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“Of course I have. I’ve even seen them on Jonathan Ross. That’s not the point. I just don’t happen to know their entire bloody history, that’s all.”
“They got big in the late sixties, around the same time as Led Zeppelin, a bit after Pink Floyd and the Who. Their music was different. It had elements of folk-rock, the Byrds and Fairport Convention, but they gave a sort of psychedelic twist to it, at first, anyway. Think ‘Eight Miles High’ meets ‘Sir Patrick Spens.’”
A
“I give up,” said Banks. “Anyway, a lot of their sound and style was down to the keyboards player, Vic Greaves, the bloke we were talking about, who now lives in Lyndgarth, and the lead guitarist, Reg Cooper, another Yorkshire lad.”
“Vic Greaves was the keyboards player?”
“Yeah. He was a bit of a Keith Emerson, got amazing sounds out of his organ.”
A
“They had light shows, did long guitar solos, wore fu
“Our Swainsview Lodge?”
“The one and only.”
“Was there an investigation?”
“I should imagine so,” said Banks. “That’s something we’ll have to dig up when we get back to Eastvale. There should be files in the basement somewhere.”
“Wonderful,” said A
“Don’t worry, we’ll send Kev.”
A
“Pe
“What happened to the Mad Hatters?”
“They got another bass player.”
“And what about Vic Greaves?”
“He’d been a problem for a long time. He was unpredictable. Sometimes he didn’t show up for gigs. He’d walk offstage. He got violent with other band members, with his girlfriends. They say there were times he just sat there staring into space, too stoned to play. Naturally, there were stories about the huge quantities of LSD he consumed, not to mention other drugs. He wrote a lot of their early songs and some of the lyrics are very… well, drug-induced, trippy, I suppose you’d say. The rest of the band were a bit more practical and ambitious, and they didn’t know what to do about him, but in the end they didn’t have to worry. He disappeared for a month in late 1970 – September, I think – and when they found him again he was living rough in the countryside like a tramp. He wanted nothing more to do with the music business, been a hermit ever since.”
“Did nobody do anything for him?”
“Like what?”
“Help him get psychiatric help, for a start.”
“Different times, A
“Blake was a visionary,” said A
“I know that. I’m just trying to explain the prevalent attitudes as I understand them. Look, when everyone is weird, just how weird do you have to be to get noticed?”
“I’d say staring into space when you’re supposed to be playing keyboards is a pretty good place to start, not to mention beating up your girlfriend.”
“I agree there’s no excuse for violence, but people still turn a blind eye, even the victims themselves, sometimes. And there was a lot of tolerance within the community for drug consumption, bad trips and suchlike. As for the rest, odd behavior, especially onstage, might just have been regarded as nonconformist or avant-garde theatrics. They say that Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd once put a whole jar of Brylcreem on his head before a performance, and during the show it melted and dripped down his face. People thought it was some sort of artistic statement, not a symptom of insanity. Don’t forget, there were so many weird influences at play. Dadaism, surrealism, nihilism. If John Cage could write four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, who’s to say Greaves wasn’t doing something similar by not playing? You ought to know this, given your bohemian background. Did nobody at your dad’s place ever paint a blank canvas?”
“I was just a kid,” said A
“They probably didn’t want you to be singled out and picked on at school.”
“Ha! Then it didn’t help. The other kids still thought I was a freak. How did the Mad Hatters survive all this?”
“Their manager, Chris Adams, pulled it all together. He brought a replacement in, fiddled with the band’s sound and image a bit and, wham, they were off.”
“How did he change them?”
“Instead of another keyboards player, he brought in a female vocalist. Their sound became a bit more commercial, more pop, without losing its sixties edge entirely. They just got rid of that juvenile psychedelia. That’s probably the way you remember them, the nice harmonies. Anyway, the rest is history. They conquered America, became a big stadium band, youth anthems and all that. By the time they released their fourth album in 1973, they were megastars. Not all their new fans were aware of their early roots, but then not everyone knows that Fleetwood Mac was a decent blues band before Stevie Nicks and ‘Rhia
“Hey, watch what you’re calling crap! I happen to like ‘Rhia
Banks smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have known.”
“Snob.”
“Anyway, that’s the Mad Hatters story. And you say the girlfriend-”
“Melanie Wright.”
“Melanie Wright said that Nick thought he’d got his teeth into a juicy story and that she felt it was somehow personal to him.”
“Yes. And he mentioned murder. Don’t forget that.”
“I haven’t,” said Banks. “Whose murder did he mean?”
“At a guess, from what you’ve just told me, I’d say Robin Merchant’s, wouldn’t you?”
Tuesday, 16th September, 1969
“I want to apologize to you about that Mad Hatters LP,” Chadwick said to DS Enderby over a late breakfast in the canteen on Tuesday morning. Geoff Broome had come up with an address on Bayswater Terrace, Enderby had driven down from Brimleigh, and they were fortifying themselves with bacon and eggs before the visit.
“It’s all right, sir,” said Enderby. “I got Pink Floyd to sign my copy of More last weekend. As a matter of fact, the Mad Hatters and even Floyd aren’t really my cup of tea. I’m actually more of a blues man myself.”
“Blues?”
“Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Chicken Shack, John Mayall.”
“Right,” said Chadwick, still no wiser. “Anyway, I am sorry. It was wrong of me.”
“You were probably right, though, about not being seen accepting gifts.”
“Well, I’d feel a bit better about saying that if I hadn’t gone and given it to my daughter.”
“You did what, sir?”
Chadwick looked away. “I gave it to my daughter. A few bridges to build, you know.”
Enderby burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “What did she say?”