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Simon weaves his Mini Cooper deftly through the West End traffic. It’s Friday and he is on his way to the Rediffusion Studios on Kingsway. Things have been going well. Work is progressing nicely on the mews house. His reviews and interviews are being well received. In fact between Monty and some American music mags he has more work than he can handle. Plus the offer of a job at EMI. Yes, things could be worse.
He’s been told he looks like Martin Amis. He likes to think of himself more as a sort of Hugh Grant…without the carefully nuanced bumbling mannerisms. Which gives the editor a minor logistical problem. She’s a big Hugh Grant fan and she knows he was born in 1960. So he would have been about seven years old when all this takes place. She wisely decides to just let it go. She also decides to go with first person singular.
Things are still messy with Samantha. She keeps talking about some kind of ‘commitment’ whatever that means. Marriage? She may be ready but I’m not (thinks Simon). Doesn’t bear contemplation.
Look how Arthur got stuck in that bloody shop. Poor bugger. His life has been a series of events, things that happened. It’s not as if he made any conscious choices…things just happened. I certainly don’t want to get caught like that. I make my own decisions.
Who would have thought pop music would explode like it did? Me for one. And by some quirk of fate I’m right in the middle of it. It’s turned into a money machine for those nimble enough to see the opportunities. Rock writing is changing fast too. Style-wise I mean. At first it was just a question of talking about the group a bit, the drummer’s favorite colour, does the lead singer have a girlfriend, that kind of rubbish. Now a whole new generation of writers is starting to emerge. They’ve grown up on Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs and they’re taking it to another level. Rolling Stone has tapped into a whole new audience, drugs are going main-stream and now you’re getting gonzos. There’s a whole lot of new readers out there. Some of them want solid information, studio details, technical stuff, and some of them want you to take them off on mind trips.
One of these days I’ll do a piece about a typical day in a rock-writer’s life. Maybe some yank mag would be interested. It could be sort of Hunter Thompson style but more English. Wonder how James Joyce would have tackled it. Lots of clever word-play and internal monologue probably. Clever bastard. Still I should be able to bang out a few thousand words on something like that. But first I need to catch up on the gossip.
So here we are in the Rediffusion Green Room where all the young dudes are already gathered. Andrew Oldham is there with Keith Altham, Rod and his Faces mates are warming up with some birds. Looks like Pan’s People on leave from Top of the Pops. The Who are getting psyched up in a corner. This being ITV most people are on their best behaviour. But not Keith Moon. He’s swallowing pills by the handful and I can see he’s in a dangerous mood. Cathy McGowan sees me arrive and comes over for a chat. I mention Moon’s condition and she says not to worry, he’s been warned, how’s things? I tell her things are OK but to be honest I’m not in the mood for socializing. I watch people dancing for a while and give Fordyce a nod but I decide to leave early. There are times when it all just seems silly somehow.
And of course Sam shows up right on cue…expecting me to take her home I suppose. I need a holiday.
Simon weaves his Mini Cooper deftly through the West End traffic. It’s Friday and he is on his way to the Rediffusion Studios on Kingsway. Things have been going well. Work is progressing nicely on the mews house. His reviews and interviews are being well received. In fact between Monty and some American music mags he has more work than he can handle. Plus the offer of a job at EMI. Yes, things could be worse.
He’s been told he looks like Martin Amis. He likes to think of himself more as a sort of Hugh Grant…without the carefully nuanced bumbling mannerisms. Which gives the editor a minor logistical problem. She’s a big Hugh Grant fan and she knows he was born in 1960. So he would have been about seven years old when all this takes place. She wisely decides to just let it go. She also decides to go with first person singular.
Things are still messy with Samantha. She keeps talking about some kind of ‘commitment’ whatever that means. Marriage? She may be ready but I’m not (thinks Simon). Doesn’t bear contemplation.
Look how Arthur got stuck in that bloody shop. Poor bugger. His life has been a series of events, things that happened. It’s not as if he made any conscious choices…things just happened. I certainly don’t want to get caught like that. I make my own decisions.
Who would have thought pop music would explode like it did? Me for one. And by some quirk of fate I’m right in the middle of it. It’s turned into a money machine for those nimble enough to see the opportunities. Rock writing is changing fast too. Style-wise I mean. At first it was just a question of talking about the group a bit, the drummer’s favorite colour, does the lead singer have a girlfriend, that kind of rubbish. Now a whole new generation of writers is starting to emerge. They’ve grown up on Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs and they’re taking it to another level. Rolling Stone has tapped into a whole new audience, drugs are going main-stream and now you’re getting gonzos. There’s a whole lot of new readers out there. Some of them want solid information, studio details, technical stuff, and some of them want you to take them off on mind trips.
One of these days I’ll do a piece about a typical day in a rock-writer’s life. Maybe some yank mag would be interested. It could be sort of Hunter Thompson style but more English. Wonder how James Joyce would have tackled it. Lots of clever word-play and internal monologue probably. Clever bastard. Still I should be able to bang out a few thousand words on something like that. But first I need to catch up on the gossip.
So here we are in the Rediffusion Green Room where all the young dudes are already gathered. Andrew Oldham is there with Keith Altham, Rod and his Faces mates are warming up with some birds. Looks like Pan’s People on leave from Top of the Pops. The Who are getting psyched up in a corner. This being ITV most people are on their best behaviour. But not Keith Moon. He’s swallowing pills by the handful and I can see he’s in a dangerous mood. Cathy McGowan sees me arrive and comes over for a chat. I mention Moon’s condition and she says not to worry, he’s been warned, how’s things? I tell her things are OK but to be honest I’m not in the mood for socializing. I watch people dancing for a while and give Fordyce a nod but I decide to leave early. There are times when it all just seems silly somehow.
And of course Sam shows up right on cue…expecting me to take her home I suppose. I need a holiday.
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