Crystal Passion

In her best-selling biography, Polly Tarantella makes clear that she ranks the most significant days of Crystal Passion's life as those from when she arrived at JFK airport until her fateful last day on American soil. It's probably not surprising that an American writer asserts that Crystal's few weeks in America should be her most important. Although Polly interviewed me for the book and we continue to exchange e-mails, there's a lot in her account I don't really recognise. And this is even though I'm so liberally quoted: to the extent that I seem to be by far the most important member of her band (with the possible exception of Judy).

The Customs Officers who interrogated us at the airport were just doing their job. I don't agree that their actions were either unwarranted harassment or a concerted effort to keep Crystal Passion out of the United States. The weeks we toured America were undoubtedly important but even though this was where her career as a singer and musician came to an end, I wouldn't say that this episode in her life is what defines her or what most makes her music worth listening to. Surely it's not the manner of your passing but what happens before that exemplifies the worth of a person's life. I definitely don't believe that Anna Walentynowicz framed Crystal or anyone else in our entourage. I don't subscribe to the theory that the drugs they found in the corridor had been deliberately planted as an excuse to charge and prosecute Crystal. I think they were dumped simply because if they'd been discovered on the person of Jenny or anyone else in the band, our tour would have ended before it even began. And I don't believe that Peter Piper the Senior Customs Officer was a reluctant partner in a shadowy conspiracy to bar Crystal Passion from ever entering America.

On the other hand, it would be difficult for Polly to make such grandiose claims for Crystal Passion and her music if she didn't present our disastrous final tour as one that had been deliberately sabotaged. I don't think she could have called the biography

Crystal Passion: Saviour of Rock

and make so many bold claims if our tour across the United States hadn't somehow been the victim of a deliberate policy of harassment rather than just an unfortunate comedy of errors.

Many people, including me, take issue with Polly's characterisation of our music as being Rock at all. In the United States in particular, but to a certain extent in the UK and Europe also, Rock Music has become so elevated in popular esteem for the older generation that almost any type of music needs to be marketed as such to attract the attention of the wider media. It can then be marketed as being sonically accessible and benefiting from a rich venerable heritage. Crystal Passion's music was a lot of things, but it probably can't easily be placed on a dotted line of musical progression that begins with Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, rises to its most lavish and pompous in the 1970s, and has ever since limped along as the music of middle-aged Dads and Russian Prime Ministers.

I don't blame Polly for how she's made such a big deal. Nobody would buy a book about Crystal Passion if they didn't think there was something special and compelling about her. Of course I

do

think she was special and compelling. It's just that when she was alive she attracted almost none of the attention she's getting now.

I think Polly addresses an apparent need to plug in the gaping hole in Rock Music's myth of popular music's cyclical reinvention. There's been nothing especially significant since Acid House burst onto the scene. And that was big mostly in Europe and hardly at all in America: the original home of House music. Rock critics like to have a narrative to describe the history of popular culture. And Rock fans like to define their lives in relation to this narrative. 1967 was the Summer of Love. 1977 was when Punk shook up the musical establishment. 1988 was when clubbing went from the periphery to the heart of youth culture. Hair-length, trouser flare, attitude, turn of phrase, and record collections all become part of something bigger and more significant. And even though British Rock critics have a different perspective to those in the States, they all have a shared faith in a similar mythology.

And then come the 1990s, what happened? Where was the next musical revolution? And into the 21

st

Century, what happened to that elusive next big generation-defining event?

My opinion is that teenagers and young people just switched the focus of their attention away from music. Now they've got the internet and mobile phones and computer games and all that stuff, what's so important about the music in the background? Is it any coincidence that the last noteworthy musical revolution (in Europe at least) came about in 1988 just before the time PCs started to appear in ordinary people's homes?

Nevertheless, if you're a Rock critic who's written for

Rolling Stone

,

Mojo

,

Q

and the

New York Times

, you're not going to buy into the idea that the history of Rock Music and its musical revolutions have just come to an end just because you can download

Angry Birds

and listen to music on Spotify on your phone and browse Google for previously rare records from Guatemala, Azerbaijan or Detroit. You're going to want a saviour of Rock—a messiah who heralds a new Second Coming—that'll be as exciting as the Beatles were when they cracked the American market; when Woodstock and the other Rock Festivals were major cultural events rather than well-organised weekend family outings; and when the future seemed bright, hairy and sexually promiscuous.

Polly Tarantella's thesis is that there was some kind of conspiracy on our American tour to nobble Crystal Passion from the moment our plane touched down in New York City. Although I understand how it might seem like that was what happened, it didn't seem so at the time.

It was inevitable that once we'd finally got past Customs, Tomiko would have already departed for the Hotel Gettysburg with her luggage. There'd been a guy from Sanity Records to meet us at the airport, but it wasn't Kai Pharrel. Even for a tiny New York record label, the boss was too big a wig for the likes of Crystal Passion. Instead, Tomiko was greeted by Barnie, a lanky teenage kid with almost as many tattoos and piercings as Judy Dildo. He knew everything there was to know about Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana and Pearl Jam; and bugger all about Crystal Passion or what was happening on the UK scene that wasn't the Stone Roses. When it became apparent that the rest of the band wouldn't be joining them any time soon, rather than continue to wait Barnie drove Tomiko into Manhattan and 54

th

Street West in a van that would have been a tight fit for all of us but was pretty generous for just Tomiko and him.

And knowing Tomiko as we all did, none of us were surprised to find her in bed with Barnie when we finally got to the hotel well after midnight,. He'd been under the impression that we were all just a bunch of dykes and he couldn't have been more delighted to discover that Tomiko succumbed so willingly and eagerly to his clumsy passes. Mind you, even by the standards set by the rest of us, Tomiko was always willing and eager. It took almost no persuasion for her to divest her clothes and suck off a strange guy's dick. However, with all the HIV and AIDS and stuff around at the time, she normally preferred sex with other girls where there was much less risk of a nasty surprise resulting from a night of unplanned intimacy.

We weren't at our best at all when we finally checked in at the Hotel Gettysburg. Tomiko's evening had been by far the most enjoyable of any of us—that was for sure. Even the journey from the airport to the hotel was a trial. None of us knew our way round New York. We didn't know anything about having to buy tokens or whatever for the subway. We didn't know where the subway lines went. First of all we detrained (as they say in America) at 54

th

Street East on Lexington Avenue. It was only after an hour or so of wandering about hopelessly lost in a district that was a lot posher than we expected that we discovered our mistake and somehow made our way via Grand Central Station to 54

th

Street West. At least, unlike the London underground, New York subway trains ran well after midnight. And all the while we were terrified that we'd get mugged or shot or gang-raped. All we knew about New York came from movies like

Taxi Driver

and we expected there to be junkies, hookers and criminal gunmen on every street corner.

The Hotel Gettysburg lived up (or down) to our low expectations. It was just the sort of dive I'd imagined all of New York was like. Clearly, Sanity Records spared at least some expense for us. This was definitely not America at its best. It was an America that smelt of cat's piss; where the carpet was kind of sticky; where there was the constant musk of stale tobacco smoke; where the escalator didn't work; and where the receptionist informed us that rooms were also available by the hour.

Despite it being so late, we had to decide who was sharing which bed in each of the four rooms that had been reserved. Only Tomiko knew where she might as well stay the night and Barnie was already taking up precious space. As band leader, Crystal had first choice as to which bedroom she could sleep in and I don't know how many of us were hoping that she'd be the one with whom Crystal would share her bed. On this occasion, she offered to share a room with Judy Dildo and—despite being the one we all suspected as being the cause for our detention—Jenny Alpha. I'd be sharing my bed with Jacquie, while her sister Jane pushed two beds together so she could sleep with Bertha who was too plump for there to be space in just the one bed for both of them.

Jacquie was probably my first true love. We'd been lovers well before we first met Crystal and before I'd been given the stage name of Pebbles. In fact, Jane, Jacquie and I had become a kind of threesome—two black sisters with Zimbabwean heritage and a girl from Bethnal Green—who shared not only our bodies but seminars and lectures in Marine Biology. Jane and Jacquie were twins, but not identical ones. They also had African names that were a lot more exotic than the names by which they were mostly known. Jacquie's other name was Bonani and Jane's was Jabu. Jacquie had the bigger thighs and rounder buttocks, while Jane's tongue could reach places inside me that never ceased to surprise me when we progressed beyond our initial awkward Sapphic fumbling towards harder, faster and more visceral love-making. But that wasn't what I wanted tonight. I was far too tired. Jacquie had to content herself with just a kiss and a cuddle. That wasn't so for Bertha and Jane who were both loud and energetic. But they were no match for the trio of Crystal, Jenny and Judy, whose fucking in the room next door was loud enough to be heard across the corridor and during which Judy was as always the most vocal.

Having gone to bed so late, it was no surprise that none of us got up early the following day. Uncharacteristically, it was Judy who woke me up rather than the other way round. She banged on our hotel room door, not having bothered to cover her naked body, and it was Jane who eventually answered the door.

"The gig's off this evening," Judy announced without preamble. "It's been postponed till tomorrow. And that's not all the bad news..."

"There's more?" Jane asked.

"There's still no news about our gear. Crystal got in touch with the airport and they said there were administrative reasons why we won't be able to pick it up for at least another couple of days. It's a question of getting the properly qualified officer to check our property: apparently because we'd designated it as valuable and easily damaged. And whoever that guy is, he isn't immediately available."

"But the gig's still gonna happen before we've got the gear," said Bertha who along with Jenny Alpha was one of only two of us who'd benefit from having nothing to set up on stage.

"And the gig's not even gonna be at such a good place," said Judy. "We got a call from Kai Pharrel: the top honcho for Sanity records, at least here in New York..."

"The record label's based in New York," Jacquie interjected.

"OK. He's the number one guy for the whole deal. Whatever. Anyway, he didn't have much to say even though Crystal was the one who took the call. There was a double booking or something at the club where we were supposed to play. So we've been muscled out of the way for a House DJ with a Latino name and we've got a last minute booking at a club in Upper Manhattan..."

"At least it's in proper New York," said Bertha. "Not one of the other boroughs."

"Well, it'll still be a shithole of a dive. And I don't see how we're gonna get even a dozen people through the door with the amount of time left to promote it. Anyhow, we'll have the chance to talk about it with Kai this evening. He's invited us to his loft apartment in SoHo."

"Soho's in London," said Bertha.

"No, it's South Houston on the Lower East Side. They call it SoHo here. Weird, eh? But we'll get to find out more about it tonight. Kai's invited us to a party at his place. I guess he thinks we'll liven it up a bit."

"Fucking right we will!" said Thelma who appeared from behind Judy in the frame of the door. She was also naked apart from a cowboy hat incongruously balanced over her short-haired pixie face. "This Kai guy's obviously heard of our reputation."

"Speak for yourself, girlfriend," said Andrea who was generally rather more restrained in her appetite for drugs, drink and sexual partners. She'd slipped on a tee-shirt and nickers, and looked almost decent. She was my younger sister and thankfully respected the taboos regarding family intimacy rather more than did either Jacquie or Jane. We'd both been students at the same university at the same time and although she also studied for a Biology degree her specialist subject was Botany rather than Marine Biology.

"Lower East Side party or not," Judy elaborated, "it's just another fucking disaster. Kai had better deliver on the drugs..."

"...if not the Sex and Rock and Roll," said the Harlot, who liked to live up to the reputation implicit in a nickname she'd earned because her unpronounceable Polish surname sounded a bit like 'The Harlot' as well as because she was at least as promiscuous as anyone else in the Crystal Passion band.

We didn't get to Kai's apartment much before midnight but we were still amongst the first to arrive. This time we navigated the subway rather better than the night before, but it was remarkable how soon we got lost in Manhattan. We'd thought the city was all Avenues and Streets at right angles to one another like in all those movies with yellow taxis cruising down 5

th

Avenue. It was nowhere near as simple as that in the district around SoHo and Greenwich Village where we hung out for most of that evening. We quickly discovered that bars in New York are nothing like as friendly or welcoming as even a London West End pub. In fact, we were more than glad for the lines of coke that Jenny managed to score. That is, all of us with the inevitable exception as always of Crystal who passed on the offer and imbibed nothing stronger than still mineral water.

Kai Pharrel and his boyfriend were both in their apartment when we ascended to the top floor in an antiquated lift with iron-framed elevator doors that was probably built before even the Empire State Building. Both Kai Pharrel and his lover were in their early 50s and I soon learnt from them that Sanity records was mostly just Kai's expensive hobby. While he fussed around with bottles of Californian wine and gestured towards the bowls in which he'd provided his guests with good quality Jamaican grass and Mexican hash, he explained that he'd always been a big fan of music, especially what he considered 'far-out' bands like the Velvet Underground, Suicide and the Talking Heads. So when he made his fortune from selling the real estate in Upper Manhattan he'd originally purchased for virtually nothing, he set up Sanity records in the hope of finding the next New York Dolls or Television.

"Instead what we've got," said Pedro, Kai's boyfriend, "is a bunch of East Coast would-be Pearl Jams and a rather more lucrative line in House and Techno..."

"...And us," I said.

"Yeah, you. And a few other limey bands that Kai's pal, Zack, sends him over from Gospel records in London."

"...And Madeleine too," I said loyally.

"Madeleine?"

"Our agent?"

"Oh, Maddy. She's your archetypal fag hag, ain't she? Absolutely adorable!"

Steadily more people began arriving and everything changed as they did so. Initially it seemed most likely that all there'd be was a polite evening of passing joints round the room supplemented by glasses of rather better plonk than we deserved and the background music of Cabaret Voltaire. However, as more people arrived—most of them men and not all of them exclusively homosexual—the mood began to change. And when some kids arrived who were younger than any of us, including Andrea, I began wondering about the safety of Kai's abstract expressionist paintings and the massive stereo speakers that were by no means yet cranked up to full capacity.

But that cautious attitude amongst other things also changes. This was going to be an evening that could be celebrated by Ian Dury's famous song after all.

First of all there was the Sex.

This was one of the few vices—if it can be described as a vice—which Crystal engaged in as actively as anyone else in the band. She looked like an angel and had the manners of a saint, but she fucked like the devil. She was equally as generous with her love in a physical sense as she was in an ethereal platonic kind. There wasn't one member of the Crystal Passion entourage with whom she'd not had sex many times over, although Judy and I were her most ardent lovers—with the possible exception of her husband, Mark, who was exactly as ambisexual and carnally promiscuous as she was. But Crystal was only one member of the band. All of us were lovers of other women, although in some cases this hadn't been until Crystal introduced them to the pleasures of Sapphic love. Most of us also enjoyed having sex with men, but to markedly different extents. I'd always considered cock to be second-best to pussy, but Judy was more inclined towards men than women, even if she sometimes used her set of strap-on dildos in ways a man mightn't expect. Neither Jane nor Jacquie cared for men at all, though they tolerated it in a group sex setting. Bertha would rather frig herself than let a man touch her.

With all the new flesh arriving on the scene and so much of it already buzzing on Ecstasy and coke, it was as inevitable as night follows day that pretty much all of us would get naked and writhe around together on the mattresses, sofas and rugs. And as several of us had shed our clothes almost as soon as we had the excuse, the opportunity for sex could hardly have been more evident. Crystal was never comfortable with textile against her skin. Her habitual nudity was really no more remarkable for her than it would be for someone else to remove their overcoat and shoes when they crossed the threshold to another person's house.

Together with the Sex, there was also the Drugs.

We'd all taken some Ecstasy tabs, which was about the only drug we'd managed to smuggle into the States. And, as we discovered, although a taste for E had crossed the Atlantic to New York it wasn't nearly as prevalent as in the UK where it was almost as popular as dope in those days. So, everyone was E'd up with the customary exception of Crystal. Kai was generous with the coke, but there was also hash, grass, and sulphate. And some of the other guests also brought smack and crystal meth along with them. That last was a drug that hadn't made much of an impact in the UK, however big it was in the States. I never touched meth, although I occasionally snorted coke. I can now take the opportunity to dispel the misapprehension that Crystal Passion had even as much connection with crystal meth as the Chemical Brothers have with illegal chemicals or the Snow Patrol with coke.