by Tot Taylor
The self-styled Svengali no longer appeared to care – not even enough to bother to pretend he cared in order to keep hold of his star act. For no doubt John Pond, like so many impresarios, imagined himself as being at the centre of things. Not existing to serve, enable or facilitate the artists. Pond saw himself as the tree, the source, and they, no matter how fond of them he was, were the branches – sometimes the twigs. The stars in the sky. As long as the Nightly industry generated sufficient income for his manager’s percentage to fund an excessive personal lifestyle as well as business development – a string of new signings, a new production company and record label, an office in New York – Pond was content. The literal cash flow, or torrent, allowing the manager to prove to one and all that he really was capable of focussing on and overseeing the careers of a handful of his most happening clients while simultaneously staying up all night, boozing himself silly, downing a variety of illegal substances and screwing anything that happened to catch his eye and detain him for a few lonely hours.
Pondy was not overseeing very much at all anymore. JCE’s most recent signing, Brocade – the group with the loudest buzz in years – had been launched not with a piece of plastic but via a Stateside TV series produced by Toba-Co Inc., the company behind most of the major cigarette advertising and commercial sports sponsorship in the US.
Toba-Co had approached JCE before, attempting to forge a union with Swinging London youth culture and introduce their traditionally midwestern smokes to a European market by way of the most happening English pop singer. Neither Pond nor his charge had been interested. Globally there was increasing public awareness about the link between smoking and illness; and although all of the Nightly band, including John himself, were heavy smokers the deal had seemed to everyone like an unnecessary and quite wrongheaded move. Pondy had been worried that the big hitters might go away and hit elsewhere, but had in the event been able to secure the tobacco giant’s interest on to his latest signing.
The resultant TV series, Psycho Deli, told the story of a teacake, or ‘English muffin’ café/emporium, located in a free-living, free-loving suburb of San Francisco. An archetypal hippie enterprise, the action was set in what television executives in Burbank imagined to be a typically-English village store. Butcher’s aprons and boaters, delivery bikes and perambulators mixed uneasily in the stage-set of a ‘Victorian’ bakery in which a customer entering the premises to make a purchase became enough of an excuse for a song. Psycho Deli was a kind of psychedelic ‘tenement symphony’ featuring the hapless Brocade in a series of multiple character roles with a change in both costume, and accent, every few minutes.
Introducing the five Hemel Hempstead lads as a touring band who liked the place so much they decided to open a Flower-Power delicatessen on Main Street, the series was a queasy mix of run-of-the-mill songs* provided by second-division Brill Building teams, together with a series of Laugh-In inspired, slapstick routines in forty-eight excruciatingly long episodes.
Deryk, Clement, Brian and Lance, a bunch of secondary-modern lookers with no previous convictions beyond the school play were shown dealing simultaneously with both the racier elements of the Free Society and the cloddish, cliché-ridden script. The series premiered on US networks a week before the Nightly Lyceum dates, gathering some of the worst reviews in showbiz history. The group, its management and everything connected with it became a laughing stock. Not even the ruse of flying half of the British press to the West Coast for an exclusive preview of the first three episodes did anything but work against them. That exercise served as nothing more than confirmation that someone had, unfortunately, now actually seen the show. The idea of audience participation in Psycho Deli was based on the premise that viewers should be able to laugh with the protagonists, not at them. The press junket itself became mythical, an example of the very worst kind of pushy, paid-for promotion – only a few steps short of actual payola. Sadly this was all the Manager’s doing.
Luckily, John Nightly was several layers removed from the whole thing. He missed the London opening because, as he explained to Pondy, he ‘just forgot about it’; and the press and record-buying public made no connection between Brocade and the Nightly operation. Of the forty-eight episodes filmed only seven were ever broadcast in Britain.
Pond survived the incident, of course. Though he did seem to find it increasingly difficult to be anywhere near ‘available for work’; that being the case, his staff grew accustomed to their boss being otherwise engaged and pretty much got on with the business of managing his client’s careers without him. Pond cruised through the restaurants and clubs of London making deals and breaking them without being too concerned about whether or not a particular project was likely to happen. The important thing, the ‘buzz’, was that there might be yet another contract on the table, with further advance royalties to be pocketed.
But John Nightly was hot property and soon other players began to pick up the scent. It’s a good deal easier to take over an act than to take one on, and various interested parties enquired after the wellbeing of both manager and star. Song publishers crossed the Atlantic hoping for an audience. In Britain, the NEMS office and former Who mentor Peter Meaden were just two who tried their luck.
Pond never studied chart positions anymore, even when they were good, appearing to have lost all interest in the day-to-day progress of his charges. He seemed unable to plan, too; or to see detail either. He had no thought for release dates, touring schedules or artwork, all of which were left to Sand, Daze and the acts themselves to sort out.
Like so many artists, John Nightly professed interest in the business side of his career without having any intention of following things through. Any kind of public relations, no matter how limited, was really just ‘a waste of my time’. Engaged in the promotion of his current project, John’s only thought would be to get back into the studio to begin work on the next.
* The exception being the title song, ‘She is Perfection’ (Amber ABM 66038), a previously unreleased track by Alexander Telstar that became a turntable hit for the group in the US.
item: Monthly Cultural Notes: August.
Things can get out of hand in the garden this month. Patio pots, hanging baskets and window boxes are particularly vulnerable. Houseplants need extra ventilation both day and night. Deal with any invasion of Soleirolia soleirolii (baby’s tears) and other creeping perennials invading the lawn by hoeing out. Sow seeds in the cool of the evening or chill the earth with cold water before you sow. Fruit-bearing plants need regular liquid-feeding. If you live by the sea, gather seaweed for composting. Keep watch for slugs on bedding plants. Give roses, honeysuckle and camellias a good watering and remember to deadhead dahlias daily.
Cliff Shapiro Films, two floors above the Jack strip club, boasted its own self-contained recording studio. Shapiro’s small track-laying room could accommodate up to twenty musicians, well enough space for the Nightly band to stretch out, rehearse their parts, have a good moan and do their thing. At the back of the studio, behind a corkboard screen, stood a simple projection set-up and a simple projectionist. Clips could be run when Morrie, brother of Cliff, said so, and not before.
Pitfall had been a success. Not an Oscar-laden box-office shatterer, but successful nonetheless. The low-budget, low-life thriller received flattering reviews all round, becoming one of a handful of homemade features doing respectable business up and down the country throughout the late summer of 1968.
As with many of the French new wave films of the period, Pitfall updated the crime genre by adding a psychological component while setting the story in a more optimistic, upbeat time. Its postcard of London at its swingiest, much of it shot around Soho and the West End, coupled with the good looks of its two young leads, Teri-Ann Christie and Bruno John, made the film a must-see for teenage cinema-goers, a ‘thriller-diller’, as Pondy termed it. Though the movie itself is now largely forgotten, location scenes regularly crop up as stock footage in cheaply produced TV tribute
s to the swinging decade.
While posters of Teri-Ann in her see-through cheesecloth made their way from the Apple Boutique to the school lockerroom, the memorable soundtrack, which utilised a tension/ release device borrowed from Michael Tippett, lodged itself in the British LP charts for a total of twenty-nine weeks, ensuring that Pitfall stayed in the public’s consciousness much longer than it might have done without its soundtrack album – or its soundtrack composer.
Myra Knoll, just twenty-four, new to London and without any practical experience of the industry, was suddenly a hit-movie producer, achieving good-looking results on a limited budget and limited production schedule without the box-office benefit of established stars.
With this out-of-town debut the Texan heiress had demonstrated that she could both spot new talent and execute a project to a successful conclusion. Myra’s hunches had paid off and so Pitfall accompanied If and Performance around the circuit as part of an ABC Regal double-bill. Stylistically, the film had its roots in the Italian and French cinema of the period. The movies watched by students, ‘raincoats’ and heads at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street any wet weekday afternoon. The audience finding itself able to cope with subtitles as long as there was enough female nudity to nurse them through 90 quite unfathomable minutes. The producer had made sure that there was. The main characters, Pyotr and Jeanne, had been pushed in their scenes together to a level of sexual intimacy previously unseen in a British feature. The producer decided that the temporary or ‘temp’ French dialogue spoken between them should remain in the final cut.
These episodes, played out in the brilliant sunshine of London’s parks and squares, went un-subtitled. This was a first for a British film of any kind and also the first time that domestic audiences outside of the capital would ever have watched anything that foreign and actually legal.
Two years earlier, on campus at UCLA, Myra had been inspired by Lelouch’s Un Homme et une Femme. The young film student, noticing how scenes that took place in the car, on the beach and in the hotel bedroom needed little dialogue. It was entirely possible to watch the original movie in French without understanding a word of the language. When she explained her ideas about the use of music to her composer, the producer made it clear that this was a job she expected the score to do, with the same skill Francis Lai had demonstrated in A Man and a Woman.
John had of course come up with the goods. The movie’s main theme worked so well and swung so heavily that it was regularly heard in other contexts, becoming the main ‘bed’ to DJ chatter on Radio 1 as well as featuring in several Rediffusion Television commercials. Pondy, always on the lookout for ‘the big one’, had even presented it to the International Olympic Committee for Mexico ’68 – though the response to the over-optimistic manager had been that the score was deemed ‘a little too avant-garde for The Games.’
The title theme could no doubt have become an instrumental hit in its own right. In 1968, non-vocal singles were as popular as vocal tracks, chart-wise, and sat comfortably alongside any number of other chart-bound sounds in the nation’s beloved Fab Forty. The Top of the Pops countdown included one-offs like Paul Mauriat’s ‘Love is Blue’, Love Sculpture’s ‘Sabre Dance’ and in another vein Whistling Jack Smith’s ‘I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman’ and ‘I Was Queen Victoria’s Chambermaid’ by pub pianist Mrs Mills*. John’s own personal favourite, a record he played over and over, driving Iona to distraction, was Mason Williams’ nylon symphony, ‘Classical Gas’.
But the problem with film scores, as opposed to stand-alone records, was that a movie being pulled from the circuit by its distributor would pretty much signal the end for its soundtrack too. Each Friday a new line-up of film releases waited to take their place in the fleapit; so if a feature didn’t fill the theatre week after week, another would replace it. For a period of almost six weeks in ABC theatres up and down Britain Pitfall remained the movie to see. In the Dandelion cafés and ‘grad pads’ of England’s university towns, students mused over its social message, argued about its muddled plot and fantasised about its lead actress.
Back in the basement of the Jack, Ron tucked into a Cornish pasty while Justin took the pliers to his top E. The others ran through a spiralling, semitonal progression, the music slithering along its uneasy path before seeming to turn in on itself, although actually ascending to a higher pitch – a trick John had picked up from studying an MFP recording of a Prokofiev ballet. In the composer’s Cinderella, the melodies embarked upon their independent trajectories. They progressed in the direction the listener expected, but seldom arrived. Instead, they flattened and diminished, alternatively decisive and indecisive in a key-defying display. To the average listener, at sea with anything more than three chords and easy-to-chew phrases, this was distracting rather than thrilling; but to the musical listener, the bearer of the gift of listening, the effect could be mesmerising. On a journey without signposts, the serious musical audience was led down – lifted down – a sometimes slippery path, a chromatic staircase without end in an often ironic though supremely elegant arrangement of melody and harmony typical of the composer. Prokofiev gave no clues about cadences or resolves. He was beyond all that. So was John Nightly. In Cinderella, every phrase posed a question, seemed a stretch or opened a door. In John’s upcoming Cantata – or Requiem; he hadn’t yet decided which – the three independent yet individually complete LPs would set off on their own courses. By piling one inversion on top of another (the way Miles Davis created ‘cool’ harmony), by combining unusual instruments (the way Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky pioneered sounds and effects for the orchestra), by scattering each free-thinking melody in all directions (as in Charlie Parker or Brian Wilson’s ‘explorations’), John intended to remove his audience to a more ambiguous musical withdrawing room. For Sergei Prokofiev, and therefore for John Nightly, a question was a resolve.
‘What is that guitar you’re wearing today, sir?’ John asked of Justin in a momentary and quite uncharacteristic lapse into frivolity. Justin seemed pleasantly taken aback as he spun around.
‘That, sir, is a Rickenbacker Jetstar 325!’
Ashley jumped on to his kit to play out a mock ‘Tah-dah!’ – clicking his sticks together while at the same time disturbing several years’ worth of dust in the dried-out cellar.
‘Is it, by Christ?’ replied the boss. ‘Well… my giddy aunt! All the better to see you with.’
‘Hear you with…’ interjected Ms Knoll, as John opened his guitar case to reveal a freshly painted rainbow Stratocaster.
‘hear you with – yeh… that’s right,’ he mumbled, while Justin smiled knowingly and continued to tune his instrument.
The boss searched his pockets for a plectrum, acknowledged the other members of the band, accepted a cigarette from Ron, then picked up a chair and placed it in front of the stage for the producer to sit down. Even in this high summer of super-fame the boy’s Grantchester manners had not deserted him. As soon as Jackie, Myra’s assistant, entered bearing a portable cassette recorder, the order was given to roll film.
At the back of the room, Morrie eased his fat belly out of his seat and cut the lights as John strapped on his guitar and stood face-on to the band. Arms outstretched, legs apart, John engaged in eye contact and nodded to each performer in turn as if he were about to conduct a Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. The projector started on its cranky course.
Exterior: A silver spring day. The entrance to Notting Hill underground station. 5pm. Rush hour. Commuters pour out onto the pavement as the camera picks out a teenage girl, a ‘Flower Child’ in purple headband and ‘hippie’ dress, goldleaf stars painted on her cheeks.
On screen, Teri-Ann crossed the street and disappeared into The Glass Bead, a head shop tucked away behind a pub on the corner of Pembridge Road. In the studio, John began a slow, measured count – in seven, of course – 2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 – until the scene cut to the interior of the building. An inky line-drawing of the proprietor, a comic-book hippie, became super
imposed on the screen before being lost within a haze of smoke, supposedly emanating from inside the premises, so dense and impenetrable that there must have been a whole sackful of marijuana involved, as the teenager handed over a package to the girl behind the counter. Right on cue, the editor’s punch-flash appeared in the top right-hand corner of the screen, the signal for Justin and Ron to begin.
The music immediately lent atmosphere to the scene; a rising motif helping to convey the narrative without getting in the way; the traditional function and sometimes unrewarding ‘lot’ of the film composer. As Ashley laid into the drums, things suddenly got very loud indeed within the confines of the small basement so that both Myra and Jackie, not at all used to hearing a rock’n’roll drum kit being pelted just a few feet away, slapped their hands tightly over their ears. John immediately indicated that everyone play softer, at which point the effect of the score when it was properly synced to picture became apparent.
The next scene, a frenzied chase through the back streets of Kensington, had been shot in forward and backward motion simultaneously; again, with one take superimposed on another. Robin Hedges, familiar to TV viewers as a delinquent in Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green, appeared as the stoned shopkeeper, looking suitably bedraggled and crazed. The previous week, during editing, Myra had expressed concerns about the scene moving too fast. This afternoon, with John Nightly’s serpent-like guitar laid across it, the composer managing to slow things down as briefed, the pace slackened, almost to slow motion, creating a mood that the clip did not possess previously. Hedges and his co-star, Hazel Linden, came to a halt outside an antique shop at the top of Portobello Road. Again, the music showed a keen touch, able to modulate and lift the scene without revealing where it was actually headed.