by Tot Taylor
The Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace, London SW1. 26 October 1966.
John Pond, manager-about-town, slammed the front door of his new pad at 77 Beak Street, next door to John Wilkes the rifle maker, and adjusted the buckle of his pink leather belt, a present from his new girlfriend Vanessa. (Vanessa Frye, a 16-year-old schoolgirl from Penzance, hit the charts with ‘Mu Mu Tea’, a Millie-inspired cover of the John Nightly song, in December that year. She was never heard of again.) Encountering a typically damp London morn, and late as usual, he put on his new pitch-black corduroy cap, narrowly avoiding a splash of mud from a green Mini Cooper. As he skipped between kerb and tarmac he fastened the pinked bands of his jacket, turned down the embroidered edgings of his Mr Fish silk shirt and tightened the belt of his matching cords. The young entrepreneur then made his way across the smoke and gas of Regent Street, where pick-up shots for Dick Lester’s new movie and a photo shoot for Trend magazine were adding to the mayhem.
‘Charlie!’ Pond yelled to Charles Wheatstone, former variety agent, now manager of the Kyst, without bothering to wait for a response before he turned into Sackville Street, pausing momentarily to look into the old-fashioned chocolate-box window of Southeran Books then continuing on his way towards the Royal Society. Pond had been due to arrive there an hour earlier to check on the preparations for that night’s launch of his protégé’s debut LP, Principal Fixed Stars.
At the entrance to the Society he came upon fashion model Bambi Brook – a recent ex – chatting to his own former secretary, the TV presenter Cornelia Cassell. Pond complimented the girls on their see-through minis and Cornelia on being on the cover of this week’s Fab Girl (the series Cor, it’s Cornelia! ran on Children’s Rediffusion TV every Friday teatime from September ’66 right up to December ’77, achieving a record of re-commissioning in children’s television beaten only by Blue Peter).
The manager passed the MoD building, allied flags asail in the breeze, and held on to his cap as a keen wind began to whip along the Mall. Pond felt good. He should; he had everything going for him. He felt bolted to the zeitgeist. He heard voices, the usual ones, advising him to follow his instincts, and he felt vibrations, unusual vibrations, a distant guitar riff that rattled the white-columned facades all around him representing what would become one of the most valuable assets of all in terms of England’s future wealth. Homegrown rock’n’roll, the new currency, rang out across Horseguards and Trafalgar Gates from a distorted PA system somewhere close by. It rumbled the dustbins lining the alleyways behind Buck Pal and it rattled the pockets of the labels that released and manufactured the product. The record-pressing plants of England were the new tin mines, the new steelworks, and vinyl, a composite of crude oil and acetate, would soon make the brand names Parlophone and Decca as world famous as Wedgwood or Chippendale.
Pond tripped down the steps from St James’s. Inside the venue, the smoke-stained walls were awash with condensation. The place buzzed with It People – tastemakers and scenesters the manager had papered in order to initiate a sense of excitement about his charge’s London debut. At the end of the narrow hallway the first person he encountered was the last person he expected, John Nightly himself, undergoing counselling by his newly appointed road manager.
‘What ’y’ doing out here, man? You shouldn’t be out here in the public… bit. You should be backstage, John… stay back there… Away from this…’ Pond looked around disparagingly. ‘This… lot…’
Dispensing with any greeting whatsoever, the manager attempted to lead the boy to safety. ‘It’s no good if the audience sees the star trying to sort out the practicals, man.’ Pond directed his star towards a narrow corridor. ‘That’s what we’ve employed your trusty road manager here to do…’
‘but there’s a problem with the dancers and… a bit of a problem with the piano and… and the orchestra… and…’
John Nightly furiously rubbed his forehead, attempting to rub away the splitting headache that had descended on him three days earlier. Pond held onto the boy’s arm in the manner of someone helping an elderly lady across the road. He spoke reassuringly.
‘We’ll sort the dancers, man… and all the other stuff… Let’s just get you back in the dressing room and out of this public… bit.’
‘but no one actually knows who I am anyway,’ the boy protested.
‘The ones in the know do,’ Pond replied without listening.
‘“…in the know”?’
‘In the know! The ones who know their stuff! And everyone will be in the know soon. Don’t worry about that…’ The manager urged on again: ‘C’mon… this is not good.’
Pond put his arm around the client, sheltering him, taking him literally under his wing. Like boxer and trainer, they hurried back along the corridor. With its linen-fold panelling and fixed glass lanterns it was like walking down a tunnel into the past.
‘I just want to be told what is actually happening, when it is happening…’
John Nightly stumbled on, visibly unsettled by what seemed like the amount of ‘practicals’ that had not actually been attended to. Pond continued.
‘That’s great, John. But as I say, that is your road manager’s job, and I completely trust him to be able to do it. Part of that job is to not actually burden you, or me, with literally every little thing that might crop up. To keep the practicals – the actual “practical”… practicals – well out of it.’
The manager employed his usual flamboyant hand gestures to make the point. ‘Practicals are boring, man… All that bad old boring old stuff, bad, bad, bad… boring, boring, bor-ing!’ He emitted a huge mock sigh of relief, in the manner of someone who had just climbed a mountain or completed a marathon. Sometimes the manager came across more like a music-hall entertainer than the intelligent strategist his client understood him to be. ‘Not that there is any bad stuff or anything… Not yet, anyway… but there will be!’ Pond assured his client as he raised his eyebrows. ‘In the future.’ He smiled. ‘Sometime in the not-so-distant…’
But Pond’s reassurance had the reverse effect of that intended. The more his manager reassured the more John Nightly became alarmed. Pond turned to his road manager.
‘I assume everything is alright?’
RCN nodded matter-of-factly as he led the way, John Nightly’s old Eko guitar in one hand and a new attaché-case in the other.
‘There you are then. All is fine, all is…’ Pond looked around and smiled at both Johns. ‘Both of you… everything is really fine.’ He checked his watch. ‘Still two hours, for God’s sake! Loads of time yet, people…’
Pond repeated the phrase under his breath one more time as if to convince himself.
‘Where’s this other lot… orchestras… coming from, exactly?’ Nightly answered before his road manager could.
‘Cambridge Music Society, but there was a sit-in this morning and that’s made them late.’
The manager continued on, falling into Daly’s slipstream, as both of them led the boy through a side door into the east wing of the building. As it opened out onto a small bar with a drinking room beyond, they could see that the auditorium itself was packed. Wardour Street regulars and Chelsea Set hangers-on, bright, shiny new beings – ‘freaky beaks’, as they would come to be known – had all turned out, tipped off by Pond’s on-the-ground public-relations offensive that this was going to be an evening to see and be seen, an event to have been at.
In the far-end corner, the Cambridge Student Orchestra lugged bulky instrument cases down two flights of steps into an adjacent dressing-room while the ballet school’s humpers pushed large portable wardrobes through a channel in the crowd. In the main lecture-room itself, a loud slab of mutated rock’n’roll added to the excitement. Pond nodded to the beat like a cockerel parading around its coop.
‘What’s this?’ he asked of the track, a segment from one of John’s new songs, as an ashen-faced piano-tuner came towards them. The boy approached him cautiously.
‘is
it okay now?’
‘What?’
‘the piano…’
‘It’s better than it was, son.’
‘and the middle area?’
‘No idea, my friend… Had to stop when they put this horrible racket on.’
‘’Mazin’… ’ma-zin’…’
The sharply attired figure of Lee Hide blocked the doorway.
‘Looks like a opera or suffink in ’ere…’ All of the Johns seemed relieved to see him.
‘John, John, I love your coat!’ Daphne ran after the manager and his contender as they progressed further towards John Nightly’s own cubbyhole. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘this? Oh… don’t know. I… well… John here chose it for me,’ a quietly decomposing Nightly mumbled as he indicated towards his road manager. ‘Somewhere in London…’ But the coat, a one-off sample from Ossie Clark’s Quorum label, was special in more ways than one. It was a present from Iona, having been chosen by Monika. Daly only ever shopped at Mr Byrite.
‘It looks fabulous on you, John,’ Daphne gushed attentively. ‘Makes you look a… a… a… film star.’ The student took it all in, amazed and impressed by the frantic activity in aid of her friend from Cambridge. ‘Is Jana here?’
‘Really don’t know, Daph… she’s definitely on her way… I know she started off at lunchtime.’ The boy looked pained. ‘sorry… finding it a bit difficult at the moment.’ Daphne beamed a good-luck smile and detached herself from John’s sleeve.
As Cornelia and Bambi appeared at the door behind Sandra, Daly and Nightly surveyed the mayhem around them – an ant-like degree of activity in the small back kitchen-cum-dressing-room. The vestibule reeked of stale incense, joss sticks and cheap Communion candles. Baskets of lavender from a previous function lay stacked against a wall. The familiar riff from ‘Lavender Girl’ leaked from a corner speaker as an orchestra of sorts attempted to tune their instruments, hindered and distracted by some sixty dancers in varying states of undress. Leotards, tights, shawls, curtain-lace suits and ostrich feathers lay draped over every surface.
On the other side of the room John Vost, the Rambert choreographer, assisted by his younger sister Donna, balanced precariously on wobbly flight-cases as they shouted out beats in the bar, for anyone who wanted them…
2-3-4
…2-3-4-5-6-7
…1-2
…1-2
…2-3-4
…2-3-4-5-6-7…
‘It’s a pattern, darling… Lord Jesus Christ!’
‘Shout where the beat is, will you?’
‘As I say, girls… it’s a pattern. You’re supposed to follow it!’ The choreographer barked his instructions:
‘2-3-4, 2-3-4, 1-2, 1-2, 2-3-4-5-6-7, start a-gain!’
Pond gazed in dismay at what seemed to be utter chaos in the choreography department.
‘Start a-gain, start a-gain, 2-3-4-5…’
But Lee, far from being at all dismayed, remained thoroughly impressed. By the sight of 20 or so young dolls stretched out in front of him wearing barely any costume. The seemingly possessed Donna, consumed by the encircling tempo, climbed onto a chair while a line of impossibly pretty girls copied her movements. Their supple bodies writhing around one another, like the themes of the music itself, as they tried to make sense of the ever-shifting rhythms.
‘That’s it! That’s seven beats, girls!’
Pond looked on suspiciously. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s getting them through the difficult timings. There’s a couple of bars of seven in there… and a couple of three. You just have to count it, though.’ John acknowledged Donna, no doubt appreciative of what she was trying to achieve. ‘I’m not sure how they count it like that; they go into weird numbers like 9 and 15, though there’s nothing in 9 in there!’ ]The boy surmised, ‘I suppose they have only been working on it for a week…’
Carnaby Street and Foubert’s Place, 1967 Photo: Eric Wadsworth, courtesy the Guardian
The offices of JCE, Carnaby Street, London W1. Friday, 21 November 1966
‘ “Lavender Girl” is the one, John. We’ve got to go with it.’
‘You’re sure it’s not too similar to the other one?’
Pond shook his head. ‘It’s right in the pocket, man. Right there in the pocket.’ The manager spoke decisively, as always.
‘Because I don’t want to… repeat myself…’
‘Then why did you write it, man?’ Pond retaliated, not a bit light-heartedly.
It hadn’t taken long for John Pond to identify a self-destructive streak in the client. Most likely a deeply embedded geological strain. Not an unusual thing to find among the prodigiously talented, but an aberration that had to be dealt with. The manager understood that. Pond wasn’t averse to game play, but a serving of doubt or self-questioning, often existing just for the hell of it, had to be volleyed straight back at the doubter.
‘You mean I am repeating myself?’
The manager picked up a pack of ciggies.
‘John…’ Pond slit the pack open. ‘What I’m saying is that the track is a hit.’ He looked around for a light. ‘What you got there is a slab of… maximum R’n’B, as they say in the trade. It’s a smash, man – a cutie, a butie, a right rooti-tooti, my friend…’ Pond made his point by dum-te-dumming the words. ‘Gotta get it out there right away. Before everyone else gets on this… folky-rocky thing you got going there…’ He looked across to check the reaction of his client, having gently eased the ‘branded’ phrase into the sentence. ‘Might be big… that folky-rocky… whatever. Tell ya. It’s gonna happen… And we don’t want it to happen without you…’
The boy slid a box of matches across the table. ‘As I keep saying… it’s not a rocky-folky or ‘rock-folk’ anything, or whatever it is you want it to be. Because that’s so… limiting. Better if we don’t actually call it that.’ John shuffled around in his chair. ‘Better if we don’t call it anything at all.’
Pond lit up, took a drag and gazed out of the window, already gone, already at least a million miles away. The boy carried on – ‘I do not want my music to be…’ – before making an unflattering and quite disrespectful facial expression as he tied and untied his cravat. Pond cleared his throat and turned round. ‘Whatever we end up calling it won’t matter a damn in the long run. The reviewers and the… the marketeers will call it whatever the hell they want. We can try to influence that… a bit, but at the end of the day, we can’t write the reviews for them, can we?’ He walked back to his desk and sat down. ‘Wish we could!’
Because you’re the “new guy”, man – or you will be. “Let’s get the new guy!” and all that kind of…’ Pond looked at the boy. ‘Very often there is only one “new guy” – the one who everyone wants – at that moment. Who’s… uh… well… newer… than anyone else. You’re gonna be that guy, man. Gonna make sure you are.’ Pond gurned his mouth and twitched excitedly.
‘ ’cause one day, John… you’re gonna be… “the old guy”… if you… get my… uh… and that day will come – but hopefully not anytime soon. It’s my responsibility, my duty… as your… y’know… as your “guide” to the new… apart from anything else, to delay that day for as long as I can – distant as the stars… as they say.’
Pond appealed to the client. ‘Now, if you maybe… just let me get on with my part of the… creative endeavour?
The manager sat back, spread his legs, unzipped his boots and attended to his desk.
Nightly took a scuffed notebook from his bag. ‘As long as you think this song is definitely the right song to release. Because, the other thing that’s worrying me is that it… Well, it doesn’t have any cut-ups in it for a start.’
‘Any?’
‘Cut-ups.’
‘No idea what you mean…’
‘Cut-up writing? Random writing? Cut-ups. We said we were going to do something on that. As in your “trademarks”.’ The boy opened his book. ‘And that is kind of my trademark, I think.’ He appea
red unsure again. ‘Or at least it’s one of them.’ Nightly didn’t bother pausing for breath. ‘Iona always says my style is… Well, what she means is… it… It’s against all the other stuff. Is what she means… I think.’
‘Against?’ The manager furrowed and twitched. ‘Opposite of… what exactly? Sorry, man, but…’
‘the opposite of… well, pop music, I suppose. Normal Pop Music. The stuff that’s going around. Other people’s stuff. You said so yourself…’
‘Normal?’ Pond raised his eyebrows. ‘Long as it’s not the opposite of hits, man! ’Cause that’ll be a pretty unhelpful opposite – for all of us.’ The manager picked up a pen and put his signature to an extremely long-form document without bothering to read it. ‘I’m really not absolutely sure where we’re off to today…’
‘we could call it… “anti-pop” …or something,’ the boy mused.
‘Anti-pop?’ Pond repeated the words as if they’d been issued by an undertaker. His complexion turned waxy. ‘Good term, good… eh.’ The manager didn’t like the term at all.
John Nightly considered for a moment. ‘We could say that what I’m doing is actually… deconstructing pop music… Because I am, actually sort of, you know… cutting it up.’ He leafed through his notebook. ‘Taking it apart, and then… well, putting it back together again, in a way…’ John looked up hopefully.
Pond felt that he had done his duty for today. He pulled his boots back on and yawned. ‘Look, man… “cut-ups”, “cut-downs”, “cut-outs”, whatever the hell they are. The record company’s convinced that this track of yours is a hit and I’m not about to inject anything into the equation that might upset the boat. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to get the boat to sail!’ The manager stubbed out his ciggie and took another breath. ‘Fact of the matter is they don’t need your permission, my permission or anybody else’s permission to release the thing anyway, and I’m not about to put Stonehenge in the way of what they wanna do. If we kick up a fuss and get all awkward now and they get fed up with us and they pull the promotion and that whole… It ain’t gonna happen anyway.’ He twitched repeatedly. ‘Whatever we… call it…’