Strange things happen: a life with the Police, polo, and pygmies Page 5

  There would be a rustle of recognition and the “S” sound.

  “Isss it him?…PoliCe…SSting…. SSStewart…” I’d be wondering if I was just hearing things, then there would be someone praying at me for a photo or an autograph, or a blessing.

  One reason to be cheerful was that I got pissing rights over pretty much everybody. At least in the music universe. The combination of chart success and validated musical prowess (other musicians respected us) meant that I had a rank that was right alongside the graven images that I myself worshipped.

  That’s how I felt the night I took my dad down to the West End in London to see the Buddy Rich Big Band at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. My daddy raised me on Buddy Rich, and it was a thrill, not just to get to see his show and experience the most spectacular manifestation of my craft on the planet, but also for my father and me to be treated like royalty in Buddy world. Backstage after the show I was saved from gushing over the master by his band surrounding me for autographs. His players were all the hottest young cats straight out of Juilliard, and they grooved to The Police. It was a pretty perfect Christmas moment in my heart as Dad and Buddy reminisced about bygone bandstands, notorious bandleaders, and legendary big band players from back in the day. They were contemporaries and had inhabited the same world before my father was swept away by the Second World War into a life of international skulduggery. Every now and then after the war was over, he would pull his trumpet out of its battered case and blow some soul over Lebanon from the terrace of our house in the hills. It was a big glow to see him now, backstage at the swank jazz club, getting respect in the world of his unrealized dreams from my most exulted music deity.

  But living with idolatry is strange, even for those who seek and expect it. You notice that people act oddly in your presence. There is heightened tension. Veins throb in people’s foreheads. People laugh nervously, particularly at any gag from the Known One. The tiniest acts of kindness, wisdom, or wit are rewarded with undue enthusiasm. The palest sigh or frown can be an excruciating laceration on the soul of the faithful.

  People apologize for all manner of imperfections, as if it is their duty to maintain the pristine quality of my environment. People offer their seat, their place in line, their daughter, wife, or mother. Folks seem to assume that I deserve a better shake than they get. Somehow I’m special, although there is not anything remotely sacred about me. In Los Angeles, where many really luminous stars live, civilians are actually discomfited when they see stars unpampered, even if they snicker about it and exaggerate the anecdote later. It’s hard sometimes to know how nice or not people really are. Everybody is on best behavior.

  Although most people really don’t know or don’t care about the cult-head, there are some who strenuously pretend not to. They are usually the people who are most drawn by the strange social magnetism and overcompensate as they resist it. You can see the struggle to tamp down the butterflies. It looks like a kind of hysterical nonchalance. At the other end of the scale are the folks who are so bewitched that they think they are in the presence of an apparition. Two of them will stand in front of me and talk about me as if I’m a painting on a museum wall.

  “Gosh he’s tall!”

  If I move or speak directly to them they will still conduct their dialogue about me as they interact with the avatar.

  “Tell him he’s tall….”

  As I was starting to experience this I was pretty sure it wasn’t normal, but for the moment it was the role I had chosen. It didn’t occur to me until years later that I’m just some guy.

  It was getting claustrophobic. Privacy deprivation is something like sleep deprivation. The love that surrounds you becomes vexatious.

  I often wished that I could merely turn my collar up and shun the light.

  A wall went up. Suddenly I could afford a country estate, so off I went to green Valhalla in darkest Buckinghamshire. The ivory tower grew like a beanstalk. Old friends gave up trying to get through. When they did, I had to put them at ease by downplaying everything. And so there was I, overcompensating.

  Fame has its comforts but is intermittent in its use as a tool or key. Sometimes it deserts you. You can’t plan ahead on the basis that it will work for you. Sometimes the maître d’ at the most critical restaurant will light up and throw rose petals as he escorts you to the best table, sometimes not. When confronted by nonrecognition it is perilous to pull rank—because it’s not real rank anyway. How the mighty crash and burn to be overheard saying:

  “But don’t you realize that I’m—?”

  On the whole, things turn out better when the mojo is working than when not. When the eminence is recognized, doors open to the rarefied zones and the blessings of this world are more freely offered. It’s like being extremely lucky in an inordinate number of instances. When the mojo is lit you just get dealt better cards and any roll of the dice is a winner.

  It does lose its fizz, however. If you are an alligator, then the dankest swamp is just plain white bread. If you are an eagle, you’re probably over having the world right there on the end of your talons. It’s just another day in the boring old sky. And so it was that I tried to remember my most yearning youthful fantasies about the ultimate Olympian state of grace that should be rock star life. When I looked around, all I could see was the same old everyday world. Of course, my life was blessed, but why did I have to keep on reminding myself?

  One day, on my way to the airport, my limousine takes a detour through a leafy neighborhood with children playing on the lawns and guys playing baseball. I look out the window at the splendor of a glamorous life. I’ve seen this world in a thousand cereal commercials and am enthralled by its simple, easy, wholesome charm. I’m sick of Valhalla. I wish I could live on this street. I wish everyone could live on this street.

  It took getting off the jet to start being able to catch stuff as it went by. The strangest things happened when I jumped ship and crawled onto dry land.

  PART II

  LEARNING TO BE NORMAL

  Copyright © 2009 Jean-Pierre Dutilleux

  CHAPTER 10

  CONGO

  JULY 1984

  Far up the Congo River, in the heart of Africa, is a tributary called the Sangha, on the banks of which we’re shooting a movie.

  J

  ean-Pierre Dutilleux, the mad Belgian explorer, is shouting at me through the clattering drums and chanting natives. The jungle is alive with music. “Go with the shaman!”

  He’s pointing to a dark hut across the clearing. I scramble through the dancing frenzy of the massed Pygmies and duck into the tribal Holy of Holies. The shaman is there, suiting up for the big party.

  Outside the hut, two or three hundred Pygmies are cutting it up on the dance floor, singing their swaying melodies and banging their elephant skin drums. There are more Pygmies gathered than have ever been seen before—even by Pygmies. The scene is lit by bonfires and by big klieg lights that we have borrowed from the French logging crew whose camp has been our base down here in the deep jungle of northern Congo.

  It’s dark in the hut, but light from the fire is streaming through the leafy walls. The shaman is rustling his relics as I stumble in. I’m crouching under the low roof and mumbling some supportive incantations of my own. Just to put him at ease, you understand. We’re in the same business, after all.

  “Jesus loves you, this I know,” I venture.

  He peers at me without much expression and then returns to his preparations. I’m about as relevant to his business as a man from Mars. He dons a grass cape that covers his head and drapes down to cover his feet. Brushing past me, he steps out into the clearing.

  As one, the voices rise to a higher-pitched fever as the shaman twirls among them. The strands of his headdress splay around him as he spins. Behind him your correspondent is grooving along for the ride, trying to fit in and dancing up a little improvised frenzy of my own. The throng is so dense that most of my gyrations are confined to waving my arms above their heads.<
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  JP and the crew are there with the cameras, but I can see over the bobbing heads of the natives that he has lost our love interest. The scene we are trying to shoot calls for her to be discovered, at last, by the Rhythmatist in the deep jungle. She is found among the lost Mboroo tribe and has been entranced by their strange music. Our heroine is played by JP’s fiancée, Tisch.

  But the shot is not going as planned. These are real Fourth World natives, and they really are entranced by their strange music. Tisch, daubed with paint and festooned with feathers, has been adopted by the women of the tribe. They have surrounded her and are wailing at her, imbibing of her outlandish blond pallor. She too is wailing.

  “JayPeeeee! They won’t let me through!” she beseeches, struggling to get to the men’s circle, where she can be discovered by the intrepid Rhythmatist. Pygmy social rules are very strict about this, as it happens. Women only dance with the women.

  JP is in more of a frenzy than anyone. He’s a director who wants his shot. He clears a path through the womenfolk and drags Tish over to the men’s side—where I’m still thrashing away.

  Actually by now I’ve got kind of a groove going with my new brothers in music. The rhythm is tricky but the pulse is clear, and I have pretty much got the hang of it. The melody is otherworldly and rhythmically harder to fathom. Somehow their voices fuse in choral waves and spirals, swirling up to peaks and swooping down to deep earth tones. I’m just chanting Beach Boy songs and swooping along with them.

  “Ooooweeeoooweeeoooooo!”

  The story we are trying to tell in this odd movie we are making is kind of improvised. And JP is improvising now, inflamed no doubt by the general hubbub.

  “OK, now ravish her!” he shouts to me.

  “Whuh?”

  I was midswoop, but now I have paused, trying to hear him through the din.

  “Keep dancing! And then ravish her!”

  “JayPeeee!” wails Tisch.

  “Radish?”

  JP is on a mission, and he won’t quit until he has me transgressing upon his babe in front of the astonished Pygmies. The music abates momentarily while the natives process this new information about the White Giants; but then they get the drift and are back into full swing as I perform my thespian duty on the director’s girlfriend.

  I’m sure if we had any idea what we were doing before we got to Africa this movie would probably make more sense, but I’m also sure that we wouldn’t be having anything like this amount of fun shooting it. We’re just making this up as we go along. There are just five of us in two Land Rovers. JP and I are in front, trailblazing and searching out locations for our ever more flimsy “plot” behind us are Richard, Paul, and Lorne on sound, camera, and everything else. In the first vehicle our story conferences are becoming ever more feverish as we struggle to imagineer all of the cool stuff that’s happening around us into some kind of plausible “story.” The only plot point that we can agree on is that the love interest is lost and can’t be found.

  Neither of us knows a thing about plot development or denouement or epiphany, but JP sure does know how to sniff out adventure. This intrepid Belgian is the real Indiana Jones—even though I’m not sure if it’s a case of art imitating life or vice versa. He’s got the leather jacket and the indefatigable hat (just like the movie) and even sometimes uses a long whip for flicking mosquitoes and tarantulas; but when you are carving your way through the deep jungle, JP is the real thing. He can sidle up to anyone, Samburu chief or customs agent, and work something out. With his Babel of languages and patois he can cajole and barter us into (or out of) anywhere. It’s his easy tongue and tight fist on the wallet that is stretching our two-week budget into two months across the Dark Continent.

  And we are arguing the whole way. I’m after musical/cultural truth, and he wants to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s because he has spent his life documenting the cultural truths of the vanishing Fourth World beyond the last frontiers of the planet. The Holy Grail for most of his life has been contact with the last and most remote tribes. He’s been hit by every form of tropical disease, snake, tsetse fly, and scorpion in the swamps and jungles of his day job. Now he’s ready for the comforts of show business, and I’m his ticket.

  Off the east coast of Africa we have found a scenic little slaver island called Lamu. From this spot Arab traders would venture into the heartland to spread Islam and capture humans. Of course that’s all forgotten now and the modern islanders are a cheerfully roguish mix of Africa and Islam. The wealth from the bad old days is still evident in the fine Arab architecture with its lavish filigree, but the sandy streets have never seen cars.

  While the crew hunker down in Mombasa to clean their gear, JP and I catch a boat out there and discover that it’s the perfect location for a chase scene. We figure that the black-clad Rhythmatist arrives with his sampling equipment and is just about to discover…(we’ll think up something) but the natives become agitated by the strange ritual music emanating from his black-clad traveling lab.

  Which gives you a pretty good idea of how thinly we spread the logic as we built this cinematic masterpiece. Never mind how we got here, this locale is perfect for a chase, so let’s have a chase. When the crew arrives we hire some donkeys and start rolling. It’s Ramadan, when faithful Muslims fast by day and feast by night, so the local extras are photogenically grumpy as they wave scimitars and swarm after me on a horde of donkeys. Of course the wily black-clad Rhythmatist is too slick for them and his donkey is the sleekest. He gives them the slip before we lose the light and then go feasting with the erstwhile bad guys. Deep into the night we laugh as we languish on the lamplit streets of Lamu.

  Logo in Lamu

  In the bar of the Nairobi Sheraton, JP sniffs out a huge game reserve and ranch owned by the billionaire Khashoggi family. In no time at all he has sidled up to young Khalid Khashoggi and scored an invitation to shoot there. It’s perfect for our story—whatever that might be—so we load up the Rovers and head out there. One of the toys at the ranch is an excellent black ex-polo horse that Kahlid offers as a prop. It’s certainly an improvement on the donkeys. We devise a scheme to shoot an establishing shot of the black-clad Rhythmatist traveling across Africa on his quest for…we’re still arguing about that. Anyway he’s traveling, and as he travels he comes alongside a herd of giraffe and rides along poetically with them.

  Before sunrise the trackers are out over the savannah, and they have located the perfect herd. The giant herbivores are deep in acacia cover for the night, but the beaters gently coax them toward an open plain where the black-clad horse groover is waiting. As the gray dawn grows I’m astride this dark mare with my ears stretched out to the sounds of the wild. Over yonder in the mist, JP is yelling something from his perch on top of one of the Land Rovers. He wants the giraffe to emerge from the thicket and majestically caravan in front of the camera with the far-seeking Rhythmatist sojourning scenically alongside.

  Copyright © 2009 Jean-Pierre Dutilleux

  My horse hears the giraffes before I do, and she’s not wild about it. By the time I can see them towering through the early light, the mare is spooked out of her skin and is trotting and prancing with fear. Horses don’t safari for pleasure. They aren’t interested in anything that might come crashing through the bush. But I’ve got her more or less steady when the giraffes appear. My attempts to persuade the horse to snuggle up to the herd, however, are not anything you would see in a cowboy movie. The black mare is struggling to trot backward away from the wild giraffes or, if I can get her to move forward, is making a tight circle. She has no interest in the giraffes at all. And I’m not looking that sage myself.

  I’m technically the boss in this relationship, so I get her moving toward the tall ones. But she’s so full of fear that if she’s going to do anything for me, it’s going to be at a gallop. So now we are charging toward the gentle giants. As soon as they catch sight of us, they are off across the open plain—with me and my steed in pursuit. Wow, this
is fun! Now that the horse is at a flat-out gallop, she’s much calmer and soon catches up with our quarry. The giraffes are huge and beautiful. As the horse gallops alongside, they appear to be in slow motion. I have to be careful not to get too close, though. One kick from Jimmy Giraffe would take me out of the saddle and turn my skull into peanut butter and jelly.

  Man, I’m in heaven. We are charging right along the equator where the dawn happens very quickly. The sun is bursting over the edge of the Maasai Mara as the posse of giraffes, horse, and Rhythmatist takes flight across the open savannah. Now this is the real cowboy movie. The brilliant golden side lighting of the rising sun against the dull blue awakening sky finds me galloping free over the distant African plain with the theme to Bonanza ringing in my ears. This is truly one of the Great Designer’s more intelligent moments. Sometimes the concentrated beauty of a moment can make even the craftiest professional shaman stop and thank.

  My rapture is interrupted suddenly by the advent of an acacia thicket, into which the giraffes continue their canter without breaking stride. End of adventure. The prickles on those acacia tree are like nails. The giraffes don’t seem to mind and can plow right through, but for me on my horse those needles are at face level. “Whoa, Nelly!” I cry, tugging the reins and leaning back against the stirrups. My agile little mare puts four hoofs in front of her and stops like a polo pro. She would have bounced me right out the front door if I hadn’t been ready.

  Problem is that the giraffes broke cover and headed off totally in the wrong direction, away from the cameras. So while I was free-birding with my tall giraffe brethren, JP was over the horizon, howling profanities. Later, when I return sheepishly to HQ we arrange to try again tomorrow morning.