Chapel Street was very elegant, with Louis Cinque rococo furniture covered with silk Regency stripes. The wallpaper was pale yellow. It was all tasteful and comfortable. Even the bedroom—where one would perhaps expect at least a little sybaritic décor—was restrained. There was a huge Napoleon bed, covered with a satin quilt. It was comfortable. I’d sat on it many times, talking to Brian when he was feeling “unwell.”
When Paul met Linda for the second time, the attraction he had felt for her was reinforced. Her blond hair was clean and shiny, her clothes simple and American “preppy.” More, her gaze was direct, her smile sincere. She seemed to have a way that made everyone feel special, quite different from most of the Fleet Street stiffos there, who never looked at you when they spoke. Their eyes always raked the room beyond, as if convinced they were about to miss a scoop.
Standing to one side with my drink and quietly observing, I noticed that Linda would lean forward and really listen. I saw how Paul liked her unpretentiousness. He seemed to me to be relaxed when talking to Linda in a way that he often wasn’t with new people. He asked her for a date, but she said, “No, I have to return to New York.”
“Oh,” Paul said. “Well, another time, then.”
“Sure, I’d like that,” she said. I thought that only a girl who was well brought up and assured would turn down a Beatle. Most girls would have torn up their tickets and declared they could stay indefinitely.
She managed to get one of the most widely used shots of the evening, a relaxed pose of the Beatles just being themselves, laughing. Paul and John were shaking hands and John had his thumbs up as if saying, “Hey, ignore the rumors, we really are best mates.”
Sgt. Pepper went to the top of the U.K. charts and went gold in the U.S. on the first day of release. Two weeks later, Jane flew back from the Old Vic’s American tour. She wasn’t too pleased by the state of the house, but she and Paul drifted back into their old habits, of Jane working hard and both of them going out on the town to clubs and opening nights, a fabled young couple.
Just after Sgt. Pepper came out, Jimi and Chas had dropped into the offices to discuss the Saville booking. I handed them a copy of the album. Jimi gazed at the cover silently, absorbing the multihued detail. I thought he’d gone into a trance. He put the record under his arm and left with it. Three days later, when he opened at the Saville again, Paul and I were there, hovering about backstage. Paul had considered Jimi the greatest guitarist in the world ever since hearing him perform at the Bag O’Nails and made a point of coming to see the show. We watched as Jimi walked on stage. Strobe lights flashed and liquid wheels bathed the whole place acid pinks and purples. And then, Jimi launched into a virtuoso medley from Sgt. Pepper, starting with the little track riff. I couldn’t believe it. He must have done nothing else for three days but listen to the album.
Before Jimi got to the lyrics, Paul exclaimed, beaming, “Hey man, he’s playing Sgt. Pepper!” He just stood there and absorbed Jimi’s performance while the audience went wild. After it was over, Paul looked at me. “Tony, that was great. The album was released Thursday, it’s now Sunday, and Jimi’s already got it down.” All I could do was nod in agreement, also amazed. Jimi Hendrix was that quick, and that good.
After the gigs at the Saville, he returned to the States to play the Monterey festival. Paul had made it a point to tell Derek Taylor, who was working over there putting the festival together, about Jimi’s brilliance. At Monterey, the Who and Jimi were sort of the British contingent. Of course, this kind of cycle of events does not, and cannot, happen now. The circuit and system is gone. A performer like Jimi Hendrix being discovered and taken up by a manager-promoter type like Chas Chandler doesn’t happen anymore. Now, all we’ve really got is the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, and to play there you’re already big, already able to sell out the place. But back in those days, musicians played small venues around London, Liverpool or Manchester. Bands would get the obligatory Bedford van, or later a Transit, and literally schlep from gig to gig until they got to the Marquee in Wardour Street. But then, those musicians were good. Or they’d better be if they wanted to last. It always sounds old-fartish to say “It’s all gone, it’s all changed,” but the standard is so poor now that most artists and bands today couldn’t come up through pure talent and a gig circuit.
18
So much was going on that spring and summer of 1967 that events blurred. At this point there was so little space at NEMS, all three floors being overcrowded with people like Stiggie and the burgeoning staff who ran the huge worldwide talent booking and promotions empire, that Brian got me and Vyvienne Moynihan our own little video and film offices at 3 Cork Street. Vyvienne had been a producer at ATV until Brian hired her. We had an efficient secretary, Angela Gatti, whose family owned the Vaudeville Theater and we were quite cozy away from the fishbowl, thankfully left alone to get on with our work.
I saw a great deal of Queenie and Harry, who used to come down from Liverpool to attend Brian’s galas, like proud parents might go to their kid’s sports day at school. Brian had retrenched more and more until he very rarely went in to NEMS—or even the “secret” offices he set up in Hille House, Stafford Street, with custom-built desks for himself and Peter Brown. The furniture was all black leather and gleaming cherry wood and enormously expensive. There was a fitted black carpet, Anglepoise lamps and modern artwork. From Eames, a leading contemporary designer, Brian ordered a black leather and cherrywood chair for himself, with a matching curved footrest, where he would sometimes sit when he wanted to think. Mostly, he was so filled with speed that he couldn’t sit still for long.
He commuted almost daily between the Priory, which he hated, but which made him feel secure, and his house, where his secretary, Joanne, and his PA, Wendy Hanson, had a small office, and I whizzed between everyone, from Chapel Street, NEMS and the Beatles. There was so much showbiz going on at the time, I was constantly on the move, taking care of things, reporting back to Brian when he was available, doing what needed to be done when I couldn’t reach him, or when he threw up his hands and couldn’t take in what I was telling him.
And there was a lot happening that needed taking care of, with or without Brian. Cilla was still doing a three-month residency at the Savoy Hotel. Brian had ensured that it was a huge affair, very cabaret, very glam. I was at Abbey Road during the day and toddled off to the Savoy at night. Gerry Marsden was doing a musical at a theater in the Strand. NEMS had expanded into Nemperor, to take in General Artists Corporation, and through them we booked the Who and the Bee Gees and Donovan. Jimi Hendrix and Andy Williams were over from America.
Fuelled by drugs, a sense of love and peace was sweeping the world. A “Legalize Pot Rally and Smoke-In” was held at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park; Ravi Shankar set up a sitar school in San Francisco; and the mood against the Vietnam War rumbled in intensity, with droves of conscripts fleeing from America, mostly to Europe. In our immediate circle, the most unlikely people were taking acid, including one or two of the desk jockeys at NEMS, who the Beatles disparagingly referred to as “the Suits,” as well as the odd banker, accountant and record company executive, as well as, remarkably, David Jacobs—our very Establishment London solicitor.
By his own admission, Brian’s assistant, Peter Brown, had given Brian his first tablet. Peter was a chubby man with thinning dark hair, close to Brian in interests as well as in age, though he looked older. He was always formally dressed, even at the height of flower power. He had managed one of the NEMS record shops in Liverpool before Brian brought him down to London within the last couple of years to help with the mountain of paperwork. His main role became fixer to the Beatles, to do whatever they wanted, particularly on the management side.
Brian’s house at Kingsley Hill was very Lutyens, with a lovely Edwardian garden. He loved to show it off in spring and summer when it was looking its best. In May, he threw quite a lavish garden party to celebrate the launch of three new companies, two of which belonged to the Beatles
and were incorporated for tax purposes: Apple Music and The Beatles & Company, which made them a legal partnership for ten years. The third company was Nemperor Inc. set up in the U.S. in partnership with Nat Weiss. Brian invited Nat and his wife to the party and flew them over. He also provided Derek Taylor, ghostwriter of Brian’s memoirs, with first-class tickets from Los Angeles. Derek had left his employment some time ago and set himself up as a successful Hollywood music publicist, with clients like the Byrds and the Monterey Rock Festival. Brian had bumped into him in Beverly Hills when he was on the Beatles’ last American tour. They talked a little, then Brian whipped out his checkbook and wrote a check for one thousand pounds which he handed to Derek. “Here,” he said. “You weren’t paid enough to do my book.”
On their arrival at Heathrow, Derek and his wife, Joan, were amazed to see John, Cynthia, George and Pattie waiting for them, waving gaily colored balloons. They looked incredible, dressed in rainbow silks and velvets, silver bells and bows, made and designed by The Fool, who were also in the carnival party. Apart from Paul, who didn’t go, carloads of people drove down to Sussex, most of them tripping and dazed. Heightening the party mood were more brightly colored balloons that Brian had gotten his staff to tie at every crossroads along the quiet country lanes leading to Brian’s house from the main London road.
John and friends floated in on his gaudy yellow Rolls, through bucolic country lanes adrift with clouds of May blossoms, as if in a magic pumpkin on the way to the ball. This gypsy car had so outraged a tweedy old lady when she saw it on its first outing that she had stepped into the traffic as it cruised down Piccadilly and whacked it with her umbrella, shouting, “You swine! How dare you do this to a Rolls Royce!” Naturally, John was delighted and repeated the story everywhere he went.
Since the time that Cyn had had a really bad trip shortly after coming to London, she’d refused to take drugs, but on that drive to Brian’s party, she took a tab in an effort to get closer to John and not be seen as so square, something he regularly accused her of being. Her instincts told her that if she didn’t do something to rekindle the embers of John’s love for her, she would lose him. For a she-wolf garbed in black had descended on her quiet fold, ready to gobble them up and Cynthia admitted that she was scared.
Yoko had finally infiltrated their private family stronghold at Kenwood, though Cynthia told very few people because she wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. She only knew that something about the intense, silent Japanese woman made her feel very uncomfortable. Cynthia’s mum, Mrs. Powell, was under no doubt that Yoko was a force to reckon with and was quite vocal.
The first time Yoko came, she arrived uninvited, saying she had an appointment with John, a ploy many fans used. Cynthia didn’t know her. John, whom Yoko claimed to know, wasn’t around, so she wasn’t asked in. When Cynthia glanced out of a window, she saw Yoko standing at the end of the drive on the side of the private road that wound past to other properties on the exclusive estate. She gazed steadfastly at the house, as if willing the gates to swing open and admit her. Hours later, Cynthia looked again, and Yoko was still there—Cynthia said, waiting for John to return. Eventually, as darkness fell, she disappeared. That was the thing about Yoko: she would appear from nowhere and then disappear.
When John did come home, Cynthia mentioned it, and John shrugged. “She’s nuts,” he said. Mrs. Powell, who always retired to her nearby bungalow before John got in, doubtless would have agreed. As the months passed John would say to me he wished Yoko would leave him alone.
The strange visitations to Kenwood continued in all weathers. Occasionally, when John was there, he might see Yoko’s distant figure standing like a dark pillar of salt, and he would make sarcastic comments. He told Cynthia to ignore her. One cold day rain fell for hours. Taking pity on this forlorn creature who had become almost a fixture, Mrs. Powell let Yoko in to use the telephone to call a taxi to take her to the station. Yoko looked long and avidly about her, used the downstairs cloakroom, and left to wait for the taxi by the gate. Later, Mrs. Powell noticed that Yoko had left her ring in the cloakroom. “I think she’ll be back,” she said cryptically.
Then the letters and cards addressed to John started arriving through the mail on a daily basis, mysterious little notes with minuscule black drawings or incomprehensible one-liners. John would either say they were stupid, or look at them silently, then throw them away. Cynthia was too nervous to throw them away herself, but her mother had no such scruples. “Mark my words, that woman is dangerously stubborn,” she said. If the word “stalker” had been in common usage then, no doubt she would have used it. When a box arrived addressed to John in Yoko’s unmistakable handwriting, Mrs. Powell ripped it open. She and Cynthia were alarmed to find a broken white cup smeared with red paint inside a box of Kotex. The imagery and message seemed clear to Mrs. Powell, but according to Cynthia, she was too panic-stricken at the implications to accept it. It was like black magic.
John of course mentioned all this whenever he complained about Yoko’s more outrageous activities, but I often wondered if he secretly relished her bizarre behavior. There is no doubt that John had a tendency for trouble.
I always thought that Cynthia was delightful. She was pretty, shy and well behaved, but if someone had told me that her mother had been a white rabbit and her father an ostrich, I would have believed it because she carried both those traits. Unfortunately, they were traits that infuriated John. He wanted some snap, crackle and pop.
Perhaps all these things were in Cynthia’s mind when she took that tablet of LSD on the way to Brian’s country party, but it made her feel ill. She stumbled into one of the guest bedrooms, opened the window for fresh air and looked down at everyone laughing on the lawn. She told Joanne Newfield that she wanted to fly out, fly above them, fly away to happiness. Instead, she got onto the bed and lay down for several hours until she felt better. Joanne, who had also taken some acid, later stumbled into the same room and threw up in a pair of Nat Weiss’s shoes.
The Stones and the scene’s new drugs guru, Robert Fraser, a heroin addict, had also been at Brian’s party. Within a month, they were in court after a drug bust, when the police were tipped off by the News of the World, a sleazy newspaper that was planning a big series of exposés on the London scene. The Drug Squad raided Redlands, Keith Richards’ home in West Wittering, which was very close to Kingsley Hill. They hit the jackpot. Marianne Faithful was found stoned and blissfully naked lying beneath a fur rug (she said she’d just had a bath) and while Mick and the rest of the party sat by, Robert Fraser—a former King’s African Rifles Officer and son of a wealthy banker—fled through the garden. He was nabbed in a classic rugby tackle and found to have lots of heroin on him. The police ignored a large silver briefcase stuffed with drugs, owned by David “Acid King” Schneiderman, reinforcing a generally held opinion that he was the informer. Instead, the police took away suntan lotion and freebie bars of soap from hotels—collected during the Stones’ tours—for forensic testing, but they also ignored a large cache of cocaine, simply because they hadn’t seen cocaine before and didn’t know what it was.
Mick had four amphetamine tablets, obtained perfectly legally in Italy, but they arrested him anyway, along with Robert Fraser and Keith Richards. Keith was charged for allowing his premises to be used. While the three of them were appearing in court (they were bailed to stand trial) the police raided Brian Jones’ flat in London, where they found some pot. In a newspaper interview, the Drug Squad commented that they had three of the Rolling Stones “in the bag” and said that more raids would be conducted in their war against drugs.
During a glorious June in England the Beatles had agreed that the Yellow Submarine would be their third and last film for United Artists, and in California, the historic music festival was put together at Monterey, changing the shape of the way music was presented forever. Among an iconic cast of performers, it was notable for launching the careers of Janis Joplin, with Big Brother & the Holding Co
mpany, and of course, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, fresh from the Saville. Ravi Shankar, who was to so influence George, also gave his first major concert in the West. The Byrds and Gram Parsons gave momentous performances.
At the end of the month, the Stones’ drug trial came up. Robert Fraser pleaded guilty and got six months. We didn’t believe it when we heard that Mick and Keith, who had pleaded not guilty, were respectively sentenced to three months and one year of hard labor. Outraged, the Sunday Times published its famously impassioned article by the editor, William Rees-Mogg, entitled, “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?” In solidarity, the liberal and creative community rallied in support and paid for a full-page advertisement published in the Times. This was signed by a long list of sixty-five prominent names, including scientists, literary novelists, broadcasters, critics, Brian Epstein and the Beatles. Thinking he was helping, Paul admitted during a BBC interview that he had been on four acid trips. This admission created an international furor and the media went to town. Paul was splashed across the front pages of the papers, including London’s Evening Standard. Many people in our circle had used acid, but Paul had forgotten how puritanical mainstream Britain could be. Brian made a futile attempt to calm things down, but made matters worse by holding a press conference, where he blew it by saying that he had taken acid and saw nothing wrong with it.
Oh dear! We discussed the faux pas around the office. Brian was at a loss which way to jump now. Whether to vigorously defend Paul and risk the total wrath of a staid citizenship or try and maintain what was called a LP (low profile, man) and hope it would go away soon.
“What do you think, Tony?” Brian asked, “Should we campaign?”
I said, “I think we should keep our heads down and let it blow over.”
Mick and Keith got off on appeal, but Robert spent the Summer of Love in Wormwood Scrubs, where a succession of celebrity visitors arrived in their Rolls, Bentleys and Aston Martins to console him. Come back soon, they said, we miss your parties, we miss your gallery openings, we miss the fun you bring to our lives. In retrospect Marianne said he was “the nervous system of the sixties,” and Yoko would say that he was “the driving force of the European avant-garde scene in the art world.” Ho hum, we all sighed, knowing Robert’s opinion of her.
Magical Mystery Tours Page 27
