Plastic Jesus (3 page)

He became absorbed in ideas of management, riches, world travels. So captivated was he by his fantasies that it took him two weeks to actually contact the band.

* * * *

“Sethy? Man wants to see you out front. Bit of a posh type, you know, wearing a suit? Says he, eh,
manages records
."

Seth nodded thanks to Mark, his bass player, not letting the trace of excitement he felt show in his face. Mark was even younger than Peyton, and no matter how much Seth believed in this band, he couldn't allow these kids to get their hopes up falsely. He ducked his head to clear the low frame of the backstage door. If the front of Blaggers was a filthy hole, the back of the place was positively cavelike. Ducking dislodged the James Dean-style cap he wore, and as he came around the stage, it slid off his head. He was about to bend and pick it up when a man did so for him.

Seth was transfixed by the sight of this slight, well-pressed, altogether normal-looking man stooping to pick up his greasy black leather cap, actually brushing off the grime from the floor before handing it back to Seth with a slight nod. Seth nodded back, his eyes wary as he readjusted the cap on his head. No man had ever knelt before him.

“Seth Grealy? I'm Harold Loomis. My family owns Loomis Gramophones and Records, on Hill Street? You may know it—” Loomis paused as Seth burst out laughing.

“Sorry, sorry Mister Loomis, it's just Marky said you were a record manager and he must have thought you meant—well, and I guess I did too. Joke's on us, you see?"

“Perhaps not,” Loomis said rather prissily. “I do manage a record store, but I also have connections with radio stations and with certain people in London. I can't make any promises, but I think at the very least I could help you record a demo tape."

Seth wasn't laughing anymore. His keen eyes studied this man, searching for any hint of fakery. “Why'd you come to me?” he asked. “We're a solid group, you know. We're together for the long haul."

“Well, it struck me that you were the
de facto
leader of the group. Being the front man and so forth. Also, I'd heard that you were calling yourselves, er, Seth and the Silver Dreams at one point, before you shortened it—"

“Don't think much of our name, do you, Mr. Loomis?” It was the way Loomis pronounced the band's name, not quite mockingly but with no enthusiasm, that told Seth this. He'd wondered about it too; the name as much as anything else had to be perfect.

“It's Harold, please. And frankly, no, I don't. Really—the Silver Dreams? There are a hundred groups in England with names that sound the same, all trying to play American music better than the Americans. I think you're doing something more than that, and you should have a name to reflect it."

“Silver Dreams was Peyton's idea,” said Seth. “I'm not married to it. I suppose you've got a better idea,
Harold?
"

“I think so."

“Let's hear it then."

“The Kydds,” said Harold.

Seth blinked. “Kids?"

“K-Y-D-D-S. The unique spelling helps it to catch the eye, but the name itself is so very basic, so very rock and roll. Who buys rock records? The kids. Who can make you the biggest band in the world? The kids. This name shows that you're part of them."

“Part of who?” Peyton asked.

Both men turned. Peyton Masters stood in the shadows to the side of the stage, smiling slightly. Seth met his eyes and wondered how long he had been listening.

“Part of the Youth Revolution, Peyt. At least, this fellow reckons he can make us a part of it.” It seemed important to bring Peyton into the conversation, to prove Seth hadn't been having some kind of clandestine head-to-head with Loomis. “He's a sort of record manager."

Peyton stepped forward and extended his hand. As the nineteen-year-old introduced himself and shook hands with the man, Seth had a sense that Peyton had suddenly grown older than his years. There was nothing of the innocent schoolboy to him just now. Instead there was a confident set to his jaw, a subtle squaring of his shoulders that made him look as though he knew all about managers, demos, and deals. It was at that moment, Seth reflected much later, that Peyton had shown Harold Loomis who was really the leader of the band.

v

Blaggers didn't even know enough to renew their contract as house band after a year. Harold Loomis wasn't worried. By that time the Kydds' name had been heard outside of Leyborough. Clubs in other cities wanted something fresh, a band that had made it big coming from a place where no band had a prayer of ever making it big. Their first single, Peyton's “Cry My Tears Away,” backed with Seth's “Dig Your Man,” climbed the English charts of 1963 like a carnival bell hit by a strongman's mallet.

“Cry My Tears Away” was the source of the first huge blowup between Peyton and Seth. They'd bickered amiably and not so amiably over the merits of various songs, sparred for the position of lead guitar, even once had a tussle that brought Peyton's mother to the bedroom door, knocking worriedly. That one had turned out to be about a particular Chuck Berry song they wanted to cover; Seth felt the vocals should be handled in a particular way, a way with which Peyton vehemently disagreed. There had also been a dust-up during which Dennis, their drummer, had had to pull them off each other—but everyone had been drunk that night. “Cry My Tears Away” was the first thing that nearly broke up the Kydds.

It was a pretty love song, a very pretty love song that would no doubt flutter the heartstrings of every little girl who heard it. It was catchy, almost
too
catchy, so that you'd find yourself humming it hours after you had vowed to put it out of your mind. (Harold told them there was a German phrase for this phenomenon, one that roughly translated as “earworm.") However—as Seth pointed out the first time Peyton played it for him, and never ceased to point out for the rest of his life—
it had no edge.

Why should a band release as its first single a song that had no edge? What would prevent the Kydds from sinking traceless into the morass of sweet-ballad bands, bunches of nice boys who wrote love songs, damp-knicker bands as Seth derisively dubbed them? Why should they disappear before they'd even had a chance to start? Why not set out with an edge?

“Because
no one who hears my song ever forgets it!
” cried Peyton. They were in Harold's living room, where they could argue as loudly as they liked without parental interference. Harold lurked in the kitchenette, close enough both to eavesdrop and to keep an eye on his breakables. “No one will forget it once they've heard it on the
radio
, once they've bought the
single
, don't you see? And they won't forget us either, they'll buy the record and they'll listen to ‘dig Your Man,' it's a great, great song—"

“Fuck you.” Seth made as if to walk out of the flat, but stopped when he saw that Peyton would not pursue him. “
Your
song is bloody unforgettable,
my
song's a nice addition to the record. How about,
my
song'll get us noticed because it doesn't sound just like a hundred others?"

“Neither does mine,” said Peyton, “and you know it. It sounds a little like the hundred others, but there's a difference, and everyone will hear it, and buy it."

“Shit."

“You know I'm right."

“I'm going out for a bottle."

It went on like that for days, and they said things they regretted (or Peyton did—it's difficult to know if Seth was ever capable of regretting his own actions), but of course “Cry My Tears Away” made the A-side of the single. Even more significant, Seth and Peyton discovered a formula that would get them through the next twenty-odd years: a great blowout of a fight made them appreciate each other even more afterwards. There was no one else in either of their lives to whom they could say those sorts of things, and certainly no one who would forgive them for it, even thank them eventually—for it could not be denied that, through fighting and cajoling and sometimes pure coercion, they improved each other musically. They honed themselves on each other. The more they saw of the music business, the more they realized how rare such a partnership was.

So “Cry My Tears Away” ate up charts and radio time, and critics praised the raw, edgy power of the flip side, “Dig Your Man.” The rhythm section made a perfect platform for the vocal harmonies: Peyton's voice all sweet turquoise velvet, Seth's reedy, woody, slightly hoarse, and the two woven together like a medieval tapestry. The Kydds became quite famous in England, played London and the European capitals, kept honing their chops.

Harold Loomis wasn't happy. He wanted America. He'd closed the record store by now, goodnight dear old Papa, and become the full-time manager of the Kydds. He'd cultivated relationships with everyone from club promoters to disc jockeys, sound engineers to studio heads. That was how Harold liked to think of himself: as a cultivator. Hadn't he taken these four unpolished boys, young louts really, and nurtured them into a talented band with a number-one hit single? Now the label wanted an album. Harold wanted the label to send the Kydds on a tour of America.

And, no mistake, America was waiting. Its bands were too bland, too bloated, or too black; as always, it wanted something it had never seen before. Its appetite for the Kydds turned out to be voracious.

You've probably seen the newsreels: the teenage girls clawing their way through police barricades, the Kydds coming down the flimsy metal staircase of an airplane, trying not to let the fear of crowd madness show through their good-natured smiles. The Union Jacks everywhere, and the giant cardboard heads of Peyton, Seth, Mark, or Dennis, each little girl's personal favorite. Peyton laughed at it, was flattered. Seth raged, said he didn't want a bunch of mindless cannibal-bitch Lolitas for fans. Harold said the little girls were all right to start with. They had money and influence. The serious listeners would catch on soon enough.

Seth told Harold he was insane to believe prepubescent girls had influence. A week later, though, when the banner of
The New York Times
read “KYDDS CONQUER USA,” even Seth had to admit that Harold might know something he himself didn't.

“The men don't know, but the little girls understand,” said Harold, smirking at Seth.

The concert changed the way they thought about everything. None of them, including Harold, had ever seen a crowd that size; they associated such crowds with coronations and other royal events. There was an instant of silence as they took the stage; then the screaming started again. They glanced at each other almost shyly, paralyzed until Dennis twirled a drumstick and touched it to a cymbal. When they launched into “Dig Your Man,” they could hardly hear themselves. It wasn't the best show they had ever played, not by a long shot, but the sensation of the throng was unlike anything they'd ever imagined: deeper than sex, more primal than rock, seeming to happen in slow motion. They would play together onstage many more times, but never with the same unselfconscious sense of fun they'd had before. This show had put too much awe into them.

They saw very little of New York—the insides of luxurious hotel rooms, the bowels of a stadium. For “relaxation”—which, like everything else they did, was filmed—they were taken to Central Park one day. Seth stood on top of a great boulder and marveled at the view, unlike anything he'd ever seen before, wilderness surrounded by the peaks and spires of the city.

“Do you think you could ever live in America?” asked a reporter. As Harold hovered anxiously just out of frame, the others shook their heads:

“No, no, don't think so. England's home.” Seth, for once, kept quiet.

vi

The Kydds had just finished recording their second album—the first had been a series of their old cover songs arranged around “Cry My Tears Away” and “Dig your Man”—and Seth had broken up with a girlfriend from his Silver Dreams days, a girlfriend who wanted a great deal more than he could give to any one woman just now. So Seth thought little of it when Harold asked him to come on holiday to Amsterdam. He thought he deserved a holiday, and Harold would pay for everything, just like a proper manager. Seth had never been to Amsterdam, but Harold knew it well.

“You can get marijuana everywhere. They're even talking about legalizing it,” Peyton said when Seth told him of the trip. They'd been turned on to pot ages ago, even before they'd moved to London; now they were famous, somebody was always hovering on the sidelines ready to show them a new kick. “Be careful of Harold, though."

“Whatever do you mean?"

“What do you think? He's queer, you know."

“So?"

“Well, nothing, but why's he taking you on holiday and not all four of us? You're his favorite, that's why. You're the butch one."

“He thinks of me as the group's leader."

“He wants you to lead
him
, most likely."

“Perhaps I will then,” said Seth, just to see the look on Peyton's face.

* * * *

Their hotel rooms looked out over a canal in the Red Light District. At night, the arches of the canal bridges were lit with red bulbs like half-open lipsticked mouths. They walked through the narrow streets looking slantwise at the girls behind the windows. “If you want to, you know, if you're thinking of having one, I'll just nip off for a bit,” said Harold. There was a girl that had caught Seth's eye, Asian and bird-boned, but Harold sounded so miserable at the prospect that Seth just laughed it off. Instead they drank beer in a cafe stained with four hundred years' worth of nicotine, giving it a many-layered brown warmth such as Seth imagined the inside of a cocoon might have.

It was after two when they got back to the hotel. Seth climbed the winding staircase first, aware of Harold's eyes on him from below. At the landing, they turned to go to their separate rooms.

“Seth?"

“Yeah?"

A somehow strangled pause.

“Yeah, Harold?"