I believe that Brian’s paranoia over the Beatles’ contract and his heavy use of drugs led him to think that it was only a matter of time before everything came tumbling down and he would be left standing in the ruins, with people pointing their fingers like kids in a playground. He certainly thought that music was cyclical, and in fact, he was quite right. But he didn’t grasp—none of us did at the time—that the Beatles had achieved an extraordinary and almost unique iconic status and would never fade. But his fears were partly why he was always on the lookout for new bands, new groups, new soloists, new God-knows-what. By being so damn good the Beatles had started a big industry, made it unstoppable, whereas starting over with another band might not be easy or might not succeed. Brian continually said that teenagers were very fickle. The audience would change.
However, I don’t want to give the impression that Brian was short of a bob or two, or worried about money. He might have been worried about the Beatles and a host of other personal matters, but not about his own business interests. John was serious about reducing Brian’s commission from 25 percent to 10 percent because the group didn’t tour or gig anymore, but it wouldn’t have mattered to Brian’s personal wealth. By then NEMS Enterprises was the biggest entertainment organization in the world.
I am sure that all Brian’s motives were heavily influenced by his feelings for John. Though his feelings were mixed and confused, he was Brian’s favorite Beatle. John was the witty one, he put himself forward. John was strong. Brian adored him and he so wanted John to love him back, and I think John did, but drew the line.
“You know, Tony, I quite see the boys’ dilemma,” Brian said to me, in his soft voice. “It is a bit pointless paying agency commission when there is no agency work.”
“It sounds as if you have made up your mind,” I told him. “John will be pleased.”
“Oh yes,” Brian said, “John must always be pleased.”
*As I write this forty years later, there’s a poster on the notice board at the village bus stop in rural Devon, where I live with my wife and two teenage sons. It’s an advertisement for a gig by the Silkie—subject to the new village hall being built in time.
12
During the time Brian spent in Torquay writing his memoirs, he contemplated a new project. “I’m going to open a theater with Brian Matthew,” he told me. Brian Matthew was a popular radio and TV presenter, who, like Brian, had been at RADA. He went on to host Saturday Club and Thank Your Lucky Stars for BBC radio. He would even eventually go on to win the 1987 Pulitzer Publishing Award for the Round Midnight program, which he presented on the BBC.
“A theater, Brian?” I asked. “Sounds good.”
“Yes, it will be. We’re building it in Bromley. It will be a repertory theater, a place where we can try out our own shows before transferring them to the West End. Do you like the name, the Pilgrim?”
I said, “What, like John’s alias? Mr. Pilgrim?”
Brian smiled enigmatically. “No, after the Pilgrims’ Way.”
He told me that the famous road, immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, had wound through the quiet Kentish town of Bromley on its way from London to Canterbury. He was very enthusiastic and put his usual energy into the project. Given the number of balls that Brian juggled it was remarkable that he didn’t break down from nervous exhaustion more frequently.
In the first four months of that year alone, just on the business front he had taken “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to number one in the U.S. charts, set up Suba Films, produced numerous pop videos, launched Cilla Black on her first U.K. tour, produced “Ferry Across the Mersey,” romanced Alma Cogan, launched the Beatles in the U.S. with a ten-day tour, two Ed Sullivan shows and the front cover of Newsweek, produced the movie, A Hard Day’s Night, moved NEMS to grander offices near the London Palladium, attended an awards ceremony at which the Beatles won five Ivor Novello Awards, been profiled himself by Panorama on BBC TV, written his autobiography, launched Peter and Gordon, made plans to open his own theater—and it was still only the end of April.
Happy as sandboys, the two Brians would disappear down to Kent where they held discussions with planners and architects. One day when I popped into the office, Brian looked despondent. “The Pilgrim Theater is not to be,” he told me. “We have been refused planning permission.”
“Did they say why?” I asked.
Brian shook his head. “We told them that we were going to put on plays and nice little musicals, but I don’t think they believed us. I think they thought we might put the Beatles on and have riots in their nice middle-class town.”
“Well, you can always open another theater somewhere else,” I said.
Brian looked at me thoughtfully. He didn’t comment. A year was to pass before he did anything about it.
A Hard Day’s Night had barely been released at a royal charity premier—attended by Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and a host of celebrities—when Bud Ornstein, European head of production for United Artists, casually let slip to Brian that the two million soundtrack-album sales in 1964 alone had paid for the entire cost of the film. Brian was not happy when he realized that he had given away all soundtrack rights to United Artists. He had also locked the Beatles into two more films for UA. Brooding about it, he confided in Bud that he wanted to make full-length features himself, where all the income would be his. Bud instantly resigned from UA in order to set up Pickfair Films with Brian.
The Beatles’ next film for UA, Help! was already being scripted for shooting the following spring in the Bahamas. The Bahamas were chosen because Brian wanted to set up a company there as a tax shelter. The third film in the agreement would be shot at the end of 1965. Meanwhile, Brian decided that he could put the wheels in motion for a Beatles/Pickfair film. But finding the right vehicle wasn’t easy. They came up with a Western. It was canceled. Plans for Help! continued.
While his corporate life went three steps forward and two steps back, Brian also spent time on his private affairs. For some time he had considered that his modern flat in Knightsbridge didn’t offer him enough privacy. Besides, he was bored with its bleak modernity. For a Christmas present to himself in December of 1964 he bought a Regency house of doll’s-house proportions in Chapel Street, Belgravia, and furnished it tastefully with antiques. Personally, I thought it was too small. Compared with what he could have afforded, it was a narrow sliver of a building in a terraced row of similar houses and had too few rooms. In the basement were the servants’ quarters, where his housekeeper and chauffeur lived. There was a little kitchen and a small lounge, his bedroom and his home office. He often threw quite lavish parties and they were always cramped. When he wasn’t there, I used to go round and romance his secretary, Joanne Peterson (nee Newfield), who later married Colin, the original drummer in the Bee Gees. Lulu—who was married to Maurice Gibb, one of the Bee Gees—and Joanne were best friends. On one not-too-memorable occasion we went on a pub and club crawl. I got smashed and while Lulu bombed down the street in her Mini, I hung out of the window, chucking up. Both girls thought it was hilarious and told everyone.
We used to go drinking at Dehams in Dean Street, the Marquis of Granby on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, or when all the pirate radio stations got proper offices in Curzon Street, we’d go to the pubs up there and hang out with the disc jockeys who were on shore leave. In the evening we’d sometimes go to the Pheasantry, and there would be lovely Julie Felix. David Frost would be there, and quite often Eric Clapton. I don’t think I went anywhere back then without seeing someone I knew in each and every watering hole.
My life was very relaxed and open, and quite different from Brian’s or even the Beatles’. They tended to be more cautious about where they went, especially together, while Brian, when he wasn’t out and about with his public face at some premier or another, was very private. However, Brian and I did go out together fairly frequently, not on a social level as such, but to check out talent. I was the scout, and if I
thought someone worth signing up, Brian would pop along to have a look. Generally speaking, he trusted my ability but he could be perverse, as in the case of a young singer-songwriter, Paul Simon.
Paul, who had his first album with Art Garfunkel in 1964, still couldn’t even get arrested in America and had made his way to Europe to play in the small folk clubs of Paris and around England. He was so settled in that he’d gotten a flat in London and a nice girlfriend named Kathy—as in “Kathy’s Song”—who he always missed badly when he caught a train out of town to play at small folk cellars. It was one early morning on the bleak station at Widnes while he waited for the milk train back to London that he wrote “Homeward Bound.”
I saw him playing at a folk club called Les Cousins, in Wardour Street, and thought he was rather good. In fact, I thought he was great. This was during the time of Bob Dylan and Donovan and Cat Stevens. Les Cousins was one of those Soho-type places where you didn’t go; instead, you popped in for a drink. But on this occasion, I popped in and stayed awhile. The next morning, I was in the office and chatting to Brian when he asked, “Have you seen anything interesting recently?” I told him I had.
“Yes, there’s a great folk singer in Les Cousins, called Paul Simon.”
So I took Brian along to the club that evening, to watch Paul’s show. Brian wasn’t very impressed. “He’s a bit small and Jewish-looking,” he said. “Not real pop star material. I don’t think the mass audience would go for him. Let’s have another bottle, what do you say?”
I argued a bit—not about the wine but about Paul Simon. You didn’t argue with Brian. He could be very stubborn and made up his mind quickly when it came to business.
Brian went on holiday with Lionel Bart to the South of France early in 1965, where they ran into James Baldwin. Apart from having homosexuality in common, all three of them instantly clicked on a friendship level. I don’t know if it was this auspicious meeting of minds that reminded Brian of his dream of owning a theater, but on his return he put the wheels in motion to become a shareholder of the Saville. In October he produced his first play, Amen Corner by James Baldwin.
Brian had such an air of pride about him as he seated his guests—Dusty Springfield, Sir Joseph Lockwood, Lionel Bart, Andrew Oldham, Walter Shenson and Dick James—in the royal box, that he positively glowed. At the reception held afterward, you could see that there was a deep affinity between Brian and the openly gay black American writer. Baldwin had already published his seminal work, Go Tell It on the Mountain, to great acclaim and Giovanni’s Room to great approbation. Giovanni’s Room, which told the story of an anguished white homosexual, shockingly highlighted the themes of interracial relationships and sexuality. He was savaged by the critics and condemned by the black community. Escaping from prejudice and a hostile environment, Baldwin went to live abroad, first to Paris and Istanbul and, currently, the South of France, where he learned to be himself, and where he met Brian.
Back in London, Brian, who was still locked in the closet, was mesmerized like a bird confronted by a snake by Baldwin’s satirical and self-deprecating use of terms like, “well, speaking as a faggot.” Fascinated and admiring, but not enough to do it himself. When directed by Baldwin to be honest and brave, to openly confront his sexuality, Brian lamely said, “Well, this is London, of course, not Paris.”
That autumn, Lionel Bart was busy with rehearsals for his newest musical, Twang! The title was dreadful enough and caused endless titters in the office, but the show was a complete disaster. Lionel had been so generous with friends and hangers-on when he was in the money, that he’d habitually kept a large bowl filled with one thousand pounds in crisp notes on his mantelpiece for anyone who was short to help themselves, which cheerfully and quite ungratefully, they did. Now, when he turned to friends to prop up Twang! very few came forward.
Privately, Brian helped, until there came a time when he had to say no. Desperate, facing bankruptcy, Lionel did the silliest thing in his life: he sold his copyright to Oliver and to all his future works and poured the cash into the doomed show until there was nothing left. The show bombed and Lionel declared bankruptcy. He lost his lavish homes and his sybaritic lifestyle. The eventual film version of Oliver was a massive hit. The album made many millions more. Lionel didn’t see a penny from any of it and he became an alcoholic.
As he had done with pop management, starting with one group and then moving to two, then seeing the sky as the limit, Brian put on A Smashing Day written by Alan Plater at the Arts Theater, starring Hywel Bennett. It was the only thing he ever directed and he only did so because the assigned director, John Fernald, was taken ill. The play itself consisted of a couple of buskers who told a little story between scenes as a kind of musical thread. Brian told me to go out and find someone to play the buskers. At his suggestion, I came up with two kids from RADA, Robert Powell and Ben Kingsley, the latter of whom played guitar. Nobody could have guessed that many years later a bald version of Ben would win an Oscar for Gandhi and Robert would play Jesus in Lew Grade’s huge TV series, Jesus of Nazareth. After the play we would go across the road to the Pickwick Club, which was owned by Harry Secombe, Lesley Bricusse and Anthony Newley, to listen to the Peddlers, or Paddy, Klaus and Gibson. It was a nice theatrical place to go. Members of our unofficial Glee Club would stay up all night with friends like Peter Noone who was “Herman” of Herman’s Hermits, Chris Cooke, who was Lulu’s roadie, Bob Farmer, editor of Disc Magazine, a whole crowd from the New Musical Express—including staff writers Richard Green and Norrie Drummond—and a giggle-gaggle of young female writers from Fab.
These were great times. At dawn, someone would say, “Let’s go down to Brighton for the weekend,” and off we’d go. Herman, who could be seen on TOTP looking like the kid next door, singing “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” was a juicer. He had a great sense of humor and a serious booze problem—which many of us had at the time, though none of us realized this about ourselves. At one time he was almost as big in the States as the Beatles were. He earned a great deal of money and was fairly discreet about it; but the pop star who earned more money than anyone apart from the Beatles was Dave Clark, of the Dave Clark Five. Financially, he was very astute, far smarter than Brian, and without a doubt far smarter than the Beatles, who left it all up to Brian. Dave left it up to no one. He owned everything, from his copyrights to his production company. He paid the band wages and the rest was all his. He was one of the first artists to come up with a lease-tape deal, whereby he fully owned and leased out the product on a one-off basis to his record label. If Brian, who usually tried to think of everything first, had thought of that, the Beatles would have been richer than anyone in the universe. Again!
Clarky’s first major purchase was the entire building in Curzon Street, Mayfair, which contained the Curzon Cinema, a very valuable property. He knocked several flats together into a penthouse duplex and that’s where he still lives, with his original DC5 60s E-type Jaguar in the garage and all the toys that pop stars are supposed to have but rarely do. If there was a button or a switch that operated something automatically, Clarky had it, and what’s more, he knew how to work it. A massive TV screen years before anyone else, noise-activated lights, clap your hands and the curtains closed. His girlfriends were some of the most beautiful girls in town.
Unlike Herman, Dave rarely drank, but when we dropped in he’d fill tumblers to the brim with Scotch or vodka. After that, it was literally a matter of surviving. I’d lie back in this state-of-the-art splendor and contemplate how very different it was from the early days in Liverpool when Clarky, who had been a film extra and stuntsman, used to send Christmas cards to us at the NEMS offices, hoping to get noticed by Brian and signed up.
By the Christmas of 1965, with Lionel’s Twang! still a recent enough nightmare to be an example of something to avoid, Brian put on a season of dear old uncontroversial Gilbert and Sullivan at the Saville, which did very well. I got to stay in the Savoy Hotel with the D’Oyly Ca
rte Company for months on end. Looking after them all was a small price to pay for the convenience of living in luxury in the heart of the West End. I used to meet with them at the American Bar at eleven o’clock each evening for cocktails, with a carnation in the top pocket, de rigeur for Bridget D’Oyly Carte. It was wonderful fun and I adored it at first, but you can only go through their catalogue so many times before you knew it back to front and were sick and tired of it and bored with being de rigeur. Cilla did a cabaret season at the Savoy during the time I was there, and as a nightcap, I would drop in on her show and meet many people I knew. I had become a boulevardier, and it was fun.
At the other end of the Burlington Bertie scene, Don Arden was also around and rapidly gaining a reputation of being the British Al Capone. He even delighted in being a cliché of the old-time vaudevillehood and would relish telling stories of how he used to enforce his position through threats. Born Harry Levy in the East End of London in a tough world between the wars, he’d started in vaudeville at the age of thirteen and clawed his way up and out. His first success was as British tour promoter to Little Richard and Gene Vincent. Don and Gene fell out to the extent that Gene used to replace the words “our souls” in one of his songs, with “arseholes” and dedicate it on stage to Don. Next Don became agent to the Animals. It wasn’t long before the joke went round that it was hard to tell who was the wilder—Don or the group. I was around the Animals a lot because of my close friendship with Brian “Chas” Chandler, their bass player. Aggressively, Don built up a big roster of acts, by which time he had an international rep as a heavy. Everything was cleared through Don, or else.
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