8/ Cristina and Ze Records [ Back to excerpts ]
At the end of our 1980 US tour, John Otway and I did one last show together in Manhattan, at a big club called The Ritz, and we were both on top form that night. Afterwards I had a couple of visitors to my dressing room. They were a young, glamorous couple of uptown New Yorkers who had been watching the show. The guy, short, boyish with tight dark curls and olive skin, introduced himself as Michael Zilkha, and his diminutive, but exquisite girlfriend as Cristina Monet.
He told me how much he had loved my show and how he had been a big fan of the Doctors of Madness. He explained that he had been to school at Westminster, and had completely missed the NBC hatchet job that had torpedoed our fledgling career in the States. I was flattered. He went on to explain that he owned a smallish independent record label in New York, called ZE Records, which specialised in putting out alternative, left-field material. I knew all about ZE records. It was painfully hip. He casually mentioned that ZE had released records by Suicide, James White and the Blacks, James Chance and the Contortions, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Was Not Was and Cristina. That was, and remains, quite a impressive roster of out-there artists. 'Cristina,' I thought to myself, 'ZE records. Of course!' This Cristina, standing in my dressing room, was the Cristina who had put out a deliciously knowing, punked-up version of the Peggy Lee song Is That All There Is? the year before. A record so vulnerable, but so tough, you wanted to simultaneously throw your arms around the vinyl and tell it to keep its distance. The song was originally written by the great sixties hit-machine Leiber and Stoller, and was a knowing cocktail-bar ballad, but Cristina Monet had deconstructed it and restaged it in coke-sniffing, cold-fucking 70's-disco Manhattan. 'And then I fell in love with the most wonderful boy in Manhattan/ We'd take long walks down by the river and he beat me black and blue and I loved it/ I'd have killed for that guy/ But then one day James went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't, and when I didn't I said to myself 'Is that all there is to love?' Leiber and Stoller were less than impressed by her reworking, but I told Cristina what a fan I was of that record. I must have gushed embarrassingly, but I was genuinely thrilled to meet her. So often girls who make records like that are a disappointment in the flesh, but she was the real deal. Elegant, intelligent, beautiful and the wittiest girl I have ever met. In a sassier, zestier, brighter, funnier world, Cristina would have been Madonna.
Michael, half-Lebanese with the good looks to match, was a very cool, undemonstrative man with impeccable manners, and he let me get it out of my system before saying 'How would you feel about doing a live album for ZE?' I tried to be cool but I was so excited at the idea I just blurted, 'Are you serious? I would LOVE to. Thank you', without giving it any thought. He said, 'Come by the office tomorrow to discuss it', and gave me his card. 'I have to go to dinner now,' he announced, and then, to Cristina, 'Do you want a lift home?' She replied, in a voice that seemed to be forever pitched between two octaves of breathless sexual arousal, 'No, darling. I think I will stay here for a little while longer.'
Cristina and I saw a lot of each other over the next two or three weeks, and got to know each other very well. She was an intriguing and perceptive girl, aged about 22, and better-read than anyone I have met before or since. The sort of girl who, in conversation, will say unpretentiously, but out of sheer enthusiasm, 'It's just like what happens in chapter eight of Madame Bovary' or who will recite verbatim a favourite page-long paragraph from Henry James. In some people this facility would be merely tedious, like a precocious child performing a pointless party trick, but with Cristina it was always apposite, perspicacious and illuminating. She used her extraordinary talent with words sparingly, writing occasional reviews of books and the theatre for the New York publication The Village Voice, and the odd, unfinished song lyric. We arranged to work together on some new songs when I got back to London. She said she would be coming to London shortly and we should hook up. I was excited by the prospect and agreed. I wrote a song for her immediately, called Let's Flatten Manhattan, and started work on several more ideas with titles like I ain't no Hotel and The Beast goes on. Cristina, the Queen of Uptown New York disco, by way of reciprocation, started sending me scraps of paper covered in her spidery handwriting, with lists of fabulous titles for songs like Do it and Call it love, and Don't Mutilate my Mink, and exhorting me to 'Now write the song, dahling'.
My meeting with Michael on the day following The Ritz gig was amiable and informal. He told me he would like to put an-eight-track mobile recording studio into one of the most fashionable New York clubs for a couple of nights and record my entire show for release. He offered a derisory sum as an advance, saying we would make all the money on royalties. Back in Delancey Street I told Mark Josephson what Michael had offered and he laughed at his tight-fistedness. 'That is so typical of the Rich' he said. 'Is he rich?' I asked, thinking no-one ever got seriously rich from Was Not Was or Suicide, and Mark explained that Michael's father was Selim Zilkha. I looked blankly. The name didn't ring any bells. 'He owns Mothercare and The Bank of Zurich!' Suddenly I felt that I had been rather short-changed by the charming, boyish enthusiast with the office over Carnegie Hall. Mark advised, 'DonŐt worry. Do it anyway. Ze is the best label in the world for you.' He asked where I would do the concerts to be recorded and I said I had no idea. He called Zilkha for a chat and together they decided that a club called Hurrah, on W.66th Street would be a suitable venue. A couple of calls were made and I was booked in for the following week for two nights, for a pretty good performance fee. These guys were certainly 'connected'.
That night I wandered up to Hurrah to check it out, and an English band called The Psychedelic Furs were playing that night. I always liked that band, especially the sneering vocalist, and I stayed to the end of their show, and then had drinks with them afterwards. There is a sense of fraternity among touring English rock bands in the States. Despite the rivalry and the bitchiness, they always end up going to see each other's shows. After the band left I was still at the bar drinking with a few stragglers. I got talking to a stunning black girl, over six feet tall with an incredible presence and an extraordinary capacity for chemicals. Her mouth was big enough to build an apartment in, and she had a fabulous raucous, dirty laugh. We hit it off well and chatted for a couple of hours. She had this thing about fur coats, and was wearing some outrageously politically-incorrect specimen on her back. She said she was a singer, too, and had to go to the studio to record some vocal tracks. As she was leaving I said, 'By the way, we never introduced ourselves. My name is Richard Strange.' 'It was a great pleasure talking to you, Richard Strange,' she answered, flashing a wonderful smile, 'My name is Grace Jones.' The trouble with me is that I never recognise the Rich and Famous until they have left the room and someone says. 'Do you know who that was?'