Chapter 13: Day Five (Thursday, 15th September)
Board to tears

'One of the main issues over why we decided to do the Life-Swap in the first place was to get the lyrics to the Pnevma song aired.'

I was talking to my PA and Gerard's eldest son mid-week. They had decided that my band would not be playing even though we had gone down the road of organising it. I thought their lack of vision was quite remarkable, but at least they wanted to hear some of the music. So I played it to them:

ALL THE DEMONS & THE FIRES OF HELL
COULDN'T PENETRATE A BUREAUCRAT'S SHELL
WHEN THEY'VE GOT THAT SELF-HATRED SMELL
& THEY'RE SUFFERING A DULL-BRAIN SPELL

SATAN'S HOARDS COULD NEVER HAVE DARNED
A SET OF CRACKS IN THE CHAIN OF COMMAND
IN A SYSTEM THAT IS NEVER ALARMED
BY THE LIST OF PEOPLE IT HARMED

They listened to a quarter of it & walked out. What they didn't hear were the really pertinent lyrics towards the end of the tune.

IT TAKES A DEVIL OF ITS OWN DEGREE
TO DENY THE RIGHT TO BE FREE
ENSLAVING A GLOBE'S ECONOMY
FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER CUP OF TEA

THIS DEVIL STANDS ON CAPITAL HILL
FEEDS OFF OF OIL IN ITS SATANIC MILL
CLAIMS TO BE THE REALITY PILL
IN ITS DESIRE TO KILL & KILL

SATAN REARS HIS HEAD & KISSES GEORGE BUSH
SAYS TO GEORGE “GIVE THE BUTTON A PUSH”
GEORGE IS CAUGHT IN A GENOCIDE RUSH
POLITICIANS CAUGHT IN A BAY OF PIGS BLUSH

INSANE HUSSEIN WHO'S TO TELL
ANOTHER STOOGE THE C.I.A. FORGED IN HELL
KEEPING UP THE COLD WAR ECONOMY
PERPETUATING ARMS DEALS INDEFINATELY

They had walked out. They were not angry with me. There was no sudden breakdown in communication or hostility. They just walked out.

When the song finally finished we discussed it in the dining room where they had found refuge from 'the devil's music'.

'So,' I said, 'we're not playing then?'

'Well,' she said, 'unfortunately not.'

Now, this was after they had guaranteed, at the beginning of the week, that we could play. They had done a volte face on the basis of a faux pas. They had been on the phone with their boss, who was not supposed to be in contact with them at all during this week.

'What the hell are you doing?' he had said. 'You're putting one of his bands on at our annual club ball? There'll be trouble. They'll probably invite their friends. What are you doing?'

So much for me having his job for a week. Surely I should be damn well allowed to do what the hell I like at 'my' ball. I couldn't see them giving him orders over what could & could not be done at his party.

At least the PA thought she should listen to the music, but it was a foregone conclusion. She thought it was a bit Satanic.

'I think it's a bit Satanic, Craig,' she said, 'but it is terribly exciting. But I shouldn't really say that too loudly, should I?'

'Say it as loud as you like,' I said. 'But you have got to question what is exciting about what you consider Satanic. That's an anti-war song delivered with venom and in a way that does justice to the subject matter. Surely it would be a moment in history to play that tune to the audience that are principally involved in the action that I don't like.'

It is interesting to me that I was talking to people there who felt that a song was Satanic that was anti-war. Now, that is an interesting philosophical paradox. Everything that I perceived as 'good' was 'bad' here, and vice versa.

She looked pained.

'All, right,' I said. 'Let's try and make a deal here.'

I fought for it, but what I did not know was that she was not the one making the decision. She was being tutored behind closed doors on the phone, so she could not say yeah or nay to anything without being given orders.

'Could you not push the boat out?' I said. 'What say we get the audience to vote on it? Wouldn't that make fantastic television? Let's prove to the rest of the world that the upper crust of society is democratic. I say, my band plays heavy rock music with quite a strong level of social commentary. It's very loud, very abrasive, very venomous. If you don't want to hear it, that's fine, but if you do want to hear it, and remember it will be just two and a half minutes of your time, you'll then be able to sit back and truly consider what you don't like about it and what you might like about it but you will not have experienced anything like this before and you probably won't experience anything like this again. Which way are you going to vote? Wouldn't that make amazing television?'

She wanted to do it but she could not say "yes".

'There'll be no violence,' I said. 'My intention is not inflammatory, it's informative and I feel I have to go to these lengths to get through to some of these people and you are robbing the public of quite a singular media event and if it comes off we'll be able to pat each other on the back for the first time in our lives.'

'No,' she said, 'I can't do it.'

She did look at Gerard's son for a lead, but it was not his call either. He could not do anything without daddy's permission and he did not like that state of affairs. I could see it written all over him. There was not the bond between him and his father that I had with mine, not at all. He had never been to a gig. I could tell he wanted to. He was sitting there. She was sitting there.

'We could get the Red Hot Chilli Peppers if you want, as well,' I said. I knew he liked them.

'Really?' he said.

'Of course,' I said, 'you've got the money to do it. Fly 'em in,' I said, 'first whiff of the media, they'll be in here like a shot and you'll get to see the band you like best.

He hated the fact that he had no power to decide. If I had a eighteen year old son, I would give him that power. He knew it was not within his dad's bounds of acceptable behaviour. So anyway, I turned to them.

'Okay,' I said, resigned to it, 'our band isn't going to play.'

This is when they said we could auction off something of our choice for charity.

So at the board meeting I had discussed the idea that our band should play and since that had been on the Monday, they had said 'yes' and I had said., 'really?' 'Yes,' they said. Until they had spoken to their boss on the phone they would have been dumb enough to let us do it. Gerard must have had beads of sweat on his face when they told him over the phone...

'You've done what? You've said what?'

'He's already rung them, they're coming. We haven't been able to offer them a log cabin but apparently they say they're all going to camp in tents like Mongol tribesmen visiting a baronial state in the Middle East.'

I did inform them of this. The Mongols would take their tents into the middle of the biggest park in the city state and they would set up there in their own yurts.

'And they think this is really funny. Craig keeps going on about how he is like Genghis Khan and you are like Cœur de Lion. You're like Richard the Lionheart, it's really weird.'

Imagine if they had done a life-swap in the eleventh century! So, our band was going to turn up, and our projectionist Dave Eyre does look like a Mongol Berserker. I had it all in my mind. This was going to make TV gold. Dave's projections alone would have shocked both the audience at the ball as well as the TV viewers. There would have been disturbing images of the war in Iraq. He wouldn't have pulled any punches. One of his animations is of a dancing figure with an armoured car for a head! He'd of had George Bush morphing into a chimpanzee. Little did I know at this point that one of the most honoured guests at the ball was going to be one of the top British military officers overseeing the occupation of Basra. We were that close to a TV moment that would have made the Bill Grundy interview with the Sex Pistols look like a goddam picnic.

We were going to bring our tents, we were going to have an entourage of vehicles drive in and Kostas, our pagan, long-haired Greek bass player would bring a few biker mates. We could drag Hippie Paul along too, because he is always good for a laugh. He spends enough time upsetting us so we could have just let him upset people we don't like for a change. I thought the interaction would be feisty.

Initially, they said we would be able to have a whole table for the band and all our friends at the polo club ball. This was one of the first things that they retracted early on.

'We could not include them in the costings for providing food,' they said.

'You should be looking at it that the band are doing you a favour by not charging you,' I said.

I had not really believed that it was going to go ahead at the board meeting. When they agreed to it I had kept a bit of scepticism in reserve.

Anyway, they had agreed to Skip coming over to do his painting, and arrive he did. On the evening of the day before the ball. The PA was so excited the next morning when I said we could auction him off at the ball.

'You are going to parade him?' she asked me. 'On the lot and sell a human being?' 'This was over the phone at about eight in the morning when I rang her up, as you do with your PA in that "We-had-an-idea-last-night-when-we-was-pissed" kind of way.

'Oh, Craig, that sounds exciting.'

Obviously, I was amusing her, although I do know that she and Kiran would have had a fight and it would have been horrible but avoided each other like the plague. Kiran was right, she had not got the brains to follow it through. She could see it all. 'Do not melt in front of the painted blonde bimbo. She is playing you mate!' I knew this, but I delighted in exciting her, I could not help it. If someone is being like that with you, you cannot help it. So, I rang her up at about eight in the morning.

'I have had an idea last night,' I said, 'Skippy's kicking himself, he can't believe he's agreed to it. We're going to auction him off.'

'My God!' she said. 'That's so exciting! You're going to auction off a human being.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Any of your mates with enough money can outbid all of your other mates and they can buy him!'

'Oh!' she went, 'it's fantastic. Buy a human being!'

'Yes,' I said. 'What should we do? We could inspect his teeth, I can say he's in good nick, you know, I can explain his dental history and the fact that he went to Chelsea School of Art and he went to Goldsmiths College to study art for a bit and I could explain some of the projects he has done for Bristol City Council, and banner painting and blah, blah, blah, but, best of all, we have got the painting of Pegasus that he will have completed by this afternoon and if anyone wants him they can have him as an artist in residence for, I think we said two weeks and in that time he would be able to paint anything the buyer wanted him to. Isn't that romantic?'

'It's fantastic,' she said. 'Oh, can we put him in a gimp mask?'

This was a surprise. It showed me a side of her sexuality I had not suspected, and perhaps she was not a thousand miles away from me and Kiran in a strange sense. Or maybe she was feeding me something she thought I wanted to hear.

'However much I would like to see Skippy in a gimp mask,' I said, 'being paraded in chains in front of your mates, he ain't going to go for it, lady. I will certainly ask him, though.'

In fact, I did not ask him. I told him that there was no choice, that he would have to wear a gimp mask and he nearly came off his chair at me over breakfast. He is a lot bigger than me and I thought I had better be careful. He might snap and hit me.

'I'm only joking,' I said. 'You have to retain some self-respect, but we are satirising slavery here. We are aware of what this will look like and how excited they will be by it, even though we are looking for a Medici family for you, Skippy, to finance something, to finally get your other projects out. This is serious shit.'

This was why I was annoyed but he was relieved when they did not put him on it. Can you imagine who would have bought him? Probably some horrible old general who wanted him in chains for two weeks in some horrible basement of his mansion or castle. I mean, Skippy was running all kinds of nightmare scenarios around his head the next morning going, 'What have you done to me man?'

'It's already on the menu, man,' I said. 'It's happening.'

It was the first time he had drunk since the last time I had seen him in Bristol in the March and he does not drink alcohol except when he is with me and then really extraordinary things happen to be quite frank. We all thought it up communally the night before, although it was more my idea, but the PA, bless her, was really enthusiastic and I felt that what had happened by the end of the week was that she had had all of that enthusiasm sucked out of her by constant communication with her real boss: "You've done what? You've said what? You've done what?"

She kept assuring me that Gerard had a very similar sense of humour to me. She was quite surprised by that, and he probably has, but his humour is more derisory than mine. It is aimed at people who are less well off than him, whereas mine is aimed at people more well off than me although equally cutting and sharp.

His son, the PA and the business manager were all very, very excited by what had happened, but the son was still in shock because of the fact that Gerard had sprung this life-swap on him over the time of the polo club ball. He had sacrificed his attendance at this prime event only in order to get extra cameras in there, to advertise his empire but the crew had pulled a fast one on him. They had not put anything over on us at all. We had meticulously engaged them in terms and conditions before this happened. In order to get him to do the show they did tell him he was going to do a wife-swap. He wanted to prove that he was more of a man than your average working class stud but instead he got el freako, he got a benevolent form of the Joker who did not match anything male that he understood.