by Will Birch
Ian was indeed a gifted ‘wordsmith’, who had tasted enough of London life to inform his image. He cleverly honed his portrait of a rock ’n’ roll street urchin, living by his wits, ducking and diving to stay one step ahead of the law, having nicked everything from racy magazines to flash cars. With the Kilburns as an outlet, his writing had turned the corner, progressing from his slightly derivative early efforts to reporting his own experiences and aspirations, as in ‘The Upminster Kid’, in which ‘Gene Vincent Craddock remembered the love of an Upminster rock ’n’ roll kid’:
When I was fifteen I had a black drape jacket and sideboards to my chin,
I used to go around in a two-tone Zephyr with a mean and nasty grin,
Twelve-inch bottoms on my stardust flecks and socks of dazzling green . . .
The truth is, when Ian was fifteen, he wanted a black drape jacket, but he had to make do with a mail order ‘denim rock suit’. Even though he had sported the classic Teddy Boy hairstyle, the Ford Zephyr with its gleaming chrome and faux Detroit fins was pure fantasy. But never mind; didn’t the great Chuck Berry once write about ‘working on a T-bone steak a la carte, flying over to the golden state’ while he was incarcerated in prison? Like Berry, Ian injected his songs with dense lyrical colour. ‘The Upminster Kid’ was poetic fiction, but if his fans wanted to believe it was for real, Ian wasn’t inclined to shatter their illusions.
My good friend Fryer wore a powder-blue suit, a criss-cross lurex thread,
He turned seventeen, bought a big motor-sickle, he started wearing leather instead,
I could not afford a ruby snaffle tie or the black suede Clubman shoes . . .
In the changing musical climate of the mid-1970s it became de rigueur for emerging rock musicians to claim working-class roots, bending the truth about their family and social backgrounds and glossing over any whiff of education or privilege. They often came from middle- or even upper-class homes, but in the interests of authenticity the impression of more humble origins was preferable. The rock ’n’ roll pose was often effective, with many music journalists going along for the ride in search of ever more colourful copy.
In September 1973, ace reporter Nick Kent profiled Kilburn and the High Roads in New Musical Express under the memorable headline: ‘Hardened Criminals Plan Big Break-Out’. It was a compelling image, especially when accompanied by a grainy shot of the Kilburns in bus stop pose. At once, Ian and his ruffian band were seen as tough outsiders, railing against authority and struggling for survival on the fringes of Tin Pan Alley. Ian was quick to uphold the image.
Describing the Kilburns’ 21 August visit to the 100 Club, primarily a jazz stronghold, Nick Kent set the scene:
Tonight the duffel coats and beards have been temporarily substituted . . . tonight, you see, is rock ’n’ roll night . . . the poster on display shows a particularly squalid photograph of what looks like six hardened criminals lined up in full profile. The stage starts to fill out with a motley assortment of individuals. The drummer, a Negro named David, lifts himself on stage by means of two crutches . . . the pianist, Russell, who looks like an original beatnik, takes his place . . . then some character one presumes to be the singer finally appears; he looks like a greased-back, squat Lou Reed – but even Reed never looked quite as oppressive and sinister as this . . . he is simply the most charismatic figure I’ve ever seen on a small British stage.
Ian was tickled pink. He loved the knowledgeable journalist’s description of the Kilburns’ musical eclecticism and the way he dropped some impressive names into his text, such as American musicians Meade Lux Lewis and Professor Longhair, both of whom rang a bell with pianist Russell. Ian was amused by Kent’s reference to ‘a character in a motorcycle jacket dancing with a Bianca Jagger lookalike’, this being Denise Roudette dancing with Kilburns roadie Paul Tonkin, who made it his job to try and motivate a listless audience. Even more, Ian loved the ‘hardened criminals’ tag and the fact that Kent’s sign-off credited the Kilburns as ‘God’s own gift to Shepherds Bush Market threads specialists’. Ian couldn’t have put it any better himself.
Through his many NME features, possibly with the Kilburns in mind, Nick Kent was instrumental in helping to shape the immediate future of rock ’n’ roll. Maybe only a thousand readers were paying attention, but they were the influential few who would sway their friends and help to spread the gospel, just as Dave Robinson predicted would happen.
On 18 September 1973, shortly after Denise Roudette had returned to college in Bristol, the Kilburns played the City of London Polytechnic in Whitechapel. It was there that Ian met Roberta Bayley, a twenty-two-year-old American who was staying in London. As a rock ’n’ roll fan, Roberta had gravitated towards the Kilburns through the snippets she’d heard on Charlie Gillett’s radio show. She had worked part-time at Let It Rock – the Vivienne Westwood/Malcolm McLaren boutique in the Kings Road – and had already attended an earlier Kilburns show with McLaren who, she remembers, was something of a fan. ‘I was living in a huge flat in Albert Hall Mansions which belonged to a friend,’ recalls Roberta. ‘It had wall-to-wall carpets, a TV and a phone and it overlooked the Albert Memorial. Ian and I ended up hitch-hiking back there from Whitechapel. He was probably supposed to get a ride with the band, but he was like, “Let’s go!” Sparks were flying, so to speak.’
‘We got a ride in a big lorry and went back to this spacious flat. We had a night of romance. I fell madly in love with him. I’m not trying to make myself seem like I’m oblivious to deformity, but I didn’t give a thought to the fact that he was crippled. Obviously, it was a big issue for him. It might have been part of the reason I was attracted to him. You go home with this person for the first time and they have this leg they have to unstrap and I was like: “OK, get on with it.” It wasn’t like Jane Fonda and John Voigt in Coming Home; we had great sex and everything was fine.’
The following day, Ian and Roberta went to the cinema to see Scarecrow, the road movie starring Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, and had as much fun as possible in the few days they had together. ‘The fact I was due to go back to America added the extra-romantic element that I think Ian thrived on,’ continues Roberta. ‘Peter Blake had an American wife, and I think Ian saw me as his American rose. I was a well-scrubbed, WASPy looking girl, smart but unformed. Ian was very much trying to form me and educate me. He called me his “Breck girl”.’5
After their whirlwind romance, Roberta Bayley gifted Ian her gold scarab ring and flew home to San Francisco, wondering if she would ever see him, or the ring, again. Before the month was out, she received a rather coy letter containing some mildly flirtatious suggestions and the news that the Kilburns were about to give an interview to Steven Fuller, an American writer from Penthouse magazine. ‘How many wankers will buy our wares?’ Ian wondered.
Riding high on press coverage, the Kilburns were invited at short notice to support the Who – often described as ‘the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world’ – on a short UK tour. Keith Lucas broke the news to Ian on 29 October: ‘Guess where we’re playing on Thursday night! Belle Vue Stadium, Manchester!’ Panic set in; overnight the Kilburns would have to progress from playing to a few dozen fans in tiny pubs to performing in front of thousands. ‘[The Who] were going to do it on their own,’ said Ian, ‘but I guess their material wouldn’t stretch to two hours without recourse to the dreaded Tommy.’
Just before the tour got underway, Ian was hoping to ‘secure quarters in Whitechapel’, courtesy of his co-manager, Gordon Nelki. Ian had just had a terrible row with Betty, one of their last before he left home for good. Ever loyal, she had ironed Ian’s stage outfit for the opening show with the Who, but took modest revenge by pressing his trousers along the side seam, so that when he went on stage, his legs looked flat and wide.
Nobody quite knew why the Who had requested the presence of the Kilburns on their ‘Quadrophenia’ tour, but Ian hung on to the theory that Pete Townshend had seen the group at the Speakeasy in November of
the previous year. ‘Pete knew what we were about,’ said Ian. ‘We did eight gigs with the Who . . . I think they wanted us to be on their record label . . . it was a hectic fortnight. I saw what could be done with extreme volume. At the Lyceum, the flunky came down with the plates of gear and Keith Moon smashed the lot – same the next night. The third night they came down with paper plates and he tore them all up. He lived by his convictions, that man.’
The tour played to sell-out crowds in Manchester, Newcastle and London, which sold out so quickly that Ian was unable to get a ticket for Peggy. But the trek did little for the popularity of the Kilburns, or their morale. They were unable to project their visual or musical subtleties in such large venues, and most of the audience had no interest in ‘the support act’. The road antics of the Who had an overwhelming effect on Humphrey Ocean, who was about to quit the group. ‘Humphrey witnessed a load of dodgy reporters telling Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon to throw things and kick the walls down,’ said Ian. ‘The reporters were winding them up so they could get some shots. Plus Humphrey had done the best part of a bottle of Pernod. He had to be laid on his left side, in this hotel in Manchester, so he didn’t choke on his vomit.’
At one point during the tour, Ian and Pete Townshend became engaged in a long, alcohol-fuelled yak, in which the megastar magnanimously offered the Kilburns a support slot on his group’s upcoming American tour. Although this was little more than inebriated banter, in Ian’s mind it was a reality, and he excitedly announced that the group would soon be California-bound. Gillett and Nelki were sceptical, but decided that passport arrangements should be made, just in case.
As none of the group had work permits, Gordon’s wife, Andra, called the US Embassy to request visas. Kilburns roadie Paul Tonkin was sent home to Southampton to get his passport and instructed to come straight back to London. Upon his return, Tonkin met the group in the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, to be greeted by Ian, exclaiming: ‘I don’t know why you’re getting a visa, you’re not even coming to America! You dropped an amp the other day. You’re out!’ All of the tellers looked up from their desks, listening to Ian’s rant, while the rest of the Kilburns sat nearby, absolutely mute. It was Tonkin’s first brush with Ian’s ‘bad side’. ‘I can date his megalomania from that time,’ says Tonkin. ‘He’d been treating me like a dogsbody. “Get my suit!” His head was getting big.’
The Kilburns didn’t go to America. ‘The whole thing was a fabrication between Ian and Pete Townshend,’ says Gordon Nelki. ‘The Who had already hired Lynyrd Skynyrd!’ Ian was naturally disappointed that the US trip had fallen through. He had dreamed of the Kilburns opening for the Who in California and was also looking forward to reuniting with Roberta Bayley, who had flown home to San Francisco just a few weeks earlier. But instead of appearing in front of a 12,000-strong crowd at the Cow Palace, the scene of the Beatles’ final US concert appearance of 1965, the Kilburns were booked to play a three-night stint at the Zero 6, a discotheque in Southend-on-Sea.
Following the Who tour, Humphrey Ocean decided to leave the Kilburns. ‘I’d had enough,’ he says. ‘I realized that it was not for me. I wanted to be a painter, and all of the hardships that one had to endure I would endure for painting, but not for music. My heart wasn’t in it. I knew very well that I didn’t want to be a bass player, having tried it and been quite good at it. It wasn’t really what I wanted to make of my life.’ Ian recalled: ‘When Humphrey decided to leave the Kilburns, I remember Peter Blake outside Dingwalls, more than a bit pissed, trying to persuade him not to leave. Peter was sitting on a Porsche and he kept being sick, then he had to go and sit on another bit of the Porsche! “Tell Humphrey not to leave the band, anyone can be a fucking painter!” But it wasn’t true, so he left.’
In December, the Kilburns hired a new bass player, Jerome Lucas (no relation to either Keith or Chris Lucas). Jerome had formerly been in Kripple Vision with David Rohoman, but his tenure in the Kilburns would be short-lived. For a mad moment, the group considered asking Paul McCartney to join. ‘Andra worked with Linda McCartney on photography projects, so there was a connection,’ says Gordon Nelki. ‘We were quite serious about it. We thought Paul would enjoy it.’ When it became clear that the McCartney was not about to soil his hands on the pub rock circuit, the Kilburns advertised for a new bassist.
Amongst those who auditioned for the job was Charlie Sinclair, formerly of the band Phoenix. Sinclair, who hailed from the Shetland Islands, was a great musician, and his diminutive stature would enhance the group’s unconventional appearance. At a little under five feet in height – a vital statistic not lost on Ian – Sinclair would frequently be described in the music press as either a ‘dwarf’ or a ‘midget’. Ian would affectionately nickname him ‘Iron Man’. Charlie Gillett was suspicious about Ian’s motives for selecting Sinclair, ‘but it kept the look of the circus about it all, a band in which Ian wasn’t the only weird one’.
Choosing my words carefully, I remarked upon Sinclair’s height to Ian. ‘There are people who might say . . . [Ian laughs] that the Kilburns were sort of . . . [Ian laughs again] somewhat visually . . . visually impaired,’ said Ian with a smile. ‘The day we auditioned little Charlie, at a church in Brixton, we’d had ’em all in, six foot two, banging their basses. Charlie was easily the best. We were rehearsing in the vicar’s office, and Charlie was waiting in a pew while we had our group discussion. I was sent out to talk to him. I said, “Well, Charlie, you’re the best bass player we’ve had, but you can’t join the band.” He asked, “Why?” I said, “Because you’re too small.” He exploded with rage and said, “That’s no fucking reason.” I said, “I’m pleading with you, Charlie, three out of six [unusual looking people]?” He said, “No, I’m joining.” We went, “Oh, all right then.”’
Ian knew that with the wee one on board, the Kilburns would look more bizarre then ever. Humphrey had observed that people found it hard to walk past the Kilburns without wanting to come back for a second look. Peter Blake agrees: ‘The eccentricity of the group was more important than the music. Humphrey couldn’t play! But he looked wonderful, a tall gangling figure in a white zoot suit with the crotch at the knees. And Rohoman! When Ian saw him leave his drum kit and walk away on crutches, he had to have him! So when a very short bass player walked through the door, Ian would have chosen him above any normal-size person. I recall they played a gig in Bath and stayed in one of the cheap hotels close to the station. When Ian called to make the reservation, he said, “I want to book some rooms. We’re a band. There are six of us, one’s a midget, two of us are cripples and one of the cripples is black.”’
Although the recent tour with the Who had not won the Kilburns a vast army of new fans, it had lifted the group’s profile just enough to attract attention from the major record labels. CBS talent scout Dan Loggins was leading the pack. To investigate the Kilburns’ recording potential, Loggins paired them with former Velvet Underground producer Geoffrey Haslam and arranged some pre-production sessions at Majestic Studios in Clapham. Haslam was slightly underwhelmed by the Kilburns’ musicality but invested a lot of hours in dissecting ‘Rough Kids’ and rearranging it as a potential hit single. Ian was extremely excited by Haslam’s work and the prospect of signing to a major label. He boasted to friends that the deal would provide the group with ‘an equipment van and a nice medium p.a.’, the dream acquisitions of every unsigned band.
That Christmas, Ian visited Peggy and his aunties in Devon and had plenty of time to reflect on his musical career. He believed that the CBS deal was in the bag and that the label would be sending the Kilburns into the recording studio with producer Tony Ashton, of ‘Resurrection Shuffle’ hit-makers Ashton, Gardner and Dyke. Ian had also decided that the Kilburns would be coming off the road for the foreseeable future in order to work up some new songs for their album, but he’d failed to tell David Rohoman and Jerome Lucas. The ill-fated pair heard the news at a New Year’s Eve gig in Southend-on-Sea. It didn’t bode well for the show, wh
ich was also marred by an onstage punch-up between Davey Payne and roadie ‘Zeus’, in which, according to Ian, ‘Davey went berserk because of the awful sound and leapt on Zeus, sax in one hand, mic stand held aloft like an insane Zulu.’
Ian’s habit of taking the band off the road in order to prepare new material also allowed him to put some distance between himself and musicians he was seeking to replace. It was usually the drummer and frequently David Rohoman. He later told a reporter that the Kilburns had ‘been through thirty-six drummers’, which was only a slight exaggeration. Ian felt particularly guilty about sacking Rohoman and for a moment considered accommodating him on percussion and backing vocals in an expanded line-up with drummer Barry Ford from Clancy, but the idea was scrapped for financial reasons. Other drummers would come and go, including Louis Larose, who fell out of favour because he had negotiated a healthy session fee, whereas the rest of the group had to make do on a paltry wage.
On 1 January 1974, Ian finalized his next letter to Roberta, confessing: ‘I’ve done up a lot of bullshit with girlfriends, getting too far inside defences, building unreal reliance frameworks, needing to be little Mr Terrific to all and sundry.’ With Roberta things would be different, he suggested, pleading with her to come back to London to be his live-in lover. ‘I’ll have a room by 10 Jan and I earn ten quid a week,’ he told her. ‘Lots of rice . . . hardly any ice cream or movies . . . come to England, as quick as a shiny airplane and a slimy shuddering taxi . . . there is a shocking Roberta shortage in England.’
Hopeful that Roberta would return to London, Ian redoubled his efforts to find somewhere for them to live. For many months he’d been sleeping in the front parlour of Gordon Nelki’s house in Stockwell but craved a personal space where he could set up his desk and write, his current work-in-progress being an early draft of ‘Plaistow Patricia’. ‘[It’s] about old East End girlfriend 1960 mingled with dead health service heroin child called Jenny Wren who died in 1962,’ Ian would tell his transatlantic muse. By now, Gordon and Charlie had helped Ian find inexpensive lodgings at 26 Stockwell Park Crescent, where he slept on a mattress under a bare light bulb and dreamed of Roberta Bayley returning to the UK.