The Story of John Nightly

by Tot Taylor

  [The editor scribbles furiously in his notebook, barely able to keep pace with his own enthusiasm]

  Pitchblack… jet black – black with pitches! [John Nightly laughs and burps at the same time]

  Eh… brack one… [Hiroshi responds philosophically, as if he has just been handed the secret of life itself] And eh… you fabourite TV a-star?

  Actor? Oh… I only watch telly in the afternoons… so… my ‘favourite’… probably… Sooty.

  [The journalist responds with a series of knowing nods]

  Suttie… [scribbling, pressing hard with his pen] What it is exactery? Engerish pop-a-star?

  That’s it… wears a suit, orange as well… so, a connection – of sorts. One piece fur, hence the name, and… he’s orange so, quite… ‘bear-like’… [John play-acts a little too disrespectfully] He… well… Sooty doesn’t actually say that much…

  Aha! This one… compretery sirent bear… in suit? [Spoken as if this too is a revelation; Hiroshi frowns as he scribbles some more, trying to fix the indecipherable image in his mind]

  … do you think we could… [John, so rudely patronising one of his very biggest and most loyal markets, desperately wishes to move on]

  And you fabourite a-drink?

  oh… again… it’s difficult. When I was a kid, I used to really like, was kind of addicted to… Kia-Ora.

  [A further snippet totally unfathomable to the Japanese super fan]

  Key A-or-A?… this nice word! [Attempts to write down the impossibly assonant creation; double-checks that his cassette recorder is turning round] And… addict? Eh… [Looks up] Who this Qui or-A?

  It’s a drink. Mainly used by children… but… that is actually orange as well – weirdly enough.

  Aha… this orange one also! You rearry rike orange thing…

  Seems like it. Kia ora – the actual words – mean ‘wellbeing’ in Maori. [John is at least interested in this] New Zealand language. Read that in a leaflet… from the Kia-Ora Children’s Club – sorry, ‘crub’, I mean!

  Ehhhhh… So Key A-or-A Crub, this your fabourite drink and mean Well Bean? [The interviewer has cracked it] It strange thing…

  Well, it is… that’s exactly it… [John, a little guilty at the deception, continues; he lights up and takes a drag]

  Went to a couple of places with my manager last night… and we had… well, Bolivian rum and Bacardi and Coke… Coca-Cola… quite a lot of whiskey, bit too much probably… and that was… a very good drink, ’mazin’ drink, I’d say, and a… a good night, good night out – maybe a bit too good”. The boy cleared his throat and mimed lifting the lids from his hooded eyes.

  And book? What you read, Missa John?

  Yeah… that’s a bit more… might be a bit more… ‘revealing’, mightn’t it? [Coughs and clears throat, ready to be serious (and quite possibly pretentious) for a moment] Books… well… currently I’m writing… working on… a piece of music partly inspired by William Blake… [Looks doubtfully at Hiroshi] An… old poet… and his… his sort of… ‘enlightened’ ideas. So last night I was reading a book of poetry called Children of Albion, which I just bought. I’m sure you get it in here… [motions towards the shelves] Poetry doesn’t have so many conventions and… structures as other writing… that’s why I particularly like… ‘free’… unstructured stuff – and it’s shorter!

  This interest me today! [The journalist squints, suddenly with full comprehension] And eh… how ’bout poetry?

  Pardon?

  Missa John Nightry… now last thing… what you eh… you faborite music? All-time-one, prease…

  … oh God…

  [The interviewee has had enough; he flicks through a mind-file of what might be termed his most ‘un-favourite’ records]

  Mrs Mills is… she’s pretty good…

  Miss Mirrr?

  … the miller’s daughter. In terms of ‘absolute’ favourites, though, that… that’s easy. It would always be Gustav, The Planets. When I was little. But there’s… a lot of other things I like now, more modern things… What exactly am I listening to? [Pulls out a neatly folded sheet from his bag] Can’t remember the name of the thing…

  [Hiroshi looks blank]

  You might not know it… but… in terms of pop… in terms of favourites… [An image of John Snr and the family’s tiny front room in Grantchester flips into the boy’s head] Gotta be Mrs Mills…

  Brian Wilson called George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue his ‘theme for life’. The Planets and The Firebird were John Nightly’s themes. They didn’t just ‘speak’ to him; they kidnapped him, called him like sirens. Pulled him away from whatever he was doing, through the mirror, down into the tunnel. As a child John would lie on the floor next to John Snr’s record player while he held the stylus over a particular few grooves of Stravinsky’s ballet suite. The boy would put the arm down on the same section of music over and over again as his brain dissected and analysed exactly what was going on harmonically, melodically and structurally and what that meant philosophically and spiritually. The turned earth of these compositions had helped form the basis of John Nightly himself, not only his music-making but his psychological make-up.

  Like many composers, much of what John wrote was based on a spark. Two or three notes or ‘events’ that could be adapted and developed. He often worked from the same spore or cell, admitting that he’d been ‘writing the same piece of music all my life’.

  In addition to these dangerously influential works, John was attached to his own pet system of three. He beat it out with his fingers whenever he drifted off for a moment or someone bored him. Lyrically he would employ this ‘natural way’ more often than not, the first word consisting of one syllable only. John viewed the world as a spiritual triangle, seeing groups of three, a stressed metre or rhythm across three beats – a natural balance of three – in almost everything he encountered, whether or not it was there. From the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost to Births, Marriages & Deaths. Even as a child he understood that musical structure seemed to have everything to do with this naturally occurring principle. A song was comprised of three distinct parts: verse, chorus and middle; each one based around a three-chord pattern, with three primary chords in each key, C-F-G and E-A-B in a major key or Am-Dm-Em and C#m-F#m-Gbm in a minor, conforming to the more Dorian-based blues mode of the times. As with the colour chart of primary and secondary colours in visual art, there was a corresponding group of three ‘secondary’ chords, most usually the relative minors, or majors, depending on the key – or ‘home’ itself. Verses and choruses almost always occurred three times each during a song, the song itself lasting roughly three minutes; in the words of the detractors, a ‘three-chord wonder’ or ‘three-minute wonder’. He liked the three-beat grouping of words: ‘Please Please Me’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘Do the Twist’; ‘the swing of the words, the waves of the notes’… and so on and so on. And on and on and on.

  Sonata form, concerto form. And such as King’s College Choir, Nine Lessons & Carols and Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Owen Wingrave, Gloriana. John Nightly wasn’t the only composer into this ‘three’ thing. Every song John had written so far employed a three-word title: a trio of chiming bells. As a teenager he had striven to achieve stylised compositional features equivalent to those of his peers. Mahler’s unresolved suspensions, Ravel’s tight clusters, Stravinsky’s piled ninths, Richard Rodgers’ semitonal motifs, Delius’ ‘folk harmony’, Ellington’s piano tumbles, Steve Reich’s skyscraper rhythms, Cage’s rejection of structure, Bernstein’s grasp of zeitgeist, whatever it happened to be, Bacharach’s daring melodic leaps and his technically ‘atonal’ pop songs. Even at a young age John had been able to identify each composer’s handwriting. And now, with a major new work occupying his mind as nothing had done before, he vowed to take this ‘learning’, this ‘natural, existential musicality’, to another level.

  The plan was to have three different movements – mouvements – one per LP. The music itself i
n 3/4 time, or a multiple of it.

  LP 1 (Mink) would contain the rhythm,

  LP 2 (Bungalow) the poetry and ‘fractional collage’, and

  LP 3 (Requiem?)… he had yet to decide.

  Probably just sound, washes of sound, a ‘sonic pasture’ on which to project the more conceptual propositions. The third record completely non-rhythmic, so as not to clash – in the wrong way – with the other two.

  The boy continued to gather inspiration. To be patient and receptive. What he was planning was a Requiem Mass that wasn’t really a mass at all – or a requiem – more a gigantic choral symphony, or tone-poem, involving some 400 performers. John wasn’t concerned that there was, as yet, very little actual text, or music. The good thing being that there would never be anything at all forced, or coerced, about the concept. Concept! That’s exactly what it was at the moment. The composer not having written one note of anything. All he had in his mind were storm clouds, coastal grey, Zawn black, sunset orange, Sooty orange, Mrs Mill’s vamping, Ravel’s intensely romantic voicings, Stravinsky’s neo-classicism, Glenn Miller’s expressive colours, Gershwin’s easy populism, Debussy’s starlight, Ellington’s introspection – and the Beatles sales figures! Doom clouds, boom clouds, gathering all around. Various accumulating masses, each with different intentions. He knew he would rise up and punch through. Rise to the challenge. To zoom again. Get back to that one and only elusive Zero Point. Get back by going forward. He just needed to get on with it.

  Right now, only one thing was certain: the Mink Bungalow Requiem would be in waltz-time.

  John Nightly Sex M

  Cambridge, England, Great Britain 07/15/1948 12:00 –

  Julian day 2432747.96

  Adjust -1.00 ST 6.33 Lat. 52.13 Long. -0.08

  Donna Vost Sex F

  Cambridge, Mass., USA 09/17/1950 05:00 –

  Julian day 2433541.92

  Adjust 5.00 ST 4.50 Lat. 43.01 Long. 73.23

  Ten minutes later, when he could take no more, John got up from his chair mid-sentence, shook hands with a still confused Man from Japan, and wandered out into the sunshine of Russell Square for his weekly rendezvous with Miss Vost.

  Each Tuesday, for the past six months, the top-of-his-game composer had met his precious young choreographer in the corner seat at the Kardomah coffee house in the Strand. Here they would put movement to music in preparation for the world premiere of the black mass.

  Observing Donna persuade a troupe of teenagers to walk in patterns around Piccadilly Circus for a BBC documentary, John warmed to her plan of beginning this next project, not with conventional choreography but with co-ordinated real movement: walking, running, jumping, jerking, sitting, starting, stopping. Natural kinetics, she called it, set in motion by the ‘movers’ as the music ran its course, the resultant work developing through each performance.

  Most afternoons the pair would work on layouts and tempos, the composer asking about every dance format from the Baroque Chaconne – a stately dance in ‘three’ time – to contemporary ‘group-walking’. Donna knew enough about both to be able to interpret whatever her master envisaged. At the end of each session, with step-diagrams and patterns folded into John’s songbook, they would repair to the Savoy to have brainstorms, have tea and have each other.

  Donna was no doubt infatuated. But she fooled herself, imagining some improbable scenario in which she might take the place of Iona in John’s life rather than just his bed. Donna could never hope to replace Iona, either emotionally or logistically. John Nightly’s existing domestic set-up entirely suited him. Allowing him security and freedom. Any kind of permanency was unthinkable from his viewpoint, so this convenient session had become an undeniably exciting but also genuinely warm and loving way to pass a midweek afternoon.

  Donna drifted through the Savoy in her ishka, her veils of cheese-cloth, ribbons and string tied into her hair, a ‘spirit’ ballerina. She was voraciously driven and, like her lord and master, on a kind of quest. But regularly struck down by various no doubt psychosomatic disorders along with the habitual dancer’s injuries; she was beginning to cultivate something of a permanent frown which threatened to stamp her young forehead with unsightly creases.

  In rehearsal with the group, soaking up inspiration from all quarters, she managed to catch each nuance of John’s imagining while encouraging everyone else’s contributions. She was able to solve the conundrum of how to make passages of physical timeframe equate to musical bars; the problem facing choreographers of every discipline. Trying to match time, space, dynamics and meaning with expressive movement. What she and the composer ended up with wasn’t dance exactly – it wasn’t intended to be; not as people understand it – but it was completely rigged to the music and also emotionally affecting. Donna had managed to translate the composer’s generally unformed ideas into something cohesive. In terms of a choreographic style, the mouvement was more to do with soul-walking or ‘dance-walking’. As if ten people happened to be walking down a street as individuals, then, after being aware of each other, began to be influenced by one another’s pace and rhythm. The result a co-ordinated shuffle between a group of ‘movers’, relating to some common source – a church bell, plane overhead, children playing, the traffic’s loop…

  The choreographer, like her composer, was herself unable to read dots and had her head stuffed full of numbers. With a highly sophisticated musical memory, rather like that of a concert pianist, Donna had coded what seemed like acres of orchestral interludes and links; helped by the sketches blocked out on those Tuesday afternoons, which would form the basis of the choreography for John Nightly’s ‘walking ballet’.

  Aged just 23, the gazelle was to be in charge of a chorus of at least 40 professional hoofers, on a different stage almost every night for the planned 70-date tour covering most of Europe and Japan – to include the biggest attended concert ever planned – finishing up on the West Coast of America. The prodigiously talented Miss Vost shouldered the overall responsibility of pulling everyone through.

  John was confident she could do it. During the course of rehearsals, he found himself more and more attentive and admiring, quite knocked out by what she had achieved. Her grace, the way she handled herself, stood up for herself, held herself: back straight, head in air; the way she bent and stretched, or the way she sat, cross-legged on the floor, sliding across to demonstrate the next move; her soft flat shoes, the layers of thin garments that clung and sometimes fell from her slight, perspiring body. As rehearsals progressed, the composer found himself a mere spectator as Donna explained to much more experienced feet the ‘head attitude’ necessary in order to perform this ‘enlightened and enlightening piece’.

  Because of this free exchange, the resultant choreography was ahead of its time – without being recognised as such in the real world of contemporary dance, due to being linked to what was seen as a hugely overwrought commercial enterprise, although dancers working on other productions in the capital would have died to be a part of this company. The spirit of experimentation present at MBR rehearsals was unheard of in the often tunnel-minded world of modern dance. As were the wages! For John Nightly, able to afford the best, not only demanded the best but also gave the best – to the outrage of his manager. The maestro had no real interest in the huge royalty income he was generating and reasoned that if you paid well you got well; JCE therefore ended up paying each performer almost double the going rate. At last, professional dancers were able to pay the rent and eat. The Mink Bungalow Requiem became the talk of the town, and not only in the dance world. As full-tour rehearsals got underway, the payroll rose to £2,000 a day just to continue to kick things into shape.

  John and Donna found that it was seldom necessary to explain or discuss very much. They communicated by doing, not by considering. If Donna was lost on a particular step, John would rush over and beat out the rhythm for her, taking off his shoes, putting his hands inside them and getting down on the floorboards to tap out a kind of spoof routin
e. If the Master lost his way during a section, Donna would tiptoe over to the piano and remind him of it in her inimitable one-fingered style. Her brain must have decoded the music in exactly the same way as John’s had encoded it; a sense of absolute knowing existing between them.

  But while there was no way she was ever going to betray the Master, Donna Vost fully intended to exploit any work opportunity that might follow on from her new insider connection.

  So the composer was disappointed when his choreographer invited potential future bosses – directors, managers and patrons, even other composers – to dress rehearsals, walk-throughs and costume checks without bothering to ask him. Then again, the era was one of collaboration rather than competition. In those looser days artists hung out with their peers while they were physically creating. Everyone was invited and often did join in. The benefit resulting from letting people attend these particular run-throughs being that word – good word – about the Mink Bungalow Requiem quickly got around. It was, as John Glade, the Times’ dance critic, described it after attending a rehearsal at Ms Vost’s invitation, incredible people walking together in rhythm. Somehow sacred gestures, at the same time sometimes absurdist. A pagan Enid Blyton! Ridiculous as that sounds I was transfixed by what I saw, and could not get the haunting themes out of my head. I for one am absolutely crazy to see the real thing.

  Sunday Times colour supplement: ‘Here’s to the New Decade’, Sunday, 10 December 1969

  This was all JCE needed to obtain funding for what Pondy called the venture’s ‘uniquely innovative’ element: sea electricity. The utility chosen to power the entire opus.

  A few weeks after the London Electricity Board backed out following the sudden realisation that every one of the performers, along with the organisers, were ‘long hairs’, rehearsals were halted in an attempt by JCE to stem the flow of cash pouring out of the operation. The company held its collective breath.