she was an expert on everything from the environment to international relations. However, one song wasn’t enough to make anybody a superstar, even one given the considerable helping hand of being featured during a season-defining moment in a hit TV show.
The sad truth was that if Heike was four feet tall with a hump, she might still sell a few records, but she wouldn’t have the media chasing her all over Europe. She was attractive, she was stylish and she knew how to sell a carefully constructed image of herself. She courted controversy, baited the tabloids with an alacrity bordering on the reckless and she knew how to make any given story about her.
And, of course, there was the issue of her father. Ramsay Gunn had been among the most influential Scottish artists of his generation, one of those Bowie-like figures who always seemed to be tapping into a cultural seam before anyone else even noticed it. He had lived and worked in California in the late sixties, and was said to have been present at the birth of the modern green movement. He painted cover art for prog-rock classics in London in the early seventies, then pre-dated punk’s own rejection of the same when he lit out on an ultra-realism period, immersing himself in an almost documentary style of painting, from African war zones to the theatres of European leftist terrorism.
Coming on the back of this, of course, he spent the late seventies and early eighties in West Berlin, but returned to his native Islay before the Wall fell, in order to raise his German-born daughter.
It was said that Heike was born to be a cultural icon, but from what Parlabane had discovered about her upbringing, she wasn’t exactly groomed for the spotlight. Nothing was in the public domain about her mother, who had died in Heike’s infancy, resulting in Ramsay’s retreat to the island of his own youth and a more contemplative period of landscape work. He had raised his daughter largely on his own, a succession of muses, female artists and hippy flakes fulfilling motherly duties to highly varying degrees, according to the gossip.
‘On the whole, I think she’s played her hand well,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘She’s used the exposure to give herself a platform. But don’t you ever worry she’s riding a tiger?’
‘You worry, sure,’ said Scott. ‘She’s my big cousin, for God’s sake. But on the other hand, Heike’s smarter than the tabloids. They think they know what she’s about, but Heike’s always one step ahead of where you think.’
Rory let out a chuckle.
‘Yeah. I’ll never forget the
Sun
calling her a hypocrite for backing the No More Page Three campaign when she had done what they called topless modelling. She had posed nude for a painting by a woman who had won the fucking Turner Prize, and the result was hardly spank-bank material.’
‘It would be like wanking to a Picasso,’ Scott said.
‘The media claim she wants to have her cake and eat it,’ said Damien, once again grabbing the reins. ‘They say she’s partly selling her music on her image, while at the same time condemning sexism in the media. It’s impossible to describe just how much they don’t get it. And it’s not about an image: it’s about who and what Heike is. There’s a million beautiful women out there, a million singers, a million songwriters. It’s about the whole package. It’s that unquantifiable but unmistakable thing: star quality. Whatever it is, we all know Heike’s got it. She’s touched by magic, and everybody wants some of the stardust to sprinkle on them.’
When the last of his interviews was over, Mairi was waiting for him in the reception area, sipping a coffee she must have bought from the greasy spoon he’d passed on the way in.
‘Well?’ she asked expectantly. ‘Did you find out anything?’
‘Yeah. That they’re all lying.’
‘What?’
‘By omission, at least. I’ve been speaking to them for two hours, and in all that time, nobody told me
The sad truth was that if Heike was four feet tall with a hump, she might still sell a few records, but she wouldn’t have the media chasing her all over Europe. She was attractive, she was stylish and she knew how to sell a carefully constructed image of herself. She courted controversy, baited the tabloids with an alacrity bordering on the reckless and she knew how to make any given story about her.
And, of course, there was the issue of her father. Ramsay Gunn had been among the most influential Scottish artists of his generation, one of those Bowie-like figures who always seemed to be tapping into a cultural seam before anyone else even noticed it. He had lived and worked in California in the late sixties, and was said to have been present at the birth of the modern green movement. He painted cover art for prog-rock classics in London in the early seventies, then pre-dated punk’s own rejection of the same when he lit out on an ultra-realism period, immersing himself in an almost documentary style of painting, from African war zones to the theatres of European leftist terrorism.
Coming on the back of this, of course, he spent the late seventies and early eighties in West Berlin, but returned to his native Islay before the Wall fell, in order to raise his German-born daughter.
It was said that Heike was born to be a cultural icon, but from what Parlabane had discovered about her upbringing, she wasn’t exactly groomed for the spotlight. Nothing was in the public domain about her mother, who had died in Heike’s infancy, resulting in Ramsay’s retreat to the island of his own youth and a more contemplative period of landscape work. He had raised his daughter largely on his own, a succession of muses, female artists and hippy flakes fulfilling motherly duties to highly varying degrees, according to the gossip.
‘On the whole, I think she’s played her hand well,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘She’s used the exposure to give herself a platform. But don’t you ever worry she’s riding a tiger?’
‘You worry, sure,’ said Scott. ‘She’s my big cousin, for God’s sake. But on the other hand, Heike’s smarter than the tabloids. They think they know what she’s about, but Heike’s always one step ahead of where you think.’
Rory let out a chuckle.
‘Yeah. I’ll never forget the
Sun
calling her a hypocrite for backing the No More Page Three campaign when she had done what they called topless modelling. She had posed nude for a painting by a woman who had won the fucking Turner Prize, and the result was hardly spank-bank material.’
‘It would be like wanking to a Picasso,’ Scott said.
‘The media claim she wants to have her cake and eat it,’ said Damien, once again grabbing the reins. ‘They say she’s partly selling her music on her image, while at the same time condemning sexism in the media. It’s impossible to describe just how much they don’t get it. And it’s not about an image: it’s about who and what Heike is. There’s a million beautiful women out there, a million singers, a million songwriters. It’s about the whole package. It’s that unquantifiable but unmistakable thing: star quality. Whatever it is, we all know Heike’s got it. She’s touched by magic, and everybody wants some of the stardust to sprinkle on them.’
When the last of his interviews was over, Mairi was waiting for him in the reception area, sipping a coffee she must have bought from the greasy spoon he’d passed on the way in.
‘Well?’ she asked expectantly. ‘Did you find out anything?’
‘Yeah. That they’re all lying.’
‘What?’
‘By omission, at least. I’ve been speaking to them for two hours, and in all that time, nobody told me
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