The Grail Guitar

by Chris Adams

  We considered contacting the director of the documentary but decided to leave it in abeyance, as the world of serious music is infamously elitist, and it was always going to be a long shot. Then chasing up the film angle, I came across a website belonging to Roger Fritz, one of the directors Llewelyn had worked with in the sixties. There was a gallery on his site, with close-ups of stars like Anthony Quinn and Romy Schneider and informal shots of the Beatles on the ski slopes during the making of Help. As Roger was obviously the kind of person who kept a back catalog of his work, it occurred to me that he might have some photos of the Lonely Ones, so as a long shot, I sent an e-mail to his site explaining about our Quest.

  A reply arrived three weeks later, just before I left for a holiday in Turkey, and crucially it contained both David’s e-mail address and his phone number. I thanked Roger profusely and immediately sent the composer a message, but by the end of the vacation I had heard nothing. Finding myself at the airport with time to kill and a partly used Turkcel phone card, I decided to ring him and got right through. I then found myself talking to a man with that unmistakable upper-class accent so redolent of classical musicians, but that said, he was open and chatty, with no whiff of formality. It seemed he had been unwell but was now on the mend, and if I cared to e-mail him, he’d be happy to tell me all he could of his time with the “young English pop band.”

  Back home, I fired off an e-mail and a week later got a reply, in which he outlined how he had come across the young English rockers:

  Finding musicians to play the film music had proved to be very difficult, but eventually in the Griffin Club in Geneva I heard this down-and-out rock band, who really were not that good, but there was something about them which I liked, and also I felt sorry for them as this residency was their last gig and they didn’t know what to do afterwards. They told me they were frightened to go back to London as they were being threatened by their management there, because they owed them money which they didn’t have!

  This would have been the debt that was incurred when their van broke down in France and Galaxy Entertainments “subbed” them a modest sum to hire another, but given Martin’s tale of Ron King’s revolver, their reluctance to return empty handed is understandable. That said, if they were as poor musically as David makes out, what was it that he saw in them that made him take them under his wing?

  Andy, the lead singer, had a good voice, not unlike Joe Cocker, and Keith, Martin, and Trevor were all proficient musicians. If anything, the weak link was Rick Davies who had originally been a drummer and was now on keyboards but could only play with his right hand. For the film music, I had to teach him to use his left hand, which was a very long process demanding a lot of time and patience! I also suggested renaming the group “the Joint.”

  In his classical wisdom, David may have seen this name as a trendy wheeze (sorry!), but it’s hard to see hardened rock fans being impressed by anything so patently obvious. But in the parallel universe that was Switzerland, it seems the drug connotations of “the Joint” may well have been lost in translation. As for the film, it turned out to be a low-budget affair, but on the upside, the band would eventually find themselves in clean hotel rooms, eating three meals a day at a restaurant booked for the film crew. All of this was great, but the real bonus was actually getting into a recording studio, which in those days was a very big deal. So what of the tracks themselves? Well according to David, “The film people were happy with the results, and the music received good crits. So after What’s Happening? was finished, the band asked to do some more work with me as it was very well paid, so I took them all with me to Munich where we got established and went on to collaborate on many different film scores.”

  Steve Joliffe had already told me how before they “got established,” the band were living in a single room in Schwabing, Munich’s famous Bohemian quarter, and even with the odd gig at the PN Club, they were on the verge of starving. Next door to the PN was the Picnic, a restaurant patronized by the needy rather than the greedy, where their female fans would buy them bowls of what they called “groupie goulash.” Steve actually recalled having to eat sugar lumps to stave off hunger pangs, and interestingly, he also told me about a little game that David Llewelyn played where they each had to nominate one of their number whom they thought would go on to become famous. Some, like Steve, voted for themselves, on the basis that to make it you must have total belief in yourself, but tellingly, none of them plumped for the most unassuming member of the group, not even the man himself. Although Joliffe never attained fame, he did go on to play sax with the Berlin-based Tangerine Dream later in the seventies, a path opened for him by David, who on hearing that he was leaving the Joint, offered him the use of his flat in Berlin and then helped him gain entry to music school, uniquely, as it turned out, for at this point the self-taught sax player still hadn’t learned to read music!

  In Munich, the band hit a steady seam of film work, recording the tracks that became Freak Street at Studio 70 on Schorn Strasse, with the American George Moorse as lyricist. At this point none of them could read “dots” so they had to learn their parts by heart, and when it came to the bass lines, Martin remembers this as a fearsome task. That said, Llewelyn told me that they did improve tremendously over this period, but though the work was lucrative, if they were going to make it in the world of rock, they needed a manager, and David was never going to be that man. However, typically, he happened to know someone who might be. “I approached an old school friend of mine of who was living in Geneva. He was a multimillionaire and badly needed an occupation. His name was Sam Miesegaes, and he hadn’t a clue about rock or pop music!” With his usual air of insouciance, David portrays the approach to his “old school friend” as something of a casual favor, done for his general well-being, but for one of the five Lonely Ones, it was to prove a life-changing moment.

  Chapter 11

  Dreams Realized

  So following the Lonely Ones through Europe, we had confirmed that by the summer of ’67, the “Purple Haze” Telecaster had arrived with Trevor Williams in Munich, and if further proof was needed, this was borne out by the guitar solo I’d heard on their reissued film music. But for now we must leave the Tele trail and return to the man who set this whole ball rolling, for while Andy and the boys were scrounging groupie goulash in Schwabing, his old mucker Noel Redding was on a shooting-star trajectory to fame, though to borrow a quote once used to describe the great jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw, the cheeky Kentish lad would prove to be “psychologically unsuited to stardom.”

  June found him in midair, en route to Monterey for the Experience’s first US gig, and sitting next to him was none other than Brian Jones. Now as if an American debut at the first ever rock festival in that summer of love in front of tens of thousands of hippies who’d never heard of you wasn’t freaky enough, the charismatic Rolling Stone chose this transatlantic flight to initiate the young bass player into the delights of LSD. This is undoubtedly the point at which Noel went way out of his depth, not that he would have dreamt that possible, for by now, he was no stranger to amphetamines and barbiturates, or “leapers and sleepers” as he called them. But this was a different league, and he subsequently reported that he found himself briefly in New York, and then in San Francisco, by which he means that at some point he woke up in the Big Apple and then basically it was a total blank till he fetched up in the City by the Bay.

  For his part, Jones had come along on this weird California trip to act as MC for what was then a totally unknown act, implicitly begging the question of what kind of player this young black guitarist must be to tempt one of the few genuine rock gods down from Mount Olympus to play John the Baptist. As endorsements went, it didn’t get any better, and after Jimi Hendrix had finished introducing the other members of the Experience as “two cats I picked up in England,” the assembled multitudes got their answer, for only a few bars into “Killing Floor” it was apparent that this guy from Seattle was a bona fide rock genius. So
just as he had turned on young Noel, Brian had managed to turn on America.

  But if Noel’s first trip was the incarnation of surreal, it turns out that Jimi’s intro to psychedelia was much more private, for in New York the previous year when he repaired to the Red House with Linda Keith after they left the Cheetah Club, she asked if he’d like some acid, and not being au fait with the terminology, Jimi said no, but if she had any of that LSD stuff, he’d like to try that. Of course, it sounds too good to be true, but using our urtext method, Linda had confirmed otherwise, which should remind us that we were all once among the great unhip. No one emerges from the womb chilled, not even Hendrix. So that evening in the Red House has to be a seminal moment in his development, because up to this point he was basically a sideman in black soul outfits, where the guitarist played distant second fiddle to the showman singer. In fact, never has the phrase “blown your mind” been more apposite, for Jimi’s hair, always wild, now began to sprout like Albert Einstein’s. In fact, his “Stone Free” lyrics talk about the reception this got him in black neighborhoods, where they basically treated him like a dog! And all the time his mind was expanding, bursting through its limited horizons, till on that first transatlantic flight he “became” Jimi Hendrix, the man who came to embody the movement this drug created.

  So for Jimi, at least in the short term, acid was an extremely positive force, and in a sense, Monterey was like coming home, not just physically to the States, but also to the state of mind that San Francisco then encapsulated, for this is where the acid culture had originated. When I worked with Tim Rose in the late seventies, he told me how he’d arrived there in ’66 from the East Coast with his polo neck and beatnik hairstyle to be greeted by visions from another planet. Everyone had long hair, and the colors were so vibrant that he had to ask himself whether he’d been hitherto living in black and white! And of course, the genie that was causing this huge paradigm shift was none other than acid. So the multitudes who bowed to Hendrix that day at Monterey were actually the followers of the LSD high priests who had been worshipping at the psychedelic altar for well over a decade. But from this twenty-first-century perspective, I see now that the other side of the baton that they handed on to the next generation of rock visionaries was mental illness, alcoholism, emotional instability, and early death.

  Looking back at Monterey, acid’s dark side was already apparent on that day. The vast crowd was itself a major happening, and this center of gravity drew a galaxy of stars who all had a side-stage view of Keith Moon and Pete Townshend setting about the festival gear at the end of their set, with Pete thrusting his Strat into the borrowed speaker stacks and Keith kicking the kit out from under him as some very alarmed sound technicians dashed onstage to protect their expensive mics. Among the stars watching the Who’s antics and Jimi’s subsequent Strat burning was Steven Stills, for whom the sight of a guitar being destroyed was sacrilege, and at the other end of the musical spectrum was Mickey Dolenz, who saw in Hendrix a route to street cred and promptly offered Mike Jeffery a support slot on the upcoming Monkees tour.

  Mike jumped at the chance, though given the Fabricated Four’s fanbase of squealing prepubescent teeny boppers and Jimi’s predilection for sexual innuendo with his Strat, this was not on the face of it the most prescient decision he ever made. Either he was totally out of touch with the fast-changing times or he had a genius for glimpsing the bigger picture; the choice is yours. First stop on the tour was Florida, not the most auspicious place to intro the exotic black guitarist to the ranks of shrieking fans, and on the night, sheer girl power proved in the ascendant, as a heavily megawatted Experience was drowned out by nonstop waves of “We want Davey!” By the sixth night, the high-pitched cacophony emitting from the monstrous regiment had succeeded in riling Jimi so badly that he gave them the proverbial finger and stormed off. Chas Chandler immediately pulled the plug on the tour, citing a false press release that claimed the ultra-right-wing Daughters of the American Revolution had pressured the promoters into taking the “highly erotic” Hendrix off the bill. But true or not, he knew that the attendant publicity would be worth its weight in platinum, and with “Purple Haze” soon climbing the charts, who would dare to second-guess them?

  As for Noel, this was just the start of a two-year stint crisscrossing the United States, for the burgeoning baby boomers were determined to satisfy their thirst for sex, drugs, and rock and roll and not always in that order; so for rock musicians, this was the promised land. But sometimes dreams that are realized become dreams destroyed, and so it was to prove for Noel. It was barely three years since the Birdland audition, but the music world was now a very different place. His first Experience gig had been to a baffled provincial audience in Evreux in October ’66, and what proved to be his last came on Sunday, May 29, 1969, at the Denver Pop Festival in Mile High Stadium. In this rarefied atmosphere, five thousand feet above sea level, Jimi whipped the huge crowd into such a frenzy that they went berserk, and the police did what they often do when crowds turn ugly; they went on the offensive. Trapped onstage with teargas blowing in, their tour manager Gerry Stickells saved the day by backing a van up to the rear of the stage and ushering his terrified stars inside. But the danger was not over, for the crowd then began to clamber onto the roof of the van, and sitting in the darkness, the trio could hear the stanchions creaking ominously under the increasing weight. Typically, Redding responded to this claustrophobic situation by rolling a large joint, and then once out of danger, he fled back to England.

  Although Jimi continued to tour for another year, for the original trio, that was it, and on reflection, their career arc is perfectly captured by these two gigs, only thirty months apart. They start out as genuine rock pioneers, way ahead of their time, and finish up as freaks in a never-ending traveling circus on the road to nowhere; and at one of the sideshow booths, we find little Noel Redding. Like Jack, of beanstalk fame, the happy-go-lucky Kentish lad had stumbled upon the path to golden riches and, having ridden the giant’s roller coaster over the most demanding twists and turns, was apparently at the zenith of the rock world, in a stadium a mile high, being mobbed by hysterical fans. But nothing was as it seemed in this world of mirrored marijuana smoke, for Noel was soon to be careering almost penniless down a drug-fueled Cresta Run into the pit of his own psycho delusional nightmares, and sad to say, at that moment he didn’t even know his part in the Experience saga had just ended.

  For the purposes of our Quest, it’s necessary to examine how this situation arose. Its roots actually go back to mid-1968, by which time, the relationship between Noel and Jimi had become fragile. Seeking plan B, Chandler and Jeffery initiated discussions about them forming their own bands, on the basis that either could open for the Experience, which would tour twice a year. The first move was to come up with names. Noel plumped for “Fat Mattress,” Mitch went for “Mind Octopus,” and Jimi called his part-time outfit “Band of Gypsys.” But behind these flights of fancy lay a financial reality that necessitated a cunning business strategy, for Ed Chalpin, the soul producer who had presigned Hendrix, was now gnawing away at Jeffery’s door, demanding recompense for the broken recording contract with his company PPX. The fact that this had involved a measly 1 percent of royalties on the Curtis Knight recordings was neither here nor there. Chalpin had his signature, and he wanted his pound of flesh, which is what he got, with the royalty rights for the Band of Gypsys album.

  So for Jeffery, Jimi’s part-time ensemble served its purpose, but meanwhile, Noel had actually put his side of the plan into motion, forming Fat Mattress with two of the old Kent brigade, vocalist Neil Landon and bassist Jimmy Leverton. For them, this was a real break, for they all had buddies who’d made it into the big time, but none had ever offered their old playing partners such an incredible leg up. The fact that they opened for the Experience at the Royal Albert Hall in February ’69 shows that Noel was taking it seriously, but more to the point, he was also doing both sets, first on guitar with the Mattress an
d then on bass with the Experience. You have to admire his stamina, for he went on to play four concerts as support on the next US tour, including in Jimi’s hometown of Seattle. But the whole idea was doomed. The more energy Noel put into the first set, the less he had for the sharp end of proceedings, and by the time of the gig at Mile High Stadium, the stuffing had been knocked out of both him and the Mattress.

  Moneywise, the band did get a six-figure advance from Polydor, but Noel wanted a piece of the rock-star lifestyle, so a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and a mock Tudor house in the lovely Kent village of Aldington soon swallowed most of his share. Career wise, Mattress stuttered on, landing a minor hit in the Netherlands, and a US tour was booked then canceled after only five dates when Noel fell out with Leverton. Then in December of ’69, Noel walked out on the band he had created when they invited a sax player up to jam at a gig on Long Island without clearing it with him first. So now he was bandless, and with the Jimi Hendrix Experience (JHE) center of gravity in New York, he spent some time hanging out there, waiting for a call from Jeffery asking him to return to his real job. When no word came, he started ringing Jimi and Mitch, but they weren’t taking his calls. He even turned up for the opening of Electric Lady Studios, but the reception he got was icily cool. The writing was all over the subway walls, but psychologically, Noel was still traveling by limo, and it wasn’t till the following March that the news finally became official when he called Yameta’s office to ask when rehearsals for the impending tour were to start, to discover they already had, with Billy Cox still on bass.

  So Noel’s moment in the sun had ended, but perhaps regretting what had gone down, Jeffery did announce the reforming of the original trio before what became known as the Cry of Love Tour, in April 1970, and that month Noel was actually in on a Hendrix recording session at Olympic Studios, the scene of “Purple Haze” and other old triumphs. But the only fruit this one bore was a jammed rehash of “Stone Free,” ironically the first of Jimi’s songs laid down by the trio back in ’66, when Chas was in charge and results were obligatory. But by this time Chas was long gone, not prepared to hang around control booths in the dead of night while Hendrix performed tricks for that evening’s selection of Greenwich Village hangers on. Jimi’s fans may not want to hear that kind of thing, for like religious fundamentalists, their belief in his genius allows for no suggestion that the technically limited Redding and the pop producer Chandler were actually a grounding influence on their dead hero. So in the intervening decades, many revisionist pundits have had a field day rewriting history, but if you want to glimpse the truth as it was back then, go and see what the music press was saying in the months leading up to Jimi’s death. The copy makes sobering reading, for they are unanimous in agreeing that his meteoric career had been in deadly decline for over a year. In other words, just around the time that the two guys who couldn’t see the emperor’s new clothes got ditched.