THE DEEP POOL - APRIL 2006

Lunch with my music business lawyer Simon on the south bank of the River Thames in London, close to the Globe Theatre - sensational late March sun and rain outside - you couldn't see the other side of the river when it rained, except for a ghostly blue shadow of the dome of St Pauls Cathedral. We were lunching at a restaurant called The Real Greek, and it got us both yearning for the summer sun and holidays on islands. Simon is a great character - we hadn't seen each other for a long time, and we were both moved to discover that our friendship had remained strong and was how we remembered it. He's seen me in all kinds of states over the years, and in dark times (when i was only technically alive) he even let me stumble around his kitchen, doing a bit of 'tongue and groove' for which he paid me, and even took me to his local pub for a drink. This was at a time when i had almost ceased to exist, when i had just finished living in the underground station at Marylebone for a month, and nobody wanted anything to do with me - hell, i couldn't even get arrested (actually that's not true, i was arrested a few times, but i had a good lawyer...).

Outside the restaurant, another storm of wind and rain started - one so dramatic that everybody in the place stopped talking to watch. The lion of March was in his final roaring, and for all the fury of it, the promise of warm Spring rain was contained therein, like tears you need to cry before they cry you. My lawyer is a deep and true lover of the city of London and told me stories about particular buildings we were passing on our way to and from The Real Greek. We parted company outside Tate Modern art gallery and i continued to walk along the strand all the way back to the station of Waterloo to catch a train back to Hampshire. The insane rain and wind started again so i had to jump inside a pub to stay dry (a tragedy, i know...). About 40 squealing teenage French schoolgirls and their teachers were outside getting SOAKED, so much so that the bar staff went outside and told them to come in and shelter. They were grateful, came in and at first watched the rain in astonishment, but then slowly turned to take in their unexpected surroundings - a big relaxed boozer in the warm humdrum thrum of Londoners coming to the end of a cheerful lunch. They started to watch the clientele carefully, whispering about aspects of the denizens' dress, behaviour and essential mystery. 'Then it rained like fuck so we all went to a pub by the river' i could hear them telling their staring parents on their return.

The other night i went out to dinner with Joe Shaw and David MacIntosh of doll by doll - an indian restaurant that Joe said was really good (although it later transpired he'd never been there before), called Pappadom in Cricklewood Broadway, London. It was a simple but quite unusual room, wood panelling painted red and green, with charming staff and a horrible bullet-headed London geezer who was acting as if he and the lady restaurant owner had been peace activists rescued together by American forces from a war-torn ghetto in Bagdad. He kept giving her over-the-top hugs and kisses whilst pretending to be deeply moved by something between them which had ocurred on some other occasion. She kept gently pulling away from his pawing embrace, smiling rigidly, while her staff watched intently, also smiling, and clearly hoping the situation wasn't going to 'develop'. For me it was a clearcut case of sexual harrassment and i was glad when it ended, which it did because there was nowhere else for the guy to take it - she'd put up with it graciously, and finally the guy was reduced to turning to a boy he had with him who was maybe 13 years old, and saying 'this is the beautiful lady i was telling you about'. The kid looked at the woman and nodded without enthusiasm as if to say 'i cannot begin to tell you how awful it is to be a mere prop for my father's appalling behaviour - you have my deepest sympathy'.

I'm not sure Joe and David noticed this at all and i didn't want to mention it - the room was too small and i had a bad vision of this bloke turning to us and suddenly shouting 'OI!, wot you lot talking abaht den eh? - woss yore problim? C'mon den - ahtside!'

On this evening Joe, David and me were in a 'let's not get stupidly drunk like we usually do' pact - David was flying to Sydney the next day, and me and Joe both had a desperate pile of work on. It worked really well - we drank a modest amount of muscadet (thirteen bottles each) and in no time were helpless with laughter, which is how we stayed all night as we recalled the unbelievably rich mosaic of incident that was the life and times of Britain's most ferocious and beautiful rock band - for a while. We had business to discuss, but as that went on i became deeply aware of a powerful golden glow coming out of the guys - i love these men and i always will. Chris Dennis, the man who cuts my hair and gives me all the worthwhile gossip of the county, has started writing good song lyrics, and he showed me one today which contained the phrase 'a silent golden communique', and that's how i think of the energy between me and the dolls when we don't see each other. I'm being soppy (but not sentimental) here and i don't care - i need to be able to think that it's good to be alive, and next day, back again at Waterloo station, waiting for my train, i sat in a cafe with a cappucino and the Spectator magazine, counting my blessings whilst listening to the impassioned swearing of people around me who needed to use the Bakerloo underground line, which had closed northbound 'due to an incident at Warwick Avenue'.

Warwick Avenue - for a few years my whole life was an incident at Warwick Avenue - i can't even go back there now - to come up out of the underground station and look up Clifton Villas to where i used to live is like being very slowly but surely pulled into a whirpool of treacle which has a malign personality - slurp slurp - there i go and i'll never come back...On the other hand, some of my greatest memories are of sitting outside the Royal George pub for long summer evenings, drinking Worthington's White Shield with Joe Shaw and 'The Scots Boys' as the Scots boys were known locally. The Scots Boys were to a man, real characters, mostly quite dangerous people, but a joy to be around when they weren't consternated by one damn thing or another. I'll say no more here about these folk as a lot of them are still around and they tend to nurse volcanic tempers. Some of them are dead and one in particular - the subject of my song Desolation Blues i really miss on a daily basis - but as is said - the man takes a drink and the drink takes a drink...

Speaking of which i see the American singer Pink has been doing a round of interviews - must have a new rekird oot - in which she is speaking about her drug hell and people she knows who have died from taking drugs.'I've buried three of my friends already' she says in the banner headline in one interview. I like this: it makes it sound as if she personally buried them.

'Hi Pink - bad news - Dave's died'.

'I'll get me shovel and be straight round as soon as i've finished this cuppa - ooh, 'e were a big bugger an' all - ahm gonna haf ter dig a cracking great 'ole' - let's 'ope it don't fookin rain'. (For some reason Pink suddenly seems to come from Sheffield - if you're German and reading this, that's like coming from Wuppertal)
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So, by the time you read this i'll be somewhere in Austria or Germany - i'm looking forward to going back (interesting choice of words there) to Vienna and the Hotel Furstenberg. This hotel has one of the best looking ancient lifts in the world - it's a tourist attraction in its own right, worrying dark red rooms, and is one of those places in which you must stay at least once if you are a musician - i've been there a few times...Next door there is a superb cheap restaurant called the West End Cafe - no better place in the city for people watching - last time i was there i saw a fight between two young Turkish guys - one of them refused to hand over a bag of gay porn mags, and, after being asked repeatedly to do so by the other guy, suddenly tried to get up and run. The other guy caught him by the ankle between tables, the magazines went whizzing everywhere so that people picked them up with a wide range of reactions as their nature became apparent. The manager was coolth itself - he just walked over to where they were still yabbering on the floor, got their attention by kicking one of them in the shin, then threatened to pour a a jug of hot coffee over them if they didn't fuck off immediately. They got up and customers proffered the magazines that they had gathered in the spillage. The Turkish lads thanked them all politely and left, making the noise that Mutley the cartoon dog makes when he's pissed off.

It's a city that makes me melancholy in the extreme and i've been there a lot over the years. Once i was there with Richard Olivier, son of Lord. He was directing a play in the English Speaking Theatre, and afterwards we went to my room at the Sacher Hotel where we got very very drunk. Next day i went to a gallery where forty televisions had been laid on their backs in a winding row. On each screen there was a different, following image of a stream so that you saw the entire stream running from the first telly to the last, with the sound of the stream coming from speakers very loudly. I wanted to put my hands in the stream so i got down and touched one of the screens - an attendant came over and told me to stop or she'd pour hot coffee on me.

It's that time in the cycle of things when a young man's thoughts turn to making a new studio album. Writing new songs is sometimes easy, other times it's like safe-cracking - you know you've only got so long to do it, but neither can it be hurried, you've got to hope that your 'talent' will ride to the rescue. One song in particular has been proving really difficult but i've been determined to crack it. Finally, a breakthrough! - the thing is, songs have got to at least APPEAR to be about something - you can't just have a bit of a melody that you quite like and one rather attractive lyrical phrase - the song will need 'bottom'. I was pleased that this song was suddenly showing its true colours, so i took a break, poured myself a glass of ginger and lemongrass cordial and put on an album called 'The Inflated Tear' by Roland Kirk. It quickly became clear that my great new song was, melodically, a faithful re-write of 'The Black And Crazy Blues' by Roland Kirk, the first track on the album. This is the recording that Roland Kirk wanted played at his funeral, so i was certainly getting the required 'bottom' into the song. I knew i would have to abandon the song - you can't go around stealing wholesale from someone who's in your soul as much as this man is in mine - you can adopt attitudes, flourishes, unusual key changes, but lift an entire melody? - can't be done old boy - tempting i know, but you WILL get caught - eventually.

A personal footnote - i strongly suspect that half of what Tom Waits does is based on a keen scrutiny of this very piece of music - if i'm wrong, Tom, you should listen to this tune and write a song over it (declaring it of course) - it's completely you.

This reminds me of a conversation i once had with David Thomas, in which he told me how Tom Waits always used to deliberately stay in what he (Tom) considered to be the worst hotel in Cleveland, when he was in that town. 'I know of a worse hotel in Cleveland!' David told me. I said to David this would make a great song idea (for David, not me) - a song about how you knew a worse hotel than the one Tom Waits fondly thought of as the worst in Cleveland. Well, all songs can't be about your unique understanding of the twisted mechanisms of the soul, can they? There was a thrilling moment where i saw David actually consider this idea before returning his normal forensic gaze to the Blob From Inner Space in the corner of his room that is called Leven.

My longing for the stream was overwhelming and it felt like no matter how far i travelled in the world the simple blessing of icy mountain water tumbling over grieving hands would elude me

jl