Bit of a Blur (34 page)

I had been a vegetarian for twenty years. I’d fought my way around the restaurants of the world, sending things back that had bacon sprinkled on them or chicken stock in them, enduring many a plate of overboiled vegetables, and the disdain of proud chefs everywhere. Japan was the most difficult place to fulfil the vegetarian dream. I had taken special training to make sure I could order vegetarian food in Japan, but it’s complicated. Vegetarianism is just not a notion to the Japanese. You have to explain the whole concept, every time you order a bowl of noodles. Still, more often than not it would be a disaster. ‘I’m sure this is fish,’ I said to the girl from the record label, holding up a morsel with my chopsticks. ‘No, not fish,’ she said. ‘What is it then?’ ‘Is
made
from fish
.
Is not fish.’ It was hopeless.

I think my vegetarianism stemmed from a wish to take a benevolent but passive role in nature. That role changed when we moved to the farm. You can’t be a passive farmer. I had no idea what was going on. It was two hundred acres of unknowns. I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t found Paddy. Paddy is a kind of farming adviser called a land agent. It’s the equivalent of a manager in showbusiness, or, probably more accurately, someone who you pay to be your dad. Paddy walked all over the land with us, inspecting fences, hedges, ditches, weed infestation levels. He appraised the state of the roofs and gutters around the farmyard, he applied for grants, he told me to see so and so about such and such. He took care of the business, and I learned a lot from him very quickly. He said we had to do something about the rooks. They were taking over. Rooks eat all the other birds’ eggs, so unless you keep them under control you end up with just rooks. The West End is teeming with rodents. There were heart-stopping rats bigger than cats in Endell Street. Mercer Street was more mouse and pigeon territory. Rentokil would come and put their traps down and that would take care of it, but there’s no easy way to deal with rooks. The only way to control them is to shoot them. It was a difficult situation for a vegetarian. In the end I resigned myself to the fact that you’re being a lot more benevolent with a twelve-bore than you are when you order the nut roast. It was a short step from whacking rooks to munching on a bacon sandwich.

It was the final step in a complete volte-face. I didn’t recognise myself any more. It only seemed like a minute ago that I was the number one slag in the Groucho Club, a boozy lascivious metropolitan vampire pacifist with too many friends. Here I was early in the morning, fresh from kippers with my wife, standing in a field alone with a shotgun. I let ’em ’ave it.

It was our first Christmas on the farm, 2003. Beagle was due to land on Isidis Planitia, a flat and relatively friendly part of Mars, early on Christmas morning. There was a media centre in London that had satellite links with mission control in Darmstadt. I drove up to London with my dad in the dead of night. We got there in an hour. Naturally, Colin Pillinger and his wife and the whole Beagle team were there. There were journalists, TV crews and one or two interested public figures. Everett Gibson, from NASA, was there, still showing everyone his meteorite. There were mince pies and crackers and the atmosphere was more than festive. It was tense, very exciting - the story of Beagle had become a media phenomenon. There was massive popular support for the sideburned swashbuckler and his spaceship.

We knew the lander had separated successfully from Mars Express, the mother ship, and was spinning its way towards the Martian surface. It was hard to believe it was happening. ‘Parachutes should have opened,’ said Colin. The whole room was silent. The whole city was silent. It was Christmas morning after all. I formed a mental picture of the chutes opening in the thin Martian atmosphere and the tiny machine that was taking us further into the space age. There was a lot riding on it as it hurtled, red-hot, supersonic, towards the virgin landscape. What might happen? What might we know this time tomorrow? Money, reputations, years of hard work were suspended from those remote gossamer parachutes.

Ten seconds to impact. Colin was talking to mission control on a headset. He’d been addressing the room, but now his attention was with them. We were holding our breath, waiting to hear the musical call sign that indicated Beagle had landed and was functioning. But there was no signal. It never came.

I still think Beagle was a success, in many ways. It was a triumph of aspiration, if not a victory for science. The world doesn’t leap forward by committee. It needs leaders. It needs leaders with big sideburns.

I jumped in a taxi on Oxford Street. ‘Buckingham Palace!’ I said, became aware of what I’d said and laughed out loud. I was often saying, ‘Follow that car’, and even, ‘Lose the car behind us’ wasn’t unusual, but I’d never said ‘Buckingham Palace’ to a taxi driver before. I thought he might have had more to say about it. He merely declared solemnly that Marble Arch was completely solid. For a moment I thought he was attempting some spontaneous architectural criticism, but he was referring to the traffic and not to the monolithic, eternal qualities of the structure itself. We picked our way swiftly and silently through the magic maze of Mayfair, eluding the petrified chaos of the main roads.

My experience of taxi drivers, and in fact more or less everybody, is that people naturally tend to underestimate each other. Very successful people are often refreshing because, being used to success, it’s what they identify with and what they tend to expect and see more of in people.

I once got in a taxi at Sloane Square. The driver and I were talking and he inevitably asked me what I did all day. I told him I was a musician – I was in a chatty mood. Not as chatty as him, though. He naturally assumed that I was a struggling musician. People usually do. He treated me to a well-prepared ‘Don’t you give up on it, my son’ soliloquy. ‘You’ll get there in the end,’ he said. I wondered where the hell he was talking about. I’d asked him to take me to Claridge’s.

I went to a drum shop, once, with Ben Hillier. He was the hot record producer of the moment. He was in between finishing
Think Tank
for Blur and starting a record with Depeche Mode. Ben has a thorough academic grounding in rhythmic principles and occult knowledge of metric pulse systems. He’d played timpani in orchestras when he was twelve; he’d engineered drum sounds on U2 albums; he’d programmed beats for Paul Oakenfold; he’d found the man with the cannons that we used on ‘Jerusalem’. I’ve never met anyone who knew more about drums than Ben. If ever there was a bona fide drum expert, it was him, and he’d just walked into the drum shop. He was looking at a vintage Gretsch kit. It was a beauty, very expensive. He was asking questions about it that I didn’t understand. The man said, ‘It’s a bit unnecessary for a home studio, if that’s what you’re looking for.’ He was quite dismissive. It wasn’t what Ben was looking for. He was looking for something that could grace Abbey Road. He was definitely being underestimated.

We were arriving at Buckingham Palace, now.

‘Where do you want, mate?’

‘I think we need to go in where those policemen are standing, by the photographers, see?’

‘
In?!
Yaw goin’
in
? Idunbelieveit! Twenny-farve years I been waitin’! Twenny-farve years!’

‘Jesus, I didn’t think you were very impressed. How long do you think I’ve been waiting to say it?’ He wanted to know everything then, but there wasn’t time.

I noticed Beth Orton going in, giggling, and I relaxed a little bit. It was a reception for the music industry, but I hadn’t known exactly what to expect.

It was the best party I’ve ever been to. I’ve tried to work out why. There was no sex or drugs or rock and roll. It was purely about music, in all its shapes and forms. I was talking to a tin-whistle player for a while. Then I spotted my manager. He was hosting a little huddle that included Status Quo, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. He was doing his Basil Brush laugh and telling stories. I had no idea that he knew all these people. I went to say hello, but got talking to a lady from the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation. She introduced me to an academic from the Guildhall School of Music. Like myself, most people had arrived without their wives, partners or friends. There were no plus ones, which meant that everyone had to talk to each other, rather than huddling around in their customary cliques. Everybody who turned up was quite excited about being at the palace, apart from Brian May, who was leaning unceremoniously against a fireplace, with his mad Louis Quatorze hair and aristocratic features, giving the impression that he was often there.

I caught up with my manager and he said, ‘Come on, you’ve got to meet the Queen.’ ‘Where is she?’ I spotted her; she was with Beth Orton and they were both giggling. The Queen seemed to be really enjoying herself, and why not? It was a great party. Mastering the two-minute encounter is part and parcel of being in a famous band. Music has a supernatural effect on people; I know, because I feel it myself. Meeting the people we have stirred is a delicate business. It’s not big-headed to suggest that sometimes members of the band spent the merest of moments with people who would really cherish the encounter and take the memory to the grave. The Queen, who does that kind of thing more than anybody, is really, really good at it, the uncontested world champion of the brief encounter. She made her way around the whole room and made everyone feel special. It’s tiring being anti-royal. I’ve felt much better about everything since I had a chat with the boss.

I think all rock stars start by wanting to destroy the world. Then their dreams come true and they end up trying to keep it like it was before they started.

It was Boxing Day 2005. We’d had dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. We kind of gatecrashed. We’d just confirmed that Claire was pregnant, days pregnant. It was really icy on the roads and really late. I’d done most rock star things, but I’d never driven a car into a tree until that night. We were almost home. I put the brakes on to slow down for the hairpin bend at the top of our valley. Nothing happened. We just kept going. We were heading for a Cotswold stone wall at deadly speed. I mounted the verge to lose some pace but lost control and we glanced off a mature oak,
Quercus robur.
It was a hell of a wallop. Six inches further to the left and we’d have hit it smack on. Claire might have lost her legs. As it was, she lost the baby a few days afterwards and I just don’t know how closely linked the two events were.

We were on holiday in the Maldives six months later and Claire just couldn’t get out of bed. She wanted taramasalata for breakfast, but it wasn’t that kind of hotel. I think men can tell when their wives are pregnant. I always knew before we did the test. It’s the rising shape of the breast that gives it away, more than the
à la carte
thing. I said we weren’t having ice cream this time. No way. It’s hard to watch your wife eat ice cream, especially when you’re really happy. I put on four stone when Geronimo was born, slightly more than Claire did. I’d worn out a pair of running shoes getting that stuff off. We both thought it might be twins. Claire was just so tired and hungry. We told the doctor and the doctor said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t want twins. It’s complicated.’ And sent us for a scan.

As soon as the ultrasound image came up on the computer screen, it was blindingly obvious what was happening. For the untrained eye, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s what on an early scan. It’s all a bit abstract. I was definitely looking at a diptych, though, two of everything. Yep, there were two tadpoles, two doughnuts, two wiggly bits, two croissant things; twoness abounded and multiplied and filled the screen. It was doubled up. It was dual-aspect. It was a completely two-nique situation. The mirror symmetry spoke a primitive language that a monkey would have understood. I looked up at the consultant and raised my eyebrows. He just nodded.

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Not much doubt about that.’

Claire had her head in her hands and her mouth was open; she was speechless. I realised that was what I was doing too, holding my head and gaping. I don’t know if it’s a learnt or primal reflex that causes that reaction - hands on ears, eyes and mouth wide - but it seems to be the universal mechanism for expressing sudden, unexpected, uncontainable elation. We told the grannies on Christmas Day. I thought about it and decided that the exact point when Christmas peaks is halfway through lunch, after the goose and before the cheese. So that was when we told them. I filmed their reaction and they both do that exact same thing. They put their hands on their heads, curl forwards and open their mouths. It’s a super-smile, reserved for just a handful of occasions in a lifetime when it is suddenly clear out of the blue that something wonderful has happened and things are going to get immeasurably better from now on.

I was sidelined by the news. We were at the neighbours’ house on Boxing Day and I was talking to an eminent elderly lady. Old ladies are a vital part of life in the country. The Cotswolds does a very good line in golden grannies. They seem to know more about gardening and pianos and local history and who’s who and what’s what than anybody. I was telling her my plans to bulldoze all the building rubble into one large heap in the distance, making a satisfying megapile. I explained how I was going to put a shed on the top and apply for planning permission to be buried underneath it with my guitars. At the mention of guitars, she said, ‘Oh, are you the one who . . .’ I thought she was going to say, ‘is in that band?’ I prepared myself to be bashful, but she said, ‘. . . whose wife is having twins?’ And that was me all of a sudden, Claire’s husband, the twins’ dad. I had a new identity. Bands and families aren’t that dissimilar. I had a new band now, or rather Claire did.

Claire got really big. We had fat rapper tracksuits on standby. I thought they were the only things that would fit. One of her friends told her that she wasn’t going to be able to pull her own pants up when it got to the end. Another one said she’d need a wheelchair, for sure. I’m not sure how badly Claire needed to hear those kinds of things, or how badly the people who said them wished it was them having twins instead.