Nothing more has been heard of him since-no new recordings, no gigs, no interviews. The next morning he began what we must now think of as his retirement. Nobody knows what happened in there, but when he came out, he went straight back to his hotel and phoned his manager to cancel the rest of the tour. (Some Crowe com pletists, Duncan being one, own a copy of the local band’s one and only album, The Napoleon Solos Sing Their Songs and Play Their Guitars.) In the middle of the set, Tucker went to the toilet. Crowe was in Minneapolis for a show and had turned up at the Pits to see a local band called the Napoleon Solos which he’d heard good things about.
Most people are unaware of Tucker Crowe’s music, let alone some of the darker moments of his career, so the story of what may or may not have happened to him in the restroom of the Pits Club is probably worth repeating here. Duncan would have wanted to chat to it all night. “If toilets could talk, eh?”Īnnie was glad this one couldn’t. Eventually, and hurtfully, the barman had clearly decided that they were capable of doing neither thing.ĭuncan took one last look and shook his head. The guy behind the bar had initially suspected that they were looking for a place where they could shoot up, or perhaps have sex. When Duncan moved, she could see that this toilet, like just about every other one she’d ever seen in a rock club, was blocked. Annie took as good a picture of a man in a toilet as one could reasonably expect. The light was better there, for some reason. This time Duncan stood just inside one of the stalls, with the door open. Be silly to come all the way here and not get a good one.” So Duncan stood in front of the middle of the three urinals, his hands placed convincingly in front of him, and smiled back over his shoulder at Annie. “What, the… What do you call those things?”
“Have you got the camera, Annie?” said Duncan.
Americans were very good at making the most of their heritage, but there wasn’t much even they could do here. The simple truth of this only struck Annie when they were actually inside it: apart from the graffiti on the walls, some of which made some kind of reference to the toilet’s importance in musical history, it was dank, dark, smelly and entirely unremarkable. They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.