by Tot Taylor
‘Perfectionist’, ‘control freak’, ‘mental’, ‘psychotic’, ‘genius’… All had been applied to John Nightly over the years. The inference of each having overtaken its literal meaning long ago. Though whenever any application had occurred in John’s presence he had denied it, of course. Renounced them all; the good, bad and the just plain ignorant.
John Nightly had never considered himself to be a genius, in any sense, and he didn’t believe he was psychotic. Maybe he was just a tiny bit mental. Maybe he didn’t mind admitting that one. In both senses of the word.
Had anyone ever gotten a straight answer out of him, John might have agreed that the best way to describe him these days would be… ‘sensitive’. In rock’n’roll journalese – the buzz language of dead-eared commentators who, as Pondy so rightly stated, never do write about the music itself – he would most likely have been referred to as ‘psycho-delicate’. Though John was nowhere near as sensitive or delicate as he used to be. These days, John Nightly was quite desensitised. Quite numb.
The rock’n’roll thing was what had done it for him. Trying to keep up with it was a full-time job and not at all what he had expected. Not a job about writing songs, making records and people either liking or not liking them. That had very little to do with it. It was really about all this other stuff. The stuff that somehow got compacted and entwined with the creating part.
John Nightly had embraced life. He’d given it all he had, took whatever life had ungratefully slung back and, remembering the parables and philosophies that had been inflicted upon him as a child, had utilised the gift bestowed to the best of his ability. But when the game had played itself out John stepped backwards into a vat of psychological manure. It took at least ten years to un-stick himself. Psychotic? No, that wouldn’t be right at all. Nor would control freak. Except possibly in terms of a determination for getting things the way he wanted them. And… genius?
‘The Seashore Test’ (1944), Psychedelic Drugs: Psychological, Medical and Social Issues, Dr Brian Wells (Penguin Education), 1973.
One of the most celebrated, and earliest, of the attempts to study the effects of psychedelic substances on the creative process was that of Aldrich (1944). This study is of particular interest for the way it illustrates how far test measures can depart from the realities of the situation which they set out to assess and how, when the results are reported elsewhere, they continue to get even further away from the point. Aldrich’s study was entitled ‘The effects of a synthetic marihuana-like compound on musical talent as measured by the Seashore Test’, the stated purpose of the experiment being to investigate a popular claim that the use of marihuana causes jazz musicians to ‘ascend to new peaks of virtuosity’.
The circumstances of the investigation were as follows: the subjects were 12 male prisoners, two of whom were professional musicians and all of whom were regular users of marihuana, who had been imprisoned, ostensibly, for violation of the Marihuana Tax Act. There were three once-weekly sessions in which the subjects took the Seashore Tests; only on the third occasion was a drug, Parahexyl, used. The tests, presented on gramophone records, involved the subject in distinguishing between pairs of notes as to their difference in pitch, loudness, time and timbre, and in identifying similarities, differences, and changes in simple patterns of sound. Broadly speaking, the results showed that most subjects made gains, due to practice, between the first and second tests but slipped back to a lower level on the drug-involved final test – despite most of them feeling that they had done better on this last trial.
Queen Square, Regent’s Park, London NW1. Bonfire Night, 5 November 1971.
‘You know when we were at the Revolution and Antony came up and kissed you and you took hold of his hand and brought him over to meet me?’
‘Antony?’
‘Antony. Tony… come on…’ John kept his eyes fixed directly on Iona’s. ‘He came in and he came straight over to you and… he obviously knew you very well.’
‘Of course he knows me.’ Iona was a competent actress. ‘We were out together. But I told you this…’
‘Yeh, but… what I… when I saw you actually take his hand, in that… way… and then look at me like you did while you were talking to him…’ John paused. ‘I don’t know whether you gave me that… sort of weird – it was weird – that look to make me jealous or, perhaps to see if I was looking… or… if I was alright with it… or… maybe to reassure me that I was, even at that very small moment, the only person in your world, or… But… at that very moment with his hand, his… horrible hand in yours. Well… all I wanted to do was to kill him.’
‘John…’
‘It’s a… freaky… thing to say. But I mean it. I wanted to kill a man. Destroy somebody; a person who I knew nothing about. I’d actually never set eyes on him before that night. Didn’t know whether he was a… kind man, or… “decent”, which he probably is…’
Iona’s face lost all expression as she looked down at the floor, fixing on a pattern in the carpet that may or may not have really existed.
‘Anyway. That’s the depth of it. That’s all I’ve got to…’ John took a breath as Iona began to sob. She turned at right angles to her husband and emitted irregular yelping noises.
‘I’m saying this – bothering to say it – because that is the depth of my love for you. As I said to you, so many times, and you used to make fun of me – still don’t understand why – because it was so completely true. You kept asking me if I loved you. You asked me that all the time. And I always said the same thing back, didn’t I?’
‘You said you “a-dored” me.’
‘I said I “worshipped” you. Even better than “adored”. I said that I couldn’t strictly “love” you because worshipfulness and… adoration… was a bigger thing than love. Whether or not you think that’s funny is irrelevant.’
Iona didn’t really understand.
‘That word “love” isn’t big enough, you see. Isn’t big enough at all. For what I felt. Didn’t you get it? Didn’t I tell you? “Worshipped” is much better… It’s much more…’
‘It means… it means something else, though, John.’
‘It’s more actually descriptive,’ he pressed on. ‘Of the actual situation, darling. But it’s completely unconditional, you see? Like a dog.’
The boy sat down on the opposite side of the room, as far as it was possible to physically get from his wife. ‘I adored you and looked up to you and… and worshipped you and wanted to be so close to you literally all of the time, like a dog wants to be close to his owner. Do you see? Like when you see a dog tied up outside a shop and they can’t stop looking and wanting the owner to come out, come back to it. It’s just looking into the shop all the time and howling. I don’t know if dogs have a time factor… I don’t know if they understand… Time, you know? Don’t think they do. Obviously it’s difficult… impossible really… for them to understand Time. How can they possibly know when their owner is coming back to get them?’
‘John…’
John was off on one of his things. Whether or not dogs understood the concept of Time was not what concerned Iona at this moment.
‘… anyway… Iona…’ The boy hesitated. ‘Just that little thing is funny as well…’ He lifted his head. ‘It’s so weird for me to actually say my wife’s name.’
Iona did not respond.
‘That’s funny… strange.’ John leaned back and breathed out. Breathed out a long, patient breath.
‘… p’raps that’s it. Said it now. I think I have just said what I came to say. Hope I have. And I had to come. Because there won’t be any more of this now. Any more misery, I mean… any more of anything. For either of us… ever again.’
Now they were both sobbing. John could hardly get the words out.
‘The depth of my love for you… during that long… amazing, period. And since I messed up the wonderful situation we had…’
‘After I… messed it up…’
Iona
slumped on her hard-backed chair. Expecting John to lean over and comfort her, make things just a little bit easier than they seemed right now. It didn’t cross her husband’s mind.
‘I can’t tell you why… because I don’t know that either. And since there are no excuses for my behaviour… what I’ve done, the only way out of this now, for me anyway… is never to see you again. And never to hear from you… never hear about you either – if I can help it. So please – and for you never to hear from me… obviously. It has to be this way, my… Because I won’t be able to bear it otherwise… and then… well… I won’t be able to concentrate on any music or anything. And if I can’t concentrate, then something… bad, something quite bad might… well…’
Iona stood up and used her cardigan to wipe her eyes. ‘And… Myra?’
‘That’s nothing to do with this… or us. Nothing to do with anything to do with us.’
‘Is she downstairs?’
John appeared found out. As if he’d brought his new girlfriend into his parents’ house, knowing she would not be welcome.
‘She’s waiting for me in the car. She doesn’t know anything about what we’re saying.’ John appeared calm. As if he were trying to conclude the deal and appeal to Iona. ‘But she… Myra is nothing… “nothing”… what I… nothing. Compared… I mean… I don’t mean… I didn’t mean to say that at all. Not “nothing”; what I mean is… Myra is an independent person. She’s nothing to do with this… “us”… I…’ he paused. ‘She’s special… like all humans… but compared to you…’ He paused again. ‘That’s really bad. Sorry…’
‘What do you want me to do?’
John looked at his wife one more time. Stared at her, realising it might be the last. Iona had asked him not to come this afternoon. And now yet another bad thing was part of their history.
Suddenly, the beautiful Danish model, most desirable of females, covered her eyes with both hands and let out a shocking, almost deathly wail, a ‘last breath’ kind of sound that seemed to encompass all of the pain that she had been caused by this cold inhuman man in a few very short minutes. And all of the pain, that she had brought upon him. Iona continued to wail and howl and squeal as if in uncontrollable terror, attempting to cry and to stay vertical at the same time. Looking as if she were about to pass out, she placed her hands on the chair to steady herself and then lifted up her cardigan and vomited small bits of sick and phlegm into it.
John took one last look at the apartment, the three-deck audio system still taking up most of one side of the large reception room, three televisions side by side – BBC1, BBC2, ITV – on the other. The Kasbah-style decor, canvas mats, embroideries and endless knick-knacks that comforted Iona and made her feel at home. Every corner and cranny filled with canna plants.
He dragged his hair away from his eyes, wiped tears using the back of his hand, wiped his nose, ignored Iona. Picked up his car keys, took a deep, deep breath, turned around and walked out. No kiss, no smile. Not even a look. John made his way down to the car, his new partner waiting patiently there. He had no intention of trying to explain to Myra what had just happened to a previous, incredibly famous, perfectly matched, absolute couple. Myra didn’t ask. She guessed what had taken place, having been through it herself, though in a much more sanitised way, by telephone to her displaced husband. Myra took John’s hand and kissed the back of it in a tender, most unusually (for her) understanding way. John wiped his eyes again, gave Myra a kind of apologetic, side-on smile and put his foot down hard.
Two hours later, in perfect driving conditions, John turned over the XJS while taking a bend on the B3396, the Plymouth road to Truro. He was travelling much faster than he should have been when the Jaguar hit a bank, swivelling round onto an oncoming articulated vehicle that buckled up on itself, flipped over and came to rest on its side, straddling the entire width of the small carriageway. John and Myra’s car lifted up and rolled across the verge, both passengers being shaken like jelly before being compressed inside it.
John sustained two broken legs, a broken collarbone and injuries to his head and chest. When they found him, the steering wheel was embedded in his shoulder; his back was holding up the vehicle’s collapsed roof. It took two hours to slowly cut him free. He was then taken to Taunton General Hospital, where he remained for the next four months. The driver of the lorry died the following day after several operations to remove lengths of steel from his neck and chest. Myra’s head had been forced through the re-enforced windscreen. She was killed instantly.
NBC News: The Midnight Report with Dan Glubner. 12 November 1971: The News Today
Stars of stage and screen were in attendance in Beverly Hills today at the funeral of Rachel Myra Knoll, heiress to the Knoll electricity fortune. Miss Knoll was the daughter of power magnate Bill Knoll and his wife, Isola. A successful film producer in her own right, Ms Knoll died when the car in which she was a passenger was involved in a fatal accident when it spun off a small road in England. Her companion, rock singer John Nightly, who was driving the car at the time, escaped unhurt. The Knoll family have begun legal proceedings against Mr Nightly, who, it is claimed, may have been under the influence of illegal substances at the time the tragedy occurred. Mr Nightly did not attend the funeral.
Trewin Farm, Porthcreek, Carn Point, Cornwall. Harvest Sunday 2006.
‘I like everything to be nice and clean. That’s all I ask. Everything to be clean – then I’m happy.’ Endy rinsed her dishcloth, ‘Happy as a sand boy, I am. Shipshape… like my father used to say.’ She looked up, ready to answer a non-existent question in the empty early morning silence. ‘Why did he say it? Because he was on a ship, I should think.’
What the housekeeper was saying made a lot of sense, as usual. It was good to have everything shipshape. Alexandre appeared puzzled by her ladyship talking to herself as he loped to the sink to angle his head towards her while Endy bent over the washbasin and applied her favourite cream cleaner to the already sparkling enamel.
‘Did I tell you that when I was a little girl they used to call me Thomasine?’
Mawg looked wary, no doubt fearing a further assault.
‘Don’t think you did, Endy…’ the kid muttered, resigning himself to at least ten minutes’ worth, as he balanced the full weight of his body on the back legs of his chair. ‘Why was that, then?’
‘Well…’ The housekeeper was delighted to be asked. ‘It was because I was… considered to be a bit… “bolshie” in my younger days, or whatever they call it these days.’ Endy lifted Alexandre’s front legs down from the washer. ‘C’mon, boy, there’s nothing for you in there. They thought I was a bit like Thomasine, you see.’
Both Mawg and Alexandre appeared flummoxed. Endy smiled her most excited smile and turned towards them.
‘Thomasine! Thomasine Bonaventura!’
The kid copped a mouthful of Joosi Juice. ‘Great name for a band!’
RCN wandered in, needing to get to the basin quickly to wash paraffin from his hands. Endy rambled on.
‘Oh, she was very famous, Thomasine… The shepherd girl who became Lord Mayor of London. Came from Week St Mary.’
‘What?’
‘Week… Week St Mary… up near Trigg.’ Endy picked up the dishcloth again and worked it over her shrivelled fingers. ‘Little Thomasine was toiling in the fields one morning when a grand gentleman, a really grand one, on a horse…’ The narrator mimicked holding the reins of the grand gentleman’s horse… ‘Noticed her and… well, he was dazzled by her. Completely taken over… by her beauty, I suppose. Liked the way she looked, you see. He wanted to…’
‘We get it, Endy…’
‘Anyway…’ Endy let go the reins and picked up leaves of eucalyptus blown into the kitchen by the wind. ‘He took Thomasine off back to London with him then after he died she became the mayor – or mayoress, I should say. Lady Mayoress of London… Lady Percyval.’
‘He kidnapped her?’ RCN liked to tease the committed washer-upper.
/> ‘“Kidnapped”…? No, not kidnapped. This was a very grand gentleman.’
‘What’s the place again?’ Mawg was polite enough to at least pretend to be listening. ‘Weak… what did you say?’
‘Week St Mary, Mawgan. W-E-E-K. Up near Trigg, on the north coast. Everybody knows Week St Mary!’ The housekeeper spoke emphatically, slightly rattled at the lack of local knowledge. ‘Week: “dairy-farm”, St Mary: eh… well, “St Mary”. Everywhere round here’s to do with saints. They had the first Free School in Cornwall there, the Spring School – which Thomasine, Lady Percyval, paid for.’ Endy paused for breath. ‘Anyway… that’s why they called me that…’
RCN couldn’t resist spoiling her fun.
‘Thought you said you used to be called a lot of… “nasty” things at school, and that was how you got your name?’ He went to the sink and picked up one of several small offcuts of soap. The housekeeper seemed flustered.
‘Ah, well… that’s right… but… but that was at my junior school, in Quethiock.’ She straightened herself up. ‘I’m talking about my other school now – before I went into service…’ RCN turned on the cold tap and began to swill his hands.
‘So you actually had… quite a bit of schooling then? I was under the… impression you’d hardly had any schooling at all.’
Endy turned off the water for him, passed RCN a towel, took a J-cloth out of its box and wiped the rim of the sink. She turned to the kid.
‘Shall you… want me to make you a packed lunch tomorrow, Mawgan? I’ll be up with the birds… so I can make you a nice sandwich. And a nice bit of cake… if you want me to…’
If spring is the season of hope, the kindest season, then autumn is certainly the cruellest. It’s the season of no hope. The season of suicide. The ‘wolf months’ of the year.
Though most prominent ’60s ’makers were still in the spring of their years by the mid-to late ’70s, many had already given up, having realised that the scene as they had known it – the one they had helped create – had treated them in an extremely fickle way.