Almost Famous: Chapter 2

Dakar. Happy to be home. I ring one of the world's greatest drummers and ask him if I can come over to interview him for a magazine. "Sure", he says, he's be really happy to do an interview with me. I had already done one interview with him, in Toulouse, but in our fifteen minutes he didn't tell me enough to be able to write 2000 words about him. So I, off my own back, had to go back for more.

He told me to come to the police station in a neighbourhood deep in the belly of a hot and humid Dakar. there I would be able to ask a policeman to take me to his house. He's one of the world's greatest drummers, so everyone knows his house. Arriving at the police station, a gendarme did indeed take me to his house, where I met, guess who?, the fat man who I met in Toulouse who wanted to give me children. Turns out he's the son of the drummer. I was bizarely pleased to see him, a friendly face in a poky dirty neighbourhood. He takes me upstairs to the apartment of Wife Number One where the drummer is still sleeping. After twenty minutes of sitting in this incredibly gaudy sitting room, he comes out and starts to have breakfast. On seeing me he says, "oh, hi! The minister of Culture just telephoned me. I have to go down-town for a meeting. I'm going to finish my breakfast and then we'll go together, quickly."

Well, there's no reason on earth that I should believe that this meeting will happen quickly, but I decide that it might be a good story. So we get in his Mercedes 4x4 and we creep through the tiny streets of Dakar, stuck in traffic most of the way, and after an hour we arrive at the Ministry. it is incredibly hot and I am hungry and have a headache. He leaves me in the waiting room while he goes for his meeting. After 40 minutes, a guard comes in and says, hey, why are you still sitting here? I saw your guy leaving half an hour ago. So I call his phone, which is in the car with the driver. The driver has no idea who I am. Then a big man in a blue boubou appears and says that we have to go up to the 6th floor, to the Ministry of Women and Social Development, to find my guy. it is 2.30pm, two and a half hours after the original rendezvous time.

Well, up on the 6th floor, everyone is on their lunch hour so we sit while women lope around gossiping. At 3.30pm, a woman appears and says "Please be patient, the Minister will see you soon". I tell the drummer that I really have to be going because my head hurts so much I can harldy open my eyes. And, oh yes, it's not my job to go to meetings with him. He says, mmm, perhaps he should leave his phone number with the Minister and she can call him. Eventually, another woman appears and says that we can't leave, the Minister will see us in just one tiny moment. The drummer is called in to the office and when he comes out ten minutes later he looks bemused.

"The minister is in hospital. but they let me telephone her and she will see me when she is better." So she wasn't even there...

We climb back in the car. We drive to another part of town, stopping to buy a clock, a handbag and two phone chargers from the side of the road. We get to Wife Number Three's house where lunch is waiting for us. It is 4pm. We eat, very nice rice and meat and at 4.30 I ask if we can do the interview. Four random people enter the room and sit watching me while I interview my quarry. The interview lasts 18 minutes. Then I ask if I can take a couple of photos.

"Yes, but are you going to sell this article for money?"

"Well, yes" I say. "That's my job."

"So you should pay me something too," he says.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because you've taken up a lot of my time and I have told you all my knowledge. You're going to make money from me, you should pay me."

I explain my job. I explain that, for a start, it's against the principles of good journalism to pay for interviews. I also point out that I have to pay for everything myself and that spending a whole day trailing around after someone while they go to meetings at the Ministry is actually, suprisingly, not my idea of fun.

"But that's your job," he says.

Well, as you know I have just come back from Toulouse. Where the musicians were treated like royalty. I stayed in a brothel one night because I do not earn enough from my work to be able to stay in the same kind of hotels as my musician friends. When they are driven to soundcheck, they do not have to wait for anything or anyone. They are buzzed around by engineers and managers who get the job done quickly so that the musicians can go back to their luxury hotels. God forbid they should have to wait for anything.

Well, I got up from my chair and apologised for taking up so much of his time.

"No, please take some photos!" he cried. No thanks, I said, and went home. I was so tired by the time I did get home, tired, feeling miserable about my work, wondering if I would ever come away from a job feeling properly renumerated for my efforts.

So, wannabe music journalists. It's just no fun this week.