by Ray Connolly
Chapter Eight
During the weeks that followed the party the Stray Cats worked harder than ever, but as the day of the record’s release drew closer it became increasingly clear to all of them that Johnny believed himself to have taken over the destiny of the group. And on stage every night he would go purposely to the centre of the stage to announce their new hit record on Dayray Records - just the way all the established artists did. He was so purposely confident about his position in the group as the leader, that none of the others even tried to keep him in check, although while riding in the van between gigs Jim and Stevie would moan for hours that they wanted more attention given to their song. Okay, said Johnny, he’d see what he could do, just as though it were his position to decide anything, and to Mike’s amazement the other Stray Cats let him get away with it.
On the Saturday night before release week they were playing an end-of-pier concert hall: it was an important gig for them because the summer season was just getting under way, but it was memorable in another sense. Mike had had the word from Barnacle Barney that tonight he would be giving a first airing to the Stray Cats record: Mike had found his weak spot - having young girls stick twopenny stamps all over his left buttock - and he was reaping the rewards for a massive postal investment.
During the first half of the show the whole group was edgy with anticipation and as soon as the interval lights went up they raced off the stage and away down to the end of the pier where Mike was sitting with his transistor. He had insisted on them listening to it in the privacy of their own van because he didn’t want any stage hands or managers or girls enjoying their first moment of triumph in the big time, and put that way it made a lot of sense.
Mike knew at precisely what time the record was to go on the air, and had arranged with the pier manager that the Stray Cats should be given their break in time to hear it. But as it happened, they were only just in time and no sooner were they inside the van and listening hard to the varying quality of the pirate ship broadcast, than Barnacle Barney was on to their record.
‘Any second now,’ said Mike as a commercial for Beechams Pills filled the airwaves. And then the moment came.
‘And now my flier of the week,’ Barnacle Barney was raving like something he must have heard on an early Cruisin’ album. ‘Oh yes … hi, hi, hi, shipmateys, that’s where this one’s gonna go. Tonight and all this week you can hear this record for the first time anywhere-and it’s a record that I can guarantee will be number one bound. Oh yes this is a big one all right. So here we go -Jim Maclaine and the Stray Cats with You Kept Me Waiting.
The sound of Stevie playing lead guitar filled the van, and suddenly they were right into Jim’s song.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Jim. Mike stared straight ahead. From the back of the van came the muffled voices of confusion. The disc jockey was playing the B-side of the record and saying he was going to make it a hit. What had happened to Johnny’s song?
‘He’s playing the wrong side … the stupid bastard.’ Johnny was numbed with shock. ‘He’s playing the wrong side. Someone’s got to stop him. This’ll spoil everything.’
Catching Jim’s eye, Mike turned towards Johnny sympathetically: ‘Well, the soft spanner. I tell you what, I’ll write to him.’
Jim was quickest to recover from the shock: ‘Time for the second half, lads,’ he said, jumping down from the van, and beginning to jog back towards the pier ballroom. All of a sudden he felt different, like the substitute who’s just scored the vital goal in injury time. He didn’t doubt for a minute that Mike had been up to something but he couldn’t begin to guess how the deal had been manoeuvred. He didn’t want to know the details. That was academic. He was on his way, and as he led the way back into the dance hall he felt aggressive with exhilaration. He was calling the tune now. He was going to make those bastards dance the way he wanted. The rest of the Stray Cats followed in confused disorder. Stevie was pleased to find his song on the promotion side of the record, but neither J.D. nor Alex were sure of anything any more. And Johnny was silent with shock and disappointment.
The manager was waiting for them when they got back and hurried them straight back on stage. The summertime guests expected non-stop entertainment for their money and it was his job to make sure they got it. Usually the group would hang about a bit, drawing out their interval for as long as possible, but tonight Jim was ready to work with a new urgency. Tonight was his night: his golden opportunity. Walking right to the centre of the stage he took the microphone from where Johnny usually held it and moved it a few feet to one side while the rest of the group filed on behind him. Johnny was still too shocked to realize what was happening.
‘And now, I’d like to do my latest hit record, You Kept Me Waiting,’ shouted Jim, to the unlistening audience and turning to nod to J.D. he began stamping his foot, while away went Stevie with his guitar solo opening. Tonight and from now on it would be Jim Maclaine and the Stray Cats, he was sure of that. He was going to be the star. Johnny had been by-passed. Johnny was just one of the group now. And standing up there in front of the audience, Jim was sure he ascertained a new excitement. His voice was good and he knew he looked good. Now there could be no stopping him. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before he’d be able to instruct the guys on the lights to leave him alone in the spots and to dim out the others, because he was going to be a star. He knew it.
And Mike, arriving at the back of the ballroom for the second half of the show knew it, too. Jim looked like a star. He was a prick all right. But with those looks, that voice and that ambition there could be no stopping him. And he, Mike, ex-fairground humper, was the man who had engineered it all.
Good as his word, Barnacle Barney kept You Kept Me Waiting spinning non-stop all week but not just because Mike was plying him with girls, spit and acres of stamps. He actually liked the record. He could tell a hit when he heard one and he prided himself on his knowledge of these things. Within a few days some of the rival disc jockeys on other pirate ships, Radio Caroline and Radio Atlanta, were picking up on the song, and the biggest accolade to his judgement came the following Saturday When the BBC’s Light Programme’s Easy Beat chose it as their tip for the top. Colin Day for his part was at first surprised, but sensing an exciting and unearned upset in his plans, he quickly got on to Radio Luxembourg and had their disc jockeys give the song a good airing.
For the Stray Cats, though they still drove from gig to gig in the van during the day and halfway through the early hours, things were happening at enormous speed. Now whenever they appeared Jim was mobbed. The media had built up a teenage following for groups like the Beatles and Stones and now that need had to be fed by other more accessible stars. All of a sudden there were autograph hunters everywhere, crumpet was available at every corner and there were more dates booked than the group could possibly keep. Then on the same Easy Beat Saturday a full page interview with Jim appeared in the Evening Standard. J.D. and Stevie protested vigorously that they ought to have been interviewed, too, but Jim pointed out that since they hadn’t been there when the young lady had talked to him, it was just their misfortune, which in a way it was, and would always be. As for Johnny he had become a shadow of himself, his confidence totally shattered by the speed of events.
Within two weeks all the pop musical journalists had caught up with them and they’d taped an appearance on television’s Ready Steady Go programme. But things were changing in other ways, too. Now Colin Day was really interested in them, handling them with a care and attention to detail that both flattered and annoyed them. They had never cared for groups who wore pretty band suits and had made endless fun of the Beatles because of the way they had allowed themselves to become puppets of the Establishment, but band suits they wore when Colin Day pointed out that that was the only way they would get on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, and that that was the only way they would be able to give themselves a professional identity. Professionalism, to Colin Day, meant five nice neat boys who the gi
rls would go for and to whom the mums would not object. That was the way Epstein had handled his lads and that was clearly the way to go. And of course the Stray Cats knew in their hearts that he was right, and even if he wasn’t they weren’t going to argue, because there was just no time. The juggernaut was rolling now and there was never time for anything. And so a week became a month and a release had been planned in America before they knew what was happening. And while they were rushing about the country playing gigs, driving all night and sleeping in lay-bys in the van, then rushing down to London to shop in Carnaby Street for the new gear they had to find, the record was moving up through the charts, the contracts were rolling in and almost without them fully realizing it they were becoming stars. Even Mike was slow to realize the enormity of it all. At first his problems were in getting the van to work and making sure the group made the gigs on time, but within four weeks he had had to hire a couple of extra roadies to help, driving along in another van behind the group. Mike needed all his wits about him now to organize security for Jim. Indeed he had never realized before how incredibly vulnerable a pop group was to avid fans, and night after night Jim would complain that he was lucky to get out of the dance hall with all his equipment still intact. Something was happening which was too big for any of them to grasp. It wasn’t just the hit record: Jim seemed to have something else. He was magic to the girls, and he was the envy of boys. And now he was supremely self-confident. Within a few weeks he had become completely dominant in the group while Johnny became increasingly morose as he was pushed into the background. He was becoming so surly in fact that he occasionally seemed to be deliberately fluffing his guitar solo breaks, making the group look amateurish. He was, Mike decided, a definite liability.
But for the meantime life continued. Mike went on pulling girls for the group, although he rarely indulged himself and Colin Day hustled and hustled to get his group top billing on a tour of the United Kingdom. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones may have been kings of the world in 1964, but it must have done them some good now and again to look over their shoulders and see Jim Maclaine and his pals making a nice little living following in their wake.
Then, at the end of June, Colin Day sent for the group. The record had been rising in the charts all through the month, so they knew it couldn’t be bad news, but they didn’t dare imagine what better news was possible.
‘Boys,’ Colin Day leaned back in his chair and smiled at them. ‘I’ve had information that you’ll be number one in next week’s charts …’ A cheer went up from J.D. and Stevie. Jim just stared in amazement. But Day hadn’t finished. ‘And you’ve gone into the American Hot Hundred at 38 - with a bullet.’
This time there was no reaction. Nothing instant. Just silence. It was as though this news would take time to sink in. Colin Day smiled at them as though in a slow motion action replay of eternity.
‘America …’ At last Stevie broke the silence.
‘America,’ said Colin Day, and with a generous flourish that he usually reserved for the heads of American companies, he pounced in his desk drawer and, discovering a box of cigars, handed them round to the group, starting with Jim and ending with Johnny. ‘Jim,’ he said, looking fondly at him, ‘… well done.’ And extending a hand he gripped Jim’s fist warmly.
‘Congratulations, Jim.’ For the first time in days Johnny was saying something. Moving across to Jim he shook his hand and with the other patted Stevie on the back. ‘I always knew your song would make it,’ he said.
Mike looked at him and hated him more than ever. The grovelling little bastard, he thought. But he smiled. ‘Johnny! Fancy a drink?’ he said, and with an arm round Johnny’s shoulders he led him away to a sudden and merciless slaughter. He just couldn’t afford to let some little two faced twat like Johnny interfere with his plans now. No way.
Chapter Nine
If 1963 had been the year of the Beatles in Britain, then 1965 was the year of the Stray Cats-or to be more precise the year of Jim Maclaine. With more hindsight than good judgement Colin Day managed to garnish a considerable degree of the acclaim for his part in putting the group on the ladder to success, and before many more months were up they had been heavily featured on the cover of the Observer, had numerous intellectual articles devoted to the music of Jim and Stevie, while the Jim Maclaine Fan Club had branches in every major city and some inordinately minor places in the United Kingdom. At first Day had toyed with the idea of going, to America, where their first record had broken big and won a gold within a month of release, but his natural cautiousness in his investment bade him to consolidate in Britain first and to keep America waiting. Colonel Tom Parker had made the British fans wait for Elvis, and he was bigger in Britain than anywhere else in the world. Maybe, just’ maybe, scarcity value would increase the American fascination with the Stray Cats. And as it happens, he was quite right. While little girls wrote long, loving letters to Jim from Divide, Colorado and Fairmont, Indiana, Colin Day merely fed them with hit after hit, and odd glimpses of television film. Meanwhile Britain became Maclaine’s to do with as he wanted. The Daily Express ran competitions offering nights out with the Stray Cats (all carefully chaperoned by the Express’s publicity department who had heard the reputation that the Stray Cats were getting), while television pundits and interviewers fell out with each other about who should interview Maclaine, and what his effect was on the lives of the young. And all the time everybody was making a fortune. That is, everybody except Johnny Cameron, who, after his drink with Mike, was suddenly replaced by a youthful boy called Kevin Doncaster, who had the double attraction of being as meek as a lamb while incredibly skilful on guitar. Of course Johnny did get one moment of revenge when he sold his inside story to one of the Sunday trashy papers but the thousand pounds he picked up for that hardly compensated for the knowledge that somehow or other Mike had tricked him out of his heritage. He might have been the one that had started the Stray Cats but none of the lawyers he hired was able to prove that he couldn’t be sacked by the others, and none of the others cared two hoots what happened to Johnny so long as life remained good for them. People in pop are greedy like that.
And so the whole bandwagon of money and work rolled through the year. Gigs were played, film parts were offered and turned down, television shows were done, a tour of Europe was a sell-out in Germany, Holland and Denmark, and even the French managed to get a little more excited about the Stray Cats than they had been by the Beatles’ initial trip there. And all the time there was recording to be done, cars to be bought, clothes to be fitted for, journalists to be seen and endless legal hassles to be sorted out with lawyers. It sometimes seemed to Jim that he spent more time with lawyers than he did with musicians but he never begrudged a moment of it. At occasional concerts some of the parents and relations of the group would turn up back-stage, wearing their Sunday best clothes, shaking everyone’s hands and looking exceptionally embarrassed, but Jim’s mother never came. Indeed Jim never ever mentioned her to Mike nor any of the group.
But during all that year Mike had other things to think about than the relations of his star friend. He was now the personal aide to one of the biggest rock stars in the country - indeed in the world and he had four lads helping arrange the equipment, and doing all the humping and electronic fitting which he had always hated. Getting a Stray Cats tour on the road was not unlike running a small army, and that was exactly what he did - hiring lighting men, sound technicians, drivers, dope pedlars, and the best people in stage make-up, security and love-making. No matter what the time or the place, the girls had to be available.
Throughout the rest of 1964 and much of 1965 life could not have been better for Mike. Although Colin Day was the manager and Jim was the star, it was he, Mike, who was essentially in control of matters. He was the mediator, he was the fixer. Everyone knew that there had been all kinds of hanky-panky in the way he had got rid of poor old Launderette Lil and then Johnny Cameron, but no one wanted to know the details. They just knew that
he had done a good, clean, bloodless job that had left no nasty smell. In fact there were rumours that Launderette Lil had returned to Brighton and become happily married after his brief adventure with the Stray Cats, so in a sense it could be said that Mike had done him a favour after all. So it was with supreme happiness that Mike began looking forward to the Pop Today 1965 Pollwinners Concert due to be held at the end of November. The Stray Cats were clear winners, largely because the Beatles and Stones were spending so much of their time touring America, and the concert, to be held at Belle Vue, Manchester, was sold out weeks in advance. All the group were living in London now, each of them in a separate apartment, but Jim and Mike rarely spent more than a few hours apart. Jim needed Mike to prop him up, and Mike liked this sensation of power, this feeling of being the mover of events. And then from nowhere Danielle Peronne came into their lives.
No one, other than Danielle herself, could ever quite remember at what point she became more than just Jim’s bed companion. It just seemed to be a thing that grew over the months. Since Jim had been a Stray Cat he had been through more girls than either he or Mike could begin to remember, but Danielle was different. So different, in fact, that she slowly accumulated to herself the role of full-time girl friend. After Danielle had appeared on the scene Jim stopped his philanderings and rather than hang around the clubs with the other Stray Cats and musicians of the period, he would find himself escorting her to the ballet, the opera and London’s art cinemas. She had everything that he lacked and which he coveted most: class, education and sophistication. When he stared out at the sea of screaming faces which met him on tour he would suddenly feel old and bored by it all. He enjoyed his private moments with Danielle more than anything, although there were so many things he could never tell her about himself. And he began to actively hate the chore of dragging out his suit and getting on stage to go through his series of hoops for the fans. But that was the job. And still America was to be conquered.