I think that one of the greatest performers I saw was blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, whom I saw play a few times. It’s weird how the intelligentsia treated these old guys with such pomposity. I loved watching Howlin’ Wolf because he was an absolute riot! My favourite gig was at London University, where he was terrorising the pretty young girls down the front of the stage. They’d come along expecting this profoundly serious blues man, but instead were set upon by a sixty-five-year-old maniac. He’d roll around the stage with his legs up in the air (not easy, given that the guy weighed about 135 kilos) and terrorise his female fans by waving a phallic-looking Shure 57 microphone as he sang about his ‘wang dang doodle’. He always used the same bunch of white London players; they really whipped up a storm. Tragically, Chester Burnett passed on shortly after the last time I saw him at London Uni. He left quite an impression, though.
There are so many other gigs to rave about. Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green on stage with his white robes and long curly black hair, adopting a Jesus stance after every song, like something straight off a Catholic postcard. Jeff Beck at a jam-packed Manor House, the best blues/R’n’B pub in England, hell-bent on some destruction. Oh, I must tell you about this! His guitar lead was crackling, and for whatever reason—drugs, bad temper, who knows—Beck rammed his guitar through his speaker cones one at a time. There were maybe twenty-four cones in all, and yes, he managed to ram his guitar through every single one. Then he smashed his guitar into bits.
Yet the master of all this mayhem had to be Pete Townshend. I saw The Who at Hammersmith Odeon, where I had managed to score front row seats. The James Gang, Joe Walsh’s band before the Eagles, was supporting. These guys really were awesome, as in fucking gargantuan. They produced the most enormous wall of sound I had ever heard. The Who then came on like a cyclone. They were fit to kill. During Townshend’s trademark windmilling attacks on his guitar, I was splattered with his blood. He had a full glass of whisky on top of his amplifier; between songs he’d plunge his bloody hand into the Scotch and then rape the guitar again. If you’ve ever seen a recording of a tornado, and remember the rumbling sort of sound, a prelude to all the fury that follows, then that’s as good a description as I can give you of The Who. I’ll remember this gig for the rest of my life. Their legendary Live at Leeds album was from the same tour.
Before turning into some encyclopaedia of British rock—just what the world needs—I have to mention seeing Blind Faith live in Hyde Park, the most soulful performance I’d seen from any act for many years. I saw Cream, Eric Clapton’s band before Blind Faith, in the gymnasium at London University, but it was a bummer, a cacophony of white noise. I also saw Bob Marley live at the Lyceum. You can actually see Lois in video footage of that show—she was right down the front of the stage in front of Marley. I used to go to the Rainbow, the Manor House, the Marquee Club—I’m fairly sure there wasn’t any London venue I didn’t visit numerous times.
Not surprisingly, I was starting to play some music myself. A chap named Nigel was my first guitar player; the guy was a genius who could emulate B.B. King so well sometimes you would swear he was the King. We played together for a year or so, I guess, until Nige scored a better, bigger gig. Our time together was pretty uneventful, though; I was still very intimidated.
One day after work, I was admiring a beautiful black Telecaster guitar in a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. It was incredibly cheap and the egotistical salesman (you know, salesman to the stars) wouldn’t tell me why this wonderful guitar was being flogged off so cheaply. Nigel was one of those boffins who knows everything there is to know about guitars, so I gave him a call and asked him to come down and help me out.
Nigel wouldn’t take any crap from the obnoxious salesman; he demanded to take the guitar outside into the twilight, despite the salesman’s protestations. Nigel held it up to the light, and let out a ‘gotcha!’ He came bounding back into the shop, and nailed the salesman.
‘Whose guitar was this, man?’ he asked. ‘Townshend? Beck? Blackmore? Ah ha, yes! It is Ritchie Blackmore’s, isn’t it? See this hairline fracture all the way down the guitar, man—Blackmore smashed this on stage, didn’t he?’
Nigel turned to me. ‘This guitar isn’t worth shit now. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
Thanks, Nige.
I placed ads in Melody Maker for players to help form my first band. Drummer Steve Dixon was my first amigo. Steve, like Dave the mail boy, was a tough Londoner. Although he initially showed a lot of hostility towards all humanity, as soon as I told him what a great drummer he was, it dissipated. We then found Mick, a Cockney guitarist, and Barry, his best mate and our new bass player.
These were the two most colourful and unreal characters in all of London. I have to draw a parallel with the characters in the movie Spinal Tap; Mick and Barry must have been the inspiration. Whenever I think of them I also think of the immortal poetry of Derek and Clive, the comic alter egos of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: ‘Larf—I nearly shat!’ Mick and Barry had hair down to their bums and very loud, very obscene Cockney accents. Every sentence was punctuated with ‘fuckin’ cunt’. They hated pot-smoking hippies but loved sculling twenty pints o’ bitter down the pub. I might have been a hippie but they loved me because I was an Aussie—they thought Aussies were so cool ’cause they drank so much piss.
We started rehearsing constantly. I was writing as hard and as fast as I could, although the beauty of being a support band—which is what we were—is that we only needed about half an hour’s worth of material. As I recall, we only played my tunes, yet the only song of mine I can clearly remember was called ‘Mister Fysh’, the first song I wrote. I think the inspiration was something scandalous that happened to a gay blade who owned a shirt shop in Savile Row called (you guessed it) Mister Fysh. I can’t even remember how the song goes, which proves how memorable it must have been. I do know that we recorded the song; someone, somewhere must have an acetate.
Because I was the bandleader, I went out and bought an old Ford Transit van, the ‘in’ vehicle for all London rock bands. I don’t drive nowadays and it’s remarkable that I managed to drive this thing accident-free all over London and southeast England. We’d play for 20 or 30 quid per gig, and only ever played unis and colleges.
I didn’t want to be seen as some long-haired fairy, so I used to force that revolting English beer down my gullet, just to be one of the boys. But London was the hub of the universe and there were some magic nights down the pub, packed to the rafters with we smelly, sweaty drunks, some 200 of us, arm in arm, belting out ‘All Right Now’ by Free or, better still, ‘Lola’ by The Kinks. To hear ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks while walking across Waterloo Bridge at sunset remains one of the great memories of my life.
That laughter is perhaps the thing I remember most about London in the sixties. And I mean laughing till you’re pissing your pants, tears rolling down your cheeks, holding your tummy because it hurts so much. That’s how it was, night after night down the pub—even better, back then we never got hangovers. Maybe all the laughter was simply because I was still so young; I’d yet to be shackled with the responsibilities of adult life. Maybe.
Every Tuesday night was Monty Python night and we would religiously pick up the beer from the off licence and settle in. Watching Monty Python with my little band of Cockney merry men probably heightened the experience two-fold. Every
part of my body would ache like hell afterwards.
Through Steve Dixon, I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time at Dick James Music during Elton John’s early days there, and later at Apple, the Beatles’ record label. Dick James was the Beatles’ music publisher. For a kid with such a disadvantaged background, Steve was a very together young man, and he landed himself a position as James’s general dogsbody. This was thrilling for both of us; it was the happening place to be that year.
Every night after work I’d walk up to meet Steve at the studio; I loved the whole atmosphere of the place. Steve was always trying to talk me up because he really believed in me. His loyalty was rock solid and permanent; he’d do anything for me.
Later on, Steve moved to Apple as an assistant engineer. How cool was that? I could walk in and out of Apple Records any time I wanted, and because of Steve, was always made to feel comfortable in this hallowed palace of the Beatles.
The Beatles themselves would regularly come and go, and although I can’t claim to have actually hung out with them, I would sometimes manage a very sheepish ‘hi’. It was just an absolute buzz to actually be hanging around Apple; I knew I was living out a dream. (Sadly, no, I wasn’t there when they played on the roof.) Steve’s career was going from strength to strength, and I can’t recollect exactly what happened, but with no animosity, he and I decided to call it a day. We stayed friends, but were no longer bandmates.
Mick and Barry and I were auditioning new drummers, and a thin weedy little guy with John Lennon glasses turned up. It was Micky Waller, who was Rod Stewart’s drummer and the top session player in London. That afternoon, I didn’t know who he was until he started playing in that slightly open, hi-hat style of his. I was blown away. Micky was a lovely guy, but declined to join our band; he did, however, say that he’d always be there for us if we were ever stuck.
We ended up with a guy called Steve Rose, who’d just left some big time pop band and was a real pop star himself. But the work dried up for a while, as it does, and the band started to fall apart. I vaguely remember playing at private parties and college gigs. I still have a photo of that line-up; it’s only a clipping from a proof sheet, but I must have spent quite a bit of money on the photo session. We must have been trying to get somewhere.
After a couple of years, in 1969, I decided to leave the Radio Society, and I landed a graphic designer job at Swifts, the largest printers in the UK. I earned 38 quid a week, unheard of for a young artist—family men weren’t earning this much, so I was doing OK. The two key characters in this scenario were Pam, a pretty blonde East Ender, also a graphic designer, and Emerson, a Jamaican compositor who could type faster than anyone I have ever known; he was the best comp in London, hands down.
I was now a freewheeling bachelor, looking for accommodation. Emerson, who had taken an immediate liking to me, asked me to move in with him. So I moved into Kensal Green, the original black suburb of London, way before Notting Hill Gate. This was the most interesting time I had during my stay in England. Among the many people living there was Robert, who I think had known Emerson in school, and Marva, a vivacious black girl with a big sunshiny smile, her teeth brilliantly white. She always had a smile to light up your day—she always made me feel good.
They lived life by Rasta. We had reggae music on non-stop. Emerson fancied himself as a bit of a musician and wanted to quit Swifts and form a reggae band with me. We never did, though; we were both making far too much money at the printers.
Every morning, I’d stumble sleepily downstairs to find Marva and the boys cooking breakfast in perfect time to the music. If they were frying toast or flap jacks, they would fling them in to the air at the end of the first bar and the food would land back in the pan perfectly in time with the second bar. I’ve never known such happy people. They lived by the creed, ‘Don’t worry—be happy’, and this was 1969, way before Bobby McFerrin made it a hit single. And no, I don’t think I have ever met a miserable Jamaican!
Every morning Emerson and I would scurry off down to the Kensal Rise Tube station, and cram ourselves on to the crowded train. Emerson could honestly not understand why all the people looked like they hated life so much. He’d want to chat to them in his beautiful Jamaican accent. We were such an odd couple—a lanky, chatty, well-educated Jamaican, and a short, white hippie in a suit, stirring things up every morning on the 8:05 to Tottenham Court Road.
‘Are you happy with your life?’ we’d ask the tightly wound locals, as they looked away. ‘If you are,’ we continued, ‘let’s see a nice big smile, because if you can learn to smile at people, they’ll smile back at you. Before you know it, the whole world will be smiling, man!’
The silly prats in their pin stripes and bowler hats never did seem to get it.
Emerson and Pam started to have an affair. The bastard had told me that Marva was his ex-girlfriend; he was just helping her out with a place to live until she could find her own. It took me almost a year to discover that Marva was actually his wife, a quirk in male Jamaican attitudes that I can’t explain. It was a whirlwind romance, and for many happy months the three of us would keep the art studio in stitches; the boss didn’t mind because we were all excellent workers.
Emerson would have the radio on all day, waiting for a reggae song, so he could show off with his lightning fast typing. He really could type in reggae time. Pam and Emerson’s relationship got a bit turbulent as the months went on, most of it triggered by Emerson’s chauvinism. Many times at parties that were predominantly West Indian, Emerson would use Pam as his token white trophy. I began catching him playing up with girls in another part of the house while a very distraught Pam would be tearily looking for him. This was a tough time for me. Jamaican men are just like that, and who was I to be judgemental? Then again, when I took Emerson down the East End to meet Pam’s father, it’s difficult to say who had the most offensive attitude—Emerson the chauvinist, or Pam’s ignorant father, who threatened to go back inside and get his cricket bat and smash our skulls in if we didn’t go back to Mars or wherever he thought we came from!
I started a clandestine and highly passionate carnal relationship with Anne, the cute receptionist at Swifts. She was an archetypal East Ender, cheeky and provocative. She was also very primal; it was very much a case of the frisky bull chasing the heifer around the paddock—and that’s the way she liked it. Friday was the big night out and it was these piss-ups down the local pub that led Anne and me into our clandestine night games.
She was a wild little tiger with a dirty mouth; I quickly became addicted to her. She was the only lover I have ever experienced who was into rough stuff—scratching, clawing, ripping off bras and pantyhose in the alleyway behind the pub, with lots of filth thrown in. She loved filth.
But she neglected to tell me she had a boyfriend, an unemployed thug from Shepherd’s Bush. (Yes, my social circle in England was a bit of a dichotomy—my friends were either academics, or reprobates from the rough end of town.) This clandestine affair went on for a few weeks, and then I started getting weird phone calls, death threats, but only at work. I knew so few people—as compared to nowadays—and I really couldn’t imagine who would want to kill me. I was very confused.
One night Anne got so drunk I had to take her home. As I was helping her up the stairs of Shepherd’s Bush Tube station, her skinhead boyfriend was waiting with about half
a dozen of his mates. I was about to have my head kicked in when a train pulled in, heading back to the city. I just managed to squeeze in through the automatic doors, leaving Anne’s boofhead boyfriend and his mates screaming obscenities on the platform.
I decided to give Anne a big swerve after that, and she revealed herself as an unpleasant little vixen. One night at our house in Kensal Green, the boyfriend and two carloads of his mates turned up right outside.
‘If you want bovver,’ they bellowed at me, ‘come downstairs!’
Now, I must say that the lads were getting in a bit deep. The only white people on the street were me and a little old Jewish couple who lived nearby. And my other West Indian mate, Robert, weighed in at over 110 kilos and was built like a brick shithouse.
Still, I did not want ‘bovver’; Robert and Emerson almost had to push me outside to confront these boofheads. I went out alone. Anne’s boyfriend and a couple of his mates jumped out of their car, pumped up and ready for a rumble. Just as they got close to me, Robert and another huge black mate of his came sidling up behind me.
‘What business you got callin’ on our Richie boy here?’ Robert asked the white boys. ‘Richie is our brother, mon, now don’t you be callin’ him bad names or saying bad things ’cause you make me and my friends very angry, mon!’
The bovver boys started slagging off Robert but then the two black giants jumped the little picket fence, and man, you couldn’t see those scared white boys for the blue smoke that came screaming from their tyres. I never did hear from them again, and, not surprisingly, Anne quit her job.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 3