Athens.

 

Poor old Arthur. He’s always been like that. Never changes. Very constant is Arthur.

I could tell you more about his childhood, parents, first girlfriend all that but it’s not that interesting so I skipped it. Instead let’s see what happened to him and Simon in Athens some 50 years ago.

They made it down through Italy OK. Took in the sights. Coliseum, Vatican, Pompeii etc. then a ferry from Brindisi over to Corfu. It was slow going but eventually they arrived in Athens.

They stayed in a hostel run by a woman called Lily. A nice old soul. Most of the other people there seemed to be American college students doing Europe. There were young men with guide books and expensive cameras and pear-shaped girls reading ‘Catcher in the Rye.’

After lunch (moussaka, yoghurt and retsina) they went for a look around.

On their way to the Acropolis they passed through an old quarter of Athens called the Plaka. There they met an American woman from Berkeley named Kaja, a painter, who said she’d known Neal Cassady. She was living in a small whitewashed house and she invited them to look at her paintings. ‘A bit Klimty’ was Simon’s verdict later.

They were joined by an androgynous Danish couple with guitars who had read ‘On the Road’ so there was lots to talk about. A little Jamaican called Hakim showed up. He had dreadlocks and some pot. This motley group wended its way up the side of the Acropolis to be confronted on the summit by the Parthenon.

With the famous marble pillars as a background Hakim rolled a joint, Kaja performed a sort of gypsy dance and the Danes did a passable version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Worried Man Blues’.

‘So this is the Acropolis.’ Said Simon, ‘birthplace of Western civilization. Pericles built a lot of what we see here in about 440 B.C. What do you think?’

‘I like the whiteness of the marble against the sky,’ said Arthur, ‘that blue is amazing.’ Athens wasn’t so polluted in those days.

Later they checked their mail at the American Express in Syntagma Square. This was a free service provided by AMEX at the time. It’s only for card-holders now. Then they sat at a table in the square outside and had a coffee.

‘Well here we are in Athens,’ said Arthur.

‘Indeed we are.’ said Simon. ‘Home of Socrates. And isn’t that Henry miller over there?’

‘I think you’re right. It’s him or someone doing a very good impersonation.’

‘Dare you.’ said Simon

Simon watched as Arthur walked over between the tables and stood awkwardly in front of Henry Miller. A few minutes later he was back, looking embarrassed.

‘What did he say?’

‘He told me to fuck off.’ Arthur

Simon laughed. ‘Wrong approach obviously.’

‘Well you have a go then.’

Simon said he might. But not just yet.

How does this advance the storyline? Well it places Arthur and Simon in Athens on their way further East. And it helps to develop their characters. Other than that it may be useful for triggering some buried memories.

To be fair to Henry Miller it should be noted that he was going through a difficult period at the time. The US Supreme Court was hearing the case of Besig v. United States and a lot depended on the outcome. Would ‘Tropic of Cancer’ be deemed pornographic? The future of Western Literature was at stake. On top of that he wasn’t quite sure if he even had another book in him. He certainly didn’t want to deal with scruffy young sycophants.  Best let Grove Press sort it out.

Paris 1959

Paris 1959.

04/20/2014

 

I expect you’d like to hear more about my boat Milly.

After I swapped the bar in Pattaya for Milly I told the staff I was leaving. The girls were in tears. They wanted to go with me. I did need some help with the boat so 4 of them came along. Milly only sleeps 3 so it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed.

The plan was to sail to Tahiti then on to Panama. More about later…maybe.... you are probably wondering about Simon and Arthur.

They had the usual English childhood. Andy Pandy, Enid Blyton, cricket in the rec, Grammar School education and all that. Don't worry, I’ll be skipping a lot of that boring stuff. They weren’t posh exactly. Just middle class. And a bit rebellious. They studied ‘On the Road’ diligently. It made quite an impression on their young English minds. They could recite whole passages in fake American accents.

They failed to get into university. But they did go on the Aldermaston March. That’s where they met Rod. Over cups of tea in Fortes they talked about Rambling Jack Elliot and Derroll Adams and how Paris was the place to be. Simon and Arthur thought they’d give the Kerouac thing a try. According to Rod Wizz Jones was already in Paris with his battered guitar, singing in the streets. Rod, who liked singing, wanted to give it a go. It sounded like a laugh.

So with seagulls wheeling and English schoolchildren squealing the three of them embarked at Dover and disembarked a few hours later at Calais to have their passports stamped by taciturn French customs officials with guns. Guns! The officials were serious but Simon, Rod and Arthur couldn’t stop giggling as their passports were examined. Their first passport stamps! Later they saw a group of officials waving and pointing fingers at each other. ‘They are gesticulating.’ Said Arthur. ‘Mais oui,’ said Simon. ‘they are French. Calais is where the wogs begin.’

Arthur thought they should hitchhike but after about half an hour by the side of a rain swept road they walked back into Calais and took the train to Paris. ‘Ne se pencher au dehors’ said a sign above the window. ‘Don’t punch the window.’ Said Rod.

Gare du Nord was easy enough but they nearly lost Simon on the Metro. He pretended to follow a group of schoolgirls along the platform until he got shooed off by a stern French nun. Just a bit of fun.

They got off the Metro at L’Odeon and found a cheap hotel just off Boulevarde St-Michel. The same area where giants like Hemingway, Joyce, Sartre lived, or had lived before they moved on to unreachable literary Pantheon. Becket was there but they bore no credentials and would probably have been unwelcome even if they had. Truffault was making films but he didn’t need any scruffy English pseudo beatniks either.

What they did run into was a motley collection of young vagrants some of whom they knew from places like Brighton Beach, Cornwall and London.….Wizz Jones and Clive Palmer who were busking in the streets of Paris for a living. They did Jesse Fuller’s ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ and ‘Freight Train’ by Elizabeth Cotton mainly. An incredible two-piece string band that impressed Simon who saw it as the beginning of something. Arthur was impressed by their audacity.

At the Clignancourt Flea Market they supplemented their wardrobe with some slightly flared jeans. Tres chic.

‘We can always use a bottler.’ Said Wizz.

‘What’s that?”

‘Someone to pass the hat. Getting money out of these buggers is an art form in itself.’

Simon said he’d have a go so there they were outside Notre Dame where Wizz and Rod started belting out the ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’ again. Simon began moving round the small crowd trying to drum up a few francs. Arthur’s job was to keep an eye out for les flics.

The crowd of bemused French onlookers got larger. Many were student types but among them there were a tall gaunt figure and a shorter more animated one with a beard. Somehow Simon knew they were Yanks. ‘We’re broke ourselves.’ Said the bearded one. The older one muttered something about ‘…reminds me of when I was working the hole with the sailor and we did not do bad. Fifteen cents on an average night…’

‘Between you me and the lamp post,’ said Rod, ‘If we’re going to get anywhere we need to get more commercial.’

‘Ever see a hot shot kid?’ asked the cadaverous-looking Yank. ‘I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. Stop by 9 Git le Coeur sometime if you’re interested.’

‘Sounds a bit dodgy to me lads.’ Said Wizz.

‘Poofters.’ Said Rod.

‘I can feel the heat closing in.’ Said Arthur. Whereupon they scattered and found their separate ways back to a small bistro near L’Odeon.

‘I think,’ said Simon over a lait grenadine, ‘the time has come to hitch-hike south.’

‘You’re serious about this beatnik thing aren’t you?’

‘No not really. Just curious about what comes next.’

‘Think I’ll go back to London.’ Said Rod, ‘Long John has asked me to sing in Steampacket.’ 

Information.

 

Hello. Anybody out there? Who am I? I’m the narrator that’s who. There’s sod all else to do. I like a drink so don’t expect it to make much sense.

So what’s all this about then? Well about what you’d expect from an irrelevant old fart sailing round the Caribbean looking back on his life.

I'm skipping the usual stuff about childhood, school etc. It gets more interesting when we start talking about girls, Jazz Clubs, Brighton Beach, Paris, hitch-hiking to India, London in the Sixties, meeting William Burroughs, hanging out with the Beatles things like that.

Warning: It jumps about a bit. There probably won’t be any vampires or zombies and you may have to wade through a lot of literary stuff to get to the juicy bits. Basically it’s about Arthur and Simon who were at school together before they went their separate ways. Arthur ends up living in a remote Thai village. Simon becomes a hugely successful TV personality.

Don’t ask me too many questions. I just do the narrating.

Beatniks, mods and rockers.

Nobody knew quite how it started. Perhaps with the Aldermaston March. Suddenly England had a new sub-culture (see previous post.... ‘It’s Trad Dad’). Then came the spillover from places like Ken Colyer’s Club and Eel Pie Island…scruffy hairy young people with bedrolls would find their way down to Brighton either by hitching or on the infamous Milk Train from Victoria. It usually happened at weekends. They’d sleep on the beach under the pier or in upturned fishing boats on the hard pebbles and meet up in the fish market to share bottles of stolen milk and Mars Bars. Young Dick Headley was strongly attracted to some of the beatnik chicks. He tried to entice them into his sleeping bag. Sometimes quite successfully.
Drugs? There weren’t many around. You could get a buzz off Dr. Collis Browne’s Mixture but speed and pot were hard to find. Acid was still some way in the future.

The music was quite primitive. Some people, like Davy Graham and Wiz Jones and Martin Wyndham, would have guitars. Perhaps there would even be enough instruments to make an impromptu skiffle group or even a Trad Jazz Band! Bemused old folk and other passersby on the sea front above would gather to watch this curious cultural phenomenon. Teddy Boys would shout rude things at them like ‘Do you ever wash?’ or ‘Get a bleedin’ ’aircut!!!’ and ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ Ha-ha.

Teds wore drape jackets, drainpipe trousers and suede shoes with big crepe soles. They liked Gene Vincent and Bill Haley. Then along came the Mods, who liked the Kinks, Small Faces and early Reggae. They showed up in their Fred Perry Polo shirts and parkas on Lambrettas and noisy little Vespas covered with extra headlights. This was too much for the Teds, who had somehow metamorphosed into Rockers while nobody was watching. They bought motorbikes and rode around shouting rude things at the Mods.

It may have been youthful high-spirits, or excess testosterone. Historians are still puzzling over it. Or maybe the various fashion styles and musical tastes just didn’t mix well. Anyway fights broke out which quickly became running battles, and it wasn’t long before the Great British Press was all over it. Old Bill got in some weekend overtime with his truncheon.

The Beatniks, being peaceful folk for the most part, stayed out of it. Some simply went home to read ‘On The Road’. Others decided to hitch hike to India. More about that later. Most of these young people eventually got jobs, started families and settled down in front of the telly. Some have since joined the old folk on the seafront where they sit in Regency shelters, feed sliced bread to gulls and discuss the youth of today.

It's Trad Dad.

If you ever want a taste of what primitive pop music was like in England before everything went pear-shaped you can’t do better than watch ‘It’s Trad Dad’ made by Richard Lester in 1962. The film shows the youthful revolution getting started and you’ll see how Lester developed some of the cinematic trickery which he later used in Hard Day’s Night.

It’s a lot of fun this movie. Dick Lester was from Philadelphia but he had a pretty good grasp of British absurdities. On one level it’s not much more than a vehicle for a few pop acts strung together with some silly jokes, but it has a sort of innocence and it does give a good impression of pop as it was at the time. The acting is abysmal, the script seems to have been knocked out over lunch in the BBC canteen and it’s got a really flimsy story line. But there’s some great music in it and not much to get between the audience and the musicians. Pure entertainment in other words. What more could you ask for?

The lead roles are played by a couple of one-hit-wonders. Craig Douglas who couldn’t sing or act but looked wholesome and Helen Shapiro who could sing and act but never really got anywhere with it.

The Trad Jazz bands themselves are excellent. Spirited performances from Kenny Ball, Chris Barber, Terry Lightfoot and one of my faves, Acker Bilk, who reveals his vastly underrated acting talent and gives a spot-on impression of an earthy clarinetist from Somerset. Ottilie Patterson sings Down by the Riverside so hard her eyes almost pop out and you think she was born the wrong colour. If it's OK to say that.

One of the highlights is the Temperance Seven. A very odd bunch, sort of a ’20s revival who were either way behind the times or way ahead of them depending on your point of view. They were popular at the same time as the Bonzo Dogs and had a similar perspective on life.

Dick obviously thought Trad Jazz on its own wasn’t sexy enough so he flew in some real American talent. Del Shannon looks like something from the Adams Family. Which is bad enough but why show close-ups of his acne? Gene Vincent turns in a great performance, so does Gary U.S.Bonds, and Chubby Checker, before he got really fat. Chubby does a totally uninhibited (according to a David Jacobs quip) version of the Twist. You can understand why even Phil Spector couldn’t help the Paris Sisters with their padded bras and bad posture.

There are cameo appearances from Derek Nimmo, Mario Fabrizzi and Arthur Mullard who plays a copper. Bit of a stretch for Arthur. He never was exactly a household name but you’ll know who I mean when you see him. He usually got cast as the bloke winching the rack in torture chambers.

Technicians and sound engineers will be fascinated by glimpses into antediluvian recording techniques.

Mustn’t forget the DJs. David Jacobs gliding smooth as silk through the proceedings, Alan 'Fluff' Freeman with his Ozzie accent and his broken nose which never stopped him sniffing out the next chart-topper...or good old Pete Murray and his unerring instinct for the nearest saloon bar in which to hold court over adoring teenage girls. Just kidding Pete.

So see if you can find a copy. You won’t regret it. It’s all good clean fun. No nasty punks or headbangers around in those days and there’s a big party at the end! The young extras alone are worth the price of admission. You’ll see pimply young men in sports jackets and ties, hair not too long, even some recently shaved off sideburns. There are fancy hairdos, sloppy sweaters and party dresses for the girls.

I still can’t believe I was ever putty in the hands of girls like that. Perhaps it was the plucked eyebrows or the intoxicating aroma of hair lacquer? I just don’t know. Oh, they might let you have a little feel sometimes in the back row at the local Odeon but you had to get them behind the bushes in the rec before any serious mysteries were revealed. I could write a book.