The Fame Factor

The first take was aborted when the rubber band snapped, pinging across the room and leaving the broken headphones to slither down onto Kate’s guitar. The second take, performed with the engineer standing behind her, lightly clamping the headphones to her ears, was note-perfect.

‘Nice,’ said Clive, beckoning for Kate to come back to their side.

Ellie, as expected, rattled through her part in a single take. There was a bit of a discussion afterwards between Louis and Clive about whether her short instrumental, which was undeniably impressive but which had veered away from the metronomic click-track, would have to be rerecorded to fit with the click, but Zoë eventually convinced them that nobody else would be playing at that point, so it didn’t matter whether there was a bit of ‘rall’, as the producer insisted on calling it. It was incredible, the care and attention lavished on each microsecond of sound.

‘Was it OK?’ asked Ellie, re-entering the cramped room, her guitar still around her neck.

The producer nodded without looking up. ‘Very good.’

‘Very, very good,’ Louis added. ‘There are not many people who can lay down a track like that so quickly, huh?’ He looked at Clive for approval.

Clive nodded again, still fiddling with his dials. He clearly wasn’t one for lavish praise.

Zoë felt a rush of pride, mingled with nerves. Even though the producer wouldn’t admit it, she could tell that her band members were nailing it. Most artists, she imagined, would take hours to record a single track. She hoped she’d live up to their standards.

‘Vocals?’

Zoë nodded. It was time to find out whether she would.

It was only as she positioned herself in front of the glass screen, allowing the engineer to tweak the angle of the microphone and make tiny adjustments to the height of the stand, that Zoë stopped to think about how incredible it was that Dirty Money was here at all.

A couple of weeks ago they’d been scrapping around, trying to work out whether their best chances of ‘getting spotted’ lay in Camden or Chiswick, dreaming up ridiculous ways of attracting the attention of label managers, and now here they were, having their sound immortalised by the most expensive equipment money could buy.

‘When you’re ready,’ Clive’s calm voice came through the headphones above the sound of the click.

Zoë glanced at the roomful of people and drew a breath. The beat was distracting. It was just a tick, every one exactly the same as the last. Exactly the same. It was disconcerting. It reminded her of being eleven and being made to practise her violin scales in time with the metronome.

Click, click, click, click.

‘Everything okay?’ asked Clive.

Zoë nodded. This was ridiculous. She was a musician. She was supposed to have an imagination. All she had to do was pretend that she was standing on a stage in front of a couple of hundred rowdy fans, spotlights on her face, Shannon’s drumsticks counting one, two, three, four.

Finally, she did it. Perhaps it was the quality of the amps or the carpeted walls, or the fact that she’d consumed about eight cans of Diet Coke over the course of the day and her body was filled with sugar and caffeine, but Zoë’s voice sounded stronger and more powerful than usual. She was enjoying it, too. It wasn’t quite the buzz she got from standing up on the stage, but it was a thrill, nonetheless.

‘That was great,’ said Clive as she finished the first take. ‘Hold on one sec.’ He fiddled about for a while, twisting knobs, pushing sliders and pressing buttons. ‘OK, it’s in the can.’

Zoë grinned at the girls as she returned to the cramped, overheated room. It was pitch black outside now and there was a strange sense of…well, perhaps comradeship wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t a bond, but there was definitely a closeness between them: the band, their manager and the producer. Even Clive and his greasy-haired assistant seemed to be warming to the girls now that they’d laid down their tracks so efficiently.

‘So!’ cried Louis, leaning back in the chair and making it creak rather ominously. ‘Shall we press play?’

Obediently, the producer did exactly that.

Zoë looked at the other girls, her mouth slightly open with wonder. Everything about the track was pristine: the beat, the bass, the harmonies and her vocals. It sounded as though somebody else was singing her part. Pure and perfectly in tune, there was no shouting to be heard over drunken revellers, no missing words where she’d had to duck to avoid a flying pint glass, no white noise between the notes. The whole song was…utterly clean.

Afterwards, nobody said anything. The girls were too stunned and the men were looking at one another with narrowed eyes, as though subliminally discussing what could be done to make it sound even more perfect.

‘Strings?’ said Louis.

Clive frowned slightly but didn’t disagree.

‘Maybe just in the chorus,’ Louis added, backtracking a little.

After a period of twiddling, pushing and pressing, the song came back on, this time with a sweeping string section beneath Zoë’s chorus.

‘Um…’ Zoë wasn’t sure what to say. The song sounded good; there was no doubt about that. But it didn’t sound anything like it was supposed to. The whole point about ‘Sensible Lies’ was that it was angry, with caustic lyrics that talked of the burning frustrations of living a double life. They were turning it into a happy singalong ditty.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said Louis, shaking his head at the wonders of the mixing desk.

Zoë glanced at the other girls, wondering whether they were thinking the same thing. Shannon just looked wildly excited, her earlier snub clearly forgotten. Kate was frowning, either in concentration or doubt, and Ellie seemed miles away.

‘Maybe some sort of…’ Louis looked at the producer and rubbed his fingers together. ‘Tchyka-tchyka-tchyka-tchyka?’

Zoë’s expression turned to one of alarm. The noise coming from Louis’s mouth was like the backing track of some boy-band ballad.

Again, there was some activity on the keyboard-like part of the mixing desk. Moments later, the song came back on, slightly slower than it had been before and complete with tchyka-tchyka beat. Shannon’s part was almost inaudible beneath the electronics.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Zoë, rather louder than she had anticipated. She lowered her tone. ‘But I think it sounded better before all the strings and everything.’

Louis looked at her, tilted his head, then turned to Clive.

Clive raised his brow, a look which Zoë interpreted as I’m not going to say anything, but which Louis clearly read differently.

‘Let’s go with what the producer thinks.’ He smiled as though Zoë didn’t really understand. ‘We can fiddle about ‘til the cows come home, later. No need to worry about it now. We got plenny of time!’

There was a brief silence in which Zoë nearly argued but then caught Shannon’s eye and stopped herself. The drummer was clearly concerned about falling out with their manager on day one.

‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘Plenty of time.’

‘The other two numbers?’

With her excitement only mildly marred by her frustration, Zoë sank back into her chair as Shannon prepared to lay down the beat for tracks two and three. After the recording of ‘Delirious’, an argument broke out that ran along very similar lines to the first one, so by the time they played back ‘Run Boy Run’, Louis and Clive had clearly forged some sort of alliance that meant they weren’t going to meddle with the track – at least, not in the presence of the girls.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time the four musicians fitted themselves around the cymbals, amps and drum stands for the journey home. The combination of hunger and exhaustion meant that emotions were running high.

‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Shannon, shooting out at high speed from the parking space. ‘But you can’t diss the guy who’s just taken us on as manager.’

‘I can if he’s wrecking our tunes,’ replied Zoë. She couldn’t believe the drummer was willing to sacrifice their musical integrity in favour of some bolshy hot-shot’s ideas.

‘I agree,’ said Kate, her neck bent at an unnatural angle to avoid the snare drum that was occupying the space where her head should have been. ‘That last version sounded like an early Boyzone number.’

‘Boyzone sold a lot of records,’ yelled Shannon, swerving frighteningly close to the kerb.

‘But not our type of records,’ argued Zoë, concerned that Shannon was focusing on the row and not the road.

‘He’s a decent manager! Look what he’s achieved with other bands.’

‘Decent managers leave the producers to do the producing,’ Kate pointed out as Shannon embarked on an ambitious overtaking manoeuvre.