synthesizer. The sax player joined in, laying down a line as smooth as chocolate.
Then, suddenly, a stark white spotlight picked out Jett as he strode out of the wings, looking as frail and vulnerable as ever. His black skin gleamed under the lights. He wore his trademark brown leather trousers and cream silk shirt. An acoustic guitar was slung round his neck. The audience went wild, almost drowning out the musicians in their frenzy. But as soon as he opened his mouth to sing, they stilled.
His voice was better than ever. I’ve been a fan of Jett since his first single hit the charts when I was fifteen, but I find it as hard now to categorize his music as I did then. His first album had been a collection of twelve tracks, mainly acoustic but with some subtle backings ranging from a plangent sax to a string quartet. The songs had ranged from simple, plaintive love songs to the anthem-like ‘To Be With You Tonight’ which had been the surprise hit of the year, hitting the top of the charts the week after its release and staying there for eight weeks. He had one of those voices that has the quality of a musical instrument, blending perfectly with whatever arrangement flows beneath it. As a lovesick teenager, I could lose myself completely in his yearning songs with their poignant lyrics.
Eight other albums had followed, but I’d increasingly found less delight in them. I wasn’t sure if it was the changes in me that were responsible for that. Maybe what strikes a teenager as profound and moving just doesn’t work once you’re halfway through your twenties. But it seemed to me that while the music was still strong, the lyrics had become trite and predictable. Maybe that was a reflection of his reported views about the role of women. It’s hard to write enlightened love songs about the half of the population you believe should be barefoot and pregnant. However, the packed crowd in the Apollo didn’t seem to share my views. They roared out their appreciation for every number, whether from the last album or the first. After all, he was on home ground. He was their own native son. He’d made the northern dream a reality, moving up from a council flat in the Moss-side ghetto to a mansion in the Cheshire countryside.
With consummate showmanship, he closed the ninety-minute set with a third encore, that first, huge hit, the one we’d all been waiting for. A classic case of leaving them wanting more. Before the last chords had died away, Richard was on his feet and heading for the exit. I followed quickly before the crowds built up, and caught up with him on the pavement outside as he flagged down a cab.
As we settled back in our seats and the cabbie set off for the hotel, Richard said, ‘Not bad. Not bad at all. He puts on a good show. But he’d better have some new ideas for the next album. Last three all sounded the same and they didn’t sell nearly enough. You watch, there’ll be a few twitchy faces around tonight, and I don’t just mean the coke-heads.’
He paused to light a cigarette and I snatched the chance to ask him why it was so important that I be at the party. I was still nursing the forlorn hope of an early night.
‘Now that would be telling,’ he said mysteriously.
‘So tell. It’s only a five-minute cab ride. I haven’t got time to pull your fingernails out one by one.’
‘You’re a hard woman, Brannigan,’ he complained. ‘Never off duty, are you? OK, I’ll tell you. You know me and Jett go way back?’ I nodded. I remembered Richard telling me the story of how he’d landed his first job on a music paper with an exclusive interview of the normally reclusive Jett. Richard had been working for a local paper in Watford and he’d been covering their cup tie with Manchester City. At the time, Elton John had owned Watford, and Jett had been his personal guest for the afternoon. After City won, Richard had sneaked in to the boardroom and had persuaded an elated Jett to give him an interview. That interview had been Richard’s escape ticket. As a bonus, Jett had liked what Richard wrote, and they’d stayed friends ever since.
‘Well,’ Richard continued, interrupting my reference to my mental card index of his past, ‘he’s decided that he wants his autobiography written.’
‘Don’t you mean biography?’ Always the nitpicker, that’s me.
‘No, I mean auto. He wants it ghosted, written in the first person. When we saw him at that dinner, he mentioned it to me. Sort of sounded me out. Of course, I said I’d be interested. It wouldn’t be a mega-seller like Jagger or Bowie, but it could be a nice little earner. So, when he rang me up to invite us tonight and he was so insistent that you come along too, I thought I could read between the lines.’
Although he was trying to sound nonchalant, I could tell that Richard was bursting with pride and excitement at the idea. I pulled his head down to mine and planted a kiss on his warm mouth. ‘That’s great news,’ I said, meaning it. ‘Will it mean a lot of work?’
He shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s just a case of getting him talking into the old tape recorder then knocking it into shape afterwards. And he’s going to be at home for the next three months or so working on the new album, so he’ll be around and about.’
Before we could discuss the matter further, the taxi pulled up outside the ornate façade of the grandiosely named Holiday Inn Midland Crowne Plaza. It’s one of those extraordinary Manchester monuments to the city’s first era of prosperity. One of the more palatable byproducts of the cotton mills of the industrial revolution. I can remember when it used to be simply the Midland, one of those huge railway hotels that moulder on as relics of an age when the rich felt no guilt and the poor were kept well away from the doors. Then Holiday Inn bought the dinosaur and turned it into a fun palace for the city’s new rich – the sportsmen, businessmen and musicians who gave Manchester a new lease of life in the late eighties.
Suddenly, in the nineties, London was no longer the place to be. If you wanted a decent lifestyle with lots of buzz and excitement packed into compact city centres, you had to be in one of the so-called provincial cities. Manchester for rock, Glasgow for culture, Newcastle for shopping. It was this shift that had brought Richard to Manchester two years before. He’d come up to try to get an interview with cult hero Morrissey and two days in the city had convinced him that it was going to be to the nineties what Liverpool was to the sixties. He had nothing to keep him in London; his divorce had just come through, and a freelance makes his best living if he’s where the most interesting stories are. So he stayed, like a lot of others.
I followed him out of the taxi, feeling like partying for the first time since I’d come home. Richard’s news had given me a real adrenalin rush, and I couldn’t wait for the official confirmation of what he already suspected. We headed straight to the bar for a drink to give Jett and his entourage time to get over to the hotel.
I sipped my vodka and grapefruit juice gratefully. When I became a private eye, I tried to match the image and drink whisky. After two glasses, I had to revert to my usual to take the taste away. I guess I’m not cut out for the ‘bottle of whisky and a new set of lies’ Mark Knopfler image. As I drank, I listened with half an ear while Richard told me how he saw Jett’s autobiography taking shape. ‘It’s a great rags to riches story, a classic. A poor childhood in the Manchester slums, the struggle to make the music he knew he had in him. First discovering music when his strict Baptist mother pushed him into the gospel choir. How he got his first break. And at last, the inside story on why his songwriting partnership with Moira broke up. It’s got all the makings,’ he rambled on. ‘I could probably sell the serial rights to one of the Sunday tabloids. Oh, Kate, it’s a great night for us!’
After twenty minutes of bubbling enthusiasm, I managed to cut in and suggest that we made our way to the party. As soon as we emerged from the lift, it was clear which suite Jett had hired for the night. Already a loud babble of conversation spilled into the hall, overlaying the mellow sounds of Jett’s last album. I squeezed Richard’s hand and said, ‘I’m really proud of you,’ as we entered the main room and the party
