Stardust Memories

by Ray Connolly

  ‘When the Mary Whitehouses of this world talk about the “dangerous” things that are happening, the breakdown of morals and the family, and there being no respect for authority and the institutions, they’re talking about a very real thing. Because part of the power of the ruling class depends upon sanctions remaining largely unconscious. The institution of the family is part of it, as is the psychiatric trade, just as is the prison service and the educational service.

  ‘I mean education is about getting children to learn basic skills in order to manipulate the world and to make more wealth, but to do it in a disciplined, passive and docile way.’

  Considering their view of society, it’s not surprising that they don’t always see eye to eye with the British film industry in general. Garnett puts it this way: ‘They’re in business to make profits, and we’re in busines to try to communicate with people. Don’t get me wrong. Not everybody in Wardour Street is a villain, there are some very able men there. It isn’t their fault as individuals, but it’s the business they’re in that’s wrong. There’s a word for it — capitalism.’

  What would happen if they suddenly had an enormous box office success — if they made a lot of money? I ask. They laugh, and say it’s extremely unlikely, but if they did ‘win the pools’ then there are lots of things to be done, lots of films to be made.

  Virtually all of their success they put down to luck — being lucky enough to pass the 11-plus, go to university, get into television, get the right scripts, the right encouragement and the right sympathetic bosses.

  Their concern is with the people who are less lucky. They are working-class boys who had the silver spoon pushed into their mouths. ‘The ruling class wants our allegiance, and the working class from which we come deserves our allegiance,’ says Garnett. ‘So we’ve got to decide whose side we’re on. But there’s no question that there are two sides is there? Well, not in our minds there isn’t.’

  Now at thirty-five and contemplating their future, they’d like to be in a position to plan a couple of years ahead, so that they could gather a regular team around them, and possibly give others a chance to direct or produce. They don’t see why it should always be them. And then, if possible, they’d like to begin looking at some historical subjects.

  But first they await reaction to Family Life.

  Says Ken Loach: ‘You can’t treat mental health on an assembly line, which is the way it is now organised. But the implications are enormous in the way society organises itself. If you didn’t you might have to have a few less Hilton hotels, or all kinds of terrible things like that …’

  POSTSCRIPT It is often said that Britain has the film industry it deserves. This is probably true, but is unfortunate for people like Ken Loach, in that it provides precious few outlets for their talents. Had Ken been French, Italian or American he would almost certainly have been able to find backers for all his projects. In England it is difficult enough getting any film off the ground, let alone the sort of tough, uncompromising films Loach wishes to make.

  Tony Garnett, after years of producing, has now become a director himself, and in his first two films, examines prostitution in the Midlands and the gun laws in the United States.

  February 1972

  Marc Bolan

  Marc Bolan of the group T. Rex is the one super pop hero to have emerged in the vacuum left by the dissolution of the Beatles and the emigration of the Rolling Stones. While Jagger, Lennon, McCartney and friends drift quietly down the path towards middle age, Bolan, at twenty-four, with five number one hit records in just about a year, is beginning to scale the heights of mass hysteria, knicker-wetting and mass teeny-bopper adulation.

  Bolan and T. Rex (formerly known in more pretentious days as Tyrannosaurus Rex) had been around for some time before they first began to make big circles in the pool of pop, and in fact it wasn’t until they moved from a rather dull acoustical sound to straightforward electrified rock and roll that the screaming began.

  Now they’re at just about the stage the Stones were when they brought out ‘Satisfaction’: they’re going up, and very quickly indeed.

  But to speak of T. Rex in the plural is misleading. Marc Bolan is T. Rex — and the rest of the band are just faceless back-up musicians. It’s Bolan with his sequinned tears glued to his cheeks before every performance, his guitar jutting out rudely like some enormous phallic symbol from his hips, his hair like an abused loofah, and his elfin, effeminate face who the kids go to see.

  I interviewed him at the shabby Maida Vale flat he and his wife June have been living in since before he hit the big time. A couple of joss-sticks burned like props from ‘The Summer of ‘67’ in one corner while we talked and Bolan drank a glass of whisky. He is at once an intensely irritating, totally gullible yet strangely likeable fellow.

  Doesn’t June ever get jealous of the fans, I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t think any natural, intelligent level-headed person can get jealous of something so impersonal. I mean I don’t screw fifteen groupies a night … Look, I had my first chick when I was ten and once I got over being fifteen I only liked people for their heads. If they have nice bodies that’s very nice, too, but I really don’t want to go around the countryside giving babies to ladies who I don’t care about, and who may then write to the Sunday newspapers.

  ‘It will be interesting to see if there are any paternity suits. I’d never allow it to happen, and in a way I’m looking forward to someone bringing one — because they always do. But it would be impossible.’

  Rarely can a boy have faced his future with such single-minded ambition. Brought up in Hackney (his dad was a lorry driver and his mum had a stall on a market) he was photographed at thirteen by Don McCullin and briefly became known as King of the Mods. The year was 1963.

  Educated at a secondary modern school, he left at fifteen and took a two-year sabbatical. He explains: ‘When I was thirteen I was really into clothes as an energy force — the same way that I’m now into music. But by the time the pictures came out (in Town magazine) I was into books. After I left school I stayed at home for about two years learning many things — reading, teaching myself to write and play the guitar.’

  Did he mean he stayed at home doing nothing for two years, I asked, wanting to get it quite clear.

  ‘No,’ he said with a little impatience. ‘I’ve just explained. I grew. I educated myself in the way that I wanted to be educated. I didn’t work in the conventional sense. My mother used to give me five bob a day if I wanted to go out. But I didn’t go out much. I made my first record when I was seventeen. All the record companies had turned me down, then Decca let me record something and chose my name for me. My real name is Feld, but they called me Bowland. I didn’t like that so I later changed it to Bolan.

  ‘It’s very ironic because among the companies who turned me down was EMI. Now I have my own label — T. Rex Wax Company — with them. They just distribute my records and stick on the labels.’

  Had he ever done any conventional work, I wondered.

  ‘Yes, I worked for a week in a clothes shop in Tooting, and every night I went washing dishes in a Wimpy bar. I never got any sleep so I collapsed at the end of the week. I think I just did it to show my mum that I wasn’t a lazy little boy.

  ‘And then another time I did a week’s modelling. I got £1000 for that. I worked every day.’

  I expressed surprise at the size of his pay and this annoyed him.

  ‘Ah fuck off! Have you ever done any modelling? It’s hard work. I didn’t think it was a lot of money.’

  ‘I think it is,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it may be to you but it’s not to me. All I know is that I worked incredibly hard, and for three months they used the pictures all over the country. It’s all relative. Someone may write a song which earns him a million pounds, but because it only took him five minutes to write it you’re not going to say that because you work harder than he does then he shouldn’t get that money. It just happens
that what he does happens to be more commercial or better.’

  At this point I began to say something about how justice seemed to be lost sight of now and again, and happened to mention the miners. And he said ‘what miners?’, and I said ‘the miners who are on strike now,’ and he said he really didn’t want to talk about that.

  So we argued a bit inconclusively about nothing very much and then I asked him about a newspaper report I’d seen in which he claimed to be a millionaire.

  ‘I’ve never said I’m a millionaire,’ he said. ‘But I am, although I can’t get my hands on it. I’ve only got about £100 in the bank, but my record company, and I own it one hundred per cent, is worth a million pounds. It’s all pieces of paper, anyway. You never get paid for ages. I don’t consider myself over-paid. I give a service, and I get paid for it. I look after all the people around me. There’s not a friend who need want for anything.’

  Was it true he’d seen someone levitate?

  ‘Yes in Paris. He was standing on the floor and he raised himself about eight feet in the air.’

  Who else saw it?

  ‘I was with about five other people. It’s not important who they were,’ he said. Then adding: ‘You have a very downer attitude which I find disconcerting. Do you doubt it?’

  ‘I never doubt anything,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve also done magical rites and conjured up demons,’ he said. ‘But these are things which aren’t really relevant.’

  How did he do it?

  ‘It takes time to learn,’ he confided. ‘I’ve also seen flying saucers. The world is mathematics … I mean it’s based on maths … and I was very bad at maths in school … well, there are certain herbs and incantations which make you invisible … you know, it’s possible to move into another astral plane by mental discipline. But in fact you don’t really become invisible, it’s just that you’re not visible to the person watching … you know, you might not be able to see me, but perhaps you could feel me …’

  What about the demons?

  ‘Well, I conjured up a spirit that wasn’t very friendly. It came in the form of a Greek boy. It was just something I wanted to check out to see if it was possible …

  ‘I believe you can do whatever you want to. You talked about the miners … well, I’m sure that if I were a miner, or I lived in a village with miners and I could see the injustices, then I’d make a point of going to the man to sort it out and I’d convince him into sorting it out …’

  By this time I was sorry I’d ever mentioned the miners, but he was in full flow about the ethics of self advancement.

  ‘I’d no education at school, but I wanted to be a writer so I taught myself to write. And I’d never written a song so I went out and bought a guitar and the same day I wrote three songs.’

  What had he written, I asked.

  ‘Are you serious … you really don’t know?’ Then slipping from the room he re-appeared with a slim volume of poetry. ‘Here … the best selling book of poetry last year. Sold twenty thousand copies. There’s going to be a book of short stories soon.’

  Perhaps flattered by my interest in his literary talents he showed me his most recent piece, which he’d scrawled in a large and hurried childish hand sideways across a foolscap sheet of paper. Then taking it from me he showed me a much neater transcription of it which had been done by his wife, I noticed that she’d corrected all the spelling mistakes.

  I read the piece quickly, and I didn’t understand a word of it. But the fault must surely have been mine. Twenty thousand people can’t be wrong, can they?

  What of the future then?

  ‘Well, I’ve no intention of playing rock and roll in three years’ time. I’ll be directing a film later this year … it’s something I think I can do a lot better than a lot of other people.’

  Did he ever have any doubts about his own ability, I asked.

  ‘Of course. I have doubts about everything. There’s not a day goes by without me thinking I might die or that I won’t be able to play the guitar. There’s so much to doubt … about doing shows … television. I have doubts about this interview.’

  POSTSCRIPT Poor Marc Bolan. I suppose he had every reason to have doubts about that interview. After that flying initial start his career began to slide during the seventies. Of course, he never was a millionaire, nor did he direct a film, but I don’t believe he was deliberately lying to me. He was, I suppose, among those sad fantasisers who could never really understand why others were laughing at them. He was killed in a car crash in 1979.

  June 1972

  Ned Sherrin

  You’d imagine that someone with such an unlikely old English name as Ned Sherrin might at least have warranted a line in ‘Uncle Tom Cobley’ or a minor role in a Thomas Hardy novel. Certainly it isn’t a name for Super 70 mm pana-vision, now is it?

  It could be, of course, that Ned Sherrin lost his way in life. With a name like that he surely belongs on a farm, calling the cows in off the moors, however much his natural inclination as a child may have been to hate it, and however successful he’s been in his many fields of theatrical activities since he left his father’s farm.

  Ned Sherrin is forty-one, an absurdly busy film producer, a writer of West End musicals, a one-time television enfant terrible (remember it was he who put satire on to the BBC ten years ago and discovered David Frost) a sometime TV quiz master and shortly a film director. He has, as they say, a finger in every pie — and he would appear to have more fingers and more pies than most.

  Take the last couple of years for instance — he’s been going like the clappers. There have been three Frankie Howerd films, Up Pompeii, Up The Chastity Belt, Up The Front’, then there’s The Garnett Saga, Rentadick, Boy/Girl and now National Health.

  Not bad? But there’s more. Hardly a weekend goes by without he and his writing collaborator ‘Caryl Brahms’ locking themselves away and working from Friday night to Sunday night on musicals for the West End.

  Last year was Sing A Rude Song, which had Barbara Windsor appearing as Marie Lloyd; next month their Liberty Ranch (a musical and Western version of She Stoops to Conquer) opens at Greenwich Theatre for a trial run of five weeks, before hopefully moving to the West End, while next year Robert Stigwood and Bernard Delfont will be producing a musical play they have written of Nicholas Nickleby.

  ‘Then I’ll probably be doing another Frankie Howerd film in the autumn — probably a modern day religious film called Up The Organ — or perhaps Up The Organ Fund,’ he adds tastefully, ‘while I’m also trying to get a script of Alan Bennett’s off the ground as a follow-up to Rentadick.

  ‘We pondered with the idea of Rentapuss, so that both films could be brought back as a double show with a joint title — you know a programme for all the family. But I think we’ll call it Rentascrubber.

  ‘It’s really a very funny piece about life in a Yorkshire village and the conflicting love lives of a lusty old vicar who’s keen on the ladies, and a very clammy old curate who’s more keen on the scout troop.

  ‘Rentadick has already opened in Blackpool (where else for a pre-London run, one might ask) and it’s doing very nicely. The cinema where it’s running keep having a series of phone calls from men who say “I understand you’re showing a film called Rentadick. I have a very nice one. Would you like to see it?”

  He has a very droll, bright bluish sense of humour, and I’m sure he could have gone on for the next five weeks telling me of his films and plans and projects, but we were having breakfast at the Connaught and I was afraid his haddock might catch cold.

  The only other man who ever suggested that we do an interview over breakfast was David Frost, a man with whom Sherrin’s career has been very much interlinked, and whom he resembles in many ways.

  ‘We used to meet briefly for breakfast at Oxford,’ he says. ‘I think I thought it was a rather nice glamorous irresponsible thing to do — a thirties thing in the fifties, and then later I introduced David to the idea of them. (Frost was at
Cambridge.) When I lived in Dover Street we would use the Ritz quite a lot because they have a very nice Green Room there which is very kind to one in the morning, and then when David lived near the Carlton Tower we would go down there.

  ‘I don’t understand it when people say that David and I sound alike. I hope I don’t mangle the vowels. David was pretty much the same when I met him as he is now, except that he looks fatter and iller nowadays.’

  Did he see much of him, I asked?

  ‘Yes, I phoned him the other night. He sounded quite chipper. Even answered the phone himself.’

  Sherrin was brought up in Somerset (his elder brother now has the farm), went to a grammar school called Sexey’s and from there to National Service. A year with the army in Australia was his first trip outside Britain, and he even considered making a career for himself in uniform but Oxford called, and he studied law, and became interested in theatre.

  ‘Then, just after taking Bar exams, I was walking along the Strand one day and a man I’d known from the BBC suggested that I go to ATV in Birmingham which was just starting. I’d directed a revue at Oxford for him.

  ‘So I went up for the interview, and they were very impressed that I was a barrister, and said they were sorry but they could only offer me the job of a producer — which I said was all right, since I’d been expecting to start as a tea-boy. And then they said they could only offer me £900 a year, which I said was all right since I knew that most people were only getting £450 a year.’

  His whole career has, he ways, been studded with lucky breaks like that one. He was lucky to join the BBC Tonight team, and even more lucky to get the chance of producing That Was The Week That Was — which brought him instant fame and celebrity.