At the time, Nigel was going out with Paula Boyd. She was the youngest sister of the infamous Boyd girls. Pattie Boyd had been married to George Harrison since the height of The Beatles fame, but she was now living with Eric Clapton and would later marry him. Her sister Jenny Boyd was married to Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. Nigel became great friends with Eric Clapton and, before long, started working for him. He still does, in fact, do the merchandising and looking after of Eric’s hot rods. To begin with, as far as I could see, Nigel was employed to be a ‘buddy’ to Eric. He used to drive Eric to see his beloved West Bromwich Albion football team in the Midlands, and he would go on tour with him. However, as Nigel once told me, although they were friends, “Make no mistake, if Eric wants a pack of cigarettes at three in the morning, I’d be the one to go out and buy them.”
Through Nigel, I met Eric on many occasions. We often hung out, just the three of us. At the heart of it, we were boys; boys like Ferraris and Eric had a big collection of them, so we’d go to car meetings and Ferrari gatherings. We went to the Hard Rock Café, both in London and New York, and Isaac Tigrett had seen me with Eric. He was always trying to get me to get a guitar for the café, but there was no way I was going to ask him – or even Nigel – if I could nab one of his guitars for my mate. In the end, and with nothing to do with me, Clapton gave the Hard Rock a guitar to hang over his favourite seat. Pete Townshend of The Who heard about it and gave one of his, and then it all began spreading like wildfire – the Hard Rock became the biggest collectors of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia in the world.
My production company was a member of the Glyndebourne Opera. One time I took Eric and Pattie, and Nigel’s new girlfriend Jaki, who would later become his wife. We were all dolled up in black ties and evening dresses and had a picnic on the lawns. A picnic on ‘the lawns’ with Eric Clapton in black tie; had I made it? Was I in? Was I happy? I was beginning to see in so many of the people who had ‘made it’ just how unhappy they could be at times. It was as if they were like normal people all along, with downs as well as ups. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been given very good seats – in the front row, right underneath the stage – but Eric seemed to enjoy the opera and was nodding his head to keep time all the way through. I just wanted everyone to be happy and not sad like I had been when I was on my own, in Dean Close. Like I said, he seemed to be having a good time. That was the most important thing… I guess.
One particularly memorable trip for me was when I went on the road with Eric’s band in America. They were going from New York to Philadelphia for a show in an all-silver aluminium Viscount turbo propeller aircraft. Touring bands regularly used it and inside were armchairs and sofas and coffee tables, and no aircraft seats at all. The most impressive thing for me was when we landed. I was used to flying internationally, when you have to go through security and customs. On this occasion, on either side of the aircraft as we taxied down the runway, lines of stretched limos ran alongside us. We got off the plane, climbed into the limos and, with a police motorcycle escort, sped through the traffic with sirens wailing. We then moved down the ramp and were in the stadium. Rock ‘n’ roll!
Nigel and I had dinner with Roger Forrester, then Clapton’s manager, behind the Four Seasons Hotel in LA. Eric’s Unplugged album had just hit the charts at number one and his security man, a gentle giant called Alphi O’Leary, was also there. He told us an interesting story: as they were leaving the recent Chicago Blues Festival, he had climbed into a helicopter but couldn’t do up the safety belts because he was too big. He got out and blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan stepped in. That night, the helicopter crashed in the fog after hitting the top one foot of an artificial ski slope. Everyone on board perished, including Stevie.
I went to Eric’s Italianate home outside Ewehurst, Surrey, many times with Nigel. On one occasion, like a pair of kids, we went just to see his Ferraris, and another time for a small party for the legendary Carl Perkins. We also went a few times to Eric’s Christmas show at Guildford Town Hall, and then back to his home. His granny and other members of the family were always there. I always felt an affinity with Eric because he, like me, was brought up by his granny. I always noticed that he would walk around the house holding a guitar, doing finger exercises on it. He wasn’t actually playing – no sound ever came out – but I realised it’s why he’s so good: he practises all day. Maybe if I played the piano accordion… oh, never mind.
Nigel and Jaki got married and had their wedding reception at Knebworth House. Clapton was Nigel’s best man and his band played. I think I must have been nervous, because I got trolleyed when I arrived. A psychiatrist would probably put it down to losing my best pal and playmate, but I don’t know about that – maybe I just felt like getting pissed. A friend of mine told me later I downed seven pints of lager in about as many minutes. He also told me I was breakdancing, spinning on my back with my legs in the air. I was also stoned and I had started on cocaine by then. As Eric was playing, I kept drunkenly shouting out the name of one of his best-known songs, ‘Cocaine’ (apparently). Later, Clapton told me he thought it was a request, not an offer, and at one point Nigel came outside and caught me taking off Jaki’s bridal garter with my teeth. Oops.
Since I now live in very isolated places, I rarely see famous people like Eric Clapton and I miss seeing him. The last time I saw him I was walking down the King’s Road and he was driving past in his new Ferrari. He slammed on the brakes, jumped out and gave me a big hug before inviting me to his house for a cuppa. There I met his new girlfriend, now the mother of his daughters. That was the last time I saw him. Fortunately, I still see Nigel and Jaki. She still looks as beautiful as the day Nigel married her.
*
Hanging out with Clapton was great – hanging out with rock stars in general is great – but in the mid-seventies, I had a different experience altogether. Yes, it involved another rock ‘n’ roll superstar, but the biggest of all time. I was staying in LA at the Chateau Marmont Hotel. I liked to go to a café called the Old World, just over the road from Tower Records on the Sunset Strip. I would sit there and have a beer and watch the cars go by. It was often quite a sight on the strip. You could really soak up LA – its size mostly and how big everything was. The cars were big, the roads were big, the people, their pets… Mostly, it was a freak show – and I loved it. One day I saw a VW Beetle that had long hair like an Afghan hound and another car with grass growing all over it.
Another day, I was sitting there on the raised terrace and just below me was a man hitchhiking, but he was no ordinary man. First of all, he was wearing a white matador’s shirt with billowing sleeves. Secondly, he wasn’t just hitchhiking, he was doing an Elvis impersonation and hitchhiking – I think to that old sixties dance, the Hitchhike. He was waving his left thumb, shaking his knees and singing, “Uh-uh-uh, uh-uh-uh, yeah yeah, I’m All Shook Up!” At the end of the hitchhike arc, his left fist slammed into his right arm and he shouted, “Fuck you, asshole!” to the car that had just passed him by, which I thought was pretty interesting. He did this for a while, much to my amusement. I decided to talk to him; apparently, he was once invited to sing in Vegas. Then, suddenly, just as he was doing the hitchhike dance and shaking his knees to more of ‘All Shook Up’, he casually says “Hi El.” My head turned and I looked up, and there he was: the real Elvis, driving slowly down the other side of the road, and he was as cool as a cucumber. He was in his famous black Stutz Bearcat, a very rare car that I later saw at Graceland. I couldn’t believe my eyes: a mad Elvis impersonator hitchhiking and the real Elvis driving past! That evening, I said to the girl I was seeing, “You’ll never guess who I saw today. Elvis!” Her family owned Schwab’s, the drugstore on Sunset Boulevard. She told me he went there at the same time every day to collect his meds. Not so long afterwards, he was dead.
When I went to my goddaughter Augusta Tigrett’s christening in Memphis, Tennessee, we had a tour of Elvis’s Graceland mansion. There were thirty-three godparents and some of them, like
Dan Aykroyd, were celebs, so we had a private tour of the house. The guide was more indiscrete with us than she usually was with the general public. She told us that Elvis used to have TVs in every room, hallway and corridor, showing the same show, so that he could watch it while he was walking around the house. I thought he was into fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, but according to the guide, he only ate bacon – about half a pound a day – and he died sitting on the toilet. Anyone who has done the Atkin’s Diet will know that only eating protein will make you constipated, and being constipated puts a lot of strain on the heart. That’s what probably happened to Elvis – you read it here first!
*
In 1991, I saw Eric at Ronnie Wood’s birthday lunch in London. I asked him if he wanted to come down to Wiltshire to do some fly fishing. Eric is passionate about fishing and the Nadder, my local river, is particularly good for trout. He told me he couldn’t because he was flying to New York the next day to see his four-and-a-half-year-old son Conor. A couple of days later, after Eric had got to New York, Conor tragically died falling from a fifty-third floor window. Unbelievably, the windows of this skyscraper could be raised from the floor. The maid had opened the window; Conor was running from room to room playing aeroplanes and fallen right out of the opening. Eric ran ten blocks through the streets of Manhattan from his hotel to the apartment building when Lori del Santo, Conor’s mother, called him, but there was, of course, nothing he could do. He managed to channel his considerable grief into one of his most beautiful songs ever, ‘Tears in Heaven’.
*
The Chelsea Cruise faded away some years ago, but underwent a grassroots revival in 2004 by some nostalgic car enthusiasts. To this day it takes place on the King’s Road on the last Saturday of the month.
Chapter 17
Bindon
Ronnie Holbrook had come back from Spain and I met him for the first time at the Isle of Wight Festival. At first, he was a bit suspicious of me. I guess he thought I’d been banging his missus, and I suppose he had every right to be wary, but as neighbours we soon became good mates. He picked up a marginally more legal trade too, and had become an antiques dealer with a stall in Antiquarius on the King’s Road.
Ronnie knew a lot of the Chelsea villains and it was through him that I got to know a man named Johnny Bindon. ‘Biffo’ Bindon was the son of a merchant seaman and he was a notorious villain. Ken Loach first approached him in a pub and gave him his role in the film Poor Cow. His next break came with a role in Performance next to Mick Jagger, where he played a violent mobster, and then a crime boss in Get Carter. His roles earned him critical praise and typecast him for future parts, but I knew the man and he was no actor. The man was a thug and everyone knew it. He loved beating people up, and wherever he went, a fight ensued. He did have qualities though and nobody could deny it. He was a very funny raconteur because of his confidence, and he did have good stories. Whenever he was in the pub, you’d find his circle of sycophants hanging on his every word. It was quite sick if I’m honest and, in my experience, it was all done out of intimidation. He was a gangster, he was dangerous and he was frightening – although, not according to author Philip Hoare, who called him “an all-round ‘good geezer’”. I can’t say I agree with Hoare. I got to know him quite closely; the man was a bully.
More than his acting and his thuggery, though, Bindon was famous for the size of his cock, and he would love showing it off to everyone. He could grasp it with two large hands and still have plenty left over to swing in a circle. Dany called it, in a French accent, “le pink élicoptère”. It was like a hose. His party trick in pubs was to put empty pint glasses on it, and put his penis through the handles. I believe he could do ten at one time, or something ridiculous. I was having lunch with him in the Great American Disaster one day, when the waitress came to take our order. Without lifting his haunches, he draped his cock across the table, stuck a fork in it and said, “Can I have this lightly grilled, darling?” Yes, that was John Bindon, the thug with the giant one.
It was a bright and glorious summer day. We were outside the Chelsea Potter on the King’s Road. There was currently a government survey into the UK sex trade, being led by a very upright and proper English aristocrat named Lord Longford. Bindon saw Longford approaching on the pavement, so he whipped out his cock and started swirling it. “How would you like to put this in your report, Lord Longford?” he shouted down the King’s Road.
*
There had been a property boom in Chelsea and Fulham in 1970 and ’71, but I had only just started earning decent money, so missed out. Terry Donovan, the brilliant photographer and director of the pioneering Robert Palmer videos ‘Addicted to Love’ and ‘Simply Irresistible’, was a good friend of my sister Luisa, from her modelling and photographic repping days. Along with fellow photographers David Bailey and Brian Duffy, Terry helped create the Swinging London of the 1960s, with the high fashion and the celebrity chic. They were the first celebrity photographers, the kind of photographers, particularly Bailey, who were the inspiration for the Antonioni movie Blow-Up. Terry told me the next place where houses would go up in value would be Peckham, South London. It was true that there were some rather nice houses down there, going for £12,000 instead of £25,000 in Fulham and £40,000 in Chelsea, so I bought a house there in 1973, to get on the ladder. It needed renovating, and when the builders moved out, the squatters moved in. Conveniently, though, I knew Bindon.
At that time, the law was very sympathetic to squatters. All they had to do was change the lock and the house was legally theirs. You couldn’t force them out and they never left the property vacant. They were often very streetwise and had done their homework on the law, so they always had at least two people in the house, to have a witness of any forced attempts to get them out. I made a decision to gather a bunch of big, rugby-playing types to try to persuade the squatters out, but my solicitor Stephen Wegg-Prosser, an old university friend, told me I must not, “absolutely must not”, touch them – not even a push, in fact. I had arranged to meet a bunch of mates in the Roebuck over the road from my flat and Bindon happened to be there. It was just too good an opportunity to pass and conveniently he had with him one of his lieutenants. Hard cases from the country would often do jobs for him that he couldn’t handle on his own and this particular character was quite something, as his numerous facial scars attested. Word spread fast about what we were up to and Bindon insisted on coming with us. I remember how I had to beg him not to get violent because I had notified the police and they were going to be standing outside the house. Had it turned nasty, I might have ended up behind bars – and I was bringing Bindon, so I was quite aware that anything could happen.
We got to the house in Peckham, and without wasting any time, Bindon crashed through the front door as soon as it was opened, throwing the kid who answered it into the side wall. Before I even stepped into my living room, Bindon had the two squatters up against the back wall, which they seemed to press themselves back into. He really did put on a terrific performance. I watched as the squatters were pinned to the wall by Bindon’s wrath and I saw it in their eyes: they were shitting it. Amazingly, though, they were incredibly plucky and would not budge. I suppose I respected them for that. Even though they were in my house, they were standing up for what they believed in and that was surely a good thing.
Bindon stormed off in a terrible huff then and went rushing around the house until he found what he was looking for. He reappeared, holding a bag of grass held tight in his fingers, his face grinning in triumph. “Okay boys, the game’s up. Do you want me to take this outside to the coppers, or will one of you go and find your friends?” Bindon was referring to the other squat around the corner. The bag of grass was the smoking gun and it was great to watch, as now they were left without a card to play. One of them left to go to the other squat while the remaining squatter was left without a witness, so Bindon took him and threw him outside.
I had thought ahead and had a locksmith stan
ding by. He quickly got to work while I emptied the house of all the squatters’ possessions, before they repossessed it. As we were piling all their stuff into the gardens, the policemen came over. The squatter had returned with some mates, but they were outside the house. Was the power struggle going to shift again? Was I in a world of it? The bobby stood there with the squatters lined next to him. Bindon and his lieutenant were there too and I was bricking it. The squatters were protesting that what we were doing was illegal. I didn’t want to go to jail and the kid was right – it was illegal. However, then something wonderful happened, the power of my golden bollocks returned.
“We don’t like your sort around here. If I were you, I would get a van and get your stuff out of this nice gentleman’s garden – because we’re leaving now, and when we’ve gone, I think these two could make mincemeat out of you,” the copper said, looking at Bindon and his mate. I later found out that the ‘lieutenant’ personality with the muscles and the scars was one of the most hunted men in England, and was wanted for shooting a policeman.
*
In 1977, Peter Grant, the manager of Led Zeppelin, gave his approval for Richard Cole, the band’s tour manager, to hire John Bindon as a security man on their US tour. Bindon and Cole were friends from the King’s Road, and I was also a friend of Cole and his wife Marilyn. Towards the end of the tour there occurred what has become known in rock ‘n’ roll history as The Oakland Incident. Bindon had a fight with promoter Bill Graham’s security chief and knocked him unconscious. This then escalated into an all-out brawl between the two sets of security men. The band was performing and unaware of the incident. Zeppelin then said they would only perform the second Oakland concert the next night after Bill Graham had signed a letter of indemnification, absolving the band of any responsibility for the incident. After the second concert was over, Graham changed his mind and sued the band for $2 million. After months of legal wrangling, the case was settled. Peter Grant later said that hiring John Bindon was the biggest mistake of his management career.
Johnny Cigarini Page 12