CHRISTOPHER TARLING None of these people were businesspeople. None of us have been good with money. Tommy would spend his last twenty quid on a round of drinks. He was incredibly generous.
ROY CHITTLEBOROUGH Tommy was a designer, basically. He used to come in at ten o’clock, ten thirty, whenever he felt like it. He was his own man. He would just walk in and go into his little office, doodle away there with different designs. In lots of instances he didn’t want to see people. He was one of those shy guys. So the three of us cutters—Edward, Joe, and myself—sort of got on with the work, saw the clients.
EDWARD SEXTON I’d hired all the tailors, run the workshop, run the diaries—everything. I just saw that the thing flowed and we produced beautiful clothing.
ZANCE YIANNI Edward was an amazing cutter. He basically was the tailoring side. Tommy was, for want of a better word, the salesman, but much more than that too. He was always doing something, getting the name out to people. And the two of them worked together because they were completely different. Unfortunately, things did come to a head when I was there for a variety of reasons. I thought there was an element of—maybe Edward didn’t feel that he was getting the credit he deserved. Tommy always made sure that he sang his praises; it wasn’t like Tommy was trying to slight him in any way. But Tommy was getting most of the limelight, there’s no two ways about it.
DAVID GRIGG Tommy was the creative force. That may be disputed by Edward, and obviously there must have been some crossover. Tommy did these funny, very stylized sketches. Edward can say, “I interpreted them,” and it’s certainly a talent to be able to do that.
JOSEPH MORGAN I think Edward wanted to be Tom. I’d say this in front of Edward, because it’s only fair. I was there, and that’s my interpretation of things. Edward had great skill—still has great skill, is a great technician. But he’s not Tom.
ZANCE YIANNI Having looked back on it now, Tommy probably felt that he was being ganged up upon. Because Edward was the one who started doing all the business side of things. And Roy and Joe were cutters as well; they were working very closely with Edward. I don’t know where their sympathies were. I think they probably, naturally, aligned themselves with Edward….I got the impression the business was in a bit of a state, financially. What came across is that they felt Tommy was almost a luxury. Which was quite ironic, because he was the business. It was his name. He was the one who attracted the people in. As good as Edward, Joe, and Roy were as cutters, none of them had the personality or the contacts that Tommy did.
STEWART GRIMSHAW What I think happened was that Tommy didn’t really know the difference, or notice the difference, between a 51 percent and 49 percent stake in the company. And he was persuaded to give away 5 percent of his own shares—not much [but enough to lose his position as controlling shareholder]. By that time, Edward thought he wasn’t as serious as he might have been. I think Tommy lost focus on the business side of things, and Edward said, “Somebody’s joining us, why don’t we give 5 percent each…” and then instantly turned against him.
JOSEPH MORGAN I think it was when Edward came back with Tom [in 1971] and said, “We’ve gotten rid of Peter Brown and the other investors, and we’re going to take the company forward.” And, I think, “We’re going to give you some shares.” I got three shares. I think Roy got about five. And Tommy and Edward had the rest.
PETER BROWN When I left London, Tommy was the sole owner. And then he gives shares to Edward and the staff and didn’t do his math. Then Edward starts bossing him around….I’m sure he could make a case that Tommy was a terrible businessman, and he was much better, but that doesn’t mean you remove him as the leading shareholder.
EDWARD SEXTON We never had a formal shareholding structure, we just didn’t know about doing things like that.
JOSEPH MORGAN I recall that there was talk. Edward said, “I think it’s time that I was made managing director so I can run the company as it ought to be run.”
EDWARD SEXTON I said, “Look, I’m going to take control of the finances and everything, you can go and have your lunches, bring your receipts in, and you’ll get your money back.”
JOSEPH MORGAN Whoa, hold on! And then it was put to Tom, and I think Tom said, “How can I let you be managing director when my name’s above the door? Can’t do that.”
EDWARD SEXTON Joe went upstairs and knocked on the door [of Tommy’s new flat], and I think Tommy turned around to Joe and said, “You can’t change managing directors because my name is on the window.” Well, his name was not. Nutters was on the window. And Nutters was owned by the company.
JOSEPH MORGAN So that was that. Then Edward and I went off to America. Roy stayed with Tom, and when we came back, he’d gone.
EDWARD SEXTON Where has he gone? What’s happening?
DAVID GRIGG Sometimes Tommy could go off the blink. Like, you couldn’t get hold of him.
ZANCE YIANNI I was working there the day Tommy left, but they were quite discreet about it. It wasn’t really happening in front of the staff.
ROY CHITTLEBOROUGH I don’t recall any big upheaval. I don’t know what led up to it. I know at times Edward sort of wanted to do his own thing. I think Tommy sort of didn’t like what he was doing at times…and he just walked out on us. There was basically no discussion at all. He just left, went to his flat, and I never saw him again.
DAVID GRIGG I think Edward and Tommy must have had some huge argument. I can hear Tommy saying, “Oh, fuck you all! If you think you can do it on your own, then do it”—and stomping off. I can imagine that. Because they were putting so much pressure on him: “We’re the people who are making this happen…”
ZANCE YIANNI I suspect Tommy felt let down by the others. A bit betrayed. Which was horrible, because they were friends.
JOSEPH MORGAN If only he’d come to us and said, “Look, I think I’m going to have to leave.” We’d have said, “Hold on, let’s try to work this out.” But no, nothing at all. It’s very upsetting to think he felt he couldn’t talk. Why didn’t Tom fight for it? I’m really surprised that he didn’t.
PETER BROWN The big picture, really, is that Tommy was this brilliant person with a great eye, meticulous about things when he was creating. And then the rest of Tommy was irresponsible, more or less, which is maybe not fair, but is to some degree. And Edward was a brilliant cutter, period, who did see this as a wonderful way of making a living. Which was true. And if Tommy had been more responsible and stronger, then they would have made a good partnership. If Tommy had behaved better, maybe Edward wouldn’t have felt the need to be so hard. It’s a great shame. Joe’s right that Tommy should have fought for it. Most people would have. But that was Tommy.
EDWARD SEXTON I don’t know what other people are going to tell you, and I’m not interested. I’m just telling you the way it was. We were a great, great team, and it was a tragedy that Tommy was such a big girl, and couldn’t sit down and say, “Fuck it, we’re going to get this by the scruff of the neck and we’re going to make it work.” He could have been one of the greats.
ZANCE YIANNI I don’t think anybody comes out with glory from this whole thing. There must be a few regrets on all sides that it reached the point it did. It’s just sad, because it was such a unique situation. Anyway, I don’t know that it could have lasted much longer. Things had reached a point where bespoke tailoring felt almost old-fashioned in Britain, like a dying trade. All of a sudden you’ve got these businesspeople coming into fashion with a completely different mentality. So Nutters was almost fated to fail eventually. There was something about it that was too innocent.
* * *
Like jumping into the Thames or the Aegean Sea, Tommy’s jump from Nutters of Savile Row was swift, impulsive, and mostly inexplicable. “I’m definitely leaving,” he told the Daily Express in early May, making it public and official, “but I can’t tell you yet whether Edward Sexton will replace me as Managing Director. He�
�s away in America. It’s very difficult for me to comment at the moment.” And beyond that he didn’t comment, in any consistent way, for the rest of his life. Instead, Tommy preferred hints and allusions, grumbles and sighs, suggesting, depending on how he felt at any given moment, three wildly different versions of events.
1.
In the first version, Tommy walked away because he was bored. At what seemed like the height of his popularity, he simply “took a year off” to reset and refresh. There was no real argument in the cutting room, no showdown with Edward Sexton. On a radio show in 1980, Tommy would say, “I felt that I’d achieved everything I wanted to in the Savile Row area, as far as bespoke tailoring is concerned…and I took that wonderful year, that wonderful summer of 1976, and sort of wore jeans and a T-shirt and enjoyed St. James’s Park.” This was a glamourized version of the past, obviously, but there was at least one germ of truth: Tommy had achieved everything he wanted to as a Savile Row tailor. His ambitions were bigger. That had been part of the problem.
2.
“There was jiggery-pokery going on,” Tommy once told Richard Walker, a Savile Row historian, “and I felt I didn’t want any part of it.” This second version, which could be called his “down and out” narrative (as Tommy once described his ensuing months of joblessness), was slightly closer to the probable facts. “I had reporters chasing me down the street, but I kept quiet about it because it was so messy,” he said.
The following year, Tommy would sit down with David Taylor from Punch magazine and offer an annoyed talk-around that Taylor would then translate into a tour-de-force of breathless monologuing:
Cutters can turn squabblesome at the drop of a stitch, there’d been an ill-advised attempt to diversify into shirts and talk of toiletries, some felt this was too loud or that was too passé and what with one thing and another Tommy thought, well, chuck this for a game of soldiers, I’m off. And off he stomped, clean out of the shop into which he had sunk his savings and look at the thanks he gets and, well, he’d just retire to his Curzon Street apartment and week-ending Brighton pied-à-terre and cultivate only the loyal company of Clarence, his cat. He did nothing much for twelve months except slop around in denims and sweaters looking dreadful and feeling if anything worse, wondering whether to abandon the trade, started a noveletta about this girl who makes good from an ordinary background and, it so happens, isn’t Twiggy either, and dined out and went to the theatre, and though anybody might think he was rich enough not to mind, is not, and is still today a bit pressed, because quality clothes cost to have hand-made, you know, and it isn’t just profit from tailors’ dummies, not by a long chalk-stripe.
Despite its conflations and errors (he never lived on Curzon Street), this stands as Tommy’s most comprehensive public testimony of what, in his opinion, actually happened at No. 35a.
3.
There was another version, though, confided to friends after he’d had time to lick his wounds and reflect. It involved a man with whom Tommy had been briefly but intensely involved sometime around 1975: Antony Hamilton, a blond, Adonis-like former dancer with the Australian Ballet. Tommy had been smitten with Hamilton—even, perhaps, seriously in love, more seriously than he ever had been with anyone before. Tommy’s friends noticed that when Hamilton was around, Tommy became unavailable, out socializing with his boyfriend, though their relationship could not have lasted more than a few months before falling apart. It soon became clear that Tommy was being exploited; Hamilton, a “top model” aspiring to Hollywood, was using the famous tailor to get a leg up in his own career.
Years later, Tommy would tell a close friend that his overwhelming feelings during this period had caused his attention to drift from the business. While he was with Antony Hamilton, he could think of nothing else. He was infatuated, obsessed, and it was this that Tommy eventually pointed to as a reason for his downfall. In the 1980s, he would tell his assistant Wendy Samimi that he’d never make the same mistake again: it was either a career or his personal life, one or the other. Tommy could not focus on both, he came to believe, without risking everything.
* * *
At the exact moment Tommy began to tumble toward his personal nadir, David, over in New York, received an offer for the job of a lifetime: official photographer for Elton John’s upcoming three-month transatlantic concert tour. “It’s a wonderful opportunity, but a shock,” David wrote after Elton phoned him up to ask personally.
Within five days of Tommy walking away from Savile Row, David flew to London. He needed to be in Leeds for the first performance on April 29. Before driving up the country in a Land Rover, though, he wanted to see his brother to find out what had happened.
They caught up face-to-face, then went to a pub to talk things over. Tommy seemed “in good shape,” David wrote. “Coping well with the Edward drama.” Still, it was strange how fortunes had suddenly turned, Tommy now a penniless mess, and David (though still a mess, in many ways) preparing for a huge adventure.
Reunited in their old stomping grounds, the Nutters finished their drinks and decided to do something they’d once done together nearly every week of their formative years. The Rockingham was long gone, of course, but now there was Bang!, on Charing Cross Road: strobe lights and a cinema screen showing Busby Berkeley dance routines, DJs Tallulah or Gary London spinning imported tracks for a thousand sweaty men. Times had changed dramatically, but that night Tommy and David got “très drunk,” David later wrote in his diary, and danced to forget about all of it.
interlude
LOUDER THAN CONCORDE
Beginning on April 29, 1976, Elton John’s British tour—England, Wales, and Scotland—lasted for thirty-six days, with an exhausting schedule of twenty-nine performances. Intended as a thank-you to the people who first vaulted him to superstardom, it skipped larger venues in favor of small towns and 3,000-seater halls, the kind of places usually ignored by titans of rock ’n’ roll. Inevitably, that also meant modest hotel suites, a lack of twenty-four-hour service, diminutive dressing rooms, and, as Bernie Taupin later put it, “brown ale and cheese sandwiches.” Not that Elton seemed to mind too much. On opening night, he danced across the stage of the Leeds Grand Theatre with a giant gold banana dangling around his neck, “really sincere,” in the eyes of one local critic, with “not a trace of arrogance.”
Beginning on June 29, Elton’s US tour then lasted for fifty-one days, with a slightly less exhausting schedule of thirty-one performances. Offering considerably more elevated comfort was Starship 1, a private Boeing 720 jet that would be used to ferry Elton and his band between venues across the country. The tour got off to a rocky start, though, after an awful scene in New York, which David carefully recorded: “The guy said, ‘What’s this, Halloween?’ Elton overreacted and threw a glass ashtray at him. Reid hit him in the face. All totally unnecessary, really. Big down for me: Elton told me to shove New York up my arse.”
Indeed, things would struggle to gain positive momentum (in Philadelphia, security was lax, and Elton walked off the stage threatening to cancel the show; at a hotel pool in Charlotte, somebody flashed him and caused another nuclear meltdown) until late July, when Elton phoned David’s room to say that “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was number one on the UK charts—a morale booster.
Back in New York, the Louder Than Concorde (But Not Quite as Pretty!) Tour ended on August 17, after a week of sell-out concerts at Madison Square Garden in which Elton played for 137,000 people. “Never seen Sharon so sublimely happy,” David wrote in his diary. “We all got very emotional about each other.”
At the very last party, Elton sat back down at his piano and dedicated a performance of “Island Girl” to his photographer, who had documented almost every show from Birmingham to Chicago, and every side-trip from Coventry to the Playboy Mansion, and every single one of Elton’s bespoke suits that had been designed by his own brother. Before a roomful of people, El
ton anointed David—or Dawn, as everyone was calling him now—the “International Dinge Queen,” and he gave him the queenly gift of a Cartier diamond.
David and Elton between performances.
COUNTERCLOCKWISE: Performing with Bonnie Raitt; naptime; in bed with Divine.
Foosball with Hugh Hefner and Barbi Benton.
CLOCKWISE: On Starship 1; a Playboy Bunny; in the dressing room.
With John Reid (in a Groucho Marx sweater).
With Queen.
With decadent eyewear.
With Elizabeth Taylor.
Imagine a pleasure in which the moment of satisfaction is simultaneous with the moment of destruction: to kiss is to poison; lifting to your lips this face after which you have ached, dreamed, longed for, the face shatters, every time.
ANDREW HOLLERAN, Dancer from the Dance
Freddie Mercury
The most terrifying episode of David’s life began on February 4, 1977, in San Francisco, when he boarded a flight bound for New York with an enormous quantity of Quaaludes hidden in his carry-on luggage. The prescription sedatives, all illegally procured—“thousands of them,” David recalls—belonged to Bill King, who had called in a favor. David had agreed to transport the pills without so much as a second thought, as though it were just another part of his day job. Yesterday he was a darkroom technician; today he would be a drug mule.
House of Nutter_The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row Page 20
