The Zapple Diaries

by Barry Miles

  Delighted by this turn of events, we calculated that the first issue of the magazine-album could be out in eight weeks. It was to have a long electronic piece by Paul that he had already recorded on his pair of Brenell tape-recorders, a ‘mutter poem’ by Pete Brown, who had performed a similar work by Kurt Schwitters that summer at the great Albert Hall poetry reading and who was now helping us construct and decorate Indica. There was to be a story by Adrian Mitchell, and Burroughs had promised a cut-up tape. We got as far as making a list of people who would receive free copies: Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Warhol, the Fugs, East Village Other and the other underground newspapers, before a problem over the office building occurred which meant that we had to put the project on hold.

  Paul’s solution was to install a temporary studio in an old flat that Ringo owned but no longer used because too many fans knew the address, while the new building was being fitted out. Paul rented it from him. It was in the ground floor and basement of 34 Montagu Square, not far from the Ashers’ house on Wimpole Street where Peter and Paul lived and easy walking distance from my flat.

  On a practical level, the studio was ideal for Ian because he was in a difficult position with his love life: he had been William Burroughs’s boyfriend since the end of 1959, but at the end of 1964, when they were living in Tangier, Burroughs took off for New York, giving no indication when he was likely to return. He made various attempts to get Ian to join him but without success. After a few months Ian found a new boyfriend, Alan Watson, whom he met in his home town of Darlington while up there on a visit. Then Burroughs decided that he didn’t like New York and returned to London where he moved into the Rushmore Hotel in Earls Court. Undecided what to do, Ian moved in with him. Then he moved Alan into a separate room in the Rushmore. Ian had no money, and Burroughs was paying for all of them. Not surprisingly there was a degree of tension. The situation was becoming farcical when the offer of Ringo’s flat came up. It made sense for Ian actually to live there because it was in the evenings that people wanted to use the studio, and this would mean he was always there. He and Alan moved in. It seemed a good way to compensate Ian for his time spent as a recording engineer. He could also make tape copies or record demos as a way of supplementing his income. Ian bought the equipment, all to studio quality and at a small discount from Teletape on Shaftesbury Avenue.

  This photograph of John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins was probably taken at Oxford in the early sixties. Hoppy began his photography career at Melody Maker magazine and photographed major bands from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones. He was a leading figure in the underground scene, founding cult venue the UFO Club, whose resident band was Pink Floyd, as well as the London Free School and co-founding International Times with Miles. He famously campaigned for the legalization of cannabis and was jailled for six months; Paul McCartney secretly funded an advertisement in The Times in support of Hoppy. He became well known for his photography of CND marches and of peace events, as featured in Peace News. His work inspired so many of the events that form part of London’s culture today, including the Notting Hill Carnival. He passed away on 30 January 2015. Hoppy’s legacy lives on in his powerful photographs, which capture the true spirit of the sixties.

  Now the studio existed, the problem arose of who was going to use it and who would produce the audio-magazine. In theory I would have been the best placed to edit the magazine because of my contacts in the literary world, but we were just starting Indica and my time was completely taken up with trying to get a rare book catalogue together, as well as simply getting the shop off the ground.

  At the time I was also working with John Hopkins, ‘Hoppy’, on Long Hair, a literary magazine named by Allen Ginsberg that I edited and that Hoppy and I were printing and publishing ourselves. In addition, I still had some duties at Better Books as the new manager had not yet taken over. Paul obviously did not have the time to take an active role, nor did Peter. John was happy to use the studio to hang out and make recordings of his friends ‘banging pots and pans’, which at the time, with massive echo on them, did not sound at all bad but was also engaged in getting the Indica Gallery off the ground. Clearly we should have appointed an editor to do the work, but Paul did not want to employ anyone – it was supposed to be a relaxed, spontaneous, underground project, and as soon as anyone got employed, like it or not, it was a business.

  We were hoping that people would get to hear of the project and somehow produce the tapes themselves, but of course the studio had an unlisted phone number, and as the flat still belonged to Ringo he didn’t want the address given out. Ian regarded it as Paul’s studio, Paul thought of it as some kind of ‘people’s studio’, but with no one in charge it sat there unused except for social purposes. Paul, John Dunbar, Peter, Sue and I often met there of an evening, with Ian and Alan playing the role of hosts, fixing everyone drinks and snacks – Alan worked as a chef in, of all places, Scotland Yard. Ian was particularly worried about Ringo’s green watered-silk wallpaper as it was easily marked. Paul would often bring over acetates from the tracks of Revolver that the Beatles were working on, and it became a very convivial little scene, like a private club. Paul was still living in the Asher household, and although he had friends over he couldn’t easily hold court in Mrs Asher’s living-room.

  William Burroughs was still seeing Ian Sommerville and he became one of the first people to use the studio, recording a series of stereo experiments there as well as many hours of tape cut-ups. He and Ian had previously been involved in several experimental films directed by Antony Balch: Towers Open Fire and Cut Ups, as well as making hundreds of hours of cut-up tapes together. Sadly none of his tapes from that period still exist. Paul was one of the other people to use the studio and soon got to know Burroughs. They discussed ideas associated with cut-ups and random juxta-positions; Paul had often noticed how well any randomly selected piece of music would go with one of the experimental silent films that he was making at that time. The brain seemed to find correspondences and link them together. Paul’s films were usually composed of two separate takes, one superimposed over the other in a completely random way. Burroughs was still engaged in making cutup texts as well as collage scrapbooks, film experiments with Balch and actual cut-up tapes. It was Paul’s friendship with Burroughs, and their conversations at the studio, that led him to put Burroughs on the sleeve of Sgt Pepper in 1967. Paul recalled his times with Burroughs in the studio:

  In our conversations, I thought about getting into cut-ups and things like that and I thought I would use it [the studio] for cutups, so I kind of thought I might do that. But I think it ended up being of more practical use to me, really, [to] let Burroughs do the cutups and let me just go in and demo things. So I’d just written ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and I just went down there in the basement in a day off on my own. Just took a guitar down. I’m not sure there was anyone there. I just operated the little Revox and just used it as a demo studio. But occasionally Burroughs would be there. He was very interesting, he was fine, but the sitting around for hours would be more with Ian Sommerville and his friend, Alan. I remember them telling me off for being a tea-head. ‘You’re a teahead, man!’ ‘Well? So?’3

  At Allen Ginsberg’s thirty-ninth birthday party in London on 3 June 1965. Chatting are, left to right, Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg and Ian Sommerville. Later on at the party Allen stripped naked and was wearing his pants on his head when John Lennon and George Harrison arrived with their wives; they didn’t stay long.

  William Burroughs in Paris, 1964. This picture is taken from the film Towers Open Fire by Anthony Balch.

  This was a bit much, coming from Ian who was constantly stoned and had been for many years. In any case, it was not meant as a rebuke. One of Ian’s fondest memories of his time in Tangier with Burroughs was that his pillow had been stuffed with marijuana: ‘Gives you great dreams, man!’ Burroughs, a man of relatively few words unless drunk or stoned, was happy to sit and watch while McCartney worked. He was intrigued to watch the development of
‘Eleanor Rigby’, which began as a simple acoustic track with Paul strumming his guitar, most of the time using Ian as his tape op, and was worked up to a stage where Paul knew exactly how he wanted the arrangement to go.

  Eventually Paul abandoned the experimental studio as unworkable. It had to be used for something more than banging pots and rubbing the rims of wine glasses and clearly was not going to be. After a couple of months Ian moved out, taking the equipment with him with Paul’s agreement. Years later someone turned up to take away one of the Revoxes. Paul gave the remaining tape-recorders and the rest of the equipment to Ian. The idea of the experimental studio and the magazine, however, remained in his head, and almost three years later it surfaced again in the form of the experimental division of Apple Records: Zapple.

  Our stoned discussions, which were sometimes held at John Dunbar’s and Marianne Faithfull’s flat at 29 Lennox Gardens in Knightsbridge, had led us into the fantasy world of a radio station, a television station and a newspaper.

  Yoko Ono demonstrating her ceiling installation at her show at Indica Gallery. Viewers had to climb the stepladder and use a magnifying glass to read a tiny text on the panel. Lennon climbed up on the day he met her.

  Chapter 2

  The Idea

  LESS THAN A YEAR after we opened, Indica Books moved to its own premises near the British Museum in Bloomsbury. The gallery was in the appropriate location, but the bookshop wasn’t. There was no passing trade, and although we were doing our best to publicize ourselves with pictures and interviews in magazines most people had no idea that Indica Books existed. We decided to separate the bookshop from the art gallery, and fortuitously, in the summer of 1966, John Dunbar met Chris Hill who had somehow acquired a bookshop called Jackson’s at 102 Southampton Row, one block from the British Museum in Bloomsbury. A complicated deal was done in which Chris became a director of Indica and also received a cash sum in order for us to take over his premises. The money, inevitably, came from Paul McCartney. Chris and his younger twin brothers, Jeffrey and Alan, lived above the shop at 18 Ormonde Mansions, 106 Southampton Row, and were frequently in the shop. It was through his involvement with Indica that Chris met Denny Laine, who had been the lead singer with the Moody Blues – he sang on ‘Go Now’, their biggest hit – and worked on a number of musical projects with him. We installed a huge noticeboard, which was quickly covered with notices of readings, items for sale and personal messages. William Burroughs appealed for volunteers for him to practise Scientology auditing and even gave out his telephone number – rare for him; Yoko Ono appealed for babysitters – we had to take this down in the end because several people complained that they had babysat until the early hours for her and she never paid them; musicians wanted to form bands; bands wanted musicians. There was a big brown teapot, and tea was offered (this was before the ubiquitous coffee in bookshops), and the big room in the back was used initially for overflow exhibitions from the gallery, the first show being the Baschet Brothers’ sculpture-instruments.

  In October 1966 International Times (usually known as IT), Europe’s first underground newspaper, began publishing from the big room in the basement. I was a director and also contributed a regular literary column, as well as a record review column. Our music coverage increased when one day I complained to Paul McCartney that we were finding it difficult to get advertising and he suggested the obvious: ‘Why don’t you interview me for the paper, then you’ll get record company advertising?’ He was right, of course. I went over to his place and recorded a conversation with him which we ran as a Q&A in the fifth issue of the paper. After that record company advertising became a major source of income for the paper. Paul suggested that I interview ‘my friend George’, so I invited George over to my flat for tea and recorded a tape with him. After that it was easy. Mick Jagger came to tea, and I taped him, he was followed by Pete Townshend and others. I never had to go through record companies or publicists; it was all done on a friendly basis because the musicians knew IT and liked it and wanted to be in it and support it.

  There is no question that without Paul McCartney’s support Indica Books would have gone under several years before it did (it closed on 29 February 1970). Paul was a good friend and supporter of the underground scene, although of necessity he kept his involvement quiet. Years later Paul talked about this period of his life:

  When John was living out in the suburbs by the golf course with Cynthia and hanging out there, I was getting in with a guy called Miles and the people at Indica. I used to be at his house a lot of nights, just him and his wife, because he was just so interesting, very well read. So he’d turn you on to Burroughs and all that. I’d done a bit of literature at school, but I never really did anything modern. I find this very interesting because it’s something I realize I didn’t put around a lot at the time, like I helped start International Times with Miles, helped start Indica Bookshop and Gallery, where John met Yoko.1

  The launch of International Times has been described as one of the important moments in the sixties counterculture revolution. The launch, held at the Roundhouse (this was its first public event), featured Pink Floyd, among many other avant-garde artists. IT embodied the free-thinking and cutting-edge arts movement of the sixties and flew the flag for London’s underground scene.

  Paul was a great supporter of International Times, not only raising its profile by agreeing to be interviewed but also often dipping into his own pocket to keep the paper afloat. This cover was kindly donated by IT art director, Mike McInnerney.

  Indica Gallery closed in 1967, but the bookshop struggled on. It was in late September 1968 that I went to see Paul McCartney at his house on Cavendish Avenue in St John’s Wood. Indica Books was once more in trouble financially, and as Paul had always said to come to him if we needed further help I was doing so, albeit with trepidation. I didn’t like asking for money because I thought it affected our friendship and I was also the one who approached him for help whenever International Times needed money to pay the staff; too many of the people he knew were hitting on him. However, he did say that I should never be scared to come to him if things were really bad. ‘Years from now,’ he said, ‘twenty years from now’, and it did look as if Indica Books would fold without an injection of cash, so I went begging once more. At least it was for the bookshop, not for me. I gave the secret three long rings on the doorbell, which all the girls gathered by the black metal gate knew anyway – they had eyes and ears – and was admitted. Paul’s house was set back from the road, with a front yard serving as a driveway. To the left of the house was the garage, concealing his Aston Martin DB5 and his wide-wheelbase black-glass Mini Cooper. The yard was lit by a Victorian street lamp, installed by Paul. Tea was served in his living-room, and we sat there like two English gentlemen. I asked for £3,000, to which he readily agreed and then quickly changed the subject, as if he were as embarrassed as I was at bringing it up.

  Paul, having split up with Jane, was in what he later described as his ‘bachelor period’, and the house was full of semi-clad young women, one of whom looked in on us. Paul told her to go away; that we were talking business. She pulled a face and left. ‘It’s terrible,’ he said. ‘The birds are always quarrelling about something. There’s three living here at the moment.’ He laughed, because this was quite a new departure for him. Mostly I’d only ever visited the house when Jane Asher was there. ‘And there’s another one, an American groupie, flying in this evening. I’ve thrown her out once. I had to throw her suitcase over the wall. But it’s no good; she keeps coming back.’

  Peter Asher and Miles at the till in Indica Books, April 1967. The first cash till for the shop was donated by Jane Asher and was the same Victorian till she used when playing ‘shops’ as a little girl.

  Paul was clearly very pleased about something, and, business over, he leaped up and led the way upstairs to his music room. ‘Come and hear this,’ he said. He put on a white label acetate of ‘Back in the USSR’ that he had finished mixing t
he night before. ‘How do you think the cocky Americans will like that?’ he asked, and we both laughed.

  In fact there was further business to discuss. Just a few weeks before we had been talking once more about a series of very cheap spoken-word albums, issued regularly if possible, like a magazine. Paul saw this as a way of involving me, and also Indica Books, with Apple and had asked me to prepare a list of people I thought that Apple should record. I had the list with me and showed it to him. In no particular order it comprised the following poets and writers: an initial group to include Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Richard Brautigan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, Michael McClure, Ken Weaver, Ed Sanders, Charles Olson and Charles Bukowski; I didn’t expect them all to happen. This would be followed by Anaïs Nin, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Samuel Beckett, Gary Snyder, Simon Vinkenoog, Tom Pickard and I even thought of approaching Ezra Pound to read his Confucian Analects.

  Almost all of the people on my first list lived in the USA, and Paul thought it would be better to start with people who might be known there, if only by a small number of people. Paul had met both Ginsberg and Burroughs, and certainly knew of Miller, but the rest I suspected he had never heard of. None the less his response was enthusiastic. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Terrific. Get it together! Get an assistant and go out there and record them. Done. Just like that!’ He laughed. I laughed.