Superyachts seek safe havens. Property portfolios dissolve. Lawyers are engaged, accountants contracted. Politicians confect plausible denials over ostentatious donations. Tory party co-chairman Ben Elliot deletes online boasts of his company’s “15 years’ experience providing luxury lifestyle management services to Russia’s elite and corporate members”. It seems there were oligarchs everywhere, all along. We’ve been living in an oligarchy, and no one knew, except all the silenced journalists and stifled inquiries that tried to tell us.
Six years ago, after meeting him at a urinal, I briefly befriended the now penitent oligarch Roman Abramovich. Ten songs into a brilliant set by Americana legends the Long Ryders at Under the Bridge, the venue attached to the football ground Abramovich owned, I dashed to the gents, just after Ivory Tower and during The Light Gets in the Way, my prostate gland and my enthusiasm for plangent country rock in mortal combat.
“That Ivory Tower song is so good. We do live in an Ivory Tower,” the urinating oligarch next to me moaned drunkenly in an anglicised Russian accent, “And an Ivory Tower can fall down, any time, my friend! Fantasticheskiy!” And with that, the edified oligarch began to weep hot tears that splashed down into the urinal bowl, diluting the champagne-flavoured micturate his tiny penis had squirted weakly there. I am not a fan of football, kleptocracies or smelting. I did not know I was being addressed by the oligarch, and newly converted Long Ryders fan, Roman Abramovich.
“I agree,” I said, innocently. “The Long Ryders work within the country rock genre, I suppose, but they invest it with levels of real tenderness, insight and originality, magically greater than the sum of its parts.” “You are an intellectual, my fat companion. A shoe-shine boy of the elite. You overanalyse,” said my new oligarch friend, suddenly stabilising. “I never knew this group before, but the sound is Clash, but on a farm! Makes Robbie Williams seem shit.”
“Have you seen Robbie Williams live?” I asked politely, zipping up my flies, and wondering how a Russian Robbie Williams fan had found his way into a reunion show by some not well-known 80s alternative country pioneers. “Williams played the New Year’s Eve party I threw for Vladimir Putin two years ago. Then he writes an offensive song obviously about me and the loans-for-shares privatisation programme: ‘It takes a certain kind of man with a certain reputation to alleviate the cash from a whole entire nation.’ Happy to take my money though, eh? Asshole! I should sue him. Like Catherine Belton and HarperCollins in the future. At least I was never in Take That!”
Now I was confused. “You threw a party for Putin? Who are you?” Without washing his hands, my oligarch companion clasped my face in his palms. “You do not know who I am? Ha! Fantasticheskiy!” And then he kissed each of my cheeks in turn. “Come Shoe-shine! We’ll drink champagne. You explain this ‘alternative country’ to me and watch the cowboy farm band, yes?”
As we were served, very quickly, at the bar, the Long Ryders kicked into the countrified powerpop of their signature NRBQ cover, I Want You Bad. “Fantasticheskiy,” enthused Abramovich, as a woman poured us champagne, “But I have never heard them before. Their failure to penetrate the wider marketplace is surely due to poor business decisions by record labels in the 80s. All is business. I bought a painting of a big woman for £17m. George Lucas, yes? I invited him to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers play at my 2011 New Year’s party. Ideal party band. Those Ewoks in Return of Jedi, yes? They are no fucking good. I asked Lucas, ‘The Ewoks are Wookiees, yes, from the other two films, the good films? Compare the meerkat. You changed Wookiees for the new small creatures to sell more toys to morons?’ Lucas said nothing. All is business. What song is the group playing now?”
“State of My Union,” I reply, fizzing, “I suppose, both musically and lyrically, it has an ironic relationship with rock’n’roll songs that eulogise a particular place, like the Beach Boys’ California Girls, the humour here deriving from the fact that it concerns the unglamorous state of Kentucky.” “Enough, Shoe-shine!” honked Abramovich, “they’re leaving the stage. Clap for an encore.”
“Ivory Tower! Ivory Tower!” commanded Abramovich, a man not used to having his wishes disobeyed, but the spritely roots veterans sprang instead into a spirited reading of their near hit, the British invasion hued American history lesson Looking for Lewis and Clark. “This song is good. The harmonica break excites me,” concluded Abramovich as the Long Ryders left that stage, and we headed to the exits. “But it’s no Ivory Tower. Hey! Shoe-shine,” and Abramovich threw his arm around me as we walked through the Chelsea grounds in the cool summer night, “Ivory Tower. Sing that song for me, now.” “Really,” I asked, “just here now, unaccompanied? I don’t know if … ” “Sing the fucking song, Shoe-shine, and earn your champagne!” growled Abramovich, so I summoned some inner strength, stood up straight and sang: “My friend lives in an ivory tower. She don’t listen when you try to tell her: ‘it’s too late, your ivory tower’s falling down.’”
The notes faded and Abramovich sat down near a seagull on top of a dirty bin, gazing at the stars. He seemed momentarily moved, as if about to admit something, but then snapped back into certainty. “Hmm,” concluded Abramovich, “This Ivory Tower needs a checkpoint entry, crash barriers, iron gates, like Kensington Palace Gardens. Or expensive litigation lawyers. Some donations to a charitable fund. Etc. Then the Ivory Tower will not fall. Go home Shoe-shine. Home to your stinking book-lined cave.”
Rescheduled national 2022 dates of Stewart’s 2020 tour, Snowflake Tornado, are on sale now; as are Edinburgh fringe shows. The Long Ryders return to Under the Bridge, London, on 17 and 18 June
