Chapter 9:
Too Much Sex and Violence ...Too Soon?
I’m amazed I didn’t have a nervous breakdown. Every day there was so much for me to do, interviews, press decisions, EMI meetings, designing artwork, posters, Euro trips to promote the single in Germany and Spain, where ever. I was taking control of everything in my mad fanatical way, ignoring the others (who were out having a great time living the rockstar life by now remember). I’d made a big thing about the reasons WE managed ourselves, that there was no big Svengali manipulating us, we did the business...but when I look back. You know, if ONLY there HAD have been a Svengali with experience maybe he would have saved me from myself. I needed a Brian Epstein or Peter Grant to save me from my worst excesses.
If I look at how it was all going back then, would I have done things differently? Probably not. Fame and success is like doing the best drugs in the world and you’re so high no one can tell you different. After all it was all working perfectly to plan wasn’t it? In that moment the masterplan had propelled us to being the biggest most talked and written about band in the world.
But...
Should we have held back? Held back with the press, the endless interviews, the bragging about the genius of it all. I can’t blame Magenta - she was doing the best job in the world and what I asked for. At that time I had got so good at trotting out the story I was talking in virtual slogans, talking in headlines every time. They loved it, it was terrific copy. The journalist said hello and I’d talk for an hour in an unbroken stream, so keen was I to not miss a single important step in the story.
Say hello to my Big-Headed Friends...
