If you were touring America these days and you wanted to contact your manager or, indeed, anyone back in the UK, all you need to do is switch on a laptop or tablet or smart phone and use Skype. And if not Skype exactly, you'd use Viber or exchange e-mails or instant messages. But in the early 1990s, the internet was very slow and ridiculously expensive and most people weren't online anyway. So, when Crystal wanted to contact Madeleine, our agent, to find out how things were doing she had to seek out a payphone and drop a lot of coins into the slot for a not very long and usually unsatisfactory conversation.
I don't know how or when Crystal originally got Madeleine to represent her. She was Crystal's agent long before I first heard her live and she'd also represented John River before the River Bank became famous and ascended well out of her league. I sometimes got the impression that Madeleine was working for Crystal as a favour, although she did also manage some other rather more successful bands that regularly toured Europe and the UK. None were fabulously rich or famous, but they made enough for it to be worth Madeleine's while. This roster included folk groups, a jazz band and several minor league Rock and Pop groups. The most commercially successful band was called the Seven Imps. They were a Death Metal group who'd originally come from Norway but had now settled in East London and bore a remarkable resemblance to Snow White's Seven Dwarfs as illustrated by Arthur Rackham. To be honest, she and I were never really the best of friends. I think there might have been some sexual tension between us. I considered myself to be Crystal's primary lover after Mark and I think Madeleine might once have believed that she occupied that role. Whatever the reason, she was never especially friendly towards me. Madeleine was a rather offhand manager when we returned to England and, in the absence of anyone else, it was me who became the
de facto
acting band leader.
John River and Mark both told me that Madeleine was critical in the early days of Crystal's career and it was she who persuaded Christine Giordano to adopt a stage name that was less of a mouthful and thereby become the eponymous Crystal Passion. The acoustic sound of her first album,
Triad
, was a much better fit with the singer-songwriters Madeleine managed—such as Mary Jane Clover, Lenny Shroud and Joanna—than it was with the direction the music took after she teamed up with me, my sister, Jane and Jacquie. And it was through Madeleine that Crystal Passion got signed to Gospel Records.
All the same, she still doesn't get much of a mention in Polly Tarantella's biography.
"So what's Madeleine got to say?" asked Olivia.
"We've had more news coverage in the UK over the last few days than we've ever had," said Crystal.
"Good or bad?" wondered the Harlot.
"Mixed," admitted Crystal. "And none of it's about the music. There was a short article about us in the
NME
that was on our side. It was about our American tour and how we've been maligned by the right-wing press and misrepresented on television and radio. It was more about the failures of the American media than an account of the gigs we've played."
"That's something at least," said Tomiko.
"Well, it's better than the articles about us in
the Sun
,
the Daily Mail
and
the London Evening News
where we've again been called Crystal and the Passions. In fact,
the Daily Mail
even managed to spell my name with a 'K', so that I'm now Kristal as in Kristallnacht. At least they don't also accuse me of being anti-Semitic."
"What do they say?" Philippa wondered.
"That we've been scandalising all of America with our shocking stage act. That we've been appearing on stage in the nude and having live lesbian sex in front of our fans. That we're in the same tradition of scandalous and outrageous rock groups as the Sex Pistols, the Slits and Throbbing Gristle. And, what's worse, the only gig any of them report is the one at the
Purple Robe
in Detroit. There's a small photo of us in
the Sun
but it's difficult to tell what's going on because it's obscured by so many black rectangles. There's nothing about our gig at Boston. Nothing about our gig with Veronica in Newport. And there's something in
the Daily News
about me once being John River's girlfriend..."
"And is that so?" Bertha asked.
"Hardly. John is my cousin. Even I draw the line at that."
"Don't worry about all that shit," said Judy Dildo. "No one pays attention to what's printed in those rags."
Unfortunately, Judy wasn't quite right. Even in the 1990s and without the prevalence of the internet, news could still carry a long distance. Maybe it wasn't as instant as it is these days, but it was fast enough.
Later that day I was hanging around our camp site with Andrea, Tomiko and Crystal while we discussed how to capitalise on the success of our first gig and what numbers we should play at our gig on the closing night. We weren't going to be the final act. That honour was given to a local Syracuse all-woman Hard Rock band called Third Rock. We weren't even the second-to-last. That slot was taken by the Women of Babylon, a Riot Grrrl band from Brooklyn defiantly proud to be both mixed race and lesbian. That was the perfect combination at this festival which the Crystal Passion band surpassed only by virtue of us having almost three times as many women as they had. But we were looking forward to being third from last and wondering whether we should perform some other cover songs. Andrea was keen on playing Carole King's
It's Too Late
while I was arguing the merits of Alison Limerick's
Where Love Lies
.
But our discussion was interrupted by Ariel Golgotha who appeared by our tent dressed in denim shorts, hand-weave sandals and the official festival tee-shirt.
"Gee! What the fuck! Have you heard this horse-shit rumour, you guys?" she said.
"Sorry, Ariel," asked Crystal innocently. "What horse-shit?"
Ariel looked Crystal up and down from her face to her toes, clearly uncomfortable at standing at such close proximity to a naked woman. Her freckled face visibly reddened, but she continued regardless.
"The horse-shit about you guys performing at a strip club in Detroit. I mean it's fucking groovy that you're like naturists and into Mother Earth and all those good things, but Gee! Strip Clubs! I mean, guys... What the fuck! Is it true?"
Crystal lowered herself onto a deck chair, partly to obscure her nudity but also to take the more submissive role appropriate for further negotiation.
"We've not been lucky with some of our bookings, Ariel," she said.
"But a fucking strip club. In front of fucking... fucking... in front of men. Gee! I mean, like what the fuck! This is a woman's festival. We're here to celebrate our sisterhood. We're not here to pander to male chauvinist fantasies and fucking... fucking... stuff like pornography and the oppression of women. Just tell me it's all horse-shit, guys. Come on."
"It's not what we wanted to do," said Crystal. "We had a gig arranged at the Detroit Fall, which is normally a folk-rock club. But when we got to Detroit, we discovered that we'd been booked to play at a club called the Purple Robe instead. We didn't know what kind of place it was and we felt duty-bound to fulfil our obligations."
"But fuck! Gee! You didn't have to play at a fucking strip club. What will the sisters think? It's like the opposite of everything we stand for."
"Do you want us to cancel our gig, Ariel?"
"What? No. I don't think so. It's too late for that. But Gee! I don't know. If word got round... You're not going to start having sex on stage are you? I'm open-minded, fuck knows. But there are limits, you know. There's only so far you can go with free expression before it becomes pornography. I mean, naturism is one thing. That's communion with nature and being Green and aware and as one with the spirits. But sex on stage, even in front of the sisters, that's fucking... fucking... It's not right. Is it, Crystal?"
"Not at all, Ariel," said Crystal. "And you can be assured that we shan't be doing anything like that at all. We'll just go on stage and perform our songs. That's all we want to do and that's all we shall do."
"Well, that's cool then," said Ariel who seemed relieved but evidently not completely reassured.
This conversation visibly upset Crystal. Once Ariel was out of sight and earshot, she sank her head into her hands: her face obscured by her long hair.
"What have I done?" she wailed. "How has it all come to this?"
"None of it's your fault, Crystal," said Andrea, kneeling down beside her and wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
"It's all shit anyway," said Tomiko. "Who cares about that gig in Detroit? At least it helped pay the bills."
"We're still going to make a phenomenal loss on this tour," Crystal continued. "We should have just said no about appearing at a strip club. We should have stuck to our principles."
I wasn't sure what to say. After all, unlike my sister, I was one of those who'd actually performed on stage at the Purple Robe and, what's more, had done so almost totally nude. I'd hated doing it but I was also complicit.
"Shall we just continue working on the set list?" I suggested.
"That's mostly been done," said Andrea. "And judging from what Ariel's just been saying I don't think we'll have the opportunity to play bonus cover tunes, whether by Carole King or by some House diva."
