Sher-er-rry, Sherry baby
She-e-e-e-e-e-e-ry ba-a-by (Sherry baby)
She-er-rry, can you come out tonight (Come come, come out toni-i-ight)
She-e-e-e-e-e-e-ry ba-a-by (Sherry baby)
She-er-rry, can you come out tonight
(Why don't you come out) (come out) to my twist party
(Come out) Where the bright moon shines
(Come out) We'll dance the night away
I'm gonna make-a you mi-yi-yi-ine
She-e-e-e-e-e-e-ry ba-a-by (Sherry baby)
She-er-rry, can you come out tonight
(Come come, come out toni-i-ight)
(Come come, come out toni-i-ight)
You-oo-ooh better ask your ma-a-ma (Sherry baby)
Te-ell her everything is all right
(Why don't you come out) (come out) with your red dress on
(Come out) Mmm, you look so fine
(Come out) Move it nice and easy
Girl, you'll make me lose my mi-ind
She-e-e-e-e-e-e-ry ba-a-by (Sherry baby)
She-er-rry, can you come out tonight
(Come come, come out toni-i-ight)
(Come come, come out toni-i-ight)
Sherry, Sherry baby
Sherry, Sherry baby
Chapter 56. ART.
I was there when it happened: when a handful of mainly working class ex-students from the Royal College Of Art got jobs teaching in art schools throughout the country, grabbed the establishment by the scruff of the neck and shook it till every bone in its fat, overfed, sluggish body shattered.
I was there when the 2nd great post war revolution happened - when the guardians of British society who thought they’d successfully tamed Rock ‘n’Roll and its culture by adding pizzicato strings to the songs found themselves plunged into a far more powerful and far reaching anarchic nightmare than they could have imagined; when Peter Blake told RCA student, Ian Dury, to stop trying to paint like Cezzanne and paint things that he liked instead; when David Hockney, himself an RCA student, was refused a diploma for not attending general study lectures, and hand painted his own.
I was there when the great Pop Art Movement burst through the dam of so-called repectability and flooded the streets, magazines, TV and films with its crazy, colourful images of targets, stripes, swirls. I was there when these same images invaded the world of fashion and the textile industry, uniting the working and middle classes for the first time ever, by adding a riot of colour and geometric shapes to clothes and hairstyles.
I was there when the art schools unpackaged Rock ‘n ‘Roll and gave it a much rougher ‘R&B’ edge, with the main protagonists writing their own songs and forming their own bands like, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Blockheads, The Pretty Things, The Yardbirds, The Animals, The Who and later, Roxey Music; when students like Ian Dury and Keith Richard stopped making images on paper and canvas and created new images of themselves instead, and David Bowie, a student at Bromley Technical College, took incredibly accurate aim at the place he knew was his destiny.
I was there when the art schools took over the world.
Yes, I was there. I was part of it. And I was shaking all over.
Apart from the really talented, for whom art school was a natural extension of their education, for most so-called students it was somewhere to go if they could draw a bit and couldn’t think what to do when they left secondary school when the only options seemed to be to become an apprentice in a factory or work behind the counter in a shop.
Art school was a kind of delaying tactic mostly, but one that gave you an identity outside the norm – a kind of exclusivity and pretend intellectual superiority. And 3 years was a long time to make up your mind about your future - plenty of time. But, most of all, going to art school was sure to be fun. I don’t think Alf was all that keen for me to spend another 3 years not earning.
However, Connie, whom he saw as the possessor of an imense mystical talent far beyond his own comprehension, had been a student Sidcup Art School just before the war, and shared the odd life class with Wally Fawlkes, later to becaome a renowned jazz musician and illustrator, managed to convince him that art school for me was probably a good idea. Connie married before she was able to use her skills commercially, but with her persuation and glowing reports from the Edgebury art master, Alf capitulated and I started my first term in September 1961.
My experience of Tony Eatwell’s brother and his weird mode of dress and lifestyle had taught me what to expect from art students and I wasn’t disappointed. The Sidcup mob had that familiar, superior, moody aloofness that set them apart from the common herd. They were scruffy, in a studied sort of way, obviously intellectual, and immensely superior. To begin with, no one smiled, deliberately to create the illusion that they were obviously lost in their own world of anti-establishment philosophy and general artiness.
(I adopted the same attitude myself a year later when I was a ‘mature’ second year student, let my hair grow and consciously stopped washing my jeans.) The Sidcup student demeanour was one of obvious anarchy. I felt I’d come home.
I’d promised Connie that when I went to the art school, I wouldn’t grow my hair down over my collar like Brian Eatwell’s. I lied. The first duty of any male art student in the Sixties was to do just that, but no one was prepared for the follicle extremis that was to come during 1963 and 64. I was delighted to find that Brian Eatwell’s plum in the mouth style of speech was common usage amongst some of the students but there was also a much rougher vocal sound, which was more widespread. Not exactly Cockney, a bit South London, peppered with a few sophisticated words. Several key words were used by the initiated: ‘excellent’, ‘fair’ and ‘really’, among the favourites.
“I saw ‘Knife In The Water’ at the NFT at the weekend.”
“Really? What was it like.”
“It was excellent.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Dead excellent.”
“Oh, fair.”
'Fair' was used to describe something that was excellent, and excellent denoted that which was really excellent. Really excellent described something that was…really excellent.
On the first day, a diminutive intellectual young man in brown corduroy trousers and suede Chelsea boots came up and asked me an important question.
“Could I buy a cigarette paper off you?”
“No, but I can give you a couple.”
“Excellent. Thank you very much.”
These intellectuals were very polite. This was Pete Cosier, a well-spoken 2nd year student who could really draw but who was incredibly lazy. Still, at that stage, I couldn’t have cared less. He represented the arty establishment of which I’d ached to become a part and he actually spoke to me. He left at the end of his 2nd year, declaring that he no longer wished to prostitute his art in the name of commercialism and went travelling with his girl friend, Pam Brambleby, a tall, skinny, blonde student from a monied background.
(Actually, Pete was kicked out of the school for not producing the required amount of work and actually left tearfully declaring that art was his life and that the system had treated him unfairly.) With long straight hair, Pam was a first year student, who at 17 was already quite a wild young thing and having fabulous sex with her merchant sailor boyfriend, so she kept telling all the girls in our year.
Later in the first term, my newly aquired girlfriend, Janet, and I used to watch her and Pete in a field next to the local park where all student couples went to experiment with the limited bits of carnal knowledge they’d gleaned from books and conversations in the toilets with other students. Pete was only 5 foot tall and with Pam being over 6, they made an unlikely couple, but nevertheless, seemed to be enjoying themselves though from the fairly safe distance of about 100yds, he looked more like one of her offspring than her lover.
Unfortunately, Pam was never to have children. While rock climbing in Wales with Pete, she fell and broke her back, and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She gave Pete the elbow saying she didn’t want or need his sympathy and that it would be better all round if he were just to fuck off, which he did.
SHERRY
The first morning tea break on the first day at Sidcup Art School was a revelation in more way than one. Being 1st year students fresh out of secondary school, we looked a pretty conventional lot, not quite in school uniform, but not far off. We were split into 2 groups both of which got to the canteen, 5 minutes before the rest of the school made their entrance into the brand new hut built in the middle of the yard that surrounded the white Art Decko main building. It was quite an entrance - obviously well rehearsed and choreographed to create the maximum shock to the gathering of new ‘school children’.
First through the door was a 2nd year student called Sherry. This was 1962 and conventional girls were still wearing hoop dresses, half a mile thick with net petticoats with hems 4 inches below the knee and still considered to be on the daring side of risqué. Sherry, then, was a bit of a shock.
Sherry pushed open the canteen doors as if they were saloon doors in Dodge City, her heavy black eye make up flashing us a sideways glance to make sure she had everyone’s attention. She had. Her hair was dyed a pinkish red, roughly cut in a ragged bob and tied up with a brightly coloured chiffon scarf. She wasn’t tall or particularly slim, but she filled her outfit amply, and thrust her chest forward to place maximum strain on the straps of the pair of men’s braces she wore over her white T shirt.
Her bottom half was squeezed into a pair of faded blue jeans that were splattered with white blobs and held up by a thick brown leather belt, boasting a huge brass buckle that would’ve looked at home round of the waist of a docker or John Wayne. The jeans weren’t conventional girls’ jeans with the regulation tapered legs that stopped inches short of the ankle that had adorned the legs of pony-tailed, American teenaged girls in films. (Actually, they were mature women, like Sandra Dee and Debbie Reynolds, done up to look like innocent teenagers risking their virtue and, likely as not, paying the ultimate moral price by becoming pregnamt as a lesson to all.)
Sherry’s jeans were men’s working jeans and had straight legs all the way down to the tatty pair of Dunlop Green Flash Sherry had on her feet. As she passed us, further thrusting her way to the tea counter at the far end of the canteen, I became aware of something I’d not noticed before and certainly not placed any significance on: the female bottom.
Maybe it was the way the jeans seemed sprayed on around this area of Sherry’s anatomy that revealed every contour of her pair-shaped backside so perfectly that was so impressive, or the way it twitched from side to side as she barrelled her way to the tea counter, or the fact that it was so convincingly shoe-horned into the very first pair of Levis I’d ever seen, that was such a turn on.
Maybe it was all of those things. We watched in stunned silence, the girls amongst us impressed and mentally re-arranging their own wardrobes, the boys feeling dry mouthed and a mite unsettled trying to sort into some kind of order the flood of odd feelings which, with nowhere to go at that particular moment, headed straight for their guts.
A steady stream of arty (scruffy and colourful) looking individuals followed Sherry into the canteen. Most of the blokes wore corduroy jackets in green, black, red or brown and the obligitary Levis in various states of decomposition. Most of the girls wore Levis too, with the exception of a few hand-printed dresses and pairs of funny coloured stockings. Tights hadn’t been invented and there were a few pairs of ‘black legs’, which had always been associated with girl art students.
There were a few beards about, thought not on any of the girls, I was glad to see. One in particular stood out. It belonged to a 4th year student called Dick Taylor. He had a thatch of rust-coloured hair attached to his head like an old piece of carpet that seemed to grow in a dozen different directions at once. His beard came from the same carpet factory and appeared to be stuck around the line of his jaw in the Quaker cut favoured by the Greenwich Village Beatnick set of Alan Ginsberg and Jack Keruac who modelled the style on Lincoln’s beard. There was no moustache and he wore a long brown sweater, Levis and Chelsea boots, crudely painted gold.
Dick flashed us the customery, disparaging glance as he strode purposefully to the counter at the end of the room. His image, with its accompanying rudeness, seemed to me to fit exactly the kind of artiness I expected from any self respecting art school student, though at the time, I didn’t realise Dick’s style was about 5 years out of date.
It wasn’t long before we new students had contrived to become infected with the arty look dispayed by their more experienced contemporarys and the boys eagerly began the ignore the natural instincts built in by their parents over many years to visit the barber.
As I mentioned before, in 1961, the era of the Brycreamed, swept-back-at-the-sides look for teenaged blokes was on the wane and had largely been replaced by a shotrter, side-parting American style known as ‘The College Boy’, somewhat dubiously adopted by the parents’ favourite crooner, Perry Como, who was older than most mums and dads. At Sidcup, the trend seemed to be to let your hair go its own way, which made sense to most of us.
All except Patrick Uden, a tall, good looking, eloquent 16 year-old freckly, sandy haired Catholic, who insisted on keeping his hair short and brushed forward in the style adopted by Brian Eatwell, except that Patrick’s hair was always freshly washed. Easily the most talented in our group, Patrick quite naturally became our group leader, with his mature and out-spoken views on politics, current events, American technology and military might.
According to the manual, art students were supposed to have Left Wing leanings but Patrick was uncomfortably Conservative and difficult to argue with, being blessed with a ‘golden tongue’, and being able to argue black was blue with total conviction. I found myself admiring the confounded man who seemed to stand against everything he considered to be superficially arty, which turned out to be many of the things that I’d wanted to surround myself with for so long, like long hair, corduroy jackets, Cuban heal boots, and anything ant-etablishment.
NB. “I hate society.” (prat)
PU. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re part of society.”
NB. “Er…”
In the outside world, a few die-hard male Rock’n’Roll fans kept the greasy swept back hair and were freshly lebelled, ‘Rockers’, and, being associated with motor bikes smelling of burnt Castrol, their look and garb eventually entitled them to the less endearing discription of ‘Greasers’. Like it, or not, everybody who weren’t art students were pidgeon-holed with some degrading term or other by those who were.
We did have a Rocker in our group. He really shouldn’t have been at art school at all, as far as I could see. He just didn’t fit the bill. John Glover was nice enough but he wore a black and white checked cap and a rust coloured corduroy short coat.
His taste in sweaters left a little to be desired, too. Lilac was hardly arty, at least, not for a bloke. John’s thick, blonde hair was scraped back at the sides and he had Presley length sideburns and a generous quiff supporting the peak of his cap. I have to admit, he had a lot of natural charm and wasn’t backward when it came to chatting up the girls. His girlfriend outside the art school was Angela, from a fairly well-to-do theatrical family in the management side of the business. Angela's family lived in a mock-Italian detatched house in Footscray Road.
John would sometimes talk of dinner paries at Angela’s with such notable guests as Ian hendry and Janet Monroe, “Ian’s a really nice bloke. Very interesting. Not a bit stuck up or full of himself. I get on really well with him and Janet. I’m not sure, but I think they’re going out together - but I don’t think that’s public knowledge.”
Despite his obvious working class background, a bit poorer than most of ours, John was a confident character and could hold his own in most company and there was no reason to doubt his word. Even the snooty Patrick was endeared to this loveable rogue. Most of the senior students made it clear that they dispised his presence at the school but John made it just as plain that he didn’t care two hoots about what they thought of him and played his part as the outsider as loudly as his black, steel toe-capped boots, a must wear for the tough tearaways of the day.
“They’re just a bunch of cunts, really - just a bunch of scruffy, arty bastards. They don’t impress me. Most of them look pretty bloody stupid, I think.”
There was another guy who didn’t fit the bill as far as looking how art students should look. He wore a well-cut, brown suit over a green cotton jumper and strange shoes with crickled soles. He was very good-looking, almost girl like, and wore his hair short, but swept back on top – almost as if it was back-combed.
Brian Boyle was a very relaxed individual, who rode a Vespa and sauntered about the place with his hands in his pockets. No one had ever seen anyone like this guy. He didn’t seem to fit into any mould and was impossible to catorgorise. He was one of 5 students who’d been invited to stay on at the school for a 4th year to take The Royal College Of Art entrance exam.
This was what all the best students aimed for. The Royal College was reputed to be the best art college in the world and was the only one that was post-graduate, and the best jobs came with the territory after graduation. You also ended up with letters after your name; ARCA, which meant, if you wanted to teach, you could command the highest available salary. The competition for entrance was fierce and though in the 2 previous years, Sidcup had managed to get 3 students accepted into the school of Graphic Design, the chances of them repeating the success was generally thought to be unlikely.
The candidates that year were, Dick Tailor, Morris Spira, a loud mouthed Jewish boy with curley hair and a whispey beard, David Kirk, an extremely un-pleasant, red-headed youth from my old Secondary School, and Dave Donkin, a lanky 6 footer who wore hand-made Cuban healed boots from Anello And David in Charing Cross Road. Dave Donkin went out with Sue Jennings, a 3rd year student who, with her long blonde hair and knee length boots, was the arty-est girl in in the school.
I got to know Dick, Dave Donkin and ‘Mole’ by means of my expertise on the guitar, which seemed to impress them. All bets were on Dick, Dave and Mole cracking the big one, though Julian Whittaker’s father, who was one of the tutors, said the only one who stood a chance was Brian Boyle. But what did he know? Quite a lot, it turns out. Dick and David Kirk failed the first part of the exam, a submission of work, and though Dave D and Mole got through to the interview, only Brian Boyle passed and was accepted by the college. I was stunned, and decided to study the enigmatic Mr Boyle, his ways and his style more closely.
During the next two years, that style was adopted by thousands of young men who, believing they’d found a new identity of their own, decided to demonstrate it by kicking shite out of anyone who supported the well-known combination of Brylcream and motorbikes called Greasers or Rockers. Somehow though, the Mods had missed the point, whatever the point was.
‘Coates comes up from Summerset, where the cider apples grow’
Dr Cameron: “Ah, Dor’or Finlay.”
Dr Finlay: “Ye wanted tae see me, Dor’or Cameron?”
DC: “Aye, Dor’or Finlay, ah did that. Angus McBain is havin’ a bot ‘o trouble with hus prize Hereford bull. A wee touch ‘o colic, ah think it uz. I want ye to go and take a gander at the curs’ed animal.”
DF: “But I’m no a vet, Dor’or, I’m a qualified people dor’or, an I canna be doin’ wi stickin’ my arm up some motheaten quadraped’s arse.”
DC: “Ye’ll dee as ye’re told, Dor’or Finlay or ye’ll be lookin’ fer another job. McBain is an auld frined ‘o mine ‘an as there’s no vet in Tanoch Brai since old Petteffer passed on, it’s the least we can dee.”
DF: “Well, may I respectfully suggest that you dee it yoursel, then. McBain’s no a friend ‘o mine. I think he’s a drunken, womanising lout wi’ as much kindness aboot him as a rattlesnake on heat.”
DC: “That I will no. May I remind you that as the senior partner in this practise, I canna be seen ta be tendin’ dumb animals.”
DF: “Oh, and I can, I suppose.”
DC: “Ye tend dumb animals every day ‘o the week right here in this surgery.”
DF: “Why that’s a despicable attitude, if I may say so.”
DC: “Ye may say what ye like. Just go and get on wi the job.”
DF: “I’d rather jump of the Forth Bridge and what’s more…”
SFX: Door opening.
Janet: “Here’s yer tea, Doctrrs. Why, ye’re never aguing again?”
DF: ‘Ye’ll never guess what the man wants me tae dee, noo, Janet.”
J: “He probably wants ye tae go and stick your arm up Angus McBain’s bull’s arse, Doctrr.”
DF: “Hoo the hell did ye nae that, Janet?”
J: “Weel, I had to dee it a couple ‘o taimes mesel’ before ye came along, Doctrr Finlay.”
DF: “WHAT!”
J: “Och, it wasnee so bad. Look at it this way, Doctrr. Would ye rather be stickin’ your arm up Angus McBain’s arse? He’s comin’ in this morning and he’s bringing a nasty case ‘o piles wi’ him.”
DF: “Where’s ma bag. Janet, I love ye.”
DC: “Wait Dor’or Finlay. I should go and see tae the bull mesel. He’s my friend, after all.”
DF: “Aye, and yer welcome tae ‘im. ‘By, Dor’or. ‘By, Janet. See ye leeterr!”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Long distance information
Give me Memphis Tennesee
Help me find the party
Trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number
But I know who place to call
Because my Uncle took the message
And he wrote it on the wall
Long Distance Information
More than that I cannot add
Only that I miss her
And all the fun we had
We were pulled apart you see
Information please
Try to put me through to her
In Memphis Tennesee
Help me information
Get in touch with my Marie
She's the only one who'd phone me here
From Memphis Tennesee
Her house is on the south side
High upon the ridge
Just about a half a mile
From the Mississippi bridge
Last time I saw Marie
She was waving me goodbye
With hurry home drops on her cheeks
That trickeled from her eye
Marie is only six years old
Information please
Try to put me through to her
In Memphis Tennesee
Chapter 57. LIFE
On the 2nd Monday of the first year at Sidcup, the new students attended their first life class. That’s to say we all sat round and stared at a 40 year-old woman completely naked for 2 hours. We all sat in a semi circle on donkeys – not real ones – these donkeys were small benches with an easel at one end. You sat astride the thing and propped your drawing board against the easel and then tried not to look nervous as you waited for the woman to come out from behind the screen where she WAS TAKING OFF HER CLOTHES, FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!
Let me explain. Few 15 -16 year old boys in 1961 had ever seen a woman naked before, unless it’d been a quick glimpse of their Mum or Sister in the bathroom when they’d burst in by accident. There were a few boys in the 5th year at Edgebury who claimed to have girlfriends, and some of the more mature ones I did actually believe. Ian Campbell, who had, at 15, the body of a 25 year old and the biggest penis in the class.
He was one of a handful of blokes at that tender age who had more than a handful of genitaliar and would stay undressed after showers while those less endowed would hurridly get themselves recovovered. He’d stick his low-swinging, German sausage between his legs, then press his thighs together and hold his wet towel round his nipples like a bra.
“Hey, Pete. Look, I’m a girl.”
A girl, he most certainly wasn’t. His girlfriend was 2 years older than him.
“Christ! I nearly cocked it with Sandra last night,” was one devastating comment he once made.
It would have been one thing if the life studio had only been filled with other blokes. You could have relaxed a bit, have a bit of a chuckle with your mates, but to have girls present to titter and giggle at your response to the forthcoming event was altogether too embarrassing a concept for words.
There was dead silence as we waited for the model to make her entrance. I managed to flick a glance around the gathering and no one was smiling. Maybe the girls were just as embarrassed. Maybe the thought of us seeing what they looked like unwrapped, if only approximately, was even more embarrassing for them than the entire experience was for us.
At last the model came out from behind the screen. She wore the sort of flimsy, cotton dressing gown they give you in a hospital out patients department and flip-flops and didn’t seem at all perturbed by her audience. Well, she was a professional, I suppose, but I wondered if she actually knew that it was the first time for most of us. Or whether she cared?
The moment came and she removed her flips flops and let the dressing gown slip off, casually casting it aside onto the posing box in the corner of the room. The box was a 5ft square wooden affair on casters draped with cushions and a white shroud. Without more ado or a ‘by your leave’, the brazen hussy sat down and arranged herself in a reclining pose right in front of me – in front of all of us. Her breasts were quite large. Her breasts were quite large. Her breasts were quite large. She made no attempt to cover her modesty, which was quite interesting because one could make quite a study of any particular part officially, as it were. And it was interesting, but not the least bit erotic. At least, I didn’t think so.
At the end of the lesson, I realised that my drawing had no head. It seemed I’d concentrated on the torso too much and, had I actually got around to the head, it would have been off the top of the paper. All I had for my trouble was a stomach, the tops of a pair of legs and, smack in the middle, 2 beautifully rendered mamory glands.
THE STURGESS BIRD
Looking back, most of the teachers were useless. Even a couple with the hallowed ARCA after their names didn’t seem to live up to their qualifications. They weren’t really interested in the students’ futures, and teaching was just an easy way of life. Few of them were actually practising painters or designers. A couple of them were practising alcoholics.
Everything seemed fairly relaxed for the first few days – not a lot of pressure, live blues guitar in the locker room next to the men’s toilet; lots of moody, arty-looking people around; girls at closer quarters than I was used to; and plenty of tea breaks where loud music was played on of those old KCC record players with the huge wooden speaker cabinet.
By this time, I’d become a really boring, pretentious (a new word I’d discovered and used as often as I could) musical snob and I was slightly disappointed to find that Modern Jazz wasn’t the order of the day, and that quite a lot of pop stuff was played. A good mix of blues and folk music balanced this out and I figured that the philistines in the student body would catch up sooner or later.
On a bright, fresh Thursday morning in 1961, first year group ‘A’, sauntered into the design room in the art school main building. A square room with a scrubbed wooden floor, the Design Room was furninshed with adjustable architect type drawing tables, spaced out, we were to learn, so that each student could concentrate and not be bothered by anyone else.
The timetable described the lesson we were about to take part in as Basic Design, to be adjudicated by someone called John Sturgess. On the far side of the room, backlit by the light streaming through the huge windows that took up the entire length of the wall, stood a skinny young man with a goatee beard. His shock of thick black hair was forced back from his forehead in a mat of wire wool in an Einstein-esque sort of shape.
The young man wore a baggy, old fashioned dark grey suit, a couple of sizes too big, that reminded me of Brendan’s old demob suit. Perhaps it was. Maybe this guy had picked it up at a jumble sale. It would’ve esplained why it was so big on his tiny frame, Brendan being half the size of The Mountains Of Mourne.
To pad out the suit a bit, the guy wore a bright purple thick-knit pullover, wide-striped blue and white shirt and blue tie underneath. He stood leaning on one of the drawing tables. He wasn’t smiling but he wasn’t scowling either, and fixed each one of us in turn with a penetrating stare. The term ‘piercing blue eyes’ was familiar but this was the first time I’d ever come across piercing brown ones.
There was an alertness, and intesinty about the man that I’d never come across in my life and, like everyone else in the group, I felt suddenly vulnerable and exposed. The young man hadn’t said a word, but already, he’d taken absolute control of the naive bunch of pubescents fidgeting uncomfortably in front of him.
After waiting till the room was entirely silent he spoke in a clear, high voice that split the air like a razor.
“Before we begin the lesson, I want to make a few things clear. First, you are here to work – harder than you’ve ever worked in your lives. Whatever you’ve heard or seen about the way things are conducted in this school - forget them. They do not apply in this room. From now on, what we do here will occupy 95% of your time. Whatever you think you know about art and graphic design, forget that, too. You don’t know anything. It’s my job to teach you to become graphic designers of the highest calibre. I’m not interested in producing anything less, and if you are, and you want to settle for second best, LEAVE NOW. Go and do something else. (He looked me straight in the eye) Go and play the guitar on the back streets of Paris. Go and work in a shop. Go and have a nice, easy life. Otherwise you’re wasting your time, the time of everyone else in the group, and my time. I can promise you an exciting, journey that will show you things that you couldn’t have dreamed of. I’ll open your eyes to all manner of things about art, literature, music, and life and culture in general that will fulfil and enrich your lives in ways that you could not possibly have imagined. If that is what you want. Is that what you want? Well, is it?”
Everyone was stunned. I was rooted to the spot, glued to the floor. I’d never come across anything like this bloke before. Whatever he had, I wanted it. I wasn’t quite sure about spending 95% of time trying to get it, and he was really scary. But he’d ‘got me’, for sure.
“Is it?” he repeated.
“Yes,” We automatically chorused, as if operated by some devine force.
“Good. Then lets get on with it. No idol chatter, over there. You’re here to work.”
I don’t know how he did it, but by the end of the next two hours, John Sturgess had us in his power, and I for one, felt I’d follow him to the end so the earth, even though I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about.
Sturgess handed out 3 sheets of sugar paper to everyone: one light grey, one mid grey and one dark grey. For two hours he had as cutting up strips and rectangles of the stuff at random and placing them randomly down on a sheet of cartridge paper to form some sort of horizontal and vertical grid, until HE was satisfied that something magical was occuring.
We, of course, didn’t know what he hell we were doing. He kept flashing up pictures of someone called Mondrian, and going on about proportion, balance and juxtapostion, another word that I’d never come across. You could’ve heard a pin drop, save for the sound of his quick footsteps as he almost skidded around the room from student to student.
He was scary, but not in the way of the Gestapo at Edgebury that I’d been so relieved to escape from. It was a different kind of fear, strangely based in a kind of reverence and respect. Whatever this lunatic was on, it was infectious, and he was so enthusiastic and damning at the same time.
“No, that doesn’t work. Let the form and shapes do the work. Don’t try and contol it or contrive it. Let your senses take over. FEEL what’s happeneing.”
Happening? Was he kidding? It was just a load of paper bits. What could be happening?
“Yes that’s it. You’ve got it. Copy that one. Make a drawing of it in monochrome. We’ll do an etching of that one.”
Was he talking to me? Yes, he was. Now what was it I’d done that was so amazing? I stared down at the pattern of paper I’d created but that was all I could see. A load of scraps of paper laid out in a kind of childish pattern. But I felt somehow smug. I was obviously on to something and immediately adopted the stance of someone in the know, even though I was far from it. And what was an etching? I thought it was something naughty that you showed girls in your bedroom.
Sturgess skidded off to his next port of call. I’d never seen anyone with so much energy and obvious delight in his occupation.What a strange man. What a funny bloke. I wasn’t sure about all this 95% of my time. When was I going to have time to play the guitar?
HOMEWORK
Sturgess wasn’t kidding when he said we’d be spending 95% of our time studying art and everything that went with it. He immediately gave us homework, It started out with a couple of drawings of a cup and saucer, a milk jug and amilk bottle to show we understood proportion. Of course, hardly any of us did as he pointed out in no uncertain terms when we subitted the work the following week.
We had to draw the bloody things completely flat and colour them in with a wash mixture of water and ink. This isn’t as easy at it sounds, and getting the mix wrong meant the paper cockled and everything ended up looking like something that cat had pissed on. Well, mine did.
Each week we got more and more work to do at home until the task each week, as he called it, beacame almost unwealdy. There just didn’t seem enough hours in the day or night.
His lessons did become more important than anyone elses, but as he pointed out, all the RCA entrants from the school had been taught by him - they may have been taught by other lecturers as well, but Sturgess more or less implied they didn’t count for much. Most of us believed him. But if he’d said he could fly, we’d have believed that too.
Strugess’s buddy on the staff seemed to be Brian Keogh, the 3rd year graphic design lecturer. A smooth dandy of a man, with a slight hunchback and foppish bow ties, not to mention the obligatory letters, ARCA after his name, Keogh was the smart arse-who spread the rumour that the yanks had declared war on Russia when the Cuban Missile crisis was in full swing and that we were all about to get fried to a crisp in the coming Holocaust.What a hoot he thought that was.
‘Don’t just say brown, say Hovis’
Ralph Horris:
“TUM-TI-TUM. Whistle, whistle. HUM, HUM. Hello, there. This uz beginning to get really interesting, dontcha think? Yeah, there’s something difinitely starding to come through. Look, there’s an oi. I really love brandishing this socking great distemper brush with sech panache when most mere mordals have trouble with an ordinary pencil, hee-hee! Ooh, look! There’s wutt looks loike a bit of a naise…and there’s an ear, issut? It’s soi ixoiding, watching the imuj comern through. This uz really intriguing… I wonder what it uz. Or should I say, who? Ah, whoever it uz, wears glarssus, an…an…he’s got a bit of a beard, there, oi thunk. Yes…looks like a but of a good lookin’ fella…noice, friendly smoil…perfuct teeth…yes he’s really coming through, noi…hey, look! Ut’s ME! Well, what a surprise, an’ Oi huv to say, Oi look fair dinkum…that’s Oz fer fabulous, by the way. Thuz calls for a tune on the old digeree-do, Oi reckon…or maybe a quick bend of me wobble board. I definitely feel a song comin’ on. Arv got an imujj in me moind of 2 little fellahs on wooden horsus…better get the hankies aiyut…could be a real weepy, thus…SNIFF!”
* * * * * * * * * *
Oh Carol, don't let him steal your heart away
I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day
Climb into my machine so we can cruise on out
I know a swingin' little joint where we can jump and shout
It's not too far back off the highway, not so long a ride
You park your car out in the open, you can walk inside
A little cutie takes your hat and you can thank her, ma'am
Every time you make the scene you find the joint is jammed
Oh Carol, don't let him steal your heart away
I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day
And if you wanna hear some music like the boys are playin'
Hold tight, pat your foot, don't let 'em carry it away
Don't let the heat overcome you when they play so loud
Oh, don't the music intrigue you when they get a crowd
You can't dance, I know you wish you could
I got my eyes on you baby, 'cause you dance so good
Oh Carol, don't let him steal your heart away
I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day
Don't let him steal your heart away
I've got to learn to dance if it takes you all night and day
Oh Carol
Chapter 58. KISS.
Carol gave me my first kiss, but it wasn’t a proper kiss. More of a long, polite peck. No tongues or writhing jaws but it was on the lips. I can still taste the sweetness of the lipstick now. It happened on my Nan’s stairs in the dark. There was a bit of a struggle for a split second…then I gave in. She was wearing a crisp, white blouse and full blue skirt that rustled with all those net petticoats they used to wear back then. (The girls, that is.) Those skirts moved like church bells when the girls walked. Sort of swung from the hips as they moved, their legs wiggling about beneath like extended bell clangers but a tad sexier.
The kiss seemed to go on forever like her petticoats, and I still wonder today if she enjoyed it as much as I did, though I doubt it. I’d seen her kissing her boyfriend, Bob, whom she eventually married, lucky bastard. It was more like gob wrestling than plain kissing, but it did quite a lot for my imagination and education.
Carol was only a tiny bit older than me. She was fifteen to my twelve but I was in love with her none-the-less. I had been for quite some time, so the kiss was an extra special moment for me. She didn’t know I was in love with her, of course. She never did. Sniff! She was my sister’s best friend and like Kathryn, a member of the youth club and I would never have dreamed of making the depth of my undying passion known. It seemed that I just had to wait, but for how long, and for what, I wasn’t quite sure and, of course, I knew Carol would never be mine. I could dream. And how I dreamt. Perhaps there would there be some signal one day that I could stop holding everything in and just let myself go. And if so, when??? Just how old did I have to be?
Adult wisdom would have explained that really, my feelings for Carol amounted to not much more than a crush, though at the time it weighed about the same as a lorry load of anvils. That’s the trouble with hormones. They whistle about inside a 12-year-old male like a swarm of kamikaze hornets. They really turn a bloke’s system upside down and inside out and make you think the most terrible things about females and what you night do with them without any sense of morality or conscience.
OH CAROL
Carol had a lovely smile with very square teeth. And she smelled like heaven, in an ultra-clean sort of way. Actually, when the kiss happened, we were all playing Postman’s Knock at my Nan’s one Christmas Eve and I’d got called out and was sitting on the stairs waiting for my Mum or sister to come and give me a peck on the cheek. Instead, it was Carol. My heart was pounding as she climbed the stairs laughing.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said, which was enough to blow anyone’s mind. I can still taste the lipstick now.
RUBY (real name: Andre - named 'RubyRed Drawers' by Keith Richards)
My first real kiss didn’t happen till I was 16. I had gone to an all night art school party with some of the senior students whom I’d got to know and been accepted by due to my skill on the guitar and collection of American Modern Jazz records. I’d turned up one morning with a Riverside LP by jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery: ‘The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of Wes Montgomery’ poking out the top of my duffel bag. (Same duffel bag I’d won in a talent competition at the Sidcup Regal) Dick Taylor, spotted it and commented:
“WOW!”
And that was that. I was an honorary member of the arty inner sanctum.
It was a weird party. Not the sort of thing I was used to. It was in a flat shared by a couple of the students over a parade of shops in Orpington. When I arrived, there were two blokes playing really fantastic blues guitar round the fireplace in the living room, though no one seemed to be listening. One 2nd year student, an intellectual called John Bennet who lived (paid the rent) in the flat, was reading the Times, and a couple of others were sitting in stone silence. In the kitchen, a fat Jewish bloke in a suit and a curly Tony Curtis haircut, called Eugene Finn, was doling out purple hearts from a plastic jar. He was accompanied by an American guy with a college scarf around his neck.
The American was a real straight zoon in a sports jacket and grey trousers. He wore the kind of Buddy Holly glasses that died with Buddy Holly and had this stupid grin on his face all the time. He kept going on about how well ‘The Cardinals’ were doing, whoever or whatever the Cardinals were.
Finn was particularly creepy, and chain-smoked expensive American cigarettes. He would have been a great stand-in for Al Capone with his banana shaped fingers and jet cygnet ring rammed onto his fat nicotine-stained little pinkie. There was something obsequious and unpleasant about this rissole-shaped fat boy. He was apparently from a wealthy background and just seemed to turn up all over the place. His demeanour spelled ‘villain’, and though I reckoned he wasn’t the kind to break your legs or screw your pelvis to a wall, I had no doubt he knew a man that would.
Back in the living room, some smart-arse turned the lights out at about 2.am and the Girl who’d invited me grabbed me and pulled me down onto her lap. Her name was Andre but everyone called her Ruby, as in ‘Ruby Red Drawers’, though unfortunately, I never got to find out why. Ruby was a year older than me and wasted no time by demonstrating the fact.
She immediately planted her mouth over mine like a great, wet sink plunger and everything seemed to go black for a moment. Her tongue started wrestling with mine so I thought I’d better fight back, promting a frantic and very exciting tongue duel. Automatically, and I swear, without any forethought, my right hand clamped itself to her considerably prominent left breast, like it had a mind of it’s own. (My hand - not her breast) She gently removed it, (my hand - not her breast) and I figured that this was not a correct action at this stage in the proceedings.
I didn’t try it again, happy to spend the next 2 or 3 hours harpooning and probing Ruby’s mouth with my newly liberated and lively young tongue which also seemed to have a mind of its own. It just knew what to do and got on with it. It seemed to be saying,
"Relax, pal. Just lay back and enjoy. I know what I'm doing."
Several other couples were indulging in the same exercise in the darkness and, during a momentary pause, Ruby and I surfaced for some much needed gulps of air, and she remarked:
“Just listen to all those puffing Billys. Sounds like a siding at Clapham Junction.”
Of course, this experience caused me to fall madly in love with Ruby - at least, I couldn’t stop thinking about her after the party and hoped for a repeat performance of our tongue-wrestling match.
‘Tunes help you breath more easily’
Deeno: “Hey, Dook. What’re you doin’ here? I’m supposed to be meetin’ Sammy and Frank. We’re in somethin’ called ‘Ocean’s Eleven’.”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. Hell, you look like a pimp on heat in that geddup. ‘Rio Bravo’ is what you’re s’posed to be doin’, with me and that slick young feller, Ricky Nelson.”
Deeno: “Jeeze, that must’ve bin some party, and hey, this suit is the latest thing from Italy. I think I look kinda cool even if it is a bit tight around the gonads… Ricky who did y’ say?”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. Nelson. He’s a singer, or somethin’. You get to play a drunk, so you won’t have to do much out of the orn’ry.”
Deeno: “I think I can handle that. Do I get to sing?”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. Matter of fact, y’do. Y’also get ducked in a horse waterin’ trough.”
Deeno: “Nuthin’ to it. When do we start?”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. 3 weeks ago. We bin usin’ a stand in till you showed up.”
Deeno: “Well, that’s real accomodatin’ of you, Dook. Hey, where can a man get a drink around here?”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. There’s a saloon on the set somewhere, but you don’t look like you need a drink to me.”
Deeno: “Hair of the dog, Dook, hair of the dog.”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. More like the hair of a mount’n lion, by the looks o’ you.”
Deeno: “Hey, there any women in this picture?”
Dook: “That’ll be tha day. Jest the one. Angie Dickenson.”
Deeno: “She pretty?”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. Real pretty, but the sheriff gets the girl.”
Deeno: “ We’ll see about that. Where is the varmit? Let me ad ‘eem.”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. I’m the sheriff.”
Deeno: “You are? You also got the Winchester, so I guess that settles that.”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. Reckon it does.”
Deeno: “Right, let’s go. Take me to the action, my man. EE-OOH-ELEV-EN!”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. I can see this is goin’ to be a long one.”
Deeno: “I’ll drink to that, Dook. I’ll drink to that.”
Dook: “That’ll be the day. I guess you will, at that.”
Deeno: “That’ll be the day. Hey, now you got me doin’ it. Can’t you say somethin’ different, somethin’ original, somethin’ noo, fer once?
Dook: “That’ll be the day.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
You can't judge an apple
By looking at the tree
You can't judge honey
By looking at the bee
You can't judge a daughter
By looking at the mother
And you can't tell the book
By looking at the cover
Now can't you see? You misjudge me
I look like a farmer
But I'm a lover
So you can't judge a book
By looking at the cover
You can't judge the sugar
By looking at the cane
You can't judge a woman
By looking at her man
You can't judge the sister
By looking at her brother
You can't judge a book
By looking at the cover
Now can't you see? You misjudge me
I look like a farmer
But I'm a lover
So you can't judge a book
By looking at the cover
You can't judge the fish
By looking at the pond
You can't judge the right
By looking at the wrong
You can't judge one
By looking at another
You can't judge a book
By looking at the cover
Now can't you see? You misjudge me
I look like a farmer
But I'm a lover
So you can't judge a book
By looking at the cover
Chapter 59. DANISH.
I was only in love with Ruby till Janet came along, which was about a week later. Janet was also year older than me. It was a kind of set up job. A couple of the girls in my group at the art school sidled up to me one afternoon and said:
“Do you like Janet?”
Keeping myself busy making a screen for printing, and trying to appear nonchalant, I said, “Yeah. Why?”
‘Well, she likes you. She really likes you.”
“Yeah?” I put a couple of staples through the muslin and the edge ofthe wooden frame, rather inaccurately, causing the material to tear. My forehead broke into a sweat and I felt myself begin to boil over. Was this how things were done? What was I supposed to do now?
I knew Janet, of course, but had seen her as a very intelligent grammar school girl with a great body who would obviously prefer blokes much older than her as most girls seemed to. It just never occurred to me that I could in any way be attractive to someone so button fumblingly sensual and mature as she was. Julian Whittaker, from my group, Janet, a couple of the 3rd year students and myself, formed the school film club committee and were responsible for choosing the films to be shown every fortnight in the life room.
The arty thing to do was to choose foreign films with obscure titles and still more obscure action that no one could understand but that everyone would pretend they did. Janet was educated, well read and terrifyingly sexy, with a very attractive 38-inch chest which was so far out of reach to me, she might have been from Neptune. I’d never given her a second thought - well not as far as her being anything more than just another devastatingly nubile looking female. The possibility of getting closer to her was almost too much to comprehend, and the idea all but sent me into a blind panic, except that now I was an experienced snogger. But how to put my newfound skill to the test was the question.
After a couple of agonising days agonising, I followed Janet down Sidcup High Street one lunch time, not exactly knowing what I was going to do. Suddenly, I saw her coming back the other way and before I could make a run for it, we were face to face. Somehow, we ended up in Sidcup Place, a local park where most of the romances at the art school flourished. I can’t remember what I said, but I think I mumbled something about always liking her and immediately kissed her. We were standing under a huge fir tree at the time and there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. Again the old right hand found it’s way with remarkable accuracy to her left breast, which it gently squeezed. This time, my hand wasn’t removed so I just left it there.
After spending about 10 minutes clamped together at the mouth and with sore tongues, we strolled back to the school hand in hand and in complete silence.
I felt 10 feet tall, and it wasn’t until about 2 days later when she suggested that it wasn’t necessary to ‘French kiss’ all the time and that a lot of pleasure was to be had by just gently kissing and allowing our tongues to take a rest, I have to admit, I was quite relieved. Carol was visiting my sister the evening after the first kiss in the park, and I shyly confessed that I had a girlfriend. She smiled and said:
“What happened? Did she ask to borrow your rubber?’
“Not exactly.” I said, trying to adopt the posture of the seasoned, dashing lover.
Carol just kept smiling and somehow, I felt I was her equal at last. And who knew? Maybe one day I’d get the chance to show her.
R&B
I‘d got to know Dick Taylor quite well by the end of the first couple of months at Sidcup. I‘d heard him play blues guitar in the cloakroom on the first day. He was sitting next to Ian Stirling, a tough, but very arty looking 2nd year student who was studying Dick’s fingers like they were made of diamonds. I had an EP of Big Bill Broonzy that I’d bought because Brian Eatwell had a copy, but I’d never really got into it. Hearing blues guitar live, however, was enough to convert me on the spot. Dick had a unique way of flicking the strings with his forefinger like he was dispatching a bogey, and it created a sharp, punchy, blues sound, which I immediately copied. I’ve never seen anyone use the technique since and have adopted it as my own.
I managed to impress Dick with a couple of jazz guitar pieces I’d learned from records. One was half of a track by Barley Kessel called, ‘Salute To Charlie Christian’ and the other was a few bars of ‘I’m Confessin’ by Django Reihardt. His enthusiasm and admiration at my skill was quite marked.
“JESUS CHRIST!”
Dick introduced me to John Lee Hooker – well, the music, anyway, - Robert Johnson, Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Lightnin’ Hopkins and got me to listen to Chuck Berry again, which was OK, because Dick told me he didn’t play common Rock ‘n’ Roll, but that it was actually rhythm and blues, and to me that was acceptably arty.
Roy Barker and I took our guitars into the school and he, Dick and I would sit for hours playing blues together, though Dick warned us that to play the guitar at the school was to be a marked man. He said his friend, Rick, who’d left the previous term was given a bad time by the priciple, Mr Jago, and more importantly by the school secretary, Mrs Nash, who actually ran the school with a fist of iron and didn’t approve of students in general.
Roy was the best guitar-playing partner I ever had. We’d spend hours, sittting on a huge pile of weeds on his dad’s allotement at the back of his house playing all kinds of stuff from Early Woody Guthrie Folk Music; Buddy Holly songs and traditional Blues to the more ambitious music of Django Reinhardt.We were guitartistically totally compatable, each able to blend in with the other whatever style we drifted into. It was like a long, never ending converstaion without words between two like-minded musicians and whenever we got together, the magic just flowed.
Rick (also known as 'Monkey' on account of his chimp like ears) got so fed up with Mrs Nash and her constant harassment that he said he was going to piss in her desk drawer when he left. Whether he did or not remains open to question. Whatever, Rick’s reputation as a Rhythm and Blues Guitarist certainly left its legacy at the school. No one, it seemed could play Chuck Berry’s licks the way Rick could.
Dick still saw Rick regulary, and said they both played in a blues band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. He said it was an authentic R&B band with 7 members and that sometimes they played in Alex Corner’s Club in Ealing.Roy and I had both heard Alex Corner on the radio and were quite impressed. They’d also changed the name of the band to The Rolling Stones.
One morning, Dick told me he was leaving the band. Brian Keoh and John Sturgess had told him that he couldn’t expect to stay up playing in a band half the night and do his RCA entrance exam justice and that he’d have to choose between the two.
“Look, I play bass. The other guys in the band are pretty pissed off about me leaving and have told me I’ve got to find a replacement. I thought you might me interested. You could borrow my bass. I know it’s a big bugger, but I’m sure you could get the hang of it. (It certainly was a big bugger. It was a semi acoustic job and a family of 4 could easily have lived in it – these days, 3 families of 4.) They’ll pick you up twice a week in their Bedford Dormobile for rehearsals, and they’d be a couple of gigs to do. You’d get £2.10s. I’ve told Mick and Keith, that’s Rick, about you and Mick’s coming up to the school this afternoon, and if you’re interested, I’ll introduce you.”
I told Dick I wasn’t sure. I was just 17 and Alf hadn’t been that keen for me to go the art school in the first place and only given in when I’d told him that if I worked hard I could end up earning as much as the top men in the country, whatever that meant. To start pissing about playing in a band, the art school thing was bound to suffer. Besides, I‘d already become a Sturgess disciple and I didn’t want to miss out.
What really clinched it, though, was that I’d just getting used to being guided by my hormones, enjoying every second and wanting more. Janet and I were still in the early throws of our relationship and, as she’d turned out to be an exquisitely passionate girl, things promised to be come quite interesting. How would I ever have time to fit in a band with everything else I needed to fit in? Also, I still I wasn’t absolutely sure what this rhythm and blues stuff was really all about. That, and the fact that the band’s new name sounded a bit peculiar to me - I mean, who’d ever heard of a band with a name as daft as ‘The Rolling Stones’?
So I turned it down. Mick came to the school that afternoon on the back of someone’s 1950’s Triumph 500, just like the one in the Brando film, ‘The Wild One’. Dick introduced me but also told Jagger I wasn’t interested in joining the band. Jagger, with his unkempt shock of hair and faded Levi jacket and jeans, just turned his back and ignored me. I wondered just who the hell he thought he was. Mick Jagger - that’s who he thought he was.
‘GIRATIONS WITH BLUES'…
…With the ROLLING STONES Rhythm and Blues Band’ read the poster for a midsummer party, on the school notice board. It went down like a lead balloon.
“What the fuck’s rhythm and blues?”
And
“Who’re The Rolling Stones, anyway? What a stupid name for a band.”
Were typical comments.
The scout hut next door to the art school was hired for the event, but for some reason akin to a sudden bout of brain fade, I didn’t go. Those who did were completely blown away by the band – especially the girls.
“Ooooooh. Did you see Rick? The way that he stands, leaning on the piano really makes me
*******!”
The party finished up with the entire audience sitting in a circle around the band waving their arms and shaking their heads, a definite glimpse into the future and Hippyism, Woodstock, Jimmy Hendrix and Phsycodelia.
Almost overnight, Rhythm and Blue became the ‘thing’, and those who followed the new movement had little time for the chocolatey‘Mersysound’groups which were also gaining popularity at a rate of knots in the wake of The Beatles success. Introduced by George Harrison, himself an ardent fan and copyist of Chuck Berry licks, The Beatles became mates of the Stones with both bands being careful not to tread on one another’s toes, either in terms of image or music, or who’s latest record was mixed and ready to roll out.
“After you.”
“No. You go first, please.”
“Oh, OK, wack, if youse insist.”
Brian Epstein, their manager, pitched the Beatles as cheeky and fun loving while Andrew Loog Oldham saw to it that the Stones expanded on their growing reputation of outright rebellion and links with Satan himself. As history shows, both publicity packages worked a treat and served to turn the Sixties world of Rock ‘N’ Roll upside down and inside out, and sent the famous decade well and truly on its way.
R&B bands started coming out of the woodwork from all over the country: The Kinks; The Yardbirds; The Animals; The Downliners Sect; John Mayall’s Blues Breakers; Manfred Mann; to name a few.
Years later, Alf confessed he would’ve been delighted if I’d become a member of the Rolling Stones, but that was easy for him to say after they’d become ‘The Greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Band’ in the world.
It was probably the incident with Mick Jagger that made me take leave of senses and write to the Melody Maker a couple of weeks after The Stones released their first single, with a pretentious load of nonsense about authetic rhythm and blues (about which I knew sweet FA) and how The Rolling Stones were anything but. Unfortunately the magazine published my letter on the back page. Dick, having failed his RCA entrance, had left Sidcup and gone to The Central School of Art, turned up at Sidcup one evening and I asked him if he wanted to play some blues. His answer was curt and to the point.
“That letter. You bum!”
Eventually, I managed to convince Dick I’d just had a brief moment of insanity when I wrote the stupid letter and he forgave me. He told me that Rick (Keef) was in a bit of a state because his Harmony guitar had got damaged and asked if I had an electric Guitar the Stones could borrow for a while. I gave him the little Japanese one that I’d paid for by risking my life on the butcher’s round. I hadn’t played it for some time, having decided that my old acoustic was a lot more arty and plaintive-sounding when it came to striking up some lonesome blues in the men’s cloakroom.
The little Jap guitar was in pristine condition when I handed it over in its little black case, though I didn’t expect it to be returned in quite the same state. It was six months before I saw it again. At the end of the 1963 Christmas term, Dick performed at the art school dance in the Design Room, in a new band he’d formed with Phil Katner, (later to become Phil May) a Sidcup 4th year student. They called the new band The Pretty Things after a Bo Didley number and the lineup was Dick Taylor on lead guitar, Brian Pendleton on rythmn guitar, John Stacks on bass, Peter Kitley on drums and Phil Katner screaming vocals and playing the hormonica through a cheap microphone. Pete Kitley, a 4th year graphic design student, wasn’t very good but he owned the drums.
The little design studio, stripped of its drawing tables, was crammed to the gunwales with writhing art students, high that the pressures of yet another gruelling term driven relentlessly by John Sturgess was over, and nobody seemed to care or even notice that the band was largely underehearsed and that Kitley’s drumming was more than a couple of beats out of kilter.
During the interval, Dick, claiming to be feeling confused, (probably due to some special medicine I saw him take in the men’s cloakroom) handed the tiny Japanese guitar back to me. It was still in perfect nick and I doubted it had ever left the case. I have to admit; I was slightly disappointed that there wasn’t even one fag burn on the bodywork.
Everyone in my group was impressed that the now famous Keith Richard had borrowed my guitar, but I doubted that it had ever reached him and probably spent a few months under Dick Taylor’s bed in Dartford. I decided to keep that bit of information to myself and enjoy the admiration.
‘Give your family the Colgate Ring of Confidence’
Albert Whickerwork:
“And as the sun sets over this… MAGical, MYSTERious horizon… STEEped in a HIStory that would make many a SULtan SO GREEN with envy he’d probably puke; SOAKED… in the KIND of splendour… that the AVerage… HOLLYwood SUPERstar would readily donate his… or HER… WISDOM teeth for… withOUT anaesthetic; it’s time to turn away… from the long SHADows… that reach out… towards a KING’s DEStiny, and nip in through the FREnch windows… of my MAGNIFICENT… CHATeaux… HERE… in the most exPENSIVE, exCLUsive… part of COGnac - that’s the place, not the bottle ha, ha - … for a cup of cocoa… and a nice long kip. NIGHTY night.”
* * * * * * * * *
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Me fine little girl, she waits for me.
Me sail the ship by my all alone.
Never think How I make it home.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Three nights and days I sail the sea.
Think of girl constantly.
On the ship I know she there.
Smell the roses in her hair.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Me see Jamaica, the moon above.
It won't be long me see me love
Take here in my arms and then
Tell her I never leave her again
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Louie Louie. Me gotta go.
Chapter 60. GRAHAM.
Sidcup Art School was always at the forefront of fashion as most art schools in the 60’s were. Our fashion guru was a 2nd year Graphic Design student named Graham Houghton. These days, Graham would immediately be labelled ‘gay’, though somehow it wouldn’t really have been fitting. Though he had an effeminate voice and a slightly mincy way of walking, he was much happier in the company of girls and was usually accompanied by a chattering entourage.
I always considered him to be A-sexual, and he was never very comfortable in the company of men. He was tall and slightly podgy which enhanced his feminine side, his head canted over to one side, probably due to a wondering eye that never seemed to be looking in the right place.
A talented illustrator, Graham also had an innate sense and natural instinct for what was ‘in’ and what was going to be. He was the first to wear striped, matelot shirts and bell-bottomed trousers (they returned in the 70’s as the more exaggerated flares) the first time they made the rounds in 1963. His hair changed shape almost with the weather. One minute it was swept back and long, the next cropped short. The week before the Beatles made their first TV appearance, he came in with his hair brushed down over his forehead, almost touching his eyebrows. Ironically, Graham was the dead spit of John Lennon, (though with slightly softer features), which pleased him no end.
No-one ever laughed at him or derided him and he always had a smug grin on his face, knowing that before anyone had caught on, he’d be round the corner and out of sight with the next ‘thing’ tucked neatly under his arm. He acquired the first Beatle jacket anyone ever saw, with the chopped off collar (immediately adopted by Ray Whittaker) and the first pair of ‘Raoul’ Shoes, which later became ‘Ravel’ because no one knew how to pronounce the name – except Graham. Graham discovered Stevie Wonder, Brooker T And The MGs, The Supremes, The Ronnettes, The Crystals, The Righteous Brothers, The Four Tops, The Kinsmen, Smokey Robinson before the rest of the world had ever heard of them and was one of The Rolling Stones first, and most devoted, groupies.
Graham was also one of the greatest dancers I’ve ever seen. On the few occasions when people were moved to get up and shake things about a little in the canteen, everyone did what Graham was doing – or tried to. For such a big lad, he was especially fluid and controlled in his movements. Had he been a couple of stone lighter and a bit more muscular, he could’ve ended up in tights in Covent Garden, and I don’t mean the market, though I’ve no doubt he would have gone down a storm there as well. He was well into the shake and was already getting his feet around the Bossa Nova before most people had mastered the twist.
The only problem that I had with Graham was that he, quite vitriolically, declared Jazz to be crap. I was disappointed, but would never have admitted at the time, that I found his taste in music quite exciting. Above all, despite his bourgeoisie fashion leanings, he did somehow manage to stay remarkably arty, which was fine by me.
The 2nd year Graham was a member of was considered to be weak, not through lack of talent, but most of them were bone-idle. Though he didn’t get into The Royal College, Graham was the only one to get a really good job at the top advertising Agency, J.Walter Thompson, in 1965. I think his trendy appearance swung it for him and he fitted very well into the was fast becoming known as ‘Swinging London’. That and the fact that the guy in charge of recruiting art directors, Terri Hamaton, was a fairly camp and openly homosexual individual himself.
When I landed a job there myself while still a student in 1966, I caught up with Graham. He shared an office with another gay young art director, David Piner, who was extremely overt and unnecessarily crude in his manner and he and I hated each other on sight.
Both he and Graham were flaunting the new bouffant hair dos and kipper ties, and yes, flares were beginning to make a comeback. 6 years later, I followed Graham to another agency, FCB, during the power strike of 1974.
He was paired with a copywriter, also from JWT, and was having trouble staying awake at his desk. I figured that he must have been living the high life but in fact he was suffering from acute leukaemia and, tragically, died soon afterwards.
‘Trill makes budgies bounce with health’
Don Michel:
“Here are The Beachboys with ‘I Get Around’ and this is Radio Caroline coming to you from somewhere in the North Sea. Excuse me…BUUUULP!”
* * * * * * * * *
Round round get around
I get around
Yeah
Get around round round
I get around
I get around
Get around round round
I get around
From town to town
Get around round round
I get around
I'm a real cool head
Get around round round
I get around
I'm makin' real good bread
I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip
I gotta finda new place where the kids are hip
Get around round round
I get around
My buddies and me are getting real well known
Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone
I get around
Get around round round
I get around
From town to town
Get around round round
I get around
I'm a real cool head
Get around round round
I get around
I'm makin' real good bread
Get around round round
I get around
I get around
Round get around round round
We always take my car cause it's never been beat
And we've never missed yet with the girls we meet
None of the guys go steady cause it wouldn't be right
To leave their best girl home now on Saturday night
I get around
Get around round round
I get around
Chapter 61. THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD.
Sturgess piled on more and more pressure throughout the 1st year, and by the end of it, we all knew we’d travelled some way along his promised magic journey, but as yet, we had no idea exactly where we’d ended up. It was all still a complete mystery. JS was always encouraging, telling us we were going to be world-beaters if we carried on the way we were going, though I still found him a bit frightening. His intensity was awesome.
I spent the entire 8 weeks of the first summer vacation working on the gigantic ‘task’ he’d set. I got stuck in every day after first limbering up on the Iron Horse and chancing my arms and legs amongst the viciously ravenous dogs of Chislehurst. My motivation wasn’t entirely a desire to push back the boundaries of art, but due to an intense rivalry I’d developed with Janet, who’d become a true Sturgess devotee and worshipper.
We started out trying to work together and hitchhiked to the Old Kent Road to draw some of the new buildings under construction as past of the project. Though she’d just bought a copy of The Karma Sutra and read passages aloud as we stood at the side of the A20, my thumb waving furtively in the breeze at the odd passing articulated truck; our love life was, to my mind, beginning to suffer. Even the excitement of hearing about The Great Train Robbery and the 2 million quid the buggers had made off with did nothing to take my mind off our diminishing progress towards what the little red Indian book described as ‘congress’.
Apart from standing amongst the traffic at the Elephant and Castle roundabout, taking in the views of half–constructed concrete monstrosities and a few lungful of diesel fumes and one trip to the V&A to draw Navaho carpets, I hardly saw anything of her during that vacation. In the previous Christmas holiday I’d seen quite a lot of her, literally. The task from Sturgess was nowhere near as demanding as it was to be in the summer, and though the great snows of 1962-63 were knee deep, I trekked on foot to the little corner shop in Plumsted which fronted the tiny terraced house where she lived with her parents and small brother and sister, as often as I could.
The first flakes of snow fluttered down on Boxing Day 1962 as the Bradley Family made its weary way along Slades Drive and through the alleyway to Imperial Way. It was only a 5-minute walk, but by the time we got there, there was a thick white carpet crunching away underfoot, and by the next morning, 2 ft deep with the snow fall showing no sign of stopping. There were still several frozen drifts on the ground on Chislehurst Common in the March.
The distance between 120 Imperial Way and Plumstead Common was about 7 miles, but spurred on by an imagination fired by endless possibilities of what might be, I didn’t notice. On one occasion, I was invited to stay the night. Janet’s family went out for the evening and took her young brother, Peter, and Sister, Ingre, with them, saying they wouldn’t be back until late and, if the weather got worse, they may even stay over with a relative.
Apart from several assignations in a freezing shelter in Sidcup Place, where one time, an embarrassed policeman apologised for shining his torch in our faces, this was the first time we’d actually been alone together with our raging desire. It was, at least for the time being, to confirm once and for all that my decision not join the Rolling Stones had been the right one.
During the slow, gentle wrestling match that commenced before Janet’s parents had got to the end of the street in their Bedford Dormobile, I discovered bra fasteners were designed with the fingers of even the most nervous, novice, would-be male lovers in mind. Having managed, shakily, to undo the buttons of her blue gingham blouse with no signs of protest, it had been a simple task to slip one arm behind her back, and with a single deft flick of a thumb and forefinger, release the catch and dispense with the wretched article with the greatest of ease.
There’d been no instructions on how to do this in the 5th form pastoral classes that were introduced in my last term at The Edge, so I guessed the powers that be must have figured that we’d all know how to perform such a manoeuvre when the time came. I thought they’d left things a bit too much to chance, though, and I’d probably been lucky not to have slipped and sent us both crashing onto the floor, breaking my fingers and Janet’s neck in the process.
ANARCHY
Starting Art School when I did in 1962, I couldn’t have timed things better. The whole country witnessed an attempt by some dark power or other, to overturn the establishment, not to mention the government, where it actually succeeded, the whole episode fueled by the media and one of the great bastions of society itself, the BBC.
To my mind, the Sixties revolt actually began by with a film made in 1962 by Ken Russel, who later became notorious as one of the most risqué British film makers of all time. He produced and directed a documentary for the snooty, Sunday night arts programme, Monitor, introduced each week by Huw Wheldon. For its day, and even now, it was a very stylish piece of work, surreal in its hand-held camera techniques and starkly lit, black and white footage.
The film was entitled, ‘Pop Goes The Easel’, and featured Pop artist icons of the day, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier, Peter Philips and David Hockney. Boty, Boshier, Philips and Hockney were still students at The Royal College Of Art, where some of the interviews with the artists took place. The classic sequence of Boty running around the circular corridors of the BBC centre at White City, in a dream sequence, still stands out today in most peoples’ minds as a real piece of ground-breaking direction, and was a continual theme throughout the film.
Along with what John Strugess was trying to drum into us, the film broke down all preconceptions about art, and confronted me with a world that was far more exciting than I ever imagined. This was modern stuff, full of vitality. The people featured in the film were young, brave, articulate, enthusiastic, but most importantly, arty, but in a new, much more clean-cut, and sophisticated way. The blokes didn’t wear corduroy, but dark, well-cut tweed jackets and black roll necks.
The girl, Boty, wore a dress in a striped black and white material that was flashy and, as we’d say now, in the face. And these people weren’t moody or dull; they were smiley, interesting and full of fun. They were shown with their work, which used everyday objects and household items as part of the content. The images they painted were fun, wild, sometimes rude, and had a carefree, almost deliberately naive sense about them.
Hockney provided the biggest shock of all. He was shown working at his easel, chatting to the camera. He wore horn-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses and his hair was cropped like a GI’s and bleached blonde. There had been a few strains of Modern Jazz during the film, which I found encouraging, but in the Hockney sequence, Buddy Holly songs were playing in the background. I’d always loved Buddy Holly but never openly admitted it in those early art school days, so it was a revelation when Hockney was asked if music inspired his work and if so, how?
‘Birds Eye Frozen Peas. Sweet as the day when the pod went pop’
DH:
“I realler lark Boody ‘olly. ‘es realler good, dorn’t ye think? ‘is songs are joost sor simple. Ah farnd them quite loovely. Inspiring, realler.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Why don't you all f-fade away (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
And don't try to d-dig what we all s-s-say (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
People try to put us d-down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we g-g-get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Yeah, I hope I die before I get old (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
This is my generation
This is my generation, baby
Chapter 62. SNAP
Another film shown on TV in the early Sixties that impressed the hell out of me was a documentary following the life of a young upstart photographer from the East End of London. Much of the footage was shot on a wind-swept beach on the South Coast as the rakish snapper ordered a willowy young model about, coaxing her to give him what he wanted, which, on screen at least, were fashion pictures.
He strutted about like more like a builder’s labourer than what we’d come to expect from the well known society photographers of the day, introducing the kind of intereaction between himself and the model that was to be copied by his future emulators the world over.
“Come on, pussy cat. Give it to me. No, no. Lean in a bit. Hair back over the shoulder. Yeah, tha’s great. Just like that. C’mon. Give it to me. Sexy. Sexy. More sexy. Yeah. Yeah. On the rock. Sit on the rock. There. On the bloody rock. That’s it. More. Again. Like that. Like that.”
He used his hand-cranked, 35m black Pentax like a hand gun, firing off shot after shot, dropping down onto the sand for a better angle, his long black hair hauled across his face like a curtain by the wind. The girl looked supreme and seemed to take his cajoling in her stride, every pose as perfect as the last, changing her body shape as fast as he could take pictures, her hair glinting in the sunlight, her chin raised in haughty contempt at the millions who would paw over the pictures in Vogue, Queen or Harpers.
She looked cool, calm, serene, young and vulnerable all at the same time. The girl was Jean Shrimpton, the first real fashion model icon that didn’t belong to the upper crust legion of unobtainable debutant types we’d been used to seeing adorning the pages of the same magazines for generations. Jean Shrimpton was closer to home. She could’ve been the archetypical girl next door except she had a style and presence about her that only belonged to the girl next door in fairy tales.
Like many of the equally famous young things who would trace her footsteps in years to come, Jean Shrimpton had at the time, the most photographed face in the world, photographed mainly by the man himself, David Bailey.
Bailey was one of 3 East End boys made good in the same chosen profession: Brian Duffy and Terence Donavon being the other two musketeers. They all displayed that same energy and absorption in their art that made them what they were, dedicated hunters of ultimate perfection where only the best would do. Second best wasn’t even to be in the race as far as they were concerned.
They made photography and the idea of taking pictures exciting and as alluring as the models they used. The pictures themselves were beautiful – rare moments in time that few of us have the ability or talent to see as they happened. These guys all had that peculiar, innate skill and instinct to capture that inexplicable something that makes an ordinary photograph great, and the reflexes to freeze it in time.
I didn’t know any of that stuff at the time, of course. I just thought Bailey was the ‘dogs’, poncing around like that in his black rollneck and cowboy boots and Shrimpton just as horney as anything I’d ever seen.
I met Bailey a couple of times over the years but I never worked with him or Donovan. I did work with Duffy a couple of time in the 70’s. He was as mad as a hatter and professed to being a Marxist Catholic and talked incessantly about anything and everything. He was pure entertainment on legs and had me in stitches most of the time. And, of course, his pictures were fantastic. You came to expect nothing less.
Lunch in Duffy's studio was an everyday event and you never knew who was going to turn up. They’d be at least 15 guests from all walks of life – journalists, carpenters, the plummer, his cleaning lady and usually a couple of beautiful models. The wine would flow, though Duffy would never partake when he was working, but would hold court and be deliberately controversial, and always, bloody funny.
‘Bristows Lanoline Shampoo’
‘Settlers bring express relief’
‘I’d love a Babycham’
“Horlicks. The food drink of the night’
Derek Frosties:
“Hello, good evening, and welcome. I must be a bit of a shock to most of you out there, with your narrow-minded ideas, pathetic moral values and misguided sense of English stiff upper lipiness. I’m about to introduce you to the real power of television – and I don’t mean the box you plug into the wall – and demostrate just how it can radically influence the course of your mundane way of life. The brittle comfortability of your safe little world is about to be shaken to the core. All the values and standards of morality you thought were sacred will uncerimoniously chucked out of the window.
“If I come across as a really clever bastard sitting here in my smart button down shirt and knitted tie like some giant salivating rat from hell, incisors ready to slash their way through society’s soft underbelly, that’s because I am. I’m fresh out of Cambridge University where I studied ways to make shed loads of money by becoming an absolute pain in the establishment’s arse and a very potent steel toe-capped boot hefted into its balls.
“Incidentally, this weird, brushed forward hairstyle with its strangely unsettling horizontal quiff at the front is, of course, way ahead of its time and won’t become fashionable until the legions of fornicating, laddish blokes suddenly appear, pissed out of their brains in the mid 1990s, by which time, I will have been knighted and become as pompous a part of the establishment as all the stuck up crustys I’m about to topple from their perches.
“My good friend, Ned Sheriff, has provided me with the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at anything and anybody I bloody please from the Royal Family and politicians to the man in the street, so watch out. No one is safe, heh, heh. Not even you, Ma’am.
“You will see the government tumble before your very eyes and crumble to dust, as we rake up all the dirt we can find and fan the flames of what would usually be a few passing, minor scandals until they become voracious forest fires. You will witness celebrities and luminaries from all walks of life being torn to shreds by my other good friend, Bernard Lever, the proud possessor of the sharpest, cruellest, most venomous tongue since Hitler to the point where some toff will try and lay him out in front of the cameras for criticising his wife in some dreadful play or other. Ooh, what a laugh!
“We’ll introduce you to a new breed of comic genius who will split your sides wide open and you’ll thank your luck stars you’re not a public figure yourself, and, if you are, Heaven help you. You’ll meet Ronnie Barker; Ronnie Barker; Kenneth Cope; Lance Percival; John Fortune; Jon Bird; John Cleese; Marty Feldman and many more.
“The very sexy Millicant Martin and Cleo Laine will supply the odd musical interlude and their own brand of sick humour and the even more sexy and magnificently superior, Eleanor Bron, will be on hand to drive the male population wild with her elegant brand of sophistry and small, but perfect titties.
“So, look out, both you Harolds, here we come.”
* * * * * * * * * *
They say we`re young and we don`t know
Won`t find out till we grow
Well I don`t babay that`s true
Cause you got me and baby I got you
Babe, I got you babe, I got you, Babe.
They say our love won`t pay the rent
Before it`s earn`d our money`s always spent
I guess that`s so, we don`t have a lot
But at least I`m sure of all the things we got
Babe, I got you babe, I got you, Babe.
I got flowers in the spring
I got you, to wear my ring
And when I`m sad, you`re a clown
And when I get scared you`re always around
so let them say your hair`s too long
I don`t care, with you I can`t do wrong
and put your little hand in mine
There ain`t no hill or mountain we can`t climb
Babe, I got you babe, I got you, Babe.
I got you to hold my hand
I got you to understand
I got you to walk with me
I got you to talk with me
I got you to kiss goodnight
I got you to hold me tight
I got you I won`t let go
I got you to love me so
I got you, babe
Chapter 63. A SHOT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT.
Everyone either loved or hated TW3. No one was impartial. It was always a popular topic of conversation on Monday mornings at Sidcup, and it brought to previously ignorant minds like my own, some knowledge of politics and government simply because the programme made such subjects accessible and interesting by the sleaze and scandal it stirred up and the wilful mud slinging it seemed so good at.
David Frost, with his leering sarcasm and jeering tones, became a national hero to the incipient anarchist in all-young people at the time. He really seemed to enjoy upsetting whatever applecart caught his eye or the eyes of the writers on the show. There had only to be one visibly bruised fruit in the celebrity basket for the whole lot to be turfed out onto the unforgivingly hard pavement of public opinion. A shooting incident in Mayfair would only been seen as a relatively minor occurrence, had the TW3 team not decided to investigate it, in the process, uncovering the biggest political can of worms since a tenuous link had been made between the Prince Albert Victor and Jack The Ripper 80 years before.
BANG BANG
A Jamaican immigrant, Lucky Thompson, had fired several bullets at the mews flat of a Whimpole Street osteopath, named Steven Ward. At the time, some bird called Christine Keeler, who turned out to be Ward’s girlfriend and Thompson’s girlfriend at the same time, occupied the flat. A simple case of jealous rage from a nutter with a gun was the obvious conclusion of the Great British public.
But the fun was only just beginning. Tw3 discovered links between Ward and several high profile celebrities including members of Harold Macmillan’s Tory government, most significantly, Defence Minister, John Profumo. It turned out, that Ward, apart from ‘befriending’ Ms Keeler and sketching her in the nude, had introduced her to a circle of society friends and associates of his and handed her around for their delectation for a small donation. There were stories of wild parties and orgies at the country home of Lord Aster, no less. Profumo was a regular guest at these fun gatherings and fell hook, line and plonker for Ms. Keeler.
But Keeler was also shagging Yevgeny Ivanov, a Russian Naval Attaché, (also introduced to her by Steven Ward,) whom the FBI already had marked out as a possible Soviet spy, and stories of apparent pillow talk between Keeler and the randy Russian were skilfully bandied about, probably by the Labour Party.
Allegedly, Ward had told Keeler things that he didn’t ought to have – things that he could only have got from one or two of his diplomat guests when they were a bit pissed at one of his orgies (either that, or he made them up, which is more likely) and Keeler told Ivanov who told his mates back in the USSR. The Soviets, chewed the cud about this so-called illicit information with their agents, who chatted with their opposite numbers on the other side about it, and eventually, it all got back to the folks inWhitehall, who rightly asked:
“Where the fuck did all that come from?”
Another racy looking young woman, Mandy Rice-Davis, was also brought to public attention by Frost and his cohorts, and pretty soon, she and Keeler’s pictures were strewn across the front pages of the tabloids, accompanied by words like: SCANDAL; SEX; CALL-GIRLS; NAKED GIRLS; RUSSIAN SPY; ORGIES; MORE SEX; ORGIES; NAKED ROMPS; LIES; NAKED MEN; EVEN MORE SEX; EVEN BIGGER SCANDAL.
The upshot of all this was that Profumo, who’d lied about his intimate relationship with Christine Keeler, subsequently retracted the denial statement he’d made to the House of Commons, confessed all and resigned. Harold Macmillan retired from the office of Prime Minister because of ill health, his daily intake of quail’s eggs becoming more and more irrevocably lodged in his throat, having recently reminded the great unwashed that they’d never had it so good. Sir Alec Douglas-Hume took over, relinquishing his title of Lord Hume to allow him to do so.
While Harold Macmillan, the gold watch chain connecting his waistcoat pockets a sure sign that he represented an establishment held up by an increasingly threadbare old school tie, was light years away from the comprehension of the man in the street, Hume, soon to be famous for his skull-like appearance and inability to speak with his teeth parted due to the huge plum he’d had inserted into his palette at birth, wasn’t even in the same universe. The old school tie snapped under the strain of what was to become known in the history books as ‘The Profumo Affair’, a General Election was called, and Harold Wilson, waiting in the wings with his working class Macintosh and pipe, was ushered comfortably into office, supplying TW3 with a brand new character to take the piss out of, which Jon Bird did to perfection.
Steven Ward was made a scapegoat, unjustifiably arrested (arguably) for living off the earnings of prostitution and committed suicide on the last day of his trial. Promfumo retired to the East End to become a dedicated charity worker, Christine Keeler sold her story to a newspaper and later went to Jail for purgery. Mandy Rice pudding, who’d always seemed to enjoy the whole mad business according to the pictures that appeared of her smiling eloquently from beneath a silly clip-on sunflower hat, also sold her story to a newspaper, got off Scott free and went abroad on the proceeds.
Amongst all the uproar and mudslinging that went on between the dishonoured Tories and “I never actually said that, but at 3.15 and 20 seconds on the afternoon of the 21st of October, what I did say was…” Harold W, a cryptic new slogan was born:
‘THE PERMISIVE SOCIETY’,
And we all thought, “Terrific. That sounds great. Where is it? We’ll have some of that.”
All we had to do was find it.
That Was The Week That Was replaced its title with the more pretentious, ‘Not So Much A Programme – More A Way Of Life’, which lent itself to the even more pretentious abbreviation of, AWOL, used mainly by Julian Whittaker who at the tender, but obviously well-informed, age of 15, actually introduced me to the word ‘pretentious’.
Julian, who’s old man had once, apparently, been a paid up comrade in the Communist Party, tended to lean somewhat to the left (which would maybe explain why one of his shoulders sloped downwards more than the other) and often expounded upon the rights of the working man, which I always thought was a bit of a bloody cheek, him living in a luxury bungalow in Farningham and being a member of a 2 car family even in 1962, while I lived on a council estate which only boasted 3 cars between about 500 tennants.
To Patrick Uden’s bird-of-prey-like-instincts, Julian was raw meat, and he lost no time in swooping down on the young Whittaker’s outbursts, talons at the ready, skilfully ripping the Ringo Starr look-alike’s arguments to shreds. Looking back, it depended on whether you had left or right wings leanings as to which one of thess two insatiable debators you thought won. Even with Patrick's tallon tearing at his flesh, Julian was confidfent enough not to feal a thing and just smiled cynically, ignoring the blood and entrails on the floor.
The debates would usually take place in the semi darkened art school canteen while we waited for evening classes to begin, the only real partakers being Janet, Julian and Patrick. The rest of us held back and let them get on with it, mainly because, no one new what the fuck they were on about. They were still at it 3 years later just before we all left art school and took the plunge into the outside world. It was all good stuff.
‘Wilkinson’s Sword. The name on the world’s finest blade’
Harold Wilson: “I was only saying to Mary, my wife, this morning, that it’s about time the British working man stopped complaining, got off his backside, rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in. After all, he’s got a lot to be thankful for. We’ve chased off those silly bloody Conservative wallers for good and all, I reckon, so now it’s up to us all to get on with the job in hand…whatever that is. I’m aligning myself with these Beatle chaps and I’ve contrived to appear on the front pages of the Daily Mirror with them as I think it’s worthwhile being seen to appreciate wot is fab and gear by the hordes of teenagers who, if I play my cards right, will one day become labour voters and keep the jolly old red flag flying. Of course, at the end of the day, I’ll make sure all that nasty, subversive Rock ‘N’ Roll stuff is made illegal, but in the meantime I’ll be seen to join in. I might even release a song of my own:
“We’ll keep the Red Flag flyin’, now,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
i don’t know why i love you like i do
pretty mama
nobody in the world can get along with you
you got the ways of a devil
sleepin in a lions den
i come home last night
you wouldn’t even let me in
sometimes pretty mama
you’re as mean as you can be
you get those crazy notions
jump all over me
well now you give me the blues
and i hope you’re satisfied
pretty mama
you give me the blues
and i wanna lay down and die
i helped you when you had no shoes on your feet
pretty mama
i helped you when you had no food to eat
you’re the kind of woman i just don’t understand
pretty mama
you took my money
and give it to another man
you’re the kind of woman
makes a man lose his brain
you’re the kind of woman
that drives me insane
well you give me the blues
and I hope you’re satisfied
pretty mama
you give me the blues
and wanna lay down and die
you give me the blues
and i wanna lay down and die
i don’t know why i love you like i do
Chapter 65. THIS SIDE OF THE FENCE.
I’d noticed Sue before. I’d noticed all the girls in my group. There was tiny, blonde Madeline whom Patrick had taken a shine to. Margaret Parry was also and tiny and very thin, darked skinned with a Diana Ross bouffant hairdo perched above her sharp features and dark eyes. Linda Hutchinson, who at the ripe old age of 18, had been nick-named, Grandma, by Patrick, had already been grabbed by the lecherous Julian Whittaker who, like a marauding Viking, plunged his tongue down her throat in the park one sunny day, and was now always to be seen hanging on his arm and every word, obviously carried away by the shock of it all, despite being 3 years older.
Linda, Margaret and Janet had been in the same class at Bexley Grammar School together and were all pretty bright with a string of O’levels between them. Linda was the gentlest and quietest of the 3 with long, dark red hair, wide, blue eyes.
Janet and Margaret were generally more vociferous and though they weren’t the best of friends, tolerated each other. Brenda Malley, a feisty, Irish red head from Erith, whose boy friend, Dave, had recently graduated from his Vespa GS to a Minnie Cooper in British Racing Green, did nothing to hide her dislike of the the remaining female member of the group, a dark, Jewish girl called Cynthia Royston. Cynthia’s father, a GP in Petts Wood, hadn’t spoken to her for 2 years. She never explained why. Maybe it was some peculiar Jewish custom or other.
Cynthia was no retiring violet, and had a voice that carried with it the well-bred, penetrating tones of the Jewish middle classes. She had stunning, exotic features, and eye make up in the style of the Ancient Egyptian Queens. This wasn’t how she was perceived by Phil Katner who immediately christened her Alma, after Alma Cogan. There was a sort of resemblance, I suppose, and they to both seemed to have been blessed with similar vocal range, and the name caught on much to the chagrin of poor old Cynth. She was actually a really lovely, kind and caring lady once you got past her apparent haughtiness.
GREENER GRASS
I plucked up the courage to ask Sue out and to my astonishment, she said yes. She was a real stunner, and wore clothes she’d made herself including an array of tights that she dyed in all kinds of bright colours and stripes. She wore shoes with pony hair on the uppers and dark hair with a long fringe that covered her eyebrows (Alf said she looked like Sandy Shaw but I think she was much better looking.) and was tall with the most amazing legs I’d ever seen, which weren’t difficult to miss, her skirts being as short as they were.
Sue had blossomed over the 1st year into a remarkably graphic personality – tall, elegant, and stylishly original in her mode of dress. All the blokes in the group fancied their chances. I was doubly amazed that she’d agreed to being my bird, so to speak. We stayed together for 18 years, marrying in 1971. I thought Janet wouldn’t take it too badly as it was her suggestion that we separate for a while. Wrong. She seemed devastated and Sue was a bit upset herself. I never thought I’d have much success with girls, and yet, here I was with the best looking one in the college on my arm and my ex. crying her eyes out. It was all a bit of a shock, one way and another.
‘Robertson’s Golden Shred, the world’s best marmalade’
Conversation with Terry Smith:
T. “I bought my first guitar from a general store. It cost about eight quid. It was one of those cheapo Italian jobs with strings that were half a mile off the fingerboard and impossible to play, you know the kind of thing. To begin with, it was all skiffle and stuff I was into but I soon got to hear Django and all that fantastic stuff he did, and that was it - I wanted to play jazz from then on.
I don’t really listen to many guitar players – just Wes, (Montgomery) Joe Pass and Django. I listen more to horn players, like Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins and Coltrane, of course, and Miles. I can’t stand Barney Kessel – that horrible sound he has. (Demostrates) I can’t stand it. I don’t like all those ‘groovy’ type players either, you know, Grant Green, Kenny Burell, all that stuff.
“That Rennie Thomas (French Jazz guitarist) real knocks me out. But his old man left him a business so he didn’t have to work. He just used all the money up, what he didn’t spend on fixing.”
NB: “You sound a lot like Wes Montgomery, yourself.”
TS: “Yeah. It’s inevitable, really. It’s the ‘octaves’ mostly, though I don’t use my thumb like he does. I use a finger pick on my third finger. It means I can play them really fast, but if I’m ever going to get anywhere, I’m going to have to play octaves twice as fast as Wes.
“The thing I’m really after getting off on the guitar is all the Coltrane changes. You know, all those weird chords he uses. (Demonsrtates) That’s a Cotrane chord. But it’s going to take such a lot of work. (What neither Terry or I realised at the time was that a young guitarist from Yorkshire, named John McLaughlin, had already achieved this, amongst many other ground breaking techniques, and would later become perhaps the most accomplished guitarist in the history of the instrument.)
NB: “I love Coltrane most on “Milestiones” with, what to me, is Miles Davis’ best line-up.”
TS: “Yeah. That album WAS a milestone. They called it, what was it, Coltrane’s ‘Sheets Of Sound’ period?”
NB: “’Straight No Chaser’ is the best track.”
TS: “Yeah. (Demonstrates)
“Like a lot of musicians, I’m very lazy. I sometimes get fed up with the intensity of it all and sometimes I’d like nothing better to come home at night, put my feet up and read the paper. It’s all just so hard. Jazz is a much bigger thing in the States than it ever will be over here, but if I went to the States now, I’d get cut in half. There are just so many players out there who are light year ahead of me.
NB: “Jazz musicians are often accused of playing to themselves and not to the audience. Would you say that was true?”
TS: “Yeah. Course it is. It was always one of my ambitions to play down Ronnie’s, (Ronnie Scott’s) but I played down Ronnie’s for 3 weeks and it means nothing. People aren’t really interested in the music. You know, I played my heart ou at Ronnie’s. One or two people in the audience looked up and the rest just carried on eating.
“It seems people are only interested in the spectacular stuff. You know, it’s like the Roland Kirk thing. The guy plays 3 instruments at once and stomps about in that black leather cat suit thing and people think it’s great.”
NB: “Well, he plays a soprano sax solo on ‘Rip, Rig And Panic’which is fantastic.”
TS: “Yeah, but he’s very limited. He spends all his time practicing on 3 instruments but it’s like a gimmick. Horn players like Joe Henderson can cut him to pieces, in my opinion. Having said that, one of the only people my girlfriend will stay awake for down Ronnie’s is Roland Kirk.
“I think Herbie Hancock (pianist) IS the governor. He says it all, he does it all – he’s got everything off. I mean, I’m not just knocked out by the guy playing changes and changes, but it’s the changes that he plays that are so incredible.”
NB: “Did you ever listen to that album, “Moonlight In Vermont’ by Johnnie Smith?”
TS: “Like I said, I don’t listen to guitar players much.”
NB: “I know, but I must show you the opening chord… (Borrowing T’s guitar)
Its like this…It stretches over 6 frets.” (Demonstrate)
TS: “Let’s see. (Plays chord) You know, he’s a really clever Bastard, ‘cos that’s the chord up here. (He plays an arpeggio at break neck speed.) My real problem is my knowledge of chords. I was talking to Bill LeSage down Ronnie’s and he was telling me that if you know all the chords, you can play any note on the intrument and it’ll be in. (Plays Johnnie Smith chord again.) This’ll keep me amused for weeks. (Laughs)
Milky Way. The snack you can eat between meals without spoiling your appetite.
Palmer: “My name…is Harry Palmer.”
Bond: “The name’sh, Bond. Jamesh Bond.”
Palmer: “No, my name…is Harry palmer.”
Bond: “Jeeshush! Where’d they find you?”
* * * * * * * * * * *
I don't know what it is that makes me love you so
I only know I never wanna let you go
'cos you started something, can't you see
Ever since we met you've had a hold on me
It happens to be true, I only want to be with you
It doesn't matter where you go or what you do
I wanna spend each moment of the day with you
Look what has happened with just one kiss
I never knew that I could be in love like this
It's crazy but it's true I only want to be with you
You stopped and smiled at me,
asked me if I'd care to dance
I fell into your open arms,
I didn't stand a chance
Now, listen, honey, I just wanna be beside you everywhere
As long as we're together, honey, I don't care
'cos you started something, can't you see
Ever since we met you've had a hold on me
No matter what you do, I only want to be with you
You stopped and smiled at me,
asked me if I'd care to dance
I feel into your open arms,
I didn't stand a chance
Now, listen, honey, I just wanna be beside you everywhere
As long as we're together, honey, I don't care
'cos you started something, can't you see
Ever since we met you've had a hold on me
No matter what you do, I only want to be with you
No matter, no matter what you do, I only want to be with you
No matter, no matter what you do, I only want to be with you
Chapter 66. JFK.
I know where I was on November 22 1963. I was sitting next to Sue on a sofa in the corner of her parent’s living room at 13 Ridgeway Cresent Gardens, Orpington, watching Z cars and tucking into a plate of sausage and chips. Z Cars suddenly disappeared from the screen and we found ourselves staring at the inter-programme BBC graphic of a silent spinning world for about 20 minutes before an announcement was made that would shake the globe on its axis. The not long elected American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had been shot whilst on a state visit to Dallas, Texas.
I used to stay at Sue’s as late as possible and always missed the last bus, having to hitch hike home. I was picked up that night in a Hillman by a bloke I’d known from Red Hill and Edgebury, Geoff Loyd, who’d become a bit of a celebrity at the junior school when he slipped over whilst participating in the forbidden extreme sport of black ice sliding one cold and frosty morning. The sport was made illegal by certain do-gooderish and ill-informed members of the teaching staff who judged it to be dangerous.
They made the preposterous assertion that someone could easily get hurt. How ridiculous was that? Geoff only suffered 2 compound fractures to his right leg. It could have been much worse. He might’ve broken both legs. Geoff’s Dad was in the car and listening to the radio. The strangely surreal news that Kennedy was dead was given out, ironically making him probably the most famous American President of all time apart from Lincoln, and filling the 3 of us in the car with a peculiar sense of excitement and morbid fascination. Little did we know that, as a result, the Vietnam War would become a bit more than just a rumour and our naive view of how world politics actually worked would be irrevocably altered, and that democracy was probably the biggest lie ever propagated by the Western World.
MOVE IT
Sidcup Art School was turned into an adult education centre and we all moved to Bromley to be amalgamated with the lot from Beckenham Art School which was to suffer the same fate. We were all dumped together in the old building school in Wharton Road, and described as ‘vocational students’. The new Ravensbourne Diploma Art College had just opened on Bromley Common and the Wharton Road lot were considered to be very much inferior to the Ravensbourne lot on account of the fact that none of us had enough GCEs to qualify for degrees.
The previous year, Joe Jago, the Sidcup Art Scool principle, had resigned and taken up the post of principle at Medway Art School in Rochester. The silver haired and moustached, chain smoking Jago was a giant of a man, and always elegantly turned out in a suit, white shirt and tie, the only feature of artiness being his bohemian hairstyle, crudely brushed forward to form a flat fringe above his penetrating eyes. A graduate of the RCA School of Furniture Design, Jago went into teaching straight from college and though somewhat out of touch with what was going on in the professional world, he was nevertheless liked by the students for his slightly eccentric ways, vageness and affable manner, though not entirely respected.
A memorable Jago moment was witnessed by all the members of my group from Ray Wittacker’s room one day when he strolled across the quadrangle between the canteen and the main building to the etching studio, a converted air raid shelter in the corner of the yard. The etching studio was empty at the time and Joe sneeked in there to use the acid trays for something.
Minutes later, he literally came scorching across the yard to the main building trying to tear his suit jacket off as he ran. Plumes of yellow smoke billowed out behind him and his face was a swollen mass of purple panic, the perpetual, long-ashed king sized fag that always protruded from his lips discarded, a sure sign that something pretty serious must have occurred. Inside the door of the etching studio next to the double sink with 4 lanks of wood layed across them on which stood the enamel acid trays, was a high shelf upon which was a row of which 2 gallon bottles containing nitric acid. We used a much diluted mixture of the stuff to etch an image into a metal plate, and were taught to coax the process along by gently stroking the surface of the plate with a feather just beneath the surface of the liquid.
John Sturgess was emphatic about the dangers of flirting with nitric but when he was out of the room and a chap or chapess wanted to move things on a bit, he or she’d think nothing of sticking his/her fingers in and giving the surface of the plate a damn good rub for a second before plunging his/her hand under the cold tap turning it on full blast.
If this tecnique didn’t do the job, a good result could be guranteed by grabbing hold of one of the bottles and pouring a coupole of globs of neat acid over the part of the plate you were working on. This was a dodgy trick and often resulted in the eruption of an angry cloud of yellow nastniess, which if breathed in wouldn’t do the linings of the lungs an awful lot of good. Activated in this way, the acid often splashed onto your Levis to dry in white blobs, which looked pretty cool and gave one the air of a far out nutter who’d deliberately stood too close to a nuclear blast until the jeans were put in the wash.
The water reactivated the acid and the white blobs instantly became holes that could’ve been made by some kind of ravenous South American moth with extremely jagged dentures and when Jago and his yellow cloud came tearing across the yard, it didn’t take a genious to figure out what he’d been up to. In trying to put a bottle back on the shelf, it had slipped and fallen against the next one, smashing the neck open and spilling neat Nitric onto the shoulder of his tailoring. In panic, he dropped the bottle, which exploded on the concrete floor, and ran for it. It was a week before the etching studio was safe to use without a gas mask.
OLD KING COLE
Jago was replaced by Mr Cole, the deputy principle of Sidcup’s sister school, in Beckenham. A wizzened little jewish man imn horn rimmed glasses who would have looked more comfortable working for an undertaker, Cole was the brother-in-law of Mr Colebourne, Beckenham’s principle. He didn’t seem to like students at all, least of all art students. John Sturgess was appauled at a question Cole asked a prospective student in his interview.
Cole: “I hope you’re not one of these people who likes Marylin Monroe. I really don’t approve of her at all.”
Strurgess: “What does the man think he’s doing? This is a bloody art school. Students should be aware of what’s going on around them in all walks of life. Monroe is one of the most significant icons of the 20th century and should be appreciated as such.”
Whether Sturgess’s comment had anything to do with the fact that Andy Warhol had used multiple pictures of Marylin Monroe in several of his paintings or wether he just found her a big, slutty turn-on, is open to conjecture.
When the move to Bromley finally came about, the Sidcup mob got the best out of the deal. We had the best tutors. John Sturgess turned down a plumb job at Hornsey and went with us. So did his friend, Robin Hughes, whom he’d known since they were both at The Royal College Of Art together in the late Fifties.
Strurgess was in the Printmaking School while Hughes had studied graphic design and illustration. When he left the College, Robin Hughes went into TV as a graphic designer and quickly became Head of Department at London Weekend Television and while he was there, was responsible for some of the ground breaking graphics of the day including the original titles for the first ‘Avenger’ series and the titles for ‘Public Eye’, a drama series about a down market detective.
He then spent five years in advertising before deciding it was time to fulfil his ambition to become a teacher and have the chance to spread his philosophy of he called ‘Visual Education’, the subject of his RCA thesis. He got his opportunity when Brian Keogh left Sidcup and became a senrior graphic design lecturer at The Central School of Art in Holborn. Ray Whittaker took over but had to step aside when Hughes turned up with his ARCA diploma in tow.
‘Phylosan fortifies the over forties’
Announcer: “We’re now going over to our outside broadscast cameras and Fife Robertson at Holy Island in Northumberland. Fife. Are you there?”
FR: “Good afterneen. At the mooment, aim stunding in the Wash, und ye may be wondering why ma feet aren’t wet. Well, the reason is… the tides oot.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.
And there's no tenderness like before in your fingertips.
You're trying hard not to show it, (baby).
But baby, baby I know it...
You've lost that lovin' feeling,
Whoa, that lovin' feeling,
You've lost that lovin' feeling,
Now it's gone...gone...gone...wooooooh.
Now there's no welcome look in your eyes when I reach for you.
And now your're starting to critisize little things I do.
It makes me just feel like crying, (baby).
'Cause baby, something in you is dying.
You lost that lovin' feeling,
Whoa, that lovin' feeling,
You've lost that lovin' feeling,
Now it's gone...gone...gone...woooooah
Baby, baby, I get down on my knees for you.
If you would only love me like you used to do, yeah.
We had a love...a love...a love you don't find everyday.
So don't...don't...don't...don't let it slip away.
Baby (baby), baby (baby),
I beg of you please...please,
I need your love (I need your love), I need your love (I need your love),
So bring it on back (So bring it on back), Bring it on back (so bring it on back).
Bring back that lovin' feeling,
Whoa, that lovin' feeling
Bring back that lovin' feeling,
'Cause it's gone...gone...gone,
and I can't go on,
noooo...
Bring back that lovin' feeling,
Whoa, that lovin' feeling
Bring back that lovin' feeling,
'Cause it's gone...gone...
Now it's gone...gone...gone...woooooah
Chapter 67. THE MUSIC GOES ROUND AND ROUND.
This was 1964 and Popular music was making all kinds of leaps and bounds in a variety of new directions. By now, the younger generation’s preferences were being fully supported and exploited by both BBC radio and TV and Independent TV. The old format of Oh Boy and Boy Meets Girl was scrapped and replaced by shows with a looser structure, like ‘Ready Steady Go’ and ‘Stars In Your Eyes’.
The former was compared by people from the young generation itself, amongst them, Cathy McGowan, an archtipical Sixties babe with long straight hair, and up-to-the-minute mode of short, girlie frock and white tights, and Tony Blackburn, though a watchful eye was kept on proceedings by Keith Fordyce, who, though he Talked the Talk and tried to Walk the Walk, was obviously a fish well and truly out of water, looking every bit as though he was floundering on the river bank, and would rather have been somewhere else.
Phil Spector, with his ‘Wall of Sound’ heralded a new American musical revolution with acts like Ike and Tina Turner, who’s ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ came at the unsuspecting audiences right out of the sun, along with The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes and the Chrystals, while Tamala Motown unleashed a wave of energetic singing groups like The Supremes, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Turrell, The Four Tops and Stevie Wonder.
‘The Who’ took up the cudgels of British Rock in response, sweeping a great army of head banging, Mod desciples along with them, while the Beatles kept turning out smash hit after smash hit and The Stones just kept on rolling along like Old Man River with their own fair share of turbulent waters, a far rougher, rapid strewn stretch of water than the one in the original song.
Cliff Richard must have thought the sky had fallen in. He immediately changed his hair style from the swept back greasy style of the Fifties and brushed his locks forward in a vain attempt to get with the new programme. He didn’t really succeed, his squeaky clean image having been set in stone when his act with the Shadows automatically cleaned itself up when they performed for Princess Margaret and her new husband, Tony Armstrong Jones, aka, Lord Snowdon. Dispite all their risqué, high kicking, leg swinging to the beat of ‘Apache’, Cliff and his boys couldn’t hold a candle to the overtly sexual gyrations of Mick Jagger or the rough edged R&B bashed out by the Stones. Like it or not, Harry Webb and co had slipped backwards and become part of the repsectable establishment.
Their days of perceived rebellion were over and they were left firmly in the middle of the road, blinded by Merseybeat and R&B headlights with not a lot to look forward except The Eurovision Song Contest, and material which was far too easy on the ears of London’s new swingers, who lusted after musical anarchy.
The jazz scene started to change, too, with Roland Kirk blindly staggering around with 3 horns in his mouth at the same time, and Ornette Colman and Archie Shepp arrived blowing in the ‘New Thing’, an agonising strain of sounds that dispensed with formal chord progressions. Indian music began to make its mystic way to the inner ear of musicians and surface with ‘fusion’ bands like those of The Charles Lloyd and Joe Harriot quartets, while John Lewis and The Modern Jazz Quartet carried on regardless, refining their art till it became so perfect it was almost boring.
The new Chico Hamilton Band stuck its head above the parapet and fronted a young guitarist who’d escaped from the 1956 Hungarian uprising, injecting a whole new concept of an electrified acoustic guitar into the mix. John Coltrane left Miles Davis and recorded 30 of his own albums including his famous album of all, the deeply religious ‘ALove Supreme’. To coin a well-worn phrase, it was all happening.
TYZACK AND JIM
Just before we left Sidcup for Wharton Road, a couple of new teachers showed up. One was Jim Morgan, fresh out of the Textiles School at the RCA. He was a typical product of the place: tall and pin sharp, in his tailored black leather jacket, bright red cashmere V necked sweater, small-knotted flowery tie, and skin tight grey slacks with shiny Chelsea boots poking out the ends. He was to teach us screen printing but spent a lot of the time chatting up the girls, most of whome thought he was the coolest thing they’d ever seen.
Mike Tyzac was older than Jim Morgan and probably in his late 30’s. Tyzac, bearded with hornrimmed glasses, spoke in Greenwhich Village ‘hip’ language. Like Morgan, he was clean cut and played jazz played the trumpet.
A graduate of the Slade School of Fine art, he was part of what was known as the new Optical Movement which used optical illusion as a technique. (The term ‘OP Art” entered the language but it’s expression in fashion with the stripes and spots had little or nothing to do with the movement itself.) The Optical, or ‘Op Art’Movement thing was started by the Polish painter, Victor Vaserely, and the British painter, Bridget Riley, who’s swirling black and white canvasses, had the power to make any viewer dizzy and nauseous.
Sturgess was highly suspicious of the Optical bandwagon that everyone seemed to be climbing onto and especially of Tyzack – until a group of us visited his one man show at a gallery in Mayfair. The paintings were stunning and had dynamic titles like‘Spinner’ and ‘Candyman’. The colours were bright and painted in accrilic on canvas and he used masking tape to get the lines dead straight, and some of the blocks of colour stood a good quarter inch from the suface of the painting.
At first, the work just looked like fabulous abstract shapes in their own right but suddenly they’d appeared to move and spin. Huge voids stretching to infinity seemed to grow out of the canvass depicting depth that you felt you could place your arm inside. Sturgess was completey blown away by the experience and immediately found himself running behind the Op Art bandwagon trying desperately to scramble aboard before he got left behind.
Someone asked Tyzack why his paintings were all the same size and he simply stretched his arms out sideways as far as they would go and grinned.
“I just wanted them to be man-sized. My size. As big as they could be without me not being able to lift them on or off a wall.”
Tyzack was also involved with several eminent architectcs and was promoting a scheme they called they called, ‘Painting Towards Environment’, where art became an intergral part of the building. After the visit to his exhibition, he became everyone’s hero including John Strugess.
Mike Tazack and I became quite friendly due largely to out mutual interest in Modern Jazz. I lent him some albums from my already hefty collection, like ‘Milestones’ by Miles Davis, ‘A Love Supreme’ by John Coltrane, ‘Rip Rig And Panic’ by Roland Kirk, ‘The Sermon’ by Jimmy Smith and ‘The Incredible Jazz Guitar Of West Montgomery’, all of which he seemed to appreciate.
“Hey, Dad. That’s just out of sight! The cat’s a fucking genious!”
Jim Morgan and Mike Tyzack became muckers and a sort of double act and part of a formidable teaching staff the school was beginning to accumilate like wasps on strawberry jam.
‘Kitekat Meaty Dinner’
.
Charles Lloyd: “Hey, Miles, ma man. How come you keep stealin’ all my sidemen?”
Miles Davis: “Well, that’s what you ‘spose to do when you at the top.”
* * * * * * * *
Ooh-oo-oo
Baby love, my baby love
I need you, oh how I need you
But all you do is treat me bad
Break my heart and leave me sad
Tell me what did I do wrong
To make you stay away so long
'Cos baby love, my baby love
Been missin' ya, miss kissin' ya
Instead of breaking up
Let's do some kissing and making up
Don't throw our love away
In my arms why don't you stay
Need ya, need ya
Baby love, ooh baby love
Baby love, my baby love
Why must we separate my love
All of my whole life through
I never loved no one but you
Why you do me like you do
I get this need
Ooh, ooh, need to hold you
Once again my love
Feel your warm embrace my love
Don't throw our love away
Please don't do me this way
Not happy like I used to be
Loneliness has got the best of me
My love, my baby love
I need ya, oh how I need ya
Why you do me like you do
After I've been true to you
So deep in love with you
Baby, baby, ooh 'till it's hurtin' me
'Till it's hurtin' me, ooh baby love
Don't throw our love away
Don't throw our love away
Chapter 68. SUPER NOVA.
NOVA
In 1965, the first real style magazine hit the bookstalls with an impact like a meteor. Its beautiful typography, sumptous fashion photography, and pioneering layout gave graphic design a fresh respectability, and Nova itself, immeasurable value as a sign post to the way ahead for graphic design students.
Art Director, Harry Peccinotti (real name, Harry Peck) used loads of white space and huge, powerful headlines, ranged right, against single columns of type in the middle of a page. He helped break down the barriers of editorial design, creating a fresh arena for creative design in publishing which stopped everything looking bland and boring like Womans Own, with its knitting patterns, safe cooking advice and drab typography.
The work of ‘new wave’ fashion designers like Mary Quant with her ‘dolly girl’ look, crazy make up, pelmet sized skirts and Andre Courreges with his futuristic plastic, space age stuff: wide belts, knee length plastic boots and strange head gear was shoved in the faces of the ever hungry young British consumer, constantly on the look out for something fresh.
Labels like, ‘Op Art” and ‘Pop Art’ were used to describe the clothes, which, though paying lip service to some of the images and colours used, had very little to do with two of the Sixties’ greatest movements in art since Cubism and Abstract Impressionism.
1965 also saw the launch of the first weekend newspaper colour suppliment by The Sunday Times. Again, the photography was stunning and the journalism pin sharp and allowed us to look at what was happening in the world in terms of fashion, music, politics, current events in glorious colour, black and white television still being the order of the day.
The Daily Herald became the Sun – originally an updated, revamped, broadsheet version of the old newspaper that clearly defined its political stance backing it up with intelligent comment. It was to be quite a few years before The Sun became a tabloid of the worst possible kind, spreading the black art of the excruciating pun headline and shallow sensationalism far and wide. (God, I’m turning into a serious critic.How sad is that?)
SATISFACTION
Throughout 1964, I let my hair have its way and cultivated my very own Rolling Stones look. I bought the Cuban heeled boots, the shirt collared jacket, a la Mr Jagger, and my first pair of Levis. I washed my hair every day and carefully dried it with a hair dryer, completing the picture with a black oilskin jacket Sue bought me for Christmas.
I became the dead spit of Brian Jones,(so i thought) give or take a few tons of drugs, and used to practice my harmonica playing stance in the hall mirror before going through the front door and onto the stage of the Edgebury estate.
Alf and Connie didn’t complain, being some what fascinated with their son’s cutting edge life style they perceived as being closely associated with that of the band of roughnecks who were now a regular feature in the pop charts.
Alf, in fact, veremently defended The Rolling Stone’s reputation when the Daily Mirror regularly slagged them off, telling the neighbours that I knew them and that they were actually jolly nice chaps.
It was when Connie answered the front door one day to a crowd of squealing teenaged girls, desperate to get their hands on her precious son, that things started to get out of hand. Luckily, I was cornered by a similar small mob round at the Edghill Road parade of shops one day and I was able to explain that I wasn’t actually in the band, but that, yes, I did know The Stones, (that was stretching things a bit, but I thought I was entitled to my 15 minute’s of fame) but I’d turned the band down because I had better things to do. I suddenly became a lot less popular.
COUNCILING
My art school grant didn’t amount to much and throughout the 1965 summer vacation before we started our last term at Wharton Road, a few of the boys in the group took jobs working for Orpington Council, the main task being to remove the mossy clumps of weeds from the cracks between the borough’s paving stones.We were paid 17 quid week, which, as we didn’t have to pay tax, ( a fact that was carefully kept from the regular workers) was a fortune.
Patrick joined the Bromley brigade while, twins, Dave and John Tuffnel, Jim Sweetland and I climbed onto a dark green truck at the Orpinton depot at 7.30 one morning and were given a brand new spade each. The full time workers in our crew were a burley 40 year old called Billy and his skinny mate, Chris, in a black leather jacket and winkle pickers. A part Down Syndrome lad called, Keith and a cloth capped middle aged Scot called Bob, who was our forman, and who had the leathery, ruddy complection of a man who spent most of his life outdoors.
Billy’s only ambition in life was to be ‘gobbled’, as he put it, by Cathy Kirby, the shiny lipped, laquer haired, screeching singer who scored a number 1 hit in 1964 with her banshi-wailing cover of the Doris Day song from the film ‘Calamity Jane’, ‘Secret Love’. The orginal song was a gentle love song, rendered by the warm tones of the homely girl next door Ms Day as she sat dressed in a hooded cape, side-saddle on a chestnut mare, whilst on her way to a square dance to meet Howard Keel, aka Wild Bill Hickock.
Skinny Chris’s only ambition seemed to be to watch. The thought of him leering and salivating through his decaying teeth at the scene was almost more than a man could bear.
En route to our dropping point, we picked up 2 more students, Jock, who claimed he was a Marxist, and went to Dulwhich College, and Norman, who was studying English at Leicester University. These two argued like cat and dog about everything, the lazy Norman spending most of his time on his back on grass verges, shirt peeled back, sunning his already nut brown torso, and winding Jock up by presenting his right wing views on the state of the day’s nation at every opportunity.
Jock, a large, schoolboy-looking rugby player would get extremely het up as most socialists seem to able to do at the drop of a hat, while Norman just flashed his gleaming, perfect set of teeth in a mocking smile.
At the time, the pressure at Wharton Road was really on. We only one term before we had to present work for the RCA entrance exam. And there was a huge summer design project to get through. I have to admit, Norman seemed to have things pretty well sorted.
There didn’t seem to be much pressure in his life. I was quite envious.
“University’s a piece of cake, really. I’ve just got to read a few books and take a couple of exams at the end of 3 years. Then I’ll teach. Life’s pretty good. I take the odd run, the odd swim, read the odd classic, have the occasional knock. The only trouble with that is, she’s the Dean’s daughter. Still, it adds a bit of excitement to life. They seem to work you art students bloody hard. Not something I’m terribly keen on.”
During my 6 weeks on the council, I came across Mr Hyde again. I had to get up very early to be in Orpington by 7.30. Trouble was, I clashed with Alf’s itinerary. He had to wait an extra minute or two one moring while I was in the bathroom and he banged on the door.
"You finished in there? I gotta go to work!”
When I came out, he was like Rasptuin.
“I ain’t no fuckin’ part time worker, Mister. I’ve got to go to work. I ain’t no fuckin’ casual labourer.”
Alf always called me ‘Mister’ when he was being an areshole, and I hated him for it. He was beginning to get pissed off with me being at art school for 3 years and not bringing anything into the house in the way of wages. He probably had a point but his attitude just added more steam to the pressure cooker I was beginning to feel I was living in.
I was doing the council job so that I could buy some decent clothes. Professionalism was the new buzz word, and everybody was cleaning up their act. I took the plunge during the pre-Wharton Road vacation and crept sheepishly into a barber’s shop in Chislehurst High Street and asked the very willing man with the scissors to lop off my Rolling Stone locks and cut my hair short.
He went about the job with great gusto and with a grin on his face. Perhaps he thought it was a sign that the so-called ‘Swinging Sixties’was coming to a premature, and to him, welcome end. Not so. I was just changing my image.
I was horrified at the result when the smirking hair slasher shoved his silly little mirror behind my head with a flourish to show me the result of his labour. So much so, in fact, that I wrote a long letter to Sue, telling her that what I’d done and that I’d understand if she didn’t want to go out with me any more. I needn’t have worried and she seemed to like the new Caesar hairstyle I’d created, much to my relief.
IMAGES
The old, paint stained, green corderoy jacket, I’d worn for two years with its array of pencils and paint brushed stuffed in the top pocket, had to go, too. That sort of artiness was now old hat and was trashed in favour of the look adopted by the American art directors we’d all seen in the advertising bible, ‘The New York One Show Book.’
This was an annual of all the famous award winning design and advertisng work and in one issue, there was a picture of a load of the creative icons of the day who made up the jury that particular year, across the middle of a whole spread.
These guys represented the ultimate in cool. They all wore lightweight suits, button-down collars and hand painted, flowerey ties. One guy had a crew cut a pair of white sneakers to compliment his suit. If that wasn’t the epitome of all that was hip, what was?
John Sturgess told us a story about how a student in the Graphic Design Department at the RCA was chastised by his tutor, Don Foster, himself a pretty sharp dresser. The student rode a motorbike to the College every day, and turned up in his design studio wearing leathers and biker boots.
Foster went beserk, telling the poor guy that if he wanted to be a graphic designer, he’d better start dressing like one. This made a certain amount of sense, graphic design being a very exact, meticulous art, and Foster argued that it was an all consuming occupation and that one’s attitude to life, environment and personal appearance would be reflected in one’s work.
The next day, when the student turned up, Foster tossed a brand new, salmon pink shirt at him, still in its cellophane wrapper. The message was clear.
‘Gillette, the best a man can get’
Jock: “The strike is perfectly justified. It’s the right of the working man.”
Norman: “They’re just a lazy bunch of thickos with only the contents of the Daily Mirror between their ears.”
J: “How can you just lie there and say that?”
N: “Its easy. I just open my mouth and out it comes.”
J: “You’re one to talk about being lazy. You’ve hardly lifted that shovel all day.”
N: “What’s the point? You and the others are doing a damn fine job. I don’t see the point in getting in the way. It’s called devision of labour, Jock. You should know all about that. Isn’t it in your manifesto?”
J: “That’s typical of you and your kind. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You just look after number 1. As long as you’re OK, that’s all that matters.”
N: “It’s called having an intelligent approach to any given situation, and getting the best out of it.”
J: “The best for you, that is.”
N: “What else is there, prey? Just because those around me don’t seize their own opportunities, it’s not my fault,”
J: “That’s typical Tory talk. It makes me sick.”
N: “You should have a lie down, Jock.”
J: “I’d rather put my back into some honest labour, thanks.”
N: “And go down with the rest of the masses, and for what? Just to satisfy some misguided sense of guilt about your middle class upbringing.”
J: “I’m not middle class!”
N: “Of course you are. If you weren’t, your parents wouldn’t be able to afford to send you to Dulwich College. Try doing that on a miner’s wage.”
J: “It’s not the miners’ fault they’re so badly paid. It’s why they’re striking. It’s the only way they can get themselves heard.”
N: “They should go into arbitration, then.”
J: “What good will that do them? It would be admitting defeat.”
N: “At least there’d be a settlement.”
J: “A compromise, you mean.”
N: “Probably. But at least they’ll make be some kind of progress. That’s the way things work, Jock.”
J: “When you think of the way those miners are forced to live. 2 up, 2 down, with an outside toilet, if you can call it that, it’s outrageous. It’s about time things changed in this country.”
N: “The only way they’re going to change things at the moment is to go into arbitration.”
J: “Oh, shut up! You’d better get off your arse and do something. Here cames Bob.”
* * * * * * * * *
Since you gotta go, oh you had better
Go now go now, go now
(Go now) Before you'll see me cry
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
'Cause how many times do I have to tell you darlin', darlin'
I'm still in love, still inlove, still in love with you now
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
I don't wanna see you go, oh you had better
Go now go now, go now
(Go now) Don't you even try
Tellin' me that you really don't want it to end this way
'Cause darlin', darlin', can't you see I want you to stay
Yeah, yeah
Since you gotta go, oh you had better
Go now go now, go now
(Go now) Before you'll see me cry
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
'Cause how many times do I have to tell you darlin', darlin'
I'm still in love, still in love, still in love with you now
Whoa-oh-oh-oh
I don't wanna see you go but darlin', you better go now
Chapter 69. MECCA.
Despite the fact that my summer project work was a complete disaster and I didn’t finish it in time, I’d long began to believe that I’d developed an idea and feeling about graphic design that no-one else in the group had. I’d aquired somewhere along the way, an instinct for idea-based deisgn and an ability to arrange things on a page in a visually exciting and individual way.
Robin Hughes recognised my new-found ability and became my mentor, talking to me for hours on end about his attitudes and phylosophies about design and life in general. He encouraged me to stretch out and do what I instinctively thought was right and really push myself hard for the RCA entrance exam.
“Just take a look around you. It’s a tough world out there. No-one’s going to do it for you. No one will help you. They’ll just get in your way and try and stop you if they can. You just have to say to yourself: ‘Fuck ‘em all. Just fuck ‘em all.’”
Suddenly, I hit a flow and the ideas just kept coming. At the end of the 8 weeks we had to prepare, I had a portfolio of work to die for, and I knew that if I was right about what I was doing, then with a fair wind, I could get into the Graphic Design course at the Royal College. I also knew, that unless I was very much mistaken, no one else in the group would.
ROYALTY
We made several visits to the RCA and one was to the Film School where Keith Lucas, a longtime friend of Robin Hughes was Pofessor in charge. We were shown some of the films made by the students and given a guided tour round the department which looked impressively like a professional TV studio with cameras and loads of cable everywhere.
At the end of Keith’s lecture, he asked if we had any questions and one of his students, sitting at the back of the room piped up.
“Yeah. How do you get in?”
The smartarse. But it was always the question on everyone’s mind and I thought I had the answer.
SURF’S UP
The next visit to the RCA was to the 1965 Diploma Show where the graduating students were expected to stand in front of their own personal exhibitions for about a fornight while various luminaries from industry wandered around to see what sort of talent
(artists and designers, not totty) was about to kicked into the cold, unforgiving world outside after an intense and highly competitive 3 year struggle in the College environment.
There were two students off special interest. They were both from Sidcup Art School and had enrolled at the RCA the term before I started at the Art Deco building in Grassington Road.
One was Dave Chaston, a chisel-chinned, sun-tanned young man, sporting the now obligatory Caesar haircut of the new wave graphic designer. The other was a shy, retiring bloke called, David Eldred, who lived with his Mum near Sue in Orpington. We caught sight of Eldred when we arrived but he quickly vanished. Chaston stood his ground, obviouskly revelling in the attention and anxious to exercise his considerable ego while listening to a ‘The Beach Boys’ album playing on a small record player at his feet.
He had a life size cut out of himself sitting on a table beside his exhibition. The top pocket of the cut-out’s shirt was 3 dimensional to accommodate some identity cards. A label on the shirt pocket said:
“Please take one.”
I didn’t think a lot of Chaston’s work. It was very professional but creatively not great. Robin Hughes asked him what he planned to do now his course was over.
“Oh, take a break and get some surfing in down at Newquay. Then, freelance with a couple of days teaching a week.”
As we walked away to the strains of ‘California Girl’, Hughes said under his breath: “I wouldn’t touch that punk with a barge pole. What could he possibly teach anyone?”
This may have been true, but I thought Chaston was the sharpest looking individual I’d ever seen. He had on a light brown herringbone tweed jacket over a salmon pink button down shirt and a blue tie with white polker dots. Navy blue slacks in hopsack and lightweight tie-up American shoes completed the picture.
A couple of months later, Chaston, Michael Forman, who was to become a prolific illutrator of childrens’ books, and Roy Giles, an RCA photographer, turned up on the cover of a new mens’ pulication launched by Brian Forbes and entitled, King Magazine.
Chaston was in the foreground wearing shades, his hands folded in front of him, legs astride, with the other two standing one behind the other towards the background. All 3 wore white suits. They were pitched as the exciting creative staff of King, Chaston as art director, Giles as photographer and picture editor, and Foreman as illustrations editor.
King magazine lasted less than a year, and disappeared along with Chaston while Michael Forman continued to build his reputation as an illustraotor and Giles as a fashion photographer.
Chaston modelled himself on a young first year teacher at Sidcup called, Paul Huxley, who’s own appearance and hairstyle became a benchhmark for both him and Patrick Uden. Strugess was very suspicious of Huxley because he’d been educated at the Royal Accademy Of Art in Piccadilly. Strugess held the view that the Academy was too steeped in the past and clung onto outmoded forms of classicism that went out with the arc.
Huxley turned out to be the painter of powerful abstract images and became famous in New York, his work being exhibited at The Museum Of Modern Art, which at the time, was the yardstick for what was significant in the art world. Ironically, he also became Professor of Painting at The Royal College Of Art in the 90’s.
‘Birds Eye Fish Fingers: fresh from the Captain’s table’
Z Cars theme
Fancy: “They don’t flippin’ build cars like they used to.”
Jock: “You can see tha’ agin.”
Fancy: “Not a very good advert for a Ford Zepher, this isn’t.”
Jock: “Aye, thut u’ uzzun’t.”
Fancy: “There’s no bloody gluss in the windscreen, for a start.”
Jock: “Ut’s nae gor any wheels, neither.”
Fancy: “Ah. That’d explain why the ride’s so bloody bumpy.”
Jock: “Nae. Thut’s them two wee Sassenachs at the buck shakin’ ut aboot. DON’T LOOK ROUND! Phew! Thut was close. Stand by. Aim gonna hit the brakes real hard.”
Fancy: “But what we’re not even movin’.”
Jock: “Och, jest use yer imagination, mun!”
Z Cars theme – fade out.
* * * * * * * * *
Set me free why doncha babe
Get out of my life why doncha babe
Cuz you don't really love me,
you just keep me hangin' on
You don't really need me
but ya keep me hangin' on
Why do ya keep a'comin' around
playin' with my heart
Why doncha get out of my life
and let me make a new start
Let me get over you
the way you've gotten over me-hey
Set me free why doncha babe
Let me be why doncha babe
Cuz you don't really love me,
you just keep me hangin' on
Now you don't really want me,
you just keep me hangin' on
You say although we broke up
you still wanna be just friends
But how can we still be friends
when seein' you only breaks my heart again
SPOKEN:
Whoa-oh-oh
Set me free why doncha babe
(Whoa-oh-oh)
Get out of my life why doncha babe
(Whoa-oh-oh)
Set me free why doncha babe
Get out of my life why doncha babe
You claim you still care for me
but your heart and soul need to be free
And now that you've got your freedom
you want to still hold on to me
You don't want me or yourself
so let me find somebody else, hey hey
Why doncha be a man about it
and set me free
Now you don't care a thing about me,
you're just usin' me-go on
Get out, get out of my life
and let me sleep at night
Chapter 70. IN.
On the last day of submission, Sue’s Father, Larry, volunteered to cart the group’s portfolios to the Royal College in South Kensington in his Bedford Domrmobile so that the work could be submitted for the first part of the entrance exam.
This was a simple process of elimination with a committee of tutors from each department having the task of sifting through the mountains of brown paper parcels to arrive at a short list for the 2nd part of the exam – a two day design project, life drawing and an interview. There was a long nail-biting wait for the results of the first part, and at the end of Janaury I received a white envelope bearing the Royal Warrant in the post. I’d got through the 1st part and had about 3 weeks to till the 2nd which was to take place in the College itself.
My letter arrived on a Saturday morning and when I got to Wharton Road on the Monday morning, of the 13 submissions, I wasn’t surprised to find I was the only student to have got through the illimination process for the school of graphic design.
I was surprised to find that Patrick had failed to even get to the inteview for the Film School though Janet had succeeded. There was no doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, that Patrick should have got through, but because of the Royal College’s recognition as a fully chartered university, replacing its ARCA diploma with a new MRCA degree, GCE qualifications came into play for the first time. But the school of graphic Design waived the O level requirement to allow it to take a number of students who’s talent, they decided, outweighed the need for academic qualifications.
It must be said, it was raw talent, tenacity, and an ability to impress a formidable panel of tutors, to be accepted as a student at the Royal College Of Art especially, it turned out, if you were female and applying for a place in the Film School. The number of O levels you had or didn't have, didn't count. The various departments took who they wanted and that was that.
The Film School was considered to run a more intellectually demanding course, and Patrick was obviously disappointed but philosophical and decided to try and get a job in animation, which was one of his real loves, and a subject he had the natural wit and flare for. The 2nd part of the exam wasn’t quite as nerve wracking as I thought it might be.
There we were, about 25 students from round the world sitting in front of a life model for a day and then having to design a pack of playing cards using some feature or other from our home towns. I couldn’t think of anything exciting about Chislehurst except the caves and instead pretended I lived in Daganham and did a pack based on cars. I got hold of one of those ashtrays that had a miniture rubber car tyre around the outside. I dipped the tread in black ink and printed a black tyre mark around the whole pack while it was a flat plan. It worked a treat, so I made up a playing card based on a Model T Ford and that was the job done.
There was also an essay on given subjects to write but I wrote a short story instead and tried to make it sound like Len Deighton in style. I only got as far as a particularly nasty murder scene that took place in some poor bloke’s shower before the allotted time was up. All this stuff was pure occupational therapy to keep us all occupied while the interviews took place. When my time came and I trooped down the long, dark corridor to the Proffessor’s study, I found myself uncharacteristically relaxed.
I was also dressed to suit my new image as a razor sharp, RCA style graphic designer. The outfit was tailor made by John Stephen of Carnaby Street and cost almost all of the money I’d made from working for Orpington council. It consisited of a light brown herringbone jacket with a four button front, small lapels and a single vent at the back; lightweight grey trousers, blue bottondown shirt, red knitted tie and black Raoul shoes.
There were a dozen people seated around a huge table with the professor at one end. They had my work spread over the table and seemed enthusiastic about it and quite jolly. They asked me why I wanted to got to the College and what I’d do if I didn’t get in. I said that I felt I was only just starting to wake up to what Graphic Design was all about and that if I didn’t get into the College I ‘d get a job.
What seemed to amuse the commitee most was a cover design for a Christmas edition of The Sunday Time colour supliment and a spread about Christmas commercialism. We didn’t have the facilities for four colour printing at Wharton Road and my visuals were of money. The only way I could make the idea work was to stick down real money, which I did: a load of coins and a five pound note. They found this notion hilarious and a couple of them tried to pick off the fiver to see if it was real. If anything, it was one of the things in the interview that swung things my way.
After a painful month of waiting, the results came through the post one Saturday morning. I’d been successful. I’d got in. I was absolutely elated and ran the half mile to the bus stop to catch a 61 to Orpington to tell Sue the good news. She was almost as delighted as I was and her Father opened a bottle of sherry, which for him, begin a non drinker was really pushing the boat out.
The reception at Wharton road on the Monday was a good deal cooler. Congratulations were politely offered but I had the distinct impression, judging by the way Julian Whittaker was holding court in a hushed huddle, that a few people were pissed off. According to Patrick, Julian put it about that I’d somehow cheated my way in, which of course was impossible by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, including his.
Janet had also received the good news that she’d been accepted as a student in the Film School, which must have caused Patrick to feel a bit left out in the cold. However, 3 weeks later, he got the news that the College had decided to accept him after all as a student in the Film School.
So after 3 years and 2 terms, the group of naïve teenagers who’d been plunged into a world that was almost beyond their comprehension and definitely beyond their years, looking back, but who somehow managed to come through it all, left the art school with huge portfolios under our arms, thanks to Hughes and Sturgess who’d pushed us all relentlessly.
3 of us, Janet, Patrick and I, were sorted (sort of) while the others had to start plodding the pavements to look for some kind of work in the design or film world. Some of them were successful. Sue got a job on Honey magazine as an assistant art editor and later became Art Director of Cosmopolitan. Brenda became a designer at Decca Records, Cynth went on to The Central School Of Art to study jewellery design, Ray Newman joined an animation company, Julian Whittaker joined a design group, Jim Sweetland emigtrated to Canada and the rest just disappeared, Madeline and Margaret having already dropped out to become Mods and have a good time were living in a cruddy flat off Portobello Road with Madeline quickly becoming pregnant. Must have been something to do with the wallpaper, or more likely, the emulsion on the ceiling.
‘Do ‘ave a Dubonet’
Lucas: “Patron, Patron!”
Maigret: “What it is, Lucas? Calm down, man. Can’t you see I’m busy watching Madaam Pencherant in her apartment across the street through these extremely powerful binoculars? I would never have put her in lacy, red underwear. I might have taken her out of it, given half a chance, but I’ve always suspected that there is more to our Madaam Pencherant than meets the eyes, I mean eye. She must have stolen those extemely tiny pants and peepy-hole brassiere that make her nipples stand out like 2 black olives on a couple of upturned crème brulettes, unless she has a lover we don’t know about. She certainly wouldn’t be wearing such alluring skimpies for that husband of hers. Old Pierre Pencherant is 94 if he’s a day so she’d definitely be wasting her time there, the harlet. She’d have better luck trying to raise the latch on a gate.”
L: “But, Patron!”
M: “Quiet, Lucas. You are ruining my concentration. Damn, the lenses have steamed up again.”
L: “Patron. I need to speak to you with the utmost urgency.”
M: “Well, it had better be important or you’ll be drawing your pension sooner than you think. Is it police business?”
L: “Of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t think of disturbing your study of such important criminal matters.”
M: “It doesn’t become you to take the piss, Lucas, old friend and esteemed colleague. Now, what is it that’s got you hopping up and down like a hot tarte from the Follies Berger?”
L: “It’s your car, Patron?”
M: “My Citroen?”
L: “Your Citroen, Patron.”
M: “What about it?”
L: “It’s being towed away.”
M: “MERD!”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Every evening, when all my days work is through
I call my baby, and ask her what shall we do
I mention movies, but she don't seem to dig that
And then she ask me, why don't I come to her flat
And have some supper and let the evening pass by
By playing records, beside a groovy hi-fi
I say yeah yeah that's what I say, I say yeah yeah
My baby loves me, she gets me feeling so fine
And when she loves me, she let's me know that she's mine
And when she kisses, I feel the fire get hot
Se never misses, she gives me all that she's got
And when she ask me, if everything is OK
I've got my answer, the only thing I can say, I say Yeah yeah
That's what I say, I say yeah yeah
We'll play a melody and turn the lights down low
So that no-one can see
We gotta do that, we gotta do that
We gotta do that, we gotta do that
And there'll be no one else alive in all the world 'cept you and me
Yea, yea, yea, yea, yea
Yea, yea, yea, yea
Pretty baby I never knew such a thrill
Just thought I'd tell you, because I'm trembling still
But pretty baby, I want you all for my own
I think I'm ready to leave those others alone
No need to ask me if everything is OK
I got my answer, the only thing I can say
I say yeah yeah, that's what I say, I say yeah yeah
That's what I say, yeah yeah
We'll play a melody and turn the lights down low
So that no-one can see
We gotta do that, we gotta do that
We gotta do that, we gotta do that
And there'll be no one else alive in all the world 'cept you and me
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah
Yea, yea, yea, yea
Pretty baby I never knew such a thrill
Just thought I'd tell you, because I'm trembling still
But pretty baby, I want you all for my own
I think I'm ready to leave those others alone
No need to ask me if everything is OK
I got my answer, the only thing I can say
I say yeah yeah, that's what I say, I say yeah yeah
That's what I say, I say yeah yeah
That's what I say, I say yeah yeah
Chapter 70. JWT.
Knowing that I’d rest on my laurels before going to the Royal College, Robin Hughes put me in touch with a friend if his, Terri Hammaton, the senior art buyer at J. Walter Thompson, the largest advertising agency in Britain at the time. It was Terri who’d hired Graham Houghton and when I met him (no disrespect to Graham) I wasn’t surprised.
Terri was a tall, extremely thin, elegant man with what was called ‘fay’ tendencies, but well-mannered and obviously knowledgable about his business, part of which involved interviewing and employing art directors of all levels, from students to super stars.
Apart from my experiences of casual work when I was a student and my time riding the Iron Horse for Doubles, the butcher, this was my first insight into industry proper. Of course I knew J.Walter Thompson, being and advertsing agency, wouldn’t be like a local factory, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how different it was.
The building in Berkeley Square was impressive, taking up the entire North Western corner and fronted by a Cinemascopic expance of glass swing doors, through which cascaded a regular ballet of excited, chattering, exotic looking people as I sat nervously in the huge reception area waiting for to be called to meet Terri.
The blonde, Sloane type girl with the obligatory black suede Alice band, grey suit and pearls, nonchalantly scrutinised Horse and Hounds, her hand straying to the phone when it rang and slowly lifting the receiver, her gaze still fixed to the page.
“Hellay? Ay yers. Mr Cooper-Evans is expecting your call, Mr James. Hayled on and ayl connect you.”
Almost without taking her eyes orf the gee-gees, her hand tapped out an internal number.
“Helay, Michael. Ai hev Ken James for yor. Mr James? You’re through nigh.”
Sloane looked up and smiled as a pretty girl in a very short mini skirt and shiny, beige plastic sling backs approached the desk.
“Hi-ee. Have you a Neal Bradley to see Terri?”
Sloane flashed me a meaningless smile and poined a well-manicured digit in my direction, dropping her gaze back to the point-to-point and leaving the finger dangling in mid air. The apparition turned to me and smiled a more meaningful smile. So meaningful, that it tore through my three-quarter-length navy overcaoat, button down shirt and straight into my heart. She was absolutely stunning.
“Hi-ee. I’m Lelly. I’m Terri’s PA. (whatever a PA was) Would you like to come up?”
Would I ever? I followed her to the lifts as a fresh bunch of ballerinas came pirouetting by and crammed myself next to Lelly in the very crowded box, taking care not to plant my embarrassingly oversized portfolio bag on her delicate toes.
Terri met us at the lift on the 3rd floor. He greeted me enthusiastically and I followed him along a corridor, lugging my bag behind me, side stepping several people rushing along like traffic on a motorway with no lane markings. The whole place was obviously at action stations.
Terri ushered me into a small office with red walls. He sat down in a winged armchair that would have been at home beside an open fire on a Victorian Christmas Morning. I sat opposite in a dining chair from the same period and laid my folio open across a large glass coffee table. Terri sat sideways and with one hand flipped through the work piece by piece in a well-practised and professional manner.
He must have been in his late 30s though it was difficult to be sure. His boyish features and small head sat uncomfortably on his wide shoulders and long body. Strangely enhanced by a curiously long jacket, his entire person was emaculately wrapped in the finest, bespoke, double breasted 3 piece suit Saville Row ever hand stitched together. I’d never seen clothes like these before. I wasn’t sure I liked the cut of Terri’s suit, but it shrieked quality.
Terri spoke with a very cultured voice and seemed to like my work. He told me there was an opportunity for some temporary employment as an assistant to a senior art director who was trying to wrap up his work responsibilities before going off to spend time in the JWT New York Office, and he wanted to show the work to someone else.
Terry took me to see Harold George, the agency Head Of Art, who lived in a large office along the corridor. Despite the 1930s metal windows, the office was furnished with antiques and Harold, a jovial white haired man in his early fifties, sat hunched behind a large desk in the center of the room with his knees under his chin and his feet on the edge of the table. He wore a lightweight grey suit and an MCC tie and immediately asked me if I liked cricket.
Harold was very smiley and laughed as he talked, a trait I’d only come across once before in the person of Graham Alexander back in the wonderful days of Red Hill Junior School. Harold had large, jug handled ears and a deep suntan probably aquired from languishing for many long hours at Lords in the days when cricket was still the sport of gentlemen.
He told me that a favourite art director of his, David English, who had recently left he agency, had studied at the Royal College and had been replaced by another ex-student, Fred Barter. Harold also seemed to like my work and made a call on his internal phone asking some called Laurence to join us.
A tall, sunburned young man with long, lank hair poked his head round the door and greeted Harold in an even more cultured voice. Laurence Hutchins was 26, and slightly unkempt in appearance, wearing an old crew necked jumper with the sleeves rolled up and tucked into a pair of ill-fitting cream windowpane checked trousers. He seemed somewhat agitated and quickly went through the work, which was spread intidily across Harold’s desk.
“I can see why you’re going to the Royal.” was his only comment.
Harold and Laurence agreed between them that my turning up could be very fortuitous as Lawrence was extremely busy and had a lot of work to complete before leaving for New York at the end of July. If I was interested, they could offer me work as Lawrence’s assistant for 3 months and then I could spend the remaining month in any department I chose before I starting at the College in the October, and they would pay me based on on a salary of £850 a year.
I couldn’t believe my luck. Getting a job in industry straight out of art school was a tough call in itself and students expected to trudge the streets for months before they were taken on, if at all, the competition was so tough. Here I was going to the Royal College and landing a job in one of the most famous agencies in the world at the first attempt. It all seemed slightly unreal and was made even more so by the sudden blizzard that engulfed me as I carried my huge portfolio back down Berkeley Square to Green Park tube station.
Back at Wharton Road the following day, I excitedly told Robin Hughes the good news. He seemed delighted and told me it was the best thing I could do before going to the College. Julian Whittaker was somewhat less pleased having recently been interviewed by Lawrence Hutchins himself and feeling certain he was going to get a job at JWT.
In fact, Julian was almost beside himself with rage, telling other students in the group that he thought I was a complete shyster taking his job away from him having first ‘blagged’ my way into the Royal College. I never really understood his attitude though it must have had a lot to do with his Father’s loathing of Robin Hughes.
I asked Lawrence about Julian later and he just shrugged and said that although he quite liked him, no promise of a job had ever been made.
It was agreed that I would start at JWT at the beginning of May as I officially left Wharton Road at the end of April. Hughes and Sturgess had both resigned from the school over a dispute with the principle of the mother college, Ravensbourne, on Bromley Common. Colebourne, who by chance happened to be the brother-in-law of Cole, who was in charge of Wharton Road, considered that none of us should be allowed to submit our work to the Royal College as we didn’t have the necessary O levels and that Ravensbourne wouldn’t pay the entrance fees.
The course was called ‘vocational’ which meant that there was no degree or diploma to be had at the end of it all and that we’d have to go out and work for a living. I thought this what what we were meant to do but apparently getting a proper job went against the status quo set up by the education Mafia of getting a diploma and going straight into teaching in an art school which was considered to be quite a well-paid cushy number.
Robin Hughes paid our fees out of his own pocket and submitted our applications privately. He went off to teach in Cardiff and Sturgess took up a senior teaching post at Hornsey, the London art school that spawned The Kinks.
‘Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face with mild, green Fairly Liquid’
Robin Redbreast:
“Good evening. Question Time this evening comes to you from Billy Smart’s Circus and on tonight’s panel we have 4 very eminent guests.
“On my right is Beepo, renowned for his famous bucket of water trick and penchant for live eels which he spasmodically produces from his huge, checked baggy trousers.”
Beepo: SFX: Motor car horn. “Beeeeeep!”
RR: “To Beepo’s right, is Plug, so-called because of the enormous bath tub stopper he wears around his neck. I’m not quite sure what the significance of his peculiar medalion is, but I’m sure we’ll find out during the course of the evening.”
Plug: SFX: high-pitched siren: “Screeeeeeeeeee!”
RR: “Good Lord! I think my eardum has become dislodged. To my left we have Arty and quite what he’s planning to do with that wallpaper brush soaked in red paint is anyone’s guess. Don’t even think about it, sunshine.”
Arty: “Giggle!”
RR: “Last but not least, we have Gomez in the bowler hat and striped pygamas. He doesn’t seem to do much except get covered in whitewash from time to time. Still, he seems to enjoy it.”
Gomez: “…….”
RR: “So that’s our panel for this evening. And I am confident that, we will be privvie to more lucid, succinct and better-informed answers from this lot than those we get from the usual bunch of clowns we get on the programme.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you
If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
If you should ever leave me
Well life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows what I’d be without you
God only knows
God only knows what I’d be without you
Chapter 71. AD LAND.
During our last year at Wharton Road, Robin Hughes pinned some tear sheets from American magazines of the now famous Volkswagon advertising campaign on the wall. The ads were simply layed out, uncluttered and funny and conceived by two American advertising luminaries from Doyle Dayne and Burnback in New York: the art director, Helmut Crone, and his copywriting partner, XXX XXX.
They hadn’t had much luck with the work they’d been showing their Volkswagon client and were travelling on the subway back to their office from another disappointing meeting, when they started to doodle to chear themselves up. They poked fun at the Beetle, calling it a lemon, and sketched an ad showing it tiny with a headline that said
‘Think Small.’ They started to take all the apparent negatives about the funny little car and wrote ads around them.
Beetle was airtight so you couldn’t close the door properly unless the window was open. They wrote an ad that said simply:
‘To close the door, first open the window.’
They poked fun at the car in such a way that those aspects that were perceived as negatives were re-examined. By the time they reached their office, the two ‘creatives’ (as they would be called today) had a whole new campaign mapped out. They showed their scribbles to the chairman, Bill Bernbach, and he loved it. The idea was sold to the client and went on to become the most famous campaign in advertising history.
The Volkswagen advertising of today still sticks rigidly to that original belief in the product dreamed up by the two guys on the subway train and still uses the same irreverent approach.
For the first time, advertising told the truth about what it was selling. It made the consumer (that’s an awful advertising stereotype term for you an me and basically means people who buy things) feel kindly disposed towards the car. They began to love all its weird idiosyncrasies like the shape; the lack of power; the fact that it didn’t have a radiator; that the engine was in the back; the fact that it started first time even if it was covered in snow because that ridiculous engine that sounded like a hair dryer was air cooled and didn’t have a radiator to freeze up.
The Volkswagen campaign revolutionised the advertising world completely. The industry was suddenly respectable, and the work it started to produce sophisticated, witty, intelligent, and entertaining. But the revolution was slow burning and didn’t really take root in the UK until the early Seventies when Doyle Dane’s London agency started to take off and the Charles Saatchi joined forces with art director, Ross Cramer, and opened his own place. At the same time, a few other ‘new wave’ agencies began to make their mark, like CPV and Collette Dickens and Pierce.
But the large agencies of the day who’d built their reputations by giving the clients what they wanted, like JWT, Ogilvy and Mather and Massius Wynn Williams still clung on to the old world order, a fact that I was to discover on my first working day as a 19 year old junior art director at 40 Berkeley Square.
The people in the creative department at JWT, those are the ones that actually do the ads weren’t devided into teams in the way that I’d been led to believe was the best way to work. Instead, the art directors were crammed together, sometimes 5 to a room, while the copywriters who seemed to be mainly women had their own rooms. Some senior art directors like Lawrence and Fred Barter did have their own offices, but they seemed few and far between.
The headline and copy for an ad was delivered to the art director on a sheet of yellow paper by the copywriter, often some chain smoking female in her fifties, with a name like Veronica, Ursula, Honora, Shirley or Jane, and the art director was expected to make some kind of sense out it and do what they called a ‘layout’ and turn the words into an ad. Then if the copywriter like the way you’d made her immortal words look pretty the ad would be taken off to the client by a bloke in a 3 piece suit, called a rep, and sold to the client.
If the writer didn’t like what the art director had done, then he’d get told off or hauled up before the group head (JWT had 8 creative groups in those days) who was usually an even older female who’d probably spent her formative years at a Swiss finishing school. You weren’t allowed to argue or defend yourself but were merely told to do better next time.
This wasn’t the way to create great ads. I know that now and I knew that then. But here was nothing I could do about it. At the time, I figured I wasn’t going to be there long so I’d make the best of it and learn what I could. Lawrence was good to me and up to a point, let me do my own thing.
I was put in an office with a 25 year old red headed girl called Judy and a short young man in an American style light weight suit, named Chris Hudson, who seemed to be acting out the part of the Madison Avenue adman to a T, answering his internal phone with great authority while knocking out rough ‘layouts’ with the other hand for some industrial product called Atcost, whatever that was. Judy was very nice and mothered me, as I was a bit shy and Chris was friendly enough trying to dislocate my shoulder my with his dramatic handshake.
At 11.00 on that first morning, Lawrence pranced into the room and told me to get my coat because we had to go out. Parked against the curb at the back of the building was a British Racing Green, Austin Healy 3000 convertable.
“In you get, matey,” yelled the exhuberant Lawrence who was obviously in a boyant mood. As the car snarled into life and we sped off across Mayfair towards Park Lane, I decided there and then that if the ‘Lawrencemobile’ was the sort of machinery young art directors about town drove as matter of course, then I was going to own one just as soon as I could get my hands on enough cash and drive it back to the dreaded Edgebury School that had scarred so much of my formative life, park it on the playground, sit on the bonnet and light a fag.
To my mind, at the tender age of 19, such a demonstration of contempt would be the ultimate fingers up gesture to those ex-army bastards who’d made my life and those of countless others so miserable while we were prisoners at the Edge.
Laurence told me later that he’d been driving the Healey open topped one night in Yorkshire with his girlfreind’s brother, Keith, in the passenger seat. They were going pretty fast and had hit a sudden dip in the road. The car did a complete summersault, ending up on its wheels having ejected both its occupants onto a grass verge. Seat belts weren’t compulsory in those days, and Laurence claimed that they were both so pissed they didn’t feel a thing and ended up sitting on their bums on the wet grass wondering why they were car less. When they examined the car, there were 4 distinct rubber streaks on the boot lid made by their feet as they catapulted over the back end.
The Healey blasted down Park Lane, round Hyde Park Corner and towards Knightsbridge and Kensington.Half way down Kensington Hight Street, Lawrence turned the car into Adam And Eve Mews and pulled up alongside a dark blue open topped E Type Jaguar with a small sailing boat on a trailer attached. As the sound of the Healey’s engine died, the front door of a white painted terraced cottage opened and very suntanned man in his late thirties appeared, grinning through a set of Holliwood style choppers that Tony Curtis would’ve died for.
John Green was one of the most super trendy and highly paid advertising photographers of the day. However, his mode of dress: pink shirt, flared grey hipster trousers and desert boots, didn’t quite hide his true origins, his hair still flicked back at the sides and reminiscent of some of the lads in Alf and Connie’s youth club members from 10 years before.
“Watcher, Lawrence. How’re you doin’?”
“Hi, John D.” Lawrence grinned back, “ This is Neal. He’ll be my assistant for the next couple of months.”
“Watcher, Nilw. How’re you doin’?” John Green, sounding uncannily like Pete Double from my butcher's boy days, crushed my hand in his with a simple flex of his prominent and equally suntanned bicep.
I was about to witness my very first photographic shoot. I held my breath. What were the models going to be like? Would they take their clothes off? Would one of them fancy me? No such luck. Suspended in the centre of Mr Geen’s small studio was a sheet of aluminium, its edge to the camera and lit like a laser beam. There weren’t any models, naked or otherwise. We were going to photograph a lump of aluminium for a technical ad for Alcan Aluminium. Great.
The whole session was very relaxed with John and Lawrence chatting and laughing about everything from women to racing cars and Lawrence’s upcoming visit to the States. They didn’t seem to be under any pressure and were enjoying themselves immensely.
Was this really all part of ‘Swinging London’? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
John D Green changed his name to John ‘d Green which made Lawrence and I wince in pain, went on to produce a book with the dubious title of ‘Birds Of Britain’, that had absolutely nothing to do with ornithology, and boasted a picture of a stereotypical 60s dolly bird staring cross-eyed at a ladybird painted with a union jack perched on the bridge of her nose. He opened a floating restaurant on the Thames called ‘Sloop John ‘d’.
The Beatles were high on medication and putting the final touches to ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and the Beach boys were even further out of it mixing ‘Good Vibrations’ along with a shipload of other substances. Elvis Presley was preparing a comback with a live show in front of a selected audience for TV and David Frost was becoming a respectable part of the establishment he once made a living out of ridiculing.
Everybody at JWT, especially Graham Houghton, were going bananas about a new store in Knightsbridge called ‘Biba’; Brian Boyle from Sidcup Art School had just graduated from the RCA; Donald Campbell was preparing to kill himself in Bluebird on Lake Coniston; 4 policemen were shot dead in a London Street by a gang of armed payroll robbers and John Wayne and the rest of America's Republicans were gung ho about the escalating Vietnam War.
Lawrence married his lovely girlfriend, Pat, and went off to New York where she hit the big time as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, and I left JWT to go to the Royal College Of Art.
On my last day in the agency, Harold George took me out to lunch at his favourite eating place in Greek Street. I’d never been to a posh restaurant before or eaten melon, which Harold recommended would be a suitable starter. We both had a glass bowl of a white powdery substance next to our plates and Harold liberally sprinkled a couple of spoonfuls form the one nearest him onto his slice of melon so I followed suit from the bowl nearest me. I didn’t like the melon at all. It tasted entirely of salt, which it would, as that was what I’d sprinkled it with. Harold’s tasted of sugar. He must have seen what I’d done and either thought I had peculiar tastes or preferred not to mension my mistake in case I was too embarrassed.
This was 1966.
In 1983, I finally got my posh sports car. It was a bright red, Alf Romeo, GTV6 2.5, 160bhp, absolute rocket. The engine scream was sublime and the car was blisteringly quick. I’d had company cars before though none had actually fitted the bill. But this beast was perfect for ‘the job.’ (As I said, my ambition had always been to go back to that dreaded place, drive onto the playground in a flash, motor, sit on the bonnet and light a fag.)
One Friday, I took the day off work, stuffed ‘Night and Day’ by Joe Jackson, (excellent show-off driving music,) into the tape player and headed through the Blackwall Tunnel towards Chislehurst. Turning into Edgebury Road at the top end, I blasted round the bend towards the school, sunroof wide open, music wailing.
It had gone. The Edge was no more. In its place was a private housing estate. No dark, red-brick building, foreboding air raid shelter, corrugated huts, playing fields...nothing. As I sat there, the engine idling, the music turned down, I looked at the houses and tried to imagine what had been there before.
Over there would have been the art room next to the hall...no, it would have been further down. Maybe...
It was no good. The Edge was buried along with its ghosts. I couldn’t bring it back even in my mind to mock the place one last time. I think I heaved a sigh.
I know I turned up the music, blipped the throttle, found first gear and took off down the road like a scalded cat.
TV Announcer:
On behalf of the BBC and God, I'd like to wish you a very good night and remind you to remove the plug from the wall after switching off your TV set. We don't want to be turned into a damn good fry up while we sleep, do we? Tat ta.
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