The approach came at the end of a lunchtime talk at the Biographers’ Club, as everyone was moving towards the cloakrooms, some exchanging business cards, others hurrying off to their next appointments, all of us having tarried too long over a gossipy meal. A rock journalist of senior years, who had several music biographies under his belt, introduced himself and came quickly to the point.
‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘who was a big rock star in the sixties and early seventies. He was absolutely at the centre of the business and knew everyone who was anyone during that period, not just the music people but the artists and the writers and the fashion designers, the whole “Swinging London” scene. There have been a few problems and he’s a bit down on his luck. He wants to write an autobiography but there’s no way he would be able to do it himself. I’m not even sure he can read – probably dyslexic or something. He keeps asking me to help, but to be honest I think I’ve known him too long. It needs someone to come at it fresh and catch his voice.’
‘What sort of problems has he had?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he avoided my eyes as he took his coat from the cloakroom attendant, ‘there have been a few issues. He’s not been brilliant with the money and he has a few bad habits …’
‘Drink? Drugs? Gambling? Sex?’ I tried to prompt him to be a little more specific.
‘Umm.’ He made a non-committal sound which seemed more affirmative than not.
‘All of them?’
‘Well, you know. It was the sixties and …’ he shrugged his coat on, ‘would you just talk to him? Give him a bit of guidance on what his options might be?’
Stories from people who were insiders in London at that period are always intriguing. It was a time when the Beatles and all the others were changing the music scene for ever and people like Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon were changing the way we all looked. It was an era that seemed revolutionary and exciting at the time and with the passing years had also taken on a patina of historical interest as well. To be honest I was already hooked.
The call came and we agreed to meet at his home in World’s End, Chelsea. It was a council-owned flat in a shabby Victorian block with gloomy brick stairwells that reeked of urine and echoed with a mixture of hostile sounds. Inside, the flat was surprisingly bare. The rock star lived alone like any other old man on a meagre pension, surrounded by the simple necessities of existence. It was a perfectly safe and clean little flat, but gave no hint that the old boy with the bad haircut, who seldom moved from his armchair with an ashtray balanced on the arm, apart from going to the pub, had once been adored by millions, playing live to crowds of thousands and reputedly sleeping with hundreds.
By the time I met him I had already checked the idea with an agent, who told me that if the stories were sufficiently star-studded we would almost certainly be able to get him a deal because there would be potential for a lucrative newspaper serialisation. At that stage several of the richest newspapers were waging circulation wars and were paying sums for book extracts that dwarfed anything that the publishers were willing to shell out.
Pete was extremely affable, especially if we were in a bar, and full of stories that didn’t quite lead to anything but were enough to put together a synopsis which hooked a major publisher. When someone has a fund of anecdotes people in pubs will inevitably tell them that they ‘should write a book’, but anecdotes alone will not hold a reader’s attention for 200 or more pages. Pete had absolutely no powers of description and no emotional insight into himself or anyone else that he had ever met. He would greet any questions I might have with an entirely uncomprehending stare, before launching back into another anecdote. Despite all that, however, he had led an amazing life and I was sure there was a story in the meteoric rise and fall of his star.
‘Why don’t you give me a list of 20 people you hung out with during those years,’ I suggested after one particularly long and fruitless session with the tape machine, ‘and I’ll go round and see what they have to say, like I would if I was writing a biography. Then I’ll put everything back into your words.’
Sometimes the partner or friend of someone famous can provide greater insights into their worlds than the central characters themselves. Kathy Etchingham, for instance, met Jimi Hendrix on his first night in England in 1966. She became his girlfriend, living with him in Mayfair’s Brook Street and remaining his friend until his death in 1970. During those four years he rose from being unknown to being a legend of the music industry and Kathy was an integral part of that scene, a period when British groups like the Beatles and the Animals (and Pete) were making music history. I had helped her to capture the period in general as well as the intimate details of Hendrix’s short life in her memoir Through Gypsy Eyes, painting a picture of a life that no one else had experienced, and the resulting book had worked well. It seemed likely to me that if I could find some witnesses as good as Kathy I would be able to bring Pete’s world to life on the page in the same way.
His obvious relief at being given an escape route from my continual questioning resulted in him pulling together a list of names which was like a who’s who of Swinging London. Most of them were old enough to now have some time on their hands and would enjoy reminiscing about their glory days. They all had fond memories of their times with Pete and were happy to talk about him at length. The ruse, it seemed, was working.
I collected together all the stories and ran them by Pete, who happily confirmed all of them, often embellishing them even further. We were off and running. The newspaper deal was done, the book was printed up and was scheduled to go into the shops the second day of the newspaper serialisation.
The night before the first part was due to appear in the paper I bumped into one of the people who had supplied me with stories and he enquired how the project was going and who else I had seen after him. I named someone who was a good friend of his as well as Pete’s.
‘Really,’ he said. ‘How is he? He will have told you some porkies.’
‘You think?’ I laughed, assuming he was teasing.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, ‘but then I told you a fair few porkies too.’
‘Did you?’ I think my laugh may now have carried the slightest touch of hysteria.
‘Yes,’ he said, his accompanying chuckle entirely hysteria-free. ‘But none of the porkies he and I told you will be anything to the ones Pete will have dished up.’
Frozen is probably what my smile was by that stage. The book was printed and crated and heading towards the back doors of bookshops all over the country. Would this be the moment to ring the publisher and report this little conversation? I decided it would make me sound alarmist, maybe even naive. Best to hold on and see what happened. Maybe he was just kidding.
The following morning the first part of the serialisation was splashed across the middle pages of the paper, flagged up mightily on the front page. A few hours later lawyers’ letters began to be delivered to the newspaper’s offices suggesting that some of the stories were entire fabrications and enquiring what the editor intended to do about it.
The editor intended to get very cross indeed as it turned out. The publisher was hauled over the coals and rang Pete, who cheerfully denied all knowledge of any of the stories he was being challenged on. Fortunately, I had all our conversations on tape and could prove that I had not made any of it up. The books were recalled and pulped, everyone apologised to everyone and Pete went to the pub that evening as if nothing had happened. For him it was just one more incident in a life full of such incidents, another anecdote to be told to his mates, who could then roar with laughter and slap him merrily on the back.
Really, the old boy should write a book.