How Dempsey died
From Mr Michael Moorcock Sir: I very much enjoyed D.J. Taylor's good- natured review of my book King of the City (Books, 13 May) and I'll gladly pay his usual fee if he'd copy-edit my next before it goes to press. I'm a bit unhappy, though, with his reference to the publisher Michael Dempsey, father of Rose Tennant, manager of rock bands and one of my dearest friends, whose funeral I describe in the book.
Dempsey didn't die of liver failure (and, by inference, of drink) as Mr Taylor says. He died from his injuries when he fell down the stairwell of the block of flats he was staying at. I'd been speaking to him on the phone just before the accident. He had not been drinking, but he was in a hurry to get some cigarettes before the shop closed. One of the complications of the accident was that broken bones damaged his liver, the chief cause of death. He sometimes spoke of Geoffrey Wheatcroft, but the word 'friend' was never used. Dempsey scarcely lived to see middle-age. The bands he managed, including the Adverts, were punk bands. Like me and the musicians I performed with, and probably the young Mr Taylor, he relished the pleasures but not necessarily all the delusions that went with our brief pre-Thatcherian golden age. My book doesn't end in Eastern Europe, as Mr Taylor says, but with the dawn of an international capitalist utopia originating in the City of London. That's probably why described it as a fable.
Michael Moorcock
Circle Squared Ranch, Lost Pines, Texas, USA
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