Doing what I’m told
‘Do you still do music at all?’ she asked. I think I’ve told you before. That is a musician’s least favourite question. Normally my heart sinks when I get prodded with that one. All musicians still make music, of course they do, and it’s soul-destroying to be reminded that no one knows or cares. Suddenly, though, it was the funniest thing anyone had said for ages and I had to gulp down a smirk before it split my face in half. ‘Oh, yes, sometimes, sure,’ I said.
Funny, because the previous night my old band had played our first gig for nine years and I was still glowing from it. It had been a success, more wonderful than I could ever have hoped: a grown man in front of me was trying to sing along, but was crying too much — like a three-year-old who has had his Smarties taken away. I know exactly how he felt. It was all quite emotional, and quite a story, too. Our return had been announced on the national news. I kept seeing my face staring back at me from the covers of music magazines and now it was bannered on the front of newspapers as well.
Funny, because this was a fashion shoot, and fashion is nominally all about what is hot, hot, hot. Quite frankly, without wanting to blow my own trumpet (although that is my first instrument), it’s me. But she was in charge and she didn’t seem to know that.
I’d completely forgotten that the only thing that is worse than people you meet assuming you’ve gone off the boil is people being fascinated by what you’re doing. That is utterly exhausting. Suddenly it was rather nice to be obscure again. I was second-choice model for the fashion shoot, drafted in at the last minute, and I wondered who had dropped out two days before.
‘So what’s this for anyway?’ I asked. ‘It’s for a broadsheet?’ she said, making the word broadsheet into a question, as if I might not know what one of those was. ‘It’s big,’ she said, ‘big,’ nodding and staring into space, and her assistant and the two groomers and photographer’s assistant all nodded in assent.
By coincidence, I’d bumped into the editor of the ‘broadsheet?’ at two a.m that morning and mentioned the shoot to him. He didn’t seem to know anything about it, but I didn’t want to spoil things for everybody. I knew what paper it was for; what I had meant was, ‘What are we trying to do here?’ But I could see there was little point in getting involved in that side of things, the thinking side of things. Best just to do as I was asked.
I’d forgotten how little intelligence models, musicians, anyone at all is credited with in the fashion world. When my hair was being dressed, the stylist showed what she wanted to the hairdresser, but not to me. She kept the screen just out of my vision. Well, I suppose the model’s job is to sit there and look pretty.
‘What clothes have we got, then?’ I said. ‘Oh, I’ve got everything. Uniqlo, Gap, everything. Only trouble is, your agent never gave me your sizes.’ ‘Who didn’t?’ I said, mentally making a note to reprimand whoever was at fault, when it occurred to me that it would have been a pointless exercise anyway because there is only one size in fashion and that is sample size. That’s the only size the clothes ever come in.
The stylist’s assistant was ironing things. She was so beautiful and impossibly fragile that she looked as if she was from another planet. I’d brought a load of ironing with me, hopeful of getting it done by the stylist’s assistant, but then I didn’t like to ask. She emanated baffling amounts of nobility for someone who was just ironing. There it was, everything that fashion aims at. A girl you couldn’t take your eyes off: a distant glamour, even at the ironing board. Everything she did made a picture. It was indescribably nice when she tied my shoelaces, tucked my shirt in, helped remove my trousers.
‘Did it go all right last night?’ she whispered, as we struggled with a shoehorn. ‘Not a dry eye in the house,’ I told her. ‘Can you tie your own tie?’ said the head stylist. She was back. ‘I’ll certainly give it a go,’ I said. There are 365 ways to tie a necktie. I went for number one, the ‘in and out’. Best keep it simple, I thought.
Then it came on the radio, which was turned up very loud, that Blur had played their first gig for nine years the night before and that it was amazing. I stood there in the bright lights glowing and grinning like a Cheshire cat.
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