#13 So Long, Sixties…

 

Quantum Anonymous #13

So Long, Sixties…

Well we finally plugged in.

When we did, nothing so bonkers as collective audience transference occurred, thank you very much. But some dodgy action happened right fast.

Fabian organized our first live performance in London. The club chosen was arranged along his preferred Ley Lines. Some old music hall owned by a famous magician from the vaudeville days. Erik was plugged into that Quantamp and let it rip. Nobody had much idea of what to expect, so we kept the settings low. Watched the room, sussed out the effects. Had some hush-hush sleuthing by “audience members” who were really Quantum folk. Got chatty with punters, finding out how they liked the act.

Well, those that could rightly remember the show said they really enjoyed The Get Quick. Many others felt fine, and said they loved the band. But they couldn’t quite remember what happened; something like a pleasant dream you can’t recall. Those up front near the stage had a bit more to say. Various audience members reported ”feeling displaced in time”, with several “claiming to have experienced memories of events that had not yet occurred.” Card punchers back at the lab sorted that business out. The rest of us were satisfied that nobody had disappeared.

Right then, Quantamp’s good to go.

And so we hit the road.

1968 blended into 1969 without many problems. Aside from technical, that is. 

Despite my modified ice cream truck, transporting the Quantamp was a logistical nightmare. Tubes from CERN were always needing replacements. Due to sensitivity of the settings, the whole business had to be rigged from scratch at every location. Tremendous bother. Those locations offered different degrees of interference, depending on geography. Fabian was marking the maps, routing us through Ley Lines. This produced a rather erratic tour.

Stops like Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester were traded for places like Devon, Cornwall and Hewes. Smitty spun some story about “testing new material” at smaller locations for “intimate reactions” and such. Like the best liars, he was half true. The bloody new material was Quantum experimentation!

Wasn’t much too it, far as I saw. Shows were all cracking and the fans went wild. Of course I didn’t have them instruments the lab types had. They were always buzzing around somewhere, dressed in disguise like. Blending in and taking measurements. Didn’t see nothing myself much out of the ordinary, excepting for the bass player.

Studio player from London, brought on for the tour. Poor bloke played closest to the Quantamp, and didn’t have the benefit of Viking Blood. Hardly lasted half the tour before going under. Started going on about “shadow people” at first. That wasn’t talk that really raised alarms in 1968. You’d think we would have learned by then. But you’d be amazed how much behavior was just filed away as “it’s the sixties” business. Lots of people from that era– Quantum and non-quantum– went MIA. That bass player was one of ‘em.

Happened one night bound for Dartmoor. I seen it happen from my Quantum ice cream truck. Always last in the caravan, thanks to them low end gears. But very popular upon arrival, what with all the ice cream. Anyway I’m half nodding off as we’re driving through the night and suddenly the tour coach up ahead jams the brakes.  Hardly stopped proper when the door flies open. Bass player bolts out stark naked and screaming. Runs right there into Wistman's Wood and disappears.  

Never saw that one again.

Later I’d put two and two together. Wasn’t just his placement on stage. That bugger liked his ice cream, he did. More than once I found him passed out in back of my truck. Mostly I’d let him sleep it off. Should have rousted him more. Never really thought about his proximity to the gear. I mean, not when it wasn’t plugged in.

Well, these are the things you learn.

Learned lots of things as that UK tour evolved into a bloody intercontinental circus. Along the way, The Get Quick became a proper sensation. Sure, they had been known and loved. Now the lads were becoming something like sacred idols. Went past music into movies and shows. Smitty signed them up for some specials on the BBC TV and then came one of them Italian cowboy pictures. Even bloody chewing gum cards! When I saw that, times right changed. 

It’s one thing to hear your lads on the radio. It’s another thing to see them smiling on a bubble gum wrapper. They become something like public property at that point. Highly valuable public property. Like you’re working with Big Ben or the London Bridge. But to you, they’re still “the lads”. Ones you dragged from the pub for a session at the studio. Now you’re dropping them off at Buckingham Palace for tea with the Queen.

Quite a shift, that is.

Different lads handle that level of exposure in different ways.

Erik Evol wasn’t much for it, which was barmy, considering his chosen professions. Used to vex me something terrible when that one mumbled about his problems with fame. “Can’t go round to see a movie. No more down the pub.” Well son, why’d you pick up that bloody guitar and start singing all them bloody pop songs? Shoemakers do just fine, and nobody bothers them much at all.

But it was too late for all that.

The Get Quick was becoming a right proper global pop sensation.

Each had their own way of managing that. Mitchell Joy returned to his roots. Back to New York, back to the old neighborhood. Fans loved that. Pictures in the paper, Mitchell playing stickball with the kids. Ice cream in the park with some debutante model. Church with mom. That was Mitchell.

Smitty set himself up like a Lord in London. Of course nobody would ever dream of knighting that shyster, but that was half the laugh. Got chauffeured through the West End in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Picked up one of those fake British accents like naff Americans do. Mostly London despises that type. Just loved it from S. True Smith. Man was so truly disingenuous that it made him real. Plus he passed out pounds to lads living rough. Soft touch for a quid. Had a good heart, Smitty did.

Erik Evol gravitated towards France and started racing cars. Liked to push things. Quantamps or cars, just the same. Had an absolutely wicked Aston Martin made to his specifications. Pushed it out mostly on the track. Also round the coast. Often with brandy and that’s bad for business. The business of staying alive, that is.

Erik was always banging up that Aston Martin and making the papers. Smitty would stamp his feet and pull his hair, but Erik couldn’t be bothered. Did what he pleased. If that meant crashing custom built Aston Martins in La Ciotat, that’s just what he did.

That’s what bloody pop stars did. People expected such nonsense. Which was real nonsense when you considered this particular pop star. Forget about crashing your Aston Martin at full throttle.. What about disappearing from your Aston Martin at full throttle? Think on that one, lad? 

Really there’s not much thought at that level. All the thinking happens on the way. Spend most of your life dreaming of fame like that. Then it happens, all at once. No time to think when it does. Success like that moves right fast. Shall we say things get quick? Something happening, every day, every which way. The lads had their hands filled and so did everybody involved. Nobody could be bothered to sort out more. News that would have normally stopped your tracks just floated right past.

What’s this? Erik Evol rolled another Aston Martin? Right. What’s for lunch then?

Part of that depended on certain arrangements and promises. Remember them? Such favors fell into place when Smitty delivered the Air Force their #1 Sound Lad. True to their word, the brass had us sorted. Records rolled out, money rolled in, and there was nary a bother in the Get Quick world. Through the 60s, our lads were gold. Other bands ran through money, or got nicked with their pills, maybe run into trouble with local unions or the tax man. Get Quick was beyond all that. Never a shady day. Hit songs to hit records, onto movies, then shows and bloody bubble gum wrappers. Nothing but sunshine all the way.

Until that letter.

Arrived in the winter of ‘69, as Fabian was mapping out our next European tour.

Get Quick tours were obscure as always, following those Ley Lines. Crowds didn’t matter, since Air Force money footed Quantamp productions. And with that, Get Quick music was hitting. Stirred up something Fabian hadn’t reckoned would happen. Crowds didn’t complain, like the press was. Those papers were brutal about Fabian’s Ley Line tours. Fans loved them. Gave these kids a mission, see?

Right, you’re not coming to London? Well London’s coming to you.

And all the West End piles into vans.

Missing Paris this year? Well Paris won’t be missing you.

Lorries and campers all the way to Nantes, filled to the brim with France’s finest flower children. 

Wherever we played, caravans of fans were there.

Which gave Fabian free reign to find far away Ley Lines with real powers.

“Let’s play The Black Forest,” says he.

“But Fabian, there’s no club in the Black Forest,” says us.

“Never mind that,” says Lord Kevorkian. “We’ll build ourselves the stage.”

So we did. Yours truly went from engineering 30 amp circuit breakers to engineering amphitheaters for thirty thousand fans. With Quantum money and Air Force influence, nothing was impossible.

Except that letter. Nobody knew how that could be possible.

The day it landed, our world stopped like a clock.

Right there I was at Get Quick HQ when it arrived. Quite busy navigating the problem of Black Forest latrines. Those types of details slipped past ol’ Fabian in his grand visions for touring along Germanic Ley Lines. Details like where will thirty thousand hippies have a wee? That was up to me. Difficult to manage that business with the Germans. Very particular about their crappers, that lot. I was right in the thick of it when word shot round our London office about some letter from Erik Evol.

Lad never wrote, which was odd.

It was mailed in from Hollywood, which was strange. 

Erik hadn’t left France all season.

Our people knew. We booked his flights.

And by the looks of that letter, Erik Evol had flown round the bend. 

Stationary was Chateau Marmont. Erik’s handwriting, plain as day. I’d recognize that scratch anywhere– notes of his filled Studio 3C.  Now they filled a page of Hollywood stationary real out of hand, like. Words went all round the page. No order to ‘em. Something about love and being sorry and warnings and wine stains and cigarette burns all along the paper.

Well that shocked us all right proper. And while we were getting our heads round whatever had happened out in Hollywood– and how Erik Evol had even gotten to Hollywood– “the phone” rings.

Get Quick HQ was usually quite bonkers. Business was a party, those days. Hippies and such, artists, people looking for checks or just a place to crash. Deliveries and sign offs round the clock. Phones ringing all about. But not that phone.

That was “the phone”.

Family line. Lads had the number, so did their wives and steady birds. Only souls know “the phone” were Get Quick, through and through. Usually meant something real serious. Always a bad feeling, whenever we hear it ringing.

I was closest and picked up. Said hello and some French bird is screaming at me. Couldn’t reckon a word. Passed it off to a fashion photographer in there smoking marijuana, waiting for his check. In from Paris, spoke the language. Bloke listens and hangs up “the phone.”

Place is hanging on the edge of our desks. We’re all staring at this French tulip and what does he do? Has the nerve to light his marijuana– real slow like.

“Who called?!” We all start shouting. “What’s the news?”

Takes a bloody hit, he does, then shrugs. “It ees Ereek. Eee as deezapeered.”

Well, we all let out one big breath together. Used to that, by now. Stories about Erik’s vanishing acts had even slipped into magazines and news. Like a joke, you know. Interviews with The Pop Star who’s always “disappearing.” Added to Get Quick mystique. More of your astute readers took that as a code word for drugs. Fans who took the stories at face value just adored him even more. People loved to be mystified by Erik Evol. Those of us on the inside just had a chuckle. We weren’t much mystified by Erik’s disappearances. Just slightly amused by them. Reading a rock journalist puzzling over Eric’s latest vanishing stunt was all part of a funny riff. 

We’re all laughing then, going back to our work when that photographer ponce finally adds the critical detail.

“For sree weekz now, she sayz eee iz gone.”

“Three weeks!” I shouts. “Erik Evol gone missing three weeks and that bird calls it in now!?”

This French bird was his wife, like. Common law at least, living with him there in France. Used to him popping in and out, she was. Only now he popped out and didn’t pop back. Bloke gone vanished for weeks. Bird finally called it in.

Smitty whisked in just then, back from lunch at Schmidt's Continental. Heard the news, started in on the phones, broke up the party and sent everybody home.

Like the rest, I wandered out in a daze.

That’s when I realized I still had Erik’s letter from The Chateau Marmont. Finally noticed the post date.

Which couldn’t be possible.

Not at all.

 

More the Morrow.