Nate’s Inflatable Bar I

Nate is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a black overcoat. He’s been around the block. He’s been around the world. He runs the Inflatable Bar. His customers are some of the most interesting dead people in music.

Each week one of them is featured in a half an hour episode. Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Phil Lynott, Marvin Gaye, Brian Jones, John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Joe Strummer, Mama Cass, Marc Bolan, Syd Barrett, Keith Moon.

There is a heavy atmosphere on the desert road like there’s a constant sandstorm. Nate is driving a 1973 Mustang; he veers over to the left hand side of the road and his arm comes out of the window and plants a sign in the dirt ‘Nate’s Inflatable Bar 1 mile’. He wheel spins away and after a mile stops again, gets out, takes a pile of rubber out of the trunk, inflates the bar and walks through the swing doors under the neon light. The dog pads in after him. The bar is a haven with the feel of a last chance saloon, rugged, on a frontier. Inside the lights are low; there is a long bar with a Rock-Ola and a pool table. It’s hard to tell how big the bar is.

Nate is the gatekeeper; he’s a dark figure, strong and silent, with a strange tattoo on his hand, a good listener, with a Bruce Willis smile but he keeps his sentences short. He often fidgets with a pair of dice.

Each week the featured artist appears in a classic car: Otis in a chauffeur-driven black limo, Sam Cooke in his 1964 Ferrari. The artist is as yet unidentifiable. The car pauses near the ‘1 mile’ sign then moves on; every week it is stopped by a Highway patrol cop. The cop is the narrator, a bit of a redneck, doesn’t really approve of pop/rock stars and you can tell it from his world-weary delivery.

‘Where are you heading?’ The artist motions down the road and mouths something about a bar. ‘There is no bar’ says the cop. ‘I just saw a sign,’ says the artist, ‘Nate’s Inflatable Bar 1 mile’. The cop takes off his hat, looks down the road, scratches his head, shrugs: ‘OK mister, if you say so. The car pulls off, arrives at the bar and the featured artist walks in.

The artists are look-alikes. The body of the programme consists of conversation between the artist and Nate, narration from the cop, library film clips and song extracts with occasional re-constructions i.e. Sam Cooke’s final moments. However this is not straight documentary, there is an odd, slightly surreal air. Although there is only a cast of two, occasionally other strange figures appear and disappear – a ghostly Dolly Parton barmaid and other spectral bar staff, who never speak and who Nate ignores. The bar walls open and close like it’s alive.

Illustration by Doug Gordon