. If I was really lucky and they remembered, I came back for an encore with them at the end.

San Francisco was great. Of course, it was the guys they mostly came to see, but I always had a real hard core following in San Fran. Someone released balloons with flowers tied to them – still no idea who: it wasn’t planned, but it was great. We sang San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) as an encore.

Some of the Bible Belt was a little cooler. By the time we reached New Orleans, it was hurricane season. Let me tell you, playing guitar in a rainstorm, with your guitar plugged into the biggest Marshall stack in the history of the world, isn’t my idea of a relaxing evening.

The tour bus was a bone of contention. I mean, the band’s last album had sold in shed loads, but that didn’t mean they knew enough to change their socks. Around about Nashville I got together with Shayla and Cherry, their backing singers, and organised a clean up. Sweaty towels, dirty clothes, food containers – we got the driver to stop, and threw the whole lot into a field somewhere in Davidson County. Might still be there, for all I know. It’d be worth a lot on eBay if it was.

By the time we reached the northern States, what with all the coke, who actually stumbled on to back my last two songs was a matter of conjecture. I remember one gig – was it Portland? – where it was just Mitchell, banging a tambourine he’d borrowed from Shayla. Out of time.

Mitchell was the most paranoid of the lot of them. Maybe it comes with being a lead singer, but he was always worrying about the band’s position in the rock n’ roll universe. “Forget Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,” he’d say, to any groupie who’d listen. And the groupie would just nod, and smile, and play with Mitchell’s moustache. They were kids, all of them.

Not that Sumner got to get involved in all of that, because he and Shayla were an item at that point in the tour. So there’d be the two of them off in a corner, and me in another, reading a magazine or trying to write a song, and all sorts of madness going on in the middle. Don’t know where Cherry, the other singer, went after gigs. To bed with a good book, very possibly.

Canada was so cold, in more ways than one. Playing ice hockey rinks instead of football stadiums. It seemed a long way from L.A. and the Troubador, and nobody was talking to me. Things came to a head when they tried to set me up with Bill, one of their roadies. I mean, nice guy, but not my type. As Sumner well knew.

So, one freezing morning in Toronto, I got Shayla to help me pack, and drive me to the airport. The flights were all over the place in those days: took me two days to reach California, criss-crossing America, and getting stuck inside of Cleveland with the Memphis blues again. But that’s another story.

Shayla wasn’t too sad to see me go, although she made a big show of hugging me at the airport. Poor girl. I don’t think she lasted as long as the end of the tour, apparently. Thinking back, I should have poached her and Cherry to be my backing singers. We would’ve made a good team.

Mairi's Wedding

Mairi’s not her real name, of course. The same way Sumner Field isn’t really Sumner Field.

She was one of the first generation of supermodels, and Sumner’s second wife. Face of Lancôme to wed Minor Rock Royalty, was how the L. A. Tiimes put it. I loved that ‘minor.’ By then, even Sumner’s star was on the wane.

So there they were, Mairi done up in some sheer silk number that showed off her bony frame, and Sumner, for some reason, in tartan trews. And all of L.A.’s beautiful people. It was the big hair era, and shoulder pads, and all that jazz. I felt like someone’s frumpy aunt. Chilled champagne in the function suite, and bowls of cocaine in the rest rooms. Bad combination.

Why I was even invited, for goodness’ sake, is a mystery.

“You look great, Linda,” Sumner said when I congratulated him. Then, as he kissed my cheek, he whispered, “It could have been you, y’know.”

Still, I got a song out of it. I still have the napkin monogrammed with their initials that I wrote the first couple of verses on.