Jonathan Coe - The Dwarves of Death

‘How’s Studio B coming along?’ I asked, anxious to change the subject.

‘Oh, you know, a bit of work still to do. You’ll be the first to know when it’s ready.’

‘How long’s it been out of action, now? Quite a few months, isn’t it?’

‘No, no, a few weeks, that’s all.’

‘That’s funny, because whenever I talk to the other bands who use this place, none of them have ever been in there, either. It seems to have been shut for as long as we can remember.’

He put his face uncomfortably near mine and looked me squarely in the eye.

‘Do you mind if I give you some advice, Bilbo?’ he said. ‘Don’t ask so many questions. All right?’

I nodded.

‘Come on then, we’ve got work to do.’

Jake and Harry were already waiting for us in the studio; Martin presumably knew that we wouldn’t be needing him until later. Once inside the studio Vincent became quiet and efficient and began checking the mikes set up around the drum kit. Jake was looking nervous: he knew that his part was the first to be recorded, and that he’d have to get it right early on in the session. It wasn’t a particularly complex drum part, though, and besides having a click track to keep him in time, I was going to provide a basic keyboard part so that he’d know where he was in the song.

As soon as he started playing, though, I could tell that he hadn’t learnt the song properly. He had no real idea where the transitions were meant to come, and he was far too tentative about putting in fills. And, in spite of my pleas to the contrary, the pattern he was playing was a none-too-distant cousin of:

After six or seven takes he was basically no better, just a little more polished and relaxed, so I thought we might as well cut our losses. As Jake sweated his way through the fade-out, I gave a thumbs-up to Vincent on the other side of the glass, and Harry was sent through to put down the bass line.

We got an excellent take from Harry on his second go, by which time Martin had arrived. There followed a prolonged interval for re-stringing and tuning. Vincent gave him a brief lecture about the folly of putting new strings on just before a recording session, and I felt, for once, slightly grateful to the bad-tempered old bastard. Martin scowled and dithered over whether to use a thick or a thin plectrum. At first when he started playing, his chords seemed to bear no relation to the bass line: it transpired that he was playing them three frets too high. There was a minor seven which he kept playing as a major until it practically drove me mad with frustration. He attempted impossibly ambitious arpeggios where the song called for simple power chords. His B string kept going out of tune. By the time we had even a half-way decent take, it was getting on for one o’clock.

‘We’ll have to finish this this afternoon,’ said Vincent, gleefully. ‘It’ll cost you double, of course.’

‘You’ll have to speak to Chester about that,’ I said. Chester paid all our rehearsal and recording bills.

We went to the pub across the road, a square, detached, concrete building calculated to depress the most flighty of spirits. Martin bought a round and we sat drinking it in morose silence, conscious that the morning had gone just as badly as we had all expected.

‘Catchy tune, that,’ said Jake eventually, having hummed a few bars of ‘Stranger in a Foreign Land’.

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a nice one.’

I resented these limp attempts to cheer me up.

‘Perhaps we should have recorded something a bit simpler,’ I said.

‘No, this is a good one to do,’ said Harry. ‘It’s direct, it’s tuneful.’

‘Not exactly chart material, though, is it?’ said Martin, sipping his beer and glowering. ‘It’s not what you’d call commercial.’

‘That’s such a bloody old-fashioned thing to say,’ said Jake. ‘That distinction just doesn’t exist any more. Anything can get into the charts these days, absolutely anything, as long as it’s properly marketed. That’s why they’re so full of shit.’ He took a mouthful of Guinness and closed his eyes. ‘God, I wish we were back in seventy-six.’

‘Why, what happened in seventy-six?’ asked Martin.

Jake eyed him up to see if he was being serious.

‘You’ve heard of punk, have you?’

‘Punk? That was never twelve years ago, was it?’

‘It bloody was,’ said Harry. ‘Twelve years almost exactly. “Anarchy in the UK", released November the twenty-sixth, nineteen seventy-six. What a band, eh? What a band.’

‘The Damned, “New Rose". That came out then, too.’

‘No, that was earlier, about a month earlier.’

‘If you two are off wandering down Memory Lane again,’ I said, ‘I’m going to go for a walk or something.’

They ignored me. Once they got going on this subject, Jake and Harry (who had both been in their teens during the late seventies) were unstoppable.

‘What about The Vibrators, eh? “We Vibrate".’

‘The Jam. The Buzzcocks. The Adverts. Siouxsie.’

‘May the seventh, nineteen seventy-seven. The London Rainbow. I was there. What a fucking brilliant night that was. The Clash, The Slits, The Jam and Subway Sect.’

‘X-Ray Spex, “Oh Bondage Up Yours". Great single.’

‘"Spiral Scratch".’

‘"Pretty Vacant".’

‘"Right to Work".’

‘"Get a Grip".’

‘Do you remember The Rezillos?’

‘Do you remember Alternative TV?’

‘Stiff Little Fingers.’

‘The Desperate Bicycles.’

‘XTC.’

‘999.’

‘Slaughter and the Dogs.’

‘What about The Dwarves of Death?’

The flood of reminiscence stopped and Jake stared at Harry in surprise.

‘Who?’

‘The Dwarves of Death — they did that single, what was it called… “Black and Blue”.’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘No, you remember them, surely? I mean, it didn’t chart or anything, but they were a real cult band.’

‘I think you’re pulling my leg.’

‘No I’m not. They did two singles — “Black and Blue", and then another one, I can’t remember the name.’

‘Look, I was around at the time, right? I can remember the name of every band from the punk era. Stop taking the piss.’

‘I’m not. Honest. You must remember. There were four of them — they had this amazing girl singer with a really unpleasant voice — made Poly Styrene sound like Kiri Te Kanawa — and they had this guitarist and this bass player who were both dwarves. Brothers. That’s where they got the name.’

‘That’s only three,’ I pointed out.

‘Well, there was some other guy. The drummer or something.’

‘Sorry, Harry, I’m not buying it.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘I just don’t believe you, that’s all.’

‘Look, why don’t we ask Vincent?’ I said, thinking that we already had enough trouble on our hands without falling out over a stupid argument like this. ‘He’s always going on about how he was right there in the thick of it when punk happened. Ask him, he’d remember.’

And so it was Vincent who settled the argument, after a fashion, with a curt ‘Nope, never heard of them’, when we got back into the studio. Harry began to sulk and Jake grinned in triumph. Then shordy afterwards, he and Martin left: their jobs were done and there was little point in them hanging around to watch the tedious process of me and Harry finishing the song off.

We had recorded the drums in stereo, so now, with the drums and bass guitar all laid down, we only had four tracks left to complete the recording. We decided to put the vocal line down on one track and leave the other three free for keyboards. The real hook of the song was a recurring figure which should really have been played on the saxophone, but we didn’t know any saxophone players so we had to make do with a fairly convincing sample which Vincent had found for us. I recorded that, and a piano part, and added some strings, and then Harry had a go at the vocals: