‘Should we call an ambulance?’ I suggested.
‘No!’ cried George fortissimo, the wounded hero. ‘I’m determined to do the sessions. But I shall need a wheelchair and quite a lot of help I daresay.’
The fall had cracked several ribs. But the resourceful Peter, a trained nurse in former years, managed to hoist George upright amid yells of discomfort while I went in search of a wheelchair. Once Melly was seated Peter was able to divest him of his nightshirt, revealing a body badly infected with eczema and psoriasis, and finally managed to recloak him in an ornate if slightly brief kaftan. With our star upright in his wheelchair we made our stately yet spectacular way to the foyer where a cab owned by a friend of Peter’s awaited us and drove through Bexley and up the hill to Clownspocket Studios.
Over the next two days with Derek Nash we recorded eighteen tracks, George alternately seated in the recording booth to record guide vocals and the big garden outside, urbanely smoking and enjoying the garden views while the Half-Dozen toiled inside. To fortify myself against the pressures of recording I had brought a litre bottle of fine Russian vodka, a gift from friends in the Midlands and was mildly dismayed to find that at the end of day one it was almost gone, making regular trips to Sandy Nash’s generously stocked bar a necessity. The ebullient Sandy made trips in return to the studio providing sandwiches, tea, coffee and stronger beverages as required, while Derek worked his miracles at the desk. At the end of the day, George was driven back to the hotel where a group of young tough south Londoners recognised him in the bar and encircled him to gossip and drink.
On the third day it was time to ensure that all George’s vocal tracks were laid down for editing and tuning purposes and this was a warm April. In the booth, tiny in any case, George, Peter, Derek and myself gathered for an intensive day’s work in a warm and airless space. The regular use of a pee-bottle intensified what was already a funky atmosphere and it was hard to miss the equipment that had carried George through so many triumphant physical encounters.
The following week we had been due to mix the Melly album, to be called, like Jack Higgins’s new show, Singing and Swinging the Blues. But the ever-generous Peter had liked what he heard of the Half-Dozen in-studio and rededicated the three reserved days to recording what was to be our new band album called Things Ain’t What They Used To Be. The mixing turned out well, and we had fun, particularly with ‘Frankie and Johnny’, which turned into a full-blown production with spectacular guitar from Dominic Ashworth recalling both Duane Eddy and Jimi Hendrix, plus electronic brass-stab gunshots, and shouts of alarm when Frankie’s 44 rooty-toot-tooted Johnny into eternity.
George recovered quickly and, by the end of April, was ready to travel up with me up by train to Barrow-in-Furness for a quartet date, then down with the Half-Dozen to another Giants of Jazz show in Halifax. Both shows had ‘sold out’ signs up when we arrived.
Later George explained to me why the bathroom accident had occurred. Along with other increasing medication he had been prescribed water pills, necessitating regular nightly trips to the bathroom, a miserable experience making prolonged sleep virtually impossible. It also meant that – in the old phrase – when he had to go, he had to go.
‘Once,’ he said, ‘I was taken short and had to find a nearby wall in Shepherd’s Bush. Which I did. But then I felt a policeman’s hand on my shoulder. “What’s all this, then?” I explained that I was taking water pills and that peeing when it happened was an urgent necessity. “Oh very well, sir,” said the policeman. “But perhaps next time you could find an alternative to the wall of our police station?”’
CHAPTER FIVE
Travelling Shoes and Blues
By the spring of 2003 Jack Higgins’s publicity had paid off and by British jazz standards we were working very hard indeed. Seldom did a week go by without at least one or two concerts, and our show – tidied up further by the arrangements we’d recorded for our new album – began to turn into a smooth but high-powered presentation. It was also much the same most nights, a point that bothered me as George, in a previous life with Mick Mulligan, had been known to complain about singing most of the same songs night after night. But at this point he didn’t seem to mind.
Consequently, our first half more or less permanently comprised George’s new opener ‘Old Rockin’ Chair’ with some exchanged business between George and I (‘My Cane’s By My Side’, ‘And a Fine Upstanding Thing!’, ‘Was . . . !’), ‘Cakewalkin’ Babies’, a heavily blues-soaked ‘Trouble in Mind’ (featuring Dominic’s Claptonesque flat guitar) and usually ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ as a closer. Then, on our second half, George would return for a solo on ‘Michigan Water Blues’ (with Craig Milverton’s solo piano) before ‘Dr Jazz’, a ballad such as ‘Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You’ or the defiant ‘Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do’, a jumping ‘All the Girls Go Crazy’ (complete with the song’s original words later on celebrating ‘All the Whores Go Crazy ’bout the Way I Ride’) and, to finish with, a romping ‘The Joint Is Jumpin’, featuring Craig’s marvellous solo piano at high speed, with exchanges between Len Skeat and Bobby Worth before the end. The encore inevitably was ‘Nuts’. ‘Can you imagine waking up in the morning,’ George would muse to his audiences in mock-envy, ‘and remembering “I’m Roosevelt ‘The Honeydripper’ Sykes?” For this finale the lights were turned up on the audience and George would pick out the unfortunate man ‘whose shirt is blue/he’s got very big nuts; he just don’t know what to do’, ‘whose shirt is peach/he’s got very nice nuts but his arms don’t reach’, before turning the joke on himself: ‘See this man – he’s big and fat/they say that his nuts are no bigger than that’ (not true as we knew) and finally, ‘See this man/his head is bald/they say he ain’t got no nuts at all.’ It was a marvellous show.
And we were busy! George’s datesheet with the Feetwarmers had been slackening, as we knew, but now he was back and doing well. Over the next few months we played the Giants of Jazz package – three-header shows co-starring Humphrey Lyttelton and either Kenny Ball or Acker Bilk – in Halifax, Coventry and Bath. In early May, we played in Derry at the Millennium Forum, a superb new building where one of our company (though not one of the Half Dozen) trashed his hotel room in a rare moment of hotel rage, rock’n’roll style.
We also took George, with a cut-down quartet, Feetwarmers’ style, to Brighton and, with the full band again, to Hertford, Tunbridge Wells and George’s home town of Liverpool. Here we played at the tiny Neptune Theatre, distinguished by its lack of a ground-floor entrance (you can only get to its charming first-floor auditorium via a lift) and by the fact that our star had made his first-ever on-stage appearance there as a child. We also played Ludlow, Bracknell, Hever Castle, Aboyne, Southend and Whitstable.
By May our new album Singing and Swinging the Blues had been mastered, the artwork completed and the generous sixteen-page booklet adorned with a blessing from George’s friend Sir Paul McCartney. George had written to Holly Dearden, Paul’s secretary, and received a delightful answer from the man himself, stating that he’d known George since his days in Liverpool when he was already a legend on the jazz music scene, and had followed his career since then, describing George as ‘a lovely man’.
Such a coup meant a lot to Peter Clayton. As well as printing the words within the booklet he had a sticker printed to be attached to the cellophane wrapper of the CD. A fine piece of advertising, but George had difficulties grasping the fact that you could read Paul’s words both in the booklet and on the sticker on the CD’s disposable wrapping. ‘Stupid!’ he snorted. ‘A total waste! Unwrap the damn thing and all my hard work – and Paul’s – goes straight in the rubbish! What an IDIOT.’ We never quite managed to get the point across.
When the CD was finally ready to go to press, Peter, as ever awash with enthusiasm and excitement, decided that we should take it to George’s house for a ceremonial debut and play-through. This turned out to be a distinct anticlimax. Very few musicians enjoy hearing the
ir own work anyhow – especially just over 65 minutes of it. And Peter’s exuberance failed to receive the reception it deserved. Diana Melly, who was long experienced in the arrival of new recordings, asked for it to be played at moderate volume, which meant that George couldn’t hear it at all, even if he had been hugely interested. Granddaughter Kezzie wandered in and out of the kitchen-diner in search of boiled eggs rather than music, and the two producers sat in increasing discomfort before a quick and tactful exit seemed the best choice.
In mid-August at Whitstable – the very pretty town on the Kent coast famous for its oysters – we were to be joined by our agent and champion Jack Higgins who had announced his intention of coming to see our two shows, a rare occurrence for him. I had yet to get to know Jack well and, like many of his clients, was still terrified of him. My concerns were doubled by the fact that the Half-Dozen’s guitarist, Dominic Ashworth, had let me know some time before that he would be on holiday during the two dates and, as we could play quite happily with just piano, bass and drums and earn a little more money too, I had failed to let Jack know.
I knew he would almost certainly be furious. But to tell him in advance would be bound to provoke a row. With heart in mouth and nails bitten to their quicks, I approached the dates, ready to face the thunderstorm I felt sure would ensue. Finally the day arrived and down we travelled to Whitstable to be told that Mr Higgins had checked into his hotel and would join us at the theatre. So, with just six men and our star, we took the stage and when the set was over I steeled myself for an ugly row in the making.
In the dressing room, there was Jack – broad-shouldered, distinguished, immaculately dressed in jacket, tailored slacks, shirt and cravat, talking to Len Skeat. I tried to make myself invisible in the curtains but to no avail. With measured tread, Jack approached me.
‘One short, eh?’ he enquired briefly.
‘Yes,’ I stammered. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything . . . I was afraid it might spoil the weekend . . .’
Jack cut in. ‘Tell me next time!’ he said. ‘Otherwise we might have complaints. And we don’t want that. Now – tomorrow, you, Lisa and George will be my guests at the best restaurant in Whitstable. Is one o’clock convenient?’
Of course it was. My merciful agent had decided that this was to be a happy weekend devoid of rows. And next day, with him, we feasted on a seafood lunch of incomparable quality, oysters and all.
Only our hotel, well away from Whitstable centre, cast a shadow on the proceedings. An inflexible landlady (definitely one of the old school) offered no hot water after 9 a.m. and almost nothing in the way of hospitality. Chris Gower took his revenge at breakfast-time by wandering morosely around the garden, then being sick into a handy flowerbed. But on day two there was a break in the clouds. The Half-Dozen and I were cheered to find that Dave Gelly, jazz critic of the Observer, had voted Singing and Swinging the Blues his Record of the Week. Generous as always, Lisa bought seven copies of the paper and we celebrated in the hotel car park listening to our new work of art on her in-car CD player. George was proud of his latest achievement too, and for many months thereafter worked a reference to our triumph into his show.
‘Our new CD,’ he would say, ‘has been voted by the Observer’s jazz critic as his Record of the Week. All the more remarkable, as the man concerned usually only likes the kind of modern jazz I refer to as the fire-in-a-petshop brand.’ The term refers to the kind of modern jazz known as ‘free’ but by its detractors as ‘squeaky-bonk’. But Dave Gelly, a commentator who not only knows jazz from its beginning to the contemporary but also plays elegant and expert tenor in the style of Lester Young, would have been rightfully dismayed by such an inappropriate dismissal.
We were now settling into a show proper. Lisa’s presence at the shows was invaluable, not only for her solid support for a project with which she was increasingly familiar, but also for her help with the new and demanding matter of ‘produce’. Now we had a new album to sell as well as the subsequent issue of our own new album on Robinwood Things Ain’t What They Used To Be (with George as special guest on one favourite track of mine, the old Eddie Cantor song ‘When My Ship Comes In’). The two albums were joined by George’s liberal bibliography, including his Penguin trilogy (Scouse Mouse, Rum, Bum and Concertina and Owning Up) and a wonderfully eccentric account of his fishing passions and encounters (at least one of them, literally sexual) called Hooked.
Before a show, while George settled himself into his dressing room, arranging his bagful of accoutrements with geometric precision as usual, it was our job to carry in boxes of books and CDs, locate the house manager, establish what if any percentage of sales was to be taken by the house and then set up two tables: one for the books and records and one nearby at which George would sign autographs. CDs must be stripped of their cellophane covers for autograph purposes, books unpacked and the quantity of produce counted and listed. A float of twenty or thirty pounds must be brought or located on-site, and sheets of paper plus felt-tipped pen left at George’s table for admirers to write down their names if he was too deaf to hear them. Then the produce itself must be set out attractively and covered with a protective tablecloth to avoid preshow theft.
At half-time, shows frequently resembled a beer-garden. Queues of people would make for our stand, skilfully run by Lisa but usually accompanied by the bandleader, sweating from the efforts of his first set, straight from the bandstand into the arms of the crowd. This wasn’t fun and, if Lisa couldn’t be there, was liable to turn into a chaotic nightmare of hurried financial exchanges, inebriated recording of sales and the promise to return after an interval devoid of rest, to the second half of our show. This bewildering business undoubtedly led me nearer to the bottle of vodka I normally carried with me and occasionally to later bouts of frustration and ill-temper as, having completed a sell-out concert, it would be necessary to run back to the stall, complete the sales, report on them to the house manager, sign receipts and (worst of all) calculate percentages owed plus or minus VAT before returning a shade hazily to the dressing room. There I would attend to the small matters of packing trumpet and mutes, gathering music and paying my patient friends in the Half-Dozen who would help in dismantling and packing our own PA away, minus their perspiring leader.
And this wasn’t all the clerking involved. Once home with recorded sales and a bag of money it was Lisa’s and my job to rationalise figures (often at odds with the scribbled sales accounting on the paper) and then pay the money into George’s two companies. ‘Man Woman and Bulldog’ for records and ‘Wing Commander Jack’ (named after Diana Melly, known as the ‘Winco’ by George and Jack Higgins) for books. For these unpaid tasks Lisa rightly asked for a commission of £1 for each CD sold, but it was small return for the work involved.
Later on I took on paymaster’s duties single-handed and one day a bright-eyed young counter clerk questioned me.
‘We’ve been wondering,’ she said, ‘about Man Woman and Bulldog. It’s a funny name for a company. What does it mean?’
Modesty forbade me – certainly at 10 a.m. one Monday morning – from explaining that ‘Man Woman and Bulldog’ was one of George’s favoured party-pieces. Baring his bottom he would advance into the room backwards and bent double revealing those swarthy balls and a mighty penis. ‘Man.’ Then a return appearance with penis and testicles pulled forward between his legs. ‘Woman.’ And finally – with balls only to view – ‘Bulldog’!
About now, however, serious challenges were raising their threatening heads for our star. Following his cracked ribs prior to our first recording dates, George had remained in pain for a while and become depressed. A general check-up had involved an x-ray and this revealed a shadow on his lung. The scan that followed produced a chilling diagnosis: lung cancer, a verdict that devastated Diana Melly. A biopsy had been offered but George, fearful of needles and the threat that an operation might interrupt or even finish his singing career, decided that he might go out the way he had chosen to live
: by drinking, smoking and living the life he loved. These days Diana was often away from home on holiday or at the Mellys’ cottage in Bagnor but now comforted herself with counselling and the acquisition of two papillon dogs, Bobby and Joey (quickly and appropriately christened by George the ‘yap-yaps’). She then hired a homehelp, a handsome Zimbabwean called Desdemona. George’s 77th birthday in August approached with plans for a big party – a joy-week at Bagnor to which a succession of friends would visit, including Mick and Tessa Mulligan and playwright Julian Mitchell. The week was a great success but a month later a second x-ray revealed that the tumour had disappeared. The Reaper, it seemed, had sheathed his scythe.
CHAPTER SIX
Ronnie’s and Beyond
In October, we played a concert at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, where George had collapsed and been rushed to hospital some years before. This time there was little fear of that and our star received a standing ovation.
It was also at this time that I endured my first fully fledged fight with Jack Higgins. The day of the concert he had rung with the offer of some work in Somerset.
‘But,’ growled Jack, ‘you’d better get your act together. Because there’s word down there that Digby Fairweather is unreliable.’
‘Oh,’ I joked, ‘another paternity summons? I’ll see to it, Jack.’ But the remark rankled.
The next morning Jack rang again. ‘Who took the cheque last night?’
‘Lisa did,’ I said. ‘The manager gave it to her and we’re posting it off today.’
‘How many times,’ said Jack, his voice rising in a crescendo of fury, ‘do I have to make it clear to you that the cheque comes direct to me. Get your act together. And tell your fucking girlfriend to do the same.’
I held my breath, then let go of my temper. ‘Listen, Jack,’ I said, watching myself say the words, my breath now catching in fury. ‘First, you don’t speak to me like that! Second, you never speak of my partner in such terms again. And, while we’re on the subject, I want to know who it is that accused me of unreliability?’
On the Road with George Melly Page 5
