Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

by Judith Wills

  I was four and a half months pregnant but it never really entered my head to keep the baby. The father was married and my boss, I was 20, I saw no way to raise a baby on my income – or, indeed, to continue with my job if I had a baby, I lived in a no-babies-allowed house, and could not see myself as a mother at all. My mother, who around this time was living with and looking after my gran, and who had fairly poor health, was in no position to help me look after a baby either.

  What kept me going throughout was the thought of the Kid and when I might see him again. It was a good job I didn’t know how the Isle of Wight would turn out.

  But from time to time, even now all these years later, although I can’t/don’t want to remember which hospital it was, or the exact date of the abortion, or anything much else about that time – I do remember giving birth to the foetus. I was too far gone for an ordinary scraping and so had had a birth-inducing injection in my belly. After several hours of fairly serious agony, the nurse brought a stainless steel tray and squatted me over it on the bed. A few minutes later, I pushed the foetus out. I remember looking down at it, all pink and curled and about the size of a kitten, and wondering what sex it was, before the nurse came and took it away.

  A couple of weeks later, Betty and Heather decided to ‘give’ me another press trip abroad, to help me, I am sure, ‘get over’ what had happened in the past couple of months.

  This time the visit was to a Swedish music festival, where I was to interview ordinary Swedish teenagers about their lives, their make-up routines and whatever.

  The plan was to get the plane out of Heathrow with our photographer Roger Brown, all the music press people and some of the English stars who were appearing at the festival. We’d go straight to the festival, stay the night, then fly back the next day.

  That was my first experience of P.J. Proby, the singer who had made his reputation, mainly, by splitting his pants on stage but whom I had always admired as I thought he had a great voice.

  P.J. was due to appear at the concert and was on the plane, getting fairly tanked up on the free booze. By the time we were nearing Arlanda airport, Stockholm, Proby was staggering about the aisles, singing and trying to tell us all jokes and stories. And the air hostesses were trying to get him to sit down. He pulled one of them down onto his lap where she kept him busy and pinned down while we landed, thus saving us from having to go around again and perhaps circle for an hour or two. P.J. continued to play to the crowds at the airport as we waited for baggage and it is hard to believe that he managed to perform only a few hours later, but perform (on stage, that is) he did, and quite well, too.

  We were driven through the Swedish countryside for mile upon mile – me staring out of the coach window and wondering how any country could be so beautiful but so bland and boring and sterile all at the same time. In other words, I didn’t like it much.

  By the time Roger and I reached the festival, having also had our share of alcohol, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep but had to knuckle down and find lots of teenybopper Swedes to interview and photograph. Every time we found a really pretty one, she didn’t speak enough English so it took a long time, and I seem to remember making most of these interviews up when I got home in the hope that the Swedish girls definitely wouldn’t be finding copies of Fab or translating their ‘quotes’.

  Heading the bill at the festival were a band of hairy Americans called, I am pretty sure, Blood, Sweat & Tears – proper rock merchants whose set I found distinctly underwhelming and which also gave me a nasty headache. That said, they were one of the top bands of the day. I just had little taste, that’s what it was.

  After a couple of hours sleep it was back to the airport and the UK. One thing I will say – Jim Proby was a lot quieter on the way home. But after we said goodbye at Heathrow and he went off, smiling his nice crinkly smile, I kind of missed him for a while. He was a good bloke. Next time I saw him some years later, he was Elvis.

  Whether or not the visit to Sweden was the tonic I needed after the events of May I am not sure – on balance, probably not. I was knackered for a week after.

  Over the next year I saw little of The Boss … there is nothing quite like an abortion to put a tarnish on a budding romance. On my 21st birthday, on 6 August 1970, I went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant down the Fulham Road with Georgina and her boyfriend Roy. If she hadn’t taken me out, I would have been on my own. So much for my fabulous life.

  A few weeks later, The Boss did buy me a small dried flower ornament – which I still have today – as a belated present, at which point I realised that the affair hadn’t been extinguished along with the life, just put on ice for a while.

  Gradually, after a few months of emotional turmoil, by the end of 1970 I began to find things about life to enjoy once again. My diary says that I met Robin Gibb, Simon Dee, Matt Monro, Rod Steiger, Dionne Warwick and Martin Jarvis that year – but there were many more. I remember travelling down to Jenny Agutter’s home in a peaceful spot outside London – at 17, she was a huge star because of The Railway Children but was about as shy and quiet as I had been at her age.

  The diaries are slightly frustrating to look through now because I only kept them in a very offhand, perfunctory irregular way – sometimes you’ll find a page saying, ‘Rod Steiger, 11.30, Dionne Warwick, 2.00, driving lesson 3.00, dentist, 4.00.’ or ‘Monday, David Essex, Tuesday, The Osmonds, Wednesday, Paul McCartney, Thursday, buy egg poacher’. I think I was too busy living and doing to keep a diary properly. In September I booked a holiday to Holland with my mother – the only proper holiday she and I ever had together alone, and the first time she had been abroad since a school visit to Paris when she was very young. Why we chose Holland I am not sure, unless it was that Mother wanted to try to find her long-lost relatives – her grandfather had come to England from Amsterdam as a child.

  We caught a ferry to Ostend, then boarded a tour coach which took us through Belgium and Holland, finally arriving at the town of Valkenburg in the only hilly part of the country, in the south-east near the German border.

  We had a great week, going down the Rhine, wine tasting, sightseeing and generally enjoying ourselves, and in any boring moments I could regale Mother with many of my show business tales. She had always had a great interest in the world of showbiz and some of the glamour of my job rubbed off on her – she loved it when she saw my picture or byline here and there, and when I had gone to the premiere of The Magic Christian, my mother was there in the crowd to watch me, loving every second of it – and loving the tales later of how I had shaken hands with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr and seen Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon this far away, so close I could see the violet of her eyes and the hair in his ears.

  She quite often came up to Avonmore Road to stay for a few days and, if she was well enough, we always got up to mischief. Back in Buckingham, Mother didn’t get out a lot – she was no longer friends with Mrs Hill, whose lobotomy had turned out not to be as successful as had been hoped; her sadistic tendencies had begun to return and Mother had decided it was best to give her a wide berth. Not before time, is what I thought.

  By the time we returned from our autumn holiday, I was more or less back on track. Most evenings I would go out with Julie or occasionally Georgina, Nigel or one or other of the guys I knew from the music press. Gordon Coxhill was still around and I was friendly with Roy Carr, another journalist on the NME, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music and a music collection to match – once Julie and I visited his small flat in the city and it was like a cave chock full, ceiling to floor, with vinyl. He lived for music and should have been another John Peel.

  He may have fancied his chances with me a bit but he never did anything about it. He wasn’t one of the world’s greatest lookers – he had a ZZ Topp kind of beard and a rather hunched posture, always wore a black leather jacket and just didn’t have a lot of sex appeal but he was a truly lovely man. Roy, I think, realised that I was in a marginal depression that a
utumn and took charge to ensure that I wasn’t hanging around Avonmore Road on my own too much.

  One day in October we drove down to the Orchid Ballroom, Purley after work to see The Who. The place was small and considering The Who were by now very big, having released Tommy and broken the USA, it was really too small a venue for them to gig. But they liked doing small places in between the stadiums, so there we were in this ballroom surrounded by crazed Who fans pushing and shoving and for reasons I will never understand, the stage had been built way too high, so that wherever you were in the room, you had to crane your head backwards as far as you could to get a look at the band.

  They played to an ecstatic crowd for probably nearly two hours – certainly by the time the set ended I had a hugely bad pain in the neck, a monstrous headache and was slightly worried because my escort appeared to have vanished in the crowd.

  Roy knew everybody in the music business and quite a few media people had been invited down to Purley. But he did return to find me, squashed and wishing I’d not had high heels on, at the end of the gig.

  It was only a few weeks later that I got the chance to see The Who again – Julie had been invited to their gig at the Hammersmith Palais which, I believe, was the last night of their little autumn tour. We arranged to meet there as I had a film screening to attend beforehand.

  I arrived at the Palais and pressed through the crowds – I could see this was going to be a wild night even by Who standards – backstage to find no sign of Julie, but the members of The Who trying to get themselves dressed and ready for the gig. A few familiar faces were there from the music papers but I didn’t know them that well so settled into a corner to wait for Julie. No show, so I crossed the room to help myself to some drink. When I got back there was Keith Moon, rifling through the handbag that I’d left on a table.

  ‘Er, Keith – hi! That’s my bag.’

  The Moon turned round, his face in that expression you’ve seen in photos a hundred times, naughty, cheeky little boy. ‘Oh sorry, love, sorry, I was just looking for this …’

  And he held up my best Biba lipstick. ‘You don’t mind do you?’

  Well I wasn’t going to say no. ‘Well of course go ahead … but I’m not sure it’s the right shade for you …’.

  He laughed and retreated with his prize to his corner of the room and I watched fascinated to see what he was going to do with my lipstick. He removed his T-shirt and proceeded to draw an intricate pattern with it on his fairly hairless chest, finishing by drawing concentric circles round each nipple. Then he put his T-shirt back on and sauntered over to me again. ‘Thanks!’

  And he handed me back my lipstick – or I should say, the empty container as he’d used every bit of it on his body.

  He was so sweet though that you couldn’t be cross with him.

  After the support act had finished and Julie had turned up, we made our way out front where a sea of bodies was pressing into the stage. The Who came out, Keith looking demure in his white T-shirt, and proceeded to do a fantastic end-of-tour set.

  The mob got wilder and wilder and I managed to retreat to the back of the room where there was space to breathe. Shortly before the end of the set, off came Keith’s T-shirt and I stood there looking at this crazy little guy, drumming wildly and wearing my lipstick on his chest.

  You know what emotion I felt? I felt proud he was wearing my lipstick and proud to be part of this scene. Part of me realised that this time was something special, that The Who would be recognised as one of the greatest rock bands of the twentieth century. But by far the biggest of my emotions was sorrow and guilt – because the lipstick was too muted a colour to be seen properly under the lights. Poor Keith! If only I had bought the bright red Chanel, not the dusky Biba! That’s what I thought.

  The set ended with Pete smashing up his guitar. The Who had become famous for the amount of equipment that was wrecked on stage, but you didn’t always get to see this; it hadn’t happened at Purley. So if a guitar got smashed you felt, kind of privileged to witness it. As the boys left the stage, the audience carried on rioting and fighting, and I slipped out and walked the few minutes home to my room, the sounds of the crowd and ‘My Generation’ and ‘I Can’t Explain’ ringing in my head as I strode through the dimly lit, deserted back streets of West Kensington at the end of another ‘ordinary’ day.

  A day when I saw Pete Townshend break his guitar. And Keith Moon stole my lipstick.

  I kept that lipstick container for some while as a unique souvenir of Moonie and an incredible evening.

  six

  Just Call My Name

  1971

  Shillings and pence have gone – it’s ‘p’ now when you want to buy a single. Mick Jagger’s married Bianca. God, the charts and TV schedules are full of rubbish – plenty of naff stuff around this year. ‘Grandad’ by Clive Dunn; ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ from Middle of the Road, and Benny Hill with ‘Ernie’; The Cilla Black Show, It’s a Knockout and Dixon of Dock Green, winding down to a merciful death. We’re saved only by T.Rex and Slade.

  1970 had certainly helped me achieve my main ambition – less beauty and film, more music. But I was still doing a mix of all three – and, later in the year, I would be very glad that I was still covering movies.

  By early 1971 it seemed that the little office in Old Fleetway inhabited by Georgina and I had been visited by thousands of pop promotors and PRs. But one I remember better than most. He appeared at the door when, for once, I was busy trying to work. Even now I can picture his boyish, enthusiastic face, his short hair, his suit and tie and his dark overcoat. He looked nothing like most of the people in the music business looked at that time, i.e. – he looked straight, very straight, in the old-fashioned sense of conservative.

  This guy, I’d guess, was trying to look older than he was, which, I imagine, was about the same age as me, but it just wasn’t creating the right impression. Clutching a set of 45s and a sheaf of photos, he grinned widely and announced, in an American accent, he’d come to talk about The Osmonds.

  ‘THE OSMONDS!?!?’ shrieked Georgina.

  ‘You mean THE OSMOND BROTHERS?!’ I shouted. ‘That bunch of cheesy American kids who used to sing barbershop songs on The Andy Williams Show back when I was still living at home and my dad and I used to watch the show on our old black and white TV at Weston on the Green?’ I asked. ‘Those Osmonds?!’

  Yes, it was true – he’d really come on behalf of the Osmond brothers. Georgina and I both sat there and laughed at him.

  This, you remember, was around the time that the Rolling Stones were charting with the Sticky Fingers album, T.Rex were high in the singles charts with Hot Love and Rod Stewart and his Faces were cavorting around the stage in loon pants and tight flowery shirts.

  ‘The Osmond Brothers – what do you think they’re going to do here then?’ we enquired.

  ‘Well I have to tell you guys they’re really big in the States now. They’re not called the Osmonds Brothers any more, just The Osmonds. They’ve changed their image a lot, they sing real rock, they play instruments, they’re groovy now. Really, honestly, trust me!’

  With that he shoved a single under my nose and we played it. He was quite determined not to go away until we had. ‘One Bad Apple’.

  ‘Oh no – it sounds just like The Jackson Five, but not as good! They’re never going to get anywhere. And aren’t they Mormons?’

  We looked at the photo – and there were five boys all with huge sets of gleaming teeth and short dark hair cut into pudding basins a la early Beatles but not quite as cool, a couple of them with tubby faces too. Not rock gods in the making even if you didn’t know they were the Osmond brothers.

  Anyway the American guy wouldn’t have his faith in these boys dampened and away he went promising us that the boys were going to be huge in the UK.

  We were giggling about that all day, on and off.

  But, of course, The Osmonds had the last laugh because indeed they did become huge in the UK as
well as in many other parts of the world. It took a while – ‘One Bad Apple’ didn’t go down that well in the UK, reaching only number 44, and their follow up later in 1971, ‘Down by the Lazy River’, did only marginally better. However, by 1972 they were massive … and they became a huge part of my working life for several years.

  But Bill, the American, clean-cut guy, he also had the last laugh in a much more personal way. His flair for publicity and his determination were, I believe, one of the major reasons that The Osmonds did finally find their place in the UK. He worked tremendously hard for them and I ended up with great respect for him, his dedication to the cause and his ability to get people to do what he wanted them to do.

  A few years down the line he and the boys parted company and I almost forgot all about him for decades. Then I switched on ITV thirty-five years later in 2006 and saw a face I couldn’t help but recognise, one of the judges on a popular talent show of that year, Soapstar Superstar.

  Bill had morphed into ‘Billy’ Sammeth, apparently, while I wasn’t looking, having built up one of the biggest star management outfits in the USA with Cher and numerous other stars in his stable.

  Turned out okay for him, then. And very pleased I am too. Moral: never underestimate young men in suits.

  A little later in the year I headed down to Sussex to a rather beautiful old house lost in the middle of nowhere, to spend a Sunday with Adam Faith, his wife Jackie – the girl he had ‘stolen’ from Cliff Richard, so the story went, some years before – and their newborn baby, Katya.

  Adam had, for many years in the early ‘60s, been one of the UK’s top pop stars along with Billy Fury and Cliff Richard, but by this time he had just become famous on British TV as an actor in a series called Budgie.

  I didn’t tell him that seven or so years previously I had paid to watch him on stage at the New Theatre, Oxford. He hadn’t been much of a singer, and he was tiny (about 5ft 4 or 5in), but he had a beautiful face.