Touching down in New York, David managed to clear the airport without being questioned. He returned to his apartment on the Upper West Side, then emptied out his bags. As a kind of carrier’s fee, he pocketed a few of the Quaaludes—or “disco biscuits,” as he and his friends preferred to call them.
That evening, David trudged into a deep February freeze, so cold that at least thirty-six people had already died in the Northeast, and made his way down to the Meatpacking District. At Fifteenth Street and Tenth Avenue he came to Crisco Disco, a club where the DJ booth was modeled after a giant tub of vegetable shortening, and where everybody bought tickets and then exchanged them for drinks to circumvent the lack of a liquor license. David swallowed his biscuits and went inside. He began to cruise the dance floor beneath a cluster of mirror balls. Recently, he’d surprised himself with newfound boldness, noting in his diary: “Look what’s happened to Dawn—rampant woman.” Now he pressed against the men, dancing and pressing until finally somebody pressed back.
And then everything went dark.
David woke up back in his apartment on the Upper West Side. The ludes had triggered a blackout. He had no memory of exiting the club. No memory of traveling home with the stranger. No memory, either, of having his hands bound together behind his back “like a Perdue chicken.”
As David struggled to regain consciousness, the stranger was standing over him. He punched David in the face and told him he was going to die.
David slumped to the floor, stunned. The man—a shadowy outline, in David’s recollection—walked away and began to search the apartment for objects of value: a stereo, a camera, things he could carry. David was terrified; but once the man found enough loot, he just exited through the front door, which slammed shut—and locked tight—behind him.
David tried to calm his nerves. He knew he would never get out with his hands bound together.
First, he crawled into the kitchen. He had, he recalls, a vague, improbable notion of burning through the rope using the flame from his gas stove. But when that didn’t work (because of course it didn’t work) he shuffled back into the living room. He looked around. On the floor was a rotary dial telephone. This gave him another idea: “What I did—I dialed my neighbor, Chris, using my tongue.” One number after the other. Around and around.
“He was frantic,” remembers Chris Albertson, a journalist and jazz critic, who hung up the call and rushed over. “Of course, David couldn’t come to the door, so I went around to the fire escape. I don’t know how I pulled the ladder down and got up there. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The window to his apartment was half-open, so I climbed through. And there he was, all tied up, looking very relieved.”
The next day, February 5, David had the lock changed on his front door. His face was a battlefield of bruises and cuts, though he didn’t bother consulting a doctor to check for more serious damage. When he did finally leave his apartment later that evening, it was to go to the Oh-Ho-So restaurant on West Broadway. Queen had just finished its first-ever performance at Madison Square Garden—singing, among other songs, “Tie Your Mother Down”—and the after-party by Elektra Records was not to be missed.
At the restaurant, David pushed his way past Eric Idle, John Belushi, the members of Thin Lizzy…all the way up to Freddie Mercury, who was holding court. David had met Freddie through Elton John two years before, and since then they’d partied together at bars like Hollywood and the Barefoot Boy, becoming firm friends. Freddie had taken a shine to David, who he thought was hilarious; for one of David’s birthdays, he would give him a male stripper and a custom-made maroon jumpsuit with DAWN BLACK emblazoned on the front. Now Freddie took one look at David’s face and turned very grave. Why did he have a black eye? What the hell was going on here? Who was responsible? David confessed the truth about his larcenous trick and Freddie became incensed. “He read me the riot act,” David recalls. “He said, ‘Don’t you ever do anything like that again.’ ”
A few days later, David composed a letter laying out the whole sorry tale for his brother. Tommy, horrified, dashed off his own reproach from London.
My dear—what a calamity. No scars, I hope. You really must be more careful…I must say it is the ruination of a girl…I hope you were insured but I suppose you were not. Must have been an awful shock. I would have gone completely to pieces. I don’t think it’s ever happened to me—but there’s always a first time.
* * *
If there is a strong whiff of fatalism in Tommy’s reply, then perhaps that’s because he was still living through his own nightmare. Walking out of Nutters had cost Tommy more than just his place on Savile Row. Because he refused to speak to Edward, let alone negotiate with him, he failed to secure any compensation for his share in the company (though Edward maintains there was no real equity anyway). He also lost his home, because “rent and all out-goings” from the small flat he was using as a residence were paid for directly through the shop (meaning it technically belonged to Nutters). Indeed, Tommy was left with virtually nothing, awkwardly dependent on the generosity of his close friends.
In the immediate aftermath, David Grigg stepped forward to offer a place for him to stay. David lived with his father, Barry Grigg, an older gay man who also happened to work in the tailoring trade and therefore had a great deal in common with his son’s former employer. (“My father was incredibly extravagant,” David recalls. “He and Tommy got on really well, actually.”) David and Barry lived on Bayswater Road, in a house facing the north side of Hyde Park. With Barry’s consent, Tommy moved into the spare room, like a member of the family who had suddenly returned after a long absence. Tommy was extremely grateful for the gracious welcome, though he was also dazed by his diminished circumstances. He passed solitary hours drinking in the local pubs, reclining on deck chairs near the Serpentine, looking for sex in all the familiar places. “I was working,” David recalls, “so I didn’t see him during the day. At night we often went out to Bang! or Napoleons.”
After living in limbo with the Griggs for a while, Tommy migrated over to Chelsea, where Stewart Grimshaw (of Provans) and his partner, Simon Sainsbury, maintained an empty flat for their guests on the Vale. Tommy, again, was extremely appreciative of his friends’ hospitality, writing to his brother: “They are very kind and have really helped the old girl out through this tricky period.” This second address gave him greater privacy, even a small degree of luxury. But he knew that it was only a temporary solution.
Once Tommy was settled in Chelsea, he began to sketch out various schemes for a solo comeback. His first idea was for an exclusive bespoke service, a kind of designer-for-hire. He told his brother (in the rush of confidence that comes with a new idea before its requirements are properly considered): “Madame Pam is back in business. I feel that I will be able to make more bread by keeping the whole thing much smaller—no overheads—and just keep the best clients—i.e., EJ [Elton John], JR [John Reid], and not keep them waiting so long.”
This idea was quickly discarded as impractical, however, and Tommy turned his sights to America instead. There was a “marvelous offer” from a man to “revamp” his fashion business in Los Angeles; a new start in Beverly Hills seemed alluring. But then Peter “checked him out” by investigating his bona fides and found him to be “very shady.”
So Tommy looked closer to home: a new Mayfair shop, backed by the Jean Junction, was being managed by Justin de Villeneuve, the ex-manager of Twiggy. Perhaps he could become an in-house designer? “This might come off but it all takes so long,” he complained.
He also began to eye an empty showroom on the corner of Bond and Grosvenor streets, imagining elegant suits styled in the picture windows of a modern gentlemen’s boutique—a kind of Nutters redux. Trying to retread the pathway to his previous success, he put the idea to a potential celebrity backer: Elton John. Elton was intrigued, though John Reid, as his moneyman, questioned the pra
cticalities. Reid thought the rent was exorbitant, the location was awkward for a menswear boutique, and Tommy’s vision was far too unfocused: “He wasn’t able to translate anything onto paper. I kept saying, ‘Give me a plan.’ He’d say, ‘But it will be fabulous, everyone will flock there…’ ” This vague dreaminess may have persuaded people back in the 1960s, but these were more cynical times. David Grigg was sitting with Tommy when Reid finally called him to say that it would never work, that Elton had to pass on the project. “It was like popping a balloon,” Grigg recalls.
After that, Tommy crumpled into uncharacteristic anxiety. “The JR thing really fucked me up,” he wrote to his brother. “So much time was lost.” He brooded about the Bond Street store, worked himself into a state, and blamed Reid as personally responsible for his dashed hopes, though he remained cautiously “friendly” to Reid’s face: “No point in doing a number as I might need him one day.” This was not particularly fair to Reid, but Tommy was so furious at having been given so much contradictory advice on how to get back into business that he was “almost going crazy.”
His most pressing concern was cash flow. Tommy had meager savings, which he quickly burned through; he also had a mortgage for the Brighton flat to consider. “When I bought Brighton I had a loan from the bank,” he explained in a letter to David, “which they are now wanting me to re-pay and of course until I am back in business this is absolutely impossible.”
The thought of losing Brighton made Tommy morose. Not only was it his sanctuary, it was also a tangible symbol of everything he’d worked to achieve over the past seven years. He’d earned it, and now it was imperiled. One day, he swallowed his pride and asked David Grigg to take it off his hands, hoping he could then lease it back to maintain an illusion of continuity. But Grigg, who was still in his early twenties, had to decline. (“I didn’t have any money either,” he recalls.) Eventually, the bank increased its pressure to the point where Tommy turned frantic. “I am being threatened with bankruptcy—if this happens I am completely finished,” he wrote to his brother.
I have put Brighton on the market, and the profit I get from this will re-pay the bank. They are quite happy with the arrangement, but in the meantime, to stop me going bankrupt, I need a guarantor to keep the bank happy. This means a deposit with the bank that will not be touched but will keep them happy until Brighton is sold.
I have no idea the extent to which you have earned with Elton, but if there is any way you could help me out with this deposit it would guarantee me getting back into business the right way. No-one wants to know about a bankrupt. The ghastly sum would be around $6000. I know it is a hell of a lot but I can assure you that it would not be touched. This would only have to be lodged with the National Westminster in Wall St.
David, if this is an absolute impossibility I fully understand. There are other people I can ask, but I do not want everyone to know my business.
David received this letter—and did nothing, because there was nothing he could do. Even a fraction of that sum was an absolute impossibility in 1976.
* * *
One week after the Louder Than Concorde Tour had ended that August, David flew to Los Angeles at Elton’s request. In part this was for a well-deserved holiday, the wind-down after months of living on the road. But it was also for a meeting to discuss financial compensation. There had been no contract in advance of the tour laying out the terms of David’s employment—nothing, it seems, beyond a verbal agreement that he would step in as official photographer for both the UK and America dates. Despite Tommy having prodded him to make sure he was “getting enough out of Elton,” David had been content to coast along on sporadic gifts and rent payments. On August 24, in Los Angeles, he now wrote in his diary: “Meeting with Connie and EJ. They want to give me a lot of money. About $30,000. I couldn’t believe it.” Like winning the lottery, this lump-sum payment would transform David’s life completely.
It never arrived. By October, the offer was revised into a salary, to be paid weekly “from now on.” Five weeks later (during which time one of David’s portraits of Elton appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone), this salary, it seems, had also yet to materialize. In November, Tony King called David to express concern about his “money situation.” Then one of Elton’s reps called to offer an explanation, which apparently reassured David: “They are paying me a wage. Obviously Reid’s decision.” But did this wage ever actually come through? David’s diary falls silent on the subject (though he does move into a larger Upper West Side apartment around the same period). His memory, too, turns to fog whenever it comes to financial matters. “The whole thing with money got very complicated,” David says. “It was the same as with the Beatles: nobody really knew what they were doing.”
Still, what is certain is that David’s lack of business acumen meant there was little chance he could have acted as a guarantor for his drowning brother even if he had been receiving a decent wage. David could barely keep his own head above water.
By the time of the incident at Crisco Disco, David had resumed his role as Bill King’s darkroom technician to make ends meet. This was a deeply frustrating professional regression. King was still doing interesting work in 1977—covers for The New York Times Magazine; the Blackglama “What Becomes a Legend Most?” campaign, with Diana Vreeland posing in luscious mink—but it was his work, not David’s. King’s studio was in disarray, with new “useless” assistants whom David held in contempt. And King also seemed unwell, showing signs of serious addiction. (“Is he still mainlining?” Tommy asked David in a letter.) One day, the studio was preparing for a major magazine shoot when King called David from a bathhouse to say that he’d taken so many drugs he couldn’t get his clothes on. “You go and take the pictures,” King mumbled. “They won’t know.” Suggesting they probably would know, David talked him into his clothes and then into a taxi back to the studio, where King managed to pull himself together just long enough to get the job done.
Another day, King called David at home and summoned him to his apartment on Horatio Street. When David refused, King threatened suicide, saying that if he didn’t come David would read about it in the newspapers tomorrow and feel responsible. So David made his way down to the West Village, just in case, and found that King was flying high on pills. Far from contemplating death, however, he appeared to be aroused. King demanded David photograph him performing solo sex acts that were “obscene and bizarre,” as David described them in his diary. David was repulsed—although, as King’s boyfriend banged on the door demanding to be let inside, he took the pictures anyway.
These kinds of episodes scratched away at David’s sensitive nerves. His depression dragged him down again, and he began to spiral into another self-reinforcing fugue state.
One morning in April, David decided he needed a mental-health break. He skipped work to mope at home for a day, lingering in bed. “Thank god,” David wrote—because this random act of truancy meant he was there when the telephone unexpectedly rang.
It was Michael Jackson.
“We talked for an hour,” David wrote afterward. “He’s adorable and wants me to visit one weekend.”
* * *
The previous July, in Philadelphia, Marlon, Michael, and Randy Jackson had turned up backstage at one of Elton’s tour performances. David, “very up” that day, had snapped a few frames of the boys posing with Elton and then struck up a conversation with Marlon Jackson, who he’d thought was particularly “sweet.” Marlon had asked David to “send him some pics,” so they’d exchanged details before David had turned his attention to Elton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Elton with Marlon, Michael, and Randy Jackson in Philadelphia, July 1976.
Next morning, Marlon phoned David first thing to say he’d try to make the show that night. He did not make the show—“shame really,” David wrote—but Michael, his younger brother, turned up instead. David had spoken briefly with the eig
hteen-year-old before heading off to a pub to eat shepherd’s pie with Elton’s band. Evidently, this conversation—which was a passing thing for David, barely registered in his journal—had made quite the impression on Michael Jackson, because he soon called David for a follow-up chat. And then another one. These phone calls, David recalls, could stretch on for hours and had the meandering aimlessness of two teenagers talking about everything and nothing.
By the time Michael called David and caught him hiding at home from Bill King, they’d been talking sporadically for nine months. A bond of trust had developed between them. Now Michael asked David to come visit him in person, in Philadelphia, where he was working with his brothers on Goin’ Places for Epic Records.
David caught a train down on April 23—a Saturday, so he could stay on for a few nights. Arriving at the recording studio, he found an unobtrusive spot in the corner and settled down to watch. Michael was doing vocals for the title track, which David thought was excellent, “very disco.” Between takes, David passed the time by chatting to Dexter Wansel, the composer, whom he knew through Elton’s entourage; he also spoke with the Jacksons’ school tutor, who was fighting a losing battle to correct grammar in the song lyrics.
That evening, David accompanied Michael back to his hotel room, and the two of them sat up gossiping with Marlon into the early hours. The next day, the weather was miserable, so they settled in to watch Roots on television, then clowned around as Michael tried (and failed) to teach David some dance moves.
House of Nutter_The Rebel Tailor of Savile Row Page 21
