In 1975, in the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel in Los Angeles, a man was observed staggering around the foyer and acting suspiciously. When Security arrived he was incoherent and seemingly abusive, so the police were sent for and he was arrested and charged with drunken behaviour. Hours later, Clive Goodwin died in his cell of a brain haemorrhage. He was forty-five years old. When friends learned of his death, they were surprised and horrified, particularly when it came to light that he had taken only one glass of wine with Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths during their meeting about the film Reds.
Years earlier Clive, having received an award for bravery in the face of the Scaffold, had gone on to become a highly successful agent. In 1963 he married Pauline Boty after a whirlwind ten-day romance. She was a golden girl who featured alongside Peter Blake, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips in Ken Russell’s film Pop goes the Easel. Friends argued about whether she looked more like Brigitte Bardot than Simone Signoret, and about whether she should abandon painting and pursue a career as an actress, for she had already appeared, albeit briefly, with Michael Caine in Alfie and only just lost out playing the lead in Darling to Julie Christie. Clive seemed to live a charmed life and I must confess to harbouring envious thoughts on returning to Liverpool with Thelma after spending time with the Goodwins in their neoteric flat on the Cromwell Road. ‘Why can’t you paint like Pauline?’ I said to Thelma.
‘Why can’t you look like Clive?’ said she.
While I was improvising a television career with Mike and John, which involved commuting between Liverpool, Manchester and London, Thelma, having forsaken Pauline Boty for Mary Quant, had moved from painting in oils to designing dresses, gone into the posh end of the rag trade with a friend of hers from art college and opened a boutique called, appropriately, Monika. Our un-neoteric flat in Huskisson Street became their sweatshop and for months you couldn’t find a chair to sit on without being stuck with pins, or find a length of floor to walk on without stepping on a cut-out paper dress pattern. On the plus side, the place was filled daily with friends of Thelma in various stages of undress. I’d stroll into the kitchen to discover Yvonne wearing nothing but a bra and a reel of cotton, or go into the bathroom and find Vera clad only in knickers and a pair of Courrèges boots. It was a sad day (not only for me, but for all my pals who had suddenly begun dropping in at all hours) when the whole operation was moved downtown.
I was lolling about in the boutique one morning, enjoying my new role as a dress designer’s moll, when in came Yvonne, now fully dressed, with three young, beautiful black girls who were so loud and funny that had there been aisles in the shop we would have rolled in them. It transpired that they had not come to buy frocks but to see me, assuming that because I had appeared on television a couple of times I had strong show-business connections.
‘We wanna be stars, Roger,’ they chorused.
I must admit that I was flattered and interested, and explained that after a few sessions with Joan Maitland and some careful marketing there was no reason why these girls couldn’t be a hip, black, British version of the Three Stooges. Strangely, they seemed unimpressed.
‘We wanna be the Supremes, Roger,’ they chorused.
So I rang up Clive Goodwin, inviting him to join me in a partnership to manage the careers of three sisters who were not only beautiful, had amazing personalities and came from a good home locally, but were happy to sign up for seventy-five per cent. Clive was round within the hour and so the Poppies were born.
If you came out of the boutique on Bold Street and turned left, left and left again, you would find yourself in Seel Street where the Blue Angel Club lorded it over its rivals. It was there one night that Freddie Starr asked me in all seriousness (well, in a James-Cagney-with-a-stammer kind of seriousness) if I would write some comedy material for him. Freddie was popular on the local music scene, but his group the Midnighters had been passed over by Epstein and others, so his future as a recording artist was in the balance. Freddie had loads of talent but was it harnessable? He could sing and tell dodgy jokes, he was a great mimic, he certainly had charisma, but he was dangerous in that unzip-flies-and-wave-it-around kind of way.
‘I’m not sure if I’m the right man for the job, Freddie. Don’t you think my stuff might be too … esoteric?’
‘You mean you’re not funny?’
‘Well, er …’
‘You doity little rat.’
He produced from nowhere an imaginary tommy-gun and sprayed me with bullets, before leaping up on to the bar. All eyes were now on him as he yelled in triumph, ‘Look, Ma, I’m on top of de woild!’ and fell backwards into the flames.
Some weeks later I was on the dance floor downstairs, showing the world how to do the twist, when news fluttered through that Bob Dylan had just arrived, arm-in-arm-in-arm with three stunning black girls. When the music stopped I acknowledged the applause and made my way upstairs. As I suspected, there, pinned against the bar by the Poppies, was the living legend. How they had managed to get backstage after his show at the Odeon Theatre and kidnap him I can only guess, but the victim seemed not unpleased. The girls chorused the introductions: ‘Bob, this is our manager, Roger McGough, he’s a singer-songwriter too.’
‘Roger, this is Bob Dylan, he’s from America.’
I muttered something suitably humble, which Dylan didn’t hear because he was then being introduced to half of Liverpool, so, not being one of nature’s hangers-on, I melted away. Ten minutes later a Poppy was tugging at my jacket: ‘Roger, we’re all going back to the hotel with Bob, and he said to invite you. He’s lovely, isn’t he?’
So the Poppies, Bob Dylan and I strolled arm-in-arm-in-arm-in-arm-in-arm along Renshaw Street to the Adelphi, and up to his suite, where we were joined by his manager, Al Grossman, the Beatles’ first manager and owner of the Blue Angel, Alan Williams, Clive, Mike, and I don’t remember who else. What I do remember, though, is sitting quietly in a corner with Dylan and chatting, mainly about what was happening with poetry in the city. He really wasn’t interested in talking about himself, it was as if he was already bored with the idea of superstardom. Perhaps it was the Jack Daniels I was drinking, or the overawesomeness of the occasion, but I came away with the impression that when his touring days were over he intended to come back and spend some time hanging out quietly in Liverpool. I’m sure he meant it at the time, although he didn’t quite realise how long his touring days were going to be.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that Dylan saw in me a fellow poet, someone with whom he could feel at ease, intellectually and spiritually, someone to whom he could relate on a higher level than the fans, liggers and groupies who constantly surrounded him. No, I don’t want to give that impression at all.
Eventually, Clive came over to tell us that the girls wanted to sing for Bob and would he mind. Of course he wouldn’t. On the count of three (or, it might have been four or five, even) the Poppies burst into their version of the Crystals’ ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, a number we had rehearsed many times in the girls’ front parlour. They were brimming with confidence, they oozed sensuality, they moved with such style and grace that if it hadn’t been for the singing I’m sure Al Grossman would have signed them up on the spot. It struck me at the time that if only we’d brought along a big brass section they might have been able to drown out the voices. But Dylan didn’t seem to mind that the girls had sung out of tune (had he even noticed, I wonder?).
Perhaps if Clive and I had persevered with the girls they might have achieved success in the business; after all, with a sympathetic sound engineer and some creative wizardry in the recording studio, who knows what effect a showcasing on Top of the Pops might have had on the career of these superb mime artists? However the Goodwin-McGough Management Agency folded even before the notepaper could be letterheaded and we all went back to what we were best at, which in the case of the girls was marrying wisely and living happily.
There was an echo of the way the Poppies introduced me to Dylan in the Blue Angel – ‘This is Bob Dylan, he’s from America’ – that sense of making sure you know who you’re encountering to help you avoid making any social gaffes, when many years later, Mike saw Sandy, the youngest and cutest of the sisters. He had just swanned into Stringfellows in Covent Garden, when he heard a joyful shriek from across the room; ‘Mike, Mike, come over ’ere.’ As he approached the corner table he saw Sandy, seated and cosy with none other than Marlon Brando. Sandy jumped up to do the introductions: ‘Marlon, this is Mike McCartney, the brother of Paul, you know, one of the Beatles. Mike, this is Marlon Brando,’ adding sotto voce, ‘He’s an actor.’