The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  The boy was going to have to concede the psychological argument. Even he could see that things needed brightening up.

  ‘I like the song, of course. That is why I recorded it in the first place… as you say. I guess I’m thinking more about the album. Want to make sure that it, the single, does actually “represent” the album. I want to keep developing… evolving, releasing different kinds of songs…’ John Nightly closed his book and dropped it back inside his bag. ‘What about ‘Lavender Girl”? Did you play that to them?’

  ‘Didn’t like it… and I can see why. Second or third single, that one – not a first.’

  ‘It’s the only other one I’d want released, though. “Mu Mu Tea” is much too… commercial somehow…’ The boy broke off. ‘It sounds too much like… well, a “hit” already, an “instant hit” or something…”

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t want that! Christ Almighty!’ Pond thundered his heavy boots on the carpet in a fit of mock incomprehension.

  ‘John…’ The manager leaned across his desk at his beleaguered friend. ‘The one thing we can do that’d probably please you no end would be not to put out a single at all! Why don’t we try that? Release the album and forget the single! No one’s ever come up with that masterstroke before!’ The manager made the suggestion in order to scare.

  ‘Could we?’

  But it didn’t.

  ‘Godsake, John!’ Pond wiped his brow. ‘People do have to release singles – unless they’re bloody bonkers. To have one little hope in hell of selling any albums whatsoever.’ He looked round for his secretary. ‘And… before I forget… I’m setting you up in a meeting. Film producer who sent this over for you. Name mean anything?’

  The boy stared blankly into space. Pond continued.

  ‘Myra Knoll… she was in the paper yesterday.’ Pond gave a cursory look back to his desk. The feature he wanted lay interred there. ‘Well, you should know, man. You should read the stuff we send you.’ He looked exasperated. ‘That’s why we send it to you, John.’ The manager checked underneath the protruding envelopes and contracts. ‘The film, Tsunami… the surf film?’

  ‘…I think Iona saw that…’

  ‘She would’ve. At least your… your woman is up on… life…’ Pond made his point and pursed his lips. ‘Anyway… this is a new one.’ He located the script in his in-tray. ‘London thriller… one of three new projects… Pitfall…’

  Nightly listened attentively. ‘As in… falling from a pit?’ Both of them grinned.

  ‘Don’t think so, man.’

  ‘it’s a nice title…’

  ‘Yeah?’ The manager perused the topsheet. ‘Says it’s… like a Dirk Bogarde movie – but with sex!’ The manager twitched… ‘Looking for someone from England to compose a soundtrack… wants the music to be…’ Pond squinted at his own scribble. ‘Particularly English, it says. So there you are! There’s no one more “particularly English” than you, man.’ He carried on: ‘Shot in London… Psychological thriller. Right up your street, surely! You’re quite… “psychological”.’ The two of them smiled knowingly. The manager unrolled the palms of his hands as if he were unwinding yarn, which he undoubtedly was. The gesture denoting a fait accompli. ‘Hello, Mr Film Composer!’

  Pond tossed the heavily bound script over to the boy, challenging him to catch it before it fell apart, certain that he’d delivered something of real worth to his client. The irony of their partnership being that in reality both players were as ambitious as each other. In Pond’s mind, they were already winners of the Academy Award for Best Soundtrack. Manager and client were ensconced in adjacent cabanas at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Pond had already half-written John Nightly’s acceptance speech in order to get maximum exposure in every conceivable direction for this most ‘happening’ of talents. The manager drifted haplessly away, fantasising about which Hollywood legend would read out the nominations and how he would then be able to further exploit the historic moment the following year when they would both show up at the Oscar ceremony as special guests of the Academy – ‘previous winners’ and all that – and then… of course… most important of all, the parties afterwards. He looked to John Nightly for a response. The client liked both the sound of the project and the idea of writing for films, but was too set in his act to suddenly come over too enthusiastic. John looked down at the title page: Pitfall, Knoll Film Company, 72 Berwick Street, London W1. Let’s hope it won’t be, he thought. There was a note scribbled in red pen and circled:

  ‘John Knightley… K-N-I-G-H-T-L-E-Y… English music’, it read, suggesting that the scribbler had actually never heard of him.

  ‘You said you wanted to do a film score…’

  The boy remained silent.

  ‘I’ve set you up for lunch… Kettner’s, next week.’ The manager waited for approval. There was no hesitation.

  ‘Of course it sounds… interesting, but what’s it going to be like, this Pitfall? It’s not a… a… a corny thing, is it?’

  The boy’s naivety still came as something of a surprise. ‘ John… man… I wonder how I, or anyone else, would know that given that I haven’t seen the damned thing and presumably no one else has either, as the film company haven’t actually made it yet!’

  The manager’s words ricocheted along the corridor. Pond really needed to get on this morning. A potentially very stormy day loomed. A damaging hyping scandal with another of JCE’s acts entailed allegations of records being illegally ‘bought in’ to the chart; and today people needed to be calmed down, backed off a little. There were a lot of ‘persuading’ calls to be made. He picked up a rather worrying note from Cornelia as his mind moved on to other things. Pond turned to the boy.

  ‘…Big American company… previous film did well… You keep telling me you want to do a film score. The project’s loaded… the girl’s loaded, I think… Daddy is an oil guy.’ A Big American oil guy. Pond picked up the receiver, ready to dial. ‘The one thing I can’t tell you is whether or not she’s pretty,’ he put his hand over the receiver. ‘But I can tell you she’s rich…’

  The boy smiled, acknowledging that the manager probably did have his best interests at heart.

  ‘I’ll tell you if she’s pretty…’

  Kettners restaurant. Romilly Street, Soho, London W1. 8 December 1966.

  ‘… hallo…’

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Hallo… nice day, isn’t it…’

  ‘Always a fine day at Kettner’s, sir.’

  ‘…okay… well, I’m… let me see now…’

  ‘Trying to remember who you are, sir?’

  ‘No, no – very funny, though – who… I’m…’

  ‘Who you’re meeting?’

  ‘…that’s… Yeh.’

  John put down his guitar-case and fumbled in his pocket for the slip of paper containing his dining companion’s name. Kettner’s was a regular lunch spot for music-business types, with several faces already scattered around the restaurant’s champagne bar. Characters John now recognised. Most of them cropping up in conversation with his manager as examples of how or how not to do things. ‘That’s what Andrew Oldham would’ve done…’ or ‘I can’t see Mim Scala doing that!’ was a regular tack. He recognised two very pretty girls sipping sangria at a table by the door, their eyes flitting around the cherry-pink room; they were friends of Iona’s, and they recognised him, but each without really knowing who either party was. The boy fumbled and fidgeted, while right at the end of the square room, waiting patiently, and sitting pretty, was the reason for his visit. With her hair in a tight ponytail, hazel eyes, orange-lipsticked lips, silver chain-dress and silver Bentley waiting patiently outside, sat Miss Myra Knoll: heiress, oil daughter, film-maker, troublemaker.

  ‘Hallo… I’m… very sorry… I think I’m very late…’

  ‘By American standards yes. By English standards… maybe not.’

  The unusually well-groomed Miss Knoll did not trouble herself to get up.

  ‘Really am so
rry. I… I didn’t realise… the time…’ John tidied his hair as he knocked into the adjacent table with his guitar case. ‘Really rushing today.’

  ‘Yellow pills or blue ones?’

  ‘Right…! No, what I meant was, I’ve got a lot to do and…’

  ‘So have I!’ Myra snapped back. ‘One of the things I was planning on doing was having lunch with someone, music guy, at… one o’clock, I believe it was…’

  The boy couldn’t apologise anymore. He was still coming down from last night after a weekend of rehearsals that had made him slightly deaf – temporarily, he hoped. His luncheon companion softened. Warming to his overtures and his seemingly out-there, thoroughly English manner, she smiled as she finally got up to shake hands.

  ‘I was about to leave… But I’m practising getting used to London’s more relaxed attitude to timekeeping.’

  John smiled and looked for somewhere to put his guitar as the waiter swiftly pulled out a chair. ‘There you are, sir – and I’ll take that for you.’ The boy honed in on the music coming from the bar.

  ‘…know this one?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Do you know this song? The one that’s playing…’

  The young woman, not having registered any music at all, sat down again.

  ‘Something of yours?’

  Myra took the wine list and gestured for John to sit, for God’s sake. He picked up his folded napkin and… folded it over again.

  ‘My Funny Valentine’ faded in and out of the scene.

  Exactly sixty minutes later the pair marched out of the restaurant. The fledgling film producer having found herself a composer, the novice soundtrack composer having found himself a patron. So absorbed in their own pitfall were they after this short but revealing hour that they completely ignored the waiter, who had a message for Ms Knoll, a guitar-case and a bill for Mr Nightly.

  SOUNDTRACK – a Music and Cinema special supplement. November 1970. Live broadcast by Jan Browntree. The LFF (London Film Festival) brochure, featured five contemporary musicians considering the influence of music on cinema.

  John Nightly: composer. Age 22; b. Cambridge, England.

  John Nightly’s Ape Box Metal has been in the upper reaches of the LP charts since its release in February. I spoke with him as he was completing work on his first film score – the soon-to-be-released Pitfall by the Polish director Joseph Karmov.

  Would it be true to say that your music has a strong visual element?

  [sniffs] Music is the root of… everything… of all art… in a way… isn’t it? I don’t think anybody can direct or… edit a film or write a book, a poem… a play… without being musical. I don’t think so anyway. Not properly… [sniffs again] The musical… instinct you need for composition… it’s the basis of everything anyway. How often events and characters appear in a book… novel… the rhythm of a sentence… and dynamics. A musical person will be a ‘natural’ at these…skills. [wipes his nose]

  Is there anyone you particularly admire in terms of directors? Someone with whom you might like to work in the future?

  Ken Russell is… really good. The… Delius and the… Elgar film1. The guy who is the… (amanuensis, Eric Fenby ed.)… the bit where Jelka throws the rose petals (magnolia, ed.) over Delius’ dead body. I love the new one2… saw it, the other day. The bit with the boy running through the forest, Glenda… Jackson blown away by the strong winds. Like Michael Powell or… it’s really… It’s really good.

  And which, if any, film composers do you particularly admire?

  the people who do the cartoons… animation composers… The ones who do Tom & Jerry. Bernard Hermann I like a lot, the music for Vertigo – but it’s like Tristan & Isolde… isn’t it? The… love music from that. [sings] All Hitchcock’s films have great music. Hitchcock isn’t afraid of music, like a lot of directors seem to be. He really… gets… gets into it. Lets the music completely take over the film. [thinks] Alfred Newman, Randy Newman’s uncle, isn’t it? The music to Wuthering Heights. You know… because it could not be more… perfect, without being sort of…intrusive – or even very noticeable. John Barry… I love On Her Majesty’s Secret Service… Daa, da, daaaaa… [begins to hum the theme] Can’t get it out of my… [laughs] It’s just so… It just doesn’t muck about.

  Butch Cassidy3 – the music was really good. [looks for coffee] Truffaut films have… great music. People driving around in cars with nothing going on except music playing all over the… scene. In English films they’d be talking all the time. [takes a sip of coffee]

  There’s French… Un Homme et une Femme and Johnny Dankworth’s films… Sonny Rollins and Alfie… with Tubby Hayes… There’s a lot of beautiful film music… uh… in films…

  [Rollins’ theme ushers John Nightly out and the next composer in]

  John Nightly’s LP Ape Box Metal is released on the Mosaic label. The live tour: Bristol, Colston Hall, Friday, 7 November. Tickets: 31/6, 21/6 and 17/6.

  ‘I became conscious of an incredible kind of beauty, the existence of which I had never dreamed. Even the bees stopped to listen and became as entranced as I. I wished the music would never end. When it did I was weeping. The announcer gave the particulars of the recording. I got up. I pumped up the tyres of my old Hercules, cycled to the nearest record shop and bought Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B flat minor played by Solomon and the London Philharmonic. From that moment on I was imbued with magical powers.’

  Ken Russell discovers the magic power of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in A Very British Picture (William Heinnemann) 1989.

  * * *

  1 ‘Delius – Song of Summer (1968), d. Ken Russell (produced for the BBC’s Monitor series). Elgar (1962), d. Ken Russell (BBC Monitor).

  2 ‘The Music Lovers’ 1970. d. Ken Russell

  3 Burt Bacharach 1967

  Jonathan Foxley interviewed by The New Underground, June 1987, speaks about the beginnings of avant-garde pop music in Britain. Interview by the late John-Julius Bowman. © Transcom Publishing Company Ltd.

  Monika was friendly with one of the tutors at the Royal College [of Art] and we all went. Probably me, Pond, Iona, John, a few others, Daly… we used to go around in a bunch in those days. The concert was like a sound-workshop thing in a basement room at the college. One of those ‘happenings’ or, you know… things of those days, organised by Victor Schonfeld I should think… Great fun – or I remember it as being fun, anyway – perhaps it wasn’t so much fun when we were actually there! We were probably all a little ‘under the weather’, I should imagine, as usual for those days… The audience sat on the floor for, a hell of a… couple of hours probably, of this… ‘musical experimentation’ by the AMM. I can’t remember what it stood for – it’s not… you wouldn’t know it now, but it was a known thing then, something that people respected. A good thing… as they were a freeform group, four of them, led by Cornelius Cardew, who was coming up then, although he was already big… in that area – had been Stockhausen’s assistant – which is… it’s fairly big, you know. [nods to himself] It was quite whacky… they all wore… white lab coats. Very… ‘laborious’ they were, or… hah! [chuckles] Whatever, however, you would say – sorry… I mean, ‘laboratory-like’, don’t I? Yes, laboratory-like…

  Cardew was Professor of Composition at the Royal College [of Music] anyway, so… it would’ve been quite a thing… But we all sat there while he sort of… tapped on the leg of this piano for ages, or… what seemed like ages, with a piece of wood, and that was about it. They had… he had… these children’s toys… electric toys… on a steel tray… They were vibrating them on this tray. Wind-up toys… and they were letting off sirens… It was all this kind of thing…

  [Jonathan raises his eyes at least as high as the sky and slips off his watch; he uncrosses and then re-crosses his legs].

  John was really quite taken by this kind of thing. I think he was immediately intrigued by it and really… You know, to have that kind of thing… experimentation going on and yo
u could actually pull in some kind of audience. It wouldn’t happen now. Wouldn’t be anyone there! Ha, ha! [Almost doubles up with laughter] John did become a big… supporter of Cardew after that and I think it inspired him to be as adventurous as he could with his own music and not to pull any punches. Showed it could be done. Showed you there was ‘another’ world. I remember them at Spontaneous Underground… that was at the Marquee – the Floyd used to do it – and all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Oh… it was a really real time… mad time… mad… Fantastic, crazy time. Really real, as they say now…

  Trewin Farm, Porthcreek, Carn Point, Cornwall. Thursday, 2 June 2002.

  ‘… how can you see all that, Mawgan?’

  ‘It tells me what the chords are as they come up. As they get printed underneath the stave.’ Mawg tapped his foot mindlessly to the computer’s mindless click.

  ‘E minor, F minor 9, D over C…’ The Wizard squinted as he peered into the screen, doubting that his complex harmonies and polyrhythms might ever be properly deciphered by a ‘typewriter’.

  Mawg reached for a piece of chewy and sunk back into his swivel chair. He balanced the thing on its back legs, his favourite, most precarious position, kicked his feet into the air and turned to the boss.

  ‘There you go, John… you don’t have to be musical anymore!’

  ‘… well… I don’t know about that Mawgan! You have to be musical to think of it!’ The Wizard cackled as he gazed out of the window, then quickly turned back to the kid. ‘That’s it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘the bit… that’s it! The bit you just played. Wind it back!’