The Bee Gees’ saga continued apace. The greater their success, the greater the pressure from the other Bee Gees and their management to get Robin Gibb back into the fold.
It started nicely enough, and the request was simple – would I release Robin from his publishing obligations. My answer, of course, was no. Until one day, the whole episode took a nasty turn. I returned home to my mews in Paddington one evening and within a minute or two of my arrival the telephone rang. I put the receiver to my ear and mumbled the customary, ‘Hello.’ In those few seconds, life was to change inconceivably. The voice at the other end snapped like the crack of an ice-flow parting with the mass.
‘Watch it when you cross the road tomorrow, because you’re going to have an accident.’
The line went dead and I was left listening to the mesmerising purr of the dialling tone. The process was repeated daily over the next week, the threats becoming more and more aggressive. Although I wasn’t letting it worry me particularly, the constant harassment was finally getting to me. By coincidence, at the end of that first week, one of my old road managers arrived back from Italy for a short holiday. Phil was tall and very good-looking, with gold chains hanging round his neck and wrists, but, oddly enough, it was all in the best possible taste. He was tough, although he didn’t look it.
We had some dinner that Saturday evening and during our conversation I recounted to him that I had been receiving many threats to my life over the telephone in the last week or so, and I was unsure about what to do – whether to go to the police or ignore it.
‘No problem, Bryan,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Let’s go down the East End. I know a couple of ol’ mates down there who’ll sort out yer problem for you.’
Looking back with twenty years’ perspective, it is hard for me to even consider why I went to the East End that night, why I didn’t just go to the police. The immorality and stupidity of the next two or three hours corrodes my soul, but it is irreversible. I was twenty-eight years old, happy but soft. Soft because of my upbringing, in spite of being brought up in the East End for the first eight years of my life. Soft even despite spending my formative years in tough secondary schools. Nothing had prepared me for the ritual abuse of the thug.
I was brought up after the Second World War and lived in one of the most civilised countries on earth. Yet, even within this law-abiding country, I was being threatened. I think that was the reason for me taking fate into my own hands.
I had seen enough evidence in those black-and-white newsreels of man’s inhumanity to man, enough of the wretched, starving masses standing gaunt behind the wire simply because they did not resist. The success of the dictator is by the acquiescence of the people. I needed to stand up and be counted. I did not want the forces of the law to do my bidding. Unfortunately, every general needs an army, and the only recruits awaiting me – although I didn’t know it at that particular moment – were the Dixon brothers, sitting in a pub in the East End.
We cruised through the city on that fateful evening, through Whitechapel and down the Mile End Road. The pub was packed to the gills, and peroxide blondes in white, high-heeled shoes were everywhere. I ordered a gin and tonic, and an orange juice for Phil, while he elbowed his way through the crowd to find the boys. They materialised like two battleships in the night, menacing and powerful.
‘What’s yer problem?’ they asked.
The expressions on their faces never revealed whether they thought I was a friend or foe.
‘Gotta problem then, have you?’
‘Er … yes,’ I stumbled.
‘Who izit, then? We’ll sort it out for you.’
It was at that precise moment I knew that as much as I needed an army, these were not the troops I was looking for. These guys wanted revenge – I only dreamed of it. I paid my respects and left. This was all too much for me to handle. We drove back through the hurly burly of the West End, my only pleasure being that I’d managed to extricate myself from my stupidity. Fortunately, I had not mentioned who I thought was threatening me, so there was no question of the Dixons going off and doing anything on my behalf.
For reasons that I have never ascertained, the threats grew less over the next few days, and finally, within a week, they stopped. One of the reasons may have been that whoever was on the other end of the telephone was now getting more verbal abuse from me each time he rang.
The whole episode was about to be dispatched onto the pyre of rock ’n’ roll history, when about a month later my phone rang in the office and Cora explained guardedly that some friends of mine from the East End wanted to speak to me.
‘Bryan, how are ya, my son? It’s the Dixon bruvvers ’ere.’
‘I’m all right, but why are you ringing me?’ I enquired nervously.
Well, the truth was (so they said) that they’d just ‘come up West’ to get some business done and had decided to give me a ring to see how I was. I immediately grabbed the opportunity to assure them that the problem I’d mentioned to them had long since ceased to exist.
‘Everything’s sorted out, but thanks for calling. Good luck, and I’ll see you one day.’
‘Hang on, hang on, Bryan. Hold up son, we wanna come and see you,’ commanded the voice defiantly at the other end of the telephone. ‘We only wanna come up and say ’ello, Brysey. No big deal.’
With no room to manoeuvre, I gave in and told them the address.
‘We’ll be round in two minutes.’
And never was a truer word spoken. The sound of giants echoed up the stairs of my office as the brothers and their henchmen lurched towards me.
The first one who entered slid sideways through the door of my office, his massive frame unable to pass through on a full-frontal. He didn’t so much stoop as bend his head forward to avoid the upright of the door. If this man had passed you in a park on a sunny day, he would have caused a total eclipse of the sun. He was followed in by the brothers, one smiling from ear to ear and the other looking as mean as ever. The non-smiling one I’d guess was about five-foot-six square.
The three of them arranged themselves on the various sofas and chairs in my office. One of the brothers soon made it apparent that what he really wanted to be was a singer and even asked me if he had any chance of making a record one day.
I have to say that in spite of their physical menace, the two brothers had a certain boyish charm about them. Their associate, the blond one, however, was pure evil. After three or four minutes, he suddenly placed his arm on the side of the chair and began tearing at the soft leather in the way that a vulture might tear at his fallen prey. Within minutes, his fingernails had gouged a six-inch-long streak. All I felt was a sickening emotion that was welling up inside me.
‘There’s only one way to deal with geezers that threaten you. You gotta take an arm or a leg off,’ he sneered. ‘That way, they won’t forget about you.’
I snapped back into the present, and the words, ‘Look, that’s all over now,’ fell from my lips. ‘Please will you go now?’
‘Listen, Brysey,’ five-foot-square said, ‘it cost us a few bob to come up here today. How about a hundred ’n’ fifty quid in exes and we’ll be gone.’
I knew it was pointless to say no but, nevertheless, that’s what I said.
‘Come on,’ he replied. ‘How about fifty quid then and we promise you it’ll be the last you see of us. That’s unless you get us a record contract and want us to record for you.’
I have to say, I still have a soft spot for the brothers who, in their own way, were East End gents. Reluctantly I handed over £50 and they left. To give them their due, they were as good as their word and nothing more was heard from them until some six months later.
It was about 1.30 in the afternoon and we were all about our business when two squad cars with a number of plainclothes policemen arrived in their vehicles outside of our office in Bruton Place. They poured into the next-door office, where they tried to arrest the managing director who, fortunately for him, was not in that day.
They left empty-handed, but promised to return the next day to interview him. It turned out, after Cora had gone next door to see what the fracas was all about, that the police were looking to interview someone by the name of Peter, who they had reason to believe had a meeting some months previous with some rather large gentlemen.
Now, as I explained earlier, I had once employed Peter Barnes, but I had also had a meeting with some men fitting that description many months before. So when the police arrived the next day, I boldly stepped forward and suggested that I was possibly the person they were seeking.
It took only a few minutes for the CID officers present to ascertain that I was indeed the one they were looking for, or in police jargon, ‘the one they wished to interview’.
‘Can you come with us, please, sir?’
‘Well, can’t you do whatever it is here?’ was my hapless reply.
With that, he pointed towards the door and we headed down to the street. It just so happened that my Aston Martin was parked outside of the office. I walked towards it, assuming that I would follow them in my car to wherever we were going.
‘Leave your car.’
‘But I thought I’d follow you.’
‘No, just leave your car, sir, and come with us.’
I didn’t like the way he said ‘sir’ and had an uneasy feeling that events were beginning to take a turn for the worse. This thought was immediately clarified when I found myself in the back of the car, squeezed between two plainclothes CID officers. A cop at each shoulder, the car suddenly accelerated with the urgency of a Formula 1 driver at the start of a Grand Prix.
We screeched down Bruton Place, barely missing the two bollards at the end of the mews by inches. This fast right-hander took us to the junction with Bruton Street. Normally cars pause or come to a complete stop here, principally to give the driver a view of oncoming traffic. This formality, however, was not deemed necessary, and set the scene for the rest of the journey across London.
These guys were not simply late for tea – they were on a mission. They also operated under a completely different set of motoring laws than the rest of us mere mortals: overtaking into oncoming traffic, and ignoring all road signs, particularly those annoying little stop lights that tend to proliferate around major junctions.
We finally reached the relative tranquillity of Westminster Bridge and another few hundred yards later we screeched to a halt in front of a nondescript building that went by the name of Tintagel House. For the uninitiated, let me explain. In the late sixties, this anonymous edifice, on the opposite side of the Thames from the Houses of Parliament, was home to the Metropolitan Police and its serious, nay, very serious, crime squad.
I was hustled out of the car and up to the second or third floor, my state of mind at the time being extremely confused – I really didn’t know if I was coming or going. A door was thrown open and I was shown into a room, long and fairly narrow with one solitary window at the end showing a glimpse of the Thames.
The room held a dozen or so men and there was a faint smell of sweat and cigarettes. They all either sat or lounged around against walls, some hands in pockets, but each one’s eyes locking in on me as I entered their realm. Suddenly the tension disappeared, and I was addressed in an almost polite manner by one of them, who turned out to be Chief Superintendent Wickstead of Scotland Yard, known as ‘The Old Grey Fox’. He introduced the men in rapid succession – all manner of supers, chiefs, and commanders. The list was reeled off and, each time, one of the faces nodded to me in some form of acknowledgement.
‘Sit down, please.’
‘Watcha been up to, then?’ one of them asked.
I looked from side to side, wondering whether this question had been directed at me, or was merely the tail end of some discussion that had taken place before my entry. The question was asked again. This time I realised that it was me they were addressing. I remember having a momentary but hilarious thought: maybe they wanted to know what I’d had for breakfast, or who’d been the object of my desire the previous night.
‘Bryan,’ the voice came again, fired like an arrow from a crossbow. ‘Why were the Dixon brothers in your office?’
‘Who? Who?’ I spluttered.
Petulantly now, he repeated the question.
‘The Dixons. The little team that came to see you a few months ago.’
‘Oh yes, them. You mean, you’ve brought me here because of them?’
My demeanour suddenly changed from obsequiousness to indignation.
‘Are you telling me that you’ve brought me here, wasted my time, gone through all this charade, just because a couple of East End boys came to my office for a chat? This whole thing is bloody ridiculous.’
They carried on questioning me for another twenty minutes before it became apparent that, in spite of my protestations, the gentlemen on the other side of the table were not particularly impressed. My ramblings were cut short by a senior detective, who signalled to the rest of the men in the room to go out and take tea.
They departed and I was left in this friendless room with nothing but a few chairs, a table, and old Father Thames flowing by outside. Oh, and one policeman. I shuffled over to the solitary window and peered at the flowing river. On the other side was the Tate Gallery, a place of such joy to me over the years.
‘What kind of business are you in?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Rock ’n’ roll,’ I replied. I think I denoted a sign of interest flash across his face. ‘Look, more importantly, what am I doing here, and when will I be able to leave?’ With a show of bravado, I added, ‘If this is a joke, it’s wearing a bit thin.’
‘Leave?’ He leant forward across the table. ‘Are you off your rocker?’
With a voice one-part menacing, one-part kindness, he proceeded to tell me they had reason to believe that the Dixons were involved in a Conspiracy to Murder, and that if I didn’t cooperate I would find myself embroiled in the whole case.
His words burned through my brain, and there were brightly coloured stars exploding before my eyes, spelling out the words like a firework display – Conspiracy to Murder. I repeated them two or three times standing in front of the solitary window, and suddenly the Thames seemed to stop flowing, and this lifeless room became a morgue.
Half a minute later and I was still unable to fully comprehend what was going on around me. I was dumbfounded. The sprockets of the film in my mind slowed down to a mere thirty-five frames a minute, and the mental picture was of a deep, dark and filthy dungeon; my hair long, white and tatty, and a thin, bony hand clutching a piece of hard, gnarled bread. The soundtrack was repetitious: fifteen years, fifteen years. That’s what people got if convicted of this criminal act.
I turned back into the room and saw the face of my judge and executioner, who had uttered those terrible words. At that moment they had achieved what they’d set out to do. They had put the fear of God in me, so they could obtain a piece of the jigsaw that was missing. The door of my cell reopened and in they marched. Those twelve just men and true.
Wickstead pulled out a chair and plonked himself down on my right side, making a very sharp observation.
‘You’re looking a bit white and peaky, Bryan. Anything the matter?’
‘Well, what do you think?’
I pointed towards my potential jailer.
‘He just told me that you think I was involved in a crime that could carry up to a fifteen-year jail sentence.’
‘No, no, Bryan. We’re not suggesting that you’re guilty of any crime. It’s just that the people who came to see you are hardened criminals, and we have reason to believe they came to see you for more than just a drink.’
This had now gone far enough and although I was scared stiff I knew I’d done nothing wrong. What I wasn’t aware of was how far the police were prepared to go, in order to get their convictions. I now started to resist.
‘You’re all crackers.’
And so I repeated the story of my visit to the East End, and the three of them coming to my office.
‘Well, who threatened you then?’ Wickstead asked.
‘I don’t see it as being relevant, because I never told the boys who it was that had been threatening me. I only told them that I might need their help one day.’ Then I cut the conversation short, realising the mess I was getting myself into.
‘Well, if you were being threatened, why didn’t you come to us?’
Now here was the first logical question I’d heard, but I didn’t have a logical answer.
‘Why don’t you just tell us the whole story?’ he said.
At this point or probably much earlier, I should have done what they do in the crime novels and movies, and that was refuse to utter another word until I was in the presence of my lawyer. This simple request would have saved me all the trouble that I’d got myself into, but, in retrospect, it wouldn’t have made such an interesting story. Having nothing to hide, I then told them the whole story, making it clear throughout that the Dixons knew nothing of who was threatening me, namely, the friends of the Bee Gees or whomever.
I was allowed to leave about an hour later. By the time I arrived back at the office, the only thing I had been charged with was the taxi fare home.
It was shortly after this that I learnt the Dixon brothers were not simply a couple of ordinary dudes who did a bit of housebreaking; they were more into arm and leg breaking. Such was their burgeoning notoriety that they were fast becoming the gang to fill the vacuum left by the Krays. This was the reason that the police wanted to nail them, before they got too powerful.
I remember Wickstead telling me a story about when the police had pulled in the Krays. They had sat in a room filled with the top officers in the land, around the same table. The Krays were so established in London at this point that the police were about to lose control. In fact, so assured were the twins of their invincibility at this meeting, they proclaimed that they would put away Detective Chief Superintendent ‘Nipper’ Read, of the Met’s Murder Squad, before he managed to do the same to them. This was the justification for the police coming down so hard on the Dixon brothers.
It was some nine months later when the Dixon brothers and their mates were put on trial at the Old Bailey on assorted charges. I’d never actually seen the Old Bailey before, and it turned out to be a cavernous and austere building, where many a black cloth had been placed on a judge’s white wig before the pronouncement of death by hanging. It was not until the second day of the Dixons’ trial that the pieces of the jigsaw started fitting together.
The six accused were standing bolt upright in the dock, their physical presence almost bursting out like a soufflé in a hot oven. They had all spent the best part of the morning grinning and postulating, in constant communication with their briefs. By the end of a long morning, the Crown’s case was beginning to wear thin and a sense of victory could be felt in the dock. Suddenly, to the amazement of the entire ensemble, the Crown announced its star witness.
In the box, six bodies stiffened, the air was electric and all eyes were riveted to a small wooden door that stood in the corner of the courtroom. It opened sharply, pulled with some force from within, and standing silhouetted in the doorway was the same figure that had more than amply filled the uprights of my office.
Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom and within two seconds of his entry two defendants had managed to get a leg or two over the dock before being roughly manhandled and squeezed back in like corks into a bottle. The judge started whacking his gavel up and down like a blacksmith with a wig, and having about as much effect – the commotion swept like a wave over the room. If looks could kill, if clawing hands could throttle, then our new witness would have been saying his prayers.
Thirty seconds had now passed and a new dimension was in play. It was not action now, but voices, which could be heard in an ever-increasing crescendo: ‘You fuckin’ bastard!’ – ‘Squealer!’ – ‘Grass!’ The six in the box were joined by a dozen in the public gallery, all shouting obscenities as fast as their nervous systems could handle.
At about forty-five seconds, inaudible at first but then rising to a majestic soprano, was the voice of our judge, ringing out like a town crier, ‘Order in court, order in court!’
Which surprised me somewhat, as I thought this sort of thing happened only in Hollywood films. After about a minute, two of the several briefs were searching their desks for the wigs that had slid from their heads in the chaos. Others were attempting to placate clients or the assembled relatives, while the clerks and several policemen were restoring order.
Finally, as a civilised dignity settled like a shroud over the ensemble, the raison d’être for this commotion became clear. The big one, the one that blocked out light, the one who stood in doorways and was now standing in the witness box, had turned Queen’s evidence and was testifying for the prosecution.
I was to hear later that this supergrass had not behaved with the required etiquette and decorum when squiring a female member of the Dixon clan, and had been duly castigated. His motives never becoming quite clear, he had then turned from the hunter to the hunted. The evidence that he gave that day and in the ensuing days was to put all of his mates in the clanger for up to ten years.
I learnt that he was given a new name and number and, like many who’d travelled the same road before him, was to be relocated in some far-off and dusty corner of this earth – Australia being a favourite stop. It would seem that history repeats itself, or maybe the Australians just like ex-convicts. Of course, this was fodder for the national press, who had rightly covered the trial for days. The police now had what they wanted, I was both physically and mentally exhausted, and the Bee Gees and their management were not too happy.
I had been used by the police to catch a much bigger fish. No one was particularly interested about the threatening phone calls; they disappeared into the mist. The Bee Gees were back together and shortly afterwards recorded one of the biggest albums ever created, Saturday Night Fever, and it had really been just that. A Saturday night fever.
The police told me later that on the day I arrived at Tintagel House they had no idea who the third party was and without a third party there can be no conspiracy. However, after I had mentioned the Bee Gees, they had their third party. The police were trying to build a story as they needed to put the Dixons away and, fortunately for them, the big one achieved this.
The in-fighting with Robin Gibb did not terminate at this juncture, but at least from here on it was conducted with due legal process.
• • •
The Dixon Gang were not exactly the ‘East End gents’ that Bryan has recalled so fondly. The gang consisted of the brothers George, Alan and Brian Dixon, along with Mike Young, Mike Bailey, Leo Carlton and Philip Jacobs, who was their leader. Jacobs was a short man, who became known as ‘Little Caesar’, after the way he forcefully took over much of the Kray twins’ pub and club protection racket. George and Alan Dixon had themselves been one-time associates of the Krays, before they had a falling out.
In July 1972, Jacobs and the rest of the Dixon gang were convicted at the Old Bailey of blackmail, conspiracy to blackmail, assault, grievous bodily harm and other kindred offences, and received prison sentences totalling sixty-one years.