#7: “The Mysterious Mr. Kevorkian”

 

Quantum Anonymous #7:

“The Mysterious Mr. Kevorkian”

 

So there we are: 1963. Yours truly just heard Pop! by the Get Quick and showed up for work at the BBC. They shot me down (as well they should have), but just as I was leaving the lobby, ol’ qTom remembered one last card to play.

“And I know computers,” says I.

Just as I said the words, a very distinctive and well-dressed gentleman was walking past in the lobby. Tailored from top to toe, wearing the oddest of hats, he was. One of those fur type Russian things from Siberia. Mind you, this was summer it was.

Had an absolutely dazzling Chinese bird on his arm and I heard them carrying on in her language. That stopped on a dime when I mentioned computers, and so did the well-dressed gentleman.

"Young fellow, did you say you know computers?”

He was posh all the way and I nearly choked my words but managed to nod and tell him I did.

"Come with me, then," says the man. “Straight away.”

Now mind you, nothing about the BBC is straight away. Place is a bloody maze. We're walking through hallway after corridor, past office and meeting rooms, through studios and down stairs, turning this way and that all the way.

I thought I'd never find my way out. I suppose in a way, I never did.

But that morning, I couldn't ever imagine wanting to. All I wanted was to follow this man, whom everybody in the entire BBC seemed to know. Which is how I finally realized who I had fallen in with.

"Morning, Mr. Kevorkian,” said one and all.

"Have your tea Mr. Kevorkian?” and "Will you still be needing room 28-B, Mr. Kevorkian?” or "Did Lord Twiddledum find you last night, Mr. Kevorkian?" and "I've tuned the Timpani, Mr. Kevorkian", and so on it was, right through to the heart of the BBC.

Fate be damned: I had just met Mr. Fabian Kevorkian himself.

If I had known more about him, I wouldn't have dared to try. Fabian Kevorkian was London’s most celebrated producer. Started in the BBC sound effects department, worked his way up to twiddling knobs, then took over the boards as producer and arranger. Made rock and roll history… and pots of money along the way.

Fabian's name was stamped on every session in Swinging London. Booked up like the library, he was, when it came to his recording dates in the BBC's legendary Studio 3C. They were flying in from all over to track with Fabian. Rock stars in one door, royals popping by another, champagne from The Savoy, oysters in from Scott's, masters flown out to Los Angeles… Travel, glamour and hit records was the Fabian way.

Knowing none of this, I had walked right into the BBC fancying a chat with the man. And here I was, just like magic, following London's hottest producer and that dazzling Chinese bird right into the heart of pop.

She was the top classical pianist in China, I'd learn later. Just the night prior, her ovation at the ol’ Royal Albert was so grand the chandeliers were shaking. Defected to Britain through Fabian's "old boy" connections. That was the first time I heard the Chinese language, let alone seen a beautiful Chinese woman, all dolled up in Harrods finest. And Fabian spoke Chinese! Hearing the two of them pattering about like it was high tea in Shanghai was quite something for a lad in from motor pool.

You can say I wasn't in Kansas any more… and never again would be.

If “Pop!” changed my life, Fabian rearranged reality itself.

Long as I live, I’ll never forget—or regret—that stroll with him through the BBC. Times were still formal, they were. BBC people were spit and polished, dressed to the nines, slick as glass and posh to the knobs. I'm still a lad with coal dust back behind his ears, mind you, doing what I can to keep pace with the BBC's most famous producer. That I did, towards what I had no idea, until Mr. Fabian Kevorkian threw open the door of a well-lit, poorly ventilated, and terribly disordered room on sub-level three.

“Right then, have at it,” was all he said.

Then he was gone.

I looked about, scratched my head, then went back to the door to read the name of the room. Well, there I was in the BBC's "Computational Machinery" room. Which was an accurate name, as there surely wouldn't be any computing done until the bloody machine was assembled. All in crates, it was. Most hardly opened. Mucked about a bit and recognized the parts soon enough. Had a laugh then, I did.

The BBC machine was government issued, just like the one I had fiddled with at REME.

Only this one was all in parts and pieces, with nobody at the BBC knowing what to do with it. Typical UK. Somebody had ordered the bloody thing, and somebody had delivered it. Job done, form filled, now down the pub or off to tea.

So there it was, this great miracle monster of computational machinery just lying about there in sub level three. Which is where I came in: the bloke who bumbled in saying “I know computers.”

Maybe the case when the blasted things were plugged in and spitting out punch cards. This bugger hadn't been unboxed!

Knowing computers is one thing. Knowing how to put them together is another thing entirely. I didn't know end one, from bin two and reel three on this bloody thing…. But damn if I wasn't in the door of the BBC. So I rolls up me sleeves and start making things work.

Luckily enough, I knew my way around machines. Whenever I lost the plot, I’d pop by the pub. Have a pint, catch the coach and find my way back to Manchester and the REME.

They thought it was a lark, what I'd done. Had me all fixed to land them birds from the BBC. Sound lads, they were. Right proper on getting me sorted. I would have sketched out the problem from London. Drawings of pieces and diagrams I made, trying to make sense of that BBC machine. We'd match it against the REME business, and that's how I sorted things out, computationally. 

Took me all through the summer, right into winter when I finally got the thing up and running.

Turned it on the day they shot Jack Kennedy.

I suppose that's all rather metaphorical, if you realize how the world changed past that dreadful day. But I wasn't thinking metaphorically back then. I was just trying not to be grassed up by someone who finally sussed out I was in from the bloody streets!

Every day I thought the BBC would boot me proper. But it never happened. People would see some lad with his head buried in machinery and figure all was right and good in the land of computational machinery. I suppose they figured right, as I got the thing chattering away eventually.

Precisely one person in the entire building cared about that: Fabian Kevorkian.

By this time, he was “Sir Fabian”; been knighted in July. All those hit records did lots of business for Britain, and not just financially. Pop! was the sound of freedom, you see, winning hearts and minds and no shortage of birds, neither. Fabian always had a beauty, swooping in for updates as I pieced together the machine. Computers fascinated him. Wanted to know all about them. Showing him the works made us well acquainted. I wouldn't say mates, because he was real establishment, that one.

Mostly I've found that set to be rather dull when it comes to wits. But Fabian was not your typical knob from the top drawer. Quick study. No airs about him. Never above asking questions and had a knack for asking rather smart ones. Find the heart of the matter straight away. I dare say I was a bit put out at times, as part of my job was pretending I knew what I was doing.

Fabian played along with all that. He had a vested interest in turning the bloody thing on. It was Sir Kevorkian himself who had persuaded the BBC to purchase this machine. Apparently quite the sell. Circa 1963, The British Broadcasting Company just didn't see the need for all this computer bother. Which is why it was lying there all in crates when I walked on the scene.

Such scenes, I would come to learn, were absolutely Fabian. Visionary sort. Talk anyone into anything. Really a magic fellow. Snap his fingers and —poof!— what he wanted would suddenly appear.

But lying in pieces, mostly.

Fabian had a flair for that half-done, “mostly sorted” type of business. Bloke was so charming, not a soul was ever bothered. Especially after he was knighted. His records were hits and the rest was details, as they say. Those details surely didn’t bother Sir Fabian Kevorkian. He'd leave them up to people like me.

Sorting out that machine was my ticket to more details. Fabian had lots of them to sort out in studio 3C. That was Fabian's command post. The place that launched a thousand hits.

I fell in as assistant engineer. Mostly that was serving tea and signing for the champagne. But things moved fast around Fabian. I went from picking up his dry cleaning to rewiring pickups rather quickly. Or arranging amplifiers for proper reverb. Or tuning and detuning pianos, splicing tapes and spitting them backwards, dubbing in strings and such.

He never had a system for these recording sessions. People talked of the “Fabian Magic” but really it was lots of mucking about. Didn’t know how he did it, back then. Things just had a way of falling into place. At least they sounded that way when his songs played on radio. Most of that happened through magic hands in Hollywood, but we didn’t know that ruse in '63. We just thought Sir Fabian Kevorkian was certified rock and roll magic.

Neck deep in Quantum, he was.

Fabian Kevorkian was one of the quantum forerunners, you see. Playing with the same forces that pulled The Get Quick right out of our reality.

Those sins would be well paid for. After his stellar, swinging sixties had faded, Sir Fabian’s reality ran rather dark by the 1980s. When I heard that news about him with a stick of dynamite at The Grammys, and the donut shop he shot up in Venice Beach, I figured it was justice. Maybe more like balance, actually. Sure, I was sad to see Fabian fall. We all were. But demons come home to roost. And that charming fellow was responsible for drumming up more Quantum darkness than most. I don't believe that was his intent. Just his nature. Like all those questions he would ask.

"What's that?" and "What If?" are perfectly acceptable inquiries when piecing together a mainframe for the BBC.

But when piercing through The Veil, a bit more propriety goes a long way.

He never respected that, you see. He never respected Quantum reality. Fabian played with things. That's what got him, I believe.

But before all that— and because of all that—Sir Fabian Kevorkian produced some of the most vital and valuable pieces of 1960s rock and roll.

He also engineered the fate of Erik Evol.

And for that?

May God have mercy on his soul.

More the morrow.