Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

by Judith Wills

  The West End production was to open at the Palace Theatre and the lunchtime reception was packed out and I could hardly get in the door. Standing in the melee near the entrance, looking like an apologetic teenage virgin but somehow still managing to make himself noticable for that very reason, was a small guy with longish dark hair and vestages of hippydom about him, as if he had once played an acoustic guitar around a fire at every summer festival, but had now been told to smarten up and grow up by his dad. He had a worried air, his face was almost contorted with what could have been the effort of smiling at people when really he wanted to run away. He was obviously forcing himself to greet anyone who entered. I immediately felt deeply sorry for him.

  He grabbed my hand and pumped it over-enthusiastically.

  ‘Thank you for coming! Good to see you! I’m Andrew Lloyd Webber. Have a drink …’ he waved in the direction of the other side of the room where Tim Rice was holding forth near the bar in a much more relaxed way.

  They were both very young, of course. Within weeks the pair had a mammoth West End hit and I never had cause to feel sorry for Lloyd Webber again. Later I went to see the show, with Paul Nicholas as Jesus and Dana Gillespie as Mary. Yes, I enjoyed it, yes it was good in the manner of several shows of that era – Hair, Godspell and so on. It was theatre for pop music fans, and there was nothing wrong with that. Later the duo were to make a star of another of my old acquaintances – Elaine Paige.

  Back at the office in Southampton Street, the old staff were slowly being replaced by others. Betty was still Ed, Bev was the new picture editor whose boyfriend Martyn took a lot of the photos. Tom, whose real name was Brian, was the art editor, John Fearn, the old art then Ass Ed, had been killed in a car crash and Fid was now in his place. Sue James was the new fashion editor who right from the moment she arrived had the confidence, demeanour and aplomb of a future senior manager, and soon became Betty’s close ally.

  While I was never going to be management or editor material like Sue obviously was, Betty had by now realised that I could be trusted on most levels to represent the mag and her in a proper manner. More than anything, she perceived that I was good with the readers and so I would often be the one to do the ‘Dream Come Trues’ – the early, original and best version of Jim’ll Fix It. Every week in the ‘mag’ there was a form for the readers to fill in, saying what their dream was. And every couple of weeks, we would select one and make their dream come true. I enjoyed this as I could select the dreams that I also would enjoy doing and having spent the past few years seeing most of my own teenage dreams come true, it seemed appropriate.

  And it was fun (like being the judge at the disco dancing thing) to play god with the teenybopper’s hopes and prayers and to feel benevolent and superior all at once when you watched them achieve their dream, thanks to you and your Solomon powers.

  For some strange reason, an early Dream Come True in September involved me arriving with two tiny teenage girls at the Hawaiian-themed restaurant at the top of the modern hotel, the Inn on the Park, Park Lane, to meet up with Betty Hale and a guy who had got lucky with a few hit records and a way with creating manufactured pop – Jonathan King.

  The evening was a disaster – the little girls hardly spoke and neither did Jonathan King – at least not to them. While he chatted away to Betty, presumably because he felt she might be useful to him, he more or less ignored the girls and I found him rude, arrogant and boring. No doubt, if my readers had been two teenage boys he would have had a whole different take on the evening.

  Shortly after that I had my first holiday with The Boss – we flew to Tunisia for two weeks during which time I got severe sunburn of the knees and chronic food poisoning from the alarming red Tunisian sausages which we were served for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

  I also nearly drowned in the deceptively vicious sea off Hammamet due to the fact that I couldn’t swim properly but had too much pride to inform The Boss, a veritable fish brought up by the Kent coast, of this. I was rescued, as The Boss swam, unconcerned about my shouting (presumably – hopefully – he thought I was just yelling in a having fun kind of way).

  The person who rescued me was a weedy little guy, even thinner than me, even paler than me and with long red hair, just like me. After the third time I came up from the deep, screaming, by this time quite loudly, he plucked me up in his arms and somehow got me back to the shore where he lay me down and helped me cough up the lake of seawater I’d swallowed. The Boss eventually sauntered over, ‘What’s the matter with you,’ he grinned. ‘The waves aren’t very tall!’

  By this time my rescuer was also lying on the sand, exhausted due to the effort of carrying someone who definitely weighed more than he did out of the waves. The Boss just gave him a filthy look and walked back into the swell.

  Back in London it was a fairly boring October during which period I interviewed Rick Springfield (anyone remember him?), Peter Skellern (Lieutenant Pidgeon), Chairmen of the Board, Steve Ellis of Love Affair, Colin Bluntstone and, for the umpteenth time, Johnny (‘I Can See Clearly Now’) Nash, who always asked me out every time I saw him and who, always, I declined not because he wasn’t fabulous looking or because I didn’t fancy him, which I did, in a mildish kind of way, but because of The Boss.

  By this time, things were beginning to hot up in the UK for The Osmonds. Their appearance at the Royal Command Performance the previous May at the Palladium had started the fan fever which by autumn had turned into full blown Osmondmania with 14-year-old Donny the main object of teen affection – he’d been at number 1 throughout the summer with his single ‘Puppy Love’.

  But the other brothers were popular as well and the whole family were to arrive in the UK at the end of October to promote the new Osmond single, ‘Crazy Horses’. The older brothers were hoping to sell themselves as not just another teenybop band but as great rockers, singers and musicians in their own right. However their stab at credibility was somewhat marred by the release in the same month of their small brother ‘Little Jimmy’ Osmond’s novelty single, ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’.

  ‘LHLFL’ managed to get to number 1 and stayed at the top for several weeks during the Christmas holiday period, rather overshadowing The Osmonds’ three weeks at number 2 for ‘Crazy Horses’.

  Over the past few months I had spoken to one or other of The Osmonds on the phone to do interviews for Fab with increasing regularity, and by the time of their visit I felt I knew most of them rather well, including their mother, Olive, and father, George, both of whom took an extremely keen interest in the boys’ careers and were, basically, their managers, minders, PRs, promotion experts and PAs all rolled into one.

  I had begun to realise that The Osmonds were a strong team, highly professional, and quite determined to grab every opportunity – as long as it didn’t conflict with their strong Mormon beliefs which included no alcohol, drugs or tobacco, no caffeine, a healthy diet, no swearing. Not exactly rock world compatible, but there you are. Many years later, The Killers found huge success and they were Mormon too.

  On the afternoon of Tuesday 31 October, then, I headed to the Churchill Hotel to meet … The Jackson Five who, by coincidence, were also in the UK doing promotion at the same time, staying at the same hotel as Donny and co.

  As I got near, I could hear screaming and shouting through the closed taxi windows, and as we turned into Portman Square I was surprised to find a mass of teenage girls outside the main entrance and scurrying around up and down Seymour Street alongside. Most of the fans, judging by the banners, hats and apparel they wore, were waiting to glimpse The Osmonds rather than The Jacksons. Compared with the fanbase of just a few months earlier it was a definite improvement.

  I got out of the taxi, headed up into the entrance and found myself being pushed, prodded and shouted at by the nearest of the fans.

  I and some other music journalists spent a couple of hours with The Jacksons, who were, at the time in sales terms, much bigger than The Osmonds
in the UK after a string of hits including ‘I Want You Back’, ‘I’ll be There’, and ‘ABC’. Of the five, it was Michael – tiny, shy, with a complete halo of curly black hair surrounding his beautiful face – who most captivated me. He was just 14 years old but looked much younger and was happiest when talking about his friendship with Donny Osmond, his older friend at nearly 15. For all one read about the huge rivalry between the two bands and the two young lead singers, in fact they were good friends. Donny and Michael shared so much in terms of similar backgrounds, you could see why they liked to swap notes.

  And two days later I was back at The Churchill to see The Osmonds themselves. I made my way up to room 516 and, with the history of phone calls behind us, we got on rather well. I did a taped interview with Donny and then talked to all the boys, as well as Mother and Father. The Osmonds never called their parents mum and dad, or ma and pa – it had to be Mother and Father, as decreed by Father George Osmond.

  Not for the last time, I began trying to find chinks in the stock Osmond armour of big smiles, helpful answers, a permanent positive take on their lives, and a humble attitude to success, fans, their career and so on. And, not for the last time, I found that a hard one to crack. There was nothing bad or negative about them that I could write on the strength of this meeting, unless I were to resort to sarcasm about their teen following or their lack of street cred – something I wasn’t about to do. Especially as the term street cred hadn’t been invented then.

  As we were all told years later in various articles and autobiographies, the Osmond life was, of course, far from perfect and indeed their demeanour was in part a smokescreen at least some of the time. It turned out later that Father Osmond had been a hard taskmaster during these early years – not averse to giving the boys a thump if they didn’t do as told. Not being an Osmond Brother didn’t seem like an option to any of them at the time. But because I didn’t have to pretend to be intellectual and because they seemed very happy with the ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ line of questioning (‘Purple!’) in truth I found them quite relaxing to be around that afternoon. The only stress-inducer was remembering not to swear and having to go without a cigarette. They wouldn’t have objected, I found out later, but it only seemed polite.

  Some sell-out gigs around London followed and by this time The Osmonds had begun making the pages of the national newspapers because of their ability to cause riots. One evening I journeyed up to the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park to see them perform for the first time. The hysteria and screaming put even my Beatles ’60s Albert Hall concert in the shade. And the boys performed a better set than I had anticipated, from what little I could hear.

  By the time The Osmonds had departed they had definitely arrived, and in the weeks that followed Betty Hale and Olive Osmond began discussing a joint project which was, in 1973, to become Osmonds’ World magazine – a monthly publication which would appear to be The Osmonds’ own magazine, but which would be published by IPC, edited by Betty, and in part written – ghosted – by me.

  The few weeks to the end of the year were busy with all kinds of interviews – by this time I was moonlighting for several other publications, including Easy Listening magazine and Record Mirror, to earn a little more money. This also had the benefit of broadening my field of work a bit – but still not in the direction of my one-time colleague Julie Webb. I was never going to be a NME or Sounds ‘proper’ music journalist. For Easy Listening I interviewed Jackie Trent and Tony Hatch – famous at the time as ‘Mr and Mrs Music’ – down at their Kent house, and Sacha Distel.

  The Distel interview – backstage at the Prince of Wales theatre during a long season he did there with a few guests stars including Olivia Newton-John – was interesting for one thing that happened during the interview. The dressing room was quite cramped and somehow I ended up squashed behind the door, while he sat in the only other chair at the other side of the room directly in front of the door. He was being his usual charming Gallic flirty self, chatting about his family life and what a good guy he was and how his wife trusted him. I was getting quite bored. Then, towards the end of the interview, the door suddenly swung open, hiding me behind it, and as it did so a young female voice exclaimed, ‘Oh, Sacha darling, I’ve missed you …’ and I watched as this slim young female strode across the room, all blonde hair, lithe limbs and expensive clothes, and kissed Sacha passionately on the lips. Wondering why his response was less than enthusiastic and, no doubt, why he was beginning to blush, she looked round and saw me sitting there.

  Then she, too, began to blush – ‘Oh, oh … sorry, I was just … I’ll catch up with you later, Sacha …’ she tailed off, and legged it out again.

  And thus I was left wondering if there was more to the working relationship between Sacha Distel and Olivia Newton-John than most people realised.

  eight

  That’s Neat, That’s Neat,

  That’s Neat

  1973

  The hippy/flower power/protest era is dead – we’re all bored with watching Joan Baez and Dylan drone on and we want a lot more fun. So glam rock and bubblegum are here and suddenly the charts are full with simple songs from The Sweet, Glitter and co. that make you smile and get up and dance. Top of the Pops is awash with silver platforms, long hair and too much make up, and that’s only the boys. We’re watching Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em, Are You Being Served? and, to add a bit of culture (but only a bit) we have the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar.

  Of course I loved most of the bubblegum and glam rock – it was around my level of musical intellect. The biggest successes of the year were artistes created by the indies and newer managements companies and labels such as Dick Leahy and Bell, with Gary Glitter, and Mickie Most with his RAK Records and music publishing. With writers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman he made huge stars of Suzi Quatro and Sweet – and turned a four-piece band who had been batting away for several years trying to make it into the charts, into one of the biggest pop groups of 1973–75. Their name was Mud. By the later years of the decade, this was, literally, true, but for a few years they had hit after hit and became one of my favourite groups of young men – because they were just so damn nice to be around.

  I first met the Mud boys – Les Gray, Dave Mount, Ray Stiles and Rob Davis – up at Tony Barrow International PR. Barrow had done The Beatles’ publicity for several years in the ’60s then struck out on his own, and in the ’70s became possibly the most successful music PR in London. He was a pleasant man who had wonderful parties for the artistes he represented, including Cilla Black, The Jacksons, and very many others.

  A good PR was worth almost more than anything to the bands of this era – they could get all the journos along to do interviews with the most dire people by a mix of charm, flattery, wheedling, cajoling, and blackmail in the best possible manner (you come and interview this band now and later, when I have someone really hot, you can get an exclusive …). While most of Barrow’s artistes weren’t particularly dire, Mud didn’t have a great deal going for them at the time after several years of single flops and no great image to recommend them. Even after they were taken on board by RAK and Chinn/Chapman in late 1972, things were slow to change for the four men from Mitcham, Surrey. Although the first two singles released in 1973 crept into the charts, it wasn’t until the autumn that ‘Dyna-mite’ stayed in the top 10 for five weeks and, finally, Mud was flying.

  They were perfect Fab 208 material as the tunes were happy, basic, beaty things, the boys were clean-cut, brother-types, and they were a good live band, better than they were given credit for. They could also hardly believe that their luck was changing at last, and thus were anxious, almost over-anxious, to do every single bit of promotion that was put their way, including almost endless interviews with me, or, I am sure, so it must have seemed to them.

  They’d travel miles to do things like Fab readers’ parties, which were held several times a year in all corners of the country, and would never turn a photo opportuni
ty down. After a while it became apparent, according to Georgina, who for some reason occasionally accompanied me on these forays, that the drummer, Dave Mount, had taken a fancy to me.

  It became apparent to me, too, when Les Gray sidled up to me one day and asked if I’d go out for a drink with Dave. Now Dave was a lovely boy – not the best looking of the team, but nevertheless the kind of guy you could trust with your life. But of course, being with The Boss, I wasn’t available. Truly, if Dave had been Andy Williams I would have gone for a drink with him, but he wasn’t, so it wasn’t worth giving him hope when I knew I just wasn’t ever going to fancy him. So I said no.

  Shortly afterwards, we all headed up North for a readers’ party (I believe it was Leeds but it could have been Glasgow or Newcastle – going to these parties was like being an American tourist in Europe; you never quite knew where you were) and I had the problem of getting all the Mud news and angles and quotes about the party, the town, and so on, while doing my best to make sure that Dave didn’t think I was leading him on, and also doing my best to make sure that he was kept happy and sweet. This was why falling for and/or going out with the people one was paid to interview wasn’t a particularly good idea, I was beginning to realise.

  It was in April that, thanks to The Osmonds, I finally got on a plane and headed out to The States.

  I hate sharing the bedroom with Veronica Hill – and I know she hates sharing with me. She won’t let me have Luxy on under the bedclothes at night and she does spiteful things to try to keep me awake, like pinching my feet. Thank God she’s gone away for now – she got herself a job with horses, down in the West Country, so I have the bedroom to myself. I have my poster of Richard Chamberlain on the wall and next to that, I have another poster – an aerial shot of Los Angeles, showing the dual-carriageways snaking across the city, the cadillacs and the skyscrapers of downtown … I often stare at that poster taking in every little detail as much as I take in Dr Kildare’s blue eyes and the rest of his face.