by Tot Taylor
CONTENTS
Start
Acknowledgements
Supporters
Dedication
Copyright
Tot Taylor is a writer, composer and art curator.
He is co-founder of Riflemaker gallery and lectures at Sotheby’s Institute.
The Story of John Nightly is his debut novel. He lives and works in London.
Dear Reader,
The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.
This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. At the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.
Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type nightly5 in the promo code box when you check out.
Thank you for your support
Dan, Justin and John
Founders, Unbound
‘These scenes made me a painter’
John Constable (1776–1837)
Cambridge Evening News. Friday, 2 January 1966.
Last Friday evening, at the Eagle public house in Lion Yard, Cambridge four-piece the Everyman beat seven other contenders from the East Anglia area to win the final of the Melody Maker’s National Beat Contest, becoming all-out winners with their rendition of the group’s own composition, ‘Zigging & Zagging’.
The judges – local MP Marius Johnston, publican John Nightingale, BBC television’s Sefton Johns, and Mr Jonathan Sands from DJS Records in London – praised the group’s energetic live performance and also the vocal and songwriting talents of their lead singer, John Nightly. They singled out for particular praise the wistful ballad ‘Wave Orange Love’, written by Mr Nightly about a childhood trip to the seaside. Mr Sands described it as being ‘as good as Leonard Bernstein’ and said he felt certain that a career in pop music lay ahead for the Everyman. Mr Nightly’s father, John, an engineer at Pye in Newmarket Road, told the News that his son had always shown an aptitude for music, being able to pick out a tune from a very early age. The group’s drummer, John Hilton, said that the £1,000 prize money would come in ‘very handy indeed’ and would be spent on much needed new equipment and stage outfits. The Everyman are due to play at the Dorothy Ballroom on Friday, 16 January supporting the Graham Bond Organisation.
Tickets: 2/6s on the door.
‘Around Cambridge’ by John Gardner, showbiz editor.
Cambridge Evening News. Friday, 9 January 1966.
After winning the Melody Maker’s National Beat Contest at the Eagle public house last Friday night, local beat combo the Everyman have parted company with their lead singer, John Nightly. Mr Nightly, of Meadow Road, Grantchester, who also played rhythm guitar and organ with the group, announced he was leaving to ‘concentrate on a solo career in London’. The group’s drummer, John Hilton, said that the Everyman were both shocked and disappointed that Mr Nightly had chosen this moment to leave, at a point when a great opportunity had arisen. The Everyman have postponed their support slot at the Dorothy Ballroom this coming Friday but will go ahead with their audition in the studios of Dick James Music, the music publishers of the Beatles, in London next month.
‘Around Cambridge’ by John Forrester, entertainment reporter.
The Cornishman. Friday, 25 May 2006.
West Cornwall resident Mr John Nightly became the proud winner of the Carn Point Horticultural Society Gold Medal after showing what the judges described as ‘world class’ varieties of aeonium and canna at the village’s annual horticultural show last Friday. Mr Nightly, of Trewin Farm, Carn Point, said that this was the first time he had ever won a competition in his life, and that the £1,000 prize money would come in ‘very handy indeed’. Mr Nightly lives alone on the headland at Porthcreek, where he has built a special humidity-controlled greenhouse on reclaimed estuary land along this most beautiful and desolate stretch of West Cornwall.
‘Gardening Week’ by Jon Miller, gardening editor.
Who makes the Past, a patterne for next yeare
Turnes no new leafe but still the same things reads,
Seene things, he sees again, heard things doth hear,
And makes his life, but like a pare of beads
John Donne: Letter to Sir Henry Goodyere
Doctor of Divinity, Cambridge University, 31 March 1631
The offices of JC Enterprises, Carnaby Street, London W1. Monday, 12 January 1966. 10.30am.
Situated above You Are Here! – London’s happeningest boutique – JC Enterprises is one of many young outfits on the capital’s bright new music scene. Their biggest claim to fame being Stanmore act the Gloom, high in the charts with their debut 45, ‘Bethnal Green’, on EMI’s new Mosaic imprint. The single, described by the group as ‘a song about the area we grew up in, the East End of London’, crashed into the Hit Parade at Number 39 this week after being played almost non-stop on the offshore pirate Radio Caroline.
In the narrow hallway, a young man with straw-blond hair, blue-and-white-striped scarf and brown leather sandals sits tight. He is about to be zoomed into space. Bolt upright, arms folded, foot tapping like a jackhammer, he appears anxious; like a school-leaver awaiting examination results. In the corner opposite, a young temp in a mad-patterned, sea-green mini dress taps away at one of the new Memo typewriters. Cornelia is employed to make tea, pretend she can type, and be decorative. In the other corner Sandra, or Sand as she is known at JCE, is nonchalantly re-pinking her nails.
‘Bit like the dentist’s, isn’t it?’
The boy looked up.
‘Had a cup of tea?’
‘… oh… yes… yeh… thanks.’
‘Well… would you like another?’ Both girls had been briefed to take good care of the potential new client.
‘… I’m alright… at the minute, thanks’. The boy uncrossed his legs and refolded his scarf.
This is London. And London is Swinging or Swingeing, depending on which way you look at it. If you’re content to just look, that is. Because the only way you can get it really – really get it, London right now, right at this very moment – is to experience it for real. To be here. For to be here is to be happy. Happiness is all around. In the cobbled streets and courtyards, the with-it boutiques and out-there shopfronts. In the sunken velvet lounges of the new Chelsea nightclubs and the lime-washed white walls of Mayfair’s smartest galleries. Even in old, antique places like the ancient Thames docks, the Port of London, Westminster, the City and the print centre itself, Fleet Street. The place that prints the newspapers that tell us every day what a fabulous town we live in. The people that wind the clocks and count the banknotes, the dockers, porters and drivers, the typesetters and hot-metal lappers in the Print – they�
�re all part of the swinging city too.
But not only is London the commercial centre of the world; it’s now also the most cultural. The happeningest, the grooviest. London is where it’s at. It being ‘the thing’, the zeitgeist, the train of thought, the groove. The thing you have to have, or be ‘with’ or get ‘in’ or ‘on’. To really get it. To really get it. To really get on.
All you have to do is tune in. And people are. Because at the moment it seems that everyone, the whole wide world, the universe, maybe even the cosmos itself, is on its way to Swinging London.
‘Won’t be much longer…’
Cornelia tapped away as she spoke, her eyes barely leaving the keys. The boy picked up a battered leather bag, ready to make his entrance.
‘… okay…’
Nowadays, the capital’s people are groovy, their clothes are groovy and their outlook is groovy. Even their streets are groovy, with groove-ridden names like Bond Street and Wardour, Portobello and of course Carnaby Street, the grooviest of all. The magnificent Carnaby is probably the happeningest thoroughfare anywhere on the planet at this very moment. Doesn’t that fact alone make you want to be here? With all these fabulous characters and streets and names and occurrences? It should do. If you have anything to offer, that is. Because what this all means is that London is suddenly a place of immense opportunity. A city of significance and enterprise. One great big Happy Cake you can all bite into.
Strolling along Carnaby Street or Ganton Street or Foubert’s Place, right outside the window this very morning, you’re more or less guaranteed to bump into someone particularly fabulous. Like Ray Davies or John Bratby, Terence Donovan or Celia Birtwell or Julie Christie or Peter Hall, milling around out there with all of the normal people just like you. There’ll be Jeremy Sandford and Nell Dunn, Ron Kitaj, Rita Tushingham, Leonard of Mayfair, Murray Melvin, Andrew Oldham, Ronald Laing, Dr Roy Strong, Ms Penelope Tree or Robert Fraser or Hardy Krüger, just out and about down there, doing nothing much, ’cept millin’… and groovin’ of course.
Any of these combinations of groovy types might pass you in the street and you’d never notice them. Because everyone you meet, literally everyone, looks different – better – now, don’t they? Suddenly looks ‘happening’. And just really, well… more alive than they did before. Even older groovers like Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult are part of it. There they are, decked out in their Regency cravats and Cuban heels just the same as the bright young things. And no, they don’t look out of place at all, because nowadays you can all join in. So the Queen, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Snowdon of course; all the royals, they’re at it too. Completely affected by it. All groovy now. And, conveniently, regalia is in. Whether it’s the Georgian gentleman’s morning coat worn by Terence Stamp on the cover of today’s Daily Sketch, the crimson military jackets they sell in Portobello Road, or the Queen’s head in black silhouette on the new World Cup stamps. It’s all ‘in’ and ‘with-it’ somehow.
‘I can hear him finishing off…’
It’s easy for things to be in because grooviness isn’t exclusive; it’s non-exclusive and non-class-based. That’s the point of it. The reason being that for the first time ever, Britain is moving towards becoming a classless society. Well, that’s what they say, isn’t it? And it’s true. Because grooviness is cheap or… well, it’s actually free. And therefore immediately available to everyone. Anyone, anywhere, can be it. Groo-vy! All you have to do is get here and…
‘Show you through in just a mo…’
It’s a feeling, you see. It’s a feeling, man… and everyone has to fit in and do their thing. In this rarefied, elevated atmosphere even the bird flying high and the breeze drifting by are happening. The narrow streets of Soho, with their Italian cafés and a newsagent or sweet shop on every corner, now so busy that their clientele are spilling out onto the pavement, are grooviness personified. Busy, busy, busy! Feeling Good! Feeling…
‘He’s ready!’ The girl with fresh pink nails stared straight at the boy. ‘Just through here…’
Cornelia walked over to the manager’s office and held the door open. A tall, dandified young man with lightly waved hair waited in the doorway.
‘John… Hey man… Come in.’
The potential manager extended his hand, visibly impressed by his first live sighting of the potential client.
‘I’m John… John Pond.’
The man took a tin cigarette-lighter and motioned around the room.
‘And this…’ he offered, ‘is my gaff.’
The boy, bag clutched tightly to his chest, crossed the threshold into the dismal office.
‘… thanks a lot… it’s… nice to meet you and… well… nice of you to…’
The boy was being especially nice today. Pond smiled accordingly.
‘It’s a… John meet John thing, then.’
The teenager and the dandy both smiled. The boy taking up the conversation as he loitered nervously, slightly intimidated by the manager’s swinging appearance, the lush weave of his chalk-stripe ‘grandad’ suit; his perfectly knotted lemon cravat.
‘… Pond’s unusual…’
‘Is it? My great, great… whatever it was, was John Pond also… quite famous a long… long time ago.’ The manager spoke as if he were on television, picking up speed as he continued. ‘No one’s heard of him these days.’ Pond turned his back on the visitor. ‘An astronomer… “of some repute”, as they say.’ The boy brightened.
‘… you’re related to John Pond the astronomer?’
The manager looked round. ‘Not heard of him, have you? ’Cause if you have…’
The boy seemed impressed. ‘…I know a lot about John Pond because, well… I do research… in my spare time… for pocket money really, on tidal patterns… the movement of tides… For the weather… shipping forecasts… things like that… in Cambridge.’
‘Ships in Cambridge?’
Pond stared at the youth, who carried on without allowing for a response, in a misguided attempt to give the very best of first impressions.
‘… I do a lot of things apart from music, you see… so I know exactly who your great, great, whatever it was… is…’
‘Tidal patterns…’ The manager had no interest whatsoever in family history. He sat down and lit a cigarette from a fancy box without offering one to the boy. Pond took a single, life-giving drag and indicated towards a bright-red piece of sculpture on the other side of the room.
‘Come up from Cambridge today?’
The teenager moved around, eyed the appointed object suspiciously and sat down.
‘… for the day, yeh. Jon Sands asked me to…’
‘Right’, the manager nodded. ‘He told me about the contest thing’. Pond took another puff from the thin black stick and made something of an act of exhaling, turning his head away from the boy to release the putrid smoke. ‘Said he thought you were the best… “most talented”…’ The manager coughed and spluttered, ‘of… talents…’ (cough) ‘… he’d seen in a long…’ (splut) ‘…time.’
‘… well… that’s…’
‘Nice of him, yeah.’ Pond coughed and rasped again. ‘Wasn’t so keen on the group…’ He looked round for a glass. ‘What he actually said was he thought they were a… a right bunch of yokels… I think was the actual…’ – The manager cleared his throat and picked up a glass of caramel-brown liquid – ‘… expression’. The boy fixed on the ski-trails pattern of the carpet. He followed one broken drift as it divebombed into a tangle of jazzy hoops. Pond took a gulp.
‘Not so nice of him, I guess. What are they called?’
‘The Everyman’ the boy jumped in, ‘it’s a…’
‘Dreadful name, yeah. Whoever came up with it…’
‘I came up with it actually.’
The new John Pond sat back, feigned boredom and plonked his heavy-booted feet up on the desk. He bent forward and carefully folded the slack of his worsted flannels. Abuzz with Dexedrine, a second glass
of dead Coca-Cola at the ready, Pond’s head twitched while his eyes flickered around the room, now and again fixing on something – a photograph, pin-up or a piece of ‘art’ – that would engage and detain him for a brief moment. The manager was at least as unsettled as his guest and his irritability and frustration with life in general showed itself in today’s unnecessarily antagonistic, bordering-on-aggressive manner. The boy blabbed on.
‘it’s taken from a drawing, or a… a linocut – might be a woodcut, actually – by David Jones.’
‘David Jones? Lower Third David Jones? Just saw them at the Marquee…’
‘David Jones the artist. From Ditchling. He’s…’
‘Ah…’ Pond looked away. ‘Different guy…’
The provocateur trailed off, becoming momentarily distracted by
Cornelia’s impossibly long legs as she passed by the open doorway.
‘What are you studying… at Cambridge?’
‘I’m not studying there.’ John switched his bag from one arm to the other. ‘I’m not “at”… I’m… “in”. I live there. Only just left school last term. I’m doing research… about the moon and the sun… at Cavendish… Cavendish Laboratory’. The youth, his confidence ebbing away, carried on uncertainly.
‘… in a research group. We’re looking into wave-power generation at the moment and… different things to do with sidereal time, which kind of leads on from, or you might say to… sort of…’ The boy smiled apologetically. ‘The tidal…’
‘What is… sidereal time?’
‘Star time. Time determined by the stars rather than solar time which is…’
‘STAR TIME! Well, we’re certainly that. Hope we are anyway!’
The manager could take no more. Totally derailed, he looked incredulously at John Nightly, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. This young, good-looking teenager, little more than a kid, comes into the office on the premise of playing a tape and suddenly he finds himself in the middle of a science lecture.
