Beautiful people.

Beautiful people.

12/29/2014

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Before somebody accuses me of male dominance I should say something about Samantha. I have to do it sooner or later. 

Where to start? Samantha has always been something of an enigma. Actually that’s putting it mildly. She’s unfathomable.

When I met her she was still having an off and on thing with Simon. They weren’t married at that point but Simon was working for Monty, Sam’s dad, so there was a certain amount of parental pressure. Sam’s mum, Alma, wasn’t totally happy about Simon’s non-Jewish status but being a modern woman she was learning to deal with it.

Where did I fit in? Driver, confidante and occasional bit of hanky-panky that was me.

I can already hear murmurs of gender discrimination so it’s probably best if I let her tell her own story. I don’t want any trouble with FEMEN. Over to you Sam.



Thanks Dick. Enigmatic? Well some men like to see women that way. It does us no harm. Isis, Ishtar, Artemis all rolled into one that’s me. Or it could be a reference to my bum. Think Venus of Willendorf.

I suppose I was a typical teenage girl. Bit rebellious. Well perhaps I did have something of an identity problem at the time. Couldn’t decide if I was a Jewish princess or a debby type with snotty parents in the country. Bit of both probably. I didn’t run away to London because I was already there. Grew up in Hampstead. Went to art school. Watched Fellini's films. I’d go to jazz clubs and places like the Marquee and Eel Pie Island. Pop music was just getting started. John Baldry, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Syd Barrett, Brian Jones, Marc Bolan…..I knew all those people.

I smoked my first joint in Simon’s pad in Ladbroke Grove. He was just back from India and getting into rock writing so we were a good fit. He was an ambitious bastard but clueless when it came to clothes. I took him to the in shops. The girls were so much more in touch than the blokes in those days. Boutiques sprang up on King’s Road. Girls wore Mary Quant stuff at first whereas the boys were still wearing sports jackets…with ties! It didn’t take much to turn him into a groovy young man around town. 

Those were great days in the Grove. Hawkwind and the Mountain Grill. On again off again. Free love. What you’d call casual sex these days. Nobody worried much about catching anything. 

Simon wasn’t just another hippie. Peace, love, changing the system....actually I don’t think he ever believed in any of it. He had more personal goals. But like me he enjoyed the action and he saw the opportunities. He jumped at dad’s job offer. I’m not sure even now if anybody really knew how big the whole thing was going to get. Maybe Andrew Oldham had some idea but he burned out early. 

The clothes! So many changes. Everything happened so fast. There were so many groovy boutiques on King’s Road….Mary Quant, Granny Takes a Trip….Ozzie Clark. It was Biba’s one day, floral bell-bottoms and kaftans the next. That’s why I hate it when people call me a groupie. I’ve seen myself lumped with people like Pamela des Barres and the Plaster Casters in a few rock biographies. Very irritating. I wasn’t a complete nutter. In fact I functioned pretty well amongst all the chaos. I see myself as more the Jenny Fabian type. More of a mover and a shaker. Not just another freak hanging out. I couldn’t care less about the bloody books they keep churning out. 

And another thing I hate…when people ask me about what it was like having sex with pop stars. Did Jimi have a big one? What did Jimmy Page do with those whips? What was Syd really like?  etc. As if anybody knows what Syd was like. He had identity problems. Who didn’t? A classic romantic. He grew up listening to Radio Luxembourg and Goon show like the rest of us. I thought he was nice. Now we have to listen to Bono.

So I was one of the so-called Beautiful People. Had the right look. Modeled for David Bailey. Kept up with the fashions. Went to all the clubs. I was hanging out with rock stars and doing the latest drugs before I was twenty. I come from a show business family so I wasn’t a groupie in that sense. Fame didn’t impress me but I liked being involved in the action. All very exciting but God it all happened so fast. It was just a few years really. Crazy time. We all just got swept along. Swinging London. UFO was when things really took off. Suddenly there were lots of Americans in London. What’s your sign man? Want to throw some I-Ching? And lots of acid. Psychedelic was the new in word. 

Simon had a Mini-Cooper. We’d drive out to Rediffusion to be part of the crowd at Ready Steady Go. It was great mixing with the musicians and singers. I met everybody. The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks you could find them all there. Ready Steady Go, Top of the Pops. The BBC didn’t know what to do about it. It was quite funny watching groups stoned out of their heads turn a TV studio to bedlam. Keith Moon never disappointed.

We’d go to clubs like Ad Lib, the Scotch and the Bag of Nails. Which is where I met Dick Headley. Dick was another diamond in the rough when I met him. (OK if you say so. DH) He’d just been fired from Arsenal for drugs and it was in all the papers. He was hanging around with a bunch of thugs at the time. Dick was a breath of fresh air. I‘d never met anybody quite like Dick. His dad was in and out of prison so he’d more or less been brought up by his mum who was on the game (True. DH). I don’t think he’d ever read a book in his life. I took him under my wing and turned him onto cultural things. It was fascinating to watch him at gallery openings and receptions. I loved the way he was completely unimpressed by ‘all that poncey stuff’. You always knew where you were with Dick. He was so different from Simon. (Nice piece of writing. DH)

Simon’s studied naturalness was easy to fall for but he was a devious bastard underneath it all. Very ambitious…and long-sighted. I can see that now. I knew he wasn’t happy with the kind of writing he was doing. Things like record reviews for the NME. A publicist is what he was, albeit a darn good one. He was selling out and he knew it. But he did enjoy being at the epicenter of what was going on. Deep down he aspired to be like Burroughs and Beckett. Of course it was much more complicated than that. Funny how he stayed in touch with his friend Arthur. Bit of a bumbler Arthur. Ran a sweet shop for years. Last I heard he was living in Thailand. Don't ask me what he gets up to there.

So many things happened. I can’t remember which years. Easy Rider. Isle of Wight. Antonioni made ‘Blow Up’ in 66 was it. Someone blew Biba’s up. Jimi Hendrix was found dead.

And then we had the OZ trials. Underground magazines were pushing the envelope faster than ‘respectable’ society could keep up. Jerry Rubin came over. Felix Dennis, Mick Farren and some others managed to disrupt the David Frost show. It was all a bit silly really. Funny thing is I went to work for one of Felix’ publications later on and I don’t remember any nudity in the office.

I used to go out to the EMI studios at night. That’s when the Beatles recorded. Often it would just be a bunch of stoned people sitting around. Very strange as we used to say. I was there for a few Sergeant Pepper sessions. Then suddenly the Beatles broke up. John and Yoko were going to change the world. Maybe they did a bit. You’re getting the potted version here Dick…excuse the pun.

I knew Germaine Greer quite well but I don’t think I was particularly political at the time. Women’s Lib was just getting started but the role of women didn't change much. It was great for guys of course. All the girls were on the pill and trying to be liberated so people were screwing like rabbits. Even at OZ magazine women still made the tea and did the typing: And were expected to have sex with anyone who wanted it, To refuse was uncool and people thought you were acting like a straight. Ask Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott.

Things started disintegrating in the late sixties/early seventies. Hard drugs. Altamont. Manson. It got heavy. We weren’t sure what came next. I was pregnant. Maybe that’s why me and Simon got married. A lifestyle change was called for. That meant cutting out the drugs and getting out of London. For me anyway.

The Sixties are really making the news these days. Nostalgia abounds. Everything from Abbey Road to Woodstock. Everybody’s writing their memoirs. Of course we’re all in our sixties ourselves now. Not much time left. The kids must be fed up with it but it’s fun to remind them what they missed. No point telling them a lot of it just seems plain silly in retrospect. Acid for instance…all those elitist freaks wandering around smiling like they alone had the key to life’s mysteries, what rubbish, as if it was all so groovy. There were lots of casualties too. I can still see Syd miraculously making it across the road at Notting Hill Gate in heavy traffic. Not recognizing me. Staring into space. Emily plays.