Composed by Rosanne Cash Read Free Book Online

crammed into the corner of the office of a department staff member, David, and it somehow never managed to cross my mind that he might well have considered me an intruder: Johnny Cash’s kid on a lark in London, taking up a good deal of his space for the purpose of absolutely nothing that he could ascertain. Still, he was kind, and did not even resent his orders from Derek to take me around to find a flat. David did suggest that we tell prospective landlords that I was his secretary, “to make things smoother.” I self-importantly balked at this, as he was not senior enough to have a secretary, and the plan felt strangely lascivious to me, but I see now that that little ego stroke was the very least I could give him in return. Eventually, he did help me locate a flat, a small, lovely third-floor walk-up at No. 3 Carlingford Road, in Hampstead. (Later, I met David’s fiancée, an immaculately put-together and aggressive blonde who favored shiny suits in shades of steel gray with matching stiletto-heeled boots, had perfectly straight and sleek almost-white hair, and wore near-Kabuki-style makeup. She scared me to death, though she dripped honey when she spoke. One evening shortly after my arrival, as we were having drinks after work at a wine bar, she thoroughly looked me over and said thoughtfully, and not unkindly, “You aren’t very glamorous, are you?” I didn’t answer, in part because I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted, and in part because I wasn’t sure what the answer was. After many years of wrestling with that question, I decided that she was partly correct. I like a little glamour, just not so obvious, and a bit more rock and roll than business dominatrix.

    It soon became clear that my job in artist relations would involve little more than deciding which seats various people in the company would be given for concerts by CBS artists performing in London, and then doling out the tickets when they came to David’s and my office to retrieve them. At one point, when several artists were playing in London at the same time, David and I posted a sign on our door that read CBS BOX OFFICE. QUEUE HERE. (By the end of my London stay, a few Anglicisms had seeded themselves into my mind, forever to remain: the proper use and spelling of the word “queue,” the reversal of month and day when writing a date, and an obsessive and unrelenting adherence to teatime, with proper tea brewed in a pot.) When we strategized seat placements for concerts, we began with the given that Obie always got center orchestra, six to eight rows back from the stage, depending on the venue. After Obie and his wife, there was a strict hierarchy for bestowing seats, with the heads of each department at the top and with secretaries at the very bottom. This pecking order was taken with utmost seriousness, and it was an unspeakable breach of protocol to give a mediocre seat to a self-inflated A&R guy. When I inadvertently made such assignments in my early days at the job, I would get a personal visit from the offended party, which would leave me withered, shaking, and in tears. I felt sorry for the secretaries, who were mostly relegated to the balconies, and even sorrier for the occasional member of the cleaning staff who ventured to ask for a ticket to see a favorite artist, to whom I was ordered to give back-of-the-balcony seats. I sometimes managed to elude David’s observant eye to give one of these lower-echelon workers a center orchestra seat.
    The CBS office building was in Soho Square, just off Oxford Street. I took the tube to work every morning from Hampstead and got off at the Tottenham Court Road station. My office was on the sixth floor, and I strove, with utmost diligence and gut-churning dread, to stay away from The Third Floor, which housed A&R and promotion. No woman was safe there; the taunts and come-ons were urgent, and not friendly. The men in those two departments were notorious: loud, predatory, debauched, and