The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  You talk in your book about the two of you having to ‘adjust’ to one another?

  Very much so, because I had been coming from a very… ‘social’ or ‘society’ family, as my father was a diplomat, and so our life was social or society in a way, and going out… and John was from a very small town, a pretty town in Cambridge, and it was very different for him, so he told me that as a family he had really never been out even to eat at a restaurant, not in their home town, even though there was a restaurant some doors away. Why should they do this when there was food at home, at the table, you see? [giggles again] Because of this, John, when I met him, was not really a ‘people person’ very much and the ‘manners of society’, can we say, or even the ‘manners of the table’! [laughs] On the many occasions when there were the guests of… singers, actors… he would sit, his head… leaning by his elbows, seeming quite bored actually and talking in single-syllable ‘yes’ or ‘no’, unless there was anyone there who really…

  He wasn’t a great conversationalist?

  He was not [giggles] because his… enthusiasm was for music, for talking about that and doing that, which was very like my father. But only ‘in depth’ – John did not want to issue comment on this week’s ‘sensations’ – gossip ‘scandals’. He was not interested in how many songs he himself was selling either, but the payments kept him happy, which they did I suppose, and he was also refusing his music to be played in films and such things. In terms of money, I think he was making a good… quite enough anyway, and of course making this money the way he wanted to… just very, very quietly living.

  This attitude had a profound effect on you when you decided to begin the Foundation, which has grown to be one of the most… active and energetic philanthropic operations in the world, especially in the field of music commissioning.

  In a way this was the reason I began. I had really done many things early in life, which I began to think, this is not so important, and… not so rewarding for me so much. So when my father died I did want… something which would be a ‘permanent’ programme in order to honour him by and this very much had to do with music, so that we could… develop long term in the fields of music and of art and so on. I would not have done that if I had not met and watched, observed, John – Nightly – when he was working and understood what his attitude was to creating his music and his very open mind into it and also for the… well, the absolute act of creation itself.

  BBC TV: This Week, 9 November 1968. ‘Ape Box Metal’: The Albert Hall concert. Interview by David Peat.

  John… welcome to This Week

  pleasure…

  Now… you’re about to begin a tour of Great Britain with the new LP; we’ve just heard an excerpt from it there – which will of course culminate in your appearance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Now… what I want to ask you today is… You say that you’re intending to use ‘wave power’… energy, for this one special performance instead of the usual ‘general electricity’ as supplied by the mains grid?

  [John Nightly smiles as if to reassure the presenter]

  Now… er hem… How exactly is this going to work?

  ‘Oh, you look well!’

  ‘Do I?’

  The woman got up to embrace the farm manager. She put her arms around his tubby frame and attempted the warmest of hugs. RCN held out his arms too, but only to embrace her with the lightest of touches. He understood all too well that someone like himself, a person of relatively lowly capacity, paunchily middle-aged with, no doubt, a very low level of attraction to the opposite sex, could never be worthy of the attention of such a beautiful creature.

  ‘You look so well, John – tanned and brown – it’s nice to see you looking like this.’

  ‘Red, you mean!’

  Her eyes flashed as she remembered that her old friend had always found it impossible to accept even the most casual of compliments. Long ago in the past, kind words had often been met with a droll, even abrasive response. The pair smiled in agreement and sat down.

  ‘It suits you being down here…’

  ‘I came here first with my mum and dad. Summer holidays. You know when you get off the train? I noticed, even then, how everyone was bright red. Red-faced – and very thick-skinned; literally thick-skinned – rather than properly tanned. Same as they are now. All these old guys on the platform, with bright-red cheeks, not from the sun but from the wind – wind-tan, as they call it. “Wurzel cheeks”,’ he laughed, ‘from walking along the coast and all that wind… well… I am now that red-faced man!’

  RCN looked pleased with himself, having managed to deflect the woman’s compliment with this pleasant observation and ease his general discomfort at being present this lunchtime.

  To be polite, if nothing else, he ought to have paid the lady sitting opposite a compliment in return, as any other gentleman would. But he was far too shy and also quite overcome by the way she appeared before him today – even more dignified and serene than he remembered – to be thinking about etiquette. John Daly removed his anorak and draped it over the empty chair beside him while Iona looked around for a waitress.

  I think the… the way that it’ll work will… maybe I should start at the beginning. It is a bit complicated to explain – in a simple way, I mean – but… What we are going to be doing… if I do explain it simply, is ‘harnessing’ water power, natural water energy, the mass, the volume – the energetic part of the water – by connecting our… our guitars and our amps… amplifiers… and PA systems; everything… up to… well, you know… to the upper reaches of the River Thames…

  ‘But what I don’t understand, and never have done, after all this time – and it is a long time now; such a long time…’ Iona untied her hair and let it fall onto her shoulders, making her look younger still than her forty-three eventful years.

  ‘I don’t absolutely understand, what is, at this moment in particular… the actual matter with him?’

  Daly picked up a teaspoon and began playing with it. ‘That’s a very good question.’

  ‘It is an absolutely long time, John, a long time now. Because most people with this problem, John’s kind of problems, surely they can recover? Or have some type of… permanent medicine which can work, or what is it called – “regulate” them? By now…’

  The farmer didn’t hesitate. ‘You’d have thought so.’ He put down the spoon. ‘But it’s not that simple.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s how we see things, though, isn’t it?’

  Iona picked up her glass as RCN caught a whiff of the past. What looked like fresh orange juice, the pith sparkling in the sunlight, was laced with two, maybe three shots of Scotch whisky. A waitress came over. Daly ordered a gammon sandwich and a half of shandy.

  ‘It’s a very, very difficult thing… for him to deal with, obviously… And also for us to deal with… day to day.’

  ‘Yes. And tell me… who is “us”?’

  Daly turned redder still. ‘Right… Well… I suppose we’ve got a proper little family now,’ RCN smiled. ‘In a way anyway. That sounds a bit… presumptuous, maybe. No women, I mean… apart from a housekeeper… you know, she’s old – “elderly”, I mean – oh dear!’ RCN rubbed his eyes and looked rather ashamed. ‘Lady from Quethiock who keeps us all in check, you might say. You’d like her. There’s the guy who runs the business, proper plantsman, Robert, reliable chap, keeps everything the way it should be plant-wise, and takes care of other stuff, well… Then there’s me and… the boss.’

  RCN calculated that he was roughly halfway through the allocated time. Certain questions he had anticipated having to deal with were being seen to; those he dreaded were just around the corner. ‘As I say… it is difficult for everyone… But all I can tell you is that things are better now.’ He coughed. ‘He… is better now… generally, I mean. Day to day. Really better.’ His lunch companion peered into her glass as Daly continued.

  ‘What they did manage to sort out over there –
and this was obviously a major achievement, which made things a lot, lot easier for us…’ RCN spoke nervously, ‘was to get him off the bad drugs – I don’t mean the “bad”, bad drugs…’ He slid the empty glass in front of him from side to side. ‘He’ll never touch those again – they’d kill him if he did. I mean the bad prescription drugs – because they were doing as much damage as the other ones… in my opinion. The ones that were making him… numb. So at least, you see… as he says himself… he’s not numb anymore.’

  Iona lit a cigarette. She was battling hard to follow the rather long, rather too drawn-out, defensive-sounding explanation.

  ‘You sound like him… the way you…’

  Daly looked sheepish again. It sounded like a compliment, but also a criticism.

  ‘Well, we’ve been with… around each other… a long time now, Iona.’

  ‘So… this is how I understand it… and it’s only in part, his condition at the moment, that is… only in part due…’

  ‘To all the stuff he chucked down his throat. That’s correct. That’s what I understand. What I was told, by them, anyway.’

  Iona stared at the defendant.

  ‘The actual “condition”, or whatever it is all really… this… the thing you sent me?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Because I certainly didn’t understand this one!’

  Iona adopted a rather hurt expression. She didn’t seem at all convinced as she sat forward in her chair.

  ‘Because… you are a qualified doctor. You know these things. Everyone forgets this.’

  The farmer turned pink.

  ‘I’ve got nursing qualifications, Iona. But even that was a long time ago.’ RCN was desperate to eat something. It was a fair few hours since Mrs Peed’s cooked breakfast. ‘It’s all changed now; if you were to go into it in a professional way, I mean.’

  He smiled sweetly and looked around to see where his order had gotten to. Iona pressed on.

  ‘But… you can at least… understand these things… What you mean is the hormone, adrenaline?’

  RCN nodded.

  ‘So can you start again, please? Sorry, but I… I really didn’t understand what you said on the telephone… and my husband, he was talking to me as usual… and I… I don’t know… I could not concentrate…’

  She suddenly appeared beaten down. ‘That’s why I thought it would be better to meet.’

  [John Nightly cupped his head in his hands. He couldn’t wait to get back to the Albert Hall soundcheck].

  RCN was in need of immediate refreshment and was relieved to see his shandy arrive. He took a swig, raising his glass to his lunch companion.

  ‘It’s been… cliché though it might be… a hell of a long time, Iona.’

  ‘It’s a lifetime, John. Really it is… another lifetime.’

  RCN put down the glass and swallowed – another bit of business – ready to continue with the tale.

  ‘What they discovered in America is that John… when his body produces adrenaline… it’s… There’s some kind of fault in it, in his metabolism… the adrenaline metabolism as it works in the brain.’

  RCN gathered his cardigan around him and pulled down the cuffs, suddenly feeling a draught. ‘Let me get this right… so I tell it properly.’ The fat man looked around the room and took a moment.

  ‘John’s condition… which is not… uncommon, apparently…

  If they don’t do tests and whatever… whatever it is they do, they’d… It’d never’ve been discovered in the first place…’

  ‘And this means?’

  ‘…that instead of producing adrenaline “normally”, like… a “reasonable” amount of the stuff… like it occurs in everyone else – naturally and all that – it means that in John’s case he’s… when his brain is producing – secreting – the hormone, it’s actually making… an “unreasonable” amount… so unreasonable that it’s actually something else – or it was. And that something else is partly, amazing as it might sound… a substance… chemical… or a compound, very close to mescaline.’

  Iona raised her eyes in dismay. Not knowing quite how to respond, she turned away from the trustee towards the light streaming through the hotel entrance, where the noonday sun cast an ambiguous shadow, an almost human form, onto the arched doorway of the old abbey.

  ‘You mean “mescaline” mescaline? The “bad drug” mescaline?’ Iona looked at once disbelieving and suspicious. ‘The “really bad” drug?’

  RCN squinted in the sunlight. Iona looked straight at him –

  ‘John…’

  – her eyes suddenly becoming watery, ‘it doesn’t make sense to me today.’

  ‘I know. Sounds ridiculous… bit… comical.’ RCN noticed his gammon sandwich making its way through the tables. ‘The really “very bad” drug. That’s what it is and that is the actual fact. Medical thing. Chemical thing.’ RCN acknowledged the waiter. ‘Thank you – looks good!’ He took the plate from the young man and laid it in front of him. ‘I saw the results – there’s a copy of the whole thing up at the house. Reams of the stuff. And……’ RCN removed the top slice of bread and picked up a jar of mustard. ‘What I’ve just told you. It means that this “process” produces a kind of… psychosis. So that his brain is making a… Well, it’s hallucinating.’ Daly took a knife to spread far too much mustard onto the chunky ham. ‘Like a… a… “hallucinatory” substance.’

  Iona lodged her cigarette on the rim of her saucer. She lay the palms of her hands together and cupped them around her chin, trying to make sense of the whole weird tale. ‘So… the question… whether this thing – “process” – was happening before John got into… you know… doing a lot of things?’

  ‘That’s exactly…’

  ‘When he was… a child, for instance?’ Iona’s eyes were wide open.

  ‘The actual “problem substance”, the “chemical” his brain is making, is called adrenochrome.’ RCN took a bite. ‘You can look it up in all the medical… textbooks… It’s there. There was a programme on the radio about it. And it’s always been there; it’s not a new thing or anything. It’s just… a derivative… of adrenaline.’

  The woman seemed to relax a little. Her friend had been convincing and she was impressed at the ease with which he navigated the ‘medical’ side of the explanation.

  ‘You’re good at this, John.’

  Daly blushed again. It seemed the grilling might be more or less over.

  ‘It’s in the table of “known hallucinogens”, as they say. The consultant explained to me. They have… evidence that adrenochrome does occur in the normal brain. They tried giving it to patients in trials… The effects of people actually taking the stuff is that it produces symptoms close to clinical schizophrenia.’ RCN pulled a string of ham from his tooth. ‘So there you are. That just about sums him up and does actually all make sense. Same stuff Aldous Huxley was writing about.’

  ‘Was it? You’re much more up for it… on it, I mean… “with it!” – than I am.’

  RCN smiled as he recalled her endearing difficulties with the language.

  ‘We’ve got all the research papers at home. John Smythies is the name I remember – the guy who wrote a lot about the syndrome. Couple of hundred pages sitting in a plastic bag somewhere. And stuff related to it about epilepsy and fits… “flicker” – strobes and all that…’

  ‘Oh, no… not that… He was always going mad about that… that… “flicker-machine.’

  RCN licked his lips. ‘Hmn… good food…’

  ‘John is not epileptic, though…’

  ‘Not… no… never has been. But that has got something to do with it, the condition. Symptoms. Like when you have a band with a strobe on the telly and they tell people not to watch it… if they’re epileptic.’

  ‘And he knows about all this?’

  ‘He knows everything about it. Understands it a lot better than I do. Gets updates from the Center… new findings… the whole bit. Could have already be
en happening when he was a kid. But maybe that’s what gave him all his ideas and everything as well, y’see. Maybe that was his… juice. Never know, do you?’

  Iona stared at the red-cheeked, middle-aged farmer. After all these years, all these… changes… difficult times. He still had only sweet things to say about John Nightly.

  ‘Ideas… exactly. All those ideas, damn ideas… things he wanted to do. The true problem with everything…’

  …it’s hardly a very radical idea. Most of the industrial revolution was powered by water, after all. What do you think kept the mills going? [the interviewee punctuated his response with a series of long yawns] Isaac Newton made models of windmills and watermills as a child. Then you had water clocks as well. So I don’t think… [the boy thought for a second] Even Constable’s Hay Wain – the best-known picture in England – shows his father’s mill, Flatford Mill, the water wheel… the ultimate… idyllic view of the English countryside. Well, that’s a little bit like my wave-hub!

  RCN picked over the other half of his sandwich as Iona lifted a large, rusty cake tin up onto the table.

  ‘Could I ask you to do one thing for me, John…’

  She turned the object round so the lid was facing him. ‘This is a present for John – and for you as well, of course.’ Iona raised her hand and made a gesture as if to stop him from responding. ‘I know you don’t want me to give him anything; and I know he doesn’t know that we’re meeting today or anything like this. I understand all this… but it might, as my husband will say… re-kindle memories… I thought so anyway. John always used to like it.’

  Outside in the real world, Chapel Street, a funeral procession was attempting to bypass vehicles parked illegally in front of John Wesley’s chapel. Eventually the hearse had to unceremoniously climb the kerb for several yards, causing astonishment among holidaymakers and shoppers admiring the expertly polished limousines. As it did so the funeral director rolled down the window, stuck two fingers up in the direction of the hotel and cursed the owner of the damned coupé.