Afterwards, two blocks west, I feel heady, ravenous, pumped up, as if I’d just worked out and endorphins are flooding my nervous system, or just embraced that first line of cocaine, inhaled the first puff of a fine cigar, sipped that first glass of Cristal. I’m starving and need something to eat, but I don’t want to stop by Nell’s, though I’m within walking distance and Indochine seems an unlikely place for a celebratory drink. So I decide to go somewhere Al would go, the McDonald’s in Union Square. Standing in the line, I order a vanilla milk shake (“Extra-thick,” I warn the guy, who just shakes his head and flips on a machine) and take it to a table up front, where Al would probably sit, my jacket, and its sleeves, lightly spattered with flecks of his blood. Two waitresses from the Cat Club walk in after me and sit in the booth across from mine, both smiling flirtatiously. I play it cool and ignore them. An old, crazy woman, wrinkled, chain-smoking, sits near us, nodding at no one. A police car passes by, and after two more milk shakes my high slowly dissolves, its intensity diminishing. I grow bored, tired; the evening seems horribly anticlimactic and I start cursing myself for not going to that Salvadorian bistro with Reed Thompson and the guys. The two girls linger, still interested. I check my watch. One of the Mexicans working behind the counter stares at me while smoking a cigarette and he studies the stains on the Soprani jacket in a way that suggests he’s going to say something about it, but a customer comes in, one of the black guys who tried to sell me crack earlier, and he has to take the black guy’s order. So the Mexican puts out his cigarette and that’s what he does.
Genesis
I’ve been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that I didn’t really understand any of their work, though on their last album of the 1970s, the concept-laden And Then There Were Three (a reference to band member Peter Gabriel, who left the group to start a lame solo career), I did enjoy the lovely “Follow You, Follow Me.” Otherwise all the albums before Duke seemed too artsy, too intellectual. It was Duke (Atlantic; 1980), where Phil Collins’ presence became more apparent, and the music got more modern, the drum machine became more prevalent and the lyrics started getting less mystical and more specific (maybe because of Peter Gabriel’s departure), and complex, ambiguous studies of loss became, instead, smashing first-rate pop songs that I gratefully embraced. The songs themselves seemed arranged more around Collins’ drumming than Mike Rutherford’s bass lines or Tony Banks’ keyboard riffs. A classic example of this is “Misunderstanding,” which not only was the group’s first big hit of the eighties but also seemed to set the tone for the rest of their albums as the decade progressed. The other standout on Duke is “Turn It On Again,” which is about the negative effects of television. On the other hand, “Heathaze” is a song I just don’t understand, while “Please Don’t Ask” is a touching love song written to a separated wife who regains custody of the couple’s child. Has the negative aspect of divorce ever been rendered in more intimate terms by a rock ’n’ roll group? I don’t think so. “Duke Travels” and “Dukes End” might mean something but since the lyrics aren’t printed it’s hard to tell what Collins is singing about, though there is complex, gorgeous piano work by Tony Banks on the latter track. The only bummer about Duke is “Alone Tonight,” which is way too reminiscent of “Tonight Tonight Tonight” from the group’s later masterpiece Invisible Touch and the only example, really, of where Collins has plagiarized himself.
Abacab (Atlantic; 1981) was released almost immediately after Duke and it benefits from a new producer, Hugh Padgham, who gives the band a more eighties sound and though the songs seem fairly generic, there are still great bits throughout: the extended jam in the middle of the title track and the horns by some group called Earth, Wind and Fire on “No Reply at All” are just two examples. Again the songs reflect dark emotions and are about people who feel lost or who are in conflict, but the production and sound are gleaming and upbeat (even if the titles aren’t: “No Reply at All,” “Keep It Dark,” “Who Dunnit?” “Like It or Not”). Mike Rutherford’s bass is obscured somewhat in the mix but otherwise the band sounds tight and is once again propelled by Collins’ truly amazing drumming. Even at its most despairing (like the song “Dodo,” about extinction), Abacab musically is poppy and lighthearted.
My favorite track is “Man on the Corner,” which is the only song credited solely to Collins, a moving ballad with a pretty synthesized melody plus a riveting drum machine in the background. Though it could easily come off any of Phil’s solo albums, because the themes of loneliness, paranoia and alienation are overly familiar to Genesis it evokes the band’s hopeful humanism. “Man on the Corner” profoundly equates a relationship with a solitary figure (a bum, perhaps a poor homeless person?), “that lonely man on the corner” who just stands around. “Who Dunnit?” profoundly expresses the theme of confusion against a funky groove, and what makes this song so exciting is that it ends with its narrator never finding anything out at all.
Hugh Padgham produced next an even less conceptual effort, simply called Genesis (Atlantic; 1983), and though it’s a fine album a lot of it now seems too derivative for my tastes. “That’s AH” sounds like “Misunderstanding,” “Taking It All Too Hard” reminds me of “Throwing It All Away.” It also seems less jazzy than its predecessors and more of an eighties pop album, more rock ’n’ roll. Padgham does a brilliant job of producing, but the material is weaker than usual and you can sense the strain. It opens with the autobiographical “Mama,” that’s both strange and touching, though I couldn’t tell if the singer was talking about his actual mother or to a girl he likes to call “Mama.” “That’s All” is a lover’s lament about being ignored and beaten down by an unreceptive partner; despite the despairing tone it’s got a bright sing-along melody that makes the song less depressing than it probably needed to be. “That’s All” is the best tune on the album, but Phil’s voice is strongest on “House by the Sea,” whose lyrics are, however, too stream-of-consciousness to make much sense. It might be about growing up and accepting adulthood but it’s unclear; at any rate, its second instrumental part puts the song more in focus for me and Mike Banks gets to show off his virtuosic guitar skills while Tom Rutherford washes the tracks over with dreamy synthesizers, and when Phil repeats the song’s third verse at the end it can give you chills.
“Illegal Alien” is the most explicitly political song the group has yet recorded and their funniest. The subject is supposed to be sad—a wetback trying to get across the border, into the United States—but the details are highly comical: the bottle of tequila the Mexican holds, the new pair of shoes he’s wearing (probably stolen); and it all seems totally accurate. Phil sings it in a brash, whiny pseudo-Mexican voice that makes it even funnier, and the rhyme of “fun” with “illegal alien” is inspired. “Just a Job to Do” is the album’s funkiest song, with a killer bass line by Banks, and though it seems to be about a detective chasing a criminal, I think it could also be about a jealous lover tracking someone down. “Silver Rainbow” is the album’s most lyrical song. The words are intense, complex and gorgeous. The album ends on a positive, upbeat note with “It’s Gonna Get Better.” Even if the lyrics seem a tiny bit generic to some, Phil’s voice is so confident (heavily influenced by Peter Gabriel, who never made an album this polished and heartfelt himself) that he makes us believe in glorious possibilities.
Invisible Touch (Atlantic; 1986) is the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility, at the same time it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. It has a resonance that keeps coming back at the listener, and the music is so beautiful that it’s almost impossible to shake off because every song makes some connection about the unknown or the spaces between people (“Invisible Touch”), questioning authoritative control whether by domineering lovers or by government (“Land of Confusion”) or by meaningless repetition (“Tonight Tonight Tonight”). All in all it ranks with the finest rock ’n’ roll achievements of
the decade and the mastermind behind this album, along of course with the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford, is Hugh Padgham, who has never found as clear and crisp and modern a sound as this. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument.
In terms of lyrical craftsmanship and sheer songwriting skills this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Take the lyrics to “Land of Confusion,” in which a singer addresses the problem of abusive political authority. This is laid down with a groove funkier and blacker than anything Prince or Michael Jackson—or any other black artist of recent years, for that matter—has come up with. Yet as danceable as the album is, it also has a stripped-down urgency that not even the overrated Bruce Springsteen can equal. As an observer of love’s failings Collins beats out the Boss again and again, reaching new heights of emotional honesty on “In Too Deep”; yet it also showcases Collins’ clowny, prankish, unpredictable side. It’s the most moving pop song of the 1980s about monogamy and commitment. “Anything She Does” (which echoes the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” but is more spirited and energetic) starts off side two and after that the album reaches its peak with “Domino,” a two-part song. Part one, “In the Heat of the Night,” is full of sharp, finely drawn images of despair and it’s paired with “The Last Domino,” which fights it with an expression of hope. This song is extremely uplifting. The lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I’ve heard in rock.
Phil Collins’ solo efforts seem to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a narrower way, especially No Jacket Required and songs like “In the Air Tonight” and “Against All Odds” (though that song was overshadowed by the masterful movie from which it came) and “Take Me Home” and “Sussudio” (great, great song; a personal favorite) and his remake of “You Can’t Hurry Love,” which I’m not alone in thinking is better than the Supremes’ original. But I also think that Phil Collins works better within the confines of the group than as a solo artist—and I stress the word artist. In fact it applies to all three of the guys, because Genesis is still the best, most exciting band to come out of England in the 1980s.
Lunch
I’m sitting in DuPlex, the new Tony McManus restaurant in Tribeca, with Christopher Armstrong, who also works at P & P. We went to Exeter together, then he went to the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton, before moving to Manhattan. We, inexplicably, could not get reservations at Subjects, so Armstrong suggested this place. Armstrong is wearing a four-button double-breasted chalk-striped spread-collar cotton shirt by Christian Dior and a large paisley-patterned silk tie by Givenchy Gentleman. His leather agenda and leather envelope, both by Bottega Veneta, lie on the third chair at our table, a good one, up front by the window. I’m wearing a nailhead-patterned worsted wool suit with overplaid from DeRigueur by Schoeneman, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Bill Blass, a Macclesfield silk tie by Savoy and a cotton handkerchief by Ashear Bros. A Muzak rendition of the score from Les Misérables plays lightly throughout the restaurant. Armstrong’s girlfriend is Jody Stafford, who used to date Todd Hamlin, and this fact plus the TV monitors hanging from the ceilings with closed-circuit video of chefs working in the kitchen fills me with nameless dread. Armstrong just got back from the islands and has a very deep, very even tan, but so do I.
“So how were the Bahamas?” I ask after we order. “You just got back, right?”
“Well, Taylor,” Armstrong begins, staring at a point somewhere behind me and slightly above my head—on the column that has been terra-cotta-ized or perhaps on the exposed pipe that runs the length of the ceiling. “Travelers looking for that perfect vacation this summer may do well to look south, as far south as the Bahamas and the Caribbean islands. There are at least five smart reasons for visiting the Caribbean including the weather and the festivals and events, the less crowded hotels and attractions, the price and the unique cultures. While many vacationers leave the cities in search of cooler climates during the summer months, few have realized that the Caribbean has a year-round climate of seventy-five to eighty-five degrees and that the islands are constantly cooled by the trade winds. It is frequently hotter north in …”
On The Patty Winters Show this morning the topic was Toddler-Murderers. In the studio audience were parents of children who’d been kidnapped, tortured and murdered, while on stage a panel of psychiatrists and pediatricians were trying to help them cope—somewhat futilely I might add, and much to my delight—with their confusion and anger. But what really cracked me up was—via satellite on a lone TV monitor—three convicted Toddler-Murderers on death row who due to fairly complicated legal loopholes were now seeking parole and would probably get it. But something kept distracting me while I watched the huge Sony TV over a breakfast of sliced kiwi and Japanese apple-pear, Evian water, oat-bran muffins, soy milk and cinnamon granola, ruining my enjoyment of the grieving mothers, and it wasn’t until the show was almost over that I figured out what it was: the crack above my David Onica that I had asked the doorman to tell the superintendent to fix. On my way out this morning I stopped at the front desk, about to complain to the doorman, when I was confronted with a new doorman, my age but balding and homely and fat. Three glazed jelly doughnuts and two steaming cups of extra-dark hot chocolate lay on the desk in front of him beside a copy of the Post opened to the comics and it struck me that I was infinitely better-looking, more successful and richer than this poor bastard would ever be and so with a passing rush of sympathy I smiled and nodded a curt though not impolite good morning without lodging a complaint. “Oh really?” I find myself saying loudly, completely uninterested, to Armstrong.
“Like the United States it celebrates the summer months with festivals and special events including music concerts, art exhibits, street fairs and sporting tournaments, and because of the vast number of people traveling elsewhere, the islands are less crowded, allowing for better service and no lines when waiting to use that sailboat or dine in that restaurant. I mean I think most people go to sample the culture, the food, the history …”
On the way to Wall Street this morning, due to gridlock I had to get out of the company car and was walking down Fifth Avenue to find a subway station when I passed what I thought was a Halloween parade, which was disorienting since I was fairly sure this was May. When I stopped on the corner of Sixteenth Street and made a closer inspection it turned out to be something called a “Gay Pride Parade,” which made my stomach turn. Homosexuals proudly marched down Fifth Avenue, pink triangles emblazoned on pastel-colored windbreakers, some even holding hands, most singing “Somewhere” out of key and in unison. I stood in front of Paul Smith and watched with a certain traumatized fascination, my mind reeling with the concept that a human being, a man, could feel pride over sodomizing another man, but when I began to receive fey catcalls from aging, overmuscled beachboys with walruslike mustaches in between the lines “There’s a place for us, Somewhere a place for us,” I sprinted over to Sixth Avenue, decided to be late for the office and took a cab back to my apartment where I put on a new suit (by Cerruti 1881), gave myself a pedicure and tortured to death a small dog I had bought earlier this week in a pet store on Lexington. Armstrong drones on.
“Water sports are of course the leading attraction. But golf courses and tennis courts are in excellent condition and the pros at many of the resorts are made more available during the summer. Many of the courts are lit for night playing as well …”
Fuck … yourself … Armstrong, I’m thinking while staring out the window at the gridlock and pacing bums on Church Street. Appetizers arrive: sun-dried-tomato brioche for Armstrong. Poblano chilies with an oniony orange-purple marmalade on the side for me. I hope Armstrong doesn’t want to pay because I need to show the dim-witted bastard that I in fact do own a platinum American Express card. I feel very sad at this moment for some reason, listening to Armstrong, and a lump forms in my throat but I swallow and take a sip from my Corona and the emotion passes and during a pause while he’s chewing, I ask, “The
food? How’s the food?” almost involuntarily, thinking about anything but.
“Good question. As for dining out, the Caribbean has become more attractive as the island cuisine has mixed well with the European culture. Many of the restaurants are owned and managed by Americans, British, French, Italian, even Dutch expatriates …” Mercifully, he pauses, taking a bite out of his brioche, which looks like a sponge drenched in blood—his brioche looks like a big bloody sponge—and he washes it down with a sip from his Corona. My turn.
“How about sightseeing?” I ask disinterestedly, concentrating on the blackened chilies, the yellowish marmalade circling the plate in an artful octagon, cilantro leaves circling the marmalade, chili seeds circling the cilantro leaves.
“Sightseeing is highlighted by the European culture which established many of the islands as regional fortresses in the seventeen hundreds. Visitors can see the various spots where Columbus landed and as we near the three hundredth anniversary of his first sailing in 1590 there is a heightened awareness in the islands as to the history and culture that is an integral part of island life …”
Armstrong: you are an … asshole. “Uh-huh.” I nod. “Well …” Paisley ties, plaid suits, my aerobics class, returning videotapes, spices to pick up from Zabar’s, beggars, white-chocolate truffles … The sickening scent of Drakkar Noir, which is what Christopher is wearing, floats over near my face, mingling with the scent of the marmalade and cilantro, the onions and the blackened chilies. “Uh-huh,” I say, repeat.