* * *
Our presence is requested in the office at 2 p.m. on August 13. And here we sit, splayed on the couches in the big room, young lords enjoying the freedom of their new manor, eyeing Mandy and a couple of other secretarial tartlets as they scour the music papers and clip out articles about the Groundhogs, Black Sabbath, and all the rest of our talented stablemates. Then we pick up the clippings and mock every syllable.
We point out the curious blue vein running down the left side of the Groundhogs’ Tony McPhee’s never-ending forehead and decide that it would be staggeringly funny to refer to him from now on as Tony McVein. We pass around the photo from Record Mirror of the long-fringed white leather vest worn by the chubby Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne. It looks like something Martha or a Vandella would wear on an outing to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The wisecracks are instantly papered over and the smiles wiped off our faces—replaced by frozen, dumbstruck expressions—when the big doors open and in from the outside world walks Ken Mewis, looking sharp and talking sharper. But that’s not what shuts us up. Behind Ken is none other than the great man himself, our unattainable ideal of a manager, the Svengali who practically invented and definitely sassed-up the Rolling Stones—our hero, the sainted Andrew Loog Oldham, in the flesh.
We are introduced, which to us is a mildly religious experience. Oldham says he’s just been listening to the tapes with Ken and he likes what he’s heard. Bloody hell.
He reminds me of Ken, actually. They could be brothers or maybe sisters. The Oldham and Mewis show is quite something, too. They seem not just related but rather members of some alien species who communicate in fey gestures and witty camp chatter. They laugh at each other’s comments, collapsing damply into each other’s shoulders and hanging on to a lapel as though they would otherwise fall flat on the floor. Perhaps they would. The pubs have been open for hours.
Both of them try to outdo each other, spouting quadruple entendres replete with flouncing wrists and madly gesticulating fingers daintily clamping half-smoked cigarettes that they use as exclamation points. They are like a pair of dotty maiden aunts left too long alone in the garden on a hot Sunday afternoon with a bottle of cooking sherry. They are absolutely great.
Ken hands over a little brown envelope containing fifty quid, and in addition gives me a copy of The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess. Suggests I have a glance at it.
As we are leaving, Andrew Loog Oldham says to us, “Your music’s good, really good. If you don’t make it, don’t worry. The music will still sound great five years from now.” Then he walks away.
Casino and I look at each other. What did he say? Five years from now? Five years from now we’ll be on our fifth album! Five years from now we’ll be suing each other in court or, best-case scenario, be dead. What is he talking about? Not make it? Five years. The great man has obviously lost the plot.*
* * *
Lou’s birthday—he is twenty. We receive, by special delivery, the acetate from the Gooseberry session. The package also contains a note from Ken saying that Mandy and the tartlets have been given the task of finding a suitable flat for us so we can exit the squalor of the squat.
Three reasons to celebrate as life just keeps getting better and better. We crank up the music box to ear-bursting decibels and play the acetate deep into the wee hours.
Casino shows up at the squat with even more good news. He’s heard from the Musicians’ Union and they say that, on the basis of the letter I wrote yonks ago, he can stay and work in the United Kingdom. He even brings me a gift in appreciation, a book by Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom. I remember those eight pages I anguished over, rewriting them four times, and, finally, the late-night walk to the postbox in Bushey. They probably just got worn out reading it. Who cares? It worked.
To celebrate, pockets all a-jingle with Worldwide Artists’ cash, it’s off to the Markham Arms in Chelsea for a baker’s dozen of pints and perhaps the odd whiskey.
Afterward, out on the quiet streets of Chelsea, Lou and Brady get a bit rambunctious. They’re just revved up—we’re signing contracts tomorrow—but reprehensible behavior, nonetheless.
The office sends Casino and me a “standard” contract to look over, and we repair to the French House pub in Soho to do so. The contract weighs a pound and is as thick as a Vogue magazine. We order a pint each, sit at a corner table, and start flicking through the pages. It might as well be written in Korean.
We understand nothing.
A scruffy old chap at the bar sends us a round of drinks. Thanks, mister. We find out later that he is Francis Bacon, a painter of some renown. We find out later still, from the barman, that Mr. Bacon brushes his teeth with Vim.
That’s nothing, mate. I clean my balls with Dettol.
* * *
It’s August 22, 1973, contract-signing day. We sit at a huge table covered with pages and pages of documents, which Ken and Wilf and some other mysterious somebody in a suit keep shuffling around from Brat to Brat. We all sign our names dozens of times without reading so much as one word on any of the pages. Joviality is being kept to a maximum by all and sundry of the Worldwide Artists/Gladglen employees, and somewhere not too far off champagne corks pop in quick succession, exciting much girly giggling from Mandy & Co.
A blizzard of papers. Sign here, initial this, in triplicate please, there we go. What is it? Oh, don’t worry, just a formality, it’s a standard contract, completely standard, no tricks, ha, ha, ha. Lawyer? What would you need a lawyer for? We’ve had our lawyers go over these contracts dozens of times. Just sign here, boys. You’re going to be huge, boys, huge.
After signing their names, Lou, Brady, and Mick are whisked away by Mandy to Champagne Town. Casino and I, being writers, are special and we also have to sign publishing contracts. We are introduced to a jovial fellow named Malcolm Forrester, who apparently has a publishing company that goes by the snappy name of Panache, and they too are part of this cheerful, helpful Worldwide Artists/Gladglen gang.
Then Casino and I sign another contract with some company called Hemdale. When we ask they say, “Yeah, it’s Hemdale, films. You know, David Hemmings. Remember him in Blow Up? The Antonioni film? Yeah, that’s it. Sign here.
There is much chuckling and back-slapping as it is explained to us that, in order for them to sign us, they have to adhere to a legal formality and offer us a monetary advance, which for reasons far too complicated to explain they can’t really do. Therefore, in order for the signing to be completed, we will be asked to make a gentleman’s deal to forgo any immediate recompense and accept the token amount of one shilling each.
One shilling? Five pence? Yes, that’s just the way it has to be, but don’t you worry, soon enough you’ll be receiving royalty checks that will make your heads spin. You boys are going to be massive. Let’s get these contracts signed and join the rest of the lads with the bubbly, shall we?
Where do we sign?
XVIII
Two days later comes the blissful news that the company has found us a suitable flat on Bishop’s Road in Fulham Broadway. We’re scheduled to move in four days. Finally, we’re going to blow this doss-hole. Cans of lager are cracked and tipped down our throats as the three of us resolve to spend the evening in the squat congratulating ourselves, playing the acetate endlessly, and getting politely hammered.
This we do for seven straight hours until, at ten o’clock, we decide it would be an excellent idea to jostle around the mirror, slap the makeup on, slip into our finery, and toddle off to the Black Lion on West End Lane for a nightcap. I’m sporting my top hat and walking stick, and the lime-green clogs I inherited from Sonja. Off we go.
It is a warm summer night, lots of people about as we make our way eastward on Mill Lane. The Black Lion, when we arrive, is jammed, with patrons spilling outside and sitting at tables under Cinzano umbrellas or milling about, jabbering. We can’t help but make an entrance
, with Brady uttering loud inanities about the Hollywood Brats, his arms spread wide as the crowd parts to let us through. Not for the first time lately do I wonder where Dr. Brady Jekyll got this personality. There was neither Mr. Hyde nor hair of it a mere ten months ago in a bedroom in Bushey. The timid, quiet little Irish wallflower has metamorphosed into quite the obnoxious, lippy piece of work. You get what you ask for, I suppose.
One junior office boy makes a drunken move toward Brady, until I poke my walking stick up around the knot of his tie and he comes to a surprised halt, waving his pint, pointing at me, and spouting some common-or-garden vitriol. We leave them muttering outside and enter the pub proper.
Inside, we are received in much the same manner. Brady continues going for the Mr. Congeniality award, talking loudly to people who look like they want to kill him, telling them how great the Hollywood Brats are, charming none and sundry. One pint later and the barman refuses to serve us any more, and as the crowd don’t seem overly enamored with us I suggest to my two cohorts that it might be time to exit.
Lou needs no persuasion—he’s all for it. Brady protests, saying he’s got three-quarters of a pint left. Nonetheless, he follows us, pint in hand, out the door. The crowd parts, the jeering starts, we haven’t broken any hearts. Dickheads take swipes at my topper, somebody spits, women are swearing like fishwives. All in all, quite a nice outing.
Somehow, we make it through to the curb on West End Lane, at which point the mob seems content to let us leave with just a bit more baying and howling. Fair deal, I say.
Alas, Brady is not of the same mind. He chooses this exact moment to hurl his three-quarters-full pint glass in a high backward arc over his shoulder. It smashes dead center among the crowd outside the Black Lion.
Well, we don’t need to hang around to see how this is received. We leg it up West End Lane, turn left on Mill Lane, and run until we can run no more. We stop, gasping for breath and looking fearfully back for signs of pursuit. Thankfully, all appears peaceful, so we continue our way slumward, breathing heavily and castigating Brady for his psychopathic behavior.
Lou and I can only castigate for so long, however, before dissolving into laughter at his rare brand of insanity. What a complete nutter. We laugh some more, increasingly so, until we are actually bending over at the waist, laughing hysterically.
In fact, we are laughing so hysterically that we don’t even notice the mob that has caught up with us until it is too late. We are surrounded on the corner of Mill Lane and Narcissus Road. Now there’s poetic justice for you, or irony, or some bloody unpleasant thing. There are at least twenty-five of them, not to mention three carloads of extras, just in case they need them. And this rabble do not seem to be amused. They want justice, and not the sort delivered by police and courts and such. And none of this poetic rubbish just mentioned, either. They seem to be unquestionably leaning toward the vigilante variety.
They separate the three of us. Brady, though, is the villain that commands their most vigorous attention. Three thugs have him bent backward over a hedge, and while two of them bravely hold him down, the other courageous fellow cocks and lands a vicious fist right in Brady’s face. This momentarily distracts the Neanderthals holding us two. They begin yelping encouragement to the puncher. I catch Lou’s eye and he gets it, and we take this split second of inattention to break free and make a mad dash for it. He heads south, down Holmdale Road, and I head north, up Aldred Road.
This breakout briefly confuses our sharp-minded assailants and gives us a few precious seconds’ head start. Have you ever tried running for your life in a top hat and clogs? I wouldn’t advise it.
I find myself on Agamemnon Road, then take a sharp right onto Achilles Road. Behind me, I can hear yelling, the grinding of a gear stick in the palm of an idiot, and the loud revving of a car’s engine. I leap over a stone wall into somebody’s garden and crouch with my back pressed against the rough stones, trying to stifle my loud breathing. Summoning a thimbleful of nerve, I peek through a small gap and see about six hod carriers jump out of a car—a forties Chevy, weirdly—and scout around, trying to find me. After a couple of agonizingly long minutes laced with profanity of a decidedly low order, they climb back in the car and reverse with squealing tires back down Achilles Road. Over the wall I clamber and continue my escape up to Ajax Road, where I dart left onto Ulysses Road.
And what’s with these names, anyway? I’m trapped in the middle of my own personal Greek tragedy maze.
Leaning on a garden gate, I catch my breath and listen for any sound of the Black Lion Bricklaying & Motoring Club. Nothing. So I begin a slow, careful, circuitous—not to mention cowardly—route around the back streets, through hedges and gardens until, finally, I arrive at 11 Mill Lane and scurry in through the front door.
Fifteen anxiety-riddled minutes later, Lou arrives, telling a tale of how he ran through some gardens with a mob in pursuit until, in terrified desperation, he pounded on the door of a house and some Chinese guy came out and immediately went into a karate stance and made some weird barking noises, and the thugs ran away. That cat was apparently fast as lightning. After that, he let Lou in and gave him refuge until the coast was clear. This could only happen to Lou.
A solid hour later, Brady makes it home. He crawls up the stairs. His eyes are swollen shut, he’s got bruises everywhere, and they robbed him of all his money.
One quid.
XIX
After hiding indoors for three days, we go south in the city and up in the world. We move into 26 Bishop’s Road, Fulham Broadway, the ground floor of a house. What a palace. Not a rat in sight, a large front room with fireplace, a large rear room, a kitchen with table and chairs, a bathroom complete with tub, and even a glass conservatory leading to a small garden. We have a telephone and, wonder of wonders, a television.
Within an hour, charming Lou has obtained credit at the shop across the street and comes back with Pepsi, chocolate bars, crisps, and cans of lager.
We have landed in heaven.
Just like the Monkees, the four of us move in together, including Mick, who arrives from Hemel Hempstead and sits on one of the beds for fifteen minutes before sighing, standing up, and saying, “I’ll be right back, lads.”
Ken assigns us a road manager named Louie. He’s a cockney, five foot seven, tops, shoulder-length hair, mustache, Buddy Holly glasses, and a leather trench coat. He’s a bundle of nervous, chain-smoking energy. Ken has previously described him as “an obliging little ferret,” but we like him instantly.
Two days later, the three of us are in the big room at noon watching TV, riveted to a kiddies’ show about the difference between a square and a circle and how to draw them, when Lou says, “Anybody seen Mick?” Only now do we notice that he never came back. Like that chap with Scott of the Antarctic, he just walked off into the night and never returned. Perhaps he thought our rations were running low and that we were almost out of whale oil. It’s strange, anyway.
But we can’t dwell on it because today Louie is taking us shopping. That’s why we got up so early. He picks us up in a van that already contains a Norwegian keyboard player and drives us to Shaftesbury Avenue, home, as previously noted, to the best music shops in the universe. Seems like five minutes ago we were staring in these windows, coveting and drooling. Now, we can’t really believe it but we have been told we can have whatever we want. Imagine that.
The van takes us through Piccadilly, up Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, pulls up outside Sound City, and in we go, the “obliging little ferret” leading the way. As soon as he’s through the door he announces in a loud, cockney, town-crier type way, “Ladies and gentlemen, these are the Hollywood Brats and they are going to spend a lot of money.”
You’d be surprised at how quickly this announcement gets attention and a truly superior brand of service. This happens in every shop; we are treated like royalty.
For a band tha
t has existed for so long balanced on a knife-edge of decrepit instruments and junk gear held together with gaffer’s tape, the sheer wonder of this afternoon cannot be adequately described.
Casino, his little sperm microphones and red-painted two-ton upright confined to the Dark Ages of memory, gets a Fender Rhodes electric piano, a Hammond B3 organ with Leslie speaker, Orange amp and speaker cabinet, and a Yamaha acoustic guitar.
Brady, his face still puffy and a lovely shade of purple from the Black Lion beating, gets a ’68 Gibson Firebird and an invitation to travel by limousine to the Hiwatt factory to custom design his own amp.
Lou selects a set of Gretsch drums with Zildjian cymbals and a year’s supply of sticks.
I content myself with a Gibson J-200 acoustic. In addition, Casino and I each get a tape machine to help us with the writing process.
On top of this, and under the watchful, demanding eye of Louie, technicians buzz around getting us microphones, stands, leads, speakers, and all the rest of the mountain of boring bits and pieces that a band needs to perform at top whack.
At Macari’s, I forlornly search the walls crammed with beautiful expensive guitars. There is no sign of a black Vox teardrop.
That night, after one of the greatest days in the history of Western civilization, we finally head off to the land of Nod, drunk and exhausted. I lie there in my lovely new bed, complete with sheets and pillows, afloat in that mysterious, blissful stratum twixt consciousness and sleep.
Then, against all of my better inclinations, I am struck in the brain by a lightning bolt of pure inspiration. I fall out of bed and grope around in the dark for my brand-new tape machine, purchased for just such a moment. Kneeling there on the carpeted floor, I sing, quietly and hoarsely, into the small microphone for a minute or so, add some slurred spoken instructions, then back to bed. Two seconds later, I’m out cold.
Next day, my birthday, as a matter of fact, I check out the nocturnal recording and it’s not only good, it is in fact quite good and just might be the best thing the Hollywood Brats have got. I have to get this to Casino as soon as possible. I toy with the recording throughout the day, throwing on a couple of guitar chords and a few more lyrics.
Sick On You Page 23