fans: lasers and lipstick are not the markers of a brilliant career. Bah!”
He smacks the paper down on the table, splashing your tea, and finishes his whiskey-laced coffee. One of the staff is at his elbow in a moment with the pot, and—always polite—he remembers to thank her. It’s as reflexive as the thanks he offers when you pass him the silver flask kept warm inside your gaudy velvet waistcoat.
You could refuse. But that wouldn’t stop him drinking, and he’d be even worse in a rage. You pass him the whipped cream too.
At least it’s calories.
“Fuck ’em,” you say. The reek of alcohol from his coffee stings your nostrils. You pick a flake of skin beside your nail.
These bodies. There’s always something going wrong. Exile is a kind word for death sentence. Nobody likes spilling the blood of a god if they can help it.
Bad precedent.
“You should see what they say about your sax, sweetheart.” He finger-flicks the paper away. “Gods rot it, Hobnoblin. I want to go home.”
He doesn’t mean England. You don’t mean England either when you say, softly, “Yeah,” and reach over and pat his hand.
He shakes it off, though, and jerks his head side to side, sniffing. “Well, as long as we’re stuck here, maybe we can bust things up a little. Let in some damned light and air.”
It never worked on the Aesir, but you don’t say that. It won’t help either of you to remind him that he provoked the exile he mourns. Loki has never been any good at all at keeping his head down.
You’re a little too good at it. That’s one of the reasons why you love him: when the Aesir came, Loki was the one who would not be silenced, who forced them to treat with him as an equal.
For a time.
But that’s a second thing you can’t say. And the third one you don’t tell him is that, despite the coffee mug, his fingers are chill.
Tracks: Would you rather talk about the music? How much of the process is collaborative?
Loki: Oh, let’s. And—frankly—a lot! I mean, the songs are mine, but the arrangements, that’s all of us. And that’s most of what makes it work. The Hobnoblin [Robbin “Hobnoblin” Just is Loki’s saxophone player—Ed.] has a great ear for layering sounds. (Loki laughs and takes a drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke while he finishes the thought.) And a good bass player, that holds the whole thing together. We hired this chick you’re gonna love. (Smirking.) Oh, it’s all collaboration. I’m pretending modesty this week. I just write the pretty words and play a little lousy guitar.[5]
He drifts on the music sometimes. The sound system in the estate in Kent is extraordinary, and sometimes you’ll walk out on the patio and find Loki in jeans and a T-shirt, arms spread wide, head lolled back, letting the music lift him like a thermal lifts a hawk.
It’s not his own stuff he plays to go there. As often as not, it’s not even rock. Beethoven; Mozart; Charlie Parker; Thelonious Monk; Bessie Smith; Big Mama Thornton; Joni Mitchell; Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
You won’t disturb him while he’s listening.
But sometimes you’ll sit at the breakfast table and watch.
Word gets around.
I knew when I arranged the interview that Martin Blandsford—Loki, to his young fans—would rather be interviewed at home. He doesn’t go out much. He’s been assaulted by feral packs of adolescent maenads one time too many, and says self-deprecatingly that it’s in the interest of everyone’s safety if he stays home with his slippers on.
Not that he was wearing slippers when I arrived. His bare knobby feet looked cold on the tile floor of his half-furnished house, and his white summer-weight pants were rolled up to show equally knobby ankles. He wore no shirt over his sinewy, hairless chest. His shaggy black hair stuck to itself in streaks of blue and goldenrod.
He’d been painting the upstairs bedroom, he explained.
To this reporter, accustomed to his commanding stage presence—the black leather and platform boots and smeared eyeliner—he seemed younger in person, slight, polite, dangerously thin. But the lack of costume bulk did make him appear even taller. He offered me a glass of wine and a cup of coffee, took one of each himself, and showed me into his den.
The actual interview did not go as smoothly.[6]
Melody Monitor: Do you categorize yourself as feminine?
Loki: Oh, no. I’m très butch. Don’t you think?[7]
The rest of the Barbed Hearts tour is a kind of hell, though