“That doesn’t explain how he ended up at my cottage.”
“He looked miserable, Dad. And hurt. I felt shitty about what happened. I offered to drive him to a hospital, but it turned out it was just a nasty bump rather than anything sprained or broken. And the next thing, we’re in the car heading north.”
The preamble gnawed at her. The whole time she answered, she actually wanted to scream out a question.
What did you think of the song?
Because just the slightest encouragement from her father would feel like a rainstorm after a drought. Knowing whether he thought the song was important. But would he care that she’d played the instruments? Would he be impressed with the speed at which she’d been able to produce such a solid version?
“Are you and him . . . ?”
Yeah, no rainstorm.
“Jimmy. You’ve never shown any interest in my personal life since the day I was born, even before then. Now is the wrong time and place to start. Let’s separate professional and personal.”
Her father stood and tugged his hand through his hair. With his hands on his hips, he stared at the ground.
The stance reminded her of Jase. He did the same thing when he was frustrated.
“It’s incredibly unprofessional for the production team to hook up with artists that pass through the studio. If the situation were reversed, if we had young women singers in here, how would it look if the production team were hooking up with them?”
“Like Mum was a decade your junior and a backing singer. Don’t come at me with morality. And it wasn’t predatory. I have zero influence over anything because you won’t let me have a say in anything. I can’t make them sound better or worse, I can’t alter their contract with us. And they know you don’t listen to a word I say, so I can’t influence you.”
“You need to end it.”
“Before I respond to that, are you speaking as my father or my boss?”
“Right now, your boss.”
“Fine, boss. Then I will tell you it is none of your business what I do in my personal life as long as nothing I do spills over into the quality of my work with our clients. But seeing you haven’t let me do any actual work with them, it’s not an issue. And do you know what? I’m really proud of that song. It’s the first song Jase has written, and I helped him do it. Nobody on your team even thought to challenge the rest of the band to participate more actively in that process, simply accepting it was primarily Matt with some help from Luke. Second. Did you know Jase played?”
Her father raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. Played. So those guitars you heard on there were him. And third. This is what they are meant to sound like. They’re meant to sound raw. They don’t need the rough edges of their lives polished off them. Think about it. There’s a reason everyone knows the Beastie Boys are from New York. Where they are from is part of who they are. Same for The Beatles. Or Nirvana. Certain bands are meant to carry that with them. You’re polishing their roots out of their story.”
Cerys caught her breath, suddenly aware she’d just yelled at her dad. But shit, in for a penny, in for a pound. “And yes. I’m dating Jase. And I wish you’d just listen to this song instead of getting wound up about how it happened and thinking about what the label wants. If this was a new band off the street you’d never heard of, what would you think of it?”
She wondered what he made of a song about a child who felt abandoned. Did he see that even though she’d never been abused or left without money, she felt just as abandoned by him as Jase did by his family? Tears stung the corners of her eyes as she realised his lyrics hit her differently.
When the song finished, her father opened his eyes and looked at her. “Let’s take this in the order you laid it out. First, you’re right. My team have automatically relied on Matt to lead the band’s songwriting. When you’re focused on the trade-off of getting a record made within a window of time, engaging everybody is often sacrificed to make it work. The band didn’t come properly prepared because the label is in a rush to capitalise on their current success. If we spent time pandering to Jase, they’d be no better than Young Punk, squandering the hours he had booked.”
Cerys sighed. “I get that. But what if doing that only gets you an album that’s eighty percent of what they are capable of?”
“I’m not running a music school here, it’s a production studio. He suddenly gets an urge to write? He needs to step up and say so. I work with what I’ve got. Same with your second point. He plays guitar and wants to play on the album, he needs to talk to his bandmates and just get on with that shit. If the best they can pull off is eighty percent if he does neither of those things, then they have to put it out and see how the market reacts.”
“But isn’t it your job to get the best out of them? To tap into what other people don’t know about them yet? To find a way to bring something new?”
Her father leaned forward. “I don’t know what psychological voodoo you did with him at the cottage, in fact, I’d rather not think of him at the cottage with you at all, but whatever it was, he should have done that before he got here instead of wasting our time. Because throwing the album songs up in the air, adding new ones, waiting while the band learn them—especially if he wants to go back and rerecord shit with his own instrument on it—isn’t possible. It wasn’t your right to lead him to believe he could mess around with my schedule like that. And third, those bands you mentioned? They were all right place, right time. They were all on the cusp of a movement. They defined the sound of a generation and became the most famous for it. Take The Beatles. There were other bands in the Merseybeat, as it was called. Gerry and the Pacemakers, for example. Just as talented. Just as prolific. Haven’t endured on the global stage the same way at all. Just being from a place doesn’t mean success. Those lads in there are from Manchester. They’re already standing on the shoulders of giants, and they know it. Joy Division, Buzzcocks, The Smiths, Happy Mondays, Oasis.”
Cerys stood, the fire in her stomach growing stronger. “But it doesn’t mean they can’t be added to the list of greats. You’re making them good enough, not great. That it doesn’t bother you is driving me nuts. You’re regarded as one of the world’s best producers, but you aren’t acting like it.”
Her father sat down in his chair. “I don’t know what to say to all that.”
“Yes. Well, that isn’t really a surprise seeing you haven’t known what to say to me or do with me since I arrived here. Look. I get it. I’m sorry this has messed up your schedule. I badgered you until you said I could come, but this clearly isn’t going to work out.” Cerys stood and smoothed down her shirt. “I’ll start looking for a job back in the UK and be out of your hair as soon as possible.”
“You don’t get to drop all that on me and just walk out of my office.”
She fiercely bit back on the tears that threatened to fall. “Yes, Jimmy. I do.”
And she needed to get out of there, before she realised that her father not caring she was leaving probably hurt most of all.
“What the fuck,” Jase muttered as his phone rang.