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time we grabbed a neighbor’s cat and stuck a firecracker up its arse and lit it to see what would happen.
    Hoag: And what happened?
    Scarr: (laughs) They may have nine lives but they only got but one arsehole.
    Hoag: That’s absolutely disgusting.
    Scarr: Isn’t it? I’d never been happier. Even started getting a bit of a rep in the neighborhood for being a scruff. M’dad decided to have it out with me about it. Says to me, very serious, “You’re being a bad boy, Tristam. Your schoolwork is inadequate. Your behavior and language are unacceptable. You’ll never be a proper gentleman at this rate, just a lout. I want you to stop seeing this Rory Law.”
    Hoag: And what did you say?
    Scarr: “Make me.”
    Hoag: And what did he say?
    Scarr: Not a thing. I won. (pause) Show me that ear thing of yours again, would you, Hogarth?
    (end tape)
    (Tape #2 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 20. Appears subdued. Wears only a tweed overcoat, long Johns. Hair is in a ponytail.)
    Hoag: You look tired tonight, Tristam.
    Scarr: I was practicing. Haven’t been to bed yet.
    Hoag: Taking up a new instrument?
    Scarr: No, it’s that ear thing of yours. I don’t get it, mate. “What’s the trick?
    Hoag: There’s no trick. Either your ears can move independently of each other or they can’t.
    Scarr: Show it to me again. (silence) Bloody hell!
    Hoag: Let’s talk about when you heard Elvis sing “Heartbreak Hotel” on the radio that first time. You wanted to sound like him, look like him, be him … ?
    Scarr: Me and Rory both. We were ripe for it, y’know? Something new. Something that our parents and teachers wouldn’t approve of. Something that was ours. Rock ’n’ roll music, it simply didn’t exist here in ’56. We had Tommy Steele and Johnny Gentle and vanilla pop like that. But we had no one like Elvis. No records. No radio. Nothing. Just the American movies.
    Hoag: What movies?
    Scarr: We were just knocked out by The Wild One with Marion Brando. The motorcycles. The black leather jackets. The way the adults were so freaked out by him. The attitude. It was like he was saying, “Fuck all of you,” y’know? I’ll never forget this one conversation. Somebody says to him “What are you rebelling against?” And Brando, he says, “Whattaya got?” (laughs) Whattaya fucking got! We couldn’t get over that. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. That was another movie we freaked for. And Blackboard Jungle, with all of these wonderfully scruff students who hated Glenn Ford’s bleedin’ guts. The theme song to that was “Rock Around the Clock,” sung by Bill Haley and the Comets. Me and Rory we ate those movies up. Saw ’em over and over again. America, it seemed like some kind of paradise to us over here then. It was Technicolor. We were black and white. It was Marilyn Monroe. We were Dame May Whitty. You blokes over there had your own bleedin’ cars to take your dolly birds for rides in. Our parents couldn’t afford cars here, mate. America, it was the land of the free.
    Hoag: Wait, wait: “What’s that I see/From across the sea?/The land of the free/More for me/Over there, the sky/It don’t ever get gray/Ain’t no one to tell ya/What not to say/More for me.”
    Scarr: You were a regular bleedin’ little rocker, weren’t you? Wouldn’t know it to look at you now.
    Hoag: Good breeding prevails in the end.
    Scarr: Don’t wager on it, Hogarth. Where was I? … Ah yes, once we got into Radio Luxembourg, we got turned on to a lot of the American rock ’n’ roll music—Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson. Blew our minds. All of it. It was definitely where we wanted to be.
    Hoag: What about skiffle? Wasn’t that an important influence on early groups like Us?
    Scarr: Skiffle was a craze, and it was ours—kind of a cross between washboard folk and trad jazz. Got started by the song “Rock Island Line” by Lonnie Donegan, who played in Chris Barber’s jazz band. A skiffle