Scott Hardy’s Queensway Sessions

What Scott Hardy wanted to know was:  if you released a piece of art into the 21st Century without any fanfare could it, through sheer quality and word-of-mouth alone, find an appreciative audience? 

Scott liked the idea of music that didn’t exist in CD form.  He composed the tracks on his computer, uploaded them and then every subsequent downloading was a facsimile of an original that didn’t exist.  He did nothing to announce the music’s presence to the world—deliberately placed it onto tumbleweed sites where new arrivals went unnoticed, did nothing to tag it, and, wherever possible, left all the music files untitled.  The only way anyone could come across it was through searching for an artist with a similar name to his, just as I did.  It sat on my hard-drive for a fortnight before I played it, but after that I listened to it non-stop for the next three months.  The best way to describe the music was powerpop, only with lyrics that had a weight and density that few since Ray Davies have been able to achieve.

I copied the CD for Mark, the editor of the music mag that employed me as a photographer, and he became determined to run a story on this mystery man.  But we couldn’t find him.  We’d long since given up tracking new artists through their record labels, but Scott had literally no web-presence: no fan-site, no reports of gigs, nothing.  We assumed one day he might break cover, but in the meantime, aside from making his album our download of the year, we forgot about him.

And then he came to us.

I could never get Scott to admit he’d tracked us down because he was flattered by what we’d written.   He wasn’t obvious about it.  He didn’t use his real name and Mark only made the connection because his email address had the same title as one of his songs.  Maybe he was just playing hard to get, but it took several months of emails before he consented to an interview. 

I went along to the café and eavesdropped while Mark interviewed him.  Some singers can’t stand a photographer listening in on an interview, but Scott didn’t seem to care.  He parried any personal questions and didn’t want to talk about his work but he was delighted when he discovered he and Mark shared a hero—John Philips, from the Mamas and the Papas.  He didn’t have a place to stay so I invited him to make use of my sofa and he lived there for two months, only to return to the US for a week and then come back to me again.  I was happy having him live with me, he was so good-natured, and unlike most clean-living Americans, he never complained about my diet or smoking or love of spare ribs.  The whole time he stayed here Mark was on at him to play a show and eventually he relented under the condition that it’d take place in my apartment and we wouldn’t sell tickets.

I couldn’t help laughing—we could get ten people tops into my flat and Mark wasn’t about to waste this opportunity on members of the public.  Instead he invited editors from rival fanzines, the only people who’d fully appreciate Scott’s talent.

Mark was desperate to record Scott’s performance, but he insisted that he would only play on an unamplified acoustic guitar.  I could see what this was doing to Mark, a man whose moral principles only wavered when it came to rare recordings, so I volunteered to tape Scott with a hidden mic. 

After this intimate performance it was inevitable the other magazine editors would write about Scott and the cult slowly grew.  When Scott was approached by record companies I expected him to go to an indie label, but instead he signed a single-album deal with a major for a considerable sum of money. 

Two months before the album’s scheduled release, Scott’s best friend emailed to inform me that Scott had had a fatal heart attack at the age of twenty-seven.  Rock star deaths aren’t supposed to happen like that—Scott wasn’t completely clean-living, he certainly liked his beer—but he’d always steered clear of drugs and debauchery there wasn’t any obvious reason for his death.  What upset me most was that this was almost certain to become an important factor in the promotion of his record.  We knew it was something Scott would hate, but inevitable, and we steeled ourselves for what would follow.

Only the album never came out.  It seemed extraordinary: how could a record company give up on such good music and so interesting a story?  Eventually Mark discovered the answer to this mystery.  One of his industry contacts told him that Scott’s parents had paid an unbelievable sum to persuade the label to withdraw the record.  Mark and I decided to contact them.  We found an address and I boxed up all the photos and sent them with a note saying they were free to use them in any way they wished and I didn’t need payment.  Mark also insisted we send the tapes secretly recorded in my apartment so they could re-master them for posthumous release.  I did so, but not before making copies.

Two months after I sent the photos to Scott’s parents, Mark and I received cheques for half a million dollars.  I’ve been living on that money ever since. 

I’d always vowed never to let anyone else hear that Scott Hardy tape.  Sure it would have got me an enviable ratio on the torrent sites, but it didn’t seem right.  I kept my vow.

Until I met Freddy Five Hands.

I came into contact with Freddy Five Hands through the usual sites. We swapped trading lists and realised with great pleasure that we could fill out each other’s collections.  His trade page was so long and I’m so excitable that it was months before I got to the last page and noted the final item on his want list:

Scott Hardy’s Queensway Sessions.

I had to contact him. 

‘So what’s this about?’ he asked, as he answered the phone.

‘Scott Hardy.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘The Queensway Sessions.’

‘Yes?’

‘Are they widely available?’

He laughed.  ‘If they were widely available, I would have them already.  If there were three or four copies in existence, I would have them.  No, as far as I’m aware, there are only two copies of the Queensway Sessions, one on tape, the other on CD.’

‘And who has them?’

‘Do you remember that magazine, Raining Down Diamonds?  Scott stayed with a photographer who worked for them for a while.  Reuben Cantarini.’

‘I’m Reuben Cantarini.’

‘What?’

‘I’m Reuben Cantarini.  I have the Queensway Sessions.  I recorded them.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and I could hear him trying to fight down his excitement.  ‘What would you accept for them?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I told him, ‘I couldn’t possibly make you a copy.  I’m sorry, I know it sounds unreasonable, and I promise you this isn’t a trade-bait.’

He sounded insulted.  ‘I’m not a trader.  Not really.  I’m a music lover.’

‘OK, I’m sorry…’

‘How about this: I’ll come round and listen to them, just once, in your presence, of course.’

‘I can’t…you might have a recording device.’

‘Look, if that’s what it takes I’ll sit there in my underpants.  I just have to hear them.  You don’t understand, I think Scott Hardy’s the greatest singer who ever lived.’

After Freddy Five Hands hung up I began to feel paranoid.  His trade-list had been so close to my want list: was it possible that it’d been deliberately constructed to lure me in?  He’d been very touchy when I mentioned trade-bait, the practice of holding back higher generation copies of rare recordings to draw someone into more specialist swapping. There had always been something cloak-and-dagger about the bootleg world, and traders would go to enormous lengths to liberate a rare recording.  It was perfectly possible that he was the front for a syndicate: that his list had been put together by a group of traders who’d pooled their resources to lure me in, maybe even a team who wanted to press it up, although there was precious little profit in bootlegs now.   And then he arrived, five minutes early.  He was unlike any trader I’ve ever met.  Six foot two, dark-haired, attractive, he looked like he spent more time tending his biceps than his torrents.  I knew I had the right man, though: he had the obsessive’s hollow, searching eyes and it was clear he didn’t sleep nights.  I didn’t want to torture him, so I had the CD cued up and ready to go. The two of us listened until it came to an end, and then Freddy said, ‘He’s still alive.’

‘What?’

‘He’s still alive.  That email you received from his best friend.  His parents sent it.’

I was shocked.  ‘He wouldn’t do that to me.’

‘I’m not lying,’ said Freddy, ‘and I need your help to find him.’

Which is how I ended up on a plane to Portland with a man I barely knew.  We started our search in downtown St. John’s, one of the few areas of the city that’d resisted gentrification.  Freddy claimed Scott liked to come here for inspiration and I could see him enjoying the mirthless humour of bars named Dad’s, the Wishing Well and Blue Balls.

‘So what do we now?’ I asked Freddy.

‘Ask people if they’ve seen him.’

‘What people?’

‘Start with the barmaid.’

We had no luck in the first three bars we visited, but then an elderly black man in a white cowboy hat took pity on us and said, ‘You wanna try Portland Meadows.  Any true friend of his would know that.’

Portland Meadows, we soon discovered, was a racetrack.  He wasn’t hard to find.  I almost felt disappointed when I saw him, dressed as always in a plaid shirt and weathered jeans, his sandy long hair and beard exactly the same length as the last time I saw him.  Scott was sitting at a table by himself studying the form and watching the horses through the glass.  I approached him from behind, sliding alongside him before he had chance to see me.

‘Any tips for the 3.15?’

He turned to me and smiled.  ‘Pretty Poison.  But don’t bet more than two dollars.’

I persuaded Scott to come up to the bar where Freddy was waiting.  He seemed amused rather than angry that I’d tracked him down, at least until he saw Freddy Five Hands, who, it soon emerged, was his British cousin.  Freddy didn’t believe Scott when he said he’d smashed up all his guitars.  He was convinced he was still playing in some anonymous Portland bar-band or at least recording music for himself on a 4-track at his ranch.  But I knew he was telling the truth.

Scott apologised for letting us think he was dead; the email and payment had been his father’s idea.  The one thing the old man believed in, he told us, was the power of money. 

He spoke about Nick Drake and Elliot Smith and Jeff Buckley and Kurt Cobain, saying that he didn’t exactly fear death but knew enough about music to understand things usually ended badly for people like him.  The whole point of his experiment, he explained, was to find the right audience.  Like-minded people.  There was nothing difficult about his music, it was for everyone, but he’d started worrying that if he put it out on a major label it might not be his anymore, and he couldn’t cope with that.  His biggest fear was that other people would have expectations of him, that he’d have to go on tour supporting some big band and play to audiences who weren’t interested in him.  That once he’d started down that road he’d never get his life back.  He didn’t need money, or as much as he liked the people he’d met through his music, adoration.  All he wanted was to go to the track and watch races all day.  He was happy with his new wife, and didn’t want to leave her to travel the world.  He was opting out, before it was too late.

It wasn’t until we were on the plane home that I realised what Scott had done for us.  I thought about all the musicians whose albums I kept buying even though their initial inspiration had long since gone, and only kept recording because they couldn’t give up the lifestyle.  I remembered all the songs that had been killed for me by commercial association; all the bands ruined by a half-hearted reunion.  I wondered what it would be like if I was more like everyone else, for whom bands could be represented by just one album, or a greatest hits, or even, in some cases, a single song.  What would it be like if I didn’t need live bootlegs, unreleased albums, endless reissues?  And I realised I could cope with that world, at least when it came to Scott Hardy.  But it did mean I’d never get to see my photographs alongside a retrospective feature on him, or inside a 48-page booklet of box set liner notes.  And for the first time I felt that maybe photos weren’t enough, that I should write something as well, just to hold on to my memories and remember the role he played in my life.  So I went to my local coffee bar, ordered a double espresso, lit a cigarette and started writing this, a short history of Scott Hardy, the greatest singer the world never heard.