Young Winstone

by Ray Winstone

  Alan was ill at the time of that Cannes trip. He had yellow jaundice, and probably shouldn’t have been leaving the house, let alone getting in a very small plane. I love flying now and I’ve been up in Spitfires and Mosquitoes since, but at that stage the idea of strapping myself into a metal coffin was quite new to me, and it was hard not to be struck by how fucking tiny that plane was.

  The weather wasn’t looking too clever either. And as we were standing around waiting to get introduced to the pilot in the VIP bit of Gatwick, it was all starting to feel a little bit Buddy Holly. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t want this plane to go down now I’ve just cracked it.’ Living fast and dying young worked alright for James Dean, but that’s no reason for me to be doing it.

  At that point the captain came out to meet us and I was reassured by the fact that he had the biggest moustache I’d ever seen – a proper old RAF handlebar, like a rear-gunner in a Lancaster would’ve had. So we got on the plane, with me and Clarkey in the two seats at the back and him at the controls in the front. The take-off was OK, but once you’re properly flying in one of those little planes you feel yourself dropping out of the sky every time you hit an air pocket.

  It was a three-and-a-half-hour flight. At times it felt like it would’ve been quicker to go by car as the pilot negotiated his way around a series of storms. About halfway through, Clarkey leant forward – don’t forget he’s got yellow jaundice – and said to the captain (and you’ve got to read this to yourself in a really strong Scouse accent to get the full picture), ‘Eh, Captain, you know, could you drop down a couple of thousand feet so I can have a piss out of the window?’ Understandably, the captain’s not having that, so I give Clarkey the sick bag and say, ‘Do it in that, Al.’

  Now he’s got to stand up to take a piss, but the problem is the plane is too cramped for him to do that, so he ends up all bent over. He whacks his cock out into the sick bag and pees into it. I’ve got to say that the smell from the yellow jaundice is diabolical. I’m gagging, the captain’s moustache has drooped, but Clarkey’s feeling very relieved. Finally we come into Nice airport and the captain taxis the plane round the runway. At this point he’s supposed to see us off and show us where to go, but instead he just opens the door and runs away. He’s had enough of us, so he’s just fucked off.

  Me and Clarkey haven’t got a clue what to do, so we’re just wandering around on the runway – if that happened now you’d probably get shot. Eventually we find our way into the terminal, and at this point it suddenly dawns on me that we’ve left Alan’s piss in the sick bag on the floor of the plane. When that pilot gets back onboard for the return flight, he’s in for a nasty surprise.

  Once we finally made it to Cannes, our accommodation went up a couple of notches. We were staying on Don Boyd’s boat. Don was the overall producer of the film – who’d just got Clive and Davina in to do the donkey work – and this was the first of several great trips abroad he took me on. Don was someone I had a lot of time for. He’s one of those big figures in the British film industry – like Jeremy Thomas who I ended up doing Sexy Beast with – without whom very little would ever actually happen.

  It was very exciting being at Cannes for the first time. After what happened with the TV version being banned, the idea of the second Scum even being shown in a cinema seemed very unlikely to me. Now all of a sudden I was in this mad glamorous world with the Palme d’Or and all that stuff going on. There were film stars everywhere – I was the only one I didn’t know.

  Alan Clarke was the perfect person to share that experience with, because however much of an outsider I thought I was, I could never be as much of one as him. That didn’t stop him making the most of his opportunities, though. Fuck me, that man loved a bird, and they were still attracted to him, despite what he looked like.

  Clarkey could talk to anyone, he just had that way about him. I remember the film I really loved which was out at the time was a vampire comedy called Love at First Bite. The first time I saw it (in Margate with Elaine when I was filming Fox) I was laughing so much it made me cry. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw the star of it, George Hamilton, standing outside the Carlton Hotel in all his Transylvanian gear and the make-up and everything. I pointed him out to Alan, who must’ve smiled at him as he walked up the steps, because George Hamilton – thinking that he knew him, even though they’d never met before – said, ‘Hello, how are you?’

  Actors in those situations usually pretend they know everyone, because otherwise they get too stressed out trying to remember whether they actually do or not. Alan would’ve known this and was happy to take advantage of it, so he was standing there with George Hamilton going, ‘’Ow’s the kids?’ And then they got into some big debate about something. That was what the whole week was like, and even though I’ve been back to Cannes on a bigger budget a few times since, you never forget your first time. Especially not if Clarkey’s involved.

  CHAPTER 22

  HACKNEY MARSHES

  In between my first brushes with the international jet set, I was still doing the same kind of things I’d always done, like trying to stay out of strife at the Charleston or the Two Puddings in Stratford, or playing Sunday football on Hackney Marshes. As a consequence of going to school in Enfield, I’d had to play a lot of my football in alien territory, where people’s skill and understanding of the game were frankly not up to the level I had been raised to expect. But once I was a bit older and back in East London, I was finally in a position to put that right.

  Hackney Marshes was the place I liked to play best. It’s amazing the way the pitches stretch out into the distance, and if you’re one of those East Enders who doesn’t leave your manor too much, that might be one of the biggest open spaces you ever get to know. You can’t let the sense of freedom go to your head, though – you have to keep your wits about you. I remember playing there once when a car drove onto the pitch next to us and tried to run one of the players over. Maybe England might have more of a chance at the World Cup if we were allowed to do that. Either way, there were a few shooters flying about that day on the Marshes. A couple of the games stopped to watch, but it was the ones which carried on as if this was a perfectly normal everyday occurrence that made the biggest impression.

  I’d like to be able to say that at the time I was taking a similarly level-headed approach to how well things seemed to be going with what was now officially my acting career. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be true. I didn’t carry on being the same no-nonsense down-to-earth geezer I’d always been. When I saw myself in the finished version of Scum – more or less holding my own with a lot of much more experienced and technically gifted actors – I didn’t think about how much I still had to learn, I decided I was Jack the fucking Biscuit.

  Going to America with Don Boyd probably didn’t help in that regard. Because Scum was kind of the big underground film at the time, my first trip to New York found me moving in very different circles to the ones I was used to. Don took me to the Mudd Club, which was full of all these fucking strange people. Siouxsie from Siouxsie and the Banshees was there being ‘punk’ – which seemed to be a bit of a pose where everyone had to look really solemn and try to fuck everyone else off. She seemed like a bit of a prat to me at the time but I’m sure she was just doing her thing.

  Siouxsie’s wasn’t the only famous face to come looming up out of the dry ice in that place. Yoko Ono was floating about too, as was Andy Warhol . . . hole . . . hole. I didn’t know too much about all these arty types, but I went up to him and said, ‘Alright, how are you going?’ He said hello back politely enough, so as far as I was concerned he was one of the good ones.

  It’s at about this time that I take a hit on something that is probably angel dust and start to notice that the waitresses are all the most beautiful women you’d ever see. But after a few ‘Hello, darlin’’s my eyes start to adjust to the light properly, and now I’m thinking, ‘Woah, fuck me! Something ain’t right here – the old Adam’s appl
es are a bit prominent. These birds are all geezers. You could make a mistake here!’

  By now the angel dust is properly taking hold and I’m not used to this kind of feeling. To be honest, I’m properly shitting myself, so I’m working my way around the outside wall like a kid who can’t swim hanging onto the edge of the pool. Eventually I get to the exit and promptly fall all the way down the stairs. So I get in a cab and ask the guy to take me to the Gramercy Park Hotel and he goes, ‘Well, I ain’t gonna take you to California am I, bud?’ When I finally get back to the hotel, Don Boyd’s standing there looking at his watch going, ‘Raymond, you were twenty-five minutes longer than I expected you to be.’

  It was a great way to see New York for the first time because I was going in through the underbelly – not the gangsters but the artists and bohemians. I still had a massive chip on my shoulder, though, so I probably didn’t make the best impression.

  Before one screening I remember being introduced to Richard Gere, who was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time, and he totally blanked me. I can understand why now – after all, he didn’t know me from Adam Ant – but at the time I remember thinking, ‘Fuck you, that ain’t very nice, is it?’

  After we’d all sat there and watched the film, Richard came up to us again. I think Don Boyd probably knew him because he said, ‘Ray, invite Richard to the party after.’ But I said, ‘No, Richard’s very busy. Ain’t you, Richard? He’s definitely too busy to come to the party.’ Richard Gere’s probably a nice guy who has to talk to a million people a day – why should he have any idea who I am? – but that was my attitude at the time. I was quite fuck-you about everything. So maybe I had a bit more in common with Siouxsie than I thought I did.

  When I eventually got to the party, they fitted me up with this starlet who became quite a famous actress later on. I’m just talking normally to this reporter from Hollywood Tonight and all of a sudden this bird has been slipped onto my arm. It ain’t her fault they’re trying to pair us up like Beauty and the Beast – she’s been told to do it, which they used to do years ago, and I suppose they still do today. It’s good for you to be seen with a starlet, and good for them to get their face out there, but all the time I’m thinking, ‘My fiancée’s at home – how’s she gonna react if she sees this?’

  I’d rather not say who the unlucky lady was – not because she had anything to be embarrassed about, but because I did, as she was a lovely girl and under other circumstances, yeah . . . Oh, alright then, it was Jane Seymour, and I ended up being quite rude to her. I’ve done enough things I’ve had to apologise for over the years not to have to make up imaginary misdeeds. So I don’t see why I’d have a painful memory of telling the future Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, ‘This is my film – it’s nothing to do with you, love’, if I hadn’t actually done it. That’s just one step away from ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ really, though, isn’t it?

  The problem with thinking you’ve cracked it is it’s all too easy to get complacent and piss the whole thing up the wall. I’d come out of shooting Scum and gone straight into Fox. It was a thirteen-part ITV drama series about a big South London family. They weren’t so much gangsters, more a strong, old-fashioned family who looked after each other in a way that was becoming less and less common then, but which I still believe in today. Maybe that was why it struck quite a chord with people at the time, even though not many people remember it now.

  It was while I was doing Fox that the hype really started for the cinema release of Scum. I remember watching it come on Barry Norman’s Film 79 with some of the other actors in Fox – Peter Vaughan from Citizen Smith and Larry Lamb, who was on EastEnders for a long time years later, were definitely there. You could tell something big was happening, but I ended up being quite distanced from it all, because I’d chosen the two weeks leading up to the London opening to get married to Elaine and go on our honeymoon in Lanzarote.

  Once we landed back in London, we got off the plane and straight into a cab to the premiere at the Prince Charles just off Leicester Square. There was quite a lot of hysteria and people fainting in the cinema (which I’m sure was a rent-a-crowd Don Boyd had paid for. Why not? They’d do it in America. That’s why I love Don to death, because he’d set that kind of thing up – even though he never admitted to me that he had). I remember thinking, ‘Fucking hell! I had no idea this was going to be such a big deal.’ It was probably a good thing I didn’t, because I’d already lost enough of whatever discipline I’d managed to accumulate as an actor.

  I remember one of the producers of Fox telling me something that got me quite annoyed at the time. ‘You’re doing alright, Ray,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing going on in your eyes.’ Looking back now, I can see that what made me angry about this remark was the fact that it was absolutely bang on. It took me a couple of years to get over the initial shock of someone digging me out like that, but as time went on I began to realise that just because you were saying the right words and making the right movements, that didn’t mean there was anything actually behind them.

  I’m not sure exactly how I eventually managed to make a deeper connection between who I was and what I was doing as an actor. Maybe it was getting a bit more life experience. Maybe it was having a few disappointments. Maybe it was losing some people who I loved. But I don’t think I’d ever have been able to do it without Elaine at my side.

  People have sometimes said to me that it was a strange time to get married – just as my career was taking off. But it’s not a choice I’ve ever regretted, in fact quite the reverse. I wasn’t one of those people who needed showbiz to get a bird. I’d done all that by then, and I needed someone around who was a strong enough character to stand up to me when I was getting a bit full of myself. My Elaine didn’t just do personal guidance. On the next job I got after Scum, she gave me the most important bit of professional advice I’ve ever received.

  If the people making the film had got their way, Elaine wouldn’t even have been around to save the day. We’d only just got married when I was offered the lead role in an American film called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. Well, that wasn’t the original title. At first it was called All Washed Up, but I think they changed that title because they were worried it was going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy (which, in a way, it did).

  It was a funny old script about a load of punk rockers on a tour bus, which was going to be directed by an old hippie and self-confessed mate of Roman Polanski’s called Lou Adler. They’d cast some big old characters to be in such a confined space, but we’ll come to them in a minute.

  When they asked me to do it off the back of Scum I said, ‘OK, fine’, but only if I could bring my wife with me. They didn’t fancy that too much but I said, ‘Listen, I’ve just got married and I want to stay that way, so either my wife comes with me, or I don’t come at all.’ Neither Elaine nor I have ever been the jealous type – that’s part of the reason we’ve stuck together so long – and these days when I go away for work she’s probably glad to get rid of me. But at the time we’d only just got hitched, and I didn’t want to be out in Vancouver for a big chunk of 1980 without her.

  It was a good job I felt that way. Because when I was trying to get my head around the idea of playing a character who was the lead singer in a band, I didn’t have the first fucking clue of how I was going to do it. Singing a song I could do, but the idea of me becoming a rock star and putting on some kind of performance just seemed completely impossible.

  It was Elaine who told me something which now looks embarrassingly obvious written down, but that was all the more reason why I needed to hear it. She said, ‘But you’re not a singer, are you? You’re an actor . . . so act it!’ I realise how ridiculous this sounds, but that’s when the penny dropped for me. ‘Oh, so you’ve got to make out to be something else other than what you are, and make it look real. I get it now.’ I must have been driving her mad. When it comes to how I’d managed to get through a couple of years of drama col
lege and lead roles in two versions of Scum without somehow waking up and smelling that particular cup of coffee, your guess is as good as mine.

  The message had got through just in time, because when it came to looking comfortable onstage, I was about to face a pretty searching examination. The other three members of my band were going to be Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and Paul Simonon of The Clash, all of whom had a certain amount of experience in that area.

  There was a fair bit of tension around our first meeting. As I’ve said before, I’d enjoyed the Sex Pistols’ music, but a bunch of fucking geezers who picked their nose and spat at people? I ain’t gonna like them very much, am I? What made it worse was I’d had a couple of run-ins with Johnny Rotten at the auditions for Quadrophenia, where he was up for Phil’s role as Jimmy (Jimmy Pursey had a go at that one too – I think Frank Roddam was aiming for the punk audience at that point). He’s funny, John, and he’s a bit of an intellectual on the quiet, but he’s one of those people that if you ask him a question, he’ll answer it with another one.

  That type is all very well in real life, so long as you don’t have to live with them, but they’re a nightmare to do acting improvisations with. John’s probably grown up a bit now – or maybe he hasn’t, it’s hard to tell from the butter adverts – but the concept of two people working together for the benefit of the piece was not something he could really get his head round at the time. It was all about him being Johnny Rotten.

  To be honest I thought he was a bit of a cunt, and when I got the hump with him, he didn’t like it. But if I was expecting things to go the same way when I met Jonesy and the two Pauls, I’d got it completely wrong. I actually loved them, and we’re all still mates to this day. Jonesy’s still a live wire now. I was on his radio show in LA a while back, and we kept talking in rude cockney rhyming slang that no one else in the studio understood, so you can see how much we’ve matured.