Peter was my entrée into the scene; he was already playing in bands and living just a few doors down in the cul-de-sac, Horbury Mews. He wanted to put a new group together and was interested in recruiting me, though he had yet to find the remaining players.
‘That other band isn’t quite together yet,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime, how would you like a paying gig?’
‘Well yes, of course!’
Suddenly I was thrust into the world I’d been searching for–and with a job. All my doubt was gone; I could tell my family that I’d done it, I’d actually got myself a job as a drummer! I nearly jumped over the drums and bear-hugged Peter that day. It was only one gig, but I didn’t care.
I joined a band called the Senders and played exactly one gig with them, in a youth club. We mostly did covers by the Shadows, a band whose records I’d listened to while learning to drum. They were Cliff Richard’s backing band, (to all of you in America, Cliff was our Elvis) and they were huge during my childhood. I absolutely adored them and knew all the songs by heart. I did the gig, playing with a real band to a real audience, and the exhilaration was dizzying. There is no feeling quite like it and once I got a taste, I wasn’t letting go.
By the summer of 1963, Peter Bardens had got his pop-rock act together and I became the drummer, alongside Eddie Lynch on guitar and vocals, Peter Hollis on bass, Roger Peacock on vocals, Phil Sawyer on guitar and Bardens on keyboards. We were called the Cheynes, named after a fashionable street in Chelsea called Cheyne Walk, where everyone from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to Marianne Faithfull, Lawrence Olivier and Henry James have lived. The Cheynes’ repertoire consisted of Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly and Little Richard covers, plus a handful of originals and we did put on a good show. We toured Britain extensively, playing regular gigs in London as well as short trips on the university circuit with bands like the Yardbirds, the Animals and the Spencer Davis Group.
I must say that, considering our relative youth and great inexperience, we were a pretty hot act for the time. As a band, like a thousand others, we all went to a shoe shop called Anello and Davide and got ourselves Beatle boots, which were basically Spanish dancing boots (they’re also known as Chelsea boots). They were a cool thing before the Beatles, but afterwards they were mandatory. We had a crooked booking agent, who I believe was the one who came up with a uniform for us all to wear: leather jerkins, pink Dr Kildare shirts, and brown mohair trousers to go with our boots. We amassed a following locally, and my favourite regular venue was a dive in Soho called the Mandrake. The place was open all night, every night, and when I wasn’t playing I usually stopped in there to see who was on. I was still only sixteen at the time, but thanks to my height, no one ever questioned whether I was old enough to drink or be in the club–which I wasn’t. I learned so much with the Cheynes, not only about playing, but also about what rock and roll was becoming and what the music had begun to mean.
I saw all of this close up by having the chance to tour and open for the Yardbirds, which we did quite often, and usually at the original Marquee Club on Oxford Street. The Yardbirds were not then the influential band that history has proven them to be, but they already had fans–dedicated, knowledgeable, die-hard fans–something I’d never seen before. It was the first time I realised exactly what that meant. Before then I’d always seen my fellow audience members as people like me, there to absorb the music. This was different, these were people who were there just for the Yardbirds, to see them play songs that they already knew by heart because they’d seen them many times before. These people shouted out to their favourite band members as if they were old friends. This was very early in their career, too, at a time when the Yardbirds had a blonde lead singer with one lung named Keith Relf and a young guy on lead guitar named Eric Clapton, who was good, but at that stage, honestly, he was still just a guy in a band and didn’t stand out whatsoever.
Later I would see the same thing when I saw the Rolling Stones play gigs at Eel Pie Island, a tiny piece of land in the middle of the River Thames. Those audiences hadn’t just come to hear blues and rock and roll, they had come to hear those guys play blues and rock and roll. That might seem silly to say about legendary acts like the Stones, the Yardbirds and Clapton, but at the time they were nothing more than cover bands with a few original tunes in their repertoire. They hadn’t even begun to find themselves, so to see that degree of dedication from an audience was eye-opening. The energy of that idol worship was tangible and when we opened for the Yardbirds I could feel it, even though the fans weren’t there for us.
That moment in time was the start of ‘bandmania’, an unfolding phenomenon that soon went completely viral as we’d say today. This happened to the Cheynes as well; we had people following us from pub to pub around London. With the Cheynes I also lived through every cliché that young inexperienced bands endure. We were ripped off by promoters and kicked out by venue owners without being paid after playing a great show. Our booking agents gave us a van and a PA system to tour with but had included words in the small print of our contract that required us to repay them at a loss. We’d play gigs all week long, driving for hours in a freezing cold van, only to end up with pocket change. But I wouldn’t have traded it for the world, and eventually, by being as thrifty as I could, I moved from my sister’s attic into a small flat that I shared with one of my bandmates. It was about then I also got my first car, an old taxi. I’ve always been a nut for motor cars.
The Cheynes recorded a few singles, gained momentum around London, and in 1964 did a tour with the Rolling Stones just as their star began to rise. The Stones had been booked on a tour of old cinemas, and we’d been hired to play as the back-up band for the pop legend and opening act Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes. Ronnie, aside from taking the house down every night with her unparalleled vocal gifts, answered patiently our never-ending questions about her then-husband Phil Spector. Like almost everyone in the world of music, we were fixated on his famous ‘Wall of Sound’, on every technique he used to capture such massively beautiful soundscapes. ‘How many guitarists did he have doubling those parts on “Sleigh Ride?” How many musicians were required to lay down the basic tracks? What was the room like?’ We didn’t leave her alone for a minute!
When she told me how Phil had built a platform that hung five feet from the floor by thick chains to hold the drummer’s kit, I nearly died. He’d built it because he believed that drums should be recorded from every side, including below. I was grinning from ear to ear; this made so much sense to me because no one knows more than a drummer how much reverberation is created and how much is dissipated into the ground as we play. That echo is a powerful feeling that both grounds us and drives us. The fact that Phil Spector had tried to capture the sensation that a drummer felt when his bass and snare vibrated his stool was genius as far as I was concerned. I could barely contain my envy, vowing to myself that one day I’d record with a producer like him, if not Phil himself.
That tour was magical to me. The Stones really took care of us, looking after us like little brothers, and that is when and how I got to know Brian Jones quite well. I feel lucky about it because Brian was a special soul, in many ways far too sensitive and perceptive for this world. A brilliant, fluent multi-instrumentalist, he was the one who founded the Rolling Stones and he had the creative vision that helped them to evolve organically from a mop-top blues-pop group into the mystical rock gods they became–something that many people today might not realise. Brian had a huge heart and we became friends very quickly. We’d sit and talk about the blues for hours, trading stories we’d heard about the recording of the songs we both loved.
Later, Brian and I became even better friends when I was dating the young beauty who became my first wife, Jenny Boyd. Our social circles became intertwined and we saw each other all the time. Jenny and I used to go round to Brian’s flat to hang out and even to participate in the séances he’d hold at his mews cottage in Fulham. At the time Brian had a girlfriend called ZuZu and th
e two of them would pull out the Ouija board and we’d attempt to communicate with the dead. Peter Bardens’ father had written a book about ghosts that we had all read, so we were scared and fascinated at the same time.
I’m far from the first to have said so, but I’d like to confirm that Brian Jones was, without question, one of the sweetest human beings and the most visionary musician I’ve ever met. He’s yet another who died too young, at twenty-seven, the same age as far too many of his peers–Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, as well as Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse in the years to come.
Bill Wyman was a great mentor to us as well. The Stones bass player took an interest in us and brought us a song he’d co-written with a former bandmate named Brian Cade (they were in a group called the Cliftons together) called ‘Stop Runnin’ Around.’ Bill played bass on it and co-produced it with Glyn Johns, whose work with everyone from the Beatles to the Eagles to the Clash is iconic. The song came out as a B-side to our song ‘Down and Out’ in 1965 though it didn’t chart (none of our singles did), it was just so cool that Bill did that for us.
There is a reason why Mick Jagger was with Marianne Faithfull at that time and their relationship encapsulates all that was changing in the counter-cultural scene and in English society as a whole. Marianne came from a very sophisticated family and dating Mick Jagger, who was well-educated but very much associated with a working-class band and movement, was symbolic. It was the epitome of the cultural shift and their relationship was a catalyst for it. Marianne was one of many well-bred members of the scene, such as Tara Browne, an heir to the Guinness fortune, and many like him were of the younger generation and wanted to be a part of this new movement. They included members of the aristocracy, some in their twenties and thirties and others who were even older, lords and ladies and members of parliament, who aligned themselves philosophically with the more radical ideas of sixties culture. All of these people could be found hanging out at the same clubs where we played and at parties in posh properties where the Stones would be the main course.
The Rolling Stones were the crown jewels that the wildest of the rich, young and privileged felt they had to possess. They were the best party favour anyone could hope to have at their gathering. I’m not sure if any of their party hosts realised it, but as funny, fuzzy and odd as they saw the Stones, these eccentric entertainers were the ones who truly held the cards. They became the linchpin to those aristocrats’ social lives more than they would have thought possible when they started inviting them round.
After the Cheynes toured with the Stones, we were accepted and we found ourselves invited everywhere that they went. At the end of that brief tour, I wondered if I’d be seeing Brian again soon and I remember him turning to me and saying, ‘Well, you’ll be coming along with us now, won’t you?’ It was that simple and we did.
It was a moving scene that would start at a number of pubs or clubs and usually move to some elegant townhouse that lads like us would never have imagined being inside. Rolls-Royces and Bentleys would be parked out front, antiques were everywhere, and the men wore gorgeous velvet jackets. I wanted clothes like that too. So I saved my pennies until I could afford to have one shirt made and I scoured the second-hand shops for the right funky old scarf to wear with it. Everyone looked so cool and it was all so exciting.
In the way that people talk about Paris in the 1920s, everyone who was a part of London in the 1960s knows what I mean when I say there will probably be nothing like it in this lifetime. The working classes and the children of the rich were sharing the same space for the first time, all of us finding ourselves. Everyone was like-minded and anything was possible, and why not? Musicians were the pied pipers who rallied the socialites, the fashion folks, all of the mods, the models–just about everyone.
Music was our shared playground, but I must say that without those younger aristocrats unwilling to follow the path set out for them, a lot of it wouldn’t have been as swinging. They were the patrons, just like the families throughout history who commissioned great works, from Wagner to da Vinci. Their patronage wasn’t as directly influential or recognised, but they furthered everything. The easiest way to think about it is that something exploded and it was heard. Then it grew bigger until it was no longer exclusive to the lucky ones sitting in townhouses in Chelsea and it became everybody’s property.
The Stones and the Beatles became the spokesmen for a generation, the vehicles that allowed a large number of people to come out of their shells and that had a lot of repercussions. For one thing it caused a much deeper, eventually dangerous degree of fandom. You only have to look at how obsessed people became with John Lennon, or any of the Beatles, and how personally they took it when John hooked up with Yoko Ono. It made no sense that people should feel failed by an artist for the decisions he made in his personal life, but it happened. This was the start of that kind of devotion when it came to our cultural public figures. The Stones and the Beatles were living billboards for a movement that changed from day to day, just as they did as people, because everything was new and in flux then. They were the flag-bearers and they ended up bearing the brunt of a storm that wasn’t necessarily of their making.
When the government and the more conservative lawmakers tired of the younger generation’s taste for drugs and flamboyant living, they went after the figureheads. The Stones were busted for drugs, constantly harassed and eventually forced into exile in France. It was all reported in the newspapers, served up as a morality tale by the powers that be, but they didn’t win in the end. They tried their best but they couldn’t hold back the tide of change. By the end of the 1960s, the counter-culture was accepted, but only after it was deemed fashionable.
Now, looking back on what happened then in London, I am reminded of a story my dad told me about a journey he took by canoe, as a young man. He rowed his way down the Rhine, through Germany and France, and though it was well before the Second World War, he saw things he could not ignore. He observed the start of the Nazi movement and he wrote about it in his journals. There was something afoot that he didn’t understand. He knew only that something tremendous was about to happen there and it was but a matter of time before the pieces came together to form a larger, and in this case ominous, whole.
Forgive me for drawing such a negative parallel with the sixties scene in London. I do so only because I remember how my father spoke of that trip and I felt the same way about that particular moment for me. Things were happening, there was something coming together, but I didn’t know what it was. I knew it was bigger than me. It was bigger than all of us, even those at the centre of it all. And it was coming our way.
CHAPTER 3
JENNY
By 1965, the Cheynes had wound down to a logical demise. None of our singles ever really hit it big and we were going in circles creatively. Since we had the same agent that booked most of the top British blues bands, among them John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, I came to know a man who has never left my side since–my best friend, the other side of my brain, and the fellow without whom musically I’m only a fraction of what I can be. That would be Mr John McVie. When I met him, John was one of the untouchables because he was in the Bluesbreakers, whom everyone had huge respect for. He and I had been on so many of the same bills that we became what I call ‘nodding partners’; one of those people you see often but don’t know, so you never talk but you nod at them, ‘Hey, how you doin’?’ and keep walking.
John was known to be a great guy but also had a reputation for being a lot of fun. If you were going to be hanging out with John McVie, you’d better saddle up if you planned on keeping pace with him. I noticed John because he was always turned out in a classic blues band style. He’d have on perfectly faded jeans, a pair of gym shoes, white T-shirt and his Fu Manchu moustache. He had a very cool, ‘don’t fuck with me’ air to him. He wouldn’t leap around, he’d just stand there and play beautifully. He’s never changed.
John was born in Ealing, West London, an
d like me, he learned to play his instrument by listening to the Shadows. His first bands played Shadows covers exclusively and John learned to play bass to be contrary to all of his peers, who only wanted to play lead guitar. John left school at seventeen, and after a stint as a tax collector and gigging in a few bands, he ended up playing in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers for about two years before we met. Mayall’s band, unlike the Stones and the Yardbirds who went off to conquer America, had remained in Britain and focused on becoming purists of their form.
So when American electric blues became an internationally acknowledged art form for the first time, John Mayall and his outfit became the backing band of choice for every great American blues master who journeyed across the pond. The demand was there and those that came to the UK were received with open arms because they completely blew our minds. From John Lee Hooker to Sonny Boy Williamson to B.B. King, when those great bluesmen toured England they toured with John Mayall, thanks in part to the Stones for going to America and flying the flag there for the blues.
This is where John McVie cut his teeth playing bass and that is why he does so as divinely as he does. John possesses a tone and rhythm and a progressive sense unlike anyone I’ve ever heard. Back then he was a cut above, and he’s done nothing but improve with age. He is the greatest dance partner; the type who knows what you’re going to do before you do it, because they’ve been leading you all along.
John and I became instant friends and we began to spend time together in the clubs and at my flat, sharing pints and our love of the blues. To this day, we’ve never been at a loss for things to talk about. John was one of my first close friends. I didn’t have mates from school because I changed schools so often, so Peter Bardens, then Peter Green, and then John McVie were the first real male friends I had ever made. It would be some time before John and I would be able to translate our friendship to the stage, however.
Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac: The Autobiography Page 4
