I was met at Euston Station by a chauffeur-driven Bentley and whisked off to the film studios in Twickenham to meet Dick Lester, who was in search of a writer to complete a film script that Joe Orton had been working on when he had left Islington for the great cottage in the sky. At this point the Beatles were interested in being involved and I seemed to be the right man for the job, even though I had no experience of scriptwriting. He and Oscar Lowenstein even showed me the small office on the compound where I would put in my eight hours a day. I sensed that Dick Lester would be a tough cookie and I’d find difficulty in arguing my corner, but Oscar was so pleasant I could have taken him home, sprayed him gold and put him on the mantelpiece. Eventually I was given a copy of the script and chauffeured back to Euston. It was a heady experience as I daydreamed the life of a screenwriter, the first rung of a ladder that reached up to the Hollywood of loose cars, fast bucks and big women. Or something like that. Then I read the script of Up Against It and couldn’t make head or tail of it.
For a long time I pretended to myself that my reasons for turning down the chance of a lifetime were entirely altruistic, in that I didn’t want to break up the Scaffold. It was mainly, though, because I was frightened. Frightened of failure, of Dick Lester, of small office with typewriter, of living in London with no wardrobe to talk to. I don’t know if it’s a failing peculiar to Merseysiders, but I have known so many young people, musicians in particular, who turned down offers to work in London. On the point of signing the contract, they’d opt out and hightail it back to the Liverwomb. As fortune would have it, I probably made the right decision in saying no to the gold bullion because Orton’s script was a beast that several writers more experienced than I failed to tame, and eventually the project fizzled out.
‘DRUG-CRAZED HIPPIES IN SEX ORGY’ headlined an article in the News of the World in August of that year, illustrated with a photograph of me wearing one of Thelma’s creations, a Sergeant Peppery kaftan, standing alongside John Gorman in a military band tunic and a priest’s biretta. Nowadays, of course, litigation would have followed, with John and me awarded huge sums for the embarrassment caused by the misrepresentation, but we were tickled pink to see a photograph of ourselves in a national newspaper, even if it had been taken a week earlier at the Alexandra Palace where the Scaffold had compèred a benefit concert for the International Times magazine. Presumably Michael had been cut out of the photograph because he didn’t look orgiastic enough. Appearing at the Ally Pally with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and at the UFO club with Pink Floyd, the Scaffold might seem to have been spearheading the psychedelic revolution as the merry pranksters of the English hippie movement, but in truth we were floundering. A change of musical direction was needed and as in a technicolor dream, salvation arrived in the form of Paul McCartney who took a few days off, between recording Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and setting out on the Magical Mystery Tour, to produce an album with his brother and me. We wanted to do something based around the Summer with Monika sequence featuring Andy Roberts’s guitar alongside poems, a few songs and a couple of Mike’s faux surreal stories, and there was no room for John’s subversive clowning. McGough & McGear was recorded in two days at the De Lane Lee Studios in Holborn the day after I turned down Joe Orton.
When the Scaffold worked in London we stayed in hotels, the one nearest to Euston Station preferably, to enable a quick getaway back north, but if it was just Mike and me, and Paul was away, then we’d stay at Paul’s house in St John’s Wood. Comfortable and luxurious though it was, with a Warhol and a Magritte on the walls, you quickly came to realise the price paid. There were never less than twenty people outside the front gate, day and night, fans who would scream whenever music was heard within the house (even though it might have been Radio 1), a light was switched on in an upstairs window, or there were footsteps on the gravel. Photographers patrolled Cavendish Avenue two by two like cops on the beat. For me, it was fun pretending to be a friend of a Beatle, because I knew that in a few days I’d be on the train and back to reality, but for Mike it wasn’t so easy, being the younger brother of somebody unimaginably famous. One minute you’re fighting over the last slice of Swiss roll and the next he’s sending you air tickets to see him in concert in Los Angeles. In the early days it was bad enough …
(Enter photographer from local newspaper)
PHOTOGRAPHER Right, Scaffolds, this shouldn’t take long. Which of you is the Beatle’s brother?
JOHN Me.
PHOTOGRAPHER Right, you go in the middle. Which Beatle is it?
JOHN Ringo.
PHOTOGRAPHER Thought so. Big smile now.
But as the Scaffold’s fame grew, so life became more embarrassing for Mike and in a gallant but vain attempt to escape his brother’s shadow he adopted McGear as a stage name.
(Enter photographer from national newspaper)
PHOTOGRAPHER Right, lads, this shouldn’t take long.
How’s your Paul doing, Mike?
MIKE Fine.
PHOTOGRAPHER Good, then if you’d just stand in the middle and the other two take a couple paces back. Bit further back … bit more, and if you could crouch down a bit … lower … maybe on one knee looking up at Mike.
MIKE (with righteous passion) Excuse me, we’re a group. You take the three of us together or not at all!
PHOTOGRAPHER Sorry, Mike, sorry.
Earlier this year I was contacted by the perspicacious manager of an Oxfam shop in Henley-on-Thames who, when sifting through a bunch of albums that had been dropped off in a black bin liner, came across one with a photograph of two little garden gnomes on the front cover and a lot of handwriting on the back. Was some of the handwriting mine? It was. Was the rest of the handwriting Michael’s? It was. Was the Jimi we were thanking for playing on the album Jimi Hendrix? It was. McGough & McGear was subsequently taken off the shelf, put up for auction at the Marquee Club and raised a thousand pounds for Oxfam. Thirty-seven years earlier, as producer of this gift to charity, Paul had been able to call on some of the best musicians around who were more than happy to sit about, share a few spliffs and strum/hum/drum/blow as required: Dave Mason of Traffic, Graham Nash, prior to leaving the Hollies and seeking his fortune with Crosby & Stills, John Mayall as well as Hendrix, who brought along his drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Reading for the experience. Even Paul’s girlfriend at the time, Jane Asher, invited her mother to one of the sessions where she sang and swung with the best of them. There was something quite magical about turning up at the studio at lunchtime with a little poem called ‘Ex-Art Student’ and at three the following morning listening to a song transformed by a shy guitarist known as ‘The Wild Man of Pop’.
For contractual reasons, none of the musicians could be named, but when the record was launched in May 1968 at EMI, the former Beatles Press officer, Derek Taylor, handed out a press release naming those who took part. As well as those listed above, other musicians included Spencer Davis, Paul Samwell-Smith (Yardbirds), Zoot Money, Barry Fantoni, Mike Hart, Gary Leeds (Walker Brothers) and Viv Prince (Pretty Things). Fun though it was, making the album reinforced my feelings of being a stranger at my own party, for once these guys picked up an instrument and conversed through music I became the dumbstruck outsider, the table-tennis player adrift on a beach volleyball court. Despite being well reviewed by the music press – indeed, it was Melody Maker’s Album of the Month – McGough & McGear never made it to platinum. Or gold, or silver, or tin, although, of course, it did make it to black plastic, as in bin liner. How it got there remains a mystery, although Jimi did have a girlfriend who lived in the Henley-on-Thames area who might have cleaned out the garage and missed the collector’s item. If only that album could talk, what a story it might tell!
After being pressed, I left the factory and was dispatched, along with five of my brothers, to Mr Michael McCartney’s house on the Wirral, where I was inscribed by him and another gentleman before being posted to an address in London. I had rather hoped that my new owner, Mr Hendrix, would put me on the record player and listen to me, but instead he stood me on a shelf with hundreds of my fellows, all of whom I found to be loud and arrogant. I was to remain there, unopened and unplayed, for several years until one morning I was taken down by my owner and presented to a young lady. You can imagine my excitement when she took me to her flat in Henley-on-Thames where she undressed me and laid me on the turntable. I was soon in a spin, what a spin I was in. Round and round I went, the needle working that old black magic, when suddenly … You can imagine my disappointment when only halfway through the first track I was taken off, put back in my sleeve and pushed into the musty darkness of a cupboard containing shoes, magazines and old toys, where I was to remain for three score and seven years. Now, of course, I am famous thanks to the lady in the shop who rescued this poor foundling from death by recycling. My new owner wears purple loons and an anorak, and at least once a week, usually at weekends, he takes me down, wipes my sleeve and kisses me before putting me back on the shelf. Am I happy? At least I’m content, although I still wrestle with that one big philosophical question: What do I sound like?
In the summer of 1967 as China exploded its first H bomb, summit talks began between US President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Kosygin, homosexuality was legalised in Britain and Fiddler on the Roof played in the West End, I rehearsed and filmed the series Sat’day While Sunday with Tim Dalton, Malcolm McDowell and company. (I hope you haven’t forgotten about that ‘Most promising TV newcomer’ quote in the Daily Express, it means a lot to me.) The drift away from the Scaffold seemed increasingly on the cards, particularly as I was spending more and more time in London working on scripts for At the Eleventh Hour, a late-night politico-satirical show for the BBC scheduled for the new year, as well as popping along to the TVC studio in Soho to start work on the script for The Yellow Submarine. Then, on 4 November, ‘Thank U Very Much’ was released.