Punk drummer Sonny Starr paid the studio a visit yesterday. I was incredibly busy as usual and did not have the time to pay him much attention or to patronise him in the way to which he has become accustomed.
After he’d finished telling me about how he’d had a ‘right good blow-job’ from a member of Amy Winehouse’s female entourage in an elevator in a hotel in Dublin, he began trying to cajole me into letting him book some studio-time for some spurious band of which he is now a member. ‘We’re called the Mood Swings,’ he told me. ‘It’s sorta punk-jazz.’
I was having none of it. ‘I know you’re trying to book the studio for the Dysons,’ I insisted. ‘They aren’t coming in – not after last time, Sonny.’
‘What do you mean?’ he whined.
‘Your guitarist, Staz. After he’d spent the day sitting in a corner sniffing glue and urinating out of the upstairs window on to passing black men, he took a substantial dump, if you recall, on top of the toilet seat.’
‘Oh, yeah, sorry about that. He ain’t with us anymore.’
‘You still aren’t coming in.’
‘We’ll pay you in speed.’
‘You definitely aren’t going to be recording in this studio.’
‘But we’re jazz, man.’
‘You have no conception of jazz, Sonny. You only have one style of drumming: fast and loud.’
‘No listen,’ he said, ‘it’s easy. You just emphasise the fourth beat of every bar.’ He drummed on the table with his hands to demonstrate. His technique sounded fairly accurate but for some reason, the moment seemed weighed down, depressed.
‘Go away, Sonny,’ I said finally.
‘You’ve changed. You ain’t my friend no more,’ he said quietly. I detected real regret in his words. Opening the heavy door to the control-room, he turned and asked me: ‘Wanna buy some speed?’
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Sonny Starr