by Judith Wills
‘Yes – don’t you remember, you said how great it was!’
Soon I began laughing and returned his pud to him from where I’d put it under the table.
That broke the ice and I learnt a valuable lesson – a sense of humour helps in most situations. We spent the rest of my two days there together, to the slight disapproval not only of the Fab photographer who’d accompanied me and thought it unprofessional to cohort with the interviewees, but also of most of the other 208 DJs, with the exception of Tony Prince who encouraged us in our romance, so thank you Tony.
When my few days there were up, Kid drove me to the airport and I felt bereft when the plane took off. I guess I was in love – with an actual person, not a photo or an image on the TV – for the very first time. I got back to Avonmore Road, exhausted from hardly any sleep, and went to bed clutching the radio, with 208 on, of course. Some habits do die hard.
Trying to keep a romance going when he had to be there and I had to be in London was extremely difficult, however. Faxes hadn’t been invented, let alone computers, mobiles, Skype, tweets or anything remotely similar to all we have today. We had the post and we had landlines (but I still didn’t even have a phone of my own, only the landlady’s communal phone downstairs).
We did talk on the phone once or twice but somehow reverted to our shy personas and these talks were less than successful. It was months later that we met again – Kid came to the UK to cover the Isle of Wight Festival, which was revered as the UK’s answer to Woodstock and attracted some of the greatest names in music. This year Jimi Hendrix and The Doors were topping the bill. Betty decided I should go and cover the event.
I could hardly wait to see Kid again but when we did meet, in a large room in reception at our hotel, there was Kid, an assortment of radio hangers on, and a young blonde woman called Anne Challis who worked for Radio Luxembourg in London and whom I had met a few times before. Not only was she quite attractive, she was also sitting next to Kid and was sending distinct ‘he’s mine’ messages across the room, or at least that’s what I thought. While we waited for our rooms to be allocated, Kid stood up and came across to me. My heart started thudding. At last!
‘Hi! How are you doing, Judy?!’
‘Fine thanks, Kid – how are you?’
‘Yes, okay – I have a note here for you.’ With those few words he handed me a piece of paper, then returned to his seat. I opened the note but it wasn’t from him – it was from Tony Prince and was just two names – Kid and Judy – with an arrow and heart in between the two and Tony’s signature at the bottom. So Tony wanted our romance to continue – but did Kid? He wasn’t exactly paying me much attention. He’d walked back to sit next to Challis and didn’t seem to even glance my way. Once again my lack of confidence surfaced and instead of going across to him and showing him the little cartoon as I should have, I stayed put, stuck, in my chair. I had no idea what to do.
We were all shown to our rooms and to my horror when Kid went into his, Anne Challis followed. Devastated, I continued down to my room and cried. The next morning she stuck to him like a leech, he and I had no chance to say anything to each other, and those two days at the Isle of Wight were ruined.
I was broken-hearted, I guess. My GSOH had deserted me and I could think of no way through the toughened-glass wall that seemed to be between us. Mainly because I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, and also because my Leo-ness prevented me, as it did so often, from swallowing my pride and just making the first move. I knew Kid wasn’t the sort to gloat and parade a new woman like that in front of me. Did he know what was in the note? Couldn’t he see how upset I was? I wasn’t to find out the answers until months later.
To ease the pain of seeing Kid around at the festival and not even being able to talk to him or hug him, I tried my first drug. Well actually that’s not true. I tried my first drug because I didn’t know what it was. The person who shared his joint with me was called Jim Morrison, lead singer with The Doors.
Attempting to be the professional that I was slowly becoming, despite my misery I carried on with trying to get interviews, and of course, watched as many acts as I could. The line up that year was quite fantastic with so many huge names from the world of music – apart from The Doors there were (among many others) Ten Years After, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Joni Mitchell and The Who, all of whom appeared on the Saturday, and Kris Kristofferson, Free, Donovan, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen and Jimi Hendrix, all of whom appeared on the Sunday, the last night of the Festival.
But getting interviews wasn’t quite as easy at it should have been. For one thing, I had turned into a wimp. All the bravado which was now usually in place back at Fleet Street and surrounds had vanished because here were not bubblegum popstars dying to have you interview them so that you naturally felt superior and in control, but real musicians, actual American rock idols, huge, huge stars – people who attracted the likes of The Beast at the NME, The Times and Rolling Stone to interview them. The acts and the media here were real cool people, man, so all my life-long old feelings of inferiority returned and I felt so far not in control and wanting to get off that island now, a feeling reinforced by the sniffy attitude of most present to teen magazines. But I knew I had to return to the office with some stories.
I had a backstage pass – in those days backstage at a festival was some rough grass, a couple of tents, one with alcohol and sandwiches, another for the acts to get changed in, and a couple of tiny caravans for the major stars. Well maybe not quite that bad but you get the picture. It was all very basic and of course it always rained at these events as it still does today.
At the IoW it was rarely the case that PRs fixed interviews for you (not least because nobody knew where anybody else was), you just grabbed people and started asking questions – a method of interview somewhat hampered in my case by my timidity.
So my technique was to wander round this scruffy backstage area until I found someone I vaguely recognised, then muster up the courage to approach them, or, if my nerves got the better or me, to walk away and pretend I hadn’t seen them in the first place. All Saturday morning I had had very few sighting of the major stars as they didn’t really get going until past lunchtime. I was beginning to worry that I really would be going home with nothing when later I spied Morrison heading towards the refreshment tent on his own. My heart started racing not because I fancied him, but through my old companion, fear. And I did it anyway – hurried, as casually as was possible, over to him, lied about what magazine I was from and asked if he would chat. Sure, sure … it was hard to keep talking because he did have the most fantastic face, eyes, hair, body … he looked like a cross between a Greek god and Christ, but better looking and nicely clean-shaven.
Because the Fleet Street people I mixed with were firmly based in alcohol for kicks, not drugs, I had little experience of drugs of any sort or what they did to people. I had no idea of the physical effects or the brain effects and I had no idea what drugs of any sort looked like, smelt like, or how you took them. Hard to believe now, but true. The stories of rampant mass drug taking by all in the press, the music business, fashion, film and so on during these years are way off the mark. Yes, it happened, but of all the people I knew during these years very few did more than the occasional puff of hash.
Despite my ignorance, I did strongly get the feeling that Jim Morrison was off with the fairies. He was aware of me but in no way on the same planet.
It didn’t seem laid-back to take notes so we just talked, in the bar, as best we could between us – he was pleasant but monosyllabic in his fairy world and me also monosyllabic on planet fear trying hard to stay cool. As you may imagine the interview was about as productive as a chef in a famine, but at least I’d met him. I don’t recall any hangers on, managers, whatever, being there at all. Strange. He was a big star. But I guess he did his own thing.
Anyway, he offered me a roll up and I smoked it. I smoked twenty cigarettes a day at that
point but found the taste of these little homemade ones quite disgusting.
Of course it contained weed but at the time I genuinely didn’t know. I also didn’t know that you were meant to share a joint so I smoked most of it myself while Jim Morrison, fairly politely in the circumstances, looked on. Eventually I put the stub in a nearby ashtray whereupon he rescued it and finished it off. He wandered off soon after and later was up on stage in front of the 500,000 crowd on Afton Down, me included. Another of those moments where I had to pinch myself. Surreal.
Less than a year later he was dead.
How did I feel after the joint? Well it dulled the pain I had been feeling but also addled my brain more than alcohol had ever done and made my mouth so dry I detested the sensation. Weed or any type of cannabis just doesn’t suit me and although I tried it once or twice more, I eventually decided I just was never going to be a bona fide pothead – and stuck with the Scotch and cokes and the wine.
The dubious effects of the joint wore off, and I was left feeling tired and strangely depressed. Because of my distracted state, I seemed to spend the whole weekend on my own although I knew I had gone there with a photographer and I knew several other people who had been on the same journey down there with me. Where they all were, I can’t say, nor whether or not they managed to get back to our hotel at night, nor how. Kid Jensen had apparently vanished into thin air. There were just thousands and thousands of strangers, all of whom seemed to laugh the whole time or dance or sit, smoking. Everyone having a good time, except me. That was the biggest crowd I ever felt lonely in, that’s for sure.
It was Saturday evening, with two more nights of the festival to go and no early finishes – at the IoW the music went on until morning. I was obsessed by trying to figure out where I would sleep, hoping that I would find some way back to the hotel. I have never been good at staying up all night and was often laughed at when I started clubbing with Julie Webb, when I would always be the one asleep in the corner of the Revolution – the mega hot club of the day – or wherever, at midnight. Our hotel was probably 2 to 3 miles from the festival site and I had naively assumed that there would be transport back to the hotel after the end of the concert each day, but had been told by a couple of people backstage that this was never going to happen.
No transport, nothing at all, no chance of a taxi – even if you could have called one he’d never find you in the midst of thousands of people.
Around 1 a.m., I decided to walk back – but of course there was no street lighting, and anyway I didn’t know the way. So I had to abandon this attempt, and was eventually forced to opt for a sleepless night under the stars (the ones in the sky, not any of the acts), wretchedly wondering where Kid was and how he and Anne Challis were getting on.
By the second night I couldn’t have cared less who was on the stage, and having managed to have a short chat with both Joni Mitchell and Donovan (chosen by me because they didn’t look too scary; I had used up all my bravado on Jim Morrison), had also given up on trying to find interviewees. By this time I had managed to muster the courage to shout at a few people and organise myself a lift back to the hotel, but that would only happen after Jimi Hendrix had been on. The concert was running later and later, and by the time he did appear it was well into the early hours, and he then set about playing a long, long set to an audience all of whom bar one seemed ecstatic. I was vaguely aware that he was up there on stage being brilliant. I can still remember the whining soaring adrenalin-boosting sound of his guitar, but, hardly able to keep my eyes open, I couldn’t wait for him to finish so I could go.
Next morning I went home as soon as I was able, and am probably the only living person who attended one of the historic Isle of Wight Festivals, saw both The Doors and Hendrix perform, had access all areas, and came home convinced that it had been one of the most miserable weekends of my life. Let’s put it this way – it was another thirty years before I ever went near another festival in the UK, and that was to see my own son Chris perform.
Eighteen days later, Jimi Hendrix was dead. And I didn’t see the Kid again for a few years by which time he was happily married with a dog and a baby, living near Sherwood Forest and working for Radio Trent.
But a few months later I did find out a bit more about what had gone wrong that weekend between the Kid and me. I had to interview Tony Prince on the phone and in the middle of the conversation he suddenly said, ‘Why did you blow Kid out that weekend at the Isle of Wight?’
Taken aback, I said, ‘What do you mean – I didn’t blow him out! He blew me out! He was with Anne Challis!’
‘Oh Judy you are so silly. Why do you think I wrote that note for him to give you? He couldn’t wait to see you. But he is shy. I thought you would read the note and all would be great.’
‘Well he was with her all the time and he didn’t even talk to me. She was in his bedroom.’
‘Judy, he didn’t fancy her. He wasn’t sleeping with her. He didn’t want her in his bedroom, she just followed him around the place. It was you he wanted. When you read the note and you didn’t do anything, he thought you didn’t want him any more … he was gutted …’
Many, many years later I did meet up with Kid again – we both felt we had ‘unfinished business’ to talk through. At that meeting, he told me that in fact Anne was gay. And when he said that, I remembered, so clearly, the time she turned up unannounced in my office at Fab, bearing a packet of cigarettes for me. At the time I couldn’t understand why she’d done it. But perhaps, just perhaps, it was me she had her eye on, not Kid at all.
Some things just aren’t meant to be. We both ended up happily married to other people, but do you ever greedily feel that just one single passage through life somehow isn’t enough?
Around the time of the mix-up with Kid that kept us apart, I had had other things on my mind as well and was still trying to get over one.
I realised I was pregnant just one week after I got back from that first Radio Luxembourg trip in late April 1970. When I had been out there, I began to realise something wasn’t quite right with my body. I had been sitting with Kid in his room, on his bed, wearing my best miniskirt and tight top, and we had been having a discussion about size and shape.
‘I hate my body’ I said. ‘I am too thin.’ And he said, ‘No, you’re not – you’re not thin at all.’ I looked down at myself and realised that he was right, I wasn’t really thin any more. And, more pertinent – I seemed to be developing a fat stomach. I shut up about my size, and back in my hotel room stripped off, turned sideways and looked at myself in the mirror. My belly was most definitely sticking out. And it was hard, firm. I began to have a nasty feeling that something was far from right.
Back at home, I returned to work and developed a strong and urgent craving for oranges, day and night. I was in the Ladies at Fleetway three days after I got home, sitting on the loo, wondering if I’d ever have a period again (they’d never been that regular), craving an orange, gazing at my fat belly, when I noticed a dark line going from my navel downwards.
And then I knew with a certain horror that I was pregnant. And there could only be one father. A man who had been in my life, in quite a casual way, for the past few months. A man who, again, was married, had three children of his own, one of whom was only just born – and who was my boss.
I couldn’t have got it much more wrong.
I had been warned off him several times by Betty Hale – and he himself later told me, laughing wildly at the joke, that she had confronted him when he arrived as our publishing boss, saying, ‘Now, don’t you go anywhere near my girls!’ He had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and very deserved it was.
Being the kind of person who hates being told I can’t do something, as soon as Betty warned me to stay away from him as he was a) married and b) a womaniser – I couldn’t resist. Of course I couldn’t. He often drank in the Hoop and Grapes, and so did I. He was personable, charming, slim, blonde and with a great smile. I was young, with long hair and l
ong legs.
So the inevitable happened – eventually we got together. At the time, I found out later, he was just finishing a relationship with another girl who had worked for him, who also had a guy of her own. These were the dying days of the Swinging era, the pill was easy to get (not that I was on it), and that is what one did. The world of publishing was very incestuous and it seemed that at one time or another, everybody ‘screwed’ (the word of the day for partaking in sexual intercourse) everybody else. Compared with most of them, I was a true innocent.
He was still living with his family and I am sure thought of me as nothing more than a passing amusement – we certainly had little more than a ‘drink in the pub occasionally followed by a taxi home to my bedsit, sex’ kind of relationship. Apart from anything else, I was terrified that Betty would find out and find a reason to sack me.
I was chatting with Georgina in the office one day a few months earlier after the first time I had slept with The Boss, and she offered me three months’ supply of the pill, which she had got for herself and then decided not to take. Gratefully I took them from her and began them.
As it turned out, it was already too late and I must have been pregnant after the first time we slept together towards the end of December 1969.
After that day in the loo, I went to my GP near Avonmore Road who within a few days confirmed my pregnancy. He arranged for me to see a consultant in Wimpole Street and I was given a price, £80 (over £900 in today’s money), for an abortion. The next time I saw The Boss, I told him I was pregnant, said I wanted an abortion and could he pay me something towards the cost please?
In the end he paid half, and my sister, who was one of the few people I had told, lent me the other half. For some reason, which escapes me now, I also told Betty, who to my surprise was brilliant, and Heather Kirby, our fashion editor, who was a complete brick throughout it all and even picked me up from the hospital afterwards.
That abortion is another thing, like the Bertie Green episode, that I totally erased from my mind after it happened. There was little to consider re pros and cons.