The other Sunday I was about to leave Ed's Diner in Soho, after an American and vanilla shake, which was itself preceded by watching The Nim Project at the Curzon Soho, and before that a run and swim at my gym, and was to be succeeded by an expensive browse round Foyles and a drive home (that's what I call a Sunday morning), anyway, I was about to leave when on came this track...
I had to stay. I was singing the harmonies under my breath as was the lady who had ordered a milk shake without the milk earlier. I wonder...
When they listened to the playback, did they look at each other and know they had crossed the line from being a decent vocal band to the creators and performers of an immortal song? That their lives would never be the same again, and that they had a place in the world? Well, maybe not that last bit. Did they know it was a masterpiece?
There are many occasions when people cross the line from being an ordinary Joe or Susan to being Someone with a Stake. Clifford Stoll describes this process in his classic book The Cuckoo's Egg. I imagine it happened to Joe Strummer and the clash when they holed up in Chelsea for six months composing London Calling. It's like that Robert Johnson Crossroads myth: you make a commitment to something, and if it takes, it changes you.
What I want to know is, does it feel on the inside what it looks like on the outside?
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