The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  What it all meant was that Iona herself was intent not on keeping things real but in keeping them as unreal as possible. Like Donne’s transitory comets, Iona and John floated in and out of each other’s orbit and universe for the next thirty summers. As we already understand, they never did actually meet again. Maybe they almost did, though. Maybe they drove past each other on the B3306, on one of the rare occasions that the two Johns might have been off on a daytime gardening recce or Sunday driving on a frosty Monday morning.

  Iona would have had no trouble in recognising the old black Jag. An unusually class vehicle for West Cornwall, an unmistakeable ‘pop-star drive’, and therefore suspiciously easy to tail around the winding back streets of Penzance or Truro.

  With echoes of Reality TV or a very bleak Wednesday Play, in those few black days the couple went through emotions easy living had not prepared them for. Feelings neither had ever had to deal with, separately or together, and which John in particular was incapable of either confronting or finding any solution to. The unreality of this chaotic state quickly reduced these two golden beings to the emotional level of young children – which in terms of experience is exactly what they were. Neither having had any taste of betrayal or loss nor any psychologically balanced domestic background in which they could find comfort.

  So… the first thing the injured party did, instead of considering things practically, or at least letting the situation calm down for twenty-four hours, was to move out of Queen Square and move in to the Savoy Hotel – with the nineteen-year-old Teri-Ann.

  The debutant film composer was photographed tearing along Portobello in his green Mini Cooper. He chased round Sybilla’s, the Savoy Grill, the Ad Lib, Dolly’s and other safe houses with the American actress hanging on to his arm. John Nightly wanted to be as visible as possible, in the hope that Iona would see them together: this was the sole reason he frequented places that usually held no interest for him. Suddenly, ‘being seen’ was the only thing John gave a damn about. Once production on Pitfall was completed Teri-Ann left for a new city, Rome, a new film directed by Tito Rosso, and the arms of a new leading man, the redoubtable Lino Trevari.

  For John and Iona, what had occurred was unfixable damage. A single event sparked by the underlying gaps in the waves and curves of their life together.

  But why Iona had done it no one could figure. Not her friends, who had always seen in her the innocent she now more visibly became, or her enemies, model friends, envious of the easy ride she appeared to have been given, with the best bookings, the most exotic locations, the highest earnings. It was easy to be jealous of such fortune. More unfathomable was the fact that John had remained faithful to Iona in so many opportunistic situations. Completely, absolutely. Even in the Summer of Love! All those wasted opportunities. The things he could have done, the beautiful women he could have had. Passing him their numbers in restaurants and booths, slipping notes under his hotel-room door, grabbing hold of him in corridors and lifts. Delivering love poems… chatting him up… showering him with compliments about his music… throwing him kisses in the street and putting their arms around him for photos. ‘Do whatever you want with me,’ they’d say. ‘Use me… enjoy me… anything you want… however you want.’ All the standard lines.

  No doubt John would have liked to experience them. He was a young man, just twenty years young. But the boy hadn’t done that. Hadn’t done anything. Nothing wrong or regrettable. He hadn’t taken advantage. The young John Nightly had kept himself to himself. Unbelievable as it may sound; that’s how damned stupid he was. And now, thirty-five years on, with all the pop-star confessionals and scandal biogs having come and gone, revealing the orgy-tastic antics of rock’n’roll provincials working abroad during the cultural maelstrom of the ’60s and ’70s, lost without their pints and butties and other comfort zones, it can be recorded that, at the outset of his career at least, John Nightly had not behaved like everyone else.

  John Nightly had, for some odd, misguided reason, stayed completely faithful to his muse. As to why she had strayed, he had no answer. And neither did Iona.

  Maybe the girl wanted to wound; maybe her boyfriend had let her down in some other way we are unaware of. Committed some awful, emotional crime. Something of which to be ashamed. Maybe Iona was jealous. But that wouldn’t just be it. For, although she was young, Iona was in some ways a grown woman. Psychologically she was more mature than most English girls of her age. Perhaps mentally, emotionally and sexually, too… Certainly more mature than John, who, well… John wasn’t mature at all. Obviously not. Emotionally the boy was a mess. John was creative, purely creative. John was imaginative. John was a genius. Everyone said so. And, contrary to longstanding beliefs in terms of a link existing between creative gift and depression – or, as in so many cases, self-destruction – John Nightly was far from depressed. John Nightly was energised. John was always zooming. John was bubbling over. John was on fire. Everyone who worked with him even for a short while understood that. Iona was the more steadfast, feet-on-the-ground earth daughter. John was the nutty professor, the analyser, the information sponge. The Moonie kid who, as God would have it, just happened to be the best-looking guy anyone’d ever set eyes on.

  There it is, then, to finally use the word… John Nightly did most likely qualify as some kind of genius, as one and all later acknowledged. With darling Iona being the conjuror’s perfect accomplice – had she not been so successful in her own right – to look after and care for him. Provide stability. Which is what she was doing, so perfectly… before it all disintegrated so suddenly.

  It may have been that Iona was out on the town, alone and most likely stoned, which she often was, or perhaps at home, experimenting with other tinctures. Maybe the girl was just… bored. But with him? How could any woman be bored with John? It was difficult for Iona’s girlfriends to fathom. With his star-bright demeanour and voodooistic charm, his slight, feline elegance so appealing to women, his straw hair, newly lemon-bleached by the sun after their holiday in Morocco, John Nightly was a mess of frustration and longing. Every one of Iona’s friends agreed, and that’s because it was true.

  Using his bony fingers as a comb, in a familiar trademark gesture, the boy dragged his flaxen locks back over his tawny features. In his white cotton jacket and brown leather sandals, legs splayed, taking a slow drag from a cigarette while nonchalantly gazing out into space, quite unaware of his immense sexual charge, John’s appearance was more akin to that of a movie star, a real one, from the old days – John Barrymore, Ronald Colman or Douglas Fairbanks – than a tupenny-ha’penny pop sensation. Whether you were a woman or a man, it would’ve been impossible to be unimpressed with that.

  Whatever the reason, this was the single event that changed things. Stopped everything. Removed trust, tore up unwritten rules and dropped a bomb on Queen Square – on the perfect loving cup shared between the enchanted boy and the cutest bride-to-be. So, although the thing had been initiated by Iona, as soon as John himself began to transgress, he didn’t mess around… that is, in terms of ‘messing around’. John really messed around. John Nightly actually went apeshit fucking crazy.

  The boy started on a whole stream of affairs, a sequence of short-term trips in and out of bed with the most beautiful women available to him, in other words… those every other man desired.

  John never set eyes on Teri-Ann again, except on film, which was no bad thing – particularly after the Savoy incident, which had a damaging effect on him personally (although career-wise he quickly recovered from the adverse publicity and almost benefitted from the glow of Stones-level decadence, which was of course exploited by his grateful manager).

  The actress made three more movies before a change of career led to her becoming one of television’s most in-demand script editors, and the consultant behind some of the most successful US TV soap operas of the ’80s. Their paths were unlikely to cross again*.

  Over the next twelve months John Nightly conducted flings and variou
s unstructured relationships with the art collector Jane Cone, children’s television presenter Jeni Speed and actresses Phoebe Rothwell and Frances Geer as well as just about every model on the circuit. It seemed like that anyway, until John got together with Myra Knoll – the woman for whom he eventually left Iona. The self-dependent, all-too-sane film producer was to leave her young husband of just three years because of the idiot Nightly, creating a cavern of disbelief in the staid old-moneyed world of the Knoll oil family, tarnishing its business image around the globe and even leading to a fall in the company’s quoted share price. The result being that Myra’s father never spoke to his beloved daughter again.

  John Nightly was beginning to cause chaos. Chaos that would lead to his undoing. He would literally unravel, and be dragged into a life of addictive pursuits that would lead to his eventual collapse. The fact that Iona Sandstrand had been unfaithful first was something the girl never forgave herself for. Iona wasn’t stupid. She accepted she’d been charmed to begin with: meeting the ‘love of her life’ early on, realising it from the moment she set eyes on him.

  One of the things about being a couple in London 1968 was to be seen to be totally involved in its culture as well as in each other. A culture built on a misguided sense of exactly what so-called real life was about. The London Social Degree proving to be an impossible backdrop for any kind of lasting romance that might benefit both parties. If the couple concerned were reasonably mature in terms of both their experience and temperament, then maybe they had a chance. If they were as unwitting and light-headed as Iona and John…

  What happened next was that John Nightly put the whole of himself, his every spark and breath, into an enterprise that would only see the light of day some thirty years later, and then with the assistance of someone who wasn’t born the last time John cast his ear over it. A kid as ambitious as John Nightly himself, maybe even with the same degree of talent as the Master he served. No one knew for sure, but in John Nightly’s own mind this someone was really very like himself. Almost a… a ‘reincarnation’ as he put it. He and Mawgan Hall worked side by side, eye to eye, ear to ear. As if they were ‘brothers’, close collaborators – ‘compatriots’. That’s how it felt to the Master, recently returned from Limboland. Everything felt the right way up again. Alright. The Project was nearing its natural conclusion, the Requiem Mass finally being laid to rest itself, after all these years; the results about to be issued to anyone who wanted to hear them.

  As for his muse, Iona, having ‘fucked up big time’ as Mawgan would’ve put it, spent the rest of her life with a landowner, dairy farmer and judiciary in the South West of the country. She lived out her days designing her rather too whacky woollen outfits for women of slightly more mature years, a successful operation that led her to travel regularly to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to source materials and meet with manufacturers, and to the Far East every now and again to launch yet another of her chain of franchised retail outlets (twenty or so Iona shops opened in Japan between 1982 and 2000).

  Before all was officially recognised as lost, the lovers made several further attempts at reconciliation – though it must have been obvious to both that whatever they had once shared was gone. Maybe all they needed was company. To help each other out emotionally more than anything else. Trying to ‘help someone out’ was the reason Iona had put RCN back in contact with John Nightly in the first place; and the reason she was still eager to see and speak to her former lover and partner – her ‘main man’ in every sense – after all this time: thirty-six years after their first meeting. Just one more look. One more ‘hello’ and… ‘goodbye’. One more sapphire sparkle.

  item: The New York Times. ‘Weddings, Celebrations’, Sunday, 12 May 1967.

  Myra Whitney Elizabeth Knoll, the daughter of Elizabeth Isola Knoll and William Emerson Knoll III of Pacific Palisades, California, was married yesterday evening to Jay Merrick Blom Jnr, the son of Dr Jay and Samantha Blom of Inglewood. The Reverend Jonathan David Speed, an Episcopal priest, officiated at a ceremony at the home of the bride’s parents. The bride and bridegroom both graduated from Harvard, she summa cum laude, he magna cum laude. They met at a programme of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Hollywood, where both bride and groom studied film finance.

  The bride will keep her name. She is CEO of the film-production company Knoll Entertainment Moving Picture, Inc. (KEMP) and a partner in the associated business the Someday Umbrella Marzipan Mutual Electric Record Corps. She worked as an administrative assistant in the New York and London offices of Knoll New Energy, Inc., a division of her father’s company, along with her two brothers, John Knoll and William Knoll IV. The bride’s mother recently retired as costume designer for the Sunset Community Players, a local charitable dramatic society in West Hollywood, and is also a set designer for film and television. The bride’s father, Bill, is chief executive operating officer of Knoll Oil and Energy, Inc. Previously, along with his own father, William Knoll II, he ran the private-investment and fixed-income securities division of Knoll Isaacs Standing. The bride and groom will live in Westwood Village, Los Angeles, and also in London, England.

  * * *

  * At the1998 Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, the Teri-Ann Christie-scripted docu-cop series Speed of Angels won the award for Best Original Teleplay.

  Alice B. Toklas’ Hashish Fudge

  The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (Garden City, New York 1960)

  Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverised in a mortar. Take about a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of Cannabis sativa can be pulverised. This, along with the spices, should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. Almost a cup of sugar should be dissolved into a big pat of butter. This should be rolled into a cake and cut into pieces made into balls about the size of a walnut. It should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

  When Brion Gysin gave Alice B. Toklas her famous recipe for hash fudge, he started a hash-cake chain letter from Gertrude Stein’s lover and biographer to everyone’s favourite ’60s model. Brion Gysin’s hash cakes became Alice B. Toklas’ hashish fudge became Iona Sandstrand’s hashcake. And one day in midsummer 1979 a cake fitting that exact description arrived from Alice B. Toklas herself for the sole resident of Wing 3U.

  The SUMHA Centre, in the pretty village of Spoed near Brampton, Hunts, is one of the leading independently funded programmes in the UK for the treatment of paranoid schizophrenia and other emotional disorders. It also treats addictions arising from the abuse of alcohol and both illegal and prescription drugs. Founded in 1957 by the ‘anti-psychiatrist’ John Bedding and his wife Dr Peta John Hardy, Compton Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, SUMHA also pioneered research into genetic links for addictive personalities and has published results via its Seasons imprint of booklets and pamphlets (now available via the centre’s website).

  The discovery of a gene called mu-opioid confirmed suspicions researched by scientists at the University of South Florida and James A. Haley of VA Medical Center in Tampa that drug and alcohol abuse may be linked to a common genetic trait. Almost all of the study participants who were alcohol abusers or who smoked and used drugs shared a specific variation of the mu-opioid gene. About half a person’s likelihood of developing an addiction is based on genetics. Dr John Schiona, director of the neuropsychology clinic at James A. Haley and the study’s lead author, states that 10 to 20 genes might be involved, but only mu-opioid has been confirmed.

  ‘California Health Today’: bulletin, June 2003.

  Spoed Lodge, originally a racing stable and stud for National Hunt trainer John ‘Jonno’ Sander, began as a U-shaped configuration of detached chalets designed by modernist architect Sir John Vasten (RIBA, FRMS), best known for his post-war rebuilding of Watford Town Centre and other overspill areas north of London. In May 1967,
five years after it opened, because of the success of the centre as a one-stop treatment shop, and also because of the place bursting at the seams with acid casualties, a second U-block was added which adjoined the foot of the original ‘U’ creating a large ‘S’ configuration with six separate single-roomed annexes or ‘private wings’. A number of its inhabitants would arrive at the centre by helicopter, remarking that the view from the air was rather like landing on top of a giant serpent; the original layout of the building being based on the contours of a tuliphead. One of Spoed’s ancestors founded the Dutch flower-import business Spoed Vasten Bloem (Uitvoeren AA).

  Set in thirteen acres of dense woodland, SUMHA suited John Nightly down to the ground. He spent six years there on and off, mostly on, until the centre officially changed its name to SUMMER, at which point he was referred to its newly opened residential compound in Los Angeles.

  Summer By The Sea, one of many drug-help facilities for musicians – others in the Los Angeles area included the Exodus Program, the STEP clinic and MAP, the Musicians Assistance Program – was where patients who could afford it would transfer to be able to complete their treatment, however long it took, and move to the final stages of recovery before they could be released back into the wild.