Balloon Man

It had been a long tour, in distance if not in time: from the North-Eastern USA to the South, California, the Great Lakes and back again. Now I was wandering past the Empire State Building in the warm November drizzle, hauled Uptown by my feet and my appetite. There was a good falafel place just a block away on 6th Avenue, so I decided to walk over there.

It was great to be back in New York. In those days our band and crew always entered and exited America through this electric city: it makes a wonderful portal, amongst many other things. On arrival I always felt overwhelmed, yet I hated leaving it at the end of the tour. Largely this was the dread of returning home from the euphoria of playing to ecstatic US audiences to face the flat, damp reality of life in England. I was in uncomfortable relationships with several people close to me, myself included. It’s a story I tell myself far too often.

The songs I wrote had never found much of an audience in my native land, so I had to look overseas to make a living as a songwriter. Still, being a nomad or a commuter is nothing new; if you have any kind of success in Britain, America will inevitably want to try a bite of you, if not a whole mouthful. So intercontinental travel is part of the deal. Very much so in my case, as by the mid-1980s it became clear that most of the records I’d made on small labels in the UK wound up being sold in US record stores. Furthermore, American college radio stations were now playing my songs. Yip-a-dang!

Please allow me to introduce myself: I’m an artist and, these days, I spend a great deal of time looking back. As I glide ever closer to the waterfall of eternity, I am downloading my memories to pass on to others, human or artificial, that may survive me, for however brief a time. I write songs, tell stories and draw pictures: art is the only thing I understand in life. Finance, insurance, health-care, politics, warfare, driving, sport and human relationships are baffling to me. I am what is now called “On the Spectrum”. I am impractical, detached and I’m English, but given the right music I’m up there with the angels. I love my wife, my cats and my friends. My special interest is obsolete electric traction, but I won’t bore you with that now.

So late November 1986 sees me completing my third US tour with my backing band the Egyptians and a small road crew. A large maroon bus with a cosy pink interior,has carried us across thousands of miles of autumn America and deposited us once more in New York. We are staying at The Iroquois Hotel on West 44th street with its smell of furniture polish and air-conditioning. Our bus had the same aroma to it. Everything has an antiquated bouquet as Fall tapers into Wintertime.

We’re coming up on Thanksgiving, and the last date of the tour is tonight, in Hoboken. The momentum of touring is addictive and demented and you repeat the same pattern daily: wake on the bus, travel, arrive, play the show, get drunk, fall asleep on the bus. Aside from the show, your responsibilities are few. I like that. As yet there are no cell-phones or laptops, so you are not neurally wired up to the rest of the world: you can be in a bubble, a little pink bubble. Faces and bodies come and go, and mostly they seem to like us, to find us attractive: we’re a novelty to them.

And they are still a novelty to us, also - we find some of them attractive too. Moreover, a major record label is interested in signing us, finally, after 10 years of being on small independent labels.

Yes, it’s almost December, but winter hasn’t begun to bite. It’s rainy, warm and grey - my favourite weather condition. So I find myself on 6th Avenue, around 34th Street, buying a succulent falafel wrapped in a skimpy cape of greaseproof paper. I’m too hungry to think about napkins; my defiantly British teeth are tearing into the Mediterranean alliance of foodstuffs in their flimsy pita bread carapace before I’ve even reached the sidewalk.

It tastes heavenly. The drizzle intensifies into full-on rain as I stride up 6th Avenue. I chomp through the falafel like a bedraggled rodent, leaving my face awash with hummus and tahini. The falafels themselves disappear down my throat along with most of the salad, though a few tomato pips linger around my lips. I must be an odd sight stomping past the hot-dog stands and over 42nd Street, but nobody’s looking my way. I begin to laugh. The mania of the last three weeks touring bubbles up inside me even as the rain soaks my clothes. Everything seems to funnel into me - I feel at the centre of everything. I am a spider and the world is my web. At the same time I know that I have no real control over anything, myself included.

I also have no napkins. Turning right at Bryant Park, I’m back on West 44th, heading for the hotel, my clothing drenched and the relics of my recent meal smeared all around my mouth. In the lobby I run into Mr Spools, our front-of-house sound man. He is a laconic Finlander. He sees the wreckage on my face and comments:

“What happened to you, Robyn? You been in an accident?”

Without really thinking, I reply: “Ah, Mr Spools - Balloon Man got me.”

“Well, then maybe he will get me, too.” He pulls a banana out from his briefcase and waves it in the air as if it was a toy gun: “But I’m ready for him!”

*

Two months later, back in the UK, I’m on the ferry from Yarmouth, Isle of Wight to Lymington Pier on the mainland of the English Coast. I often stay by myself on the Island when I want to write songs or do some painting. There’s nobody around outside of the holiday season, just a few old people and me. They move slowly through the deserted streets, but the shops stay open to sell their stale, pricey goods to these captive inhabitants. I like the solitude.

Meanwhile, my record deal with a US label is crystallising across the Atlantic, and I’m brooding over a new clutch of songs which I plan to record for my “major” debut. Over the ocean, in New York and beyond, I have momentum; here in late January southern England I feel becalmed. Still, once I’m in the kitchen of an empty holiday home with my guitar and a friendly table, I forget everything and everyone: I simply let the songs come to me, just as the big black crows in the backyard come to whatever I leave out in the cold for them.

Now, on the ferry, I’m sitting with a coffee and my notebook, watching the Island recede across the maritime estuary known as the Solent. The New York Falafel Incident flashes into my mind: “Balloon Man got me”, I had commented. Hmmm… what had I been thinking?

The ferry gets bumpy in mid-Solent and tiny ripples spread across my coffee. In my head, the falafel in pita bread morphs into a bouncing, rubbery sphere, cheeky and cheerful, that I picture accosting me on 6th Avenue: it’s Balloon Man! That would explain how that gunk got all over my face, which so amused Mr Spools. This particular bouncing sphere explodes, of course - let’s call him Bruce: but there could easily be more of them - and in my mind’s eye suddenly there are more, many more, clustering on 6th & 44th in Bryant Park! I picture myself switching on the TV in my bedroom upstairs. Not that I personally watch the news in real life: but then again, the narrator doesn’t have to be me. She could be a lawyer, doctor, librarian - anyone toiling in the canyons of Manhattan. So there she sits, home from work still in her mackintosh, maybe cradling some deli food that she’s brought back to her minuscule mid-town apartment. She activates the television and: NEWSFLASH! A rash of suicidal spheres has invaded New York City, and they’re jumping into oblivion from the top of the Empire State Building.

By the time the ferry docks at Lymington Pier I’ve written the Balloon Man saga down in my notebook as a song lyric. The narrator in my head being female makes me think that, once I’ve put a tune to it, this one might be suitable for the Bangles, the LA-based all-girl pop quartet. After all, they’d had a minor hit with their version of “Going Down To Liverpool” by my old Soft Boys colleague Kimberley Rew: so perhaps they’d like to record one of mine?

*

In the end I don’t know if the little reel of 1/4” tape containing a rough mix of “Balloon Man” ever did reach the Bangles. The Egyptians and I recorded it along with some other new songs in the summer of 1987, but we had no thoughts of releasing it: it seemed too jaunty, too silly. However, the folks at my new record label A&M loved it, and insisted that we put it on the forthcoming album, A Globe of Frogs.

Furthermore they made it our first single, which duly had a momentum of its own, and got a massive amount of radio play. To date, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to having a hit record.

For a long time I hated “Balloon Man” as it seemed like a trivial novelty song which I felt embarrassed to have as my signature tune. These days I’ve made peace with it - the audience always enjoy hearing it so it’s a mood-enhancer. And I owe it all to that falafel…

You can listen to/ see the film clip for “Balloon Man” here.