Concert for Andrea
The singer was a grey-haired old man who was regarded as something of a legend.
His early hits had been political songs which stood out from the myriad pop songs aimed at teenagers. He mourned the fact that in the modern world there were more issues than ever, but nobody willing to sing about them. To his mind, the money men had got hold of the music business (and pretty much everything else) and it was these guys who decided what got released. Romantic songs were nice and benign after all, and wouldn’t get impressionable, young minds asking questions about their world.
As he shuffled onto the stage in Canterbury's Marlowe Theatre, an almighty cheer went up from the crowd. The singer had gained quite a reputation for being somewhat eccentric in his performances. At one concert he had refused to sing a note until everybody in the audience had stood up in protest about the latest oil war. Luckily his eyesight wasn’t sharp enough to see that some of the less dedicated fans near the back of the room were still seated.
There was even a point in his career when he decided to satirise the vacuous nature of modern pop music by recording a twelve-bar blues consisting of a single swearword repeated continually throughout its three verses. Sadly the point was missed completely, as adolescents queued up to buy the single, oblivious to its ironic nature.
The performer wandered over to the microphone, nodded at the band and the opening chords of his biggest hit began to ring out. This was one of his few non-political songs but it had been the one that brought him into widespread recognition. At once the audience sang along to every word.
It has been written about a lady called Andrea who the singer had been involved with during his 40s. It was reported that she had been sleeping around with many other people in the music business. She had once attempted to throw herself off of a cliff, and the performer had somehow talked her out of taking in 600 feet of breathtaking scenery before finding herself scattered across it. It seemed to him, whether fairly or not, that working her way through his erstwhile set of musicians was the way she had repaid him!
Consequently the singer had ended up having a nervous breakdown and the album that followed was based on his experiences. People seemed to like this new material and as a result he had found himself at the top of the charts for the first time in twelve years.
Yet, now that several thousand people were belting out the refrain, the old, grey vocalist was pleased that he had gone through those years of anguish to achieve this level of attention.
The end of the song consisted of the single line, ‘Has anybody ever got out of this?’ repeated over and over. No doubt this is how he had felt at the time of his breakdown. At this point, the audience were expecting the song to whip itself up into a frenzied finish like on the record, but it just went on; the same thing continuously repeating with no variation whatsoever. It had played for around ten minutes now and audience reaction was becoming somewhat mixed.
The more dedicated fans thought fondly, ‘he hasn’t lost the nerve to try something challenging.’ After all, for a seventy-year-old, it seemed a brave thing to do, and this repetition probably reflected how things seemed to him all those years ago, but surely life had moved on by now, hadn’t it?
Others were now longing to hear old favourites, like the anti-global-warming anthem ‘Hot Air’ or ‘Ghost Town Blues’ which reflected upon rural decline in Britain. He had made his point by now, surely? And it wasn’t as though Andrea Walthorpe was going to be in the audience to hear this musical behemoth she had inspired.
Things were becoming like that children’s game where an adult makes a statement and those who think it’s true go to one side of the room and those who think it is false go to the other. As more and more statements are read out, the children begin to drift from one camp to the other until the answer is certain and they can all be found huddled next to the same window in a poorly heated hall somewhere in provincial England! What was happening here was exactly the same – he was rapidly losing his audience to the ‘he’s lost it’ camp.
Pictures formed in the minds of some of the crowd, for the song itself had been just three minutes long and the unwieldy refrain was now heading towards its fifteenth minute. It was like one of those old ‘snake’ fireworks, which were tiny but produced a huge trail of ash when lit. Similarly, it brought to mind the image of a small gentleman riding a pushbike with a rope attached to the back, towing along a huge mountain.
Just then a group of young men decided to take some positive action; they began to applaud. The idea was to communicate to the stage that the song’s point had been put across very eloquently and that they had enjoyed it very much. In turn, the appreciative old chap would decide to wind it up into a much anticipated crescendo and then move on to something a little less avant-garde.
The applause seemed to travel like a Mexican wave around the theatre, until the whole room was awash with clapping, so much that it drowned out the sound coming from the speakers. How blissful was the prospect that the applause might die down to reveal that the band had stopped and the old boy had finally finished this ridiculously elongated coda.
As a bit of insurance, some people began standing up and cheering. It began to sound more like a football match than a concert, and soon the sound of young men shouting indiscriminately had overtaken the clapping as the most prominent aural feature. Some of the older people were feeling very uneasy about this and shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. The usual decorum had been broken and things were beginning to get out of control. Amidst the noise, there were even certain groups singing other songs in protest over the top of all this. Or was it underneath? It had become very hard to tell.
The security guards stepped in from outside, their long, black coats flapping, as the doors each shone an oblong shaft of light into the darkened auditorium. They were prepared for the worst; trouble was brewing.
But anybody not so lost in the melee that they could afford a glance at the stage would have noticed that the show was still going on; the hands of the musicians were gliding up and down over the guitar strings in the same structured way, and the drummer was still stoically banging away at his skins with none of his enthusiasm dented. And still the singer’s lips were chanting out the same seven words, as though it was an old, vinyl record with the needle stuck in the groove, or even a computer spewing forth reams of repetitive but erroneous data due to some kind of programming error.
The first people began to leave at this point. It was as though the light from the security doors had put the suggestion into their minds that in fact they did have a choice in the matter and could leave if they wanted.
‘Has anybody ever got out of this?’ Well, so far about thirty!
Now, there is one thing that I have deliberately omitted from this story until this point - the fact that I was actually present in the audience at this performance. I had no interest in the old veteran, being more a fan of classical music, but a friend had persuaded me to come and see a ‘songwriting legend before he croaks,’ as she had so eloquently put it.
As I listened to the performance I mused as to what the historic playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe, the Canterbury man after whom the theatre was named, would make of this unusual artistic expression, but as a trained psychologist I was now far more interested in the swathes of collective thought that had been washing across the crowd; first the adulation, then the applause, then the frustration, then the claustrophobia, and now…?
It seemed that the singer was aiming to make his audience feel exactly as he had felt about the lady the song had been dedicated to. He was doing remarkably well. Such an idea wasn’t new. Wasn’t this the kind of thing the hippies tried to achieve at their 'happenings?' A single frame of mind throughout the crowd? Nobody said that the frame of mind had to be pleasant!
There had been a steady drift of people towards the luminous exit signs and out into the sanity of the cold street, but those that remained inside became incredibly tranquil. It was as though, with
the dissenters out of the way, they could at last appreciate this ‘happening’ for whatever it was.
Indeed, my own eyes became incredibly heavy, and I wondered about the possibility of there being some form of subconscious hypnotic suggestion imbedded in the music, but my wondering was soon overcome by the same passivity that I observed in the rest of the crowd. I estimated that it had taken around thirty minutes to reach this point of no return, and now, it seemed that the singer would be taking us all on a little journey, whether we wanted to come or not. Before I knew it, my eyes were closed.
I found myself at the back of the stage surrounded by darkness, except for the glare of the lights in front of me. These were blurry at first, and it was as though my ears had been blocked with water and I was recovering my sense of sound. Out of the muffled tone, I could hear a familiar melody emerging. I could make out the silhouettes of a group of musicians in front on me, clearly in the middle of a performance. Then, the penny dropped; it was that song I had been listening to for the last half an hour - they were still playing that same refrain, rumbling on and on like a runaway train. But what was I doing here? Could the audience see me? I had to get away.
To my right, I could see a russet coloured curtain. I reached out and grabbed it to steady myself, as I tried to make sense of the situation. There was a door just beyond this. I leaned forward, grasped the handle and pushed. The door opened and I fell through, flat upon my face.
I could no longer hear music.
I could now hear seagulls and the distant roar of the sea, and I could feel the wind in my hair. I opened my eyes and it was daylight. Beneath me was grass.
I lifted my head and at once I knew where I was – that familiar haunt of nature lovers – The White Cliffs of Dover. There was no door behind me; had I dreamed the whole concert? Did the singer even exist? I couldn’t even remember his name.
I climbed to my feet and gazed over the cliff edge to see the brilliant white chalk face below, leading almost vertically down. Across the blue sea to my right, I could see the hazy outline of the French coast, and ahead I could see the white South Foreland lighthouse, keeping watch over the busy shipping channel between Britain and the continent. In a prosaic frame of mind, I felt sorry for the singer and mused that perhaps we all need a 'lighthouse' of some kind to keep watch over us.
Just then, I could hear a woman’s hysterical laughing. I turned around, and about ten feet further along the cliff edge I could see a woman with long, dark hair. I was shocked and paralysed by her deranged expression, as she stood there in a white hospital nightdress. It was her – Andrea Walthorpe.
I knew at once that this was still a dream and I wanted to wake myself up. I could throw myself off of the cliff and find myself back in my chair in that Canterbury theatre in an instant, but why should I? How could she just stand there and laugh in the face of the misery she had caused the old singer? I put my arms out in front of me, and with my palms facing the lady I lunged towards her. And then…
She was gone, shrinking to the size of a dot as I moved to the cliff edge to gaze down into the foamy brine, with the waves indifferent to the drama that had just taken place.
As I stood alone on the windy cliff-top I wondered if I was now guilty of murder. If you kill somebody in a dream, the intent is still there, so does that make you a murderer?
I waited patiently to awaken.
And then I waited some more.
And then the police arrived.