Raymond Douglas got up from his chair and moved over to look at the clear night sky, which was just visible through the little skylight in the ceiling of the control room. He shuffled over to the opposite side of the room and pulled out a book from under a pile of old magazines. He took a deep breath before blowing the surface dust off. Then he rubbed the remainder of the grime off with his woollen mittens. As he looked at the cover of the book he came into the light, and I could see tears of joy come into his eyes. He moved towards me, holding the book out before him.
R.D. presented me with ‘Colourful Britain Diary 1966’. On the front was a, photograph of an idyllic English country setting: a thatched cottage by the side of a stream. I knew that this was a gesture of good will, and possibly an attempt to rid himself of some anguish.
‘Take this,’ R.D. said.
I was amazed that he felt that he could trust me so much.
‘Why, it is probably too personal.’ I wanted to take it very badly.
‘I insist. Read it and tell me what you think. I’ll see you tomorrow. But – you must promise not to let anyone else see it.’
‘Oh, I promise. You can be sure of that.’
I could hardly believe my good fortune. Me, on my first big assignment! This was such a coup! Later, when I got home, I opened the diary to find the inscription:
‘To Ray, from Mum and Dad, Xmas 1965.’ Below that, scribbled in crayon, was a telephone number: ‘Klein 108 Circle 57010.’ I turned the page and several sheets of Kinks venues for 1966 fell out. I turned to the page headed ‘memos’, and found assorted names and telephone numbers: Eric Burdon, Barry Fantoni, Bibas, Grenville Collins.
As I turned the pages I realized that most of the handwriting was not Raymond Douglas’, and therefore must have been Rasa’s. Small sentences with an abbreviated version of her reality: ‘New Year’s show on Ready Steady Go! Reception afterwards. Good rave show.’ The next part was underlined: ‘In fact the show was terrific! Party was great afterwards. Tomorrow Ray goes to Cheshire. Very good show. Got in at 3.30 a.m.’ I continued to turn the pages and found more of the same. ‘Tuesday, 4 January, Louisa’s first tooth came through, right one on bottom gum.’ ‘13 January, Top of the Pops. Number 6. Very good show. Afterwards Ray played Chesterfield where his shirt was ripped off by fans during the show. Friday, 14th. London. Ready Steady Go! Feel depressed. Something awful. Stayed behind for drinks and playback.’ The next entry was in red ink and in large writing; ‘Ray, talking to that girl.’
This interested me. Also, the name Barry Fantoni was appearing quite often as a visitor to the house, among Louisa’s appointments at hospitals and so-called ‘rave’ shows in Doncaster, Newcastle, Worthing and so on. On February 2nd the diary noted a recording session at IBC Studios and a song that I had not heard of before called ‘Mr Reporter’. Underneath Raymond Douglas had written, ‘Quote of the day from Shel Talmy: “I am not interested in the glory, I just want the money.”’
‘4 February, Louisa’s injection. Notre-Dame Hall, Leicester Square. Ray left at five to go to what he described as a meeting in the office. It lasted till nine at night. Ray was so busy, even fell asleep, he couldn’t even ring me, doesn’t matter any more. My love just does not exist. I am truly fed up, miserable and hurt. I haven’t a home, neither has Ray. Yes he has – his home is an office. In his life he hasn’t any time for home life or love. Robert and Grenville just take up everything he has. “Business is business.”’
On the whole Rasa’s sad little scribblings seemed like the average concerns of a young wife who feels she is not seeing enough of her husband. Although the comments were abbreviated, and sometimes like those of an over-emotional schoolgirl, they seemed to reveal quite a lot about her relationship with R.D. It was also interesting for me to get a point of view from a source other than his.
I continued to read.
‘7 February. Recording in morning, 10 a.m. “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” (good, no, fabulous!!), “She Got Everything” (back-track).
‘10 February. Salisbury. Good show. Went straight to Pye to redo parts of “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”. Got home at 5 a.m.
‘Friday, 11 February. Copenhagen.’ Then the writing became minute, in capitals and underlined: ‘I WISH I COULD GO SO MUCH.’
As I turned to Friday, 18 February, I realized why Barry Fantoni had figured so prominently in earlier parts of the diary: ‘Ray has written a song for Barry called “Little Man in a Little Box”. The recording with Barry is fabulous.’ I remembered that Barry Fantoni had not only been a tutor at R.D.’s art school, but he had also become a TV personality in his own right in the mid-sixties. In 1966 he was voted TV personality of the year by Melody Maker.
I hurriedly turned the pages to read more of the Kinks’ success on the release of ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’, but something had obviously happened at the beginning of March.
‘The boys have come back from Switzerland and Ray is ill. Influenza and nervous tension.
‘Tuesday, 8 March. Doctor came. Ray ill. NME 14. Melody Maker 14. Disk Magazine, Radio London 15.
‘Wednesday, 9 March. Ray ill today. Very unsteady on feet. Seems to have got flu. Kinks go to Belgium but Ray stays in bed.’
I made a note to find out more about this. Why was R.D. so ill? What was wrong with him? He had obviously not told me everything but had given me the diary so that I could come up with my own conclusions.
‘Saturday, 12 March. Ray still in bed. Will not speak or shave. Ray’s mum keeps coming up every day and bringing food for him. 10 in Melody Maker.
‘Tuesday, 15 March. Ray very ill. Doctor came to see him. Said needed extreme rest and quiet. Ray very depressed and very ill. Many pills – sedatives and sleeping pills. Psychiatrist came (Rasa black eye). Ray nearly had nervous breakdown. Family interfering very much. Fight with Rasa. Fight with Gwen. Gwen hit Ray while he was helpless in bed. Ray nose-bleed, extremely upset. Ray’s mother came over and caused a terrible scene. He had terrible argument with them.
‘Thursday, 17 March. Ray went to Robert’s office, punched Brian Somerville in face. Doctor came.
‘Friday, 18 March. Ray is much better today, well on the way to recovery. Went for drive with Robert in country. Going to buy a house in the country. “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” Number 1 on Radio London.’
It was obvious that I was reading about the beginning of the most stressful situation so far for Raymond Douglas the rock star, and the beginnings of his rift with his wife. During this time the diary recorded many visits from Barry Fantoni and an old school friend called Jimmy Marvel, who was clearly a source of great support. Then I noticed that during April, after Ray’s apparent recovery, Rasa did not accompany him so often on concert engagements. And there were various comments about Ray not telephoning. One slightly humorous extract was after Dave had to go up north with Grenville to Bradford, to defend a paternity suit: ‘6 May, De Montfort Hall, Leicester. Good show, Dave returned after winning the case in Bradford. Apparently the News of the World was bitterly upset that it had lost a front-page story.
‘Friday, 13 May. Louisa went to nursery for the first time today. Ray recording 10 a.m. till 3 p.m. Recording was really fantastic. “Fancy” – absolutely great. “In Summer Time” – “Sunny Afternoon” – the most fabulous thing I have ever heard. Ray writes the most fantastic songs and gets such great sounds, it’s unbelievable. Afterwards, a gig at Kent University.’
It seems that Rasa and Ray’s relationship was blowing hot and cold at this point. She had a genuine respect for his songwriting, but there was still that element in her that was a fan and resented any contact Ray may or may not have had with any member of the opposite sex. During the so-called ‘fallow’ patch in the Kinks’ career after ‘Till the End of the Day’, Raymond Douglas had written a sad song about a lost love entitled ‘See My Friends’. I wondered why, because according to R.D. he had everything he wanted at this time. Was it about him? Or was it about other people who were not getting everything they expected? Was it about retreating from normal life and exchanging one set of friends for companions of a darker, more sinister nature?
When I arrived at the studio the next morning I immediately asked R.D. about the song.
“See My Friends”. Oh, that. It went back to the time when I was in India and stood on the beach in the early morning as the fishermen came with their nets, chanting. Imagine a whole life being like a song, you have the opening, which goes into a verse, then a middle period, you bring back the verse and the chorus, have another crack at the middle, try to start the verse again, then realize that it’s all over, so you usually sing one or two choruses that everbody’s heard before, then it either comes to an abrupt end or you just fade out – and you’ve got only three minutes to do all that. In the Western world you have the opportunity to modulate and transpose. Sometimes you even get the chance to change key, without giving any clues where you are going. Those poor bastards on the beach in India had one tune and one key and contained within that was their entire life. Perhaps they knew a short cut – why bother to change key, why bother to do a fucking record deal? I bet they didn’t have a publisher who wrote down every time they chanted their tune, so he could register it with the PRS, and they sure didn’t get any mechanical royalties. Perhaps those fishermen were in touch with something else, and music was a way of helping them through their lives on this planet. Maybe God collects all their publishing. A couple of years later I remembered those fishermen. Somebody at the Daily Express, I think it was Judith Simons again, suggested that it was the first outwardly homosexual song she had ever heard. (She had obviously never heard Noël Coward sing “A Room with a View”.) I just kept singing “She is gone, she is gone, and now there’s nobody left, except my friends, playing across the river”. Heaven knows what I meant by that. I just believe that when you need comfort, when you are in despair, any arms are welcome. It doesn’t matter what sex they belong to. People place so much emphasis on gender. Love is love. Companionship, friendship are what’s important. The world’s obsession with the rights and wrongs of the so-called “gay culture” culminated in that screwed-up, hateful society of the late 1990s. I know there seems a lot of despair in the song, but the recording was really fun. I had this beaten up old Framus twelve-string that I’d used to record “A Well-Respected Man”, and I plugged it into an amplifier. I sat close to the amplifier so that the notes I picked would cause feedback in a high frequency while I was playing. I never changed the strings until they broke. Some of them were actually rusty. Bob Auger wasn’t engineering and Shel Talmy didn’t know how to deal with the sound, and so he told the engineer to throw a compressor over the whole track, the audio equivalent of ironing a shirt, it spreads everything out to its maximum flatness and in doing so squashes down the essence of the sound, so that there is no meat left. I heard the playback and said to Talmy, “How the fuck am I supposed to sing over that?”
‘He smiled and said, “You gotta agree, it’s different.” It was as if he were offering me another challenge. That was the sign of a smart producer.
‘I went back into the studio and remembered those fishermen and sang in a nasal chant. I didn’t think it was a deliberate attempt to sound gay or affected in any way. I was actually trying to sound like Hank Williams. But the overall effect was that the performer was definitely affected in some way.’
R.D. got up from his chair. ‘Fuck this, let’s go to the pub.’ As he reached the door he froze on the spot.
‘I forgot. I’m barred from all the pubs around here.’
‘What, a harmless old boy like you, barred?’
The words had barely come out when I realized that I had offended him. R.D. scowled and slowly shuffled around the room.
‘It’s not my age. It’s not my temper. It’s the fact that the Corporation owns everything around here, even the pubs. If I speak my mind it could mean trouble for others as well as myself.’
‘You really think the Corporation is that powerful?’
R.D. shook his head. ‘You’ve a lot to learn, my boy. Anyway, you can get me some more beer later from the off-licence. Let’s get back to work.’
We both sat down again and I tried to remember the thrust of the conversation. But I had lost it. R.D. took over.
‘I know what this is all leading to. You see, I was so overloaded with the litigation and pressure to write that I guess my mind decided to take a vacation.’
‘A breakdown?’
R.D. thought about what he had just said. Then he shook his head from side to side.
‘No, it was more like a showdown. I had been angry about a lot of things that were going on and I tried to put a stop to them. I thought that I had recovered sufficiently to continue work, but I discovered that I was forgetting people’s names and walking into walls. I stayed at home and started drinking heavily, until I couldn’t walk at all. I couldn’t sleep at night, and during the day the sun made me feel tired and afraid. Rasa called the family doctor, who had taken over after Dr Aubrey had retired. Dr Studley was much younger, but the poor man had to make a quick assessment the moment the patient walked into his surgery, because there was simply no time to deal with everyone on the NHS. The overworked GP quickly gave me the obligatory once-over: chest, heart, balls. Then he prescribed Valium and sleeping pills and told me to go to bed.
By now, with six or seven hits under my belt, I was under creative siege. I was scrutinized daily by managers to see if, like a thoroughbred racehorse, I could complete the course, clear the next hurdle. A year or so earlier, Eddie Kassner had taken out a life insurance policy on me, so that in the event of my death his royalty flow would not be affected to any great extent. This, clearly, was standard business policy. Kassner had stood with my father in the backstage bar at Fairfield Hall, Croydon, during one of my concerts, and reassured my somewhat confused parent that he guaranteed Raymond wealth beyond his wildest imagination. Was this a reference to his offer of £40 a week for life? At the time my dad was really only half listening. The one thing that mattered to my dad at that moment was that the Guinness tasted good and the backstage bar at the Fairfield Hall let you run up a tab, which I sincerely hope that Dad made Eddie pick up.
Here I was, six or seven hits later, lying semi-conscious in bed, so confused by all my ideas for songs, and so baffled by all the litigation, that my overloaded brain was experiencing a total shutdown of business. The parts of my brain that dealt with my daily functions had taken to overwhelming fits of paranoia and, as it turned out, they were totally justified. As for the rest of my brain, the parts that dealt with dreams and the subconscious, it was like the small shopkeeper who had suddenly found himself expanding, and put up a sign which read, ‘Moved to larger premises’. Everything was centred on jealousy, greed, resentment, misunderstanding and a total lack of trust in everything and everybody’. I think that was the way that the messages were being interpreted inside my head, rather than the real actions happening in the outside world. But I had discovered a theory, ‘When in doubt, trust your paranoia, it’s probably the most accurate reading of the world.’ Whatever they tell you otherwise.
With ‘A Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ such a hit, people started coming up to me in the street and singing the chorus in my face: ‘Oh yes he is, he is, oh yes he is,’ as if to say that I knew who I was. Unfortunately, my inner and somewhat distorted sense of reality told me that this was not who I wanted to be: I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t care that everyone loved the song or that it was being quoted on television and in the tabloids as a comment on the times. I saw myself on Top of the Pops and tried to throw the television out of the kitchen window. In the end, I compromised with my concerned relatives and put the television in the gas oven. The cord was still attached to the wall and through the glass in the oven I was still performing. ‘Oh yes he is, oh yes he is.’ After that I declared I was going to bed and woke up a week later with a moustache and beard. The moustache drooped and made me look like a Mexican peasant. I tried to go for a quiet walk. ‘They seek him here, they seek him there.’ I went back to all my schoolboy haunts – the playing fields, the alleyways, the broken fences – and none of it seemed to have changed. The only difference was me.
I rushed home and got straight on the telephone to my publicist, who was already angry at me for not behaving like a star and, most of all, like a man. I shouted down the telephone that I had no intention of giving the press access to my sick bed. This anger turned to total disgust when I announced that I wanted to give up showbiz and return to being a schoolboy. ‘Oh yes he is, oh yes he is.’ Somerville ranted on about letting the side down, unprofessional, uninteresting. I responded by farting down the telephone in true schoolboy manner, then hung up.
I rolled up all the money I had on me into a bundle and stuffed it in my socks. I then proceeded to run all the way from my house in East Finchley down to Somerville’s office in Denmark Street in the West End; a distance of about six miles. Upon seeing me burst in, Somerville took cover behind his desk. I threw a punch and missed. He ducked, and, in doing so, accidently banged his rather large chin on a chair. He made a frantic telephone call to the police, saying he had been attacked by a madman and was under siege in his office. What followed was a Keystone-cops-style chase around the small alleyways surrounding Denmark Street. The police would run past a doorway and I would emerge from the same doorway and run off in the opposite direction. I ended up in Eddie Kassner’s office, which was just a few buildings away. I must have been insane to go in there, but there was a part of me that genuinely wanted to make peace – I didn’t want to hate anybody. When I was ran in and gave the receptionist a kiss it was obvious to her that I was a little emotionally unstable. But she immediately told her boss that I was there and I was ushered in to the ‘lion’s den’. Kassner hugged me as if I was the prodigal son returning. His accountant, David Dane, brought me a cup of tea. I said I couldn’t understand why they were doing this to me. Kassner said that equally he couldn’t understand why I had left to join Freddie Beinstock’s company. David Dane said that surely I must have known that by signing with Belinda Music, I would instantly be in dispute with Kassner?
I can’t remember much more. The receptionist, who as I recall was a woman in her late thirties, arrived with some tea and biscuits and promptly placed her bottom on my lap, to soften me up. She was a motherly type, but still very attractive, like a continental actress from the fifties: big chest under a clingy sweater and a waist pulled in tight by a large leather belt. A nice bit of old. Soon, before I got into a more compromising situation, Robert arrived like a knight in shining armour.
He was accompanied by a doctor who wrote a medical certificate which explained my eccentric behaviour to the police. After they were satisfied by the doctor that I was acting under extreme stress, they allowed me to return home, provided I remained under the doctor’s care.
The doctor dropped me off at my house, and explained to my wife and manager that I should rest as much as possible and avoid all public engagements. He politely described my illness as ‘nervous exhaustion caused by a physical breakdown’, and recommended that I visit him at his clinic as soon as I was able. I took his prescription, said that I would rest and showed him the door with an equal amount of politeness. Dr Studley appeared shortly afterwards looking as harassed as ever. He read the note passed on to him by Robert’s doctor and, after pausing for a brief moment, said that I should block out all the light in the afternoons and lie down in the dark room until early evening. I should stay out of bright daylight because it made me think too much. I was on ‘mental overload’, and if I did not heed his warnings and force myself to take a rest in this way, I would turn into a hopeless neurotic, and he wouldn’t hesitate before putting me in a rest home.
The Kinks had gone on tour without me, with a replacement to sing my part. Everybody refers to that period as the time R.D. first broke down, when in fact it was just one of a series of ‘mind overloads’. But this was the first time anybody else had been affected by it.
Later that week we had another meeting with Freddie Beinstock under the chandelier in his Savile Row office. Everybody could see that I was emotionally unbalanced, and they carried on as if I was not there. I was wearing a new brown hunting jacket made by Dege of Savile Row, and I was admiring its fine buttons on the cuffs when Grenville asked Freddie if there was any news on the suit. Why were they talking about somebody’s wardrobe?
Freddie replied in his usual tone, which had a lilt to it as if he was about to tell a joke, ‘Well, you know I spoke to Rubenstein and Nash.’ I still thought he was talking about a suit, and that Messrs Rubenstein and Nash were his tailors. Freddie continued in his Swiss-Austrian-American accent: ‘They say no news is good news, and the amount of money they are holding for Raymond is earning interest every day.’
It was only then I realized that they were talking about the status of the litigation – meaning law-suit. I looked over at the painting by Francis Bacon, a man trapped in a square cylinder which was transparent, as if he had deliberately done it to himself. It seemed possible that he could escape if he wanted to, but he preferred to remain a prisoner in a hell of his own making. I contemplated my situation and my own stupidity for being in this position. I was either a genuine fool or had deliberately put myself in a similar cage. Self-imposed torment. The meeting concluded and I was taken home by Robert. I was still not considered well enough to make my own way home.
Brian Somerville resigned as the Kinks’ publicist immediately after my showdown with him. The official press release stated that it was a mutual parting; the truth was that the whole relationship had run out of steam. In any event, Somerville had found the Beatles a much more cooperative bunch of young men: keen to please, amiable and much more marketable than the Kinks. My dislike and distrust of the press was something he found repellent.
Somerville obviously took offence because I had taken issue with the way he was representing us. Before that unhappy time, I had looked upon Somerville as a slightly eccentric uncle who felt happier playing with the younger children at Christmas than he did mixing with adults. He always dressed in a very conservative, sombre manner, completely at odds with the way many publicity men dressed in that era of flamboyance and extravagance. Perhaps he would have enjoyed dressing up like all the other sixties dandies in flowered shirts and skin-tight trousers, but probably thought that it would have made him look ridiculous.
In fact, most of Somerville’s exterior and behaviour were correct to the point of being drab, except for one notable occasion after the Kinks had played a concert at the Opera House in Blackpool. We had been supporting his former employers, the Beatles, and perhaps Brian was over-excited about being reunited with his old playmates and Brian Epstein, as well as being exhilarated by our own success at the concert. Most of the hotels and Bed and Breakfasts in Blackpool were full and, as a result, all the Kinks had to share one room. Somerville burst into our communal bedroom wearing spotted silk pyjamas and tried to provoke a pillow-fight. We were so used to seeing the lantern-jawed, balding publicist dressed in dowdy business suits that we were completely taken aback: he now resembled a tubby circus clown.
The only accusation I can level at Brian is that when on that regrettable day I rushed into his office full of anger, instead of acting like a man when I threw a punch at him he ducked to the floor and squeaked like a mouse. But perhaps he had seen that I was distraught, had taken pity on me and pretended to faint. Perhaps, like so many people who encountered the Kinks, he expected more from a group with such an outrageous name. Perhaps the Kinks were too dull for Brian Somerville.
Much as he would despise me for saying so, when he left I quite missed him.
After that incident, I stopped doing any interviews and saw very few people. In the music press they were saying that I had become a recluse and there were even rumours that I had left the group. But the break allowed me time to stay at home and write songs, some of which were therapeutic, others for the next Kinks album. The sunny days of early spring 1966 consisted of getting up, writing a song, playing with my daughter, lunch in the back garden, the afternoon resting in a dark room, then back in the sun, more song-writing and bed. Bliss. ‘Oh yes it is, oh yes it is.’
‘A Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ was just beginning to move slowly down the hit parade when a delegation consisting of Robert, Grenville and, to give them emotional clout, my brother Dave all arrived on my doorstep. They said that unless we went into the studio and made another single and album, any impetus that the last single had given us would be lost. I said I had several ideas, but nothing as good as the last record, that I was not ready, both physically and mentally, and that I wanted to leave the group and become a painter. A week later I was in the studio recording tracks for the new album. I had a few ideas left over from the American tour the previous summer, songs like ‘Holiday in Waikiki’, ‘House in the Country’, ‘Party Line’, along with more recent ideas such as ‘A Most Exclusive Residence for Sale’, ‘A Rainy Day in June’ and a strange ballad called ‘End of the Season’. All these songs seemed to be influenced by my current circumstances. Songs about a man who had become wealthy, and, after travelling the world for the first time, returned home to buy a house and settle down. It was a character that was outside my experience and background, but the only way I could interpret how I felt was through a dusty, fallen aristocrat who had come from old money, as opposed to the wealth which I had made for myself.
Robert and Grenville had become ‘new’ money in the sense that they had opted out of the establishment world of stockbroking and banking and found careers for themselves as managers of a successful pop group. They kept up the public-school image, and dressed in pin-striped suits. The fact that they managed us must have made them radical and anti-establishment in their own circles. And, like the character singing my songs, Robert had become an unrepentent money-waster. While I had bought a modest semi in N2, Robert had gone straight for the Rolls-Royce and maintained his Belgravia life-style. Perhaps each person has his own idea of what success will buy, according to his background, but Robert was not unlike my brother Dave in the sense that they were going to blow the lot on cars, booze and babes. And why not? They were flush
During my ‘recovery’, I listened to a lot of old Frank Sinatra records sent to me by Reprise. I had also bought a book on arranging by Glen Miller, and I had started writing a song on my recently acquired upright piano. I called it ‘The Tax Man’s Taken All My Dough’. It was meant to be a topical song about the new taxes the Labour Government was bringing in to relieve the wealthy of all their hard-earned cash. Again, it was my imaginary character singing through me, just as he was in all my other new songs. As this was my first year of being a success, I could sympathize with the sad, decadent character I had invented. I was brought up believing that all Conservatives were cruel slave-drivers who took advantage of the poor and cared little for the unfortunates on whom their whole financial empire had been built. Here was I, newly rich (on paper), singing about the woes of having money taken away from me by a Labour Government. To take the curse off of this aspect of what was otherwise a good song, I turned the narrator into a scoundrel who fought with his girlfriend after a night of drunkenness and cruelty. I also kept repeating ‘in the summertime’ over the chorus, to make the song more seasonal. By the time it came to make the record, I was back doing dates with the group, and for the time being my ‘retirement’ plans had been scrapped.
We recorded ‘Sunny Afternoon’ on Friday, 13 May 1966. The four Kinks plus Nicky Hopkins on piano put a back track down in three or four takes, and I sang the lead vocal in one pass. I had bad hayfever and could not have managed to sing it twice. We had just finished putting on the back-up vocals when I noticed that Pete, our bass-player, had played some wrong notes in the last few bars. I wanted to record the track again, because we had no way of separating the bass from the rest of the instruments. The whole group looked shocked as I suggested this to Shel Talmy. He refused point blank.
‘Nobody will notice, its just a fluff on the bass.’
I pointed out to Shel that my voice sounded wobbly, but Shel was in no mood for an argument. I reluctantly let him get on with the last overdub on the record, which was a melodica solo by Nicky Hopkins. This gave the track a ‘good-time’, music-hall feel, and I soon forgot about the mistake on the bass.
The record had taken three hours to make and a decision was made by the record company later that day to bring out the single by the second week in June, to take advantage of the hot summer which was forecast.
Just prior to the release of ‘Sunny Afternoon’ we secured the services of Alan McDougal as publicist. McDougal was a short, jovial Scotsman with a broad Glaswegian accent, and his Dickensian Soho office combined with his laid-back attitude were a complete contrast to the public-school air of Brian Somerville. Alan arranged for me to give the Melody Maker an exclusive interview, where they would be the first to review the record.
As I played the white-label acetate to Bob Dawbarn, I saw a smile come over his face as the jazz-like intro started. Dawbarn was himself a trombone player, and as a musician and journalist he had watched the traditional jazz boom of the early sixties get pushed aside by Beat music. In those days the whole staff of Melody Maker was primarily jazz-oriented, as was most of the music press. Dawbarn commented on the sweet acoustic sound and said that the drum playing actually had dynamics in it. McDougal seized upon the opportunity. ‘That’s because Avory was a jazz player himself, and knows all about dynamics, so let’s all have three cheers for Mick Avory’.
Bob Dawbarn was totally enthusiastic about ‘Sunny Afternoon’. The other reviews, however, were less than complimentary, saying the record was sluggish and dreary. It didn’t bother any of us because we knew we had a hit. I gambled on it being a very hot summer, and the longer the sun stayed out, the more records we would sell.
I went back to McDougal’s office. Alan was speaking eagerly about the great press we would get from the record and said that one of his associates, Frank Smythe, was anxious to work with me. As I looked down into Old Compton Street I saw what I thought was a down-and-out tramp lying in the gutter. I called McDougal over to the window and was just about to comment on the tragic plight of the alcoholics and the homeless in London when the keen Scotsman informed me that the man trying to crawl on to the kerb was none other than Frank Smythe.
‘Ah, the poor laddie must have stumbled on his way to DeHems Bar.’
We went and helped Smythe up to the office, where he seemed to sober instantly. Frank was a born-and-bred Yorkshireman, who had been an accomplished skiffle singer in his college days. A poet and writer, with a huge, robust physique and features that could have allowed him to be mistaken for Oliver Reed – depending on how many drinks the onlooker had consumed, and how smoky and dark the drinking club was. Frank Smythe took me under his wing, which meant a tour of most of the pubs in Soho, where he introduced me to everybody from Dominic Behan, who immediately boasted of his brother, Brendan, the great but by now deceased Irish playwright, and of a mysterious and hitherto unknown sister called Les, who was a dyke. Francis Bacon’s ravaged face loomed up in a drinking club, as did a large-breasted woman called ‘Mighty Margaret’, who as well as being a last-minute carnal watering hole for Smythe at the end of a long piss-up, was a screenwriter. When the pubs closed, Frank knew all the right drinking clubs. It was a superb but somewhat protracted binge and, although it resulted in a fearsome headache the following morning, it rekindled the memories of art college – all that might have been, all I could have been, all the pictures never painted.
Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this any more. Let’s have a look at the diary. Let’s see … ‘Friday, 3 June. “Sunny Afternoon” was released. The Central Pier Ballroom in Morecambe. A good show.’
Good show? Why did Rasa write that? She wasn’t even there! What does she mean, Good show?
That was the night Quaife’s life started to shift away from the group. All because of a girl he wanted to chat up after the show. We got into the van and shouted at Pete to bring the girl with him. We were driving back to Manchester to this old Bed and Breakfast that we knew. It had a reputation as a raver’s paradise, and the owner allowed us to take in as many girls as we wanted. Before that we had been in numerous rows with various hotels up and down the country, and were bored with using fire escapes to avoid the hotel night-porters. The B and B, on the outskirts of Manchester, was a private boarding house run by a raunchy widow who must have been in her late forties. I remember her always being somewhat scantily clad, in a see-through dressing-gown under which were equally revealing undies. She must have been a trim craft in her day, and although there were lumps where there shouldn’t have been on her body, and her legs displayed a few broken blood vessels at the back, her breasts were delightfully plump and bounced around freely above her paunch. In the sitting room there was a television in one corner and a cheap formica-covered cocktail cabinet in the other. The bar was never closed, and if the occasion had arisen where there was no girl to hand, I am convinced that this delightful lady of the house would have willingly offered her services. I bet she would have been a wonderful bang, at that.
Anyway, Pete stayed behind to wait for that stupid girl. What a dope. He probably only did a bit of french kissing followed by some minor sleaze at the end of the pier. He said he would drive back with Jonah in the equipment truck. When I woke up the next morning I looked out the window and saw that the loading truck was not in the yard as expected. I ordered some breakfast, which was personally delivered by the titty madame, still dressed in her naughty nightie in case one of us got the urge for a late morning grope with Grandma. Then I went downstairs to the lounge. I turned on the television to watch Grandstand, a midday sports programme, and on came a brief news report to announce that one of the Kinks pop group had been badly injured in a crash. Jonah had skidded on the road on the way back from Morecambe, and both he and Quaife had ended up in hospital. We were due to play the Imperial Ballroom in Nelson that night, but of course the show was cancelled, as was the following night’s show in Glasgow. The next day we managed to tape the television show Thank Your Lucky Stars without Pete. It was all mimed in those days, so it didn’t really matter that he wasn’t there.
The following Monday we were even in the studio without Pete. Robert and Grenville decided to book in a session bass player. Amazingly, from six p.m. to midnight we recorded six backing-tracks: ‘Rainy Day in June’, ‘Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home’, ‘You’re Looking Fine’, ‘Too Much on My Mind’, ‘Fallen Idol’ and, somewhat appropriately, ‘Session Man’. Boy, we could really bang them out in those days. The following day, Tuesday, 7 June, the concert at Malvern was cancelled, but ‘Sunny Afternoon’ went into the charts at Number 22, four days after its release. Amazingly, the following Saturday, just seven days after Pete’s accident, the Kinks doubled at two venues in Birmingham. How did we manage to get a bass player so quickly?
We were rehearsing in the demo room at 17 Savile Row, and I was doing a record review for the NME at the same time. I was also drunk, which didn’t help. Keith Altham, a journalist from the EN-EM-Y, played me a record, and I made a remark about it which he would later turn into something readable. There was one record in particular by somebody I admired, a wonderfully eccentric American by the name of Kim Fowley. It was a cover version of one of my songs called ‘Don’t You Fret’, but I was so pissed and still so angry about Pete’s accident that I took the record off and threw it out the window. At that precise moment Bill Fowler, a Carlin employee, brought a candidate to stand in for Pete. He introduced himself as John Dalton, but Dave shouted out that he looked like a fat version of Paul McCartney. Mick agreed, ‘It’s Pull My Cock Off!’ Dave threw a bass guitar at Dalton and as I swigged back the rest of my Newcastle Brown I asked the chubby McCartney look-alike to play the scale of D minor. He willingly obliged, and the next day the unknown Beatle double was seen playing the D minor introduction of ‘Sunny Afternoon’ on Top of the Pops. Before the accident Quaife had been experimenting with a new bass guitar because he had seen John Entwistle of the Who using one on TV. Dalton inherited this instrument. I still had not heard Dalton actually play, but he convinced us that he knew all the Kinks’ hits. He had been in other groups – the Creation and Mark Four – and came highly recommended by Fowler. Two days later we were to play a double header in Birmingham. Two sets of twenty-five minutes at clubs owned by a promotor called Mrs Reagan. A rehearsal was considered to be unnecessary. It wasn’t until we got on stage and heard this appalling banjo-like sound coming from the bass that we realized how much trouble we were in, and how important each member’s playing is to the sound of the group. Although John could play, he had his own style – and also was not familiar with Pete’s equipment. It was fortunate that the sold-out shows comprised of screaming girls. Thankfully that covered up the appalling din coming from the stage.
Rasa may have written in the diary that it was not a bad show apart from faulty equipment, but I can assure you it was awful. We didn’t have any choice, we had to go on playing. The following day we had to fly to Spain with a bass player we hadn’t even had a rehearsal with. Our equipment boy, Jonah, was still in hospital and had been replaced by Stan Whitley, a friend of Pete’s from the Coldfall Estate. I had seen Stan at other gigs but I had never spoken to him. His brother did occasional work as a minder for Robert and Grenville from time to time and, like his brother, Stan gave the impression that he was a bit of a heavy, but underneath the hard-nut image he was a lovable softie. As we checked in at the airport, we saw Stan dressed in his immaculately-tailored wide-boy suit, complete with tie-pin, silk shirt and perfectly groomed hair, ready to be a suave minder, not aware that he had been hired simply as a band boy, to set up our stage equipment. Robert accompanied us on this trip, and the thought of putting the unfortunate Stan through this humiliation probably amused him. My next sight of Stan was of him crawling around on all fours behind a row of amplifiers trying to set up the equipment. By this time he had taken off his jacket to reveal his Sunday-best braces, arm-clips, cufflinks, still with a perfectly knotted tie held down with the tie-pin. His face, however, was a study in frustration. The most experience he’d probably had as an electrician was changing a light bulb. The prospect of joining cables and wires to amplifiers was overwhelming. Eyes wide with panic, his silk shirt so wet with sweat that it was sticking to him. The poor bugger had no idea he had to change the voltage to the continental standard, and so when he finally did set up the equipment it exploded when he turned it on. This humiliation was added to by the indignity of his trousers splitting at the back, exposing his underpants. He was also surrounded by annoyed Spaniards gesticulating vehemently and pointing to their watches: we were late going on. We stood at the side of the stage and watched as Stan tried to explain to them that he needed help. With frustration written all over his red, sweating face, he stormed across the stage towards me. Up until now I had still not found it necessary to speak to Stan or he to me, but his first utterance was one I will always treasure. In a perfect north London cockney accent Stan uttered the immortal words: ‘Some fucker help me before I chin some cunt!’ He then fell to his knees and collapsed on the floor, his hands held up as if in prayer.
This tragic sight aside, it was obvious that there was a certain amount of disharmony between Robert and the Spanish promoter who was a small-time club owner. Somehow we managed to play a few songs and, although the fans enjoyed what little we performed, the owners of the club were far from satisfied. Before the police had arrived on the scene, however, there had been real threats of violence: both Dalton and Robert Wace had been threatened with a flick-knife. Stan Whitley had by now recovered from his earlier humiliation, and the sight had immediately drawn on his instincts as a minder. He was ready for ‘bovver’. He stood rigidly, legs astride, arms outstretched, between Dalton and his aggressor. Then he uttered his second great line of the trip: ‘So you want some, do you, you Spanish git? Let’s have a go, then, I don’t give a monkey’s.’ Before anything could happen the Spanish police arrived, and soon were seen dragging John Dalton away with them. The devious promoter had accused him of being a Peter Quaife impostor, and that he was not a member of the original Kinks. The promoter was not only refusing to pay us, but he had confiscated our equipment as compensation. As the equipment included the bass guitar which sounded like a banjo, it was generally considered that he had done us a favour.
Morning came and we found ourselves confronted by a Spanish solicitor, who told us that Dalton had been retrieved from the police station along with our equipment – which unfortunately still included the dreaded bass guitar. Robert decided to fly Sam Levy out to join us because, in Robert’s opinion, Sam had some experience of touring on the continent, and it was obvious that his powers of persuasion would be subtler than those of the unfortunate Stan, who, only three days before, had been happily contemplating a future as a long-distance lorry driver on the M1. No Kinks. No Spaniards. And, most of all, no amplifiers. Instead he had found himself suddenly thrown into a war zone.
It was also clear to me that Robert couldn’t cope either. Robert had been educated well enough to have a decent smattering of French and German, but on a previous trip to Paris when Grenville had been confronted by a French customs inspector, he admitted being able to understand French, but refused to speak it on the grounds that President de Gaulle had refused to speak English. In other words, for Robert and Grenville foreigners did not count for much. It is fortunate indeed that these two aristocratic and well-educated men had decided to manage a pop group and not enter the diplomatic corps.
It was customary for Sam, on arriving in a new city, to head straight for the hotel restaurant. There we found him demolishing a steak and an entire bottle of wine. He had brought over the English newspapers which had the latest chart positions, and we were all excited to see that we were Number 8. The BBC had shown our video clip of Top of the Pops, which had helped to carry ‘Sunny Afternoon’ higher up the charts.
Somehow we recovered our equipment from the club and we left Madrid no richer for our endeavours, to fly to Norway. Stan Whitley was also a nervous flyer, and his endurance was stretched to the limit when our plane burst a tyre as we landed. After playing a concert somewhere at the top of Norway, literally in the midnight sun, we flew to the seaport of Bergen for another concert. This was, incredibly, less than two weeks after the release of ‘Sunny Afternoon’ and Pete’s accident.’
Raymond Douglas stopped talking. He held out his old but still slender hands, and as he bowed his head, I could see that the crown of his tightly cropped white hair displayed a slight bald patch. Even so, he was still a handsome old boy. He muttered something like, ‘Some faces you never forget.’ I asked who he was referring to, but he carried on talking to himself as if he had not heard what I had said.
‘She saw me off at the airport in Bergen. She was Norwegian, with short, thick red hair. I didn’t even know her name. Everything around me was happening in such an exciting way, and I was successful again. And yet, as the girl with no name took me by the hand and told me not to go, I would have willingly given everything up to stay with her in that beautiful place where the sun stays out at midnight and the people talk backwards.’
For a moment I thought that R.D. had flipped his lid. I thought that maybe I had been driving him too hard and it was all too much for him to take, but by now my journalistic instincts were beginning to get the better of me, and I decided to take advantage of this old man who had momentarily lapsed into a senile memory warp.
‘Was she the girl who affected you so much?’ I asked, stupidly.
Raymond Douglas slowly looked up and glared at me.
‘I should tell you to fuck off. But I won’t. I’ll just be more careful from now on. That’s if you promise not to act like a little prat. Don’t take me for a fool, kid, and I won’t treat you like an asshole.’
I didn’t find his reaction difficult to understand, but I was supposed to be in the presence of a rock poet, only to discover his language was, to say the least, blunt. At times he would speak so eloquently, only to snap and in an instant revert to the language of the gutter. Still, he was old and had been through a lot. I apologized and we moved along.
Raymond Douglas picked up the diary again and slowly browsed through the pages.
When I had looked at the diary the night before it was becoming clear that two people were writing their own versions of what was happening.
For Tuesday, 21 June, Rasa had written, ‘My birthday’; Raymond Douglas had written that he was playing in Oxford. He had made no mention of his birthday. I mentioned this to Raymond Douglas who still looked bewildered.
‘It’s like she was living part of my life for me. I guess that’s what people do when they get married, they live for each other.’
It struck me as weird that Rasa seemed to be living her life through Raymond Douglas’ work. That’s fine if you’re a fan, but she was supposed to be his wife. But it was clearly Raymond Douglas’ handwriting that announced boldly that ‘Sunny Afternoon’ had reached Number 1 on Monday, 4 July. Rasa, on the other hand, simply noted that she had gastric flu.
I held out the diary and showed Raymond Douglas the date. He smiled and seemed to perk up.
‘Boy, I was happy, wasn’t I? I didn’t realize how wonderful life was. Do you know we were Number 1 just before England won the World Cup? It all looks wonderful in a diary. Rasa wrote that “Reimukas” had gone on a business trip. Reimukas? That’s Lithuanian for Ray, I guess. What Rasa didn’t know was that Reimukas had been to New York to meet with Alan Klein.’ Raymond Douglas stopped to reflect.
‘Was I really doing all this? I was so busy that perhaps I was driving myself on deliberately so I wouldn’t know what was happening to me. I had recovered from the awful period where I’d been overloaded and couldn’t function, but I remember sitting with Grenville and looking at the hit parade with “Sunny Afternoon” at Number 1 asking him why we didn’t have any money. The basic reality was that we were signed to Pye Records at a criminally low royalty. And the law-suit between Boscobel Productions and Denmark Productions meant that all my song-writing royalties were still frozen. Grenville raised his eyebrow in a theatrical way and after pausing for a moment, spoke quietly, and his voice took on a dramatic edge, as if from a mystery play:
‘“I know a man who knows another man, and together they can do something about this situation.”’
At this juncture R.D. shuffled around in his chair uncomfortably.
‘Another man. What other man? A few days later I found myself on a flight to New York to meet with Alan Klein. Then I was thrown back into the same old system that I had tried to escape. The lawyers get you, then the system, then the establishment has you back.’
At this point, Raymond Douglas became silent. Perhaps the recollection of this period of his life was making that dark cloud come back. I let the poor old fellow rest and left the room on the pretext that I was going to make yet another cup of tea.
I empathized with Raymond Douglas’ plight. In my own humble way I had experienced the same difficulties, even if on a much smaller scale. The establishment was still running the country, the same as when he was a young man, and I was confronted by the same ultimatum: conform or fail. I had watched my own youthful optimism become dominated by the ruling classes. Perhaps that’s why the music of Raymond Douglas was beginning to mean so much to me.
My mind wandered. I started to think about Julie at my office. When would I see her next? I wished I had known my parents. What sort of story would I be able to tell if I were ever in R.D.’s position? He had lived inside his work as a shelter from the world which had closed him out. It was odd, but I felt no generation gap with him. I enjoyed hearing all his pop anecdotes, but what really interested me was when he talked about his family – a family that I wish I could have known myself.
I re-entered the room quietly and sat down in my usual chair. R.D. just sat and stared at me, almost looking through me. I was beginning to think I should make my way to the door when the strangest thing happened. He stood up and walked straight into the light. He was smiling a compassionate smile. I saw his eyes for the first time. They were watering and seemed full of emotion.
‘Why is it that I get the distinct impression that you understand what I’m saying, even though we are generations apart? I’ll tell you why. I have this theory, I call it Navajo logic. My grandmother, Kate Wilmore, looked like an old Navajo squaw. She was a large woman with enormous eyes that seemed to penetrate right through to your deepest thoughts. ‘Big Granny’ had so many grandchildren that she often mixed up their names, but she always took time to listen to the most trivial questions. She sat in a large chair in the corner of the room like a great dowager, and held court over the rest of the family in true matriarchal tradition. Meeting Big Granny was like going to confession, and that’s exactly what I did when I was in her presence. I could swing a pretty decent lie on both of my parents, and if that wasn’t convincing enough, I relied on emotional blackmail, but not with Big Granny. She eventually lived to be ninety-eight, alert and intelligent right up to the day she died.
‘She had been born in another century, in the reign of Queen Victoria, grown up at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution, in the days when children went out to work in the factories. In her youth, women were expected to have babies; when one baby had been born, to get pregnant again until the husband either lost interest or, as in Big Granny’s case, he dropped dead. Her family was large, probably about fifteen children, and even though she left school before any kind of education could take effect, she had an intuitive streak that enabled her to comprehend spiritual values and convey images more effectively than any textbook in a library. It was like she had a knowledge of an inner world that remained dark to most people. When Big Granny was around, a light shone inside you and exposed your darkest secrets. She had tremendous intuitive powers and, like the Navajo Indians, she thought that the problems of man were quite insignificant in nature’s great scheme. When she sang old Victorian lullabies, the sound in her voice was so truthful that she took you back in time before there were radios and gramophones. When she sang, children listened attentively and somehow sensed through her spirituality some emotions that defy time. That’s the logic. There’s no trick to it. All you have to do is relax and feel your history, because it will never go away and there is no future without it. Let me play you some of my past. Some of my Navajo logic.’
R.D. had me completely baffled. Maybe the old man had finally gone off his rocker. Why was he telling me his theories about senses and memory, and why suddenly had he decided to take pity on me?
He put a new tape into the cassette deck. As it began to play those friendly plodding bass notes at the opening of ‘Sunny Afternoon’, I glanced down at another entry in the diary: ‘The taxman’s taken all my dough and left me in my stately home.’ As I read the words, they ran simultaneously together with the lyrics on the tape. My head nodded up and down to the rhythm. I imagined my own parents and wondered whether this would have been their favourite song. It probably took them back to the summers of their youth. Sandy beaches full of families having picnics by the sea. Snapshots of people sitting in deckchairs squinting their eyes at the camera to avoid the sun. I imagined when ‘Sunny Afternoon’ was Number 1 in the charts in June 1966. Everybody must have related to its slow-motion world of black-and-white nostalgia in their own personal way. The song sounded blissfully sentimental, in stark contrast to the forlorn reality of my own life. I was sitting in this dark unreality, listening to the sunny truth on the tape. Was I listening to the sound of a bright smiling exterior covering up a black centre? I looked down at the pages in R.D.’s diary. The words he had written there soon told me all I needed to know.