The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  ‘The thing is, Mawgan…’ RCN pulled the kitchen chair towards the telephone. ‘Now I’ve had a chance to go through everything… it does seem that there’s a lot of material which… does seem to be, as far as we, or I… can see…’ He paused once more, to swallow a mouthful of glucose and tincture, ‘pretty much complete, which is… given that amount of time, for it to just… turn up like this…’

  ‘I brought everything out to you that was there, man,’ the dude jumped in. ‘It’s like, as I say… I don’t know who it actually belongs to legally or anything… guess it was brought by the studio as tape to be reused. For budget sessions… But that was a long time ago now… don’t know how playable those reels are. I did put the beginning – the “Allegro” – on to the machine and it actually sounded great, y’know?’ Mawgan stared up at a CCTV monitor showing a band arriving outside the studio for today’s session. ‘Needed a bit of lining up and stuff, ’cos after 30 years… But apart from a couple of little creases in the first section… it all sounded fine. It’s dirty and all that, physically dirty, needs a good clean and stuff.’

  ‘Mawgan… let me ask you something…’ RCN crunched matter-of-factly into his diminishing cough sweet, ‘Do you know the project fairly well? I mean, at all well? It’s a big project, and… I wouldn’t expect you to know all seven hours of…’

  ‘I know every second of it, John.’

  RCN nodded to Mrs Peed as she placed a steaming hot mug of tea in front of him. A sandwich stacked high with ham and his favourite cheap pickle lay waiting by the sink. ‘In that case… let me ask you if you have the facility down there… to make copies… in the studio where you are now?’

  ‘Course I do. I’ve already made, I mean…’

  ‘…Right …so would you be interested, if we paid you to work on it a little bit? Do you think you’d be able to get the thing in some kind of… order? So we could maybe listen to it properly down here… and see just exactly what we’ve got?’

  ‘Could I? Absolutely I could!’ The kid livened up and was suddenly all action. ‘Course I could… the Requiem is one of the lost albums… it’s the only lost album that is still like… “lost”.’ Mawgan spoke faster. ‘The one that everybody talks about anyway. You can get bits of it on bootlegs and that… I’ve got a few myself, or, well… I was given them, y’know… Except for the one I got at… wherever it was…’ Mawg stalled for a second, unsure what the copyright owner’s attitude towards piracy might be, even on a very miniature scale. ‘But they’re just like… bits, yeah… from live gigs mainly, probably taken from the desk.’ Mawgan got up from his seat and hit the buzzer to let the band in, elated about the offer of work on this potential ‘dream job’. ‘The recorded bits are just slotted in really, ’cos the music itself is…’

  ‘Mawgan, I’m going to ask you if you’d be able to come down and speak to us about this one day.’

  Jonathan Foxley (RCM, FRAS, MBE), music supervisor and conductor and MD of the MBR 39-city US Tour, 1972, talking to Record Collector’s Lost Masterpieces special issue. May 1996.

  It was a very interesting and in some ways overwhelmingly inventive piece, but those days were so incredibly inventive anyway… and chaotic. It did seem that, in a way, ‘invention’ was the norm. My job – such as it was – was an impossible one. To co-ordinate all of that; John not being able to read music… then having to deal with all his other ‘problems’, and just that amount of physical people… [blows his nose] It was exciting, though. Tremendously exciting. But then again, really completely… quite nuts. Very under control and out of control at the same time.

  [Jonathan becomes distracted by the interviewer’s tape-player]

  If I had to describe it musically I’d say that overall it was an… impressionistic piece – I don’t mean that pretentiously, or in terms of paintings or anything like that – I mean it more… more physically than anything, because it… In its presentation of sound anyway… It wasn’t… it didn’t… wasn’t at all ‘centred’ musically, is what I mean. And very loose, non-logical… and ‘non-formal’, in the way it… in its use of… in its handling, I should say… of rather complex musical language. Because he was, at that point, more interested in cutting up pieces of this and that, just going with it, rather than pure composition. Though he could do that as well, of course… could do anything really… so damned… accomplished… I’d think that, at that time, the piece was the purest example, the ultimate example maybe, of a cut-up or whatever you want to call the idea – ‘randomness’ – in terms of music. You get that all the time now, don’t you? With dance records… club records… sampling… But, randomness on a massive sort of… ‘oceanic’ scale… which was exactly what he was aiming for.

  [Jonathan frowns at the cassette going round] We had the John Donne text, which he used in the ‘Letters’ section – from the Donne verse-letters – all these actors reading out letters that Donne had written sort of ‘in verse’ – very moving – which was organised by Donna [Vost], beautifully I might add… and then the Holy Sonnets, and I think he was very interested in the… metaphysical aspect of it – or however you want to refer to it – because he had his imagery in there, and his musical references as ever, but he knew he had to do something else with it as well. He was interested in Donne’s subject matter and of course it also related to what he himself was going through at the time. [looks at the cassette-recorder again] I think that thing’s stopped, you know…

  It’s alright. It’ll turn itself over

  Will it? Okay… [interviewer motions for Jonathan to carry on] John could see that there were technical problems in setting the poetry… Sometimes the words weren’t really weighted towards being musicalised and they weren’t really very regular either. Donne himself said that what he was about was passion, rather than ‘syllables’ anyway. So John thought that the cut-up thing would work, obviously keeping the main body of the idea together if he could. What he ended up creating weren’t songs anymore, and they weren’t… expanded songs or structured movements or even building blocks. They were more… ‘blobs’ of something… globules… blobs of music. What he called ‘formants’, when he did these interviews with journos who obviously didn’t understand a bloody… oh, eh…

  [interviewer smiles, noting the word ‘formants’ in a glossary of terms]

  Boulez’s description, obviously. I remember John said in some magazine, where they were talking about… these other things, getting it all wrong as usual… Hair… Tommy… Arthur – the Kinks’ one – and the other one – the Pretty Things’ one – Sorrow*… so-called ‘rock operas’. Basically just a collection of songs. [Sunday Times colour supplement. ‘Pop Goes Legit’. Special feature by Joni Beech, 9 May 1969]. Nothing at all to do with what we were doing, and also John said the work would be ‘imagist’, meaning like Imagist Poetry; said something… something ludicrous… [clears his throat] ‘A compendium of musical fragments and activities in different media’ or some such thing. Must have gotten that from somewhere because he actually didn’t talk like that at all. Thank God. Not in real life… John was really… a very simple person. Simple soul. Simple guy. [turns away from the interviewer]

  How much more are you going to need of me? [interviewer indicates for Jonathan to continue]

  The Mink Bungalow Requiem had everything, literally everything thrown into it… Freeform dance, the element that Donna put in, some tremendous things, really… beautiful and moving. At the time I would guess she was probably the leading person of that period, at that point, so we were lucky, because… she was doing this kind of… rock’n’roll tour thing with us, very tiring and… and… giving us her best dancers… And there were some… some quite stunning, really quite stunning set designs… Incense, perfume… the fragrance of it… and hundreds and thousands of candles of course – all the lighting was candles, as you know… which was… just stunning. Obviously before the days of ‘health and safety’. [raises his eyebrows] Because we, as you know – John – he refused t
o use electric power. Wanted to show how beautiful candle power, candlelight, natural light… can be. That was very difficult… as lots of things got burned, some of the musician’s scores got burned… Oh God! [Jonathan laughs and takes a sip of water] And some of the musicians themselves got burned – in more ways than one, I expect!

  Faber Guide to Contemporary Classical, March 2005 (Faber)

  ‘The Mink Bungalow Requiem, a piece for Singers, Players, D­­­­ancers pre-dated other contenders such as Roger Smalley’s Beat Music ’71, for Orchestra and Four Soloists (1971) and Stars End, for Two Rock Guitarists and Orchestra by David Bedford (Virgin V2020), 1974. John Tavener’s The Whale, issued on Apple (Sapcor 15) was a direct if safer contemporary competitor.

  * * *

  * S. F. Sorrow by the Pretty Things (Columbia SCX6303), 1968. The story of Sebastian Sorrow and his encounters with Baron Saturday.

  ‘To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time’

  Leonard Bernstein

  Mawgan Hall’s Hash Browns

  Take 2lbs potatoes (King Edward or Majestic), half a bar of butter, 1 teaspoonful of olive oil, 1 large onion, a teaspoonful of ‘flavouring’. Salt (sea) and pepper (black) to taste.

  Wash the potatoes with a scourer - do not peel. Blanch in boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes. Slice the potatoes thinly or put through slicer. Add the flavouring, and lightly dust with flour.

  Take a small frying pan and melt the butter then add the potatoes. Toss when the panside is golden, then turn over. Continue until both sides are cooked. Eat with heaps of ketchup – before everyone else does!

  Trewin Farm, Porthcreek, Carn Point, Cornwall. Monday, 11 March 2002.

  ‘When John comes in you might find him a little… “detached”, is the word I’d probably use.’

  The kid continued to play with his dreads.

  ‘Sometimes it seems like he’s bored. But he’s not… so…’

  RCN smiled and cupped his hands around a fresh mug of tea.

  Mawgan took a breath as he checked the condensation-heavy room and tried to fathom from which of the three possible entrances the Master might appear when he did finally choose to appear.

  ‘I say this because… it’s just that he is always… thinking about a lot of… things… stuff… at the same time.’

  ‘Yeah… well, he’s… y’know… thinking about stuff, I s’pose…’

  ‘So his mind is… it… flits between these various things.’

  The kid ran his hand around the neck of his collar. It was unusually hot in the hothouse today.

  ‘I’m saying this, Mawgan… just in case…’

  ‘No worries, man. As I say.’

  ‘Obviously John is grateful to you… for your “discovery”.’ RCN coughed his familiar single-barrel cough. ‘We all are.’

  The kid remained immobile. ‘Anyway… my idea was…’

  ‘Wicked, man… as I say, it’s…’

  ‘And talk about… whether we can…’ The male nurse rose stiffly, placed both hands on his lower back and took a deep inner breath, as if he were in some pain. He yawned, picked up a cushion, placed it on the old farmhouse chair and flopped down again. ‘Try to… see if we can’t… get to the next stage with this.’

  ‘But…’ Mawgan sat back and twirled his spiky dreads around his fingers, ‘he is sort of… like, a… a nice guy and all that?’

  Mawgan sought reassurance that in normal everyday life his idol, musical guru #1, ‘disappearing man’ and absolute Godlike genius, now almost within his reach, was – despite all that the guru had been through; all he’d given; the road he’d travelled; all he’d surrendered of himself – still a ‘nice’ fairly regular man, rather than the burned-out shipwreck the kid half expected to sail through one of the three doors that served the old vicarage kitchen. RCN rubbed his bloodshot eyes and, obviously restless, got up again to walk over to the garden window, turning away from the kid in order to avoid answering the question.

  ‘Only thing… Sometimes he stares at you – “looks at you”, I mean – in quite an odd way… Maybe not at exactly, but sort of… through…’ RCN raised his eyebrows. ‘Straight through. Then again, when he does that he’s just… thinking. About something, so… don’t be put off by it.’ RCN scratched his head and cleared his throat, trying his best to sound reassuring. Mawgan nodded.

  ‘All sweet, man. But like I say… the guy is like, a nice guy, uh… easy to get on with, and all that…’ Mawgan upped his dynamic a little. ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a… he’s a “good guy”, Mawgan.’ RCN turned back to the kid. ‘John’s a good guy and he always has been. One of the good ones.’

  The kid seemed to go slightly wobbly. ‘Good guy…’

  Mawgan appeared more anxious than ever as he picked up his notebook, ready for action. The thick, foliate lettering of an artistically scribbled R-E-Q-U-I-E-M had been scanned across a cover decorated with psychedelic ornamentation in late ’60s style.

  ‘I reckon that only someone… really “nice”. Real cool person and all that… coulda written… come up with… all that amazing stuff anyway… couldn’t they?’

  ‘As I say, Mawgan… John is…’

  “BLAM !”

  As RCN spoke, the kitchen door of the old farmhouse flew open, black crows squawked in the cypresses above, a chill breeze rustled through the japonica and a dense curtain of impenetrable thundercloud momentarily blacked out the house, the grounds and the surrounding woodland, maybe even the whole village, and all of the headland from the white farm up as far as Black Zawn. It was as if the National Grid had suddenly collapsed. A sand-dry stillness came upon the place…

  ‘Hallo……………… you must be Mawgan.’

  The kid almost jumped out of his trainers before he stood up and sort of… dawdled to attention for the Master. ‘And… you must be… John.’

  ‘I suppose I was…’

  The Master shuffled slowly and ever so unsurely into the kitchen in his ill-fitting dark-brown cords and green leather sandals. As if he expected to enter the room without being noticed. His bone-china fingers, singed by decades of tobacco, fingernails black with peat, clamped themselves tightly onto the sleeve ends of his fraying, nondescript cardigan. Proceeding in slow motion, creaking like floorboards, the old boy made himself comfortable next to the male nurse without acknowledging him. A scruffy mongrel ambled in and stretched himself out across his master’s feet.

  The Master’s hair was unusually coiffed today. Forward-combed, fluffed and teased – almost Mr Teasy-Weasy teased. Someone, somewhere, had spent time on it. Wispy and colourless, like the roots of a dry spider plant, it framed a flat, droll face upon which the Master had today put his dumbest, most bimbo smile; as if he were already in a much too receptive, ‘surrendering’ mode. As if he instinctively realised that he might be in the presence of a kindred spirit. A like-minded soul. Possibly more than that. A potential ‘friend’, from what his faithful nurse and companion had told him. Well, it was someone who liked him, anyway. Liked what he did. That was the thing. The most important thing. Probably ‘good shit’, in the confusing modern parlance of last night’s PayPal movie. The same phrase that the fish man’s son had used yesterday, referring to the two huge spliffs RCN had laid out on the kitchen table. The Master didn’t seem at all apprehensive, but then neither did the kid. Alexandre was relaxed too. He sniffed inquisitively at Mawgan’s muddy flats before he wandered off in the direction of the pantry to search for crumbs.

  ‘Do you come from a musical family, Mawgan?’

  Oh no. It was a kind of ‘hairdresser’s question’, wasn’t it? Not the brilliant opening gambit the kid had expected from the Master, the Wizard, the Magicien, God himself and Lost Genius of all lost geniuses.

  ‘In a way, I do… s’pose.’ Mawgan attempted to connect with his potential employer for the first time. ‘My dad was called, is called, Mark Hall?’

  No response. The Master’s bimbo smile was se
t in stone.

  ‘You probably won’t have heard of him, but he’s… sort of famous – locally, if you know what I mean – in Sandy, where we come from…’ The kid, suddenly unsure of himself due to the lack of exchange, looked down at the floor and addressed the ancient flagstones rather than the Genius himself, ‘round where we live… in… Bedfordshire,’ he continued, ‘my dad had a band… a group, anyway… his own group.’ Mawgan looked up again. ‘Mark Hall & the Hallmarks.’

  No response. Mawgan floundered. At the very least he might have expected the odd ‘ah…’, a half-interested ‘I see…’, or some such similar, reasonably humane nicety. What he failed to realise was that John Nightly’s sensitivity as a human being when engaging with fellow human beings, his ability to relate to people, their social needs and responses, along with their expectations, no longer existed. Normal human relations having been knocked sideways, first by the recreational toxins he’d seen fit to shovel into his vessel and then by the process of extracting that poison from him so that he might survive – taking with it most of his personality.

  ‘Changed their name to… just… the Hallmarks… Long time ago now… I s’pose.’ Mawgan could feel himself sinking. Today was turning out to be much more difficult than he had imagined. ‘Sometime around…’76… sometime round uh… punk, I guess…’

  John Nightly wasn’t the least bit interested in Mark Hall & the Hallmarks. John Nightly had been on another planet altogether during punk. He knew that the phenomenon had existed sometime during the seventies and that, as John understood it, it was based on rock’n’roll, or Teddy Boys – ‘greaser’ music – but that was about it. All John Nightly wanted to do was to get on with it. Having made the decision that he would get into the excavation business, he was impatient to discover what he’d been up to all that time ago – thirty years past. What exactly had possessed him to work that hard? To come up with that much stuff? To drive himself, and everyone close to him, to the limits, then… tip the whole thing over the edge? John Nightly was, as ever, wary, weary, and at the same time anxious, but remained self-absorbed and therefore newly motivated, keen to make the first deep gouge in the ground.