WHEN Nigel Kennedy walks in to the Kettle Sings tea room, high above the Malvern valley, in England, I'm shocked. He's only 40 but his gait appears ancient, his shoulders hunched and rounded, a raised pink scar nestling crossly at the base of his neck. Good God, I have to stop myself exclaiming, what on earth has happened? Surely this can't be the young punk Kennedy last heard of hurling a TV set across a German hotel room? He's so pale I wonder if he's faded from lack of publicity.
Briquettes of almond slice and chocolate flapjack wave from the counter - can we tempt him? "Cool yeah, maybe a cheese sandwich would be amazing." Whatever did happen to Nigel Kennedy? It's seven years since he was first spearheading a classical renaissance, his CD recordings of Vivaldi and Beethoven shifting millions of copies.
And it's six years since John Drummond, then bead of Radio 3 and Proms director, denounced him with exasperation as the "Liberace of the 1990s". Recognising his genius yet recoiling at his persona, the classical world despaired. Then there was his voice, a bewildering mockney; the finger-in-the-socket hair; a series of pop-tarts and then ... well, not much really. A few rumours about drinking, a whiff of drugs. An occasional oblique recording, a distant tour. "Oh wow, cool, great yeah," he grins nicely, as the grated Cheddar sandwich arrives, sliced into four genteel triangles. "You want some?" and he politely offers the plate.
Then came the operation to remove the gristly lump on the side of his neck, a fleshy reminder that even if his talent was otherworldly, he was human after all. It should have gone well, but recovery was slow. Instead of recuperating properly, Kennedy was forced prematurely back on a tour of Australia by German promoters who threatened to sue him for a million dollars if he pulled out (they had booked him several years previously). He completed the tour but was promptly recalled to hospital, re-operated on and told not to play a note for six months.
Two changes of management later and Kennedy is slowly inching his way back to the big time. Next month he will play his debut recital at London's Royal Festival Hall, his first major concert in Britain in five years. I am buzzing with questions but let's get the rumours out of the way first. Has he been taking drugs? "No, well, I've probably experimented as much as the people who would claim to be up in arms about it." So he did take them? "Look, it's not good to shove things under the carpet, to pretend the Beatles made albums on Perrier."
Did they make him more creative? I'd never advocate something which might shorten lives, but to pretend that all those great musicians and writers did it without ... I mean to pretend that Aldous Huxley wrote that book without having done any of this stuff is and he finishes his sandwich not his sentence.
Did he play better on drugs? "No way! I don't think any of the substances I know about would help. Now, do you have milk and stuff?" he asks, deflecting the question with the tea pot.
Drugs down, alcohol to go. Kennedy's father was an alcoholic who left his wife just before their son was born.
Nigel met him just twice, briefly, before he died of kidney failure. Does he worry, given the claims about alcoholism being genetic, that he might turn out the same? "I've always found it easy to stop drinking. I did drink for about five months, I think it was when I was trying to write and I wasn't able to play the violin. I had a friend and we'd just like go to the pub at lunch-time and we'd get back and feel all slovenly and try to do something and like we'd do something fairly inept.
Those are the tapes I'd be embarrassed to play because they're of no significant value."
Alcohol down, what about his childhood? "I wasn't happy at all." When he was seven, his mother remarried, packing him off to the Yehudi Menuhin school. Did he feel rejected? "I felt deprived of the chance to build my own niche in the family," he says quietly. "I didn't feel rejected by my step-dad, I just felt deprived of becoming a part of that new family.
"I asked my mum for years if she could take me out of the school and let me live at home, and she would say, Well, let's see what happens next year." And it went on like that. Then I reached the age of 13 and I realised I quite liked the school." But did he feel he was carrying out her ambition? -I wasn't carrying out her ambition very well, because I wasn't progressing very well. I started out playing the piano but I wasn't with a teacher who suited me and it was only when I was about 12 that I started to enjoy the place. Then I was probably fulfilling her ambition. But once I started enjoying it I realised I could fulfil my own ambitions too. because music gives you a whole area of freedom. You get something given to you greater than you ever imagined."
AT this point I am longing to talk to his mother. Why did she send him away so young, did she realise his potential even at seven?
Does she now feel she made the right decision? Has he discussed it with her since? "Oh yeah. I did discuss it, she doesn't really like to discuss it so we don't any more. `Cos it could be ... well there's no point. About 10 to 12 years ago I did broach the subject quite a bit, but like, once people get older there's no point saying, `Hey, shit, you done that to me!' As they get older they need your support, not criticism."
In the tea room, he's friendly and charming, not at all like his irritating image. But what's he like to live with? "Difficult! Yeah, I spend a lot of time working and I need to have it pretty quiet when I'm playing. Most music comes from silence, it's like evolving the sound from silence. If you're not starting from silence it's difficult to get anywhere." Now living in Malvern with his girlfriend Eve and their six-month-old son Sark, Kennedy's early marriage ended in divorce and I wonder if there's room for anything apart from the violin? "I'm not sure really."
Well, why didn't his marriage work?
I'm not sure it didn't work," he says quickly. "It worked for five or six years, then it was mediocre for the last year, is that not working?" But can he contribute much to a relationship, or is his partnership with music so intense that human beings come second? "There is a whole devotion in my life to music. It's something I can rely on more than other relationships. It's more reliable. I've got that for life."
At this delicate point, the Kettle tea-rooms abruptly close and we're turfed out. "Come on, we can go up the hills," he cries, so we clamber up a mountainous path, manic clouds scudding above us, the strange twilight casting violent shadows on the valley below.
I want to come back to his point about reliability. I suppose I've devoted myself unconditionally to the violin and the music I can get through it, and I know the violin is going to be there. So any relationship which has finished, I've still got the music!
"A lot of my emotional needs are met by the violin. Working at it every day means I keep my feet on the ground and it gives me the discipline I need. It also conditions you to spend a lot of time alone, because if you've been alone as a kid you get to know what to do with that time, how to value it. I'm the kind of person who doesn't get lonely now." As we walk along, I notice he is looking more his age now, no longer the crouched ball he was when he arrived. His voice has changed too, his accent mellowing back to ordinary middle class.
"I have insecurities, the reasons for which may be a long way back. Since being sent to the Yehudi Menuhin school I got into this thing where I compare how valuable I am as a person to how valuable I am as a musician. Obviously, my value as a musician was put before my value as a person when I was sent to that school. So sometimes that worries me." Rain is ominously close, so we turn slowly back.
How would he describe his relationship with the violin? `Yeah, when I get those really intense moments it doesn't feel like it's the violin that's giving them to me, it's like I'm in touch with some realm of consciousness which is much bigger than I am. And it's like...it's the music which takes over, it's this huge expanse of this different world where you can look at things in different ways. And find out things about yourself. It gives you more than one dimension of looking at things. But it's really the composers, the combination of them and the instrument."
As we approach the car, I throw in a final question which has always made me wonder: how does sex affect a musician? Is he like a boxer refraining, from bed before the big match? "It does make a difference. I had a friend once whose bow went hurtling off into the audience because he'd thought having sex immediately prior to the performance might give him some inspiration." He falls about laughing. `Lost his grip, literally! So I do tend 10 stay well clear. I don't drink for five weeks before any important project and sex, well I won't have it for like two days before an important concert." And afterwards? "You deprived yourself of.