Asturias Read online

  Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not some airhead, who gets an attack of the hormones every time she sees a good-looking guy. But I don’t mind looking. And he was definitely worth looking at.

  He reached out to take the power-lead from my hand, and I dropped it deliberately on the floor at my feet. He looked at it, then back at me, and the smile never left his face.

  I had to remind myself that I was mad with him.

  “I’m trying to practise my music next door.”

  “No kidding?” He was laughing at me.

  I suppose it was a pretty dumb thing to say. What else would I be doing in a practice studio? I attempted to rescue the situation.

  “It’s impossible to do anything with that … cacophony going on!” Hell, I was beginning to sound like my mother!

  He looked at the amp, then back at me.

  “I thought these rooms were supposed to be soundproof —”

  “For music,” I cut in. “Not industrial noise pollution.”

  The smile didn’t waver.

  “That was classic Jimmy Page …” I must have given him my blank look. He tried again. “Led Zeppelin? The ‘Old Man’ album? It’s called ‘Black Dog’.” He began humming the riff that he had been playing earlier.

  I began to get mad again. He bent down and pushed the plug back into the power socket. I spoke to his back.

  “Beethoven is classic. Mozart is classic. That’s … shit!” He stood and faced me, just a few centimetres from my nose.

  “Says you.” He was still laughing at me.

  I took half a step backwards. “Says me.”

  He closed the gap between us, but there was no threat in the movement.

  “Then I can see I’m going to have to … educate you.” He made it sound like a proposition. I was lost for words — not my normal state of being.

  I turned and made what I hoped was a dignified exit, even though I felt like a complete dork.

  And that was when I heard it.

  The most amazing, unexpected … For a full minute I didn’t move. I just let the notes flow out of the doorway. Then I went back in.

  He was sitting on the amp, facing the door. His eyes held mine, flicking only occasionally to the strings of his guitar. But he never missed a note.

  “ ‘Asturias’ … by Isaac Albéniz. Eighteen sixty to nineteen oh nine, I believe. Like it?”

  All I could do was nod, hypnotised by the power of the music.

  He smiled. “Sounds better on acoustic, but …” He shrugged and went on playing. “Personally, I always thought Mozart was a bit too … controlled. And I don’t believe Beethoven ever wrote anything for guitar. I prefer Albéniz or Rodrigo … or Leadbelly …”

  And without missing a beat he slipped into an up-tempo blues progression, bending the strings and sliding his fingers up and down the neck so smoothly that they seemed to become a part of the instrument.

  Finally he stopped. And I realised that I’d forgotten all about breathing.

  “I — I’d better get back to … You know.” I nodded towards next door.

  He smiled. “Beethoven … Ludwig van … seventeen seventy to eighteen twenty-seven.” He was trying to impress me. It was working. “You know Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote some of his best stuff?”

  I nodded. That much I knew.

  He was staring at me, measuring me up and down. I should have been insulted, or embarrassed at least, but what I felt at that moment left little room for any other emotion.

  He continued speaking.

  “I couldn’t imagine anything worse. They say he could hear music inside his head that there was no way of ever putting down on paper. But he could never hear his own masterpieces played. It’s no wonder he was so hard to get on with. Terminal frustration.”

  I was backing out of the door. I didn’t trust myself to talk.

  I reached the safety of the hallway, just as his voice drifted out. “Alex … Rivera. Nice meeting you.”

  I smiled, facing the door to my own studio. “Claire … Gordon.”

  My hand was on the door-handle as his reply reached me.

  “I know.”

  I sat down at the piano, but I couldn’t bring myself to play anything.

  2

  THE SUIT

  ALEX’S STORY

  The first time I met Max, I didn’t take much notice of him. Sessions are like that.

  I was seventeen and I’d been doing them for maybe three or four years. It’s a pretty good way to make quick money. What they pay you to play on a backing track is more than I could earn at McDonald’s in a month. And I was beginning to build a rep for myself. Rock, blues, jazz, even a bit of country-slide, if they needed it. I did alright.

  Not that I’d cracked the big-time. The major labels and the big studios are a closed shop. Money talks, and they could buy the best — players with track-records that stretched back to the sixties. And time is money. Why would they take a risk on a kid?

  I’d done backings on a few independent singles, but nothing that made it much higher than the bottom of the Top One Hundred. Mainly it was just demos. “Wannabees” who scraped together just enough to burn a disk, in the hope that they could push it and themselves to one of the big boys.

  Still, I liked studio work. It wasn’t great art, not most of the time, but what the hell. It beat making hamburgers for eight hours straight. And it was always a buzz to hear the final mix.

  Max?

  Max Parnell.

  As far as I knew, he was just another suit.

  They sat in from time to time, checking out the talent. You can never tell where you’re going to find your next one-hit-wonder. So, the Artists and Repertoire men from the big labels sometimes resort to slumming it in the small independent studios, sort of “testing the water”.

  And they never notice the session players. Mostly they’re after image. With their money, and digital technology, they could make my abuelito sound good — as long as he didn’t have to do it live. It’s the “package” they’re looking for, and musicians who hide away in dark studios, reading the notes and leaving by the tradesman’s entrance, usually just don’t cut it in the image stakes.

  So I didn’t take a whole lot of notice of Max Parnell. They introduced me, and I shook his hand and listened to the usual, ‘Nice job, kid.’ Then I went out into the corridor for a Coke.

  I was about to have my first date with Claire, and I was much more interested in how that was going to turn out than I was in some A&R clone who wouldn’t even remember my name in the morning.

  Claire Gordon. North Shore, but without the class thing. Mostly.

  She had a nice touch on the piano, too. A bit traditional, but smooth. Expressive. And she had these amazing blue eyes.

  I was pretty sure I’d made an impression on her. I’d certainly tried hard enough. I’d been planning the whole thing for days, ever since I’d first seen her at the rehearsal studios. But first impressions are easy. First dates …

  Anyway, Max Parnell wasn’t high on my list of people to impress. Luckily, it wasn’t my conversational skills he was interested in …

  MAX’S STORY

  “Look, he’s perfect.”

  I could feel myself creeping into “hard-sell” mode; just the thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do.

  Symonds was standing with his back to me, looking out over the harbour. He did that a lot. It gave him a sense of power, I guess.

  I once worked out the perfect Christmas present for Symonds. A small sign to put on his desk, with “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion” engraved on it. Problem was, he probably wouldn’t have realised it was a joke.

  I’d been trying to sell him on the whole project for months, but after the mess with “Airwave”, he hadn’t exactly been sympathetic.

  I tried again.

  “We can build the whole thing around this kid. I’ve got a good feeling about him.”

  Symonds didn’t believe in “good feelings”, and he let it
show on his face.

  “Okay Max,” he said, “I’ll play. Where’d you find him?”

  “I’d heard a few rumours, and I tracked him down at Ramrod. He’s been doing sessions there and at some of the smaller studios since he was thirteen. I went down last night to watch him. He’s a natural. He’s got the looks, and the talent. Listen to the tape.”

  I’d put together some of the tracks Alex had played on, and for a “small inducement”, I’d persuaded Herman, the engineer at Ramrod, to remix them so that the guitar stood out.

  It was pretty impressive.

  I’d been in the industry for almost ten years, and what I was hearing was as good as anything I’d ever heard; even from players years older.

  And Symonds was impressed.

  He didn’t say anything, but he moved away from the window and sat down in the swivel-chair in the centre of the large room. It looks out of place standing there on its own, in the middle of a wide expanse of white carpet, but nothing Symonds does is unplanned. That chair is at the exact point where the sound from all the speakers in the office is perfectly balanced.

  He only uses it when he’s interested enough to really listen.

  Still, it didn’t pay to push your pet project too hard. That was what Travis had done with Airwave, and they just hadn’t cut it. Now Travis was licking stamps over at Polygram, and Airwave, collectively, were washing car windows at busy inner-city intersections.

  Music is a tough business.

  I eased back into the discussion.

  “Herman says he’s a natural. Never a second take, unless he wants to try some improvement to the arrangement. Which always is an improvement. And he even looks the part. Latino, with just the right amount of attitude.”

  “Can he sing?”

  Gotcha!

  “Just backings so far. We’d have to see.”

  Symonds rose and took up his position by the window again.

  “Talk to him.”

  It was such a simple idea. So simple that someone should have thought of it earlier. Maybe they did, but I hadn’t seen any evidence of it.

  Not all bands got together, practised in their parents’ garage, played the circuit, built a following, then went for the brass ring. Not all of them had to. The industry had been manufacturing its own product since the sixties. Bands brought together by the record companies. Total strangers, groomed and sculpted to fit an image, fed the music and turned loose. Publicised, used up and thrown away. The song’s the thing, always has been. But it needs a public face.

  For the chosen few the journey was spectacular. And short. Then the faces changed.

  Because it was all image. Maximum exposure, quick profit. High risk. And a discount rack full of yesterday’s heroes.

  But who was it that generated the real profits?

  The stars who stayed around. The ones you didn’t have to remake every twelve months. The rare ones. But they weren’t manufactured. They were born.

  Or were they?

  If you were going to go to all that trouble, why not look beyond the image? Assemble a band, sure. But a real band. The best young unknowns you could find, with the talent to grow in the job; to change the styles the others followed.

  Real musicians. Who just happened to look like every teenager’s hormone dream. Image and substance.

  Cynical?

  Sure it was cynical. But like I said, music is a tough business.

  Just ask Travis …

  3

  SHE

  13 April 1986

  “Music … is life, Alejandro.” Ardillo sits on the bed; his eyes are closed.

  The boy waits. His hands sweat, and the guitar slips slightly. He grips harder and watches. And waits.

  “Again. And do not try to squeeze it out. She has a voice, and she wants to sing, but squeeze her too hard and she chokes. Learn to treat her nice, and you will know how to treat a woman when your time comes. That is life. That is music.”

  The boy is seven years old. He knows nothing about women. His mother was a woman, but he knows nothing about her. This is a house of men. Hard men.

  Except for Ardillo. Ardillo knows about women. And Ardillo is teaching him.

  The guitar.

  The boy cradles her. He touches her strings, gently. And she begins to sing. On the bed, Ardillo smiles and rocks slowly from side to side, in time to the music. His eyes are still closed.

  The boy feels the strings beneath his fingertips. But his fingers have a life of their own. This, Ardillo has taught him.

  “Do not try to direct them. You cannot think so fast. Feel the music. Let it live inside of you. Touch the music with your mind and your fingers will know what to do.”

  He watches his fingers move. He listens to her sing what he feels.

  Suddenly he stops. In mid-bar, on a chord that hangs in the air, unresolved.

  “Was she beautiful?”

  Ardillo opens his eyes. “Who?”

  “My mother. You said once that you saw her. Did you think she was beautiful?”

  The moment is like the music. It hangs, silent.

  “She was as beautiful as … her mother. Your abuelita, Juana. And as fiery and as gentle.”

  The boy waits. It is no answer.

  “I never knew my abuelita … She died too.”

  Ardillo stands. He moves across and picks up one of the photo-frames. The boy puts down his instrument and moves around to where he can see.

  Five smiling faces. Behind the glass, inside the frame. Frozen in time.

  “We were so young …” Ardillo whispers the words to himself. He seems about to say more, but the words do not come.

  Then the frame is back in place.

  “When you are older, maybe …” The words run out. “Now go. It is … enough for today.”

  The boy hesitates, then hangs the guitar carefully on the wall.

  He runs his fingers once across the strings before he leaves, closing the door gently behind him.

  ALEX’S STORY

  My grandmother, Juana, was Ardillo’s lover.

  His fiancée, actually. I found some old letters in my grandfather’s wardrobe. She was from Madrid, and they met when the three brothers went there looking for work.

  It was 1935, the Depression was being felt everywhere, and the country was in a mess. The socialists would soon be back in power, but there was no work around and the tensions were rising. Before long, the army would begin mobilising under Franco and the other generals and the country would begin drifting towards civil war.

  In 1936, when war finally broke out and the brothers returned to Consuegra, Juana went with them. She was seventeen years old.

  Ardillo was twenty-one.

  My grandmother died a year before I was born. That was when my grandfather came to live with his daughter and her husband. Then I was born. And my mother died. And we were a house of men.

  I never knew my grandmother, and it was years before I came to know the full story.

  Claire got to meet my grandfather.

  She came to pick me up, and of course I wasn’t ready. It was Saturday. So, naturally, my father had to pull an emergency shift at the factory, and Abuelito had to decide to be in one of his “second childhood” moods. I think it was because he knew I was going out and it would be at least an hour and a half before he had any company to ignore.

  For an old guy, my grandfather really wasn’t too much trouble, most of the time. But he knew how to choose his moments.

  There I was, half-dressed, getting ready for my first big date in almost a year, and he refused to eat. Not only refused, but threw the plate in the sink and demanded some “real food”.

  Okay, so it was only five-minute noodles, but it wasn’t like he was starving. Hell, he never ate much at the best of times. But he was stubborn, and I was furious.

  And the doorbell was ringing.

  She stood there looking like a Cosmo photo-spread, and I answered the door with my shirt open to the waist and my feet b
are.

  She smiled.

  “Fashion statement?”

  For once I couldn’t think of a come-back. I think much better with a guitar in my hands.

  She stepped inside. I whispered an explanation about my grandfather, introduced her, and ran upstairs to finish getting ready, planning bloody revenges on Abuelito.

  The first thing I heard when I came down a few minutes later was the silence.

  I stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  I could predict what I would find. My grandfather sitting in his chair sulking, and Claire standing by the fireplace, or the window, embarrassed, and wondering why she ever accepted a date with a long-haired guitar-player.

  So, I’m not Nostradamus …

  Before I could move, and while I was still thinking of a way to salvage the situation, Abuelito’s voice drifted out.

  “Gran movida! Where you learn that?”

  Great move … The old goat sounded positively ecstatic.

  I stood in the doorway watching Claire cleaning half his checkers from the board in one move, while he did everything but applaud.

  She looked up at him and smiled.

  “A friend taught me.”

  I walked across and joined them at the table by the window.

  “If we don’t leave, we won’t be able to eat before the movie.”

  My grandfather’s face began to close over and I was getting ready for a quick escape, but Claire didn’t move. She just looked up at me.

  “Are you really hungry?” She glanced at the old man, then back at me. “I was thinking we could wait till your dad gets home, catch the eight o’clock session, and eat afterwards … If you’re not dying of starvation.”

  She looked at Abuelito and winked.

  What could I say? I shrugged my agreement. But she wasn’t finished. She pointed to the board.

  “Maybe we could have a tournament.”

  I shook my head and looked down at the unfinished game. “Count me out. I haven’t beaten my grandfather in my whole life. Anyone who could do that to him …”

  She was smiling at me, and I felt myself smiling back. Then I looked at Abuelito.

  “I think I might make you some dinner, viejo. Noodles alright?”

  He swept the remaining checkers to the side of the board, looked up at me and gave me an evil yellow grin. Back to his old self.