Everything but the Music

By Herbert Howard Jones

Jeanie Colbert and her old flame Rodney Cornwall had built up their Record Company over several years and had become minor music celebrities as a result. However, having a reached a pinnacle of sorts, they decided to try and take it to the next level by releasing a different kind of album and by promoting it more robustly.

They had never staged shows before and so set up a tour in the hope of boosting sales of their new recording, and all went well at first. But by dividing her time between the music, taking on supporting talent and juggling two intimate love affairs, Jeanie finds that this is a recipe for disaster.

As it happened, both the current men in her life have their own agendas which conflicted somewhat with hers. One, her business partner, is a drug addict who was deeply in debt, and the other a monied man who wants to utilise her fame to gain a business advantage.

This draws in a third, powerful though immoral individual who jumps at the chance to try and use her to satisfy his unbridled desires. Not knowing what was about to happen, Jeanie attends a party and is partially drugged and mauled by this man who, it turns out, holds the future of her company to ransom.

It certainly seems as if he holds all the cards, but being the strong character she is, Jeanie tries to fight back and makes it known that she intends to bring this individual to book. Unfortunately, it unleashes a torrent of legal attacks and professional defamation as he tries to use the law to escape justice. It threatens the very stability of her little music label and her life!

To cap it all, a couple of low life criminals discover some tragic information about her past which they try to use to deceive her. Money is clearly their motive. It certainly appears that fame has a downside and can put the unwary in a very vulnerable position. Even the psychic she consults gets it wrong and doesn’t offer any clear guidance.

Trying to swim upstream, fight these battles and maintain some dignity isn’t easy. If only someone could step out of the shadows and offer a ready cure for her difficulties. But knights in shining armour are just the stuff of fable aren’t they? Or is there a handsome and charismatic man living in Los Angeles who can just click his fingers, solve her problems and make her fall in love with him all at the same time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Herbert Howard Jones
• Release date: May 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005463038

Herbert Howard Jones

HERBERT HOWARD JONES grew up in Notting Hill, London in the sixties. He went to a boarding school in Norfolk and then local schools including Sloane School where crime writer John Creasy attended near the King's Road. When he left school he got numerous jobs, including as a porter at the BBC London, working as a jewellery assembler in a factory in Hatton Garden and also in a number of roles at a showbiz solicitor's office where he was a trainee legal executive and ran errands for a few of the British movie and music names of the time.He is a creative spirit who also likes dabbling in music and art himself. When he was in the jewellery business he personally made over ten thousand 14 carat gold gate bracelets which was a great learning experience for him. However, he was more interested in media and always wanted to write suspense books with a melodramatic element and so spent years reading them and working on various projects. He is also interested in romantic and fantasy fiction.But meeting people has always inspired him the most and he has had the good fortune to meet quite a few interesting people. He was personally friends with horror writer, Denis Wheatley's housekeeper when she lived in Blackheath, and knew poet John Pudney who lived nearby before he passed. One of the most interesting people that he met was the daughter of the Captain of the Titanic with whom he had tea in her cottage up in Suffolk. Miss Smith was a lady with a big personality and a very interesting home. She was surrounded with Titanic memorabilia wherever you looked. Jones was only a boy at the time and didn't appreciate the significance of all this stuff, but regrets not quizzing her on the catastrophic event which has forever featured large in shipping folklore!PERSONAL MESSAGE:I WANT TO EXPRESS my gratitude to readers who have bothered to download my books. I put a lot of effort into them and also design my own covers, and so it is a wonderful reward to get a download. Every author on this platform will be grateful for them because writing can be a lonely and thankless task. It is only the reader who makes it all worth while, and so thanks very much again.HHJ

Book preview

Everything But The Music

Herbert Howard Jones

Copyright © Herbert Howard Jones 2021

The right of Herbert Howard Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Opinions expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the author’s own views.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Distributed by Smashwords.

Cover by Herbert Howard Jones

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

The cute Bedlington terrier, resembling a lamb more than a dog, stretched itself languidly in front of large floor-to-ceiling double glazed window. The radiant heat of the sun was sufficient to send the animal into alternate states of wakefulness and deep sleep. Occasionally, an insect would collide with the window outside, which would get the small dog to its feet. Earlier a wasp had paraglided up the glass, but the dog knew its limits and was content to observe it without further action.

Returning to his comfortable position on the thick pile carpet, the dog was about to doze off again when a noise at the front door got its attention. He had already been fed and littered earlier by Lilly, the Spanish lady who came in to do the cleaning, and so knew it wasn’t her. Excitedly, he bounded towards the hallway to see who it was. When he realised that it was his mistress, he went berserk. But it appeared his mistress was with another person.

The ‘other person’ was that ‘fellow’ again. The dog had taken exception to the man’s energy which seemed dangerous to him. Also, the man wore a scent which the dog found absolutely repugnant. But that didn’t stop the dog jumping up at his beloved mistress to be given the usual generous strokes, cuddles, kisses and coohs.

‘Micky, Micky, Micky, come here, sweetie!’ the woman said enthusiastically as she picked the dog up to receive a bunch of wet licks under her chin. ‘Who’s a good boy, who’s a good boy then?’

After a thorough fussing, the dog was put down on the floor again and he trotted alongside her for a short while. Then he returned to his position by the lounge window and slowly dozed off for the twentieth time that day.

‘Shall I get the coffee going, Jeanie?’ said her dark handsome companion.

Jeanie sighed fondly at him. ‘It will only keep me up, Mark, and my stomach is still full of all that wine you plied me with at dinner!’

Mark took her hands. ‘That was only for starters.’

‘I had an idea it was,’ she replied as he moved towards her and gently kissed her lips.

She accepted his kiss without reaction. He looked tenderly into her eyes and was about to move in for a second kiss, when she pulled away.

‘Now, now darling, don’t be greedy!’ she said.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘What about a nice glass of that Concha Toro I bought you? It’s still early. I couldn’t face going home right now.’

She gently disentangled herself from his amorous hold. ‘You can always go and sit at a bar if you’re that desperate for company.’

He pulled a hurt face. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No, seriously, I’ve got to get up really early tomorrow, and I mean really, really, early!’

He grinned. ‘Okay, but it’s not like you need your beauty sleep, you’re beautiful enough.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere!’ she said. ‘But really, I’ve got a six-thirty am studio booking tomorrow and I’m normally deeply asleep at that time.’

Mark chuckled. ‘You and your music!’ He stared at her and then did an about-turn on the shiny parquet flooring. He seemed to know when he was beaten.

Jeanie Colbert was no pushover, and once her mind had been made up, there was no changing it. She knew that Mark wanted a more intimate connection with her, but she was undecided about it. As a result, he never often got beyond first base. When he did, she found his lovemaking a little too mechanical. And tonight she was too tired to bother.

In fact, she virtually hustled him out of the apartment, and he found himself standing in the hall before he knew it. He stood glued to the spot for a moment staring at her, and then with a cheerful smile she slowly shut the door on him. ‘Bye!’

He smiled bravely back and then walked off down the hall to the elevator.

Jeanie’s face recomposed itself into a neutral expression as she locked the door from the inside. She went into the lounge reminiscing about her evening with Mark, which had indeed been pleasant. He certainly knew how to make amusing conversation and he was good looking too. Cute, was the word she would use to describe him. He was also quite sophisticated and knew about fine wines and exotic foods and literature and music. He was no dope. But her attraction for him was marred by something which she couldn’t put her finger on. She couldn’t quite fully give herself to him.

But his success as the owner of a chain of jewelry shops proved he had the kind of savvy a woman respected in her man. It was handy that he was wealthy and always paid for everything, and she did feel at ease in his company. But she knew, for him, just being her escort wasn’t enough. He wanted more; he wanted her lock stock and barrel.

However, for all the glamour he offered her, for all the wit and charm and compliments he paid her, her feelings towards him were stubbornly ambivalent. She didn’t feel the slightest stirrings of anything other than just the merest of interest. When she was alone, she didn’t think about him very much at all. He was just like a hanger-on that she had got used to in her life.

And she could only tolerate so much of his company and then she tired of it and she couldn’t put a finger on why. However, that didn’t mean that she didn’t want his company ever. Sometimes she craved company, but not his necessarily. Actually, as she went into the bathroom to wash her hands, she did feel that she needed to talk to someone. Perhaps she had summarily dismissed him too hastily.

She glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror and wasn’t sure that she liked what she saw. But that didn’t matter, because now, alone, she could relax. The luxury of absolute privacy was something she could thoroughly enjoy, compared to her college days when she had to share digs.

She could just be herself in this apartment which was her own. She didn’t have to wear makeup if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to hold her stomach in. Perhaps that was why she had tossed Mark out. She just wanted to stop pretending that she was this beautiful woman people said she was, just for a few hours.

She smoothed back her raven black hair and moved closer to the mirror and spotted them straight away – the lines. They were beginning to form around her eyes, which seemed more sunken than usual.

From a distance of say two feet away she looked great and she knew it, like a real foxy diva. But closer up, her face reminded her of a Mellon, skin a bit yellowish, nose too pokey, lips overly pouty, ears like an elephant, chin inclined to be whiskery. Ugh, she thought with genuine disgust.

Although the one feature she didn’t mind in her face were her eyes. They were forest green and they shone when she talked animatedly. She knew this because people had commented about them.

But her eyebrows needed work as they were so thin that they were practically invisible. Once they had been reinforced with make-up, she felt ready to do battle with the world. She suspected that a lot of other so-called beautiful women had similar issues. But of course she was really being too hard on herself.

Frankly, she would have felt happier living in a less superficial society, where women could go about without wearing make-up. Perhaps, if she lived in a rural third world country, she could really and truly just be herself. It was an amusing thought.

She went into the lounge, furnished with luxurious Italian furniture, and relaxed on the sofa. It was Micky’s cue to come flying over and jump onto her lap. He got comfortable straight away, and she stroked him absently. If he sensed his mistress wasn’t happy, he certainly did his best to show he loved her.

The feeling was mutual, and Jeanie found her mind wandering in several directions at once. She thought about the recent progress she had made in her career in Los Angeles. She had, through hard work become this minor music ‘name’ – a composer of film scores and songs. But she was a realist and knew her limits, and in her mind she was no singer and didn’t want to be. She just loved writing music and songs. However, she doubted that her success would last forever. Perhaps it just a flash in the pan?

The great strides that she had made in music college in San Francisco were mainly due to the encouragement a certain tutor had given her. Her name was Gale Hughes and she had helped Jeanie discover her talent for musical composition and arranging. Gale was a brilliant pianist herself and astonished Jeanie with her dexterity. She owned the college where Jeanie studied, which was fancifully called ‘The Coleridge Faculty of Music’. Who Mr Coleridge was, Jeanie never found out.

Eventually, Gale had encouraged Jeanie to go to Los Angeles where there were more educational and work opportunities for budding composers. Jeanie’s guardians reluctantly agreed to let her go. Thanks to Gale’s personal recommendations, Jeanie was accepted into a corporately sponsored educational cooperative with the fee all but waived. It was really just another college but one that was sought out.

Jeanie sadly smiled to herself as she thought about her mother and father who would be so proud of her now. Their unanticipated and early deaths was a tragedy she would never get over. But their premature passing had served to encourage her in her quest for professional recognition. It was the stimulus which had really driven her in her studies and subsequent musical career.

Aunt Lucy Weston, who lived in San Francisco, had kindly and lovingly taken Jeanie in after her parents passed away. It was a big and much needed help. Jeanie stoically lost herself in her studies as she tried to blot out the past and terrible pain of losing her parents. But this agony was always there, even though she lost them when she was barely eleven years old. Sadly, time had not erased it.

However, Aunt Lucy was a good psychologists and intuitively understood her niece’s needs. Jeanie clearly had a considerable musical talent and needed the right tuition to bring it out. It was through her aunt that she met Gale Hughes in San Francisco, who turned out to be her life changing tutor and inspiration.

And it was through Gale Hughes that she met Rodney Cornwall, a highly successful arranger of film scores. He was so impressed with Jeanie’s talent that he took her partially under his wing. He had written perhaps hundreds of scores for film and television himself and he spotted something in the aspiring Jeanie.

The only reason why they had met at all was because Rodney Cornwall had been working with Gale Hughes on a stage project. Gale had subsequently presented Jeanie as her most talented student and he began to take notice of her.

Rodney or Rod as he was usually known, was a studious-looking but rakishly darkly handsome man with a profound sense of humour which Jeanie enjoyed. He also had crazy hair. He wasn’t like a tutor at all. More like a brother at first. He seemed particularly impressed with a short piece of music she had written for the piano and kept praising her for it. She called it a minuet and it sounded like someone else’s work. Still he liked it, and even acknowledged that, although it was slightly derivative it showed promise. This was the beginning of a long association with him.

On the sofa, Jeanie gave Micky another fond stroke on his hind leg. The dog responded, greedy for her touches as she recalled Rodney’s enthusiasm for her subsequent piano compositions and songs. He even threatened to use one, and he seemed half serious. It resulted in her working harder at her music, but perhaps that was what he was trying to achieve.

Eventually the formality of the student teacher relationship changed, and they became more familiar with each other. Then, when Jeanie graduated, going to a music college in Los Angeles on Gale’s recommendation, their connection deepened. The college was a private institution financially supported by a big tv company.

Rod was really pleased about this and said, ‘How lucky! Now, you can come and see me there. I’ve got an apartment just opposite the college!’

It turned out that he was actually an associate professor at the college.

At the time she was barely nineteen and viewed Rodney Cornwall as a part of the music establishment. She would have been happy to sit up all night working on her compositions if he had so requested. All the assignments that she did at that time were the result of the desire to impress him. Also, she noticed that sometimes he did get a quite grumpy if she missed an assignment deadline, and so she would burn the midnight oil to please him.

Without realising it, she was devoting more and more time to her studies to keep him sweet. She began to wonder why he was so focussed on her, as opposed to any another student. Thinking back she recalled that their relationship was almost like one of slave and master! And there was many a night when she was so mentally exhausted that she would even forego supper.

However, it was that charming grin of his which would more than compensate her for her mental exhaustion. All he had to say, ‘This is really not bad, Jeanie,’ and all would be well with her world again.

But it was all too intense. They were almost like an old couple; agreeing, then gently falling out; arguing sometimes and then making up over coffee the next day. It wasn’t normal.

Still she didn’t feel she really knew him or understood his motivations. He remained a mystery man to her. In fact, that might have been the reason why she was so taken with him. It was that element of mystery. And then there was that Texan twang of his, although he denied ever living there, claiming to have come from Arkansas.

But when Jeanie quizzed other students about his background she received mixed replies. One girl said he was Australian and another that he was a New Yorker and had lived in Queens. Jeanie also learned that a number of other students were quite attracted to him, and she had to admit that she was too. Slowly these little seeds of admiration within her grew.

At the time, her attraction for him had only been slight but it had quickly increased. Curiously, he seemed to have been completely oblivious of it. Perhaps it was because of their ten year age difference and that the fact that he appeared to have a girlfriend, although this wasn’t quite clear. In fact women flocked around him like butterflies, and that may have been due to his fame.

But eventually he did become a fixture in her life, and it had transpired so naturally that she almost didn’t realise it was happening. They had become a couple for real, and as painful as it sometimes was, it had stood the test of time.

Then real life intervened and the relationship changed, and they drifted away from each other romantically but remained tied together professionally. They were still together, but now more as working partners, collaborating on numerous musical projects. She often appeared to supply the inspiration he lacked, but how long could this go on before there was another shift? Life’s tectonic plates moved whether you wanted them to or not.

Jeanie suddenly yawned and then removed the dog from her lap and stood up. She looked at her reflection in the giant windows which overlooked the darkening city of Los Aneles. Somehow the slightly magnified windows always made her look more plump.

She thought of Mark making his way home in his expensive sportscar. If she was so minded, he could have stayed for a while, but the recording session in the morning made it impractical.

* * *

Rod Cornwall gave her a curious glance as he stood on the podium in front of the group of session musicians. He was conducting the backing music to their newest collaborative album. Jeanie looked back at him from her position on a stool in the studio’s control room. She noted that he appeared displeased about something.

She clicked on the intercom on the mixing desk. ‘What’s up Rod?’ she queried.

‘The middle eight is in the wrong tempo!’ he replied. ‘Did you check this score?’

‘Of course I did,’ she replied.

‘Well, it’s too damn fast,’ he said. ‘Can we take a break?’

She nodded. There he was taking over again. The album was supposed to be her project and mainly featuring her concepts for it, but that had gone out of the window. After three hours she was feeling quite tired of his constant analyzing. Also, the control room was stuffy as the air conditioning unit didn’t seem to be working properly.

Actually, she really needed a break and perhaps a cigarette. She was going to suggest they go out for some air, but Rod strode over to the grand piano in the studio and began playing. ‘I thought it could be more like this,’ he said demonstrating his take on a passage from her song.

‘Too slow,’ she responded over the intercom. ‘You’re playing it like a ballad!’

He played a few more bars, speeding it up slightly.

She stared at him and couldn’t fault his musical ingenuity, but it sounded like another genre of music altogether. More pop country fusion.

However, at the end of the day, he was the main driving force behind their record label which had three partners, including herself. Rod had registered the company as Coolabah Records Inc and had put up most of the capital and so his decisions tended to be carried. He had become the mogul and she the mere artistic director and A&R woman, who did most of the running about. Their other partner, Tony Letwell, was in jail and so didn’t, for the moment, have a voice in the running of the company.

As the CEO, Rod oversaw most of the policy and admin decisions, but he couldn’t help interfering in the nuts and bolts of the music making. In fact, he was a prolific songwriter in his own right, but often stealing ideas from her playbook. As a result, he tended to receive more credit from his contemporaries than he deserved which grated on her a little.

Somehow he got away with it, but only because she didn’t complain loudly enough. It didn’t help her cause that he looked like a musical genius, styling his hair Afro fashion, and wearing collarless shirts. And when she did complain, he would smile and say that he was entitled to cherry pick the best ideas and this didn’t matter in the long run. She would also benefit.

There was no answer to this, and no way to respond without seeming churlish and ungrateful. Plus, even though her intense attraction to him had waned, she still succumbed to his charm as dated as it now was. Jeanie couldn’t see herself breaking up with him professionally. He had just too much damned gravitas and influence in the industry.

She in her turn was too convenient for him. He leaned on her more than he realised. All he had to do was hum a tune and she would write it down with improvements and he would claim it as his own.

Rod remained seated at the piano making notes on the score in pencil. ‘Just bear with me,’ he said as he scratched something.

She stood up in the control room and stretched. Her back was killing her. The producer, Clive Nesbit, sitting next to her, shrugged.

‘Come on down and try it this way,’ Rod commanded.

‘I thought we were going to have a break now,’ she replied. ‘I desperately need a cigarette.’

Rod beckoned her imperiously. ‘Just for a sec. Just sing it from the end of the first chorus.’

‘But I won’t be the one doing the vocal on the final cut, will I?’ she answered. She hated singing in front of all those professional session guys. They had already contracted Jasmine Althea, an up and coming singer for the job, but she wasn’t here at the moment.

Clicking her tongue, Jeanie left the control room and went down into the studio with the other musicians and stood in front of Rod at the piano. He was being quite the impresario today. In fact Clive, the producer, was being very laid back and was hardly saying a word.

She picked up a lyric sheet and Rod counted everyone in. The song began with full backing just after the first verse. Jeanie sung it quite well, although she flubbed a couple of words, but they carried on.

The Rod stopped them suddenly. ‘We need to mic you up,’ he said. ‘Go in the vocal booth, would you! Okay guys, we’ll try it slower please.’

Jeanie blinked tiredly and dutifully went into the soundproof booth in front of the musicians. On the count of three they all struck up again but from the beginning of the song. It had the feel of a swing ballad from the nineteen forties which wasn’t how she had originally envisioned it.

Clive the producer was nodding his head up in the control room enthusiastically. As she sung, Jeanie thought the adjustment to the tempo was completely wrong.

To please Rod, the musicians had dragged the tempo down to an intolerably slow level to her ears. Actually, all the zest of the song had been taken out and it sounded like a dirge. But she did her best.

‘I don’t cry like I used to, babe,’ she sung into the Rhodes mic suspended above her head. ‘And I won’t cry over you…’

Clive gave her the thumbs up in the control room, while Rod had his back to her conducting the band. But in the battle of wills in the studio, she was losing. The session guys always agreed with Rod no matter