by Tot Taylor
The Pye stereogram. This instrument, fitted with two pairs of loudspeakers, presents a slightly different soundtrack to each ear; strings to the left, brass at the back, double-bass on the right. Pure unadulterated bliss. His lordship could easily imagine that he was right there in the concert hall. The Pye 3DSG stereogram. It brings the wonderful experience of stereo in a cabinet designed by Robin Day, one of Britain’s leading industrial designers. Model 3DSG features an f4-waveband AM/VHF radio, 4-speed record player and two pairs of matching speakers for the finest reproduction of both conventional and stereo records. 95gns. Also available: model 2DSG, 73gns. Write to Pye, Box 49, Cambridge, for a full-colour booklet.
Pye advertisement, the Gramophone, March 1962.
Several months later, Pye Radios was awarded the contract to supply speaker parts for the Tannoy Public Address system at the re-dedication of St Michael’s Cathedral, Coventry. Long-term employee John Nightly Snr receiving complimentary invitations for himself and his family to attend.
Coventry Cathedral, reconstructed after the German bombing of 1940 by the architect Basil Spence, was to be the venue for the premiere of a new work by the English composer Benjamin Britten. Then forty-seven and with a number of major successes already behind him, Britten had been commissioned to write the music for the opening service and thus produced a massive choral symphony, the War Requiem, Op 66, a Requiem Mass set to words by anti-war poet Wilfred Owen, killed in action just a week before the end of WWI.
John had performed the composer’s A Ceremony of Carols as a member of the St John’s School choristers. But it was the sheer ambition of the large-scale Requiem that affected the impressionable teenager when he attended the opening with his parents on 30 May 1962. Importantly, it also made him aware of music being composed outside of the regular distribution channels serving radio and television; new ‘classical’ music which existed in a parallel world, a world removed from the commercial demands of pop.
As it turned out, John Nightly music, real John Nightly music, would always exist somewhere between the two. John had already begun to combine the sensation and instant commercial appeal of pop with the elegance and experimentation offered by an expanded format, thereby moving several steps closer to realising the sound he imagined in his head. Though it couldn’t be said that classical music of this nature was uncommercial; a Decca recording of the War Requiem made in 1963 with Peter Pears and Galina Vishnevskaya sold a quarter of a million copies in the first six months of its release.
Cambridge Evening News. Friday, 15 January 1963.
Cambridge schoolboy John Nightly, aged 14, has written to the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London to inform them of his findings regarding the relationship between the earth and the sun. The St John’s Secondary pupil said, ‘I’ve been studying the heat and the energy of the sun as part of a personal project and am also very interested in re-using sunshine and rainwater so it can be used again. I’m worried that in ten years’ time we might have used up all of the sunshine in the world, which comes from the stars so I think it really important that we start thinking about this now before it’s too late. My teacher thought that I should send my essay to the RGO.’ John will be carrying on his investigation and hopes to win a place at King’s College in order to continue his studies in this very specialist field.
‘Spotlight on Schools’, by John Miller, science editor.
In January 1963, Britain was enduring the coldest winter on record since 1741. The fenlands surrounding Cambridge were frozen hard; no fork or plough could break the ground. The land one huge blanket of snow as far as the eye could see. On Saturday the 12th, in the sitting room of the Feathers’ detached house in Church Lane, John and Jana sat down in the cosy glow of the coal fire, steaming hot plates of cod and chips in front of them, and experienced a holy visitation in this suburban pocket of England’s foremost university town. During Thank Your Lucky Stars the two ravenously hungry teenagers let their fish and chip tea go cold as they watched four lads from the North make their national TV debut to a record-breaking six million viewers, most of whom had chosen to stay indoors that night only because of the extreme weather conditions outside. There they were, the new messiahs, sending out the warmest of vibrations – human sunshine – in the form of electro-magnetic waves from small flickering screens up and down the country, as they came face to face with their future patrons and bobbed up and down doll-like in their Beno Dorn suits.
Instantly hypnotised, like all other teenagers in Britain tuning in that Saturday teatime, John and Jana moved closer to the high-contrast black-and-white image. Positioned just an inch away from the bright-eyed and slightly bemused faces, they studied intently what they could see of the four individuals through the combination of the 405 lines and permanent snowstorm that made up the early ’60s TV picture. Hearing the Beatles perform their second single, ‘Please Please Me’ (Parlophone 45-R 4983), on its day of release and seeing the group ‘for real’ for the very first time had a devastating effect on both youngsters. As soon as John got home that night he marched straight into his father’s garden shed and tuned to Radio Luxembourg. He waited patiently for the Beatles to come on. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long as the group seemed to be played on rotation around every twenty minutes or so. As soon as John Lennon’s blues harp kicked in, the young Nightly hit Record on his father’s 2-track and logged the very first song on his Album of Life as it would come to be known. Side 1, Track 1 of endless reels of music copied over the years from any source his Fenman radio could tune into. Across the airwaves of the BBC Home Service, the Light Programme, Radio Caroline, the mysterious, intermittent FM, American Forces Network (AFN), Luxembourg, shortwave messages from the local Cambridge constabulary, and later, John’s favourite of them all, the life-giving signal transmitted from the rusty North Sea paquebot known as Radio London.
From January 1963 to December ’65, in the tool shed of the Nightly semi, John recorded anything that interested him long enough to remain for even a day or two in his own highly selective personal chart. Then, one night in November 1968, after taking 750 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide, he cut the compilation tapes into shreds, letting the quarter-inch ribbons fall to the floor of his newly purchased Marylebone apartment before he edited them together in whichever order they happened to land. This random tape assembly, compressed and distorted beyond recognition, became the basis for his transitional second LP, Ape Box Metal, dedicated to the American choreographer Donna Vost and released on Valentine’s Day, 1970.
John and Jana spent their weekends in the junk shops along Mill Road, systematically trawling the racks for unusual discs. A samba LP by Reginald Dixon, T. S. Eliot’s deadpan delivery of his own verse, live recordings of cup finals, criminal trials and medical lectures along with US presidential speeches, NASA’s The Pursuit of Space and oddities such as the EP box of native birdsong recordings from the Royal Ornithological Society. Damaged stock and cut-outs, hi-fi demonstration discs, test records and acetates, flexi-discs given away with subscriptions to the Reader’s Digest, like Transworld Airlines’ How to Navigate Our Globe or the RAC’s Driving on Britain’s New Motorways. These and a mostly unfathomable double LP of shipping forecasts were all found on those magical afternoons and became part of John Nightly’s never-ending tapestry of ‘found sounds’.
Even at this point, the boy was considering his future. With an ability to concentrate on several different creative activities at once and even at this early age thinking both accumulatively and long term, John would mentally piece together the source material he had already collected. Just as he enjoyed cutting up photographs from his mother’s magazines, sticking them together with paste made from flour and water to make bizarre-looking collages which alarmed his father, he approached the structuring of music in the same way.
John accepted that it was human nature to try to establish structure. Both the throwaway 45 and the most profound symphonic work existed within the same easy-to-deal-with
formats; beginnings and endings consisting almost uniformly of statement, repetition, development and variation. But he imagined his own compositions having a continuous story-like quality. Not necessarily ‘developing’, but dealing with their material, their fabric, quickly, before moving on. The music appearing as a patchwork of fragments within an ongoing, ever-evolving roll. There would be no secondary material, no low points, no dips waiting for peaks; nor would there be any finite composition or ‘definitive’ recordings, either by himself or anyone else.
These intentions occupied John Nightly as he and Justin spent hour upon hour compiling tape reels from countless disparate sources, often using no more than a fill-in beat here or the odd empty bar there from the original before adding John’s own ideas on top. New melodies criss-crossed old ones; chords were played in different keys and stacked up to create new extensions and polychords. Sections of cut-up backing tracks were either sped up or slowed down in order to link them harmonically or rhythmically into the next edit or ‘sample’. John would then add tape delay, reverb and other effects before he distorted the result with his own homemade compressor, fuzzying up and fizzing up the signal when it came back out of the amplifier. The result was a dreamlike assemblage which through its constantly changing moods served as inspiration for John’s always very autobiographical narrative – a day-to-day journal, real or imagined, of what might or might not be happening in his life. These spores of creation, combining backwards and forwards motion, flashback and premonition, conspired to create something new out of the entrails, the interior and the intimate, of the bits and pieces he’d investigated, filtered through the shifting sands of his imagination. Though he couldn’t have known it then, John Nightly was already at least twenty years ahead of the times.
Jani Feather had promised to take his daughter and her by now very permanent young man to the Fab Four’s live appearance at the Regal ABC cinema in March, but had underestimated Beatle appeal and lost out when every seat sold within ten minutes of going on sale. So, when NEMS announced a second visit by the group as part of their Autumn Tour, the open-minded music professor wasted no time in securing four tickets, two for Jana and John, and a pair for his wife and himself, for the group’s performance there on Tuesday, 26 November 1963.
Having been unable to purchase four seats together, Jani and Valerie settled into the back stalls – giving John and Jana the benefit of two of the best seats in the house, JJ28 and JJ29 in the front circle (a bargain at 10/6 each for the first performance, at 6.15pm). The teenagers were so excited that they happily sat through Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, the Vernons Girls and the Kestrels until a slight-looking foursome ran onstage with no announcement whatsoever. Even before the performers plugged in their guitars and waited for their bass player’s 1-2-3-4 count, the fans had begun screaming. ‘John! John!’ ‘Ringo! Ringo!’ they hollered as the group launched into ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘All My loving’. They shrieked along to ‘From Me to You’ and carried on in a more-or-less disordered state by the time of ‘She Loves You’, until they finally became hoarse and screeched to a halt during a manic ‘Twist and Shout’.
Upfront in row JJ, two members of the audience sat absolutely still throughout the short 20-minute service. It was as if lightning had struck the old Regal, but only in John and Jana’s seats. For God’s sake, Jana thought, the Beatles were less than a hundred yards away. The girl felt her spiritual self rise up while her body remained in its seat as Paul and George beamed first at each other then out at the hysterical audience from the same microphone. The scene moved in slow motion as she furrowed and frowned trying to pick out John’s choppy guitar and Ringo’s clanky hi-hat. Disorientated and dizzy, tired of searching for sightlines through the screaming mob, Jana let go of the Here and Now and found herself zooming. Fast forwarding to a possible future scenario, she searched the new landscape for her beloved but he was nowhere to be seen. The girl took control again and began winding herself slowly back, seeing her own being, her own self, for the first time in her life, at the very centre of things; the old Regal on the one hand a sounding box for the coming revolution and on the other a rusty feast-day carousel grinding down on its own spindle. The mob swirling around her like a tidal surge; hysterical in the real sense of the word, an encircling force spinning freeform as the music boomed its way through the ancient plankboards of the pre-war stage and out into the newly velveted stalls of the Swinging era, a mass vibrational quaking in stalls and circle from A to Z; an awakened pulse suddenly bringing everything around it into existence.
In this moment Jana became whole, became herself – her new self – as she responded to the pull of the magnet. Finding in this coming together, this conjunction, this vanity, a glow which was to keep her, comfort and sustain her, for the rest of her days. Fast forward again into another gear and Zap! The girl was back. Properly back. Jana sat forward, leaned her elbows on her knees as if nothing had happened and gazed up at her blond-haired boy. Her companion was transfixed by what he saw. Like an expert marksman, his telescopic eyes held the group in their sights. His analytical mind tracked every chord change and bass note. His sensitive disposition was charmed by each loving nuance and expression of warmth. His manipulative nature was awed by the absolute power the magiciens were able to exert over their followers.
John Nightly had seen the future, and had understood it. He had also understood the magnitude of the task before him. The four young men onstage had already travelled a long road. Their tight-knit, brotherly groove, their infectious optimism and their sheer ‘rightness’ was the product of 1,000 pilled-up sessions at the Star Club in Hamburg and endless one-nighters in provincial Northern ballrooms. Behind it all was what seemed like a mercury gush of musical invention. John Nightly had yet to leave the starting blocks but he was confident he could travel faster having now finally set eyes on his teachers, his gurus, his healers, his yardstick and… what would come to be his great comfort in times of trouble.
But together these four spirits, holy men from the North, tour guides to the new cultural landscape, were also to be his nemesis; an impossibly high watermark by which all others would be measured and against which he would constantly measure his own achievement. Those who inspire can also force one to face up to one’s own supposed potential, limitations, ability and inability, and this was certainly the case with the magical, mythical, Christ-like, four-headed omniscience that, in the early days at least, referred to itself using the collective term… Beatles.
Take my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise,
all lost in a wonderland
‘Stranger in Paradise’
Robert Wright/George Forrest/Alexander Borodin
Carn Point, Porthcreek, Cornwall. Photo: John Heath-Green Photographic (Cornish Echo & Trades)
Zennor Head, Penwith, Cornwall. Saturday, 5 April 1982.
A shiny black Jaguar XJS V12 drives westwards along the B3306, the coast road to St Just and Lands End. The car overtakes a holidaymaker’s caravan before turning sharply onto a path beside a muddy compound. A close morning mist hangs over the land. Rabbits and hares scatter to take cover in the bracken and scrub. A dirt track leads to a freshly ploughed field where crows and gulls nervously pick over worms. The Jag bumps along this square acre, flattening out the turned earth until it comes to a field of native daffodils – Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Further up, beneath an old distressed oak, lies a patch of Himalayan poppies and a rusty water tank. The car arrives at the entrance to a small meadow. There is a fishpond filled with rubble and bricks. To the left, a path that drops away into marshland. To the right, a grassy bank with clumps of primula, gunnera and hosta. Beyond these little outposts and obstructions there is a clear view across the cliffs and out to the sea. Blue, blue sea. The deep turquoise-blue of the Atlantic. Five sky-tall Monterey cypresses stand guard over the ocean. The magnificent ocean. The sound of long, rolling waves and spring tides beckons the visitors on. Orange gorse has spread out to claim the driveway. T
he car ploughs through the dense thicket towards another clearing, until a curtain of trees leads into bramble and sea-heather. Suddenly there are fresh open skies and shimmering granite rock. Brilliant white light floods onto the steppes. Lilac and buddleja, lime and pear trees have arranged themselves around an open meadow as the Jag pulls to a halt beneath a huge overhanging oak. Up ahead, the remains of a shingle path and a five-bar gate.
A portly, middle-aged figure in a grey anorak gets out of the car and swings the gate open. It is incredibly hot this morning. The noonday sun beats down on the roof of the shiny black saloon. The man gets back in and the car starts up again. It continues along its way, mowing down thistle and mustard in the undergrowth. Half a mile further and we’re almost on the water. Everything is blue now. A fine mist and drizzle blows in off the sea. White puffy clouds move fast across the headland. Stints and terns have come in off the cliffs. Looking east along the coast path three other farmhouses are visible towards Black Zawn. There are trails leading right up to the overhang of the cliffs. Purple schiff decorates the landscape, enticing the visitor towards the edge. It is a wild but idyllic scene. Crows and sparrowhawks bellow warnings from the cypress branches, alerting their many friends that they have company. The Jag pulls to a stop under a drip of trees. The driver gets out and walks purposefully towards a sign nailed to a broken piece of tin.
Legal Squatting
Do NOT come any further
No access
The man ignores this friendly advice and walks straight past the notice up towards a large stone building, a farmhouse in a seemingly dreadful state of repair. There are rotten card tables outside, and bunting from a long-gone feast day still adorns the guttering. On the front door a wreath from Christmas Past hangs on a nail. An old tied lavender lays abandoned on the doorstep. There is no one to be seen. Back in the car, a second man, the passenger in the front, opens the door slightly to alleviate the heat. He places one foot on the ground but remains in the vehicle. The place is overrun with birds. Ravens, jackdaws, black crows and owls. All of them blaring at the same time. The house is a mess. Chickens and guineafowl run for cover as the man approaches the front of the building, pauses briefly to kick away an old cardboard box on the ground in front of him, then disappears round the back for ten minutes or so. He reappears on the other side having inspected the total amount of space and acreage, which is considerable, and having taken a close look at five large plots out back. There are cutting beds, a rockery, a rose garden, the mature tea roses and the earth around them singed by a recent bonfire and large rectangular razed areas, two-and four-bay structures. Facing on to the sea are Victorian greenhouses with broken windows and timber joists more or less falling down. The man checks his watch, looks up at the sun, squints in disbelief at the atomic brightness, walks back up to the car and gets in.