COME HOME, BRYAN VILLIN

UPLOAD: 31/08/2022 (00:00am)

Dear F.U.N.K fans, 

For the last thirty-two years it has been an honour and a privilege to be head writer of this glorious mess we have come to love. I began working here at funk making coffee in the Summer of 1972. By 1974 I was a junior writer. I have worked in every department of our organisation: writing, editing, design, radio, television. I even sold tickets for the infamously misguided F.U.N.K festival in 1996. If you told that twenty-two year-old intern she would be running the place one day, she would’ve called you a fool and then gone home and dreamt of it. I have loved all fifty of my years here and will forever be grateful for the people, the community, the opportunities and the love I have encountered. However, as many of you may have noticed, this past year I have largely withdrawn from the publication leading to much speculation about internal reworkings, disputes and conspiracies. We here at F.U.N.K are a family and that includes our readers, viewers and all other dedicated fans. So, we have decided to address the rumours and set the record straight. As of 01/09/2022 at 00:00am, I will no longer be the head writer at F.U.N.K and after a fifty year career I will be taking my permanent retirement from the music industry. In January I was formally diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. After months of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and multiple surgeries, I have made the autonomous decision to not go on with further treatment. I have lived seventy-two years on this beautiful planet, I wish to spend the time I have left at peace, with close friends, family and my beautiful wife Gloria. I have lived one hell of a life. From my first ever job at the long since folded Rockefeller Flare magazine all through until now. With all of this being said, I have one final piece I wish to share with you all. An article fifty years in the making. I hope it brings you as much pleasure as it did for me. For the very first time on digital or in print, I am finally able to share the first interview I ever did, fifty years ago to this very day. Ironically, it would be the final interview my subject ever gave. It seems only fitting for this to be my final legacy. I made a promise many many years ago and this is how I fulfil it.

Thank you for everything and rock on,

Simone Warrant 

(Head writer of F.U.N.K magazine)

***

It’s August 31st 1972. I was on the cusp of turning twenty-two -years-old and for the last eighteen months I had been little more than a secretary for a man named Jeremy Flint, the director and head writer of Rockefeller Flare magazine — an independent rock magazine. I hadn’t much wanted such a position, having studied journalism to the top of my abilities and spending most of my teen and young adult years deeply embedded in the local music scene. Still, a foot in the door was better than no foot in the door. I had voiced countless ideas to Jeremy over the year or so, even sent him my portfolio and sample pieces. He never seemed to care all that much, always nodding politely and telling me he’d ‘get to them’, though I doubt he ever did. He knew I wanted to be a writer, to interview the biggest stars on the planet and have my silly little opinions matter even if the idea irritated him deeply. Though if I hadn’t been so annoyingly persistent, the strangest yet greatest day of my life may never had happened.

Jeremy had a ‘need to know’ only, top secret tell-all interview booked with a big star that afternoon. I had typed up all his question sheets, tested his recording equipment, picked up his flares from the laundromat and polished his shoes in preparation. At 06:07 that very morning I received a most bizarre and life-changing phone call. Jeremy’s wife had gone into labour and since this was his first baby he rightfully chose to go to the hospital with her. Since I had done all of the preparation for his big interview, — with the star’s name redacted like some comical FBI parody — plus I was one of the fun people in the office who both had my own car, knew where Springhollow was and was awake before 11am, he asked me to go in his stead. I had never interviewed anyone before but he told me ‘Kid, if you want to prove yourself, this is how you do it’. My task was simple: drive to Springhollow, set up the recorder, parrot Jeremy’s questions to the word, to the syllable, thank the star for their time and return to the office with a perfectly captured, ready-to-publish interview and transcript before Jeremy’s return the next day. It all sounded so simple, how could I possibly make a mess of something so simple?

What Jeremy neglected to tell me was the identity of my subject. The name sounds more like folklore than history nowadays but at the time, he might as well have been Jesus’ second coming in velvet. Bryan Villin. I had to interview Bryan freakin’ Villin. Though perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

For anyone unfortunate enough to not have lived through the swinging sixties and slightly less swinging seventies – Bryan Villin was God on a vinyl and sex on legs for eight glittering years. A singer, a guitarist, a lyricist, a poet, a filmmaker, a heartthrob all rolled up into one package. Though all anyone seems to remember these days is what happened after. Less than twenty-four hours after our interview concluded, Bryan Villin disappeared into thin air. I was the last person to see him alive and the last person to speak to him via telephone. I have withheld the interview out of respect for Bryan, his family and all other legal parties involved in this fifty year cold case. Though now with my own time running short, it feels right and appropriate to share with the world the true final testimony of one Bryan Villin. The boy made of shooting stars.

I still pottered about in my beaten up Ford Zephyr my parents got me for my sixteenth birthday that often took four or five times to even start up. I got lost on the ring road into Springhollow. Of course everyone and their mother knew of Springhollow, I’d driven through it and past it countless times. It’s a real shithole or at least it was in 1972. I remember questioning why any star as big as this mystery guest would be summoning us to a crapshoot, back alley wasteland like Springhollow. I was almost an hour late by the time I pulled up to the filthy and forgotten apartment complex. It looked like a spaghetti model held together with superglue, sticky tape and wishful thinking. There was smashed in windows, graffiti of obscenities and shattered glass on the doorstep. I knew if I parked here my car would be on bricks by the time I was done so I parked a few streets over. This must have really been the pits of the town. There was a unique smell of piss and vodka and a thin smog hanging above my head. I checked the address twenty times, maybe more, this was definitely the place. There was no one around yet I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being watched. I heard distant sirens and muffled screams. I clutched my little tape recorder so close to my chest I was worried I’d crush it. The scrawled note Jeremy had given me said to find apartment 21. There was seemingly no one inside the place either. It was almost dead silent with no lock or security on the entrance and no receptionist at the desk of rotting wood. I was instantly struck by sticky carpet and the unmistakable stench of weed and even more piss. I climbed the rickety stairs to the third floor and apartment 21, constantly looking over my shoulder. This place was giving me the creeps. I just felt dirty and out of place. Whoever I was interviewing had better be worth it. 

Apartment 21 was at the end of the corridor. I took a long steadying breath telling myself ‘Come on Si, this is your chance’. I knocked swiftly before stepping back. I heard a loud clunk from inside followed by a small crash against the door.

“Who are you?” A voice I recognised almost instantly said, clearly agitated.

It was Bryan freaking Villin. “Simone Warrant. I’m from Rockefeller Flare. The magazine. Jeremy had a family emergency so he sent me instead to interview you. Are you alright in there?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t let you in.”

“I know I’m a little late, I only got told this morning and I got lost on the ring road.”

“Go away,” his voice hushed with a quiver.

“Look, this is my first ever real interview. I promise I’ll be quick. Jeremy even gave me his questions. If this goes well for me, he might finally give me my promotion and let me write a piece for the magazine.”

“I said go away, little girl.”

It’s never nice learning your God is a whiney and condescending arsehole. “Mr Villin, I haven’t paid my rent in three months. My car barely starts. All my tights are laddered. I need the promotion and for that I need you to let me in.”

There was a pause as I heard two locks unlatch on the other side of the door. “Jeremy sent you?”

“He did. His wife went into labour late last night.” I rummaged through the papers I kept in my small brown leather case until I found the scratchy note he had left on his desk that morning with the address and directions. I slid it under the apartment door. “See, he left this for me.”

The main lock clicked as the door opened slightly.

“Were you followed?”

I shook my head.

He opened the door fully. I had seen him on stage and in photographs but never so close before. Decades from this moment, Bryan’s manager and ‘very close friend/confidant’ will give a eulogy where he describes Bryan having ‘skin like honey’, ‘hair like a bird's nest’ and ‘eyes like a puddle of petrol’. Those words describe him better than I reckon I ever could or at least the version of him everyone had come to love. Under stage lights he looked golden, as if he had been painted head to toe. In his doorway, in the dark he somehow looked grey. That wild mass of curls half-way down his back were knotted to the point of matting and loosely tied back out of his face. His eyes were enveloped in wrinkles and bags like he hadn’t slept in years but when the broken light bulb in the corridor flickered just right the deep blue of the ocean glimmered in them. The only thing that translated between the Bryan I had worshipped and the Bryan I would come to know was that he somehow managed to look like an ethereal God of love and wisdom and a scared little boy telling his mother he had a nightmare at the same time simultaneously. He was a grown man in crushed orange velvet bell bottoms and no shirt but when you caught him in the right light, or the dim lights of this apartment complex, he was a child dressed up in crushed velvet. He invited me into his apartment, readjusting the two deadbolts, the sliding chain and the main lock on the door behind me.

His room was just as gross as the rest of the place. There must have been hundreds of pieces of paper taped to the once bare blue walls. His writing was almost unreadable from what I could only assume were shakes. He was burning incense that smells like rose and sandalwood that for the last fifty years I haven’t even been able to track down. He had pushed the few furnishings he had against the walls. A hardwood round table stacked with a tower of playing cards only missing the very top row. A battered leather sofa that had been picked apart by anxious nails until the spongey, yellow cushions were exposed. There were paintings that had been taken from the walls and turned away so you couldn’t see the art. He had unscrewed the lightbulbs underneath the undusted shades. A pillow and a hand-quilted blanket were stuffed into a corner – I don’t think he had a bedroom. There was the unpleasant waft of soon to be rotted food from the tiny attached kitchen. I couldn’t see or smell a bathroom which may have been for the best. The whole place just looked grim, there wasn’t another word for it. It was the type of flat where you found a body not an international rock star who had apartments and penthouses and holiday homes in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Sydney and Prague. 

“I would offer you a cup of tea but I don’t trust the water in this place.” He gracefully sank onto the floor, crossing his legs.

“What’s wrong with the water?”

“You wouldn’t get it,” he said before inviting me to sit opposite him. 

I loved Bryan Villin as every human being under the age of thirty did, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit I wanted to get out of this apartment as quickly as possible. It was strange how a man as tall, as famous, as larger than life itself as Bryan was did not intimidate me. Perhaps I was a little cockier back in those days, but something about him, the way his voice lilted like a song even when he was just speaking gave me an overwhelming sense of calm.

I set up my recorder on the water-damaged carpet, testing it before I commenced. He sat patiently and silently whilst studying me. I set Jeremy’s questions by my side and my own research folder next to that.

What you are about to read is the unedited and uncensored transcript between myself and Bryan Villin, in print for the first time with exclusive added insights throughout.

SW: So Bryan, thank you for meeting with us today, it’s an honour truly.

BV: An honour? Darling, this is history.

SW: Well, you don’t really do many public interviews anymore so any occasion to speak with you is a very big deal.

BV: I suppose that’ll be your opening question.

SW: What?

BV: You’re going to ask me mocking female voice ‘Bryan, why don’t you give public interviews anymore?’ normal voice* and I’m going to say ‘Well, Simone, I no longer believe I owe my public anything. There was a time where I felt that the masses, the parasites, the zombies, the sycophants deserved my words and my soul and my heart and my mind as transparently and openly without redaction as the human beings in my private life do. I no longer feel they are worthy or deserving, not of my words or of me’. You will ask me to elaborate and I will not.

It was at this exact moment I realised something very unusual was about to unfold. I had read Bryan’s interviews, before he went all recluse on us, he has always skirted around questions but he had never been cruel nor sarcastic, simply clever. He had gotten Jeremy’s opening question correct down to the word and the inflection I was intending to use. I hadn’t noticed the half-smoked joint nestled behind his ear until he offered me a hit.

SW: No, thank you.

BV: You don’t partake?

SW: I do but not when I’m working.

BV: Is that what this is? Work?

SW: Well, I am being paid to do it.

BV: I only smoke when I am working. Got any questions about that?

SW: sheets rustling No, no, I do not. I would actually quite like to talk to you about your music, your history, the future.

BV: But everyone already knows that stuff. You can buy my records, you can read my biographies, you can wait a few years. Don’t you want to ask me something new?

SW: My job is to ask what Jeremy wanted to ask.

BV: Strange, I’d taken you for a maverick. 

SW: Do you consider yourself a maverick?

BV: I consider myself spoilt milk.

SW: Spoilt milk?

BV: Spoilt milk. No, I will not elaborate. 

SW: Right, spoilt milk. cough So your music career started back in 1959 at age fourteen when you started playing in a local blues bar as a backing vocalist.

BV: Wrong.

Shite, I thought. Now I just looked unprofessional. I had humiliated myself and insulted the great Bryan Villin and I’d only been here ten minutes. I needed to respond, any response would’ve probably sufficed except what I actually said.

SW: It’s what my notes say…

BV: My music career started when I was five in the spring of 1950 when I first joined my mother’s church choir. 

SW: I didn’t know you were a choirboy. 

BV: You knew my mother was a singer who ran the church choir.

SW: Yes and your father was the priest.

BV: My father was a monster in a chasuble.

He said it so confidently and bluntly as if it was a metaphor he had rehearsed in his head for when this question undoubtedly came up in an interview one day. There wasn’t any Dad questions on Jeremy’s sheet but it was obvious Bryan wanted to talk about more than his music. I was just the journalist, it’s my job to indulge them.

SW: Do you want to talk about him?

BV: What can you say that Dante didn’t say better in 1321?

SW: You are referring to ‘The Divine Comedy’.

BV: More riveting and righteous than the Bible. You know, when I was a little boy, I would pray on a night that I would get cancer or break both my legs or get abducted from school so then my Father would pay attention to me like he did all the other boys in his parish. 

SW: That sounds horrible.

BV: He was. My mother could’ve been a saint.

SW: ‘Could’ve been?’

BV: My father had quite the temper and she married him anyway, had me anyway, stayed anyway. Such a cowardly woman, don’t you think?

What in the Hell are you even meant to say to that? His eyes had a strange gloss over them I initially misjudged as tears, I think he was just high. He sounded like he needed a shrink, not an interviewer. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for the global multi-millionaire rock god.

SW: I think I should probably get back to the music.

BV: Ah yes, your papers littered with falsehoods and hearsay, go on, read.

SW: Is it true that in 1959, at age fourteen, you regularly sang backing vocals for the acts at a local blues bar?

BV: Del’s. That was the name of the bar. It’s apartments now. Grotty little shithole it was too. Us singer’s would spend more time cleaning smashed glass and trying to wash whiskey out of the carpets than we did actually singing. There were three of us, all local boys. Myself, Terry Carr and…

SW: John Lee. You all went to school together.

BV: We went to the same school numerous years apart. St Anthony’s Grammar. 

SW: Of course.

BV: Next question, ‘how did your parents react when you told them you were going to be a rock and roll star’? Well, my mother cried and cried and cried and prayed over me every night. My father smashed the guitar I had spent all summer working with a local mechanic to earn enough money to buy before I had even learnt to play the thing and told me rock and roll music was the Devil’s work. Would you like to tell me what I did next?

SW: You walked out on your parents, took all your belongings and ran away to London. 

BV: And what did I do once I got to London?

SW: You planned to play on the streets to earn money for lodgings but you were too northern for the locals and ended up sleeping on the sofa of the first person you met who didn’t look at you like a total freak. 

BV: The girl has done her homework, it seems. 

SW: Her name was Maisie Dickinson and she would go on to become the vocalist in your first ever band — Babydoll. 

BV: Alongside?

SW: Edgar Rollins on drums and Larry ‘The Dog’ Hodgkins on bass. You learnt how to play guitar by taking enough cocaine to kill a horse and staying up all night listening to old vinyls until you figured out the notes.

BV: Medically obtained LSD. I didn’t try cocaine until 1964. 

It felt like a school exam going off the rails. He hadn’t moved a muscle except to bring the joint to his lips and blow the smoke past my face. His tone of voice hadn’t shifted once but somehow every time he opened his mouth, his accent had altered slightly. He was reading me like an open book and I was floundering hard. I thought everything would be just fine if I stuck to the questions but he had an answer for everything like he knew exactly what I was going to ask. Like he’d done this interview a thousand times already.

SW: So Babydoll went their separate ways in 1961. Why was that?

BV: Oh come on, Simone, you know this, Jeremy knows this, everyone who reads this interview knows this.

SW: I’m just following orders.

BV: Edgar got Maisie pregnant, they had a huge barney, he stormed off and quit and ended up as a bricklayer at his dad’s business in Slough, she went home to Liverpool to raise the kid with her Mam. Dog and I started looking for new members. 

SW: And formed Critter’s Corner in the winter of 1962.

BV: I never did like that band name. I proposed so many better ones — Reign, Less Than Human, Bryan and the Rejects, they hated all of them.

SW: Got you a record deal.

BV: I suppose. I didn’t really have to do all that much. I just had to look hot, play my guitar, sing my little choruses and blow a few producers.

SW: pause I’m sorry, did you just say you blew producers for a record deal?

BV: Relax, Simone, I’m messing with you. 

SW: awkward laughter Of course.

BV: I would’ve done though. If we needed to. But we had it all worked out by the new four of us. I was the looks, Dog was the brains, Tiny Tommy Tate was the lyricist even though he was a fucking drummer and Harold gave us a nice round number. Didn’t really need a second guitarist but we looked a bit naff just the three of us. Never really got on though.

SW: How so?

BV: Harold was a Rimbad reading, Sjöström watching, lacrosse playing art school reject who was so weedy he couldn’t hold his own guitar. Dog was called Dog for a reason, he bites when intimidated. They used to throw chairs at each other, whole pots of coffee, they had a full blown scrap in a car park outside a dive bar in Glasgow once. Tiny and I just stayed by the van watching them beat each other bloody three minutes before our set. Tiny was alright when he was on planet earth. He had two faces Tiny, the normal fun one and the deranged maniac bouncing off the walls punching security in the face and you never knew which Tiny you were going to get, the mad fucker.

It was impossible not to be seduced by the tales. These epic rock and roll myths told with a voice smoother than butter between puff clouds of weed were better than anything I ever could have anticipated. I had to shake myself awake and return to my notes before I let him begin another wonderful, interesting, irrelevant tangent.

SW: You released your first two studio albums ‘Forget About The Stranger’ and ‘Backseat’ both the following year, failing to chart, ultimately seeing you dropped from the label and back at square one.

BV: Because they were shite.

SW: I wouldn’t say they were ‘shite’, I quite like them.

BV: No, you don’t. They were shite. Dog was my mate and I didn’t want to throw him under the bus but those records were his ideas, his management, his world, his everything. So I walked away and formed, go on you know this one.

SW: Bryan Villin and The Villains.

BV: Bryan Villin and The Villains. Still shite but significantly less shite.

SW: Debut album ‘Mythology of Madness’ peaked at number twenty-one, sophomore effort ‘Hint of it’ at number thirteen and then your third and final album ‘No Longer Lily’ broke the top ten peaking at number four. 

BV: We were on a roll until that silly little Lily kicked it. But if a member dies mid-tour and you still can’t get to number one then maybe you never will. 

SW: Would you be able to tell us a little bit about Lily Arme? She was the last member to join The Villains, we hadn’t really seen any female drummers before her and still not many since. Plus there were all of the rumours.

BV: What rumours?

SW: The rumours.

BV: I don’t know about any rumours.

SW: That you and Lily were, you know the rumours.

BV: I most certainly do not. Enlighten me.

SW: The rumours that you and Lily Arme were romantically involved. More specifically that you were engaged.

I remember distinctly how his back stiffened as he sniffed and ran his hands through his hair, blunt still balanced between his fingertips.I had struck a nerve with my brief deviation from Jeremy’s gospel. He knew what I was talking about, I knew he knew, he just wanted me to be the one to say it. He was testing me, he was trying to see how badly I wanted this before deciding how much effort he was willing to waste on a nobody like me. He wanted to see how far I would go.

BV: Ah, so I see. What a strange rumour. 

SW: Still, losing her must have been quite a blow.

BV: Not really. In our line of work, people die all the time. 

SW: You dedicated a whole album to a girl you didn’t care about?

BV: Never said I didn’t care about her, I cared about her very deeply but Lily and heroin were the Romeo and Juliet of 1966. We got a new drummer, I got a new…friend. We all moved on with our lives.

SW: Where were you when you found out that she had passed?

BV: You were a fan, where were you?

SW: I was at home, reading and it came up on the news.

BV: What were you reading?

SW: I don’t remember.

BV: You don’t seem the Brontë sort. More the de Beauvoir sort, the Plath sort.

SW: I think it was ‘The Bell Jar’.

BV: You think it was ‘The Bell Jar’ or it was ‘The Bell Jar’.

SW: It was ‘The Bell Jar’. Where were you when you found out?

BV: In bed next to her, begging her to wake up.

Every other answer he gave me blindsided me in a new way. He found her, he was there. When I had heard that Lily Arme was dead, I ran to my bedroom and sobbed into my pillow whilst playing the band’s record. He was right there, he saw her, felt her, he was probably holding her. His lips faltered into a twisted idea of a half-smirk before dropping suddenly as he sighed heavily. His eyes briefly and for the first time left my face as he became very interested in the manky carpet.

SW: I’m so sorry, I didn’t kn-

BV: Of course you didn’t know. No one knew, management thought it would look suspicious. They took me away from the place and checked me into a hotel and called an ambulance after a few hours so I had some deniability.

SW: That’s awful.

BV: That’s music. Honesty gets as honest does. You stay honest with me, I’ll stay honest with you. What’s your next question? Get your little sheet.

SW: rustling paper You next moved on to a solo venture…

BV: And look where it’s gotten me. Seven UK top ten singles, three number ones, two number ones across the pond. Five albums debuting at…

SW: Six, three, two, one, one and one.

BV: Just had to drop the deadweight. The Harolds and Tinys and Dogs and Lilys. It was that easy.

SW: We would like to know a little bit more about your process.

BV: What do you want to know, Simone Warrant? Tell me that.

I wanted to know how he got his hair so shiny. What Lily’s final words to him were. If it’s true there was a satanic prayer when his latest album is played at a slower speed. What brand he smoked and if he thought it made a difference. I wanted to know if he had any secret love children out there in the world.

SW: I would like to know a little bit more about your process.

BV: I wake up in a pile of my own vomit, write down the first thought that comes into my head, keep them all in my coat pocket and when I need songs I tip them all out and see what rhymes. 

SW: Really?

BV: Christ on a bike, you’re gullible. An idea comes to me when it comes to me and I sit with it and make it work. I have a thousand ideas every day and only one will ever be heard by the zombies. The rest are just for me. Now, ask me a real question. Ask me about sex or politics or people or lava lamps. I will not have my final words to a dying world be this drivel.

SW: Final words? Are you planning on an early retirement?

BV: Some may say.

SW: But you only recently confirmed that you were already working on a new project.

BV: Did I?

SW: Sources close to you did.

BV: What sources?

SW: I don’t know.

BV: But not me.

SW: Evidently not.

BV: Always check your sources, Simone, that is rule number one.

There was real anger in his voice. His knuckles were whitening and his joint had fizzled out. I should’ve tried to regain control of the situation, paused the tape to let him calm down before coming back but I wasn’t thinking. I was watching my idol turn psycho in front of me. I matched his intensity instead, hoping I could get through to him that way.

SW: Well, I’ve never done this before and you’re actually making it quite difficult so if you could just answer the questions, I would really appreciate it. Are you quitting the industry, Bryan Villin?

BV: Quitting? No. Leaving? Yes.

SW: See, what does that even mean?

BV: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

SW: Try me.

BV: Someone is going to kill me. Tomorrow. Right here in this apartment. 

Looking back, in 20/20 hindsight, I never should’ve left that apartment. I should’ve believed him. Stayed with him. I should’ve stayed so he wasn’t scared and alone regardless if his prophecy was true or not. I had only just met him but he had shared with me this ultimate vulnerability and I know there was probably very little I could’ve done to stop whatever happened in the next twenty-four hours after our conversation but it is the question that keeps me up at night even fifty years later. If I had stayed, would Bryan still be here? I remember when he first mentioned his latest paranoia, I felt all the air get sucked out of my lungs and a chill ran through my whole body as I bolted up right. I reached over to turn off the tape and talk to him in private but he lightly and tenderly grabbed my hand and shook his head.

SW: Mr Villin, this isn’t funny.

BV: Do you see me laughing? This isn’t a joke? This will be my final interview to the world. Don’t you want to make it good? That’s why I’m telling you all this pointless shit, my time is up, I don’t get another chance.

SW: I can’t say that I believe you.

BV: You don’t have to believe me, I believe me.

SW: So what do you want me to do?

BV: Play pretend. Take your question sheets and use them to feed the bug that crawled up the stick in your arse. Ask me something that matters before it’s too late. This is it, this is the midnight of my life. Make it count, Mrs Warrant.

SW: Miss.

BV: You’re not married?

SW: I’m twenty-two. I’m focusing on my career.

BV: Oh, so you’re a dyke.

SW: Excuse me?

BV: There’s nothing wrong with it. I consider myself a bit of a lesbian.

I already hated where this leg of the conversation was going. This was 1972, we were wading into conversational waters often left uncharted with no script to go off. My stomach dropped at first but that playful glint had returned to his eye and I could tell by how his body leaned in that I had reeled him back in on my hook. There was more to be squeezed out of him here today.

SW: Really now?

BV: I love women. I love girls. And men. And boys. And men who are girls and boys who are women. 

SW: Jeremy wanted me to ask about the recent dating rumours concerning yourself and supermodel America Jones. 

BV: America is a very lovely lady but no, her feelings are unrequited. I want to know about your love life.

SW: I don’t think that’s how this works.

BV: I will answer your questions if you answer my questions. You want to know about my romantic life, you must tell me all about yours.

SW: Is that a promise?

BV: Choirboy’s honour. 

SW: laugh I am a lesbian. I very very very recently parted ways with a very dear woman named Belle.

BV: How recent is recent?

SW: Last night.

BV: What happened?

SW: She was studying over here and it was time for her to go home and we met up one last time just to get some closure and she lands back in France any minute now.

BV: Did you get a goodbye shag?

SW: That is a highly inappropriate question.

BV: But did you?

SW: A lady never tells.

BV: Please, you’re no lady.

SW: Are you going to answer a question from me now?

BV: From you or from your master?

I folded the question sheet into quarters, settling it in the breast pocket of my pink blouse.

SW: From me.

BV: I promised, didn’t I?

SW: Are you in a relationship right now?

BV: A gentleman never tells.

SW: You’re no gentleman.

BV: I am entwined with another person.

SW: Guy or girl?

BV: Such black and white thinking, Simone, I expected better.

SW: Girl who’s a boy or boy who’s a girl?

BV: To me she’s a woman. She’s getting a surgery soon then everyone else will see her the way I do.

SW: That’s beautiful.

BV: She is.

SW: How long have you been seeing her?

BV: Eight months or so but we’ve known each other since I first moved here. I still kick myself for not noticing how beautiful she was until it’s too late to marry her.

SW: Right because you’re dying or whatever.

BV: Or whatever.

SW: Do you love her?

BV: I am not sure I am capable of replicating the warmth of infatuation I was overcome by when with Lily. But Kristin makes my heart hurt a little less. If Lily took me apart it’s Kristin that’s putting me back together. 

SW: Where is your lover today? Is she in Springhollow with you?

BV: Well, now that's a completely new line of questioning and I do believe it is my turn.

SW: Go on then.

BV: Have you ever touched yourself whilst one of my records plays.

SW: That's very invasive. 

BV: That’s a yes.

SW: I didn't say yes.

BV: You didn't say no. Which song was it?

SW: No, that's not your question, ask something else.

BV: You already answered. You're bright pink. You've touched yourself to my voice. You, a lesbian, have masturbated to my music.

When Bryan Villin smiled the whole world glowed. He was so beautiful when he smiled. He was giggling, tucking his hair behind his ear. I all of a sudden felt as if I was chatting with a dear old friend. It was comfortable, nice, inviting, nothing like the raging and resentful pessimist he had been not twenty minutes ago. It was about a sunnerving as it was fascinating. We’d gotten into a swing with this back and forth and I was not going to sabotage myself now.

SW: Is it my turn now?

BV: Yes you may ask your question now.

SW: Where is this Kristin?

BV: She likes to keep a day job. I could easily provide for both of us with every luxury she could ever ask for but she missed the normalcy of work. She has a part time job at a bookshop back in London. The owner lets her wear her tights under her trousers so she still feels like herself. I had to come to Springhollow alone. That's what they told me.

SW: What who told you?

BV: My assailant. 

SW: Wait, you've actually spoken to the person who is going to kill you?

BV: That's a new line of questioning.

He laughed again but it was shallow, sombre. For the first time all day I actually almost believed him.

SW: Is this a real threat?

BV: It's my turn, Simone. You must respect the rules of the game. 

SW: Alright.

BV: Simone, are you a religious woman?

SW: Can't say I am, no. 

BV: Were you?

SW: Sure when I was little my parents would make me go to church services and stuff.

BV: But you still hold some belief?

SW: I think you should be a good person because you want to be a good person, not because some dusty old book tells you to. A lot of Christians aren't good people.

BV: People like my father?

SW: I guess.

BV: Do you still talk to your parents?

SW: Do you talk to yours?

BV: I bought mine a Ferrari, but we don't talk.

SW: I'm the same. Well, minus the Ferrari. 

BV: What happened between you?

SW: My mam wanted me to settle down, ready myself for motherhood and the sort. My dad left when I was still pretty young so it was just me and her. When I told her about myself, she wasn't very happy and she told me she wasn't my mother anymore and not to come back and I never have and that’s fine.

It was shocking how easily that slipped out. The parts of myself I normally kept bricked up away in my mind were being chipped into so easily. I don’t know how he was doing it, it was like all my defences I’d ever had were suddenly crumbling away to dust.

BV: You deserve better. 

SW: I'm doing just fine. I'm interviewing Bryan Villin. 

BV: It's your turn.

SW: Who do you think is going to kill you? Why do you think that? Why are you in Springhollow? Just why?

BV: What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?

SW: Man.

BV: Why is a raven like a writing desk?

SW: Because they both produce few notes.

BV: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

SW: A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

BV: I don't know who is going to kill me. They're not human. They don't have a face or a name. But they told me they're going to do it. Tomorrow. They said it had to be here. I don't know why here. I don't know why this place. But it's what they want. 

SW: And you believe them?

BV: They have been with me since I was very small. Always just a few feet behind me, close enough to keep an eye, far enough away not to interfere. Until now it seems. 

SW: How are they going to do it?

BV: I haven't figured that out yet. They've never been cruel so hopefully quick, something that doesn't leave too many scars on my corpse. I don't want to die like that. It's not what I pictured for myself. I want to die with some dignity and beauty and poetry not some mess in a shitty apartment not like Lily or any of the others or…

He stopped quite abruptly, gazing at nothing. His lips quivered as if he had more to say but couldn't find the words to do so. I had to pull him back, not as interviewer and interviewee but as a human being watching another human being wain in front of her eyes.

SW: ‘Insult To Injury'. That's the song I touched myself to when I was fifteen years old. 

BV: You masturbated to a song about Nikita Khrushchev?

SW: That's what that song’s about? 

BV: Who else would it be about?

SW: Do you have more weed?

BV: What a silly question.

SW: Do you?

BV: Of fucking course I do.

Unprofessional as this may have been, even by the standards of 1972, I do not regret getting high with Bryan Villin. He no longer felt so fictional. We spoke almost like friends and so it only seemed fair to join him in his vices as much as I did his company. We smoked through almost all he had in near total silence apart from our intermittent giggles. 

SW: You smoke a lot, huh?

BV: It’s less destructive than many of my other loves.

SW: Like coke?

BV: The sixties were a very volatile time. It was there, people were literally shoving it in my face so it only made sense to do what was being asked of me. It’s a powerful little substance, cocaine. I’d go whole weeks where I could barely remember my own name and wake up somewhere fucking random with someone fucking random and everyone just played it off as normal because we all did it. No, I don’t touch that shit anymore. Just hard booze and marijuana from now on I think.

SW: That’s probably smart. I suppose it comes with the whole rock and roller thing. 

BV: I never wanted to be a rockstar. 

SW: No?

BV: Remember when I said I spent a summer interning with a local mechanic? 

SW: Is that what you wanted to be? Bryan Villin the mechanic?

BV: He knew I was dropping out of school and that my Dad and I didn’t really get on all that much and he offered me proper work because I loved…I love fixing things and figuring out how things works and what makes the wheels turn, you know? I never really thought of myself becoming this. I still don’t really quite consider myself as anything more than a choirboy from up North who just wanted to fix things. 

SW: I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

BV: Really?

SW: It’s not the coolest profession but I always really liked music. My Dad would always have music on and when he left he left his record player and I took it into my room and I’d play all his records that he had and I kept a little book where I wrote all my thoughts down about all the songs. This is my chance now to do it for real. If Jeremy likes this interview, if they publish it, that’s my whole career set. Bryan Villin’s final interview, this is massive.

BV: Where’s your dream publication?

SW: I’m going to be the head writer at F.U.N.K one day.

BV: F.U.N.K? Aiming for the sky there, aren’t you?

SW: It’s a pipedream but…

BV: No, no, no, no, no such thing. If you can dream it, you can do it. I know a couple of guys at F.U.N.K, I could put in a good word.

SW: I appreciate the offer but if I’m going to do this, I want to do it for myself because I’ve earned it.

BV: Then at least let me give you the greatest interview the world will ever see. Ask me anything. Any-fuckin-thing.

SW: Anything?

BV: Anything.

SW: What’s the wildest thing you did whilst on cocaine?

BV: Died for three minutes.

Another little nugget I thought was just part of the folklore, the culture, the mystique that built Bryan Villin.

SW: What was dying like?

BV: Exhilarating.

SW: What was coming back like?

BV: Disappointing.

SW: What do you hate the most about yourself?

BV: Physically or spiritually?

SW: Both.

BV: I hate how thin I am. I can’t gain weight or muscle, I’ve tried it all. 

SW: Spiritually?

BV: I hate that I haven’t cried in a year. 

SW: Why Springhollow?

BV: It’s where the dead and undead fuck like everyone else. There’s no greater pleasure than to die halfway to Hell. I’ve always wanted to come here, to record here, mingle amongst the freaks and creeps, didn’t ever expect to become one of them.

SW: Who is going to kill you?

BV: The things that follow me. They stand at the end of my bed and around my door and through my windows and they speak to me and tell me things and no one else can see them but I can and they’ve always been there longer than I can remember. Like imaginary friends that never go away.

SW: Describe them.

BV: I can’t.

SW: Why not?

BV: They don’t want me to.

SW: Why are they going to kill you?

BV: They say it’s my time and everyone has a time when they have to go.

SW: Do you believe they’re real? 

BV: Yes.

SW: They’re not just in your head?

BV: No.

The room felt almost cold all of a sudden. I don’t know which question specifically that made him turn or which response made me turn but suddenly there were no more jokes, no more laughter. I could sense the rage in him once again and a strange hollowness in myself like I was trying to talk someone off a bridge who didn’t want to come down even though they had so much more to live for. I barely knew the guy and I found myself enraged at how resigned he seemed to be to a fate so outlandish. Maybe that meant I cared a lot more than I thought I did, I don’t know.

SW: Are you tragic, Bryan?

BV: I am a fucking masterpiece. 

SW: Is anything about you real? Any of it? Any of this?

BV: My hair and my teeth.

SW: But Bryan Villin isn’t real, is he?

BV: He’s about as real as Jesus Christ. If you want him to be real, he’s real, if you don’t want him to be real then he ain’t.

SW: If you could step out of your own body right now, what would you do?

BV: I’d run down the street naked.

SW: Why?

BV: Because I can do whatever the fuck I want.

SW: Why?

BV: Because I am Bryan fucking Villin, who the fuck are you?

SW: I’m Simone Warrant.

BV: And who the fuck is that?

SW: It’s me and I’m real. You haven't given me a straight answer all day.

BV: Yes I have. 

SW: Yes or no.

BV: To what?

SW: Everything.

BV: Alright.

SW: Did your dad beat you?

BV: Yes.

SW: Did you love Lily Arme?

BV: Yes.

SW: Was your 1969 cocaine overdose deliberate?

BV: No.

SW: Do you hate yourself?

BV: Yes.

SW: Are you scared of dying?

BV: No.

SW: Then what are you afraid of, Bryan Villin?

BV: Not dying. My body is going to die, my mind is going to die, but bits of me are going to be immortal because of kids like you who are going to make sure I never fucking die. Fifty years from now someone is going to be reading this interview and thinking I was some troubled soul, some rock and roll martyr who went off the deep end. You are humiliating me by immortalising me. I don’t want to be immortal. I want to be forgotten, it is the nature of humanity to be forgotten. I deserve to be forgotten just like everyone else. I don’t want to live forever.

SW: Is that why you’re going to kill yourself tomorrow?

BV: I am not going to kill myself. I want that on tape, in writing, in your fucking mind. I am not going to kill myself. 

SW: I don’t believe you and I don’t think you do either.

BV: Yes or no. Have you ever been in love?

SW: No.

BV: Are you always the smartest person in the room?

SW: Yes.

BV: Did you chase after your daddy when he walked out?

SW: Yes.

BV: Do you really think you’ll be head writer at F.U.N.K one day?

SW: No. 

BV: And that’s why you’ll never will be. 

That stung. I don’t know what happened. One moment he was fine, more than fine and the next he was red in the face, yelling at me. It hurt deeply to hear him say those things. It made my soul scream.

SW: Are you done?

BV: What belongs to you but everyone else uses it?

SW: Your name.

BV: What’s my name?

SW: Bryan Villin.

BV: What’s my name?

SW: Todd Brian Shaw. 

BV: You could be the last person to ever see me alive. The last person to ever speak to me.

SW: Then what are your final worlds, Todd Brian Bryan Villin Shaw, son of God?

BV: If I could go back to the day I was born, I would change every single choice I have ever made.

SW: Every choice?

BV: Every fucking one.

SW: Thank you for your time, Mr Villin.

BV: Miss Warrant, what do you get from a pampered cow?

SW: Spoilt milk.

Bryan and I didn’t exchange another word. I killed the recorder, shook his hand, packed up my things and left. He locked his million locks behind his front door and began to weep hysterically, punching the ground. For a moment I considered banging on the door until he let me in so I could apologise for upsetting him and sit with him until he was stable again.

 I sat in my car for the next four hours not moving, not driving, not even thinking whilst the weed wore off. I just wanted to sleep and never think about Bryan Villin again. But I knew that was impossible. WE had shared this mental moment of insanity. A healthy dose of folie a deux. There hasn’t been a day since where I haven’t thought about Bryan Villin. I made it home late into the night. I stopped by the office to leave the tapes on Jeremy’s desk as he requested. I had no idea where he would even start on comprehending all of that. I didn’t even make it to bed, I slept on my couch.

Bryan Villin got me fired from my first ever job. Jeremy called me the next day, I’d slept through my alarm and deep into the afternoon, missing my shift completely. He referred to the interview as ‘unprofessional, unusable garbage’, called Bryan a ‘a junkie hippie cunt with a brain full of stardust’ and me ‘an incompetent, arrogant, destructive little dyke bitch’. I hung up the phone. I didn’t give a fuck anymore. If all interviews were like Bryan’s, I wouldn’t have lasted in the industry anyway and working for a man like Jeremy was no easy task when he wasn’t up to his ears in newborn nappies.

It was precisely three minutes after my dismissal that I got a call from the late, great, Reg Nilsson, the head writer and acting manager of F.U.N.K magazine at the time. He had heard about my recent misfortune and offered me a minimum wage, part-time effort in his mail room with travel costs paid in advance. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, he was very insistent I had come highly recommended. It was a relief to know that Bryan Villin didn’t hate me. Rather he used one of his final moments to save my career and set me up for life, a girl he barely knew who had only succeeded in pissing him off.

All good music historians know what happened next. Hell, anyone alive at the time knows what happened next. No one heard from him or saw him for the next week. Eventually his manager tracked down his car and broke into that apartment. Everything was exactly as it had been the day I saw him. They made me look at a bunch of pictures of it.I handed my tapes over to the police. It took almost a decade to get them back. I didn’t want to hand them over. I didn’t want them to think that Bryan was crazy. I know all signs pointed to some tragic suicide but I knew it wasn’t true, deep down in my gut that didn’t feel right. He was scared, genuinely and humanly scared of something coming after him. Bryan wasn’t there. Bryan wasn’t anywhere.

No one has publicly come forward with information or even so much as a sighting of him in exactly fifty years. No one knows where he went, what he did, if he died, if he didn’t. He didn’t seem to me like a man who wanted to die despite what the press said. Jeremy made sure I was erased from the narrative but Bryan Villin was my friend. I owe Bryan Villin everything. Everything I have now, I have because of Bryan. And I’m going to die never knowing what happened to my friend. If it was quick and painless. 

Some nights I have this bizarre dream that I am walking in Springhollow and I look across the road and he’s there unchanged from 1972 and he stops and waves and smiles at me before walking away and I can never quite catch up to him.

Bryan, it is now me living on borrowed time and I am running out of it. I don’t know how I know but I know you’re still alive, out there somewhere I don’t know where or how. I hope you see this, I hope you know that I never forgot you nevermind how badly you wanted me to. I kept you with me. Bryan, if you see this, you don’t have to come back, you don’t have to show yourself to the world. But for an old friend, in ill health, a ‘hello’ wouldn’t kill you.