If I was worried about the Corporation and its contract with me, I had almost reached a parallel emotional state to the one R.D. was in the following day. We both knew that we were going to have to discuss his old law-suit, and although I did my best to cover up the fears I had for my future if I failed to deliver the book, R.D. had somehow picked up on my nervous condition.
He took out a pair of bifocals as he strained his eyes to read the diary. He licked the tips of his fingers and turned the page. He started reading to me as if it were a nursery rhyme.
‘The New Year was sung in as usual at the Alexandra pub in Muswell Hill. I had started drinking quite heavily at the time, particularly as my hits of the previous year had all been adopted as sing-along tunes throughout the country: everywhere I went, people offered me drinks. I remember seeing my family singing ‘Sunny Afternoon’ as the sound of Big Ben was heard on the radio and the rest of the world was trying to sing ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot …’ I was seeing quite a lot of Frank Smythe too, and whether the rendezvous was in Soho, Chelsea or Hampstead, it was always in a pub. I had also started playing soccer for the Showbiz Eleven and footballers, whether they be part-time or full-time, generally like a few pints after a match.
Playing in the Showbiz Eleven gave me the opportunity to meet showbiz heroes from my youth. Sean Connery’s reign as centre half had just come to an end, but singers such as Tommy Steele and Jess Conrad, who had appeared on Oh Boy, often played. I even got to meet Glen Mason, from The Jack Jackson Show. Unfortunately Mavis Trail was not attending the games and, as far as I could ascertain, had even given up dancing. Still, it was a thrill to see these famous faces from another era running up and down the soccer pitch alongside me. There are many wonderful stories attached to the Showbiz Eleven, but perhaps we can discuss these later.
Frank introduced me to an acquaintance of his who called herself Georgie. She was a former teacher at the Royal Film School, and even after a few drinks she spoke eloquently about film, music and poetry. This rekindled my interest in film, which had been abruptly stopped by my superiors at Hornsey Art College. At first I assumed Georgie was one of Frank’s long-suffering girlfriends, but it soon became apparent that Georgie was with Frank in order to see me. It was reassuring to talk to somebody who was not just interested in me as a pop star, even though I was recognized nearly everywhere I went. I was talking to somebody who actually cared about art and film and who knew more about the subjects than I. Like Smythe, Georgie was four or five years older than myself, and despite being a drinkist of astounding durability, always seemed to remain clear-headed while to my eyes the universe was spinning like a merry-go-round. She mixed in many circles and said that she was a friend of many celebrities, particularly the actress Julie Christie, who according to Georgie trusted her judgement so much that she would only accept a movie part after Georgie had approved the script. If that were the case, I found it a relief to discover that there was somebody else in the world who was not only more famous, but more insecure than myself.
Georgie was a welcome change to the endless legal acquaintances that I was rapidly developing, particularly as the law-suit between Denmark Productions and Boscobel was looming on the horizon. Robert and Grenville were more concerned that I kept writing hit records. At the end of January 1967 Klein called me from the States to say that he would be over soon to organize the law-suit. There was fear inside me, but as I was twenty-two years old, it did not manifest itself in the same way that it does in me now that I am an old man. My body was strong and ready to withstand anything; I also had found an outlet in my writing. This comforted me.
On 4 February the Kinks played a concert at Stoke, and Cindy re-appeared as usual. By this time she had become, hopefully with my guidance, the most glamorous creature, with the confidence and aloofness of a celebrity. I knew that my work on Cindy was nearly completed when in the dressing room after the show she suddenly unbuttoned her blouse to reveal a black lace bra which had a see-through section where her nipples were. This was no home-made attempt; she had actually purchased the bra from a manufacturer who specialized in such designs. There was nothing cheap about her either: she went about everything with total class. I felt as proud of Cindy as I would have done if she had been a song or poem I had just completed. I took this to be a good omen, because I felt that she was lucky for me.
At this time it was like there were three people inside me: the loving suburban husband and father who happened to be a pop star; the confident celebrity who took pleasure in spreading his own form of good-will to his fans up and down the country, while at the same time preparing for major litigation; and, finally, the lost soul who was desperately insecure and looking for friendship which would not turn into some kind of betrayal and end up hurting me.
I was starting to become distrustful and afraid of nearly everybody. I would not tell anyone except Rasa and the band what I was writing about. This was partly because on the Face to Face album, the first ‘manufactured’ by Alan Klein, there was a song called ‘Dandy’, which we thought would be a single after the album was released. Klein had given a white label, or pre-released, copy to the record producer Mickie Most, who had been responsible for producing hits with the Animals, Donovan and Herman’s Hermits. I was flattered until I discovered that Most had produced the song ‘Dandy’ as a single with Herman’s Hermits. I was informed it had been set for release in the States. When I tried to quiz Klein about this, he announced over the transatlantic telephone, ‘Are you gonna argue with 600,000 records sold?’ I had no argument. I suppose I should have been pleased that the single had gone into the American Top Ten. Klein had liked the song and told me that it reminded him of something from a musical. It had not occurred to me before, but Klein had a good ear for a song. Perhaps I felt frustrated because our own career in the States had been halted by the ban imposed on us after our tour two years before. Nevertheless it just made me feel as if nothing was mine. After hearing their version, I was pleased that they had done a good job but concerned because I had not been told about it beforehand. Even so, if 600,000 copies had been sold it did not mean that I could get my hands on any money. All royalties were still being held in escrow until the law-suit with Kassner was resolved. I began to think of the royalties as an inheritance I would receive after a distant, eccentric aunt died – and Machat and Klein were the executors of her will.
In February we recorded two tracks for our new album, the ‘Village Green’ and ‘Two Sisters’. When Robert heard ‘Two Sisters’ he smiled for the first time in what seemed like many months and said that I had taken my writing into another class. ‘Two Sisters’ was based partly on Dave and myself. I was Priscilla, ‘who looked into the washing machine and the drudgery of being wed’, and Dave was cast as Sybilla, who ‘looked into her mirror and mixed with all her smart young friends, because she was free and single’. The song was also drawn on images of Rasa the housewife doing the laundry, changing the nappies, cooking the meals. Also on my own mother and sisters, who had been tied through marriage to children, which meant never having the opportunity to embark on careers of their own. The final chorus of the song had a lot to do with my feeling of being trapped by having a young daughter and the responsibilities of marriage. When in the bridge of the song the housewife sister would ‘throw away the dirty dishes just to be free again’, it was my own reaction in a sense, but it also came from seeing Rasa pushing the pram down the street. The last verse started with ‘Priscilla saw her little children and decided she was better off than the wayward lass that her sister had been’. That was me looking at my daughter Louisa crawling on the floor and being content just to see that. And as frustrated as I was about the legal turmoil surrounding me and the restrictions and confines brought about by marriage, I felt somehow redeemed by having written the song. At this time more than any other I was beginning to write about myself through my own subconscious. ‘Two Sisters’ was a reflection of the suburban husband. The confident celebrity manifested himself in ‘Dandy’, a song about a happy-go-lucky womanizer with a girl in every port. The lost soul was finding himself writing about a world that had disappeared forever, all the images of childhood gone, to be replaced by a new and less caring existence. It was a world which I thought was lost.
Pete Quaife had returned to England with his wife Annette, and for reasons best known to himself had asked to rejoin the group. John Dalton was very disappointed, but accepted it in a good-natured way, knowing full well that it meant a return to the building site and playing in the local pub at weekends. (This didn’t go unnoticed by the gutter press, who took pictures of poor Nobby on a building site holding a guitar in one hand and a shovel in the other.) Quaife, however, had resigned from the Kinks company once, so on the advice of Grenville and Robert we took him back on a trial basis – Pete was in the habit of changing his mind overnight.
As a teenager I had stood on Waterloo Bridge and watched the high tide nearly flood the banks of the Thames. The water was a bright brown; almost red. This was probably caused by pollution, but it gave the impression that the water was like blood flowing through a giant vein that led to the pumping heart of the Empire. I felt that there was a bigger tide coming that would completely flood the banks and submerge the Houses of Parliament. This was a tide of reality and change that was soon to turn England on its head. I started writing a song about Liverpool that implied that the era of Merseybeat was coming to an end, but I changed it to ‘Waterloo Sunset’ not only because that gave me a bigger canvas to work on but because it was about London, the place where I had actually grown up. We tried recording the song with Shel, but I felt so precious about it that I pretended that it was an experiment for an album track which had not worked. We played the back track a couple of times but gave up before anybody had a chance to hear the melody or lyrics properly. Face to Face was released and now I felt that the group was ready for something special.
I knew that I had to make my own version, and so in early April I went back into the studio and laid down the back track. I remained so secretive about ‘Waterloo Sunset’ that I would not even sing the lyrics while the band played. I went home and polished up the lyrics until they became like a pebble which had been rounded off by the sea until it was perfectly smooth. A week later I went into the studio with Dave for a couple of hours to put on his guitar part, which I had carefully prearranged in my plodding piano style at home. On 13 April I took Rasa, Pete and Dave into number 2 Studio at Pye and we stood round the microphone and put on our backing vocals. I still didn’t tell them what the lyrics would be about. Simply because I was embarrassed by how personal they were and I thought that the others would burst out laughing when they heard me sing. It was like an extract from a diary nobody was allowed to read. But when I finally put the vocal on later that evening everything seemed to fit and nobody laughed. It was not difficult to mix the record because it was only recorded on a four-track machine. The engineer, Alan MacKenzie, was sensitive enough to realize how much the song meant to me and allowed me to push the faders myself. It was like painting with sound. After the song was mixed, I had an acetate cut and I took it home to play to Rosie and my niece Jackie. Rosie had come back from Australia for a visit and although she was staying with my mother she visited me almost every night to make up for all the time we had been apart. I thought that she would get a kick out of hearing Terry’s name used as one of the two characters in the song. Terry meets my imaginary Julie on Waterloo Bridge, and as they walk across the river darkness falls and an innocent world disappears.
Even when the record was finished it was still like a secret, and for a while I didn’t want it released. I met Barry Fantoni when we were both playing a charity soccer match for the Melody Maker. When he asked me what the title for my new record was, rather than tell him I said that I had forgotten. When the record was released on 5 May Penny Valentine, the record reviewer for the Disc Music Paper, phoned Robert and Grenville to say that it was the best record I would ever make.
I suppose this was just in time, because the Boscobel-Denmark case was due to commence. It would become one of the most referred-to cases of the period: one that set a legal precedent, and helped lay the ground-rules for others that were to follow.
Boscobel versus Denmark was possibly the first time such a songwriting contract was challenged in the High Court. In the fifties and early sixties people in the music business, particularly the businessmen such as publishers and promoters, were not considered in the same way as the established professional classes. For the most part show-business had been run by former artists turned businessmen. There were ex-band leaders like Val Parnell, ex-tap dancers like Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont, and ex-pop singers like Dick James, who had sung the theme tune to the Robin Hood series on television and was now the owner of Northern Songs (who published the Beatles). Of course there had always been horror stories connected with the music business, of writers and performers denied their dues in some cases simply because the artists were either so poor or so anxious to get a break that they simply signed on the dotted line and accepted a pittance in order to get work published.
I once met a sad old drunk in the A and R Club, a seedy drinking establishment above a shop in Tottenham Court Road. The old man was introduced to me as the man who wrote ‘Sally’, the Gracie Fields hit. I was honoured to meet this man, because ‘Sally’ had been one of the most requested songs whenever the Davies family had a singsong. However I was appalled when the sad old fellow told me that Gracie Fields’ manager had purchased the song from him for £50. ‘Fifty pounds! And that included all performing rights and record royalties forever. I never want to hear that bloody song again!’ exclaimed the old man. I had heard many similar stories and suddenly Eddie Kassner’s original offer of £40 a week for life sounded a princely sum in comparison to the tragic tale told by the man who claimed he had written ‘Sally’.
When we signed the contract with Boscobel Productions there was a clause in that contract which really affected us later on. It said that in effect Boscobel had the right to assign part of that contract to a third party. We didn’t take legal advice at the time we signed with Boscobel and we were not well versed in the intricacies of legal documents. According the contract, it was not my right to know. It was, legally speaking, none of my business. To this day I don’t fully understand, and to tell you the truth the thought of it makes me cringe with embarrassment. I later discovered that Boscobel had an arrangement whereby Larry could participate in the management of the group. This is one thing and OK, I knew Page was involved on a management level, but the company Page used to sign us was called Denmark Productions which, as it turned out, was partly owned by Eddie Kassner. I even suspect that Kassner was the major shareholder. In this agreement, which I don’t recall having ever seen, Boscobel passed on to Larry Page the rights to place the publishing of the songs – my songs – with anyone he chose, and that was it. Bingo. Guess who he chose? Eddie Kassner. Whammo. That’s all I know. End of story. I suppose they thought it was a fair deal. Maybe it was. I don’t know. Now do you understand what a sucker I feel after all this time?
Play the tape.’
I pressed the play button on an antiquated tape recorder and the old Kinks song, ‘The Money-Go-Round’, started playing. The lyrics were more or less a description of the Kinks early music-publishing arrangements, and the intricate deception which would inevitably lead to litigation. The vocal style reminded me of a man being driven to the verge of a nervous breakdown. On one side he is anti-establishment, making rock records, being a pop star, and, on the other, going from solicitor to solicitor in a quest for artistic and commercial freedom. I watched Raymond Douglas as the song played, and thought that in a tragic and strangely ironic way, he was fighting the same battle he had fought with the art college principal who had tried to dictate the way his work should look. One authoritarian system had just taken over from another.
I listened to the song, and wondered why he had never decided to stop fighting the system and join it, as so many of his contemporaries had done. Go on the marches, do the concerts for worthy and fashionable causes, play the game with the press and allow the media access to intimate secrets about his life. To me, the whole mystique surrounding him and his group had been created because they hardly ever did publicity, and as a result most of their more important work had been overlooked or misinterpreted by the public. Raymond Douglas stayed an outsider, supporting unfashionable causes only to move on to other things when the rest of the world finally picked up the cause he had supported years before. As a result his group always remained on the fringe of mainstream success. Difficult to categorize, impossible to package – to such a degree that their unpopularity took them to a cult status.
As the song finished Raymond Douglas regained confidence, and his willingness to communicate returned.
‘At least they could not stop me writing songs, although everybody had expected me to cave in under the pressure of it all. It was a pity that the law-suit happened because, as I said earlier, we had it in us to rise above all the phoney sixties euphoria and turn the whole thing into something really different. If we could have made the thing work, we could have had it all. Instead the ideas about uniting in a classless society went out of the window because in the end everybody reverted to type. At school I was continually told I would fail. Every time I did something that did not quite fit in with the rules, a barrier was put in front of me. Then I started writing songs and was able to express myself, and as soon as I became successful I found myself in a court of law having to fight for my right to do so. My dad always used to say, ‘If they don’t get you one way, they’ll get you another way.’ I guess he knew, but I was determined that they, whoever ‘they’ were, were not going to stop me saying and doing what I believed in.
We were supposed to be one-hit wonders. Our first Number 1 record was supposed to have been a fluke. But I wouldn’t stop. I just kept on writing. I think that’s what annoyed them so much, the fact that I kept churning out the hits. I just stayed hot.
Actors work on stage, barristers inhabit rehearsal rooms called chambers and, when they finally appear on stage, they call themselves counsel. For the first time in my life since leaving college I was reintroduced to the pecking order of society. All of a sudden I was drawn back into a world where rules from another age applied. Where a person’s accent and background were considered before you were judged and given your ‘rightful’ place in society. I might just as well have robbed a bank, or killed somebody, for all it mattered. In my opinion I had done nothing wrong, but there I was, like a criminal, fighting for my freedom. In other words the establishment had grabbed another rebel by the balls and made him kneel before them. I had become classless because of my success, but litigation put me straight back on that cold suburban street surrounded by greyness. I felt that dark cloud drift up behind me and slowly cover my head. I was right back where I started, in an emotional wasteland.
The court case was looming and the barristers were preparing for the ‘circus’ that was about to take place. Andrew Bateson was to be the junior counsel for Boscobel. He was a small, thin, surprisingly jovial character who would literally rub his hands at the prospect of interrogating Kassner and Page. The leading barrister, the man who would actually ask the questions in court, was to be Mr Fisher. This was considered to be a considerable coup as, according to Bateson, Fisher’s father had been the Archbishop of Canterbury, and would not only give the Boscobel case a certain degree of righteous clout, but also indicated that in Bateson’s words, at least ‘God is on our side’. Denmark Productions’ leading counsel was Mr ‘Blackie’ Campbell, a Second World War hero who according to Grenville was supposed to have been one of the few men to escape from Colditz.
One of our many advisers announced with glee, ‘A great prospect. What a circus!’ I soon learned what the term ‘circus’ meant to his sort: a defendant was like a clown jumping through hoops; dwarfs being humiliated; litigants like lions being tamed with the whip of justice; desperate men walking a tightrope without a safety net to save them when they fell, and the ringmaster judging and keeping a watchful eye over the proceedings.
Collins and Wace smiled with relief at the sound of the word ‘circus’. I realized that they felt secure among their own kind, the so-called professional classes. For no particular reason I started to feel alienated from the two of them, and at times I wondered whether or not they were actually on my side. I even wondered what the case itself was about. Wace and Collins were only trying to sort out the situation with Page and Kassner, and get back to managing the Kinks. There was nothing, or very little, spoken about my right to take my publishing away.
Only Colin Wadie seemed to show genuine concern for my deep-rooted fears. Wadie diligently took notes in longhand, pausing only to make the occasional interjection on a point of law. Bateson told Wadie to put any such queries down in his notes and let leading counsel decide whether or not it bore any relevance to the case.
By now I was beginning to feel a certain amount of paranoia about the so-called ‘case’. Whose case was it? And, more to the point, whose interests were really being looked after? It was obvious to me that this was more a dispute over management rather than who had the rights to administer my publishing. As Bateson spoke about Kassner and Page, it was clear that, this was going to be a battle of classes. West End versus the City.
I looked at Collins, Wace and Colin Wadie, and suddenly realized that nothing had changed in society. My success as a pop musician had only taken me out of that world temporarily. Now I was back in the clutches of the establishment. I had to enter court and swear on a Bible and God was my witness; I had to take the oath of allegiance to a religion that seemed far removed from my predicament. I was to be represented in court by the son of the former head of the Church of England. The very same church that had filled me with the beauty of its hymns and compassion for the weak, while at the same time only allowing a boy to move in the world according to his class. It was obvious that all men were not born equal after all
After a meeting at his chambers, Bateson asked me whether there was another pop hit on the way. I turned and looked around Bateson’s chambers: a mixture of spartan Victorianism and pious splendour, with a picture of a great lawyer on the wall. He looked like he needed a hit. The room fell silent. I didn’t want these people to have access to my work as they seemed to know every other aspect of my life. I wanted to say that the new record was about something that they would never understand because they had forgotten their own innocence. Because until the record was released, the song and what it represented was for my friends only; my private world. Grenville broke the silence and announced that the Kinks had just recorded a song called ‘Waterloo Sunset’, and it stood a very good chance of becoming a hit.
‘Will it make me laugh like “A Well-Respected Man”?’ asked Bateson jovially.
I looked over at the inquisitive barrister. ‘It might make you smile if you believe this country has some romance left’, I replied. Nobody in the room had any idea what I was talking about.
As we left, Bateson looked at me in a way that made me feel I was on the other side of the dock. ‘You’re quite an enigma, Mr Davies. You must be careful not to attempt to make poetic remarks on the witness stand. Even the best judges, and Judge Widgery is one of the best, can only make judgements on facts. An enigmatic answer or inconclusive reply, however poetic, has put better men than yourself into difficulties in a court of law. Mr Campbell will jump on any opportunity to show that you are a wastrel, or quite possibly a half-wit. Vague poetic responses are dangerous ammunition for a barrister, particularly when he is your inquisitor and out to prove that you are not a man of your word. Look what such behaviour did to Oscar Wilde.’
The others chuckled and even I had to acknowledge Bateson’s wisdom.
But as I left I suggested that provided I told the truth at the trial then I was in no danger. Bateson smiled. Colin Wadie muttered under his breath, ‘Thomas More was a truthful, innocent man according to many, and yet even he was judged as being guilty. In the end it cost him his life at the hands of the axeman.’ I was only party to a civil action, but already I was conjuring up images of going to the gallows if Boscobel lost.
My taxi took me along the Embankment, and I thought about what had been said at the meeting. All the false illusions of the sixties were being exposed. The idea of the working man and the upper-class man joining arms after the Second World War for the great battle ahead was total nonsense. Throughout the meeting at Bateson’s chambers, the sound of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ had gone round and round in my head. The lyric told how the imaginary Julie, who suddenly symbolized England, met my nephew, Terry, on Waterloo Bridge. A reunion of past and future that had obviously never happened. I thought about Terry’s father Arthur, and how his bitterness and sense of betrayal by Britain had forced him to emigrate to Australia to a new life. For the first time, I considered the possibility that Arthur may have been right.