My British Invasion

by Harold Bronson

  It was a period of unrest on campuses across the US, culminating on May 4, when the National Guard killed four students at Kent State University. The next day protestors rampaged throughout the UCLA campus, breaking windows and doors, and trashing offices. Seventy-four people were arrested; numerous were injured. I felt that people should be able to express their views, but taking over a building or disrupting a university seemed immature to me. I couldn’t relate to the behavior, and never participated in a protest march, even though others said it was an easy way to meet girls. At UCLA, similar activities seemed only to deprive the students of the education they would have received had classes not been cancelled, as they intermittently were cancelled, starting on May 5 when Governor Ronald Reagan shut down classes for four days.

  One benefit was I got to see Pink Floyd play. On Wednesday afternoon, May 6, the band gave a free concert, performing on the outdoor proscenium of the Women’s Gym. At that point in their career, Pink Floyd were a few years away from becoming megastars. As the members of the band were not dynamic performers, they relied on complementary visuals. In the early days it was a liquid light show. In a few years it would be lasers. So, Pink Floyd recreating the meandering music from their most recent album, Ummagumma, on a balmy, spring afternoon sans the impact of the visual show in a darkened hall and their new 360-degree sound system, didn’t cut it for me. Or maybe it’s because Susan wasn’t there.

  On Saturday Susan and I attended a concert at the Long Beach Arena: Sly and the Family Stone with Mountain opening. I was apprehensive as Sly was getting a reputation for showing up late for performances, and sometimes not appearing at all. The evening didn’t start well. Mountain, a Cream-like power trio who were mounting the charts with “Mississippi Queen,” were too loud. Sly and the Family Stone took the stage late. Sly kept fumbling the lyrics and he experienced problems with his guitar, but the band was solid and played the hits well. It was an exciting show. We stood on our fold-up chairs, launched our arms into the air and joined Sly and the band in shouting “Higher!” We held hands. Susan’s fingers were thin, with short nails, and light calluses on the fingertips. I thought it was cool that she was digging for fossils in the La Brea Tar Pits as part of her anthropology studies.

  Susan and I saw a lot of each other. After most dates we would make out in my car. We went to a press screening of Myra Breckinridge at the Egyptian Theater. Afterward, we sipped drinks in the courtyard. Susan dressed up that night and wore a stylish hippie dress with a revealing halter-top. She wanted to see the movie Anne of the Thousand Days, which was playing at the Loew’s Beverly Theater. I wasn’t keen on the old English period of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, but I was happy in my aisle seat sitting next to her.

  A couple of my high school friends were first-year tenants at La Mancha, which offered upscale student housing, even though construction hadn’t been completed. We joined them and their girlfriends for a showing of The Graduate in the recreation room. (The owners of La Mancha sold out a few years later and the building became a retirement hotel for senior citizens. It changed again, to a regular hotel, the Westwood Marquis, and more recently the chic “W.”)

  On Friday, May 22, we went to a concert at the Anaheim Convention Center. The Guess Who, a Canadian band riding high on the charts with “American Woman” and “No Sugar Tonight,” headlined over Crabby Appleton and funk band Ballin’ Jack. I enjoyed hearing the hits. Although “These Eyes,” “Laughing,” and “Undun” were more like broken love songs, Burton Cummings sang with such a warm voice, they conveyed romance to me that night.

  We finally managed to break bread, or at least bagels. I wanted to try the food at the newest restaurant in Westwood Village, the Hip Bagel. Having a hamburger on the harder-than-a-bun bagel didn’t work for me.

  I half-heartedly asked Susan if she wanted to be my date for the Daily Bruin party on Saturday of the following week. I was surprised when she agreed. “Why would she want to go to a party where she didn’t know anybody?” I thought, “She must really like me.”

  The party took place in Jeff Weber’s parents’ lanai on Sunset Boulevard, near the border of Beverly Hills. I was given “Suzi Q” to sing as a member of the ad hoc Daily Bruin band. It was from The Rolling Stones’ second album and fit my limited range perfectly. I wanted to spiff up my appearance for the party, so I squeezed into my bar mitzvah suit jacket to approach the look of the 1965 Rolling Stones. Unbeknownst to everybody else, I had never sung in public before, and was nervous. Consequently, I failed to fully grasp how much the lyrics expressed how I felt about my Suzi non-Q. I accompanied Jonathan Kellerman on maracas when he sang Ritchie Valens’ “Donna,” but spent most of the evening sitting next to Susan on a settee.

  Driving back to UCLA, she had a strong desire for ice tea, in a can, which was still a new concept. We stopped at Harold’s Liquor on Westwood Boulevard. I welcomed Susan back to the car with a kiss, not realizing that she had a mouthful of cigarette smoke.

  I met her at her apartment. With her dog in tow, we walked to the last day of our psychology class. When we got there, I was shocked to discover that we had to take the final exam. Because so many classes were cancelled, we were under the impression that a final exam wouldn’t be given. The professor qualified it by saying that he wanted to find out what we knew, and that it wasn’t going to count that much. Had I known, I would have studied. I got a “C” in the class. During the school break, Susan went home to Sebastopol.

  When the summer quarter started, I went to Susan’s apartment and was told that she now resided in a fraternity house. During the summer, with far fewer students attending, fraternities rented out their empty rooms. I left a message for Susan, who eventually did get in touch.

  There was an appealing double-bill at the Olympic Drive-In, The Beatles’ new movie, Let It Be, and The Magic Christian, which starred Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers. By enticing Susan into the back seat, I was anticipating an evening of more physical intimacy than we’d had in the past, but she soon fell asleep. I was so bored by Let It Be I nodded off. This was a harbinger of things to come.

  A week or so later, I met her on campus late one day. Sitting on a bench, I expressed how much I liked her, and how I wanted to see more of her. She said that she didn’t feel that way about me. That was the end. Later, I thought that if I hadn’t expressed myself, I would still be able to see her. It was too painful wanting more, but the writing was on the wall.

  That fall quarter, walking to Developmental Sociological Theory in Young Hall, I would pass her walking from her class. The first few times she exchanged my greeting. Subsequently, she made a point of not looking my way. It hurt. She was often accompanied by her now-large dog, and a fellow student. He had a strong jaw, ruddy complexion, and brownish blond hair. He wore kaki shorts and sandals. I could pick him out of a lineup today.

  After a time, I emotionally moved on, and didn’t think much about Susan. A few years later, United Artists Records gave me money to record “Elementary Dr. Watson,” inspired by my relationship with her. Rather than it being about the detective Sherlock Holmes, it was about how clueless I was that there was another suitor. At the time, I asked myself, “How could there be another guy when she was seeing so much of me?” It was the best song I ever wrote. When we made out, her throat emitted a relaxed, two-note “Mmh-uh.” I’m not sure when I adopted it, but I noticed doing it at times to release tension.

  I remember so much of our time together forty-five years ago. I just can’t remember her face.

  Granny Takes a Trip

  “One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

  —From Oscar Wilde, inscribed over the shop’s door

  Nigel Waymouth had recorded two albums as a member of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat in the sixties, but I wanted to meet him less as a former musician than as one of the proprietors of the fashionable sixties boutique Granny Takes a Trip, which I thought might make an
excellent setting for a sixties rock movie. Although most rock movies focus on a male singer, or male members of a rock band, a Granny Takes a Trip movie, set in a fashion boutique, could have strong female (as well as male) characters in Nigel’s partner, the salesgirls, and customers. And, as a movie that takes place primarily in one location, it would suit Rhino Films’ usual low budgets.

  Having heard that Nigel had come to live in Los Angeles, making his living as a fine art painter, I met him in his loft on Spring Street, in what was once considered the financial district of downtown Los Angeles, in a thirteen-story 1919 structure recognized as a historical landmark. Known as the Barclay Bank Building for its primary business, it had fallen into disrepair. Nigel lived in one large room—a former office space rebranded as “an artist’s loft”—with makeshift dividers designating the bedroom and other areas. He was painting a tree on a large canvas. I was impressed with his technique.

  Over lunch at a French bistro a couple of blocks away, Nigel recounted having been a passionate R&B and blues fan. While a student at the London School of Economics—from which he graduated in 1964—he had followed The Rolling Stones from gig to gig. His actress girlfriend, Shelia Cohen, had been obsessed with buying vintage clothes at flea markets, favoring unusual and colorful Victorian and Oriental designs. Nigel had suggested they open a store so she could get rid of the stuff—at a profit. Nigel described her: “Bright blue eyes, hair pulled back or cut short, a ringing laugh, and sharp as a tack.” Third partner John Pearse apprenticed as a tailor and borrowed the £200 it cost to open the shop from his uncle.

  Nigel was familiar with an empty store at the unfashionable end of the King’s Road known informally as The World’s End, after the pub across the street. The Granny part of the shop’s name paid homage to the presumed previous owners of the vintage clothes Shelia had collected, and Trip, to show they were hip, referred to the experience of taking LSD. Earlier, a commercial in which an elderly lady peeled rubber in a Dodge Super Stocker had inspired the Jan and Dean hit “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” with its “Go, Granny, Go” refrain. But the record hadn’t been a hit in Britain, and Nigel & Co.’s whimsical evocation of a grandmother was purely coincidental.

  It’s odd to think that Britain’s hippest boutique was rooted in the arts culture at the dawn of the century, and it wasn’t limited to Shelia’s clothes. Nigel designed the exterior in an Art Nouveau style. Some described the shop’s red and purple interior, with Aubrey Beardsley erotic prints and blowups of vintage risqué French postcards gracing the walls, as evocative of a New Orleans bordello. An ancient gramophone with a large horn speaker was visible inside the entrance, across from an Edwardian peep-show photo machine. (Owing to an exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1966, Beardsley became all the rage. Humble Pie featured a Beardsley illustration on the cover of their debut US LP, and Klaus Voormann was inspired by Beardsley’s line drawings in designing the Beatles’ Revolver cover.)

  The shop seemed more a place to hang out than an efficient business enterprise. Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Bo Diddley, and other soul artists were staples of the Wurlitzer jukebox. The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Velvet Underground played regularly on the hi-fi. There were only two racks for dresses and jackets, and one display for shirts, with male and female apparel intermixed.

  Nigel highlighted the store’s eclectic stock in the first few months: “Henley picnic suits, frock coats, band master’s coats with frogging, ruffle and lacy shirts, and found dresses from Doucet and Paquin in Paris that were made for Princess Esterhazy in the summer of 1914.” Nigel contributed ideas for new apparel. John Pearse was responsible for designing the men’s clothes, Shelia the women’s. Nigel recalled her most notable designs having included “silver mini dresses, moiré satin blazers with exquisite piping, and delicate silk blouses with ribbon trimmings.” Director Michelangelo Antonioni, in pre-production on Blow Up, wandered into Grannys and bought the beaded dress that model Veruschka wore in the movie and on the movie’s iconic poster. Jane Asher, Julie Driscoll, Anita Pallenberg, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, and even Barbra Streisand were among Granny’s more celebrated female customers.

  “The first people to sniff us out were the mixture of Chelsea gays and debutantes,” Nigel said. “Then pop stars started coming after them. One morning we were sitting around cross-legged on the floor, passing a joint around and these two blokes came in. They looked around and said, ‘This is a nice place isn’t it?’ We noticed their accents, looked up and it was John and Paul. They were very sweet and impressed with the shop. They came back all the time.” The Beatles felt comfortable mixing with Granny’s clientele. John Lennon even hawked copies of International Times—the underground newspaper the shop sold—to his fellow customers. The Beatles wore Granny’s apparel in the photo on the back cover of Revolver, as did The Rolling Stones on the front cover of Between the Buttons.

  The William Morris Company had manufactured colorful, swirling floral patterns for use as wallpaper in the 1890s. In the sixties, the company revived the patterns—re-coloring them in psychedelic hues—this time as furnishing fabrics, for upholstery or curtains. As its initial stock of Victorian hand-me-downs became depleted, the Granny’s trio presented a new, more expensive line featuring fabrics from Liberty of London, with William Morris floral patterns. Adding to the cost, Pearse hired the same outworkers who constructed suits for Saville Row tailors. He designed Edwardian-styled jackets that became among Granny’s more popular (and lasting) items, worn by members of The Who, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Hollies, Small Faces, and The Move. Perhaps the most iconic jacket, bought by George Harrison, was made from a Golden Lily pattern. Thanks to Granny and its imitators, furnishing fabric outsold wallpaper at William Morris for the first time.

  Every few months, Nigel redesigned the frontage, later in 1966 with a giant portrait of Native American chiefs Low Dog, followed by one of Kicking Bear. The next year the entire front was painted with a giant pop-art face of Jean Harlow. Sometimes he and his crew worked in the middle of the night, so when people came by the next day it looked like a different place. In 1968 Pearse sacrificed his impaired 1948 Dodge saloon car to create a new exterior. It was cut in half, painted yellow, and bolted to the front to create the illusion that it was driven through the front window.

  Eric Burdon and the Animals did a photo session in front of the shop, as too did The Purple Gang who appropriated the name for an April 1967 single. (Producer Joe Boyd recorded it the day after he produced “Arnold Layne” by Pink Floyd, also customers of Granny’s.) Their photo session was interrupted when Paul McCartney walked into the boutique.

  In 1967 the celebrated novelist Salman Rushdie was a Cambridge University student who occasionally stayed with his university friend Paul Scutt who lived with his mother on the top floor. Because the windows were obscured by the exterior makeover, it was hard to see when one entered. As Rushdie recollected in The New Yorker: “You entered through a heavy bead curtain and were instantly blinded.” Like others, Rushdie felt intimidated by the ambience. On one occasion, he complained of Shelia dismissing his attempt to be sociable by declaring, “Conversation is dead.”

  “She was very engaging and full of lively good humor, but she could be indifferent to people she disliked,” said Nigel. “It was after hours, and Shelia, fat joint fuming away in her hand, was busy showing John Lennon a new batch of shirts. Salman’s untimely interruption with a gauche but cheery, ‘Hello, I thought it was time I should introduce myself’ did not impress the urbane Shelia, who had suspected that Salman’s downstairs’ visit was triggered by his desire to meet the famous Beatle (who had arrived in his iconic painted Rolls Royce).”

  In its fourth year, the partnership began to fray. Shelia, Nigel, and John considered themselves artists, not business entrepreneurs. “We went to a shirt maker to make thirty shirts from our pattern,” Nigel remembered. “When we went to pick them up, we saw a whole stack of copies
. The maker said that the buyer from Cecil Gee liked our shirt and had him make some for him. We were too naïve, too unbusinesslike to challenge him.”

  John wanted to remain focused on generating imaginative designs, and bemoaned the emphasis on hippie stock. He and Nigel argued over updating the facade. John wanted to paint a New York skyline behind the refashioned Dodge. Nigel wanted stars. “We were all dysfunctional and too busy enjoying ourselves,” said Nigel.

  “The shop was never profitable in the sense that we made and kept a lot of money. Famous yes, and quickly. Not long after we opened the shop, Time magazine’s Swinging London article came out. It should always be understood that it was the name not the clothes that brought most people in. There were other shops selling well-designed hip clothes, like Hung on You and Biba, and our clothes were wonderful, too, but it is the name that makes people, even to this day, sit up and be curious.”

  Over time, Nigel and Sheila ceased to be lovers. Having “never intended to be in the rag trade,” Nigel was easily distracted by such outside interests as designing posters and album covers with Michael English as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, and playing in a band of the same name with English and others, including members of Spooky Tooth. “It was [producer] Guy Stevens’ concept to make a record. He was something of a visionary and a romantic and even though we told him that we didn’t know a musical chord between us, he still wanted to turn us into a pop phenomenon. Hapshash had been doing graphic work for him and Island Records and I think Guy loved the idea of being part of my trip.”

  Nigel may have been a highly influential artist, but is no one’s raconteur, and delivered insufficient wonderful anecdotes on which to base a movie. Which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy his reminiscences, which added to my understanding of Swinging London. For instance, he told me about the Baghdad House, a restaurant at 142 Fulham Road in Chelsea, where rock stars including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones dined regularly, not so much for the food, but because one could smoke dope freely in the basement, decorated like an Oriental bazaar, with curtained booths—often while cops chowed down upstairs. Nigel said the owner was rumored to have been hired to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal. His redheaded Scottish girlfriend would belly dance to the accompaniment of oud players.