Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Wings and prayers, Max. Thanks for coming out.’

‘ Psshaw! It’s not every day I get to welcome an old friend and a new signing. Griff, Jasper, Dean, Elf. The Avenue.’ He greets them handshake by handshake. ‘You, sirs and mademoiselle, are mag nif icent. Oh, my dear sweet God, I’ve heard an early acetate of Stuff of Life and it – is – a …’ he mouths, ‘masterpiece.’

‘We’re glad yer think so,’ says Dean.

‘Oh, but I do . And Jerry Nussbaum in Village Voice agrees.’ With a flourish, he produces a newspaper open at the right page. ‘“ Question: Mix a shot of R&B with a glug of psychedelia, add a dash of folk and shake well, and what do you get? Answer: Utopia Avenue, whose debut LP Paradise is the Road to Paradise made a big splash in the band’s native England. With sophomore effort Stuff of Life, this idiosyncratic quartet look set to make waves on our shores. So who in hell are Utopia Avenue? Miss Elf Holloway, who wrote Wanda Virtue’s Top Twenty hit ‘Any Way the Wind Blows’ when she was sweet sixteen, lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet and bassist Dean Moss provide two or three songs per head, ably anchored by drummer-of-many-parts Griff Griffin. ”’

‘Sounds as if my arms and legs unscrew,’ says Griff.

‘“ Invention is unflagging across the album’s nine tracks ,”’ Max reads, ‘“ from outrageously catchy opener ‘The Hook’ to the contagiously Dylan-esque closer, ‘Look Who It Isn’t’. Having three distinct singer-songwriters affords a spectrum of musicality few bands can match. Moss’s ode to liberty ‘Roll Away the Stone’ broods and rises to a Hammond-swirling climax with hell-hounds on its tail. Holloway’s ‘Prove It’ is a tragicomic stomper about love and theft, while her instrumental ‘Even The Bluebells’ captures a genie in a bottle of deep jazz-blues. Virtuosic guitarist de Zoet brings the evensong ‘Nightwatchman’ to the party, and magnum opus ‘Sound Mind’. Whether Utopia Avenue can recreate the studio wizardry onstage will be revealed at New York’s Ghepardo club this week, but be in no doubt – Stuff of Life is one shit-hot record. ”’ Max looks up. ‘Welcome to America.’

‘Who’s Jerry Nussbaum?’ asks Levon.

‘The kind of critic who’d look at a Michelangelo and complain the marble’s too pale and the dick’s too small. Jasper, you look like you want to puke.’

‘I’m not the world’s best flier.’

‘We have vomit bags in the cars.’ Max nods at the two drivers who nod at porters. ‘Let’s go.’

The two limousines leave the futuristic airport up a ramp to a highway on pillars. Levon, Jasper and Griff travel in the first car; Elf, Dean and Max Mulholland follow in the second. Dean strokes the walnut trimmings. ‘Lincoln Continental.’ Highway lights dot a path across the urban dusk to the glittering city. Paul Simon’s new song ‘America’ plays itself in Elf’s head. I imagined I’d be making this journey with Lu. Dean turns to Elf, looking tired but excited. ‘It’s a long old way from Brighton Poly, eh?’

‘A long, long, long, long way away.’

Streetlamps slide overhead. Pylons stride across wastelands, like Martian invaders. American trucks would dwarf British lorries.

‘This view still gives me goosebumps,’ says Max.

‘Are yer from New York, Max?’ asks Dean.

‘No. I endured a childhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’

‘It’s an idyllic name,’ remarks Elf, ‘Cedar Rapids.’

‘Beware idyllic names in the New World.’

‘So where d’yer meet Levon?’ asks Dean.

‘On our first Monday at the now-defunct Flake-Stern Agency. We arrived to be told that just the one job was available, and that on Friday, each of us would be given five minutes to persuade Messrs Flake and Stern why he should get the job and his rival the chop.’

‘How gladiatorial,’ says Elf.

‘“Shitty” was the word I used,’ says Max. ‘We had both given up jobs for the Flake-Stern offer – and had my rival been anyone but Levon Frankland, I’d have spent the week plotting and backstabbing to save my skin. But Lev spotted in me what I spotted in him. We devised a pact and hatched a plot. We borrowed files from Accounts and did some midnight sifting at my apartment. Cometh the hour of doom on Friday, we made a joint statement that the agency would be offering us both full-time positions. Otherwise, on Monday the agency’s clients would learn about the discrepancy between earned monies received and monies paid out. On Tuesday the clients’ lawyers would start calling. By close of business on Wednesday, Flake-Stern would likely cease to exist.’

‘Yer blackmailed yer prospective bosses?’ asks Dean.

‘We presented them with a joint offer.’

‘It only worked because neither you nor Levon stabbed the other in the back,’ remarks Elf.

‘My point, exactly,’ says Max. ‘If you don’t skin Levon’s rabbit, he won’t skin yours; and an honest manager in show-business is as rare as rocking-horse shit.’

Elf climbs out of the limo, stands on a real downtown New York sidewalk – not pavement – and stares up. A Victorian Gothic edifice of windows and balconies towers halfway to the moon. A vertical sign reads ‘HOTEL’ over a smaller horizontal ‘CHELSEA’. ‘It’s an institution,’ says Max. ‘Long-term lets, mostly. A town within a city. People raise families here, grow old here, die here. Not that Stanley the manager’ll admit that anyone dies here. Lots of folks assume the neighbourhood’s named after the Chelsea, it’s that iconic.’

‘The Stones keep a penthouse here,’ says Dean.

‘It’s one of the few places in New York that’ll take musicians,’ says Max. ‘Nobody cares how you look and the walls are thick.’

‘What’s the population?’ asks Elf.

‘I doubt there’s been a census since the 1880s.’

A man with blood clotted under his nose melts out of the shadows. ‘Hey, y’all, need any uppers, downers, out-of-towners?’

The two drivers block the dealer while Max ushers the band through the doors of the Chelsea. A giant porter greets him like an old friend and Max puts a banknote into his hand. ‘If you’d give a hand with the bags and accoutrements …’

‘You got it, Mr Mulholland.’

The lobby contains thirty or forty people sitting on the low sofas, nursing drinks by the carved fireplace, arguing, smoking, seeing and being seen. Elf guesses they include professors, actors, hustlers, prostitutes, pimps and activists of the type railed against by the immigration officer. None of them is Luisa Rey. You’re going to have to stop this. Many have hair as long as Jasper’s and a wardrobe at least as adventurous as Dean’s. Artwork of mixed merit covers the walls. ‘Stanley accepts art in lieu of rent,’ Max tells Elf, as they reach the desk.

‘Stanley never learns.’ A man with a long face and a flop of brown hair straightens up with a retrieved pencil. ‘A dozen kids a week show up, clasping a portfolio and telling me, “I’m the new Jasper Johns, this is worth three months’ rent, I’ll need a double bed and a TV.” Max Mulholland. How the hell are you?’

‘Stanley, you’re looking like a million dollars.’

‘I’m feeling like dimes and pocket-lint. Utopia Avenue, I presume. Welcome to the Chelsea. I’m Stanley Bard. I tried to get you adjacent rooms. I managed adjacent floors. Dean, Griff, I have you both in Eight twenty-two.’

‘I’ll be needing my own room,’ states Dean.

‘Aye, the needing is mutual,’ says Griff.

‘Eight twenty-two’s a suite with two bedrooms,’ says Stanley, ‘and I glean from the Village Voice you’re a Dylan-fancier, Dean.’