Johnny Cigarini

by John Cigarini

  I had another experience with a junkie back in London, at around the same time. I went to the Speakeasy to see Leon Russell and his band The Shelter People. I was familiar with, but had never met, the two back-up singers, Claudia Lennear and Kathi McDonald. They had both been Ikettes in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, which I had seen many times. I got off with Kathi and we went back to her hotel room. After making love, she asked me to hold her tourniquet while she shot up. I had never seen anything like it before. If the sixties sex perversions were about liberation and expression, the seventies were depression and, I suppose, self-harm. Heroin: I have never and will never touch the stuff. I’m currently reading the book Shantaram, in which heroin is referred to as “the everything-and-nothing drug: it takes everything and gives you nothing in return”. Kathi was sharing a room with Claudia Lennear. By then, Claudia had returned to the room and Kathi had passed out. Claudia was lying down and I was trying to persuade her to allow me to cross the room to her bed. Unfortunately, she was waiting for a phone call from the drummer, the legendary Jim Keltner, who was down in the bar. She had the hots for him, and not for me. It seemed to be a recurring story – not being unlucky, of course, but being shunned for someone who could play a cool instrument… as opposed to the piano accordion.

  *

  In 1973, I met Pink Floyd at the Rainbow Bar and Grill. They were there every night after rehearsals and their shows at the Hollywood Bowl, for their Dark Side of the Moon tour. I had already met David Gilmour, the lead guitarist and singer, through my neighbour Dany, as he’d later remind me! I had never seen the band before, but let me tell you, for all the youngsters out there, Pink Floyd really were that good, and still are. The concert at the Hollywood Bowl truly was sensational. Embarrassingly, I didn’t have any of their records, but even still, the concert took my breath away. They were one of a kind and, the truth is, there won’t be anyone like them again – and I happened to be mates with them… me, a nobody from Margate, or was it Italy?

  On top of everything, I was stoned. It wasn’t something I did very often because I can’t smoke – not for medical reasons, I’m just shit at it. I don’t know how to do it, with my fingers and everything. I didn’t need to, though – there was some hash cake being passed around! The Hollywood Bowl was swathed in pink light. There were five searchlights behind the dome pointing up into the sky. The stage was in the dome, and I had one of the open boxes in the front, which I had got from the band. I had never seen a show like it. When the stage exploded at the end, I was at my highest and wasn’t expecting it at all. In my paranoia, I thought it was a tragic accident and not part of the show. I didn’t know too much about Pink Floyd at the time, but they basically started the use of solid-state lasers and huge inflatable puppets – techniques now copied by all the big stadium bands. The band employed pioneering lighting and production designers Arthur Max and Marc Brickman. I knew them both. Arthur used to go out with Joanna Jacobs in the 1970s. He is now an Oscar-nominated production designer on the Ridley Scott movies, and when he started as a set designer, I got him a job on a commercial I was producing with Bob Brooks. Arthur walked off the shoot when Bob shouted at him. I knew Marc Brickman from Malibu, where he lived with Gaby, a friend of mine and the former wife of another friend, Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, who, with his partner Storm Thorgerson, had a design company called Hipgnosis, which designed all the Pink Floyd album covers. Have I name-dropped enough yet? My relationship with the great Pink Floyd had only just begun, but I think my relationship with fantasy submission porn was kind of over – but never say never, right?

  Chapter 15

  King’s Road: Part 2

  During the sixties, seventies and eighties, the fashionistas would walk the King’s Road on Saturday afternoon. It was quite a scene, full of the beautiful people. In fact, I stopped playing hockey at Richmond in 1969 when I discovered the delights of the King’s Road on a Saturday. My friends and I would usually have lunch in the Aretusa, a cool hangout owned by Alvaro Maccioni, who later owned the famous La Famiglia restaurant at World’s End. The Aretusa was one of the first restaurants that had a sliding roof, so in the summer it was open to the sky, and every Saturday it was packed with all the Chelsea trendsetters. The King’s Road was a great hunting ground for girls. I would regularly meet a particular girl who would always come back to my flat to give me oral sex. She was very kind to me; I did very little in return.

  *

  I always wore my Granny Takes a Trip finest outfit. Granny’s was a store on the King’s Road at World’s End, where all the sixties and seventies rock stars used to buy their tight satin trousers and velvet or taffeta silk jackets, and I had the lot. The shop had the front end of a 1940s Dodge sticking out of the window, an idea later stolen by all the Hard Rock Cafés in America. Granny’s was part-owned and run by two New Yorkers. Gene Krell, now a big fish for Vogue Japan, who couldn’t have looked the part more with hair down to his hips, and his good looking partner, Marty Breslau, who was dating one of the GTOs. They had an English partner, Freddie Hornik, who wasn’t often in the shop, and when Granny’s opened up on Doheny Drive in LA, I used to stay with Freddie and his girlfriend Jenny Dugan-Chapman in Laurel Canyon. I had known Jenny for years, since she worked at Mr Freedom further down the King’s Road. She came from the wealthy Zilkha family, who owned the Mothercare stores, and she had the best legs in town, which would be shown off in very short hot pants. They seemed to make up the culture that was the King’s Road: the bright colours, the sounds. Looking back now, it was like we lived on a seventies film set and everything was perfect.

  430 King’s Road, where Mr Freedom was situated from 1968-70, has had quite the illustrious history indeed. The place was as relevant to the time as anywhere I could have shopped and hung out. Earlier in the 60s it had been the home of Hung On You, the happening boutique operated by the legendary Michael Rainey. Tommy Roberts, the owner of Mr Freedom, was a swinging sixties clothing pioneer. His bright-coloured clothes were part of the pop art fashion. His featured styles of broad-brimmed hats, close-fitting maxi dresses, silk-screened cartoon character images on jersey tops and winged shoes made quite the imprint on the movement. His shop attracted people like Mick Jagger and model Jean Shrimpton, as well as the rising star Elton John, who had adopted the Mr Freedom winged boots and jumpsuits as his stage wear.

  When Tommy Roberts moved to Kensington Church Street in 1970, his partner in Mr Freedom, Trevor Myles, took over the shop and called it Paradise Garage. He was also a pioneer. He sold Osh Kosh B’Gosh dungarees, which were all the rage on the King’s Road, and antique Hawaiian shirts. He was the first person to sell second-hand faded denim jeans and jackets. I see them everywhere these days, but he was certainly the first. I’ve recently walked down the King’s Road, but too much has changed and I can’t help but miss what it was. In a way, it seemed to bring so much more then – things that stood for change. I feel like it has now gone the wrong way, but it might change for the better again one day, and I’d like to see that – but if they do, this time I’ll just be a bystander.

  The Jean Machine, owned by Jay Scott, further down the King’s Road, followed suit. Jay, who was a good friend of Ronnie Holbrook’s and mine, used to buy shipping containers full of old denim from America. The King’s Road and California basically started the denim craze that swept the world. Trevor Myles was also noteworthy because he drove a fastback Ford Mustang, flocked like a tiger. I found a double-page spread of it from the Sunday Times colour magazine a few years ago and gave it to him. We were overjoyed to hold it and look at it together, and a smile came on both our faces. He is still around on the King’s Road and sometimes in the Chelsea Arts Club. Others were at it too, like Jay Scott, who teamed up with Tony Lonsdale who owned a shop called the Pant House on Hornton Street. They started manufacturing their own jeans in Hong Kong and opened up a Jean Machine store on every high street; they had five stores on Oxford Street alone. People were hitting it with the right products in the right location
and at the right time. Tony Lonsdale had an Australian girl too, to top it all off, called Checkie Maskell, who worked in the Pant House. He finished up marrying her, the lucky bugger. He also bought my Mercedes 280 SE 3.5 Cabriolet – even luckier.

  Malcolm McLaren had a small stall in the back of Paradise Garage, selling his collection of 1950s memorabilia and vinyl records, and he later took over the premises when Trevor Myles closed the boutique. He and his schoolteacher girlfriend Vivienne Westwood first sold Teddy Boy outfits, and the shop was called Let It Rock. I lived a hundred yards down the King’s Road at that time and I was always in there, and became very friendly with Malcolm. I remember groups of Japanese Teddy Boys, dressed in perfect English Ted outfits, posing for photos by the jukebox. After a while, Malcolm and Vivienne changed the name of the shop to Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, selling Marlon Brando-inspired motorcycle rocker clothes, because they got fed up with the Teddy Boys hanging around the shop. I still have an old torn black leather jacket that I bought from the shop with a ‘BSA’ badge on the sleeve (for a 1950s brand of British motorcycle); I just can’t get into it anymore. It would be worth a small fortune if it still had a label inside. The big change came in 1974, when they flipped the name again to SEX and started selling everything punk. Vivienne Westwood defined the look of the movement, pioneering the use of bondage clothing for fashion, and torn clothes and safety pins. Fashionable Chelsea artist Duggie Fields also painted people wearing safety pins, but I don’t know who did it first. It probably came from the street. Chrissie Hynde worked in SEX as a shop assistant before she got the Pretenders moving.

  There was always this group of young lads hanging around SEX and in the Roebuck, the pub opposite my flat. They were around for months. One night, I saw them at a party given by artist Andrew Logan, of Alternative Miss World fame. He lived in a huge loft in Butler’s Wharf, next to the River Thames. He was either a squatter or a sitting tenant. Eventually the building caught fire and Andrew and the other occupiers had to flee the flames.

  In 1976, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood staged the notorious Valentine’s Ball in Andrew’s loft, which I attended. The gang of loitering kids from the store had formed a band, and they played at the party. I think it was their first gig. I clearly remember thinking they were just the worst band I had ever seen. I thought they were just a bunch of kids from the pub. I had never heard the Ramones, the New York Dolls or punk music. The kids called themselves the Sex Pistols and within months were a media sensation, under the shrewd management of Malcolm McLaren.

  By the way, 430 King’s Road, the famous shop, is still operated by Vivienne Westwood, who of course is a superstar designer and now a dame. She first called it Seditionaries, selling military-style clothing, and now calls it World’s End. It resembles an eighteenth-century galleon, has a sloping floor, and a large clock on the outside, which spins backwards.

  My corner of the King’s Road and Beaufort Street was to become the centre of the universe for punks in ’76, in particular the Roebuck pub, the Water Rat and the Man in the Moon pubs further down the block. In addition to the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned, the Stranglers, Adam Ant, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex, and Jordan with her famous beehive hairstyle were all regulars in the pubs. Jordan worked at SEX. Every Saturday there were crowds of punks in fantastic outfits and hairstyles outside my flat, waiting to be photographed by tourists (for cash). I practically lived in the Roebuck in those days, hanging out with my pals Nigel Brickell and Little James, who had a punk shop, Smutz, in the Beaufort Market. There were always a lot of young girls in the pub. Paula Yates was one of them, later to marry Bob Geldof.

  Although I had just turned thirty myself, I liked to hang out with young street kids; they were fun to be with. I had seven youngsters in the Sting Ray on one day, driving down the King’s Road – although it was only a two-seater coupé. We had a party in my flat every night when the pub shut at 11pm. I probably had one of the first video players on the King’s Road – the Philips model that only played one-hour tapes – and I had bootleg videos of all the latest movies, including Saturday Night Fever. It’s different nowadays, where it’s all available on tap through the internet, but back then bootlegging a movie was quite an achievement.

  *

  In 1977, I had to produce a commercial with a cameo appearance of a punk. I told Annie Fielding, the casting director, that I knew all the real ones and I could get one. She said they would not be reliable and may not show up, and she knew a person who we could make up to look like one of them. This young man came in to do the job, and looked pretty realistic by the time wardrobe and hair had finished with him. He was a personable chap from Newcastle, near to where I had lived at Durham University. He told me he wasn’t really an actor and he was getting a band together. Once again, like with Chrissie Hynde, I remember thinking, Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. My cynicism was ill founded. He was Gordon Sumner, also known as… Sting.

  Chapter 16

  Eric Clapton and the Chelsea Cruise

  Nigel Carroll is my great lifelong friend and we were introduced through our cars. Mine was a green ’58 Corvette and his a regal red ’56 Cadillac convertible. We met in ’72 at the Chelsea Potter on the King’s Road. People with cars like that always talk to each other, not in a snobby way as if people without them aren’t worthy. No, it’s just that cars connect people with other car people. I’d like to think I hadn’t turned elitist, that was for sure. We were, however, the only ones with fancy cars – and would both be parked right next to the pub. We started hanging out as friends, and every Saturday night we went to the Potter. Soon, a friend of Nigel’s, Lev, began to join us. He had a ’61 red Corvette, and then came two others who also had sixties Corvette Sting Rays. It had become a Corvette club, but not for long.

  Word was spreading and, little by little, different cars came. They came in abundance and the King’s Road was their new camp. By the following summer, both sides of the road near the Chelsea Potter were lined with old motors – mainly American ones, from the 1940s through to the sixties. There were no parking restrictions on the road in those days and that gave rise to the now legendary Chelsea Cruise. Custom Car was a new mag we all read, and they took it over, promoting it for the last Saturday of every month. It wasn’t too long at all before hundreds of cars began to show up. My friends and I had started something we could not control… by accident.

  Within one or two summers, crowds of locals and tourists were lining the King’s Road to watch the cars drive by. It became a real event for us, but eventually, beer glasses would end up in the road and traffic couldn’t get through. The police got involved and the King’s Road at Sloane Square became closed to any vehicle other than a bus – except me. Because I had a driving licence with a King’s Road address, the police couldn’t stop me entering the street, and, I will say, I took great delight in being the only vehicle that could drive past the crowds in my Corvette. In the end, the police, with the cooperation of Custom Car mag, transferred the whole event to Battersea Park. It turned into something huge in Battersea, and Nigel and I had started it from the pub entirely by mistake!

  *

  Nigel was working for the property developer Peter Beale, who had a deal with Frank Dale and Stepsons, the Rolls Royce dealer in Fulham. He could buy a used car and get his money back when he returned the car a year later. In the early seventies, there was a rising market in Rolls Royces, so Peter had two Silver Clouds, the last of the great rollers – one for him and one for Nigel. In property, Peter bought the short leasehold of a huge house in Hans Place, Knightsbridge, just behind Harrods. His modus operandi was to buy a three- or four-year lease, which was too short for anyone else, fix the place up, negotiate a longer lease from the Cadogan Estates, and then sell the building on. This house in Hans Place had seven floors with huge rooms, one of which Nigel was living in. He bought a job heap of large old gilt picture frames at an auction at Bonham’s. Tony Litri was a fri
end of his, and he could do perfect copies of old master paintings. They installed Tony in the top floor attic, which was rather similar to a Parisian artist’s atelier, and gave him an electric fire. Nigel would hold a frame up to a wall in a room and say, “Tony, this feels like a Matisse” and Tony would get to work. He would age the paintings in front of the electric fire and, in no time, the whole house was filled with old masters. There was no attempt to deceive and it was only ever done for effect. Each painting had the word FAKE written across the back. Of course, for the Arab punters who came to buy the house, the paintings were included, and they never looked at the backs of them.

  Apart from the house, I spent a lot of time with Nigel in the garage in Claborn Mews. It was Nigel, myself, the two Rolls Royces, a 1950s American pickup truck and the mean-looking black ’69 Stingray. We simply loved our cars. Once, I went to buy a 1966 427 Corvette Sting Ray convertible. I only wanted it because it had rare knock-off wheels and I wanted to put them on my ’63 Sting Ray. I swapped the wheels and sold the new car, which was a big mistake – they’re now worth a fortune. As you can see, the car thing was beginning to get addictive and I’m not sure where it came from – maybe from Margate when the American boys came to take my sisters away in their classic motors. Nigel came with me to buy the Sting Ray because I needed someone to drive it back. On getting back to London, we went to Kensington High Street, where the second McDonalds had just opened. We sat eating in the car and I told him: “Happiness is a Big Mac and a new Corvette.” Smug as hell, I know, but I guess I couldn’t resist.