Mike Sparks, Pop Promoter

MIKE SPARKS, POP PROMOTER

STAGE LIGHTS FLASH IN SILENCE, GRADUALLY WE HEAR TINNY SOUND OF MUSIC THROUGH BAZ ‘ IPOD, LIGHTS COALESCE TO SPOTLIGHT ON BAZ, HE IS IN WORLD OF HIS OWN, SUDDENLY SEES
AUDIENCE IN FRONT OF HIM, LOOKS OUT , EVENTUALLY TAKES OFF EARPHONES AND SHADES

BAZ-
Sorry couldn’t hear you above this, don’t want you thinking I’ve no manners.
STARTS HIS PERFORMANCE
I’m a believer, a believer in letting the music speak but I want to share these unaccompanied words with you all, get my retaliation in first, objectively, before others muddy waters.
You might think this is a bit strange, but then I haven’t lived by caring what people think.
The way to remember where we were at is to look at the back of a tee-shirt. At least in my profession, Rock God.
No, listen.
Back of a tee shirt, you know the ones you buy at rock concerts, like Zeppelin London O2,
Stones Madison Square Gardens, Roxy Berlin Rock Palace, that’s how I remember where we were.
Diaries? Never my scene, I’m more about Jagger Richards than Blair Campbell or some political dudes.
On the road most nights of the year, absolutely gigging for it. The road.
The scenes just get bigger and bigger. First clubs we played in you could see everyone there – According to the Tee shirt, it says ‘ my hallway mirror’. No, seriously, you know what I mean. Stadia now , Jesus, Mary and Elvis they’re like a town in themselves except they’re nowhere. Rotterdam, tee shirts say we were there 3 times, but I’ve never seen the place, Zurich, Helsinki the same, fly in, check in, sound check, gig, whatever, fly out.
Beijing was different. No, I mean it would be, wouldn’t it, if you think about it. I said to the
p romoter three nights, insisted with all the weight of my reputation,
haven’t stayed in one place so long since I left school. You have to show respect.
Where it’s due.
Give respect to people, give respect to places, I mean , Beijing for Christ’s sake, how cool can you get, hip to be square. But that was the mistake. Stopping. In this sharky business you have to keep moving.
I mean moving musically, I mean moving physically. It was the second night when we had the conversation . Or rather we stopped having the conversation.
I can still hear her words now, ringing in my ears like a bad dose of tinnitus –
‘I never want to speak to you again’, over and over, same doomed chorus, ‘I never want to speak to you again.’
‘Course I tried to keep it light, merely saying that saying you never want to speak to me again is actually when you think about it speaking to me. That just seemed to really get to her.
Third night she trooped on and sang like a nightingale, but nightingales don’t speak either.
The loneliness began to get to me, out there with all the millions of people, the noise, the silence.
By the time I came off after a solo encore on the third night it was scrawled on my dressing room mirror in lipstick. Green lipstick – the only time her taste deserted her.
Capitals screaming back at me ‘I never want to speak to you again, I never want to speak to you again,’
The only glimmer of hope was the PS in red , simply one word ‘ unless...’
That’s all I remember about Beijing. It was the last night, that’s all I remember.
Haven’t heard from her since. I never planned on going solo quite like that.
‘Unless...’
I never planned it like that. Never planned anything. Especially going solo. Again.
Let me tell you how it started.
Let me tell you a secret, I always worry about being found out any way.
I’m not a musician, I mean not for real, maybe it was the whole insecure only child thing.
I never paid my dues, served my apprenticeship in the Meccas like Mick and Keith, John and Paul,
Just found I could create an orchestra, a sonic world on my laptop.
TV was my break, not being on it, watching it, I suppose that was the problem later,
I was the original living room legend, notebook and plasma, music on the disk, girls on the walls.
I saw this guy on what was ambitiously listed as a talent show.
Everytime he was on screen a caption came up Mike Sparks , Pop Promoter.
On one of my nights in I saw him interviewed on Sky Arts 2. I’m sure you watch it too.
He was always addressed as Mike Sparks, not Mike or Sparky – on one show this gorgeous girl called him Mick and he just gave her this look like a laser through rareified air.
And he always used the same caption,
Mike Sparks, Pop Promoter. The interviewer couldn’t handle the word pop and was trying to put words in his mouth like rock, or just to broaden it out a bit, music , even, I think heard this correctly,
art, though it was pretty late by then and I hadn’t been out for three days.
Mike Sparks just said, ‘ it’s called popular music for a reason, it’s popular, some people have a talent for it. If it’s just playing for yourself there’s another name for it. I promote pop, some people get rich by doing it properly, me included. Problem?’
When I talked to my friend he said yeah, millions of people hate Mike Sparks, he’s so popular.
I downloaded my album, put it in an envelope to the channel, addressed Mike Sparks , Pop
Promoter.
17 nights later I had an email with attachment heading ‘ how big do you really wannabe – open this and change your world ‘ - I don’t normally open emails like that but I did and it did.
It simply read ‘the way you can make money is finding your soul. I’ll introduce you to her.’
There was a picture of a gorgeous girl, did I know her, not from real life but from somewhere parallel? Podcast, Facebook, YouTube , TV? - I wasn’t totally sure, I have it on day and night but rarely watch it.
The attachment looked like some contract, I kind of remember the zeros, I don’t really do words.
Mike Sparks choppered me into Shepperton and said, ‘Baz, this is Lady, just remember she’s called Lady for a reason.’ I was never in the same room as him again.
It was the wisest thing anyone has ever said to me.
We had one rehearsal, her vocals soared above the beats like a dream. I never woke up...in time.
The first proper name of all time on the tee shirt was Leeds Academy. I t was just a bigger room, with Lady in it, and I learned the job on the job, learned to love the world and it reciprocated.
Until...until Beijing.
Looking back I should have seen it coming. Maybe I should never have moved in above the shop;
the tee shirts don’t speak the full story, touring is a bubble of loneliness.
Yeah, you heard me first take, touring is lonely in that surrounded by millions never alone drugs don’t work type loneliness, especially in Beijing.
At least it has been since the lipstick. The green and the red on that theatre style make up mirror the one with the bulbs round it like a garland of bright ideas except this one wasn’t, not the way I saw it. ‘Unless...’
I never planned it. There are ways of going solo, different types of being solo, I’ve tried most, duos are best.
‘There’s a reason why Lady is called Lady.’
It really freaks me out, did then, still does, people - intimate strangers – tweet talking me and saying you had it all: sex – no not sex, love , money, musical recognition, whatever you wanted – and , they say, you deliberately blew it. That’s what these fans, these strangers say. Blew it, like driving a Rolls into a pool but infinitely more significant. Let me tell you about me and Lady, I’m tired of you hearing it from others. Not everyone has my best interests a t heart. Lady did. Always.
I realise that now she’s gone.
Lady and I had been together ever since the beginning. Lady was the beginning, like Eve, only better dressed.
I admit we weren’t to be pantheoned with the all time greats musically, Mick and Keith, John and Paul, Elton and Bernie, Baz and Lady , no , I do most shit but not blasphemy. I wrote the songs, taught the band from the keyboard. We didn’t make it big, we were big from day one. When Lady floated in on vocals the magic started. Magic came into the band, into my life, the journey started, the road came up to meet us. I moved in on lady and she moved in. On the road, on stage, hotels with more stars than any galaxy but still hotels. I wrote the music for our first number one-
‘I said I’d love you forever, you said it wasn’t long enough.’
Retrospectively there may have been an ambivalence in Lady’s lyric, interpretations aren’t static, you learn that as you go along.
Yeah, I did look at other women – sometimes twice – I’m not a fool, but looking isn’t buying.
If we ‘d simply done the usual one nighter in Beijing we’d still be on the road now. Coming off stage it’s usually a beer, okey dokey maybe a little something a bit stronger since your’re twisting my arm.
And that – I swear - is all it was, exit stage left and my arm around Mike Smart’s Head of Asia Pacific, third night, I mean we were rocking Beijing for Christ’s sake, if it wasn’t for Xing it wouldn’t have happened, that’s what I said to Lady.
She said if it wasn’t for her I’d be Mr Nowhere and disappeared into the square – heavenly I think they call it in translation. I was lost for words.
Next morning about 4 in the afternoon I saw it in Paris Match, the only photo of the whole event, me and Xing entwined, like I’d done it all myself.
I hadn’t woken up alone since Lady and I first went to bed together. It was so cold I broke out into a sweat. I filled up her voicemail but you just know when people are never going to return your calls.
I drank my way back to London, still the ringing silence.
There’s no business like show business, we – the remnants - were due onstage in 15 minutes – let’s see, yeah, Vienna, - means nothing to me - looked like an evening of instrumentals with no lady on vocals when she rang.
-‘I’m just ringing to tell you I never want to speak to you again’
-But you are I said, sort of jerk thing you say when you are so relieved. ‘ Get your sweet arse out here, we’re on in 15’
-‘That all you care about, Baz, what about the past, what about the future?’
-‘Lady, what’s got into you? We live and love for the moment, we always have, you know us’
-‘Comes a time, Baz’ she said, voice a way I’d never heard before, flat, off key.
-‘Sing Babe, we’ll talk minute we get off stage.’
-‘Like we did in Beijing?’
-‘ I admit I put my arm round the promoter’s assistant, come on Babe, coming off stage, biggest gig since..’
-‘That how you see me, Babe, your assistant? ’, her flat tone becoming sharper.
-‘What has got into you, Lady? We’re on in 5, we’ve never missed a show.’
-‘First time for everything’
-‘What can I say to make it all right, make it like it was before?
-‘Before’s gone. What can you do, Mr Solo man? You can see how it feels, the Beatles were wrong’
-‘Babe, Lady?’
-‘‘All you need is love’ - come to think of it they got it right too – ‘ give me money, that’s what I want’- how much is the difference between a dinosaur and a god..?’
-‘I wrote the music, without music there’s nothing.’
-‘ You can’t write magic and I don’t like finding out what’s in Swiss bank accounts in one name. Actually two names and mine isn’t one of them.
-‘You just keep me hanging on. Maybe that’s life, at least it’s your life, started solo, end up solo, bastard Baz, see what it’s really like with no Lady in your life, in 5, 4 minutes.., unless...’
-‘Unless?’
I swear I heard her humming ‘’ Yesterday’’, a millisecond of magic, then-
‘If you have to ask, I’m not going to say this twice, I never want to speak to you again.’
There was no encore that night. No amp could fill the big silence, all the instruments sounded flat.
The thrill had gone.

- SPOTLIGHT IN BAZ’ FACE, SHADES ON, MUSIC UP FROM HIS IPOD ( ‘’I said I’d love you till the end of time, you said it wasn’t long enough’’ - ) THROUGH STAGE AMPS, SPOTLIGHT OUT ON BAZ, ANOTHER (EMPTY) SPOTLIGHT NEXT TO HIM, ABRUBT SILENCE.